What do you care what other people think?

This is an excellent question.  (Feynman, by the way.  If you've never heard of him, look him up.  He's a brilliant physicist, witty and engaging speaker, and rather creepy as a person).  The strange thing is that when it comes to thinking about it, I really don't care what others think of me.  But my behavior is completely different.  I care a lot what others think of me, even complete strangers. 

It doesn't make rational sense, but I seem to have a fear that someone's impression will affect their behavior toward me.  Of course it will, but it's not the end of the world to have people know that you are less than perfect.  It's only the truth.  How can it feel so damaging?

On the flip side, making a fool of yourself can often be rewarding.  It requires guts, to be sure, to head out to an activity alone, hoping against all hope that other people will see and join you.  I know that feeling all too well.  It's a combination of humiliation, from playing a multi-person game alone and the inability to draw more people, and pride, in playing a game I love enough to make a fool of myself. 

Also, without caring what other people think, complements have no meaning.  A complement from a close friend means a lot.  And when it's something as broad as "I like the way you live your life," well, I can't help but care.  I'm glad to have friends who know me well enough and whose opinions I care about enough that that kind of a complement totally makes my day.  So thanks. 

Tablet Pens

I couldn't come up with a good topic today, so I asked some friends.  After rejecting 'Haircuts' for being too boring, I suppose I surprised even myself by accepting 'Tablet Pens' as a topic.  But hey, a topic is a topic.  Is a topic.  So here goes nothing:
Tablet pens, along with the ability to flip a screen flat, are the distinguishing feature of tablets.
There are three camps with regards to tablets: 'they're a pain and a waste of money,' 'they're worth their weight in gold,' and 'why are you guys making such a scene about it?'  I personally fall between the latter two.  I very much appreciate being able to write notes, since often math and science notes cannot be adequately typed.  But on the other hand, my computer is often rather intermittent, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the tablet function.  At those times, the tablet functionality seems like a waste of valuable resources.  So I'm torn. 
But when it comes to the tablet pen (excluding the tablet itself)...wow.  I love the ability to write on my screen, and I'm always forced to smile when I turn it over, almost by reflex, to 'erase' a stroke or two, and it actually erases!  Plus the pen is fun to fiddle with, whether just twirling it in my hand or shooting it out of the compartment on the side of my computer. 

For today, I'm grateful for modern technology and the ways it enlivens my life. 

Stars

Stars have fascinated humans since they were able to look up.  Those pinpricks of light have been emblems of the universe's mysteries.  Philosophers and scientists spent several millenia simply finding a way to describe their motion in the heavens, and are still working on explaining their behaviors. 
But really, the explanation doesn't take away any of the awe I feel as I look above me, and see the same stars and constellations as humans across the ages.  The motions across the heavens are so consistent and reliable.  I love the opportunity to go outside on a moonless night, as far from light pollution as I can manage, and lay on my back to admire the stars.  Over the course of an hour, I can see the motion about the pole star, and watch the rising and setting of some of my favorite constellations. 
Apart from the sheer awe-inspiring aspect of stars, it's also really cool to consider the fact that we're seeing things that happened millions or even billions of years ago.  As fast as light travels, the vast emptiness of space wins out, and it takes eons for us to see stars. 
They are awe-inspiring and wonderous.

I'm glad of clear, dark nights and the beautiful twinkling of stars. 

Cold

It's not even winter yet, and it's already cold.  That kind of cold that seeps into you slowly and takes a hold of you, numbing you to everything else.  Just being outside for a few scant minutes, it feels like my nose is about to fall off.  It's not exactly pleasant.  I've heard that if you fall asleep in the cold, you will never wake up. That sounds reasonable enough.  After all, while sleeping, the heart rate slows, breathing calms, and you cool down.  Combine that with the cold outside, and you have a recipe for disaster. 
I have a distinctly love-hate relationship with the cold.  I hate the way it hurts as a breeze blows on my face, the way that it makes any injury smart in the chill air.  But I also love the excuse to stay inside, to curl up in my blankets and go into a temporary hibernation.  I also find snow beautiful, though we haven't gotten any yet.  The gentle and silent fall of snowflakes is a glorious thing to behold. 
Plus, snowmen are always nice to make, and snowball fights are a consistent source of amusement in the winter months. 
So it's not all bad.

I am glad for warm soup on cold nights, filling my stomach and warming me to the core.

Waves

The ocean is a beautiful thing.  It pounds at the coast perpetually, creating an ever-changing boundary.  At sea, a boat rides up and down on the waves, bobbing along with the rhythm of nature.  The cool thing is that waves come in all shapes and sizes.  Mostly sizes.  From ripples to tides, waves are incredibly diverse. 
It's an excellent demonstration of the limitations of instruments.  If you're in a boat bobbing around on the ocean, you don't 'feel' the ripples in the water around you.  Those barely hit the boat at all.  In the same way, you don't notice the tides as you sit in your boat, the massive sloshing of the world's oceans from one coast to the other.  All that you notice are the waves of just the right size to affect your boat. 
Anyhow, back to the ocean.  It can be incredibly terrifying.  It's an enormous stretch of the unknown.  Even now, we actually know more about the surface of Venus than we do about the bottom of the ocean.  We are constantly revealing new species and even entire ecosystems.  And yet at the same time, the oceans have been traveled for millenia.  They're a strange mix of the known and the unknown.  The oceans are fantastically powerful, and certainly deadly.  And I suppose that's why they appeal so much to me. 

