Toy Yoda

Some years ago, I came into possession of a small statuette of everyone's favorite diminutive Jedi Master. The base of this figurine has a motion sensor, some memory, and a speaker. When activated, the motion sensor triggers one of the half dozen or so sage (if grammatically challenged) sayings stored in the memory.

At first, I installed the toy on the dashboard of my car, enjoying the advice I received every time I hit a pothole. That was a car ago, however, and, in the rush of clearing things out of that car after I wrapped it around a telephone pole, Yoda was dropped into a storage bin and mostly forgotten until I moved into this apartment.

He came out of storage, and I decided to do something a little different with him this time. I attached a small wad of sticky-tack to the bottom of his base, and stuck him, inverted, to the ceiling of my room. He takes somewhere between 2 and 10 hours to drop from his perch, bounce off the floor (so unlike the floor of the Imperial Senate where he fought the burgeoning Emperor) and dispense his wisdom.

I enjoy several things about this. First, I have always liked having small habits which are quirky and mine. Not necessarily because they are quirky and mine, but because they are odd and I enjoy odd things.

Second, I have always liked the muppet-cum-animated Jedi master. Having a sensei who would occasionally quote him at us in class didn't hurt.

Third, it is a constant reminder of the small amounts of controllable chaos we deal with day-to-day. I know Yoda will fall, but I don't know when, what I'll be doing at the time, or what he'll say. It's a small amount of randomness, but it's controllable and still serves its purpose.

Also, it makes me laugh.

Meatless Meatballs

In an attempt to get myself writing again, and more regularly, I am widening somewhat the scope of this blog. So, here is a recipe I've worked out over the last six months or so. I would like to thank the patience of my taste-testers, including Jean, Lisa, Gramma and Grampa and, most especially, Elli.

TVP Meatless Meatballs

2T Butter

2C Flour

2C Water

2C TVP

2 Eggs

2 Bouillon Cubes

2 Carrots, Grated

Optional:

1/2 Cup Nutritional Yeast

2 Spring Onions

2 Stalks Celery

Boil Water, combine w/ Bouillon

Pour broth into bowl, add TVP, Carrot, Butter. Stir

Add Flour and eggs. Stir. Drop batter onto baking sheets.

Cook in 350 degree oven for 15-18 minutes.

I usually mix up one or two dipping sauces. These things can be a little dry, so I'll mix together one sweet-based sauce, and one spicy sauce. I don't have any recipes written down for these, but I'll write down some guidelines in the future.

Some basic, general fitness goals.

I try not to make my goals too general, because then I can weasel my way out of them. Let's unpack that sentence for a minute. First, why am I making goals when I could just go out and do things? Second, what makes a goal general versus specific? Second, why am I treating myself like some untrustworthy child?

In response:

1. Sometimes goals let us organize things in a way we couldn't. There are books and books on goal-oriented thinking, so I'm not going to wax rhapsodical about it one way or another. Just this: Goals are a method of measuring progress.

2. If a goal is a method by which to measure progress, the more specific the goal, the more accurate the measurement. Specificity in this case means having some numbers in there, and having those numbers be related to something clearly measurable in the real world. Additionally, there should be as few undefined terms in the goal as possible.

For example, having the goal "I will work out for :30 minutes per day" sounds all well and good, but it fails to define the term "work out." So, let's add a clarification to that with "This will include at least 1 mile of running and 15 minutes of weight training." Great, but we've added a few more terms to be defined and some more points to clarify. By using the "at least" modifier, we don't need to add anything about "not limited to," so if I'm feeling particularly revved up by my workout on Tuesday, I can go on for as long as I want to. However, we need to clarify "weight training." "Weight training to be a combination of machine and free weight exercises to target upper- and lower-body muscle groups, such that no two muscle groups are targeted two days in a row, and that all groups are worked out at least twice in a week's cycle."

Because we've been in the details for a while, let's step back and see what our goal looks like now:

"I will work out for :30 minutes per day. This will include at least 1 mile of running and 15 minutes of weight training. Weight training to be a combination of machine and free weight exercises to target upper- and lower-body muscle groups, such that no two muscle groups are targeted two days in a row, and that all groups are worked out at least twice in a week's cycle."

I'm pretty happy with that as a goal. It's nice and specific, without being so restrictive as to be useless or easily ignorable. Additionally, it allows a lot of room for building around and on. Non-adaptive goals encourage a kind of stagnation. Make the goal too big, it's unachievable, and needs to be broken down. Make it too small, and it's unimportant. As an ongoing goal, this one is one which must be met consistently and over time, but it's also fairly small, and thus easily achievable.

