Sometimes I Feel Guilty

Ok, It's a lot of times.

It's summertime in the Hyland household and I'm off from school. I have nothing I really have to do. But right across the room is Sarah working away at a job she increasingly doesn't like.

It's summertime. I could just play video games all day. To some extent, that's what I'd like to do. But she's over there earning a living, grumbling about needy clients or her boss making more work for her needlessly. So I leave Steam alone in the tray, with all the other game launchers.

I know if I say this stuff out loud she will encourage me to do what I want and not worry about it. Right now school is my job and I'm on vacation.

The feeling of guilt in the summer is new this summer, but not overall. I've felt this way before. It has mostly to do with money. This is the first summer since I started school that I'm not earning anything. When I started I still had a full-time job. After I quit that I was able to get a fellowship to do astronomy research, but I switched majors and the fellowship can only go to stem majors. As if NASA doesn't use artists and writers. As if they don't need us to convey their importance to the anti-science crowd that insists we only spend money on something that directly returns the investment.

The feeling of guilt hasn't been all bad, however. My resistance to opening up a game on weekdays has led to some productivity on the home front. I've actually planted stuff in some of the planters outside, and the fish tank project I've been excited about starting is well underway.

But overall, living with guilt that has been imposed on me by outside systems (I'll explain later) has been negative. I hope to get out from under it soon.

The Ungrammaticality of Cats

I saw this comic ages ago and I keep thinking about it, mainly when I say nonsense things to my cats. I mean I'm constantly saying things like "It's a pet the kitty" as I'm petting the kitty. "pet the kitty" is not a noun.

So, because my brain is weird, I think about this comic almost every time I say something weird to my cats, which is multiple times per day.

Since this is a post about cats, here's a cat picture (or 2).

Ok, 3 pictures.

Government Spending

     I read a comment recently on the story about the governor's proposed budget where he wants to cut 40% across the board. It said something to the effect that when the economy is down the government should tighten it’s belt because that’s what happens when a household budget shrinks.

 *sigh*

     I really wish more people took economics classes or even an anthropology class. 100 level would be fine.

     When the economy is down the proper thing for a government to do is spend. The private sector has laid off people, not as many people are buying stuff, so more people are being laid off. One of the things the New Deal did was public works projects. The Golden Gate Bridge was one of those projects. It put people to work. They, in turn, spent money which boosted the private sector. Then when those projects were complete the private sector was boosted enough to have jobs for them.

     “But isn’t the government spending money it doesn’t have?”, you ask. Well yes and no. One of the government's functions is to print money. If they need more, they can print more. Of course, they can’t do this forever, hyperinflation is bad. However, the system we have in place for better or worse is we have a central bank that handles all this for us. So the government borrows to cover the deficit spending. This has a side effect of altering the supply of money in the lending market, which changes the interest rates which makes banks want to lend again. Then that allows the private sector to expand some more. Economy grows. What’s then supposed to happen, is, after the recession is over, the government stops deficit spending.

    

     Another thing, high marginal tax rates on the upper tiers are a good thing. If nothing else, companies invest back into the company more (usually in the form of higher pay for the workers and pensions) since only profit is taxed. There’s also an inverse correlation between high taxes and government corruption. People who pay a lot in taxes tend to not like it when their representatives rob the store, go figure. Taxes are an investment in the infrastructure governments provide, everyone should pay their fair share.

     

     As far as the anthropology end of things, governments arose to take care of the people. That’s it. There are some people that decry what they call the “nanny state”. That people seem to want the government to take care of them. Yup. That’s what it’s for. Armys protect a society from outside threats. Property records keep track of who owns what. Regulations on businesses keep the water and the air clean as well as making sure the products we buy are safe to use. Roads to get us and our products from place to place. Public lands need management. All of this costs money, tax money.

     

     And no one needs a billion dollars, let alone multiples of that. I know the human brain has a hard time understanding how much a billion is. It helps if you think of it as one thousand million. 1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000 (Sorry, i didn’t warn you there would be math.) It would take multiple generations to spend that much, even if it didn’t accrue interest.

This is nuts.

Buy me a coffee!

It's Not an Actual Book, Why Do We Still Turn the Page?

Right now I'm reading "The Calculating Stars" by Mary Robinette Kowal on Kindle. It's good so far. It's alternate history where a meteorite hits Earth and decimates the Eastern Seaboard. The main character is trying to become a Lady Astronaut because colonies in space need women. The species won't survive with just men, somehow they forget all that.