Sorry for this kind of stub of a post.  I've been swamped with to-do's recently. 

I'm thankful for the consistent changing of the ocean and the hope and inspiration it offers me. 

Thanksgiving

I have many things to be thankful for.  Too often, I feel that I ignore these things and focus on the problems in my life.  Complaining has a way of uniting people for a common cause that mutual thanks so rarely does.  Someday (inspired by xkcd), I'd like to participate in or lead a contentedness rally.  I'd love to see people spending time thinking about their good fortune rather than mulling over and bemoaning their problems.
The funny thing is that the previous paragraph complained about complaining.  And now I'm complaining about complaining about complaining...
In any case, for today, I'd like to spend a bit of time considering the things in life that I am thankful for.
First off, my family.  They're an amazing group of people, intelligent, reasonable, and kind.  I like to spend time with them, playing games, discussing politics, or just sitting in the same room doing our separate things.  I'm incredibly grateful to have such an unbelievably awesome family.
My friends, too, are amazing.  I don't think I could ask for a more engaging, enthusiastic, and exciting group of peers.  I always love to spend time with them, and their insights into everything from science to religion are always intriguing.  Their friendship in what can often be a stressful world is like a beacon to me.  They give me the strength to go on living the way I do.
I am also grateful for some more mundane things, like the food I always have on my table.  I am glad to be well enough off to be able to eat good, nutritious food three times a day, when there are people around the globe who struggle just to get a bite to eat. 
I am also thankful for the physical ability to do as I wish with myself.  This freedom is refreshing and much appreciated. 
I'm glad, too, that I live in a nation of intellectual freedom, and have the freedom and the ability to express my views.  It's great that I can discuss controversial topics without fear for my own well-being, and I like to think that I am reasonable in using this freedom.
Lastly, I am grateful for my ability and the ability of those around me to see the best in things.  The world can be a frightening place at times, and it sometimes takes a new opinion to see the beauty around me.

So thank you.  To my friends, family, and acquaintances, thank you very much for allowing me to be a part of your life.  I hope that you've gotten as much out of our relationship as I have.  To complete strangers, thank you for taking the time to read the ramblings of one more person in a strange world.  I hope that you will take the time to thank someone in your life who has made a difference to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Puzzles

I've never been much of a person for puzzles.  I'll pick something up, fiddle with it for a bit, and give up far too quickly for my own liking.  But for whatever reason, today, I was totally in the mood for puzzles.  I've installed a whole package of brain teasers, logical puzzles, and so on, and spent a few hours today playing with just the first 10 or so.
My conclusion is that what I need to do is fiddle for a while, find a bit of a pattern, and then, much like a computer, break the large problem into similar, but simpler, small puzzles.  Take a sliding puzzle.  Many people have seen them.  You start with, say, a 3-by-3 array of squares, which together form a picture.  It's missing one square, so you can slide the remaining 8 around, randomizing it quite effectively.  Now, how do you put it back together?  (*spoiler alert!*)
I figured out that what you do is put together two edges, and then are left with a simple 2-by-2 square.  Likewise, with a 4-by-4, I can put together two edges, leaving me with a 3-by-3, which I know how to solve. By doing this, I can (given an infinite amount of time, which I don't have) solve any n-by-m slider puzzle.
And no, I'm not going to tell you how I put edges together.  That would spoil the fun. :P
I also had some fun with 'Map,' coloring a group of regions using only four colors, Black Box, an amazing logic game I can't adequately describe, and Bridges, in which you connect dots using a prescribed number of bridges.  Lots of fun.

I'm sorry if this entire post felt a bit like bragging.  I'm just kind of excited about now being able to complete a few different types of puzzles, something I'd never before had the patience to do.  

Today, I'm thankful for puzzles, which can suddenly get me to focus on a problem until I solve it.

Learning

When I was young, I viewed learning as a permanent process.  You started off not knowing something, learned it, and then knew it.  It was nice.  An irreversible process that was automatically worth the time you put into it.  I never studied for tests.  After all, if I knew the material like I was supposed to, the test wouldn't be any problem at all.  Studying almost felt like cheating.  It was a pleasant, if erroneous, view of learning. 
Now, I realize that learning is far more of a process than a stage.  If I learn something, I learn it temporarily.  I can guarantee it will be faster to learn the next time, and the next time, and the next time.  If I use a tidbit often enough, I'll eventually come to use it readily, like simple addition or multiplication.  And if I don't use it for a while, I will have to relearn the subject before I can build on it again.
And in order to stay up-to-date in any scientific, teaching, or engineering field, people have to continually learn new things and use what they know, or else their knowledge will stagnate, slowly festering into vague recollections of ideas once known. 
On the one hand, this is a saddening revelation.  The idea that nothing that I learn can I simply know forever is a humbling one.  But on the other hand, it also promises a lifetime of learning ahead of me, a prospect I'm certainly looking forward to. 
There are few things as thrilling as a brief epiphany, that moment in which previously unrelated ideas click into place, completing a section of that puzzle of learning I have been painstakingly building over the course of weeks, months, or even years.  And pressing the boundaries of that puzzle, asking about those pieces right on the fringe, can be an incredible experience.  The process of finding the right question to ask, finding the right place and time to ask it, and finally finding a new piece of the puzzle to snap into place, is a revealing, engaging, and exciting one.  I hope I never tire of it. 

