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Posts for the date of Friday, October 25, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:37 AM |
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Yesterday I had a nice conversation with fellow tech-geek, Disney park enthusiast and musician Mike of Sparkle*Jets UK. I realized that many of you, sadly, have probably never heard their music. That, I’m afraid, is a shame. Bamboo Lounge is a fine CD that you should check out. One spin of “Sorry” or “So Gone” will each give you at least seventeen reasons why you should listen to this disc. Sparkling (no pun intended) harmonies, killer guitar work, sly lyrics, nice bass and one hell of a female lead vocal on several tracks are just a few of the reasons to check them out. Either visit their website or check out their samples on MP3.com. It’s good stuff. And if you don’t think so, there’s something seriously wrong with you. Really. You should get yourself checked. Maybe even “Consult Your Physician.”
Besides, can you beat a song entitled “Surfing Monkeys”?
On the home front, there isn’t a lot going on. It’s raining. I’m still obsessed with physics and am struggling to pick up some of the math required to understand some of the concepts. I’ve been listening to the Feynman lectures on physics and reading some of his theoretical work. It’s difficult stuff but . . . compelling at the same time. I know I’ll have to move on to other scientists and other work at some time but Feynman’s lust for life and the thrill he gets from discussing the mere interaction between electrons. Amazing. I can’t muster that sort of passion for anything. What a brilliant bastard.
Sorry, I’ve been obsessed. I’ll move on to something eventually. I assume I will, at least. Maybe. We’ll see. I think. How silly it must seem for a man my age to be obsessed with an area of science that takes decades to fully understand. But, as a layperson I have to say, it’s exciting. The universe is beautiful in so many ways that we can’t see. It’s exhilarating to find a new layer to peel away and see something that you couldn’t before.
Well, I don’t have anything profound to say today. Nor anything exciting to talk about. I don’t even have any jokes to crack.
I think it’s too rainy and glum outside to feel like joking. I think I’ll just allow the gray day wrap itself around me and allow me to brood over things. Perhaps.
Gertrude’s first birthday is coming up. Family, be prepared for a party. If Gert isn’t the cutest baby you’ve ever seen, then you haven’t looked very hard.
The kid’s a comedian of the truest form. She’ll do anything for a laugh. Wiggle, giggle and jiggle. She’s a daredevil, an inquisitive little soul. She’s curious, sweet and loving. Everything you could ever want in a child.
Just this morning she ran up behind her nascent skater sister and gave her a big morning hug. It was cute.
And her sister’s no slouch herself. Yesterday her friend was handing out candy. She came inside and said, “I have a surprise for you. Guess which hand its in.” I did. And it was revealed to be in her right hand. It was a package of bottlecaps. I think I mentioned once that as a child these were my favorite candies. And when offered any piece of candy she could choose, this is what she chose.
And she gave it to me.
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Posts for the date of Thursday, October 24, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:20 AM |
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Yay! I’m all moved in! I can do whatever I want now. I have space, I have the means I have the tools. All I lack are those ever-reclusive ideas. Perhaps I’ll catch a few today. Doubtful, but possible.
I want to thank my personal Yoda for helping me with the web design. He allowed me to make the mistakes I needed to make and helped me when I needed help. The design looks as good as it does because of his help. Thank you Master Yoda! Your Padawan learner is appreciative!
I still have a lot to do. Pages to build, content to write, Meta tags to write, etc. It’ll be a long process but eventually it’ll be worth it. I’d estimate that it is going to be roughly 2005 when I feel it was all worth it.
I’m hitting crunch time with my freelance work. Books are due! I have more manuscript than I know what to do with! It’s exciting and scary at the same time. I may take February to sleep. But by then I’ll be reviewing pages and I’ll be tired, tired, tired.
I’m tired now. I keep having these revelations at four a.m. for some reason. Last night the baby woke up hungry and the wife and I woke with her. As she was snarfing up her food, my mind started to wander. I realized something very important.
We’re all experts in something, right? Whether it’s web design, science or potato peeling, we can all say that we’re good at something. And, quite often we’re in awe of people who can do things that we either can’t or don’t understand.
That’s the way I am with physics. I’m working to understand it as best I can, but it’s a slow process. A fun process, but slow. Most people with English degrees don’t suddenly decide to study physics on their own. Sure I could take a class, but there’s something about suddenly understanding a particular law of physics that enthralls me.
Here’s what I realized. When you look at a scientist you’re amazed and confounded by all they understand. But to them it’s easy because they can see it. Richard Feynman understood QED because he could see the motion and properties of atoms because he studied them. I can’t.
Imagine your house. You can simply say your address and you can visualize your house. You can see the trees, the wood, the doors, the grass. But if you say your address to a stranger, they won’t be able to see it. They haven’t been there. To them, it’s just an address. A concept rather than reality.
