I'm coming at you live from New Jersey, courtesy of my dad's wireless network. It's cool having a dad who's as geeky as I am, if not moreso. Driving through Morristown today, he told me that Morristown is where they ratified the C++ specification and that he is thinking of getting his picture taken in front of the hotel where that monumental event took place. My dad's a C/C++ programmer, so he's, you know, a little warped. (Just kidding, Dad.)
In Morristown, we saw a Civil War recreation. This is a very East Coast thing to do. I don't think there are many Civil War recreations on the West Coast. Or perhaps it's a very New England thing to do, as I'm sure the more Southern regions aren't as happy to replay that little bit of history. Today, we saw the Battle of... er... something. I forget. It was the beginning of the Seven Days War. July 8th, or around there. Don't ask me the year; I'm not only terrible with dates, but I'm jet-lagged. At one point today, I had the Civil War happening before the War for Independence.
At any rate, the Confederate Army won this particular battle, even though the Union soldiers had really loud cannons. During the fighting, two men on horsebacks took a few swipes at one another with their swords. "You're going down!" one of them shouted. "It's only a flesh wound!" yelled back the other. I'm not so sure they really quoted Monty Python in the Civil War, but it made me giggle nonetheless.
Yikes! I just tried to take a spider outside, but it dropped down into the sliding glass door grooves before I got the screen door open. It crawled to the end of the grooves, and this other spider pounced on it and ate it. Big mean spider was huge. Little dead spider was already pretty big, but was no match for big mean spider. Aack!
Lawn, lawn, lawn! I have a lawn! Woo hoo!
Okay, so it's not really a lawn. Yet. But it soon will be. Right now, there are just cute little shoots of grass popping up from under the compost. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Neat!
This is cool because I often think about how people think; it's a fascinating subject. How we store and retrieve information, including memories, phone numbers, the location of our car keys... It's neat stuff.
There is some discussion on stevenf's site about whether we store information heierarchically or not. I think we do, to some extent, but I think James Burke's knowlege web or the concept shown out at thebrain.com are better models. When I'm trying to retrieve a piece of information, I go through any number of pathways to get there.
For instance, if I'm trying to think of the name of a song, I'll access some stored audio in my head, or sometimes picture the room I was sitting in the first time I heard the song, which will remind me of the tune, which will remind me of the lyrics in the chorus, which most likely will contain the name of the song.
There are several things at play here: for one, there are a whole bunch of things tied to the name of the song I was trying to remember. Also, there is more than one type of data I filter through -- I get images, sound clips, text, impressions, and the rather ethereal threads that tie these things together. My search for the name of the song is narrowed down to some extent because I have learned that in the geographical location where I live, names of songs are likely to be repeated in a chorus, so at some point during my attempt at remembering the song title, my brain adds this filter into the search without my really even thinking about it.
Heierarchy as a model doesn't work because of the concept of mnemonics, because of related data points, whether they have anything to do with the subject in question or not. I remember that John Bull is the equivalent of Uncle Sam in England because there was a sidebar in my eighth grade history book and I was studying for a test with my friend, Alice, and we were laughing about it. I don't remember what the joke is or why we found it amusing, but I remember the sidebar. So there I've just thought of four things, which are related to any number of other things, and who on earth knows why that memory occurred to me just now? Not I. But these things wouldn't fit on a shelf, or in a card catalog if I really wanted access to them.
Anyhow, food for thought...
I think one of the saddest things about changing jobs was breaking up with my muffin lady. She took it fairly well, all things considered. I'll miss her and her husband (coffee guy). They've been good to me.
As I was planting a lawn in my back yard this weekend, a whole bunch of crows started cawing, and it became obvious why it's called a murder of crows. Murder. So poetic. When you hear them, it all makes sense. As I stood there in the sun, taking a short break from cultivating the soil with my Garden Weasel, I started thinking that we should have names for groups of people. Here's a few I came up with:
A keg of frat boys
A babble of sorority girls
A mole of chemists
An ollie of skaters
A bong of stoners
A lie of politicians
Happy Birthday, Cherz.
Okay, so it's pretty gross, but I really want to see someone do the moth spitting thing. The idea just cracks me up. Cherz? Silky? Tracy? I double dog dare you.
There are lots of random thoughts swirling around in my head this morning, so maybe I'll just babble, rather than trying to organize them in any kind of coherent manner. Not that that would be a big change or anything...
My password at work expires in 13 days. I'll be gone in 12. Serendipity. My new job will be cool. I haven't started yet, so I don't know all the specifics of my new job, but from what I gather, I'll be doing some user interface stuff, ASP/.NET stuff, rounding out the SQL skills, and working for a small company. Woo hoo! Sure, .NET means evil empire, but I'd be doing that anywhere -- both jobs I was looking at, and my current job are .NET-bound, so there's apparently no escaping it anyhow. I'll hopefully get to do some C# and get better at object-oriented programming and design. Also, there will be other people there who know way more than me and I can learn from them. Neat!
