Typing takes way too much energy. So I'll keep this short. I'm still sick. I go see the doctor again tomorrow. And unlesI'm actually, like, dead tomorrow I should be in for a half day, at least.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go do someting tha doesn't require any energy. Like maybe sleep.
So I'm still sick. And she says I might have a virus or something. So she said I need to stay home until Thursday and go and see her then if I'm not better. And in the meantime, drink watered down gatorade. Eww.
So I'm still sick. And I'm frustrated, because I can't do anything, and I can't go anywhere... But dadgum it if I'm going to miss another whole week of work. Do doctors understand that part time employees don't get sick days? and that students usually have summer jobs, not because they are bored and need something to do, but because they actually might need the money?
Having said all that, if I feel gross tomorrow morning, I may stay home. But I can't take another three or four days, that's crazy.
So yeah. I'm going to go eat and orange cream pop. Because they are like, the only thing that tastes good right now.
Since I wasn't here last Thursday, I didn't tell you what cool stuff NASAexplores published... so here goes: Stronger Than Rust, about anti-corrosion coatings, and Bringing the Clinic To The Patient, about telemedicine. (Be sure and check out the 5-8 and 9-12 lessons plans for the Rust story... I did both the 9-12's, and one of the 5-8's).
And once again, no one knows what's wrong with me.
but... at least the possibilities this time are much more exotic. Which of course, means I get to see more doctors. And I love doctors. Going to see the doctor is my favorite thing to do in the whole world.
We'll know if it's anything normal by the end of the week. We hope.
Startling news break: The intense heat at my house is not due to the fact that the air condition is broken. In reality, we are conducting top secret experiments. I'm not at liberty to divulge much information, but I can tell you that the experiments pertain in part to the specific heat of Lays potato chips, and naked molerats. Stay tuned for updates.
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguincharging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0
When it rains, it pours. Actually.... I wish it would rain. Not only because I like rain (interesting side note... I'm the one that likes rain, but Chad's the water baby. Go figure)... but rain tends to cool things off. And that would be much appreciated right now *glances upward, hopefully* *shakes head*
So I actually wrote a little last night. Not like, blog writing, or journal writing, or writing wrongs... no wait... that last one was off. Anyway, the point is, I wrote. Not much. But some. I think Neverwinter Nights has reawakened something... even though I haven;t had time to bring Arianell through anything past 3rd level due to the fact that I play on my sister's computer...
So yeah. Interesting. I'm not much of a writer. But I enjoy it... As long as no one else reads it. There's nothing worse than watching someone else read your work... Although Chad's read some of my "poetry" (I use the term rather loosely), and he didn't have anything terrible to say about it. And I wrote a fairly passable short story once, for creative writing. About a family in the Warsaw Ghetto... fairly depressing, but my teacher said it was well written. But of course, no one in my clas knew what it was about. They were all like, Dude why are these people sewing yellow stars on their jackets? What year did this take place? What state is Warsaw in? *sigh*
I don't know... I might let someone read this, when I finish. it may not turn out to be much... just another random sword and sorcery type story...
If I ever finish. Yeah.... Don't tell Elisa I started on anything. Thats all I need right now... another lecture on how I've never finished anything in my life. (My attempts to point out that I finished high school have been totally ignored).
So I'm going to church tomorrow. With my Grandmother. Not sure exactly how I feel about that yet... at least it'll get me out of the house, I suppose. And it's slightly better than going to my parent's church. At least the people are friendly... I dunno. Church and I haven't been getting along too well this summer. I have a church at school that I like a lot... this is more or less the last time I'm going to spend any appreciable time at home... so why fight to find a church here now? I like the new preacher at Calvary, but the church itself, and to some extent its people, hold way too many memories for me to ever be really comfortable there again. Other than going for AWANA on Wednesday nights... and even that has become depressing, as everyone I knew there is gone. Even most of my brother's friends have graduated. Grandmother's church is... well, Grandmother's church. Everyone there has known me since I was born, practically. And they all expect me to look and act a certain way... and I'm afraid I'm not going to fit that picture they have of me. But, the church itself isn't an uncomfortable place to be, which I suppose is good, since I plan on getting married there. I just wouldn't want to go there every Sunday. Actually... this summer, I haven't wanted to go anywhere every Sunday. I haven't wanted to get all dressed up and go and sit still through church, and then smile at everyone and shake their hands on the way out.... blah. People. Haven't wanted to deal with people.
And yet, at the same time, I want to be at school because there are people there. wierd, eh?
But yeah. I've probably written too much. So I'll go away now... probably take a shower or something...
Everyone calm down, and take a rational minute to listen to what I have to say, without assuming I am attacking you, or tyring to perpetuate the argument.