Anywho, the story isn't the only reason why the book is cool. It's equipped with the 'Continuous Scrolling' feature. I didn't think something so mundane sounding would be so exciting, but it's the coolest! I read an article some years back (OMG, I said 'some years back') that talked about the fact that with new technology, we don't need to continue to do things the old way. I don't remember what the article was but if anyone remembers I'll update this. I think the example they gave was calendars. But it's true about books too. Why should we be turning pages still? It's not a physical book. It doesn't actually have pages in the same sense. We don't read other documents like that unless we print them. It wasn't until I experienced a book with continuous scrolling that I realized how turning the page was annoying. It doesn't help that page turning on the Kobo app is still a little wonky. They may not even have to fix it if they started continuous scrolling. 

Well, it's almost midnight, I should go.

Zwei Katzen (Two Cats)

I figured I should start writing again and there are a couple of different reasons for that. 

1) School starts in about a month so I need to get the writing juices flowing again since I changed majors from Maths to English. Maybe I'll explain that whole thing in another post.

2) If I'm ever going to write the "Great American Novel" I should get to writing something... anything.

So I thought I tell you about my two cats, in the form of an interview. I will be interviewing myself, there may end up being pictures; we'll see.

Interviewer: Hi Ella, how are you today?

Ella: I'm good. How are you?

I: I'm good as well. Let's get started. I've heard you have cats, how many do you have? What are their names?

E: I have two cats, their names are Sinon (pronounced She-known) and Aave (pronounced Ah-vey). They're sisters.

I: How did they come to live with you?

E: We got them from a local rescue group, Clear Creek Cat Rescue. We were told that they were rescued from a hoarder.

I: That sounds rough. Has it affected them negatively at all?

E: Of course, I don't believe anyone comes out of a rough upbringing unscathed.
They are both still pretty skittish. They tend to run at the slightest provocation. Sinon will watch the mail man come up the driveway, poised to run. If he stops at the mail box all is ok, but if we get a package, she bolts. 
When they had only been with us for a couple months, I tried to take Aave outside. To get her comfortable being an indoor/outdoor cat. I took her outside, she wanted down and then she took off. We had to borrow a live trap from Animal Control. She was gone for nine days. She was starving and dehydrated. She still has food insecurity. Sinon eats random fuzzes and dust bunnies. They can be really cuddly though. Aave meets me at the door for belly rubs when I get home, Sinon likes to be held like a baby. Over all, they're weird and great.

I: Wow, thanks for sharing with us. That's about all the time we have right now, would you like to share any pictures before we sign off?

E: Yes I would!

Sinon

Aave

Sisters Sleeping

I: Those are great! Thanks for talking with us.

E: Thanks for having me.

Ok, so that was my pretend interview. It ended up shorter than I anticipated. Maybe if I had written it when I thought of it rather than three days later. Oh well, maybe next time.

Almost Done with the Challenge

This is the second to last post

Of this December Challenge. Since the first one I posted went up on December 2nd even though I wrote it on the first, this is only post number 30. I still have one to go after this. Going forward after the New Year I may not do this every day, just when I need to say stuff. It gets pretty hard to come up with something every day. I'm not sure most people who blog do so every day.

I could write about current events and my take on them but I'm not sure that would be healthy for me. I will however probably tell some of the stories I have from my past. I feel like it will be helpful for me to get that stuff off my chest so to speak.

Just a warning about that stuff. Most of it is pretty shitty and the other people involved won't come out looking good. It's not like I'm going to name people with their first and last names and where they live or anything, but if you have a relationship to me that will come out. I'm not going to obscure the fact that some of the stuff that happened to me was because of my parents. I'm not sure that I could. I haven't decided if I'm going to change names all together, I suppose I should.

Well, it's New Years Eve. Have a save and happy holiday. Make good choices.

Old Games

So...

I've been playing an old game call Pharaoh. Steam has it in a manner that runs on Windows 10. Which is impressive considering it was released in 1999 and the expansion that comes with it on Steam came out in 2000. On my laptop at least I had to slow the speed down because it was going wicked fast. I guess it was still somewhat tied to the processor's clock speed like the old SpaceQuest games, or even the Oregon Trail web emulator I found online a while back. That thing was stupid fast.