Today, I am thankful for family members and reading good books while curled up in a cozy chair. 

What a day

Today was a very strange day.  I slept in much later than I had intended, though I clearly needed the sleep.  The morning was beautiful: crisp, clear, damp from the night's rain.  What a glorious day it looked like it would be.  I had quite a bit of free time in the morning, and read some Harry Potter 7.  Very enjoyable.  Then, the work I had left over caught up with me. Everything piled on at once.  I was completely overwhelmed.  And somehow it kept accumulating over the course of the day.  I hardly had time to breathe. 
The funny thing is that under normal circumstances, I would have had a terrible day.  Far too busy for my liking ordinarily. But for whatever reason, I've been cheerful all day.  I'm certainly not complaining.  Just pondering a strange occurrence. 
Perhaps the weather had something to do with it. It was rather dreary and rainy all day, and sometimes, for whatever reason, rain cheers me up.  The pounding of rain on the roof of the building lifts my spirits.  At times, the roar of the rain exceeded the rumble of thunder.  At such times, all I wanted to do was to run to the nearest window and admire the splash and splatter of raindrops on the glass, passing the time in quiet admiration of the power of nature. 
All in all, a good day.  

For today, I'm grateful for those who will keep going no matter what may happen to them, right up to the very end.  Thank you.

Correction

A friend has pointed out an error in my last post.  The inverse square law of gravitation only applies in reasonable circumstances.  In other worlds, general relativity messes up the rest of physics.  :P  Still, it's pretty neat.  Just stay away from black holes. 
I'll post later.

Harry Potter!

Well, I'm not generally one to rant about movies, let alone movies based on books (don't even get me started on Eragon), but earlier today, I went and saw Harry Potter 7, Part 1.  It was fantastic.  I'll admit most of the story had slipped my mind at the time.  After all, I'd only read the seventh book once, about three days after it came out, so it's not exactly fresh in my mind.  Even so, it seemed quite accurate to the story (a blissful change from some of the previous HP movies), and the special effects were fantastic.
Note: I'll try not to give anything away, but if you really want to experience the movie or story for yourself, I strongly advise you stop reading now.
It was also fascinating to see how some of the characters have grown up. At several points during the movie, I was struck by how grown up Harry looked.  Perhaps it was the traces of a beard on his face, perhaps it was a result of plentiful makeup and extensive directorial consideration.  In any case, he certainly came across as an adult, rather than a child.  Ron and Hermione look much more adult than in previous films, but not nearly as grown up as Harry.
Anyhow, I liked it enough to pick up the book again.  I'm about 150-200 pages in now, and as far as I can tell, the movie was incredibly true to the book.

I'm thankful for two things today:
1) Awesome eyes in my (Linux! :-) ) taskbar that follow my mouse.
2) Discovering old things in my closet I haven't looked at in years.  The thrill of discovery mingled with the comfort of the long-standing - a glorious feeling.

Hey - smile!  :-)

Beauty

In case you haven't realized this already, I'm big on seeing beauty in the things around me.  I've found very few things with no beauty in them, and my respect for those who can see it in everything is immense.  There is great beauty in nature.  That one's easy.  Anyone who has seen an immense waterfall or the green shoots of a sprouting bush, or watched a tree grow from a seed into maturity can attest to the beauty of nature.  Nature is also where many artists seek inspiration, because there's something about the great outdoors that stirs something with most everyone.  People, too, are often beautiful.  I'm not talking about handsome or attractive here; I tend not to notice things like that.  No, I'm talking about the beauty of someone stopping to help someone back to their feet, a person who's willing to take time to help others.  Even just the person who's willing to give anyone a genuine smile.  Beauty surrounds us.  And then, the trickiest form of beauty.  Beauty of ideas.  Some ideas are so utterly perfect that I can't describe them any other way.  The symmetry of exponential functions, or derivatives and integrals, can be awe-inspiring in a way few other things can.  Beauty isn't limited to numbers, though.  It is also amazing to see how numbers can describe the world.  Take the inverse square law of gravitation, for example.  It is exactly 1/(x^2).  Not x to the 2.0001, or x to the 1.995.  Exactly two.  And it's a good thing for us that it is, or we'd be in serious trouble.  I'll leave exactly what would happen to actual scientists to describe, but suffice it to say that we wouldn't exist, and neither would the universe as we know it.  It's stunning how perfectly the universe adheres to laws of numbers and equations, equations which we even now are still discovering. The bottom line is that beauty is everywhere.  We need only open our eyes to see the beauty hidden in everything around us. 
The universe is beautiful.  Take a second and look at it. 