I also interviewed with a company that I'm a little sad I won't be working for. They're called PopArt and their office and environment and attitude impressed the hell out of me. The last part of my interview was with with the owner, who has this great philosophy about doing work for non-profits and eventually doing something good on a global scale using technology. Alas, both opportunities were great, and after a full day of agonizing, I was only able to choose one. It's all so Robert Frost "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
Since Sydney has asked about my kitty, I'll tell you a little about him. His name is Theo. He's tall and lanky and clumsy, so we have a lot in common. He's cross-eyed, so depth perception is a bit of a problem for him. He's cuter than most cats, is very soft, and has a lot of personality. He fetches. My friend Leslie found him on her doorstep and couldn't locate his owners. He was declawed when she found him, and he likes to bully other cats -- even though he loves people -- so I don't let him go outside. He's somewhere around 2-years-old. Aside from Theo, I also call him Gato, Buddy, Bobaloo, Doofus, and Sweetie Kitty. He chews on the knobs on my drawers and meows kind of a lot and sometimes, when I'm sleeping, he likes to attack my head.
Whuh? Shooting yourself in the hand doesn't strike me as a good political statement.
In other news, I got a new job today. Yay! I start in two weeks. I'm trying really hard not to have short timer's, but, well, you know how that goes.
If you're thinking that the next two months at nerdygirl.com are going to be entirely centered around NaNoWriMo, you're probably right. I can't help it. I'm compulsive that way. Would you rather I talk about my cat? Didn't think so.
I will try, however, to occasionally talk about something else. Like other peoples' cats. Here are two sites for you right now (one cat-related, one not):
1. I think this is the saddest cat I've ever seen, but I somehow can't stop laughing. Actually, somewhat more sad than that cat are the comments on ratemykitten.com. Lots of "Awww's" and "cuddly wuddly's". It's enough to make a girl puke. And then there's the comment from juliointhe04 for this cat. Is it funny or disturbing or merely a compliment gone wrong? You make the call. (Link via foxinthesnow)
2. Gnarler has a blog now. Neat.
I keep setting little novel-writing goals for myself. I have decided that I won't hold myself to the 1667 words per day thing, as I will likely need a few days off, so I'm going to keep my word count goals on a weekly schedule -- roughly 12,500 per week. Shit. I shouldn't have figured that out. Suddenly it feels daunting again.
I have also decided that, when I inevitably run out of words, there is going to be a pirate in my novel. It might be a character who shows up frequently, depending on how bad writer's block is. Or maybe one of the main characters can have recurring pirate dreams. That would allow for dream sequences (always great for increasing the word count) AND a pirate. I'm not sure what the pirate will be good for, but it makes me laugh.
So far, I'm thinking out little sketches for two characters: Chicago, who goes by Chica, and Hans. I don't know what the pirate's name is yet, as I've only just come up with that idea.
Someone asked me yesterday what it's like to be a woman in a technical field. It's something I think about every now and again, but rarely something I'm asked to explain. I told her that the main challenge is that when you go into a new job or start working on a new project with people you haven't worked with before, I think the "proving yourself" phase is a little more difficult. It's certainly not with everyone, but I do get a sense that, as the woman I was talking to said, the bar is set a bit lower for women, so on the one hand, it's a little easier to be impressive, but a little harder to actually prove oneself.
Mostly, I find it amusing to be around so many geeky guys all the time. It's like being a fly on the wall in the nerd locker room. (Although it's no longer me and 13 guys on my floor. We now have 4 women and 12-14 guys. Not bad!)
I've been fairly fortunate in that I've only worked with two or three men who have been chauvenistic enough to make me want to punch them. Lucky for them, I have excellent self-control, because I'm pretty sure I could have taken 'em.
I've also been fortunate that, on the whole, I've worked with really cool men and women who don't seem to think gender and the ability to do one's job well are at all related. Which is, if you think of it, how it should be.
This NaNoWriMo thing has gotten huge. HUGE, I tell you! It's amazing. For any of you who are thinking of signing up, or wondering why on earth you'd want to attempt to write a novel in a month, I say just do it. (I so hate that I can't say that without you thinking of Nike.)
Seriously, go for it. Put your name in the hat. At worst, you'll find that it's not something for you. At best, however, you will find yourself looking at the world in a whole new way. Every person who annoys you on the bus or who begs for change suddenly becomes a new plot idea. You start thinking in terms of word count. Contractions no longer exist ("do not" is two words, whereas "don't" is only one).
My best memory from last year's madness was ending up with Tom and Josh in a karaoke bar with our laptops. I drank rum & cokes and wrote about 1100 words. The writing was terrible, but the experience was incredibly fun. We even put really huge "10's" on our screens and turned them around when someone performed a particularly good song. We were the unofficial novelist judges of karaoke. When people asked us what we were doing, we told them, "We're writing novels!" as though proclaiming, "We fight crime!"
Is it a silly thing to do? Yep. Are you going to write a masterpiece in a month? Probably not. Are you ever even going to read the damned thing again? Many people don't. Will you be tired and wondering why on earth you did it at the end of November? You betcha. But, if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself looking forward to next November sometime around December 5th.
Oh goody!!! NaNoWriMo sign ups have begun!!! Only one month left before I write crappy novel #2!!
I was even thinking of things to write in it on my way from the bus this morning. This morning's thought was something about how we learn things that we don't even know we've learned. Like I can look at most coffee cups and know where they came from, even with the Java Jacket obscuring the logo. But it's not like I ever set out to learn that Boyd's cups are kind of fuzzy and Seattle's Best are maroon. Starbucks has white cups with green writing. That sort of thing. I could also do research for the novel in various coffee shops around town, where I will most likely end up anyhow, coffee being such a great aid to writing and all.
Anyhow, when you're trying to write 50,000 words in a month, little tangents like that are good. Also, it occurred to me that a motif of my novel could be the little things that we learn that we don't know about. Hell, that could even be a major wrapping up/plot point. It could be the whole novel!
Right. So. I'm excited. Yay!