Now. Here goes.
Sometimes people get on my nerves. I doubt there is anyone who doesn't. And when that happens, because I realize that people getting on my nerves may be my fault, and not theirs, I try to find someone uninvolved to talk to.
Chad was a good person to talk to because I trust him, and also because he was in Colorado, and therefore was not in contact with any of my friends. How many times have I gone to one of my boys to talk when I was frustrated with Chad? I would hardly say I ridicule him...
Sometimes you just need to vent. And, in the interest of keeping peace within friendships, you don't always vent on the person who frustrated you... You may hint at it, but you never push the issue with them. sometimes, you just find someone who will listen, and blow off steam.
But, sometimes, when you are having a long week to begin with, and you are running on a serious lack of sleep, you don't think about things.
Someone says something, and you don't think it sounds right. So you ask around. Ask people who should know. And you get some information. And that information is verified by several sources. So you comment that based on your information, what they said was incorrect. Not attacking anyone, not actually trying to start a fight. Just to say, hey, based on the info I have, this isn't the way it is. And maybe that information is wrong, maybe it isn't. But it's all the info you have at the time.
And they argue. And you argue back for a few minutes. Even though you detest arguing over stupid things, and worse, arguing over cars... and finally, at some point in the argument, your sleep dep catches up with you, and you forget you are a nice person.
And so you let people know when they frustrate you. And they, in turn, get pissed. And feelings are hurt, and people stop talking, and you're left feeling like crap for having said anything in the first place.
But you don't back down, because people are always telling you you need to stand up for yourself, and tell people what you think. And people take it as an attack. And people get even more upset. And you feel even more like crap.
This is why I hate being assertive. This is why, when you tell me I need assertiveness training, I say no, that's ok. Because being assertive pisses people off. Even if you are just complaining about how your steak was cooked.
And because I hate knowing that people are mad at me.
The original debate can be continued in Chad's blog, if it is deemed necessary. But I am no longer arguing. Because it's not worth fighting over. When I find something worth fighting over, I'll let you know.
posted by Deedee 10:08 AM
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Thursday, July 17, 2003
For all you Mississippians, regardless of school. The last two full paragraphs make this priceless... (Again, link stolen from David. You know... y'all could prolly preview half my content if you read his blog first...)
Oh well... I wasn't going to start anything here, but as I have no better way to spend my time....
In response to the war waging on Chad's blog... I would like to point out that I don't care what "notchback" is... I was trying to make a point, and my point was lost in the technicality of it all.
My point was this: I did some research, and refuted some thing said by someone, not in an effort to make them feel stupid, but in an effort to display how annoying it is to be constantly contridicted.
Not fun when it's reversed, huh?
And the comment from Chad was not solicited by me... he reacted to the use of notchback in his comments the same way he did when I asked about it.
Generally, the nice thing to do when people get tetchy about being corrected all the time is to let it be. If they say the sky is brown, just let them say it... it doesn't make it true, nor does the fact that they have voiced their opinion force you to believe it. Research if you like... just don't point out everything they say as being wrong. Even if they are. You can think they are wrong, without tellign them. I promise.
And, for the record, "not well-read" doesn't mean stupid... it just means that you haven't read from a wide range of books. Generally, well-read refers to literature. I consider someone well-read who has read greek and roman myths, and selections from CS Lewis, Tolkien, Jane Austen, Louisa May Allcott, Dorthy Sayers, Shakespeare, Milton, Eugene Field, Poe, Mark Twain, Asimov (not just the sci-fi), Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne, James Joyce, Dickens, and Ogden Nash, to name a few. If you haven't read, or can't at least make culturally literate references to most of the list, I would be willing to say you are not well-read. This isn't an insult to your intelligence... only to your reading habits. Which, in the engineering world, means absolutely crap.
But that's not my point either.
Because something is outside your realm of experiance, doesn't mwan it is limited to a geographic region, or a specific culture. It may just mean you haven't run across it. And dismissing it as being limited to specific regions or cultures is not typical of a quest to know or to learn why...
"Notchback" could mean "meatballs with rice" for all I care...
posted by Deedee 11:13 AM
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Hey... for those of you hwho have no clue what I'm talking about when I say "The Portal", the Portal is just the new NASA website... and here is my contribution, the student glossary.
posted by Deedee 10:08 AM
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Check out the last NASAexplores summer edition... The Summer Triangle (Mindi and Jeremy write this one, but I did the graphics)... and JoCasta's interview with Leland Melvin, her astronaut crush *grin*
We go back to publishing regular articles and lessons next Thursday *yay*
Two different links from Yahoo News... The first isn't terribly workplace friendly... but then again, it's Yahoo News, so you might could get away with it. I just found it to be interesting... The second link proves that Vietnam has a few good ideas we don't.