Today, I'm grateful for the beauty of calculus, which manages to awe me on an almost daily basis.

Fog

Early morning.  Late evening.  Fog is a miracle of the most common substance on the surface of the planet.  It's also rather beautiful.  The cold, wet, cloud around me almost makes me lose myself. Its talent at obscuring the ordinary sights of life never fails to amaze me.  And in that haze can come a new sort of view, one based more on the moment and my immediate surroundings than a far-off destination and the path to it.  I guess that sometimes you have to have something taken away to see what is right before your eyes. 
Upon emerging from the haze, I can see everything more crisply, clear now simply in contrast to the homogeneous monochromaticism I had previously surrounded myself in.  It's like opening a new set of eyes.
I can't really explain the feeling of seeing fog from inside a dehumidified, air-conditioned (or heated, as the case may be) home.  Looking out the window and seeing...nothing.  Just a gray blur in place of the familiar paths and trees.  A sinking feeling and childish excitement fight for dominance within me.  On the one hand, I love to be able to see my surroundings.  Lose that, and I am lost in a world of foreign senses and feelings.  And on the other hand, the little child within me loves the sense of adventure and mystery that fog promises.  But I miss the days when I could be entirely enveloped by the cloud of condensation.  Now that I've grown, I can almost invariably see over the fog from my high-up vantage point.  Still, that doesn't prevent me from occasionally getting on my hands and knees in the damp grass and crawling around, losing all sense of direction and location to the all-consuming mass around me. 
Weather can be an amazing thing. 

And I realized I haven't said what I am thankful for for a while now.  Hmm...friends, family, technology, and weather.  That should get me caught up.

Life

Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Darkness

Darkness has a lot of negative connotations (your line: "umm...duh!").  A lot of that, I think, stems from the intrinsic fear of the unknown.  Darkness is a master of disguise, hiding everything from our sight as it falls slowly over the world.  Even entirely rational people find themselves checking behind them, or paranoically (yeah, that's a word.  Merriam-Webster says so; therefore it is so) glancing around, squinting in a futile attempt to make out the source of a tiny sound. It comes as little surprise, then, that darkness is one of the things people most fear.  
And this time of year, darkness is more inescapable than ever.  According to Linux ( :-) ), the sunset today was at 4:30.  Far too early.  Not nearly enough daylight hours to actually do everything I want to do.  And with sunrise not until 6:45 AM, I'm spending most of the hours I'm not busy in the dark.  
However, at the same time, darkness can be pleasant.  Darkness and the cold of winter also herald the entry of heavy blankets, which make curling up in bed all the more comfortable.  It also makes for excellent stargazing.  When the moon isn't out and you can get a little ways away from light pollution, the stars are absolutely beautiful.  Bright and clear (very little moisture in the air to blur the light we get from the stars).  Simply marvelous.  I can't help but feel dwarfed by the massive scale of the universe, and somehow, I find that very comforting.  No matter how many mistakes I make, or the world makes, or dumb politicians in general make, the stars will continue on their way.  They don't know or care about our problems; gravity reaches that far, but only very weakly.  It's nice to know that there will always be some constant around us, an anchor amidst the turmoil of everyday life.  

Productive

That dream of so many of my companions, the golden ideal everyone strives for and no one ever seems to achieve.  My friends and I always say, "I need to be productive tonight/tomorrow/this week," but such noble aspirations seem to fall by the wayside with unbelievable consistency, at the slightest provocation.
And saying "you're so productive" can be both a complement and a criticism.  As a complement, its meaning is obvious.  If you are impressed by someone's productivity, it seems only natural to say it.  But I have certainly heard it used as a criticism as well, as a way of saying: "you're so productive you don't spend time having fun."  In my opinion, this is just jealousy.  I know the feeling.  I'm struggling to focus on writing something or finishing something important, and a friend has all the time in the world because he or she has finished all their other work already.  It's both infuriating and reassuring to see that it is possible to be truly productive.  It gives me something to work toward.
Anyhow, I bring this up because I was (at long last) very productive early this morning.  Which was thoroughly unexpected, since for the first time in a few weeks, I woke up tired.  And with a splitting headache to boot.  But I really was productive, finishing work I hadn't expected to complete for the next week at least.  It was quite nice.  And heading to breakfast after that, I was quite content with my morning.  Not happy, exactly, since I hadn't seen the sunrise or watched the clouds floating along in the serene sky, but content nonetheless.  I should really do that more often.
Problem is, now I'm tired again.  I suppose that was to be expected.  I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I probably should have, and haven't for at least a week.  At the moment, all I want to do is curl up under my blankets and sleep for a day or two, and wake back up refreshed and ready to face whatever life has in store for me.
Wow, that ended up being a thoroughly depressing post.  Hmm...I'll see if I can get a happier one tomorrow.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: I finally got Linux!  Now I just need internet... :-)

I am thankful for chilly mornings and warm food in my stomach.

