Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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What Computers Know

Friday Slap Your Head Day

I have a backlog of cat pictures for Fridays, but I’m always balking at the work to scan them in and make them web-presentable.  So the cat pictures live on as just a good idea that I have from time to time.  I’m not prepared to sign up to the squid (or hairy lobster) patrol, so I thought I’d propose something else: Slap-Your-Forehead moments when you finally caught on to something that was frustratingly elusive until that blinding moment.

{tags: computer science education learning programming inspiration integrity failure orcmid}

Slap Your Head Day

Here’s the game.  Think back to an event in your life, probably as a student, where you were completely frustrated and hopelessly blocked over some topic or concept.  Was there a moment when suddenly you got it?  Was it world altering for you from that moment on? 

Tell us about that.  It might be about computer technology and concepts.  It might be something else.  It could be geometry class or skate-boarding or playing pool.  Or asking the red-headed girl to dance and not dying.  What was it?

Still a Dunce All This Time?

For the bonus round, where is there something that you are still frustrated with, it’s still a block for you, and you just don’t get it.  What’s that? 

Too embarrassing?  Find a safe one to test the waters.

And Friday is almost over where I am so … join me next week?

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Tag I’m It

Oh, let’s see, I have to play too.  Oh my.

When I was a teen-ager we were taught ballroom dancing in junior high school (years 7 through 9 at Stewart in Tacoma, Washington).  The lessons were in the gym.  All I remember was that I was a shrimp and the girls all seemed to be well-endowed amazons.  But mostly I was conscious of awkwardness, not knowing where to look, embarrassed of how much my hands sweated, and praying that nothing physically obvious would happen to me.   Despite all of that, the teacher singled me out as one of the ones invited to perform in a demonstration at the school.  My mother sewed a sport coat for the event.  When the day arrived I got cold feet and begged off.  What I could barely carry out in gym, they wanted me to do in public.  I cut and ran.  I think I had mom lie for me.  She was probably disappointed because she loved to dance while dad’s joke was “if you want to neck, go out in the car.”

Later, in my brief hanging-around-a-campus years, I was invited to a dance by pretty Sandy, an acquaintance in a U of W sorority.  She asked me if I danced, and I said yes, resolved to run out to Arthur Murray ASAP.  Procrastinating away the Arthur Murray opportunity, I went to the dance anyhow.  While I got lots of coaxing I felt like a complete nerd, which is pretty accurate now that I think of it.  I never apologized to Sandy for lying about the dancing.

Later on it became easier to dance because there was none of that coordinated physical contact to deal with and, well, I did survive puberty.  We can all be expressive in the local band’s version of “Proud Mary” at last call.  And close dancing was pretty much hugging and shuffling to the rhythm.

When I ended up in Sunnyvale, California, I must have mentioned that I always wanted to take dancing lessons.  Friend Nancy told me that there was a ballroom that had beginner’s dancing on Friday nights.  She even looked it up for me.  But she wouldn’t go with me.  (Hold that thought.)

A while later I was in a seminar group and I mentioned wanting to take dancing lessons.  Helen, a widowed nurse in the group wanted to do that too, so she and I went to the Starlite one Friday night for a beginner’s lesson.  They give starter lessons in three dances followed by open dancing until midnight.  It’s a little like being at the roller rink, and very fun.  There’s a mixer system so you don’t need a partner and you don’t have to ask anyone to dance first, until you learn to do that (perhaps the biggest dance lesson of all).

Helen and I both loved it enough to take the free lesson and then we each signed for group and private lessons.  I made it to Bronze Level 1 and participated in a celebration evening with my instructor, Shirli Delgado. 

Helen went farther more quickly than I, marrying a dance partner that she met at the Starlite.  I had stopped ballroom dancing by the time I met Vicki.  I was finishing college at the Stanford Summer Session (38 years after starting) and then my Fridays were occupied. 

Well, where’s the ah hah, you ask?  It came one Friday night at the Starlite when I was dancing with a lesson partner and I realized that she was more timid about dancing than I was.  I know, it was beginner’s night (duhh), but I always had it that women were natural dancers and guys were the dufuus.  In fact, many of the young and some older women there were not all that confident.  And I could be a trustworthy partner for them, in my slightly-advanced beginner-hood.

Developing a little more as a dancer, I continued to return to dance on Fridays.  I was there because I loved how owner Jim Morton was so respectful of the beginners.  I also loved being able to dance well enough so my beginner partner might experience what’s like when the dancers’ frame is working and our bodies glide on the dance floor, magically connected in the physical communication of dance, me walking into her and she smoothly backing ahead.

I now know that there are many women, like friend Nancy, who do not know how to ballroom or nightclub dance, and they are reluctant to get out on the public floor.  Vicki did not dance ballroom (though she was a champion figure skater in her teens) and was delighted when we took a series of lessons in Bellevue, Washington.  We abandoned that and have been preoccupied with other things since.  I’ll suggest we start again.

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Still Clueless After All These Years

OK, the bonus round.

Basically, I can’t make decent estimates and I don’t keep schedules.  I can make plans, and even execute them if I don’t get distracted.  But don’t ask me how long it will take.  Anything I offer is a lie (and I’ve done that a lot). 

I knew I had to crack that for my M.Sc dissertation project, and I failed.  Then I figured that the project I created, which I say I love, could be done on my own.  But I’ve slacked off and my latest promises are all bogus. 

I obviously don’t do this everywhere, or all of the time, but around development projects it is really noticeable and predictable.  People have put up with a lot from me.  Now that I am basically working for myself and on my own as a nano-ISV, I figured that I could achieve my results for myself.  It is not happening like that.  

There’s really not much more I can say.  I’m pretty sure having a good coach or mentor would be valuable, but I don’t see how to arrange that.  What could I trade?  Is there an ah hah to be had, or is it something else?

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I’m emboldened by Alex Barnett having so much pleasure in my account of Tuesday’s weblogger MeetUp.  It could be that I’m like the NASA engineer who tested the Mercury escape tower until it failed.   Maybe not.

posted by orcmid at 3/10/2006 07:48:38 PM