Anyway. I guess that's my comments on the world at the moment.
They knew... And the media is going to play with it until people get tired of it, and then move on to something equally as morbid and disturbing.
posted by Deedee 6:36 AM
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Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Quote of the day:
What you call ignorance... we call exploration. And sometimes it means taking a few risks...
-- Neelix to Seven of Nine, Voyager "Random Thoughts"
An article on the Columbia investigation... really slams Marshall. Too tired to actually comment on this... read away.
posted by Deedee 7:39 AM
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Sunday, July 13, 2003
It's always interesting to happen upon the blog (or LiveJournal, or e-space of some kind) of someone you once considered a close friend... at a time in your life when you had very few close friends... and discover, while reading it, that not only do you have no clue what they are talking about because you haven't seen each otehr in so long... but said friend has changed so much in the meantime, that you wonder how your personalities were ever really compatible...
Grrr. I thought I was going to manage to avoid having him in any of my classes this semester... and the stupid git had to go and take the one class this semester that I'm really really looking forward to. Grrr.
That's all I need this semester, some arrogant lazy stupid head crass sex crazed prat sitting next to me several days a week, distracting me from the lecture, trying to copy my work while making inappropriate comments and being all touchy and gross.
There's still hope though. I told him it was really hard and required a lot of work, and that I was worried about the courseload... so now he's thinking of dropping. I am so eVil.
posted by Deedee 9:52 AM
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Thursday, July 10, 2003
These lyrics make absolutely no sense at all. I mean really. Read them. It's like he was on drugs or something. Why couldn't he sing about his dog dying or his truck or something?
As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
--Maurice Wilkes
Ha ha ha ha ha.... I got out of having to go to a stuuuuupid 4 hour meeting... Instead, I have to go to a (much shorter) telecon about the Portal. Which is much much much nicer than a 4 hour directorate meeting. Yay for me! (Not everyone on my team gets to go to the telecon, only people who have done Portal stuff... The rest of everyone has to go to the big meeting... this is causing interesting and fun workplace tension). *grin*
Addendum: the Portal telecon was really a thank-you party fromheadquarters, telling us what a great job we did on the Portal, the Educator Astronaut site and the NASA Explorers school. we so rock. posted by Deedee 8:33 AM
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*sings* I get to see some astronauts, I get to see some astronauts *stops singing*
But not for like, a couple weeks. So I'll shut up now.
mitochondria mobile cytoplasmic organelles of eukaryotes visible in the light microscope whose main function is the generation of ATP molecules
ok... so when I was in 5th grade, the only reason I knew what mitochondria were is because I read L'Engle. Granted, by 8th grade I had taken A & P, and had some scientific knowledge of mitochondria... but I don't think the average 6th or 7th grader is going to be able to decipher that definition. *I* am having trouble deciphering that definition. So yeah. We're gonna change it. As soon as I can find a good one.
Speaking of NASAexplores... the new summer issues went up today. Check out my spiffy page on Bootes, Arcturus, and Cassiopia (be sure to look at the pictures... I did those, too). And don't forget the cool bio of Jan Davis.
Sleep and air conditioning are two really good things... But, at the moment, I have neither :-P
The air conditioning problem might be remedied today. Hopfully. I literally had to ice myself down last night to be cold enough to go to sleep.
In other news, insomnia has one good use: thinking time. In addition to ranom other thing I figured out, I contemplated my plans for the future, and basically came up with this: I still have no clue what I want to be when I grow up. No really. I don't. I have this vauge idea that I'm going to get married next summer, and then either get a job or go to school some more... but beond that, my only plans are to live where ever Chad has a job, and someday have some kids or something. I think I want to teach, at some point, but I'm a little unsure of when and where I want to get my teaching degree... if I end up going back to school it'll be for a Masters in CS... but I don't know what my concentration would be in... I'm leaning towards Graphics, but we have no graphics professor at the moment... also leaning towards AI, but Dr. Boggess is leaving, hence no AI professor... So staying in school forever might not be the answer either (though it's tempting sometimes).
So I came to the conclusion, basically, that my life has very little direction at this point. But that's ok, I guess... it means I'm flexible, at least. Or something.
posted by Deedee 6:03 AM
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Wednesday, July 09, 2003
I really don't feel like blogging today.
If i did feel like blogging, I'd complain about stupid government rules, and financial aid, and the price of textbooks... I'd probably say something about spazzy girls... and I'm sure I would whine about still not having air conditioning, and the fact that Daddy left the gas tank on empty for the second day in a row and I'm hoping I have enough gas to make it to the gas station. I'd tell you that I have a killer headache... and that I'm leaving work at noon.