Music

Fingers dance across keys.  Music swells through the strings and wood and fills the air with a beautiful melody.  It rises and falls with the tap of the keys, flying high and dipping low around me.  Now, it soars above my head, fluttering its wings and tweeting its joy.  Its delight fills me to the brim, and I smile involuntarily.  Then, in an instant, it drops like a stone to the deepest recesses of loneliness, and my brow furrows with concern.  My fingers slow and lighten, and the music dips hauntingly.  With a heart-wrenching pound of the keys, the song begins again to speed up, dragging my heart along behind it. 
When I play piano, I feel at one with the music, and a sort of blissful peace that overtakes me and lets me ignore the world around me for a while.  Sometimes, I swear my pulse is in time with the music.   The feeling of my fingers dancing effortlessly over the keys with no motivation from me, the sensation of having a tiny symphony playing in my head, the joy of flying to faraway places buoyed along by the music.
I find myself almost addicted to the feeling.  Any time I have an extra five minutes, I find myself scurrying to the nearest piano to play a few of the songs I know (not many, let me tell you), to once again soar with the music my fingers create.

I am thankful for the joy music brings to me and many of the people around me.

Another adventure in speculation

I've already mentioned one of my favorite things to think about, the infinitely sticky substance (Fish!).  Yesterday I came up with another one, an infinitely elastic object.  Meaning that it bounces off of things perfectly.  Now, I don't claim to understand collisions very well, but the first consideration that comes to mind is whether this object (let's say it's a ball) is hard or soft.  If it were rubbery, it would absorb force and then use it to propel itself backwards on collision.  If the rebound were perfect, it would bounce off with the same amount of force as it entered with.  But on the other hand, if it were hard, it seems like it would bounce off better.  The same way that a basketball bounces better than a ball of pizza dough.
On second thought, it would have to be rubbery.  It has to deform slightly on impact with another object, doesn't it?  Otherwise (and I'm just going on intuition here; I don't have any other tools to work with), it feels like it would shatter on impact, because the forces on the ball would have to go somewhere, cause some change.  It has to do with impact, which is force times time.  An infinitely hard ball would take no time at all to bounce, so the impact would also be zero.  But that doesn't say anything about the force.  It could be anything and still satisfy the equation.  The other thing that impact is is the change in momentum, and the ball is certainly changing its momentum.  After all, it's switching directions entirely.  Hmm...  I can't remember what kind of a proof that is-assuming one thing, finding that assumption's consequences, and finding a contradiction in them.  Here, I assumed that the ball was infinitely hard, and had a contradiction in the magnitude of impact, so I can safely conclude that the ball is not infinitely hard.  (I think that's a valid proof)
So we have a rubbery ball that is perfectly elastic and bounces off of things without slowing down in the slightest.  If we dropped it to the floor, it would perpetually bounce up to the height we dropped it from and back down to the ground.  In other words, there would be no loss of energy.  Conclusion: perpetual motion!
The key to this substance is the perfect rebound.  This, I suppose, means that it has to rebound in the same time it absorbed the force.  It seems like it needs to have a very set shape which it wants to return to with all possible speed.  Hmm...but that sounds a lot like a very hard substance.  Shoot.  I'll leave that question alone for a bit.
What would it be useful/annoying for?  Certainly it would be useful for museum exhibits and scientific papers, simply because of its inherent weirdness, but without knowing a bit more about what it would actually be like (hard, soft, etc.), I don't know enough to really tell what it would likely be used for.
Another interesting thing about it is that it cannot possibly make any noise on impact.  That is, the ball can't.  The wall or floor it hits can.  Unless that, too, is made of the elastic material.  This is a weird material.  I'm starting to see why physics would object to the existence of such matter.

I am thankful for my unbelievably awesome family.

Enjoyable evening

Well, I'd love to write something intelligent here, but it's far to late to actually be thinking about anything significant.  I may have already mentioned that I'm an early to bed, early to rise sort of person, and this is certainly past my bedtime.  I, after about 10:30, possibly 11:00 in the evening, am a lot like the average teenager in the morning.  Conscious?  Yes.  Awake?  Certainly not.  But in the mornings...  I can be as awake as I want, after waking up whenever I wake up.  4:30, 8:00, 6:34.5.  Whenever I wake up, I'm fresh and ready for a new day.  But I digress.  (Hey, I'm tired!)
So here goes a rather random, rambling, and *insert another fitting adjective starting with 'r' here* post.  I had a delightful evening.  I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, had a delicious dinner at a local Chinese place, rushed off to a fantastic play (Midsummer Night's Dream, modern style), and then went back home with a friend and chatted about whatever came to mind for a couple of hours straight.  Which brings me to now, tired and ready for bed. 
For today, I'm grateful for the companionship and conversation of close friends.