The same holds true for science. If you understand physics, it isn’t so difficult to find your way to quantum physics. Because you can see it. You can visualize it. For the layperson, like me, I don’t have the map. I’m still trying to find it.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about childhood. It could be because of Matilda being a full-fledged child, perhaps. I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking of what I was like in first grade.
I know that I was really, really confused. My dad had died the year before, so I wasn’t exactly a normal kid. I was a little . . . forlorn, I guess. I’m not sure I always showed it outwardly, but I know for a fact that I acted out on it countless times.
How? Because I was a liar. I lied constantly. Not to my mother, but to my friends about my life.
A memory came rushing back to me recently from when I was in first grade. I was standing at the front of Miss Meyer’s class for show and tell. I was holding a Storm Trooper action figure (from Star Wars, not the Third Reich). I spun an elaborate yarn about how my dad, before he died, made the molds for the action figures and that we had thousands of them laying around the house because he made them.
The thing is, I knew this was a lie. My dad worked for a company that distributed bearings. He’d never once carved a mold for a plastic action figure. I sincerely doubt he had the artistic talent to do it.
But I believed my own lie at the moment. Because in that moment, I knew my dad. He wasn’t my “true” dad, of course. But he was one that was alive in my head.
My own memories of my dad are muddy at best, but for a moment they were clear. Even if they weren’t true. I never mentioned to my friends that I was jealous that they had dads that would help them in cub scouts. I never told them that I was jealous of their dads cheering on the sidelines of soccer games and I certainly never mentioned my anger at them when they told me their dad was a jerk. In my mind I figured at least they had a dad.
Memory is a strange thing. I hadn’t thought about my storm trooper lie for years. In fact, I doubt I had thought of it again since I told it. So why did it occur to me recently?
In a way I want to go back and tell all those kids that I didn’t tell them the truth. That my dad never once carved a storm trooper or any other Star Wars related toy. I want to tell them that the way my dad, in the short time I knew him, was just fine with me.
He may have never made toys but he was a cowboy soldier, a professional hockey player (who didn’t know how to ice skate) and had been bayoneted in the chest during the war (though there are rumors that the scar on his chest was really from when he climbed a barbed wire fence as a teen).
I know these things because he told me.
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, October 23, 2002
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Posts for the date of Tuesday, October 22, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 12:06 PM |
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Today I will be talking about my latest scientific theory as it relates to life. It is entitled, “The Theory of Reason Standing.” I’ve been practicing it for a few weeks and it seems to be working for me. Perhaps it can work for you.
Now, before you think I’m about to spout off some sort of psychobabble, new agey, spiritual crap based on the hum of the Earth, I want to quell your fears. This is none of that. It is simply my perspective on life for the periods between 10/1 and 10/31. Next month it could be the “Theory of Relative Crap.” Which, since Christmas is coming up is a likely topic, as it’s the time of year relatives give you useless crap.
My theory is bourn out of my current reading. I’ve been devouring the works of Richard P. Feynman, a brilliant physicist and all around goofball. It’s not his scientific theories that are striking me (though they are quite interesting in and of themselves) but, rather, it is his view on life that is most impacting the way I think.
Feynman had a brilliant mind, there is no doubt. But how his brilliance manifested went well beyond quantumelectrodynamics. He played drums; he picked locks and sniffed people’s hands at parties. He flouted rules just to prove how they didn’t work and he took on a governmental commission to help uncover the truth behind the Challenger accident. He was funny, could tell an amazing story and had a booming New York voice that gave rise to many debates, accolades and much disdain.
What I see in Feynman is something I see in myself, minus the brilliance. Feynman loved to joke, he loved to tell stories and he often accidentally offended people. I do that too. But, more to the point, people could rarely tell when he was joking and when he was serious. A problem that I often have as well.
Feynman looked at life in an amazingly simple way, considering the man could visualize subatomic particles. He broke down life into what was important and what wasn’t. And, by golly, he was going to have a good time no matter what. He could waste his time feeling sorry for himself or he could recognize his situation as an accident of life.
Feynman realized that sometimes the Universe was a wonderful playmate, full of wonders and mysteries that were there for him to discover. He loved the pursuit and sharing of knowledge. But he also understood that the Universe sometimes plays ugly, dirty tricks on you. You could choose to wallow or you can move forward to your next discovery.
What his life tells me is that I can use the basic scientific yearn for understanding to help me understand and deal with my own life. I won’t ignore my emotions. Hardly. Rather, I will better understand and direct my emotions towards the correct end result.
Imagine life as an experiment. You set up all the components and you mix together a solution and add it to your Bunsen burner. BOOM. It explodes and you are left at a crossroads. Naturally, you’re angry. You want to smash all the rest of your work because it took you four hours just to get to this point. But you don’t. Rather you step back and review what you did. In the end, you realize that you are not angry at your experiment as a whole, but you’re angry that 10ppm of Barium was too high a percentage. You redo your work and this time the experiment succeeds.