But I don't feel like writing any of that. So if you want to know, call me.
just a quick random note: being a contractor sucks. I mean, really. Grr.
Another random note: no matter what Matt tells you, caffine is not a good subsitute for sleep.
One more: air conditioning is a very good thing. hopefully there will be air conditioning at my house when I get home.
posted by Deedee 11:45 AM
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Monday, July 07, 2003
yep. after looking at the ThinkGeek site again, I have come to the conclusion that I would like to own just about anything on that site (except the binary clock, which I already have). So... come Chrimma or birthday or whatever gift giving event.. look no farther than ThinkGeek. *grin*
posted by Deedee 11:43 AM
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Yay! Check out my new cool little countdown thingy.... right over there (to the left) on top of my Weather Pixie... Yay! (thanks to David for both pointing out that I needed one, and then finding me one and sending it to me)
posted by Deedee 10:18 AM
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Dude... if you haven't played Neverwinter Nights, you really need to. If you have ever played a d20 game... or even thought about it... Neverwinter Nights will be the awesomest computer RPG you ever play... it's straight out of the 3rd Ed. D&D handbook.
And it's only $25 at Best Buy...
But you better have about 6 weeks of absolutly nothing to do.... because the game will suck you in. It is *so* addictive... Don't say I didn't warn you...
Update: for those of you on alternate operating systems... Neverwinter Nights is available for Linux, and the Trial Mac version is available online. Equal opportunity gaming *grin*
btw, I'm safely in Memphis... er... Southaven. Trying to figure out how Chad and I are going to celebrate our negative one-st anniversary... Right now it's looking like a cook out and fireworks :-)
ok... leaving work now... running away to Memphis... may or may not blog this weekend, depending on how much I feel like saying... and whether I remeber to call the spiffy number and record something :-)
So... Every one have a good holiday... and play safe (that means no blowing people up with fireworks) *grin*
posted by Deedee 2:25 PM
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Why does my chapstick have a warning that says "Keep out of eyes"? Do my eyes really get that chapped? It also says "Stop use and consult a doctor if condition worsens or does not improve after 7 days." I can just see calling Myra and saying "Uh, yeah... so I've had chapped lips ofr like, 8 days. I just thought I should consult you." I mean, really. It's chapstick. Not Rocket Science.
posted by Deedee 1:29 PM
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Quote of the day:
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
-- Artemus Ward
ok... so... This isn't a spoiler, but I have a few things to say about Harry Potter. Having finished Book 5 the day it came out, I went back and read Harry Potter again... Books 1-4... and I picked up on a lot of things in the earlier books that I would never had noticed if it weren't for the last one... and, upon my inspection of the earlier books, I have determined that not only was Harry not out of character in book 5... he was totally in character. Everything in the first four books leads up to his actions (and reactions) in the last one... I could cite examples, but then this would be a spoiler. And I promised not to do that.
So... If you are questioning Harry's actions in the last book... reread the first 4. Especially Goblet Of Fire. It helps. I promise.
La la la-la... one more day of work this week... Tomorrow, Chad will come and get me, and we will head back to Memphis... Friday, we will cook out with the BC group and watch fireworks either there, or at shelby farms... Then we have a lot of options for Saturday (incuding, but not limited to, the entire population of Moose Lake, South Dakota)... But we have no clue what we're actually going to do. Any suggestions?
posted by Deedee 1:08 PM
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agh.... it ate my work. Apparently, the server gets hungry when not connected to the rest of the world. And it ate half a days worth of work. From Monday. *sigh*
posted by Deedee 7:47 AM
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368
w00t!! The server is (finally) back up.... which means I have oodles of work to do. Yay! (Having real work to do is much better than making stuff up). Yeah. So I'm going to go finish doing my made up work... so I can do my real work... yeah.
posted by Deedee 7:19 AM
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Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Geek Test I ranked 71.99211% - Geek God. And I didn't make up anything. Ha.
Grrr. I hate Housing. All they do is try and screw me over.
But that's ok. Between Chad, who annoys the crap out of them until they do what he wants, and Matt, who lives next door to housing people, I might still get something reasonable out of this. Maybe.
And I now have roommate contingencies for either Hull (which is unlikely at this point) or a renovated dorm (which I don't want because it's expensive and the rooms are tiny).... and I refuse to live in Hamlin. So there. Yeah.
I have lots to do at work today, but I can't do any of it right now... it's all broke. The whole site, actually. I didn't do it... I promise... but I don't have anything to do to keep me busy between now and when the site stops being broke. *sigh*
posted by Deedee 7:06 AM
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This is my brain..... in part, at least.
