Safety Fork, the

I have a minor in mathematics, but you wouldn’t know it. Basic algebra is about the only thing I can still do without consulting references. I was great at arithmetic until I learned calculus (which is funny: most everyone I talk to has the same experience). Over the last few years, I’ve forgotten pretty much all of the calculus, too.

Math has lately been on my mind because I’ve been programming a little side project; work-related but far from a product-in-development, I’m mostly doing it to satisfy my curiosity. In any case, it’s required that I bend my brain around some geometry and matrix manipulations—and even a little calculus—that I haven’t otherwise touched in a long time. It’s a lot more interesting than I remember.

I make no secret that I’m not particularly proud of my degree; there are some good faculty in that department, but as a body they have political problems that—at least while I was there—kept them from developing an effective curriculum. It makes me curious now: if I had attended a college with more rigorous coursework, would I have wanted the mathematics minor more for an interest in the material than out of desire to avoid an internship requirement?

Nobody but Darren was willing to pose there for a portrait.

If by random chance you haven’t seen them yet, check out the videos at Will It Blend? If I ever feel the need to blend things, this is the blender I’ll get.

On Monday I was awake for nineteen hours; that’s a long time for me. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein wrote that “happiness consists entirely in getting enough sleep.” I agree; I don’t do so well if I don’t get at least seven hours of sleep per night.

I woke up with a cold on Saturday morning. I wasn’t happy about it, but it could have been worse, since I had two whole days with no need to do anything. The only part of me to leave my apartment on Saturday or Sunday was my arm—to get my newspaper out of the hall (which, by the way, I didn’t remember either day until about six o’clock in the evening). I went to bed Sunday night figuring I’d feel at least passable for work the next day.

Then I awoke. At two-fifty-six A.M. At five o’clock I decided that if I wasn’t going to sleep, I might as well try to get something done, so I went to work. Believe it or not, there were about thirty cars already in the parking lot when I got there a half-hour later. No one from my group, though; I had to think for a minute to remember where the light switch for my area is.

It felt kind of odd to leave before two o’clock having worked a full eight-hour day. Back at my apartment, I found myself still too restless to take a nap, and too apathetic to do anything but prepare food for Tuesday’s pot-luck lunch—which I couldn’t reasonably start until about nine. Even testing days at work don’t seem so interminable as that afternoon and evening.

But now I’ve passed the full-of-goo phase, and am into rejecting-a-lung. If past experience holds, after this I’m in the clear—hopefully before the six-day break I’m taking starts on Friday.

Here’s tonight’s gem from the John Adams Society debate (Resolved: Bring back blue laws!):

Distilled liquor is unnatural! Beer and wine happen; they’re naturally occurring!

There’s a spatula to starboard, there’s a soup-spoon off to port.
In the distance there’s an isle of forks of a certain slimy sort.

Muck and mold have set to sail in a fleet of pots and pans;
they’re a roughshod crew but strong and tough and well-armed to a man.

It’s hard to duck and cover when they’re floating on a cup,
which is why my reputation is for always cleaning up.

Sometimes it seems I’ve found a bay that’s clear and calm and fine,
‘though it never fails: from a stopped-up drain comes a rising tide of slime.

My cannon’s packed with powder, but it’s of a cleansing kind;
When I draw a bead and touch the fuse only virii run and hide.

I’d like to scale the shining cliffs and retire before I die,
but they seem an endless army that’s descending from the sky.

So I hoist my flag on a toothpick and I plant it in my sponge;
I’ve a wand’ring soul and a soapy sea of food-scum to expunge!

Some have inquired whether there is yet an ending to my late automotive saga. There is: I picked up my car at the dealer on Friday after work. I drove it to a party my friends Amy and Eric hosted at their new home (very nice) that night, to Maple Grove for dinner and games with friends on Saturday, and to Mankato on Sunday (where I—or rather, Darren—found the copy of Invader Zim for which I’ve been looking). I missed my car, but now I have it back, it works, and I can write about something else.