Experiments in Life

My mind never truly shuts down. On the nights that I do not feel like sleeping, my mind tends to wander all over — past, present, and future. Tonight it is time to set the wayback machine to early July, 2002.

Ashley had the better part of the week off from working at Girl Scout camp and had come out to visit me during my last summer cooping in Huntsville. We had not yet been dating for a year and were soon to become engaged — the ring already being at my father’s store, and all. It was a beautiful summer day and Ashley wanted me to experience a little bit of her world. Having not been much of an ‘outdoorsy’ child, I had never truly been hiking before, but I knew of some trails on the mountain so I happily agreed. Forty-five minutes later, we were getting out of my car and setting foot on the hiking trail.

Ashley was like a kid in the proverbial candy store, totally in her natural element. I enjoyed being out in the woods as well, but I think I was just happy seeing how much Ashley enjoyed pointing things out to me as we moved along the path. Now, it being such a nice day, we thought that it would be no problem to follow one of the longer trails since we had nothing else to do that day. Thirty minutes into the hike, the heavens opened and rain began to fall. “Not to worry,” I said, “surely there is not much farther to go. We might as well push on until the end.” Two hours later, we finally finished up the trail back where we started, at my car. The rain had stopped possibly an hour before — long enough ago that we were no longer drenched, but recently enough that it was still hot and muggy. With all the rain and misery of hiking farther than we expected, we both still had a lot of fun that day just being with each other. On the long drive back to the house I was staying at, I looked over at Ashley and felt even more connected to her than before, having shared this time in the outdoors with her.

My Personal Dna Report

Nights when I am not in the mood to sleep are the perfect times to take tests like these. They kill a good half hour and can be rather entertaining when you finally get the results. In my case, I find it to be fairly spot-on. In addition to its custom result, the test pegged me as INTJ in its Meyers-Briggs comparison, which is pretty close to what I remember being when I took it back in high school. As an added bonus, the Psych you / psych me! feature lets you evaluate me using the same types of questions that I answered.

Ok, so I have finally started to slow down in my book reading. Since I finished reading Freakonomics last month, I have not been idly whiling away my time. I have still been reading fiction, finishing up Children of the Mind (CotM), Night Watch (NW), and To Dream in the City of Sorrows (TDitCoS). Below are my brief thoughts on these three, relatively short, books.

CotM is the final book in the Ender’s Game saga. All I can say is that it is finally over. I really enjoyed the first two books in the series (Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead) but after that the series went downhill. Orson Scott Card seemed to get preachy and by the end of Xenocide, I just stopped caring what happened to the characters. However, when I start a series, I feel the need to see it through, so I read CotM anyways. I still did not care what happened, I just wanted the Deus Ex Machina to hurry up and save the day so that I could move on to something new. If I had it to do all over again, I would still have read the book because it did give some really good closure to the series, but it just did not do anything for me.

NW was the first Terry Pratchett book that I have read. It was quite the refreshing change over CotM. The story was funny and I really cared what happened. For the first time in a long time, I found myself staying up as late as I could so that I could read just one more chapter. Sadly, I finished the book in less than a week. Then I remembered that Terry Pratchett is horribly prolific writer, so I have plenty of his books to choose from when I want to read another one, which made me happy again

TDitCoS is set the in Babylon 5 universe so, if you are not a fan of the TV series, you probably will not care for the book. I am a big fan, though, so I thought that the book was quite entertaining. It was well written and seemed to fit in well with the overall story arc of the series. It was not high, classic literature, but it was a fun book to read. Definitely recommended if you want to know more about what happened to Jeffrey Sinclair after he leaves Babylon 5.

That is all that I have managed to make it through in the past month. I have been working through one of my nerd books during my lunchtime at work, but I have only just started chapter 3 since I am trying to work as many of the exercises as I can. Next up on the fiction list: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It has gotten several good reviews so I am excited about reading it. More about this one in a later post…

Don’t you hate it when songs get stuck in your head for no reason whatsoever? It has been around two weeks since I went to go see the musical Evita and all of a sudden, the main song of the performance has jump straight into my head and refuses to leave. It has not been there for the past two weeks, so I do not know what makes today so special. Sometimes, I wonder if songs get stuck in my head because my mind is not working hard enough. I know that when I am really, really busy, my mind stays focused on the task at hand and the radio station that is my brain is quiet for a while. Lately, though, it seems like my brain is working non-stop to keep me entertained with showtunes. “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” is just the latest song to burst onto the scenes.