Adventures of a computer inexpert

So, today, for a variety of reasons I'd rather not go into, I decided that clearly I needed Linux on my computer.  I chose to dual-boot, since I am rather attached to my current operating system in addition to wanting to learn slightly more hard-core computer stuff.  Yeah, I know.  Really descriptive.  But that's pretty much what it is to me.  A little witch in the screen that makes things work, and when there's a problem, the witch is sick or having difficulty understanding what I'm saying.  :-)
So first I had to decide what version to boot. This was an adventure in itself, let me tell you.  If I asked a Fedora user, she would say 'Use Fedora!'  Ubuntu users recommend Ubuntu.  Mint users, too, are loyal to their operating system.  And it's nearly impossible to find an objective source on the issue, because people who don't care one way or the other generally don't boot Linux.  I eventually settled for Ubuntu, since I know a few people who use it and who will be willing to help a beginner figure out what the heck they're doing.  I went to a friend (one of many local computer experts) for help with installing it.
So, I booted up the appropriate flash drive, and ... (drumroll, please) ... promptly crashed my computer.  We spent an hour fixing it, and another hour just getting the hard drive to partition properly.  At last, it completed, and I left happily, content with the knowledge that I now had Linux on my computer.  One little bitty problem...I don't. I just have a significantly smaller partition for my old OS.  Shoot.  But the adventure was well worth it, and I don't use all of my hard drive anyway. 
Anyhow, story to be continued...when I figure out the ending.  :-)

I'm grateful for those daily adventures that pick me up and make me smile, no matter how absurd.

Rain

Rain.  Rain.  Rain.  A dark cloud wafts across the sky, slowly blotting out the sun and warmth.  A frigid breeze grows from a whisper to a howl, anticipating the excitement to come.  People glance upwards fearfully, then hurry indoors.  No one wants to be out in this.  Then, like a wall of water, comes the rain.  It pounds on everything it can reach, soaking the ground into a mush.  The new swamp eagerly absorbs more and more rain water, forming shallow puddles hidden by the grasses, pitfalls for any animal wandering through.  The rain falls heavier and heavier.  Pounding on roofs and roads, sending animals and humans alike scurrying for cover.  Then, in the climactic moments, a bolt of lightning flashes across the sky, immediately followed by the clap of thunder.  Bolt after bolt strikes the earth, exposing image after image of a stark landscape in grays and whites.  Another bolt, longer-lived than before, streaks between the clouds, lasting for so long that humans can momentarily see the entire scene brilliantly illuminated in color.  No one moves.  The area is silent in the wake of the deafening crash of thunder.
Out on the sidewalk, a young child in neon yellow rain boots breaks the silence, splashing delightedly in puddles and shrieking with delight.

Rain can be such a cleansing phenomenon.  It leaves the world fresh and new, washing away the old dirt, washing in the new.  The scent of the world is completely new, a fresh and clean smell.  And everything is sparkling and revitalized (thank you to a friend for the synonyms), with the newly emerged sunlight glinting off of everything, creating a mosaic of natural beauty.
I love rain.

I'm grateful for pouring rain that energizes (or re-energizes) the world when it's starting to feel old.

Writing

Utterly terrifying.  Completely exhilarating.  Entirely fascinating.  Mind-numbingly boring.  Writing runs the gamut. And I think I've gone through all of these feelings on it.  When, the day before an assignment is due, I am forced to whip something together, I can hardly think of anything more stressful.  But when I sit down in the evening (or morning, or afternoon) to write a brief blog post, I find myself actually enjoying it.  Such a strange mix of feelings on what seems to be a single, rather one-dimensional topic.  But writing is so much more than that.  It is a way for people to express themselves without the immediate pressure of time constraints.  When talking, you can't pause for a minute to come up with the perfect word for the situation, or have the time to frame your thoughts coherently.  Writing gives you all of that.  And then some.  When you write a story, it's like reading.  I've found myself engrossed in the story so much that when I stop writing, I can't help wondering what will happen next.  It's a chance for my perfectionism to be expressed (in terms of finding the right words, phrases, and combinations thereof) and repressed (I don't have to know exactly where I'm going at a given point in time).  I am free to roam about the world I have created, setting myself on a crash course to an unknown destination.  Letting my fingers do the walking, expressing myself without fear of reprisals.  It's a freedom of a sort.
And yet it is also confining.  With only words to express my feelings and ideas, I am forced to compress gestures, images, and facial expressions into the simple letters, numbers, and punctuation I can actually type.  How is it possible to convey all of the information a person could want to in just a line of text?  Language is an amazing thing, but it is not all-powerful, all-expressive.  In the end, we all resort to some sort of face-to-face communication.
But even so, I find myself running back to the written page, as a form of both release and expression.

I'm grateful for writing, for the freedom it has shown me and the promises it holds.

(smile! :) )

Fish!

