Don't come around here no more.

In case you were wondering, I don't hang out here as much as I used to. I have my auxiliary blog that I like better and I've been posting there more, so go on over and go catch up!

http://spaces.msn.com/members/auxumbilicus/

Regards,
Michael

Dog's Breakfast.

This morning I woke up abrubtly in the midst of a REM cycle... either one of the cats woke me up by "stretching" (which entails knocking something big to the hardwood floors) or Dawn was reminding me I needed to get going to get to work.

In any case, I woke up stupefied... felt like I was returning from another dimension, my IQ reduced to a mere 4 or so points. I stared at the cat, trying to find something in my head to connect with. Then I stared at Dawn and did the same thing. Something on NPR was talking about terrorism or Bush or big oil companies or the Amazon or something. All things are related.

Shortly, my mind followed suit with my body, yet I remain sluggish today. An appopriate mood to write in.

Reflecting over yesterday's post on originality, I have to commend my new friend Marius on reminding me originality is difficult at best and that one should just do what they do very well. That's good advice, actually. The conflict of being an idealist is that I seem to always need to see the bad side to see the good. This means putting down originality to make my own thoughts seem more than they are, perhaps. I also appreciated his comments about my positive influence on him regarding NASA -- I think we can find a good balance in our discussions and end up with a realistic perspective of NASA. If we do it just right, we may open a wormhole to the future and then go live in a more enlightened age where going to space is easy, fun, and etc. It takes a good person to admit a perspective shift. Marius, you rock.

So I guess I need to figure out what I do well. Hehehe those who know me will be amazed, but I absolutely suck at math. I am good at abstract problem solving (abstract analysis, as found in Calculus) but I never got past Algebra 1 and really was only passed in high school geometry from sheer pity. I decided if I am going to be engineer-like (do I want to be?) I need some better math skills. Since I work for an educational test publisher, we have a pretty badass library and I checked out a textbook to study from. Sheesh. Maybe carpentry. I can't escape the math, either way!!

Someone else at work who I respect said that I have the very rare talent of being a creative technical thinker. I like hearing other people's perspectives on this because to me it seems like an endless stream of complex issues that needs solving by people who aren't familiar with thinking galactic-scale in an infrastructure not suited to innovation. To those at work who are following my blog to find a way to fire me for talking bad about work -- well, I am not necessarily talking about work: I am talking about the world, sometimes. And if I was talking about work (I don't claim I am) wouldn't we want to change that anyway?

Another thing we idealists do: bring in the World when we should bring in only a blade of grass. Everything is interrelated, so a blade of grass leads to... the cosmos (insert space music here). Bringing me back from Earth (I vacation in a little gas giant system in the crab nebula) is a very good idea to help balance the frustration of thinking too large.

So I don't know. Yesterday was frustration with originality. Today is accepting originality as something that's been SO done before. :) Time to go on and do my own damn thing really well.

For goodness sake, someone please tell me what 'WOOT' stands for. Everyone uses it. Not to change the subject.

P.S. I am reading a good book by Greg Bear called "Moving Mars". It's a sweet book published in the early 90s about a future Mars and a science experiment that changes humankind forever. A good, technical read. Pick it up! Do it!!

Originality.

I've been "away" for a while, working on my companion blog, about NASA and the Space Shuttle, and so on.

During this experience and in other areas of my life, I've been grappling with the idea of originality. I realize in an atomic way, my actions and thoughts and so on are unique and original: no one else has the same thoughts and actions in this moment in time as I do, and is therefore original.

This does not really satisfy, however, because thought concepts about what I think about already exist, or other people are better at it than I am. Example:

Throughout my space blog, I starting thinking of space advocacy groups and discovered there already is one. I also thought I was creating a cool blog, but there's other sites that are devoted to space with much more detail and resource than me.

So, what am I contributing? Yes, it's my unique perspective on it all, but how does that further the cause or how does that benefit anyone? For me, it's expression of writing what I experience and hopefully inspiring others (and myself).

Oh well. Here I am again, a new post, a new day, a return to blogger. Let's see what happens.

Crikey!

Dawn and I interacted with an alligator this weekend. No, not at the zoo, but on a nature hike at the Mitchell Lake wetlands area south of town. Dawn's looking at the place as a potential employment opportunity and so we decided to go wander some. They warned us there was a gator out there, and I, jumpy as always, was on the lookout. Around the back end of a trail next to a pond (which I would call lake) I spotted "Alfred" along a far bank about 30 meters away. Alfred was 8-10 feet long and beautiful. No cages, no nothing. We stepped forward a couple of feet and he slunk ever so slowly into the water, dissappearing completely into the murky pond. I suddenly felt like a wildebeast and visions of Discovery channel swam into view and I saw Alfred lunging from the water only to grab the hapless beast into the pond for death and digestion.

