Alternative Curse Words

I was reading this HSW article on swearing this morning. The article covered the basics of swearing, why people swear, swearing and how it effects the brain, and so on. But as I got to the end of the article, under the heading “Swearing and the Brain”, I found this humerous little gem.

Can you imagine yelling “sweet cheeses!” out loud in public? I don’t think I could contain my laughter even if someone else said it and I just happened to over hear. A lot of people do this whole substitute swear word thing though. My fluids professor uses “turkey” instead of of swearing.

“I can’t help you when you’re acting like a bunch of turkeys!” He’d say something like that.

Hardcore Nazi-Focus

So I was thinking, thanks to Steve Pavlina’s “do it now” post. Imagine going through the day with nazi-like focus sessions. Everything you do is focused - that is, you’re focusing on whatever it is you’re doing. Lets say you have five big projects to complete. You wake up, you start the first one, and you don’t stop, except for food and sleep, until you finish. Working your way down your list of projects, you notice that you’re performing more efficiently than ever. Things are getting done, and fast! Occasionally you take a break to reinforce your motivation with a gtd article that you printed out, after which you continue to burn a hole in whatever it is you’re focused on.

You haven’t forgotten about your other priorities like your friends, your family, your faith, your animals, and your side projects. Those will find their way into your life regardless. And you will give them the time that you want, whenever you’re done with your list. Never neglecting the other stuff, you prefer not to focus on them every second of every day, but instead you engage in their various events when you’re ready and when you’re able to. Whoever is calling your cell phone can wait; that email that you probably got can be read later; that party that you were invited to isn’t even in line with your goals so that can definitely be put on the very end of the back burner, in fact, you probably wont go anyway; you’ll see your friends tomorrow, they can wait; you did your religion thing this morning, and you’ll do it tonight before you fall asleep, nothing to worry about there.

A project will only get postponed if something is in immediate need of your attention, and it’s at that point that you’ll give your immediate attention to whatever it is that’s in need, and it better be damn important or heads are going to roll. That is the essence of hardcore nazi focus, and I dig the idea. I’m modifying my previous method of getting things done to include this. Previously, I used the hipster pda, which worked out pretty interestingly. I’m dropping it –or part of it- though because it has so many features. Now I’m leaning towards a simpler way of doing things, something that doesn’t have lots of options, in order to focus my focus more accurately and for longer periods of time.

That means, I’ll have to minimize all of the GTD things that I already do. My fat hipster pda is going on a diet; I’ll just use two note cards instead: The first note card has a list of projects to do on it, and the second one has my goals listed on it. The mozilla sunbird calendar is really great for organizing my dates but it’s also out because my laptop computer is very old and is becoming a hassle to turn on/off and operate. Unless someone buys me a new laptop, this has to happen. Operating that dinosaur is a HUGE waste of time. Basically, most of the things in this post are getting put on hold because of my old ibm craptop. That’s fine though, I don’t require a laptop, and it’s just a convenience.

Now, I’ll be using an offline calendar that I have to write in with a pen/pencil, a minimalist hipster pda (2 note cards) – this can also be done with a sheet of paper like in this post. [Oh, that last link talks about using a 3 notecard system. I do like that system but now I don’t have to use it anymore. I’ve learned to fix the anxiety thing in my head instead of doing it on paper, and the ‘distractions section’ is not needed either because now I have a better handle on when something is distracting me and how to denounce it without writing anything down. Yup, that’s progress in the right direction.]

Since I don’t have much to work with now (2 note cards and a little calendar) I think I can make some good progress in making the hardcore nazi-focus thing a habit. Maybe it’s a good thing that my laptop has lost it’s youth, but I still miss everything about having a fresh, new, fast, portable operating system in my hands. *sigh*

Scrooge

I don’t care about putting up Christmas crap right now. That’s the last thing on my mind. So when my mother asks me if I want to help the neighbors put up the Christmas decorations in the morning, and then I consequently say “NO,” why must she get angry and say things like “you never want to help anyone”? First of all, there are several big fellers around my neighborhood who could help just as well as I could. Second of all, why me? If they want to put up their crap, let them do it. Mom’s gottah know that I’m definitely not going to help those neighbors, of all people. The neighbors that I’ve never talked to since I’ve lived here. The neighbors who like to spy on my house. The neighbors who my dad so vocally abhores.

Now, feeling like a scrooge, I still don’t care if mom’s angry. I’m still not going to wake up early just to put some nonsense Christmas decorations up because the neighbors want them up. No. If I say yes to that, I’m saying no to sleep and peace of mind. If I say yes to that, I’m saying no to all the other potential things I could be doing at that time. I wont say yes to that.

Bah Humbug

Fluids Test Is Over, Now What?

