Behold, for I shall do a new thing.
This weekend, I decided to start the next phase: I am going to teach myself Japanese. Super hard? Yes. Am I scurred? Not at all. I’ve found recommendation for texts, good resources for external materials, and plenty good people who can encourage and help me along the way.
The motive, in short, is to prove to myself that I can do it. It’s going to be awesome.
So far all I’ve got is a few phrases in (lame) Romanji (besides DURR KONICHIWA and MOAR DESU) and some basic rhetoric on the grammar, but I’ve got to start from scratch, and learn the kana alphabet before I get anywhere of any real use. I’ve got to study esoteric (to me presently) abstract mental association between sounds and characters. Honestly, it’s right up my alley: unlike when I totally blew my Spanish education, this will force me to think entirely in the language, instead of always having to use English as a ‘middleman’ between construction, which always kept me from fluency (and alright, let’s be fair, laziness too). Also, so far, I’m finding the phrases full of delightful mnemonics:
ringo (りんご) = apple. Ringo Starr is an apple!
watakushi (わたくし) = I. When I was young, people would see me and say “What a kushi(cutie)!”
jibun (じぶん) = used to show possession. Gee Boone, you’re always thinking of yourself!
Yes, I’m so clever.
Here it is, now that I finally had it open, and felt like taking pictures, at the same time:
(1) The heatsink likes to eat my fingers. Each one has collided with either the fan or the copper edges at least once.
(2) This is the biggest sham ever. I got two of these heat sensors for the case fans, so they’d self adjust according to temperature. One didn’t even power the fans, and the other started the alarm failsafe after about 2 minutes. If you like getting the shaft I can tell you the brand.
(3) This is the most quiet fan ever invented by mankind. It’s like a skillion rpm but its like 0.0001 dB. Notice the remainder of the soundproofing material found a good home on that airduct.
(4) The case puts the power supply down there, and the cables and everything run either up out of there (in the hole by (2)), or through the back of the case (which now looks like a scattered mess with all the wiring, but better there than in here).
(5) This is some soundproof foam I got off EBay, and also some PAX.MATE is used around in places. It takes the total sound down about a decibel. Worth the time, money, effort, and risk of frying delicate parts with vapors from a spray-on adhesive for just that? Ehh…
(6) A UV light stick. Essential hardware. It ups the teraflops about 20%, 30% AT NIGHT.
(7) Oh man look at those wires. Somebody should clean up this mess.
(8) You wouldn’t believe the stupidity of this fan placement. It’s right next to not only where all the wires are from the power source, but also, right along side the maybe 1/2 inch you got for the power and data connector for the hard drive. So, if you string everything up and get not a single one jamming this fan, you should retire a philosopher or something.
(9) The worst part, even worse than that HD cooling fan in (8), is this cage for hard drives. Great idea in theory, not so much in practice. If you need to pull this out for something, you have about a 20% chance the power connector is going to fall out, and 50% odds that the serial ATA cable will either be disconnected, or snap clean off the connector. I loathe the day I’m going to install another drive: twice as many wires to possibly get jammed in that HD fan!
I found the ideal target for my new willpower cannon.
And, reading this didn’t hurt either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking
It’ll be like fasting, only much easier.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=3688508&page=1
I particularly like how the photo shows a toddler in the same room as the smoker, even though this piece has nothing to do with kids + secondhand smoke, just a subtle reminder that smokers are a threat to children everywhere. THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
OK now seriously, you shouldn’t smoke while pregnant, in front of kids, or hell, let’s go all the way, in front of anybody who can’t stand it, and chooses not to be around it, or says Don’t do this around me. Despite being an on-again off-again smoker, and an intense liberal, I am/was in favor of banning it in public places. I wouldn’t want to have to be compelled to be somewhere that I believed would be a risk to my health (or be forced not to go there because of this), and I don’t think others should have to, either.
But this crap in California crosses the line.
The article cites reduction of fire risks and reduced clean-up costs. Well, damn. How about we ban fireplaces, candles, gas-powered stoves, boilers, lanterns, or anything else indoors that involves creating and maintaining fire or heat intense enough to burn wood? As for clean-up costs, there’s worse than cigarette smoke, believe it or not, as far as lingering odors in domiciles. Let’s start banning people from frequently using curry, moth-balls, good incense, garlic, ginger, or anything else that leaks into the drywall and remains pungent for a long time.