Continuing in my trend of being a complete copycat, I now have fish!!
<--  See, over there?
Yeah, they're pretty cool.  And, if you're interested, I have an invisible fish...or two...or three.  So, for those of you looking to kill some time, can you see them?  And how many are there?
I maintain the right to remove them at any time and completely forget about changing this post.  If so, sorry, you'll just have to live with it.
I also got some practice converting to hexadecimal for the coloring, which was quite enjoyable.  It's always fun to do strange problems like that.  I can do two digits fairly easily.  Three becomes much trickier, because I fundamentally do not think in base-16. 
On a vaguely related note, does base 1 work?  I've had a teacher tell me that to express, say, 8 in base 1, you need: 11111111.  But at the same time, isn't one of the defining characteristics of a number system the existence of the placeholder, the number zero?  And base one certainly doesn't have a zero.  Or if it does, it doesn't have a one, and thus can't express numbers...  It's thoroughly confusing.  But also very fun to think about.
Another of my favorite contemplations is an infinitely sticky substance.  That is, it sticks to anything it touches.  Anything. A single point particle of it would bring anything it touches to absolute zero, because everything it touched would be unable to move away from it or along it (since it's a point particle).  Luckily, not many things would be able to touch a single particle of it because it would have a limited area around it.  Once filled by particles, the clump of particles would behave like a single (very strange) particle.  It would be a very strange clump, a hodgepodge of charge, mass, and strange interactions, but a particle nonetheless.  And if there were a lot of this sticky substance, you could get to the point where you have a macroscopic particle, immobile and probably rather stringy, since chances are that few sticky particles are only stuck to other sticky particles.  So we have a fantastically dense, entirely indivisible, fractal-like construct.  What would you be able to do with such an object?  Because it is indivisible, it would be infinitely harder than diamonds.  It could not break.  Could it bend? Perhaps.  It would involve the rearrangement of the particles around the sticky particle, which I suppose could be possible, so long as they could slide by each other easily.  Charge or space-filling-ness (I'm sure there's a word for that, but I can't think of it) would change their ability to change positions.  But what if one of the particles swinging around was a sticky particle?  If it got close enough to another sticky particle, they'd stick and not be able to rotate again.  So over time, if any rotation were possible, the stickiness would slowly gravitate towards the center, creating a very nearly spherical macroscopic particle.  But...no.  Because then you have suddenly much less surface area for the same number of particles stuck to the outside, which means that some would have to come disconnected, which is against our initial condition.  So probably if there's any room for rotation or bending, then the sticky particles are not yet fully saturated.  Since saturation would occur pretty much instantaneously, this is impossible.  We're left with an infinitely strong, completely unbreakable root network.
Any other interesting ideas for random ramblings?  Let me know!!  I'm almost invariably willing to think about interesting topics. 

And today, I'm grateful for warm tea on chilly nights.

Sleep

Sleep is an amazingly significant part of people's lives.  Apparently, from birth to death, the average person spends half of their life asleep.  Wow.  That's a lot of time spent doing something no one fully understands.  And yet this is possible despite the fact that in our adolescent and early adult years, we deprive ourselves of sleep constantly.  I know people who regularly pull all-nighters or get only a nap at night.  Somehow they function.  I've never discovered that ability in myself, though.  I have to get a good 7-9 hours a night.  Which is both a blessing and a curse.  It means I have to manage my time closely (no mean feat with projects, essays, and day-to-day work I seem to accumulate so rapidly) in order to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  When in doubt, I prefer to wake up early and work then.  I find myself so much more productive early in the morning.  Plus, the immediate deadline, the start of the actual day, forces me to focus and stop procrastinating, whereas at night, I can always say, "I still have__ hours before this actually needs to be done," and then I never finish.  That solid deadline gives me all the motivation I need to be more productive than at any other time of the day.  And I love to wake up early.  I've already ranted and raved about the beauties of early mornings, but I really believe it.  The world is so fresh and new, how can you help but be more awake than at any other time?

And I'm grateful for people who help pick you back up when you fall, and for the knowledge of just how to fall right.

Choices

Choices.  Everyone has to make them.  And the process of making a certain choice I'd hoped wouldn't start for some months yet has abruptly snuck up on me.  Lying in wait all week, pouncing when I least expected it.  It's a decision which is made even more difficult by the economic advantages behind it.  Dang it, I'm already weighing my options...and I only have one so far!  I guess I just need to forget about it temporarily.  Figure out what I'm doing immediately and wait until the decision needs to be made.  And research ad nauseum on all of my possible options, options for options, if you will. 

Also, as a bit of a sidenote, sorry about the vagueness.  It's to keep my identity and those of my friends off the web. For the most part, I'm imitating a few friends' blogging styles (one in particular) until I have the time and energy to develop my own.  Alright, metablogging tangent done.  Back to actual stuff.
Nope, I lied.  One more thing about blogging itself: I will sound cheesy.  Sorry to those of you who aren't interested in the way I'm stating some of my more introspective ideas, but I've come to the conclusion that a lot of what people say is true (and always sounds cheesy initially) actually applies in real life.  So I'll try to keep cheesiness to a minimum, but can't guarantee anything specifically.  
And I'm done with blogging for the day.  Actual stuff will have to wait.

Oh, and I'm grateful to people who are always willing to talk about anything.
And those who selflessly serve groups of people which would not otherwise be served.