For our fluids test, the professor let us use our laptops with our equations in excel. Half the class had laptops, and the other class had nice calculators, and then there was this one guy with a run-down calculator. Everyone had some sort of tool to work out their problems so everyone had a fair chance.

The most inviting equation that was on the test was the “Chézy-Weisbach-Darcy-Poiseuille-Hagen-Reynolds-Fanning-Prandtl
-Blasius-Kármaán-Nikuradse-Colebrook-White-Rouse-Moody equation”.
Yes, I’m giving it that long name just to give everybody credit. But, you might prefer to call it by a simpler name such as Darcy’s equation. Well yeah, we used that on the test. Below, you’ll see Darcy’s equation for head-loss due to friction in SI units. On our test, we actually used english units, like we always do.
Δh = f(L/D)(v²)/(2 g)

where:
Δh = head loss in meters
f = friction factor (dimensionless)
L = pipe length in meters
D = pipe diameter in meters
v = fluid velocity in meters per second
g = local gravitational acceleration of 9.807 m/s²

Our test had three questions on it. Yeah, that’s all. The problems weren’t insanely difficult, but they did test whether you did the homework or not, and whether you paid attention in that one class - all of the other ones didn’t really come into play this time. The unfortunate thing about this test is that I didn’t study until the last minute. That doens’t mean that I didn’t do well, but I don’t fully understand these equations quite yet. I can plug and chug just like everyone else though, so that’s always my backup.

We’ve got part 2 (our Fluids Final) next week. So with that test, we’ll have had a total of 3 tests including the final for the semester. Isn’t that a ride. Allow me to wish myself luck on the final. *does it* Now I’ll have to use tomorrow to finish my Materials Science report that is past due, to complete the Calculus quiz that I never turned in, and to finish up a couple Piping Projects. Which one of those is the most fun? The piping one, because it’s not past due yet.

The only sad part is, I don’t know autocad - I really would like to take it next semester though. Imagine that; ewonk the cad guy. As for the materials science paper, that makes me really sad that I only started on it and never got back to it. Someone is looking over my shoulder though, and I’m thankful for that. And I definitely learned something. Never, ever, wait to the last minute. Ever.

GTD In School

After reading Steve Pavlina’s essay entitled “Do It Now”, I’ve formulated an outline for myself. It’s based off of the essay, but I’ve added some extra’s and modified this and that. If you want to test out this outline, you’ll probably have to read his article first before you can really completely benefit from this. In fact, go ahead and print it out, stick it in your pocket, and read it when you’re not doing something light that doesn’t require all of your focus.

Attatched to this post is the .doc file of the outline that I wrote up. Click the link below to download it.

GTD in school .

It’s Finals Week, I Can Feel It

This week hasn’t been hectic but it’s been busy nonetheless. I’ve bumped into lots of new ideas that aren’t ready for my life yet, and ran into even more cool moments that sort of caught me off guard - I’ve been off guard ever since that one party. Ultimately all of these things get placed into the “Finals Week” box. Nothing normal happens during finals week right? Unless you think about your last “Finals Week” and I’m definitely not one to think back to a time like that just for fun. Those were ACTUAL hectic days, when I didn’t know my left from my right or my Mondays from my Fridays.

Now, I’m more mature, and I get it all, but what I want now is to feel different about finals than before. I want to look on finals week as a place of ease, comfort, and security - all of the things that it is currently NOT to me. I’ve got a few idea’s in my envelope though. One thing I could do is visualize myself in a place of green grasses, blue skies, and homework that just needs to be started and then gradually completed in little manageable pieces. This is the way it really is, but when I mess up, sometimes I convolute my ideas to mean something more than they mean. As an analogy, sometimes I look at the little ‘tickle me elmo’ (tests, homework, projects) and see a big fat dinosaur named  angry.

That’s definitely not a good way to look at anything. So, I’m going to quit that right now. I’ve got several project to finish, and I feel good about them now. I’m going to get started when I finish this post and get’r'done. Tomorrow is the Fluid Mechanics test, which isn’t actually difficult at all. The trick lies in figuring out what exactly has been covered in class. Needless to say, I didn’t attend every class because our professor likes to waste hours upon hours in excel and talk about his stories in “in the field” and have class even when the Mayor of Houston is having a speech downstairs which is pretty much something you might want to attend if you intend on being an active member of Houston - for me, I just felt obligated to attend. He’s the Mayor for goodness sake!

Aside from that, there are the piping projects, and the materials science paper that have to be written, and the cal test, oh… did I mention that the Fluids test tomorrow is NOT the final? Yeah, we’ve got a final in addition to that last minute test. That’s ok with me though. I changed my way of looking at it from an unproductive view to a productive view. And on that note, I’m brought to my next post of the night.