Now for the why. Why be so specific with the goal, why be concerned with all the little loopholes? The fewer loopholes there are, the fewer ways to sneak around the goal. But that defies the whole point of a goal, right? If a goal is just a measure for self-achievement, then the language doesn't have to be so precise. However, that's not all a goal is. Once a goal is set down and specific and locked in like this, it becomes a rule rather than just a goal.

I believe that people are fundamentally lazy. Without guidance, goals, rules, or laws, there would be no reason to get up off the couch/out of bed/off the floor and stop watching tv/sleeping/drinking. Perhaps this is cynicism on my part, perhaps it is simply me projecting my own internal laziness onto everyone around me. But, it is the assumption I operate on. Therefore, motivation, whether internal or external, must be captured and solidified into goals and rules when it manifests, or it will escape and we/I will return to the basic lazy state.*

So, that's the first of my goals and the thought process that went along with its creation. It's not my only current goal, or even my largest, but it's my primary fitness goal for the moment. I'm succeeding at it for the moment, and it feels good. Those exercise endorphins really make the difference.



*At some point I may parallel this view with some of the "fundamental barbarism" theories which manifest through a great deal of Chinese philosophy, but that's for a later time.

Switching systems, switching habits.

It has been a long time coming, this change. After the recent collapse of my computer's software system, I decided that it was time for something new. For years and years I have been installing and making work various versions of Windows. From the first versions of Windows 95, through 98, and the horrors of Millennium Edition,* and then slumping along with the mediocre yet acceptable 2,000 and XP, I held with it. Never a herald for a good system, and often agreeing with the detractors, I kept going because I didn't want to hassle with Linux. (I have never gotten along particularly well with Mac OS, although 9 worked better for me than any of the versions of OSX have.)

I had this huge mental block which was insisting that Linux Was Hard. I didn't want to give it the chance and try it because I was settled. Sure, Windows wasn't perfect, but I knew the kludges and workarounds to make it do the things I wanted it to do. I would tweak it, add new programs, but I stayed within my comfort zone.

Well, I can't say for sure exactly what it was that made this time different, but the computer died again.** Among my efforts to rescue my data, I decided that a Live CD was my best option. So, using my backup computer, which I normally don't bother with because it's old and slow, I downloaded and burned myself a copy of Ubuntu 9.1 Karmic Koala. Again, as I said, I'm not sure what made this time different, but mid-backup I decided I'd had it with Windows.

Long story short, I'm now running a complete Linux machine. Initially, I had thought I would settle for dabbling my toes with a dual-boot, and then I just went for broke. At this point, I have internet functionality, document functionality, and that's mostly it. I'm trying right now to make it play music and video, but that's neither here nor there.

The biggest difference I'm finding for my own experience is that things aren't handed to me on a silver platter. I have to struggle to figure out how to install things, and apparently even "install" isn't the appropriate word. I spent part of my time online at work today delving into figuring out the theory behind what a "multiverse repository" was and what it did for me. (Think I understood it. It's about girls, right?)

So, why does this matter, you might ask? Why should you care what's on my computer? Because of the greater change it can represent. Surely you noticed the surface metaphor, that first-layer, where my Operating System could be traded for anything in my life which I got too comfortable with?

Well, it's not just hollow metaphor. I spend most of my life on computers. When I'm not at work, or working on things from home, I interact more with and through my computer than I do in person. It is the lens through which I interact, and, although I had gotten comfortable with Windows and didn't want to leave it, that's only one of the lessons here.

Because I interact with the world through this machine, how I interact with the machine affects how I interact with the world. If I assume this is a fairly closed box, or at least one I can beat mostly into submission, something I point at the internet and say, "sic!" then I assume things work without a large amount of effort. But we all know there's no free lunch. Just because I didn't put the effort into making it work, doesn't mean there wasn't effort, and if I go about my life either not acknowledging that or not understanding what that means, I am a lesser man for it. Even more, if I dislike the way I interact, or that some small part of my interaction, and I bitch and moan about how non-transparent it is, such as with Windows networking, while not understanding what I'm complaining about, is a fairly major sin in my book.

So, I'm learning. Bit by bit and piece by piece, I'm figuring out why my computer does what it does.

There are other lessons here, too. Beyond breaking old habits and forming new ones, beyond understanding the world around me. But those are lessons for another day.

*Despite the fact that I associate each and every usage of the word "millennium" with Han Solo, this was still not enough to redeem Windows ME.

**In point of fact, it decided that one of the Login tasks was to execute a Logout. There was no way to change this without logging in, so there was absolutely no way to fix it from within the system.