Flight

It's been rather windy recently, a chilly breeze from the north.  And whenever I happen to be walking into the wind, apart from leaning into it by what feels like more than 20 degrees, I can't help but hold out my arms like wings.  My sweater flaps at the arms and waist, and I swear I'm about to take off.  Oh, flight.  What a blissful sensation.  Even just jumping has a moment of suspended animation.  The world slows to a snail's pace, and all that exists is the jump.  And then, in the blink of an eye, the moment disappears with the jolt of landing.  But the feeling stays with me afterward, the residue of the jump.  And the wind makes it even better.  The whooshing in my ears makes it seem like I am flying unimaginably fast, covering miles in the blink of an eye.  A moment or two of utter freedom, isolated from the physical constraints of real life.
What must it be like to be a skydiver, to have a few minutes of this sensation, freefall without constraints.  The roaring of air as you cut through it at over a hundred miles an hour.  The ability to almost swim through the air, maneuvering using air resistance, feeling the speed of the air changing as you have more or less surface area on the way down... Oh, joy.  And then the incredible jolt as you unfurl your parachute and slow to a crawl (if you can crawl through air), coming to a gentle landing on good old Earth.  Thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
Even a ski jumper must have a similar feeling, twisting and slicing through the air on the way to a perfectly solid landing on both skis, with a puff of snow on landing.  Freedom from the usual rules of physics, the ones we have to adhere to in everyday life.  Joy.

Windy days and the joy of flight. :)

Nice weather

That's one thing, at least, to be said for today. At the onset of winter, there is a preponderance of sunny, dry, chilly days. And those are positively glorious. Admittedly, the time of day I tend to favor, the morning, is downright cold, but I can still admire it from my window, and walking out in it to go to class is always nice. And blessedly short-lived. Otherwise I'd catch a chill and keep it...for next to eternity. Terrible circulation: once I get cold, I stay that way.  It takes a good, long run or a large bowl of steamy soup, or a long night sleeping under a mountain of blankets, to really warm me up. It's a shame, especially with months of cold weather coming up.  Even so, though, a fresh morning is a beautiful sight to behold.  Cold as it may be, the silence and stillness of an early morning is positively amazing (and I'm starting to run out of adjectives...).  A silent snow, bare trees, the abandoned footprints of a rabbit or squirrel.  The incredible stillness, the utter quiet...now I'm just repeating myself. Once again, I find I can't adequately use words to express the awe-inspiring sensation a glorious morning gives me.
Ah, well.  An interesting day.

On a completely unrelated note, a couple of close friends now know about this blog. I admit I'd intended to wait a little longer, to 'find my voice,' if you will, before sharing it.  But it's too late for that now.  The damage (or reinforcement?) is already done.

Finally, on a third and still completely unrelated note, a friend of mine recently decided to list one thing he was thankful for for each day this month.  I figured I might as well give it a shot:
Laughing hysterically at a friend tickling me.  :D

A little more

First off, I'd like to thank the friend from whose blog I half-copied this blog's description.  I liked the ring of hers better, but I like the ideas in mine. Anyhow, attribution accomplished...sort of.  I'm not putting her name here, so I suppose there is some attribution to be desired, but it's close enough. 
I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about keeping a blog.  On the one hand, I like the idea of turning my ideas into words, and I think it's kind of cool that friends and family will be able to read it and have a glimpse into my thoughts.  But on the other hand, I know I won't write down everything I'm thinking, simply because of the fact that anyone can read it.  People I know or complete strangers. Friends or not-so-friends.  That is a rather scary thought.  And then there's the aspect of 'what will _____ think?'  I try not to let that affect my behavior, but the fact of the matter is that it will.  Oh, well.  Live and learn.
I also can't help but wonder if some of my friends will read this as religiously as I read theirs (or would, if they had one), and if so, what opinions they will form of me.  Will they tell me of these, or will I just have to live with the fact that some people I see every day know something about my thoughts and won't share their impressions?  Do I even want their impressions?  I don't know.

A rather dismal and rambling post for a glorious day.

*smile*

Rafiki Cheesecake?

My thoughts: 'Hey look, I have a blog!' (short pause) 'Shoot, just what am I supposed to do with it?'

Out of a lack of any other good ideas at the moment, and without going too in-depth, I'd like to give a brief overview of my blog's title.  It is, rather predictably, the name of a dessert.  In Tanzania.  Hey, ideas come from all sorts of places.  This is a rather atypical dessert, though.  Normal cheesecake, but with an interesting story behind it.  Once upon a time, on the way from the kitchen to the dining room carrying this cheesecake, a waiter was attacked by a (hungry) lion.  In a state of panic, he flung the cheesecake into the lion's face, giving himself enough time to escape.  Rafiki is Swahili for friend, so they renamed the dish as Rafiki Cheesecake.  An interesting story, and a delicious dessert.  And it's been on my mind recently because just this week, a friend of mine decided to learn Swahili. 
That's all there is to it. 

As for why I have a blog, that's because a few of my friends and my younger sister do.  During my youth (oh so long ago), I kept a journal and updated it daily.  But with age came other things to do in my spare time, and journaling fell to the wayside.  This is both an attempt to resume that long-lost habit and an effort to put into words some of my ideas and feelings about life, the universe, and everything.

Here goes nothing!
(and to the reader: whether I know you (hi!) or don't (hi! Why are you creeping on my blog?), thank you for joining me on my journey through life's curiosities and bearing with me as I struggle with the transition between ideas and words.)

Oh, and one more thing: smile.  :)