The lesson learned is that you focused on what the heart of the situation was. You didn’t trash your bottles, flasks and graduated cylinders because your experiment failed. You rather took those emotions and put them toward discovering and correcting the error.
This can easily be applied to life. I know because I’ve been doing it. I’m in better harmony with my own emotions not because I’m ignoring them, but because I better understand their focus.
Life, in this case, is the experiment. I remember the variables; I remember the environment and seek to find the proper steps to avoid that in the future. Or, better yet, I devise a formula that I think will not only avoid explosion, but also succeed and allow me to move on to another set of experiments.
So, let me apply the Theory of Reason Standing to a basic situation:
You come home on Friday upset at your boss. You’ve been working all week long on a report for him. A report in which you’ve invested a great deal of time, work and passion. You are very proud of your work. You submit the report to your boss and he dismisses the ideas, conclusions and work that was done. When you get home you are livid. You are upset that your boss is so mean and has no regard for other people’s feelings.
However, if you apply the Theory of Reason Standing, you’ll discover that you’re not upset at all about your boss’s disregard for your feelings.
Take a look at the entire situation. What are the variables? 1. You were given a task. 2. You worked hard on that task. 3. Your work was ultimately dismissed and negated.
This has nothing to do with your boss’s handling of the situation. Rather, you feel that your work was invalidated. It doesn’t matter whether or not your boss was nice or cruel about the delivery of the news. He could have attached $1000 to your rejection and your feeling wouldn’t have changed. Your work, your time, your efforts and ideas were negated and pushed aside.
So, you come up with a plan of action. You sit down with your boss and discuss your report. It may turn out that your work was highly appreciated, but missed the mark. It’s possible that the instructions you were given were wrong and there was no way to succeed from the start. If you find out WHAT you need to be upset about, you can better figure out what needs to be fixed.
Your boss’s ability to be nice is meaningless in the experiment. Therefore it STANDS TO REASON that if you understand your emotions and focus them in the right direction, the results of your experiment will be more successful.
Life, in the end, is a series of experiments. We know the variables going in, but the end result is a discovery. Sometimes our experiment blow up in our faces. Other times we make great strides and discoveries.
The key here is allowing everything to stand to reason. Distill the situation for what it is. Get angry at the brick that fell on your head, not the entire wall.
And, slowly but surely, you will find that life is much simpler than you imagined. The better you understand your situations the better you can respond.
When the Universe plays a trick on you sit down and figure out how that trick worked. Then you will find that the next time the Universe plays that trick you will be prepared.
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Posts for the date of Monday, October 21, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 7:54 AM |
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We made an important discover this weekend with young Gertrude. She’s mastered walking, is tackling talking and her motor skills are developing at a perfectly fine clip. But now, she has discovered something that has enriched her life in ways she never imagined.
Cookies. To be specific, animal crackers. And all you have to do is say “cookie” and she motors over to the pantry and pants like a dog in anticipation.
Now, I know that this isn’t exactly a good thing to teach your kids. Meaning, one should never introduce junk food to a child who is perfectly happy eating healthy food. But, I also think it is important that children understand what is important in life. And cookies rank third, right behind nachos and hot wings.
Let me back up and explain how this happened. It was early Saturday morning and mommy and I made a deal. She would let me sleep in if I offered her something in return. I offered money, prime cuts of veal and a very expensive bottle of wine, but she settled for an afternoon nap.
Our day went as normal . . . you could even say it was fun (I got another Feynman book and was investigating his lectures in book form). Mom was tired and baby wouldn’t sleep. So baby and I played downstairs, Matilda outside and mom slumbered happily upstairs. Well, Gertrude and I were having a fine time of it when we decided to have a snack. Now, it’s difficult to give an 11 month old child a snack. Most of the food you give kids of this age will turn into a pasty mush and stick to things better than monkey poo on a humid day.
Well, we had animal crackers and they looked good to me. So, Gertrude and I sat down on the kitchen floor and she and I munched on cookies and drank milk. She seemed happy with her discovery of yummy food. She munched and crunched and asked for more (using sign language . . . she can ask for more, say she’s all done and we’re trying to teach her to say thank you.)
Well, for the rest of the weekend I’d say, “You want a cookie?” and she’d haul over to the pantry panting. Mom yelled at me, especially when we were making dinner and it would ruin it.
But I couldn’t help it. She was being cuter than hell. I couldn’t resist.
That’s because I’m a sucker and a fool. This kid has me wrapped around her finger. When she runs up to me, arms out giggling happily I turn into a puddle on the floor. Sometimes you get overwhelmed.
So I give her cookies. And she eats them. And looks at me with a love and happiness that tells me, “Someday Daddy, you’ll give me my own car. You may not realize it yet, but you will. You will.”
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