this is effed up

I'm taking a course for work.  Two colleagues took it before me and told me it's one of those things that you cannot "memorize."  It requires actual knowledge to pass the test in the end.  They both stated - and one of them is someone I consider a genius from a remembering everything sense - that the course is ... well, that it requires a good deal of study.  In other words, it's not easy.  This of course, in my mind at least, meant that if I take it I will pass the test and I will know it inside and out.  I like academic challenges like this one.  Perhaps it is my competitive nature, I don't know.  It's also been a damned long while since my brain was knowingly and actively challenged with a real curriculum of sorts.

The first half of the first mod of the first section (there are six sections) seemed super easy.  I skipped ahead and took the quiz out of boredom and then failed.  Whups.  So I went back through and found out it picks up a bit about half-way through.  I mentioned this to the super-memory colleague and he smiles.  "Wait until you get 20 hours into it."  Ut oh.  That was just the first four hours.  Fuck.  Balancing this with work is going to be tricky at best, right?

But the next couple of mods didn't seem that  bad.  In fact, I had a renewed sense of purpose and need.  My brain was starting to like this exercise.  Then I got to the one I just finished.  Let's just say that while the concepts were exciting and I was eager to do some really fun things, I realized I had forgotten some basics.  Namely, hex to decimal to binary etc conversions.  Whups.

So I spent over an hour tonight re-learning how to convert hex to decimal to binary to decimal to hex so I can decipher packets.  I was so focused on that I was only half-listening and skimming the rest of the lesson, which is all about how to do what I really wanted to do.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I'd get back to that and find a reference and pick it up as I began doing the work.  It would come.  This was unconscious at the time but I know I do this and looking back on it, that's exactly what I was thinking somewhere in my head.

Yet somehow, despite my inattention to these things, I picked up something and it was enough to pass a quiz.  It's effed up.  I don't understand how my brain went from knowing it knows stuff to thinking crap I'm gonna die no wait, I know that... how do I know that... how how HOWWWWWW do I know that... Maybe I've developed more of an audio memory than I'd thought?  Maybe I need to move faster??  GAHHHH I don't know but I'm staying home in the morning to do more of this and try to get through the first section.  If the next section is even harder and I fall further behind, I won't be seeing the light of day (or path of exile or Dale or tea or food or cats or life) for a long time.

And get this... I screwed up the first and last questions on my latest quiz but knew the answers.  Those were the only two I got WRONG.  The rest of it I sat there giving correct answers and having no idea how on earth I know them.  Many of them I was answering before I saw the choices.  This was beyond the simple "I'll guess based on the multiple choice answers I see" routine I used to be so damned good at.  (Aren't most people good at those?  I reckon so.  It sure does help people pass tests.)

They asked one question twice in a different way but I got both right.  Something about asking what a number in a header was for a UDP, the last one I think.  I'm like, "The payload."  Found the right choice, correct.  Later they're like, "What does the last field in a UDP header mean?"  I'm like, "The number of bytes in the payload.  Zheezh, I just told you that."  Found the choice, correct.  Suddenly I realized I don't remember actually learning that.

This concerns me.  I wonder how much of this is memorization (of which I used to have a more visual version of - how I am remembering this sh** is beyond me) and how much is real, solid understanding.  What the hell is a UDP payload, anyway?  I have some very vague recollection of what it is but I'll be damned if I can put it into words that mean anything coherent.  The best I can say is that if someone references this, I'll recognize it now.  But explaining it?  Ha.

Sometimes I can't help but sit back and smile maniacally.  I've always considered myself someone who can figure it out as she goes along, but, this is ridiculous.  Is there any limit to what a human can accomplish other than a self-imposed one?  Is there?  Just yesterday I was explaining to someone that I feel stupid a lot of the time.  When questioned about why I realized it's not so much that I feel stupid, it's more about feeling inadequate because of my own inner voices telling me that I should be able to answer any and all questions instantly and know everything all the time without any effort.  Isn't this rather impossible for any human?  Without this expectation of myself, I'd surely be far less stressed.  However, how far would I have come without this burning need to attain perfection in knowledge?  Whenever I hand something over to someone else to figure out or to do for me, I feel a huge section of my psyche slip into a depressive abyss as if I'm the biggest failure on earth.  Why am I a failure for delegating things I honestly and truly do not have a need to know everything about?

This brings me back to one of the systems I support - and am, in fact, the primary support for.  Again I smile and laugh maniacally.  I was sitting there with this super cool smart guy.  I saw him start writing SQL queries and asked him about it.  He seemed surprised that I didn't know SQL given that I was maintaining the system I had been maintaining for 2 or 3 years at that point.  I explained my background and how I ended up with this set of servers to support.  His eyebrows went up and he looked a bit surprised.  Apparently the amount of time between my doing tech work and running a set of servers seemed a bit short.  So he showed me some basics and got me going.  Now I love SQL.  Admittedly, I don't know as much as I'd like, but it's really not that hard.  I've often thought that having more time to just sit and mess with it would be ideal.  But, I don't have that kind of time, so I don't.  Much to my dismay.