I think this, along with the urges to stay up late at night reading, must be signs that I am not being challenged enough. Well, since the books that I have been waiting for have finally come in, I have started trying to rectify (insert obligatory EE joke here) my boredom. I started on Essentials of Programming Languages during lunch today. This, along with the slew of novels I am slowly working my way through, ought to occupy my mind for a while once I get into it. Until then “Don’t cry for me Argentina…”

As I am sitting at computer in my office, I cannot help but to look at the books that are sitting on my corner computer desk, just waiting for me to dive into them. The only problem is, I am not sure which subject I want to study first. I have an interest in all of the subjects — otherwise I would not have gotten the books. Here is what I am considering:

1. Math Books
• Introduction to Topology
• Algebraic Structures
• The Theory of Groups
2. Robotics Books
• Robot Builder’s Bonanza
• Build Your Own Robot!
• Sensors for Mobile Robots
3. Computer Science Books
• The Art of Computer Programming: Funamental Algorithms
• Lisp In Small Pieces (coming soon)
• Essentials of Programming Languages (coming soon)
4. Any of my electronics books (at work)

I picked most of these up when I found them on sale at Barnes and Noble. To be honest, I will probably start in on EoPL or LiSP when they come in — I have been fairly excited about getting them. However, I have really started to notice how many of my E.E. skills have fallen off through disuse, so I may start up a side project to try and brush up on Basic Circuit Analysis and Electronic Circuit Analysis before I try to move into teaching myself anything new (in the field that I just received a Master’s degree in… and I need to brush up on the basics).

– Disclaimer –

These are not the only books that I read, in case anyone gets too worried about me. I do read novels (in the middle of one now) and other non-fiction books beside nerd-books.

Hello World!
Yes, I am still alive!! I know, it’s been a long time since my last post. People have been asking when I would post something again, especially since my husband has been so good about carrying out his resolution of one post per week. Well, it’s a little late coming, but here it is.

A couple of friends introduced me to the artsy craftsy challenge. It looked pretty cool, and even though entries were due in by Jan. 31, and I didn’t even get introduced to the challenge until right before the deadline, I decided to participate anyway. It was pretty fun. The requirements for Jan.’s challenge were something red, something sparkly, and a beverage theme. It was definitely interesting. Well, my friends and I sent in our entries and formed the Alabama Crafters group We’re such geeks Anyway, it was tons of fun and the lady hosting the challenge has a gallery up of all the entries she received.

For my project, I attempted to blend art and science, and I think I succeeded. I ended up with a perfect mix of nerdiness to artsiness. I made a t-shirt. On said t-shirt is a chemical equation. On the left is the molecular structure for coffee, and on the right is the structure for splenda (or sucralose, it’s chemical name). If you add these two together, you get a hot cup of java and a big smile, from me anyway. I’m not really human before my morning cup of coffee, just an imposter Anyway, so here is a picture of my entry.

Now that it is Feb., there is a new artsy craftsy challenge: if you could be any animal, bird, beast, reptile, or imaginary being what would you be and why? I have been thinking about this ever since the challenge was issued. Unfortunately, I have not yet decided what kind of creature I would be. At the least, it should be a very indecisive one As soon as I come up with a project, I will post the finished results here. Wish me luck, there are so many creatures to choose from!

Even if you choose not to participate in the challenge, I am curious as to what animal my friends, family, and fans would choose to be. So, post a comment and let me know what kind of creature you would by and why. I can hardly wait to see the responses

Although I am almost a week late with this, my 26th birthday came and went last Sunday. It was a good day, laid back, no stress. Every year I go into my birthday wondering whether I will feel any different on the other side and, for the past few years, I have felt the exact same before my birthday as I did afterwards. However, this year, I have been putting some thought into exactly what it is I want to do with my life. What are my goals? What would I like to be doing in five years (the quintessential interview/review question)? I have never really had a solid answer to either question, so I am determined to put some thought into it and see if I can come up with any answers.