Anywho, back in the day when I played this game I would get impatient and frustrated because the learning curve goes steep real fast. These days I have a little more patience, so I just spent the better part of 2 days on one level. Part of the problem is that I started out playing like I always did. I tried to rush building the monument. Well this meant that I was in debt for like 8 years in a row. Do you know what that does to your Kingdom Rating? It was at 0. At 9-11 the interface says that there is a rumor that my presence causes Malaria. At 0 I should be dumped out into the desert. At any rate, it took a REALLY long time to bring that up from 0 to 40. It took 22 years to finish that mission. The monument I built wasn't even a pyramid.

The lesson is kids, don't sacrifice your Kingdom Rating to build the monument faster. It's not worth it.

Trajectory

There seems to be a thing I do

Where I just stay on a trajectory throughout the day. If I get up and jump in the shower, maybe have to go somewhere, I can get a lot of stuff done. All or at least most of my chores get done, I am productive. But if I have nowhere to go and plop on the couch as soon as I get up I don't do anything at all.

Of course there is variation on this theme but it seems to be a general trend. Anyone else work like this?

A Thing I Really Like

If you like Sci Fi

A cool thing to go get is Lightspeed Magazine. I subscribe and almost always a fun read. The only time it wasn't was the November issue. The 1st couple of stories were pretty dystopian and I was reading it on election night, not cool. I'm not a huge fan of dystopian stuff anyway.

Anywho, it comes out monthly and you can get it auto delivered to your Kindle, so that's cool.

I'm not being paid or anything, just needed something to write about real quick so I can get back to reading December's issue. You should check it out though. They also have Nightmare if you're more into horror. I haven't read it yet so if you read it, you should report back.

Acceleration and Falling

Why is it

That in Sci Fi, when someone falls but doesn't hit the ground they can stop just before hitting the ground and live? What I mean is, if someone stops suddenly they should still feel like they would if they just hit the ground. After all it's not stopping that kills you, it's the rapid deceleration (or negative acceleration if you prefer).

Think on this a minute. If anti-grav tech is going to save you it will be because you stopped slowly, not just avoided hitting the ground.

Don't let your guts fall out people.

Finals Done!

Well sort of, mostly.

I've still got to go to class tomorrow, even though I've taken the final for that one. I suppose I could skip out but I suspect the professor is holding out with the participation grade until she sees who shows up tomorrow. I'm pretty sure most of my friends will show up anyway, and there's food.

So today I had the Calc final at 7AM. Good thing I'm a morning person. I think I did alright with it but won't be sure until the professor posts grades. He sent an announcement this afternoon to tell people that he doesn't have our grade yet. Duh, it takes a bit to grade stuff that isn't multiple choice. I understand why they are anxious though. Calc 2 is one of the hardest math courses and it's a prerequisite for a lot of things. I'm eagerly awaiting my grade too, I just expected to wait until official grades were due at the end of next week.  

Well now I've got a month off to fart around and learn Python. Maybe I'll clean something and finish the macrame plant hanger that's almost done.

Python So Far...

Is a little boring.

I guess this is what I get for not jumping ahead in the book. The author warned me (sort of) that the beginning was just talking about what Python was or wasn't and what it can be used for, but I thought I should be thorough and read the whole thing so I don't miss anything.

I'll get through it.

But today I had to focus on studying for my Calc 2 final so that maybe I pass that class. I feel good about it for the most part. I actually get sequences and series. I'll just have to remember the revolution of solids part. I wasn't the best at that the first time around.

Now to change the topic...

It's interesting to me looking at the statistics for this thing. I mentioned yesterday the international readers. Today I noticed that the post so far with the most page views is the one where I complain about Windows. Does this mean I should do more bitching about IT? Maybe. Or maybe I'll continue writing about what I feel like writing about. 

I could tell the story about when my boss kept texting "I don't know what I'm looking at!" on a Saturday. It was funny but at the same time, uhh. 

I mean the guy supposedly has a degree, although it is from ITT Tech so....

Well, next time I talk to you I'll be done with most of my finals. I'll have to give a presentation for Astronomy Research but that's mainly to share my end of the findings with the rest of the group, no big.

Ella

My Eyes...

...Tired.

My eyes are so tired right now. It's not even time for bed. Not sure why. I've read a lot  today but it's not like I haven't read all day before. I don't think I really read read all that much. 