I told Dawn that she, being smaller, would be the first to be eaten. We walked briskly the other direction.

The wetlands and lake area are really untouched and raw. We saw a lot of birds (water birds, mostly) including a noisy fellow who was apparently disturbed by our investigation of his little inlet. The Audubon society took over this area and it's really quite amazing so much nature exists untouched so near a city. We didn't see snakes, but we were warned against them. Talk about your non-conventional workplace hazards. I can see the insurance claim now: "Eaten by alligator". Dawn had a dream about being chased by an alligator two days ago. Hmmmm.

I feel slightly Ghengis Khanish today. There's a lot going on and I feel resistant to the change, bloodthirsty in my individual take on everything. Perhaps its the sunburn from the hike. Perhaps it's the giant list of issues that arrived on my e-mail doorstep as I walked in today. When is there a break? When do we Americans realize its not all about work work work work work until you have a heart attack and then get to rest, if you survive?

What a load of belief systems. Need to work on accepting those so I can choose other ones. Oh well, off to work issues in a bloodthirstily lazy way.

What the?

Disorientation has set in. I remember this Michael from 3 years ago. The Michael who makes his lunch in the evening instead of in the 3 minutes before he goes to work (if at all). The Michael who went to bed at 10pm to read before zonking into a distant book-induced hypnogogic dream drama.

So, it's been a week and I should be starting a new class tomorrow--except I am not, so the week of vacation is passing and I am confused. But elated.

So, four days off of work and I've been doing lots of thinking. This is dangerous, as you know. I am trying to stave off my reflexive need to fill time with pointless stuff and am adamantly keeping away from making decisions about hobbies until I get some space to think with. And some repair time with loved ones.

I'm back at work today and am musing over the exhausted feeling that has been asbsent the last 6 days and suddenly returned with ferocious familiarity this morning on the the way to work. A return to dazedness. Hmmm food for thought.

I've hooked up with an Elias posting group and they're pretty cool people. Crazy every one of them, but it's fun. Who am I to judge--I am just judging myself anyway. They're cool. YCYOR, right?

OK. Enough disorientation for one day. Watch for lucidity -- or at least my version of it -- soon.

No More Classes, No More Books.

No more teacher's virtual dirty looks!!

I am writing as I am about to press the final "send" which deploys our paper and presentation as the last post to my UOP classroom experience.

What can I say, but, WHEW!

Here's where I say thanks to all for the awesome support over the last few years, especially Dawn -- I promise we'll get to know each other again :)

Off to have a cup of tea, press the send button, then go read before bedtime, homework permanently gone. Weeeelahhhhh!!!

T-Minus 3 Days and Counting.

There's this cool computer game I played a year or so ago called Medal of Honor Allied Assault. It's a war-type game where you are an infantryman in one of the dread historical battles on our world. There's this feature of the game where if a bomb or mortar went off near your character the game would slip into "disoriented" mode, where the viewscreen (as perceived by your eyes) would tilt randomly and dazedly. Vision was blurry and sound was distant and hazy.

I feel like that right now. I am looking at 3 days left of school and it feels like I've been dazed by a mortar shell.

Fortunately, in the game, the haziness clears up and I can get back to killing Nazis. The sniper rifle is particularly satisfying. Now for those of you who are RSS-feeding this blog or are just concerned about its content and the stability of my mind--it's a game. I'm not going to kill anyone. Sheesh. Lighten up already.

The graduation party on Friday was great -- it was enough and not too much. Cynthia did a great job of balancing my weird disorientation about being the center of attention with being recgonized for a damn fine job.

I started looking at some statistics on my 3 years of schooling just for the "fun" of it:

• I've written 97 primary responses to "discussion questions"
• I've written 427 papers on 25 different main topics
• I've posted 12,127 individual posts expressing my opinion (damn, I am opinionated)
• I took 25 5-week courses
• I have a 3.95 GPA (graduating with honors!)
• I met 165 new students but never heard their voice or saw their face (except 1, PAUL!)
• I met 25 teachers but never heard their voice or saw their face
• I spent about 70 hours per class online (based on average of 2 hours/day for 35 days per course)
• I spent about 1,750 hours online for the entire program (70*25). This seems low to me.

It's time for vacation. Soon, soooooo soon.