Ruminations a place to sit and think

Good and Bad and learning something new

i missed the bus this morning. Normally i would consider that a bad thing, but i decided to make it an opportunity to learn something new. Every thing is a learning opportunity, especially failures, right? i think that’s why the following go maxim exists:

Lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible

And i found out that i can use this different bus route to shift my morning routine back by half an hour. When (if?) it warms up here in Rochester, i can ride my bike instead of walking to the stops and cut the time to get to work down by 30-40 mins.

Whether or not shifting my routine back a half an hour is good is another matter. i would like to get more sleep. Will this new route make my life better? Not sure yet.

This reminds me of an old zen story:

A farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors gathered upon hearing the news and said sympathetically, “That’s such bad luck.”

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The horse returned on his own the next morning, and brought seven wild horses with it. “Look how many more horses you have now,” the neighbors exclaimed. “How lucky!”

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next day, the farmer’s son attempted to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. “How awful,” the neighbors said. “It looks like your luck has turned for the worse again.”

The farmer simply replied, “Maybe.”

The following day, military officers came to town to conscript young men into the service. Seeing the son’s broken leg, they rejected him. The neighbors gathered round the farmer to tell him how fortunate he was.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

If there’s anything bad this situation revealed, it’s that i’m going to be a horrible old man. i have at least two options for getting a ride to work in these situations. Did i utilize either of them? No. i wanted to explore and “do this myself”.

If i have the same level of fierce independence in 50+ years i’m going to end up doing something stupid because i didn’t want to ask for help.

Feeding the birds

The other weekend my wife and i went out to Mendon Ponds Park to feed birds. It was a ton of fun.

Besides being a great experience, i got some pictures and video that i got really excited about. My wife and i just got iPhones (my first smartphone ever) and the ability to do slow motion video is a trip:

Sidle on up and sit through my slides

i love that i was able to catch two birds flying into my hand in slow motion!

And then a bunch of pictures…

chickadee with a peanut

bird

and we were near a special certain place for which i have a bit of a soft spot…

Mug o' root beer at Tom Wahl's

There are many like it, but this one is mine

While writing the above line in this site’s readme file, i looked up where it came from because i had no idea. Turns out it’s originally about a rifle:

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Even though i spend a lot of time writing software, i don’t want to say that i will live and die upon the hill of this personal site being mastered, but it’s time for me to move towards mastery, and not just on whatever this thing is.

Writing stuff down for the internet to see

It’s been a while

i mostly avoid publishing my thoughts online these days. As a programmer, i see a fiasco every other day about other programmers being jerks on the internet (OK, OK, it’s not just programmers and i can see this happening every day everywhere), and even though i try really hard to not do that or be like that, i’ve made my mistakes and i don’t want to contribute to that in any way.

It mostly boils down to me being afraid of messing up, which is something i’m working on.

Instead of being afraid of a mistake and not creating, i think i’ll create and then choose to be honest when i do make a mistake. Then i’ll do my best to fix it.

Anyway, i’m excited to have a home on the internet and be able to share what i’m working on and what i’m interested in. Because that’s what the internet is for, right?

PS i wrote a bunch of this post and then read Zach Holman’s “Who Owns?”. It’s great. i think a lot of what i’m saying here is contained there.