(Sarcasm ahead!) Otherwise, do what some hotels have done for years: charge a premium on smoker rooms. What’s another taxation, lien, or tariff for smokers? They’re already used to paying too much for their habit, a misguided effort to try to get people to stop. Guess what. People will find the money somehow, and keep doing it, all the while cursing you advocates of anti-freedom.
Again, don’t get me wrong here: I’m not trying to encourage anybody to start smoking, and I’m not condoning its continuance, really, either. This is about freedom to do what you please in private property, leased or owned, which, according to the connotations of the words of people in this article, isn’t necessarily an assumed right. It’s more or less implied that people are absurd for thinking like this.
Yes, just let us continue our sickly habit, whatever the costs are. As long as YOU don’t have to be around it, then what’s the big deal? Either I live longer and pay more taxes, or I buy my Cammys and pay taxes. You get the only thing you really want anyway, G-Man, so back off.
Two – bread and water
About a year ago, a friend of mine had died, she drowned while trying to cross a creek, and due to excessive rains a sudden deluge had swept her up, and she drowned. I had not seen her in over 7 years, but it still bothered me a great deal, after hearing about it. I’d check the newspapers that week, hoping for some notification of a funeral service. I wrote a grievance note to her parents, and it still lies in my car trunk: couldn’t be sent without the full address, even though I had provided the street name, just not the number. It is just as well that I was denied such closure: I do not doubt I deprived her of her own closure with myself, when she’d left the Academy, in negative circumstances no less. None of that’s important to this story, though.
What is important to this story is the reactions I’d get from other people, having heard about it. These were others at the Academy I would tell, who didn’t really know her so well, or had mostly judgment for her personality. To say she was difficult was an understatement. I think most people there were uncomfortable with such a character present in that sanctuary, and eventually she, like some others before her that just didn’t fit, would wind up transferring. This exit made them revered and despised at the same time. There was not one individual who ever left, that did not become the target of rumors and gossip. We chided them, but yet, unlike us, these kids were free, and we knew it.
So then, the drowned girl gets two freedoms on us all: liberated from our high school, and now, liberated from life. I wonder if any contempt comes from a bit of jealousy. In the end, we realize it’s much better to be alive than dead, no matter how much life hurts, but, as a friend once told me, if we’re dead, then we didn’t live to care. It’s like the riddle: what do we buy but never personally use? The answer is Tylenol Gelcaps.
Was there not a time where, the dead were given a certain respect, no matter who they were? Was it not that, you didn’t speak ill about those who are no longer with us, because we have personal fears and remorse for such a fate? Not once was anybody as bothered by this news as I was, not because they didn’t really know her, but rather, the person they did know was rowdy, a troublemaker, and often inconsiderate of how others felt when she acted. Yes, she was a jerk, and somehow jerkitude is grounds for this kind of treatment.
The point of this is not to accuse others of being heartless, so I will go back on-topic. I brought this anecdote up, as evidence to a phenomenon I’ve been witnessing within some of my peers. Many carry little empathy or respect for those who suffering or dying. There’s this attitude, that matters going on around the world are of no concern to us, and as long as we keep plodding along in our lives, everything is alright. The outside has become too complex to deal with, so it’s better just to not worry about “hard” matters, and just fight to earn enough bread to buy some bullshit to bring some pleasure, and if the credit cards are under control, and our kids aren’t scum, then I guess we done alright.
As usual, my exterior accusations are just coverage for self-criticism. I’m not trying to convince anybody to drop everything, here I am just coming to terms with my disagreement with almost everybody around me. What I mean is, that there are times where I slip into a comfort with the society around me, and there are instances where I would like nothing more than to escape from what I deem meaningless and unimportant, in the grand scheme of things. Usually that second part comes with a decent amount of self-loathing, but I’ll leave that for another time.
I want to simplify my life, and yet I feel as if that would be impossible as matters are right now. I guess it’s up to me to decide if I could compromise my situation, or it’s really going to take a major major change to put myself at ease. Either way, I’m not comfortable living in a place where hearing about the death of someone is responded to with laughter. I’ve tried and tried with great effort to adapt, but I’m just not the same as anyone. There isn’t any place for me here, any more.