This class is like that.  It requires some real effort to gain its full value.  But I like it just the same... now it's time for pizza and some photo stuff...

~w

--

-Whitney

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contentsofsignaturemaysettleduringshipping. -- Mike Beattie

Thoughts on love, number 3.14~

Sometimes love is hardest when you yourself know you're miserable for whatever reason and you try your damnedest not to inflict yourself on the one you love - and ultimately fail.

I think that's the most self-condemning, helpless feeling of all.

Thankfully, there are apologies.  However, they seem so frail compared to the weight of misdirected anger.

~w

tea time

I walked outside with cup in hand

And watched my guy prepare to leave

As he drove away in rain

I waved back and drank my tea

Nothing quite like a cup of tea on the porch in the morning whilst watching the rain fall on an otherwise already beautiful scene.  I used to find beauty where I lived as a child, but it is a far cry from where I live now.  Many strive for views of lakes or mountain ranges, and yes, they are beautiful... but I like the depth of facing a quiet, dead end street.  The fog isn't as dramatic as a valley view come springtime, and the sunsets are cloaked in reflected light.  Sunrises exist on the other side of the house, once they dare to peek over the trees.  But the fog amplifies the depth by making the reds and greens richer.  The sunset lights bounce around in the atmosphere and set the road a-glow.  And the sunrises, when it's not raining, have directed one's attention to various objects.  Once it alighted on a single deer, as if the deer had taken a spotlight.

There is nothing that can compare to the scene before me.

Now for my tea.

music, omg.

So last night we took a trip to make a purchase from Craig's list.  I'm always dubious about such deals because usually anything we might really want at a "steal" is really too good to be true and totally scary to even bother with.  However, Dale made a deal.

Not only was the deal solid, but the guy was very nice and he even threw a couple of extras in.  One of these extras was a set of computer speakers.  Dale looked at me and stated the obvious.  "You've been looking for some computer speakers," he says.  I felt my eyes light up.  Cool, I thought, he will part with those!

The set up has not gone without issue.  I've got a couple cell repeaters at my desk, being near the best cell-signal window in the house.  The speakers are very sensitive to the interference at my desk.  Two guesses as to what that interference might be.  So right now I'm sitting on the floor to the right of my desk in this little alcove I'd inadvertently built for myself when I moved the guinea pig under my other desk.I've got a subwoofer way off to the left, the right speaker facing toward my desk, and the left speaker facing the desk to my right.  The sound is amazing.

I have forgotten what my music sounds like.  You know, the staples:  Peter Cetera, Chicago.  The old stuff that is so ingrained in me that hearing it like this shakes my entire soul.  And it's mine.  All mine!  So, I'm playing my favourites first.. You're The Inspiration, of course... Scheherazade, no brainer... Practical Man, Remember The Feeling, Wanna Be There, Happy Man, Alive Again, Once In A  Lifetime, 25 or 6 to 4, Big Mistake, World Falling Down.  Next on my list are the Richard Marx staples:  Hazard, Take This Heart, Nothin' You Can Do About It, One Thing Left, Right Here Waiting, Should've Known Better... this "next on my list" is gonna get long today.

This warranted some Da Hong Pao so now I've got some of that in front of me.  It's gonna be very hard to shut this stuff off so I can study.

/sigh

I had no idea how much I really missed music.  It's not the same in a vehicle, and it's sure as hell not the same coming out of tinny little built-in laptop speakers.  Sorry, Apple, but even you can't manage it!

~w

Things I've done that are cool

I was just sitting here after a good lunch and my mind wandered off to a special part of my past. His name was Lancelot. He was a striking lad with beautiful brown eyes that could watch two different things at the same time. He would often gaze at me as I worked on a computer. He also loved to look out the window at bugs flying by. He'd sit in the sunshine there and occasionally tilt his head to regard me with that quiet demeanor of his.

He was enchanting. And fast. When he was so inclined, of course. His food did not stand a chance - he loved his food, I remember that.

Over the years since he died I've come to think of him less and less. When his image does fill my mind, however, it is just as vivid as it was when he was right there in front of me. I can still see the tilt of his head, the way his eyes would look through mine and into my soul. I can feel his skin on mine. I remember how bright he was when he was happy, and how dull he'd get when something wasn't right. I remember the time he ate that spider off the curtain and grinned broadly at me, a twinkle in his eye, licking his chops.

I remember when he hid in the curtains for a week, and wouldn't take any water. I remember how he also hid in my stack of papers, and behind my stereo, and how I bred crickets just for him. I felt some affinity towards an albino cricket and took it aside. I named it Jiminy. Jiminy lived in the bathroom for three months. I set food and water out for him. Lancelot did not approve of that, methinks, but he never said anything about it. He only gazed at me, as if he was just as entranced by me as I was with him.

How many people can say that they befriended a 5-inch-long green anole and let him roam all over the downstairs of their apartment, eating bugs and clinging to curtains and circuit boards?

That, I say, is something I've done that is freakin' cool.

~w