I suppose some have figured out I write these the night before they go up. I write better at night it seems. And living in Alaska means that night time for me is very early morning for most of you. So I schedule them to go up at 8 AM my time, which turns out to be Noon East Coast US. A shout out to the few in Europe who read my blog, I have no idea what time it is for you when I post. I see all you non-US people on my traffic map, thanks for reading. 

In other news, I hear Rogue One is really good, says people who went to the premiere. So that's exciting! Considering this is coming from people who didn't like the prequels, it should be really good.

I'm not sure I understand what the hate is about for those movies, or the Matrix sequels. If it's about there being less action, so what? Was is that nerd boys didn't like the romance? Oh well, nerd boys aren't the only ones who watch movies. Yes Anakin is a whiny bitch, but so was Luke. Like father, like son I say.

Well I guess I should go rest my tired eyes, or not. It's not even bedtime yet.

Windows Is Fun!

Windows is not fun...

Ok so contrary to everything else that's going on in my life, I actually do have a small job. By small I mean not very many hours. 

Most of this job entails performing maintenance on the computers of other small businesses. As a lot of you I'm sure know, most people and businesses run Windows in it's various forms.

This is a giant pain in the ass!

Between Windows needing frequent maintenance because it's just generally buggy and Microsoft actually breaking things with their own updates; it can be frustrating. And that's not even talking about all the issues with third party software that can't keep up with all the new (needed) security protocols that Microsoft pushes. Half the time when someone calls third party support they don't know what they're doing.

And there's actually people out there that think proprietary software is better than open source too. Nope!

Grr. Just had to vent. Have another Moon pic:

Moonrise 12/9/16

Couple Of Things

First Off...

Tonight Isabelle had a choir concert and it was really good! So proud of her! She had a solo and everything. 

Second, I was thinking of learning some coding over the winter break. I already know a little Java, I had to take a class. But I was looking at Code Academy and they have a few things to learn. I was thinking about either HTML and CSS (they go together) or Python. I don't know what to choose. Maybe one of you could tell me what you think in the comments.

Ella 

I'm Done

I'm Tired

I learned recently that previous Fall semesters ended a week earlier than this one. I'm not sure exactly why they have extended the semester a week, but I'm tired. I'm ready for this to be over already.

I gave my speech today. I did decent. Now I'm having trouble giving a shit about the rest of it. Maybe I just have had a tiring day and I'll be better tomorrow. That will be too late for my Calc take home quiz, but my professor drops the worst two grades. So I can afford to only get it half done.

Anywho, here's to hoping tomorrow is better. 

Ella

Everything is OK

We're Going to Make It!

Everything is going ok today. I practiced my speech in front of the family today. I still say 'umm' too much. I'll try again tomorrow I guess. I give the thing on Wednesday.

I finished my Calculus homework, it wasn't too bad. I had to 'trial and error' the last problem, it was fine though. I might actually pass this class, in no small part to my wonderful wife/tutor Sarah. It's a good thing she remembers this stuff.

I also got a lot of codes written for astronomy research. At this point I have the base code written, I just have to change file names and small details. Every galaxy is different you know.

That's all for now, I'll leave you with a moon picture.

Wil Wheaton's December Challenge

December Challenge!

So I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog today and he had decided to challenge himself to blog about something once per day throughout the month of December. I guess to tell his brain that, "Hey, blogs can be more than just a soapbox for big heavy stuff!" 

And you know what? He's right. I think I will do it too!

I had basically abandoned my old blog because the title had my old name in it and it was kinda lame anyway. I'm not sure the title to this one is much better but at least it's not 'Stuff that fell out of my head' like it's ear cheese or something.

So I decided to call this blog...you can see it at the top of the page, why do I need to tell you what it's called? So I called it that because as a math student the Buzz Lightyear catch phrase is funny, because it's so wrong. Infinity is not a place you can get to and go 'beyond'. Infinity is a concept of going forever on a number line. You can't get to forever, sorry about that.

So I'll probably use this space to talk about the random things I'm interested in, stories about my dolt of a boss, and probably things that go on at school or home. Maybe the occasional moon picture. I just figured out how to take pictures of the moon and have them come out looking like the moon instead of a blob of light on a black background! I'm excited about it!

Anywho, until next time.

Ella