Done yesterday (20120214 Tu Valentine's Day)

[mdlbear]

Hmm. Pretty decent, I guess; some music, a walk, and some reading. On the other hand, my netbook flaked out twice, and I ended the day feeling rather restless. More on that later.

On my walk I tried out the Cardio Trainer app on my phone. It immediately started talking at me, and playing the one song I'd downloaded as a test to see if the phone could play oggs. But once I'd gotten it properly configured, it seemed to work ok. Expect better walking stats, on those days when I remember to use it.

The phone's AMOLED screen is bright enough to use outdoors in the shade; that's a major win, and makes me glad I went for the Pantech over the HTC.

I've started reading The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren. It's rather odd. I alternate between little "aha" moments, and wondering what language she's writing in. It's going to take some serious work, but will probably be valuable.

I'm hoping the netbook's flakiness turns out to be Firefox and flash. However, it just occurred to me that a memory test might be in order.

And, ok, about that restless feeling. I'm wondering whether it's bleeding over from my economic trainwreck, where I'm feeling trapped by a lifetime of inaction and bad decisions. Not much I can do at this point, hence the trapped feeling. It would make some kind of sense, but I'm not sure that rationality really applies here.

It is, perhaps, appropriate that the song I've been working on lately is "Landscapes": "In your heart and your mind/I am traveling blind..." Something like that. Only it's my heart, too.

0214 Tu Valentine's Day
  * up 6:35; W=190.8; drugs, nose, teeth, hair, dishes, exercise, light
  * sang Landscapes along with the recording from Conflikt 2009
  * vacation request for Norwescon (0406,9)
  * walk: ~1.75mi Around DeAnza; used Noom CardioTrainer on the phone;
    had to force quit in order to make it stop playing music.
  : the phone's screen is actually bright enough to use outdoors, at least if
    I turn my back to the sun.  I can handle that.
  * pick up humira at Kaiser on the way home
  * start on The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
    I alternate between feeling that I'm getting important revelations, and
    wondering what language she's writing in.
  @ Press Releases - Ricoh Innovations Expands R&D into India
    Ricoh Establishes IT R&D Laboratory in India | Ricoh Global
  : Cygnus has been very unstable lately -- it freezes.  Randomly.  I'm
    inclined to suspect firefox.  Or rather, _hope_ it's ff.  That would be
    easy to fix.
  % Restless.  May have something to do with feeling trapped economically,
    bleeding over into feeling caged-in physically.  Do Not Like.
  @ Former Sun CEO Launches A Site To Manage Your Loved One's Health Care 

Comments

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

"I alternate between little "aha" moments, and wondering what language she's writing in."

Every person has their own dialect, and people mainly get by with ignoring this obvious fact, despite occasional problems due to mis-communication. R. G. Collingwood's _The Principles of Art_ (unless I'm mistaking that for another book by him) is devoted to saying what he thinks art is. The first section is chapters on the various things he doesn't mean by his definition, and the second section is chapters on what he means by each word in his definition of art. Having read all of that, I am pretty sure I agree with his definition. If I had only read the definition, I think I would have found it too vague, and possibly pretentious. Buckminster Fuller's books are generally in a dialect that it is hard to ignore the personal nature of, often called Fullerese, and most technical books use obvious technical terms, but somewhere between that and "ordinary language" is a minefield in which some important terms, often common words that have been given a special usage in a certain area, are given inadequate local definition. The best way for me to grasp a new concept seems to be to have several specific, concrete examples. General or abstract examples are not specific enough, and having too few examples leaves the boundaries unclear.