Ephesus

In school, the prof teaching my “Intro to the C Language” course, Dr. H, really took the “Baptist” part of OBU to heart. The final project was that he would hand us a text file, a book from the New Testament, and we were to write a C program to generate a concordance (an index) to list the chapter and verse of every useful word. Bonus points if we could “stem” the words to collect variants together.

Mine was the book of Ephesians.

I was so behind in C, so out of step with the syllabus, and so overwhelmed and understudied, that I couldn’t even grok how to go about doing it. Obviously, the task is trivially easy now with modern languages. I could hack up something fairly quickly in Python. But the class was C. Low level stuff.

It was one of the lowest points in my academic path.

What really got to me was something about this prof. He was patient, approachable, almost father-knows-best-ish, but boy howdy did he push the scripture. This is the same doc who’d give us 10 bonus points on our tests if we quoted the scripture reference of the week verbatim. He did this to every class he taught. I flatly refused.

The fact that the final was related to the bible stuck in my craw. So obviously I failed that project. I failed that class with an Incomplete. I am not proud.

So why did I go to a baptist university and yet have so much disdain for the bible? Inertia. I started as this bright-eyed freshman on fire for Jesus, but by the time I took this class years later, I had grown a bit and left the church. Yet I still needed to continue with school. Rather than transfer and lose credits, I remained. My hardest lessons were learned outside of class.

I credit my ability to come as far as I have in tech to those who pained to help me when I stumbled, balked, and turned in half-efforts. I eventually got it. But damn it was a rough start.

I still have that text file somewhere. I wonder if I’ll ever finish it, just out of spite.

EDIT: Yes, I finished it on the 30th anniversary!

Streakhalten

Speaking of daily slogs, at some point I will give up this continuous streak on (I’m “learning” ). I’m currently at 447 days of streak, which sounds impressive, but I’ve burned up many streak repair “tokens” to maintain that (namely, when sick, or traveling, or whatever).

Really, this Duolingo streak thing feels like a death march. I know it’s supposed to keep me on task but, fuck, even school lets out for the summer. I’m burned out. Of all the things in my life I’m also burned out on, Duolingo is the easiest to drop.

I’m at a plateau, a wall (ein Mauer), and I feel like I’m not actually learning a goddamn thing. Ich bin studieren, aber Ich lerne kein Sprache. I’m not fluent at all and an app is not going to help that. I need a real class, not this, what I call “The German Game”.

Once I get to 500 days streak, I’m giving up the daily. can sik Lily on me to passive-aggressively nag at me all it wants, I can just disable notifications. I’m…tired.

Ich bin sehr müde. So, so müde. Und krank. Kann Ich schlafe, bitte?

Always Be Slogging

It’s taken a long time and a lot of work to get here, but I think I’ve finally cultivated a healthy work-WORK balance.

I mean, WTF to people even do with the “Life” part of their balance? Post self care memes on Instagram? I don’t understand.

If I don’t work 7 days a week, it’ll be that much longer before my work project is mature enough to handle itself so I can fly somewhere else for 7 days.

With the shot of perspective I got this week, I’m beginning to wonder about how incorrectly I’m living.

Someday I’ll die, and I wonder if all I’ll have to my name is a thumbdrive half full of photos from the meager handful of vacations I’ve taken in my entire life.

If I give enough of my body to the grinder, maybe they’ll let me turn the crank.

A Project of Life

I had some time today, split between projects at work and home, to think about how I got here. What single inflection point could have contributed the greatest to my current vector? My mother takes some of the credit.

Aside from the standard keep-me-alive stuff, the greatest thing she did for me was give me a soldering iron and an electronics kit on my 11th birthday. I jumped into it and learned early that you don’t solder in your underwear, and over time tore through that 200-in-1 kit manual to build every circuit, not quite understanding what’s going on under the hood. But I knew the utility of each design. I knew that blinkenlights and radio transmitters and music oscillators and digital logic games were hella cool. Took me a long time to grok the concepts, but the interest carried forward into a hobby.

Through fits and starts, that hobby carried forward into work. So now, 40 years later, I’m finally on a good footing in life and can repay her kindness.

I don’t think she saw it as an investment, but it totally was.

You don’t have to give your children soldering irons. But do listen to their requests. Get a sense for their real aptitudes. With any luck and a lot of fostering, their interests may elevate them to a place greater than you could have imagined.

I think my mom got me that stuff just to keep me quiet (as parents do) without consideration for my future in it. But it kept me home, out of trouble, and taught me a lot.

That small gift gave back.