Delusions of Grandeur

Tomorrow is the first day of a new semester. Earlier I was imagining myself conducting my class with dignity, significance, and respect, which is probably making it all out to be much more important than it is. This easily led me into a daydream of a man confined to a mental hospital having delusions that he is a king or a knight. The truth is, in some ways, I wouldn't mind being that man.

Numerology

A few years ago I came across another teacher at the college I teach at who claimed to know something about numerology. He was in his mid eighties and had been studying it for 30 or 40 years. I have always had a broad interest in all things natural and supernatural, and I knew that numerology (whatever it was) fit into one category or the other. So, instead of just explaining it to me, he just gave me a reading. I don't remember all of the information he gathered from me, but my birth date was one item on the list. (I still have the paper he wrote for me somewhere.) It did not take him long and I was caught off guard by how much he knew about me as a result of the reading (I suppose). Right away he told me that I love to learn, that I'm a lifelong student, that I'm not happy unless I'm learning, and that this is a burden on me. This is all true, and he seemed to know about my personal struggle of always needing to learn, and constantly seeking (but rarely finding) fulfillment through learning. In my experience, this is not a common struggle. Even among my colleagues (at a college), there are none I know of who seem to have broad academic interests. Even if I am typical, and he made a good guess, it was even more surprising that he knew that it was a source of psychological pain for me.

In any case, he knew me as well as I knew myself, and seemed to be able to do it with numerology alone. But he made one more prediction: he said that in my late thirties (roughly, I can't remember) that the burden and psychological pain that my desire to learn causes me will abate. Time will tell.

Tennis Elbow

I guess it was about 3 years ago that my tennis elbow became too painful and uncomfortable to ignore. Many years before that, I had just begun to irritate the tendon by fidgeting while reading, thinking and studying. Then it was the enormously strenuous and time consuming task of pruning our Lady Banks roses that took me to the stage of the injury that warranted a trip to the doctor. The original prescription of rest and ice made it moderately better, but did not cure it. Furthermore, re-injury was very easy. About one year after the first appointment with the doctor, I started physical therapy. The short story on that is the pain is gone, and my comfort level is quite good. The problem is that re-injury seems to still be too likely, since 4 months after finishing physical therapy the pain and discomfort is back, for no good reason. Once again, I am very certain it was thinking, reading, and fidgeting that did it. Originally, when the pain was back, I tried to do the same physical therapy exercises that helped me last summer. But it seemed that they only made it worse. Should I have gone trough a period of rest first? I remember that while attending the therapy sessions last summer, I was advised would work through some of the mild pain. I guess I done know at what point to start the exercises. In any case, I have done mostly rest for a week or so. And today I decided to try some of the exercises. Before I started, there was some pain, but it was mostly discomfort, "tightness" and weakness in the tendon. As I did the exercises, I had the idea that they have to be done "just right." For example, jerky movements are no good. When I was doing eccentric loading with the dumbbell, I would use two hands, and very gradually release the weight with my right hand as I made the eccentric motion very slowly with the weight in my left hand. The bottom line is that it felt very good, and had continued to feel good for the rest of the day. I guess it's only beneficial to definitely use the tendon, but without causing any pain or discomfort; there's a balance between the two to work for. I'm excited about this since, as far as I understand, tendons do not tend to heel properly once injured. They are slow to heal, and heal with some sort of weaker tissue that is vulnerable to re-injury. Apparently, eccentric loading does cause a more proper and resilient healing of the tendon. So, this time around I will practice my physical therapy, but keep doing so well past the point of relief in hoping to restore the tendon as much as possible.

Arboricola

This is the newest addition to our collection of houseplants. I've come to have increasing confidence recently about my skill at keeping houseplants alive and healthy. Plus, it was on sale for only $2.44. Originally, before I had a yard of my own, my interest in and attraction to plants was solely directed at houseplants. It's not the way I wanted it to work out, but I killed so many plants during that period. A big turning point for me was that I read Howard Garrett's Organic Manual at about the same time I got a yard of my own. Those events together activated my instincts about what plants need in a way that neither could have done on their own, and I started to have success with outdoor plants. In any case, I found later that the same skill I developed worked with houseplants too, although I still see them as a greater challenge.

Devil's Ivy

Here is a picture of two of three Devil's Ivy plants that I have. The foliage on one appears to very thin when compared to the other. I think that, all other things being equal, the difference between the two is that the one with denser foliage spent about a month in late summer in a shady spot in the yard (where it is much brighter than inside). The one with thinner foliage has spent all of it's time inside. Otherwise, they get the same treatment: each gets a continuous supply of compost from kitchen waste, and you can often find some pillbugs and earthworms living in the soild. The soil is alive, not sterile. They are a type of plant that is suited live inside, but maybe they should all have a turn to spend some time outside. Why not all of them spend all of their time outside? That's fine in the spring, summer and fall, but they will not survive the winter that way. Plus, I like to have a few plants inside.

Binary arithmetic, logic gates and electronics.

A few years ago, I had a question occur to me: Computers are composed of many tiny wires, each of which can be considered either on (state 1) or off (state 0). Part of the network of all of these wires are various logic gates. So, if computers are logic gates and wires, how can computers add, subtract, multiply or divide? In other words, how can arithmetic be reduced to logic?

In any case, this question really stuck with me, and eventually I started reading about it. It turns out that it is somewhat easy to understand how adding can be done with logic gates, as long as the numbers are expressed in binary. Tonight I created my first simulator in Excel that will add two four-bit binary numbers by only using logic gates. Maybe I can build the actual machine someday? In any case, this simulator seems to work perfectly. Plus one can tell that it should based on an understanding of binary arithmetic and logic. I hope I build this device someday. I considered a string a dip switches for the input number, and either LED's or a binary display (if I can find one) for the output. Transistor logic gates themselves are easy to find. For the logic gate schematic, you will find something similar on page 75 of "How Computers Do Math."

All work and no play...

I have made this claim before, but this semester really has been the busiest yet. I have way too many students, and have too many of my office hours occupied. It's Saturday morning at 2:25 AM right now. I finally fell asleep at 3:30 or 4 AM on Friday morning, but then I woke up at 9 AM. Watched Neil and Olivia by myself all day, and then at about 10 PM on Friday (about 4 hours ago) started grading papers. I kept track with a timer, and I graded for 2.75 hours. Every paper I graded was over a week old. In any case, I graded 24 papers total, and don't want to do anymore grading for a long, long time.