Infinite Perplexity

02:31 pm: Okay, I seriously need to calm down about moving.  It's all going to work out fine, and I can wait for a time that's convenient.  Really.

02:26 pm: wait just one minute
To what extent are advertised apartment square footage figures just damned lies? I measured my apartment from tip to tip and it's 25'x25'; i.e. 625 square feet - closets, bathroom, walls, everything. I can easily find a place in my price range that's advertised as being 600 square feet. But I remember someone showing us an apartment they called 600 square feet and it seemed much smaller than this place.

So why was I think this place was over 700 square feet? Am I totally misremembering, or did my landlord lie to me? Maybe they did tell me this one's 625 square feet, and I can make do with 600 square feet, and I don't have to compromise nearly as much as I thought.

What is this strange sensation? Am I suddenly finding it much easier to breathe, as I contemplate moving?

12:49 pm: Next week I'm going to give an hour-long presentation on using Boolean expressions in SAS programs. So right now I'm trying to figure out what the general problems are that Boolean expressions can solve and how people who aren't familiar with Boolean expressions try to solve them. What I use them for most often is summarizing data across observations, but I'm sure there's other stuff I'm not thinking of.

02:11 pm: I'm thinking about getting an apartment through The Lapham Company, because they have lots of properties in the areas I'm looking at and they seem to be offering very low rent. Yelp has both one star and five star reviews for them, which I imagine is fairly typical for a property management company.

Is it time to give my current landlord notice? Probably...but I might wait until I've at least made appointments to look at some apartments.

10:32 am: This is what I will see out my window every day once I move to Oakland.

02:36 pm: A stylistic question for programmers, especially those who know SQL. SAS supports SQL using a procedure called PROC SQL. One of my most common programming strategies is to write SQL code that uses lots of GROUP BYs and boolean logic. For example, these two statements first aggregate STD tests by client ID and then for the entire year:

CREATE TABLE byClientId AS
SELECT
clientId,
MAX(procedure = 'Chlamydia Test') AS any_ct_tests,
SUM(procedure = 'Chlamydia Test') AS n_ct_tests,
MAX(procedure = 'Syphilis Test') AS any_syphilis_tests,
SUM(procedure = 'Syphilis Test') AS n_syphilis_tests,
MAX(procedure = 'HIV Test') AS any_hiv_tests,
SUM(procedure = 'HIV Test') AS n_hiv_tests
FROM claimsDataBase
WHERE year = 2008
GROUP BY clientId

CREATE TABLE diseaseTestingReport2008 AS
SELECT
SUM(any_ct_tests) AS clients_ct_tested,
SUM(n_ct_tests) AS n_ct_tests,
SUM(any_syphilis_tests) AS clients_syphilis_tested,
SUM(n_syphilis_tests) AS n_syphilis_tests,
SUM(any_hiv_tests) AS clients_hiv_tested,
SUM(n_hiv_tests) AS n_hiv_tests
FROM byClientId

To me that seems like an extremely intuitive and logical way to handle the problem, so when this kind of problem comes up I usually use PROC SQL in SAS to do it this way. However, none of the other SAS programmers I work with ever do anything even remotely similar - they seem to think the heavy reliance on boolean logic is almost comical; that no normal human thinks that way. So...

1) ...is using boolean logic so heavily something that's very hard for most people to grasp, at least assuming they're not me?

...or...

2) ...have these programmers (most of whom only know SAS and learned it ad hoc) simply not been introduced to a set of techniques that are very intuitive to use and would simplify their programs?

One thing I'm almost sure of is that this style of code is much, much faster to write, debug, and modify than the techniques the other programmers use.

Edit: I'm thinking of putting together a training PowerPoint titled "Computers think in ones and zeroes; so should you."

11:58 am: One really good reason why now is a good time to donate to MoveOn.

02:17 pm: if (myCreditCard.isCanceled()) {this.sendUpdatedCreditCardInfo(myNewInfo, myEventListeners)};

I fuckin' wish...would be a nice thing for address changes, too.

10:03 am: I think this is what happens when you let programmers do the marketing.

04:08 pm: This June was one long-ass month.

Should "long-ass" be hyphenated?

05:28 pm: selections from Modest Mouse
ice age heat wave can't complain
if the world's at large why should i remain?
walked away to another plan
gonna find another place maybe one i can stand
i move on to another day
to a whole new town with a whole new way

the days get shorter and the nights get cold
i like the autumn but this place is getting old
i pack up my belongings and i head for the coast
it might not be a lot but i feel like i'm making the most
the days get longer and the nights smell green
i guess it's not surprising but it's spring and i should leave

i like songs about drifters books about the same
they both seem to make me feel a little less insane
walked on off to another spot
i still haven't gotten anywhere that i want
did i want love? did i need to know?
why does it always feel like i'm caught in an undertow?

But it's a line farther down that really gets me:

i know that starting over's not what life's about

Fuck it, no need to be all emo about it. I am not compulsively wandering from place to place desperate to find one where I finally feel like I'm coming home; I'm make a reasoned decision to improve my career and social life by moving to a place I preferred to Sacramento in the first place. And my reluctance to do so is not based on some profound desire to choose a place and make my stand; it's got more to do with the dreadful thought of loading my Billy, my Malm, and all my other inexpensive-and-fashionable-but-fragile furniture-with-Swedish-names into a moving van.

03:01 pm: (continued from http://nfnitperplexity.livejournal.com/670849.html)

I can think of a couple of next steps:

1) Make a list of the hang-ups that stop me from building a better social life, then start solving or refuting them one by one. For example, if one of the common problems is, "I can't think of fun group activities," then come up with a long list of fun group activities that I can refer to later. If another problem is, "I'll get upset if people reject my invitations," then remind myself that this sort of rejection is in fact not all that painful and I've dealt with it before, and it's easily worth pushing through that in order to get what I want.

2) Figure out which people I know handle their social lives and social networks really well, tell them that I'm trying to do better in that area, and find out what suggestions they have.

3) Even if I haven't got everything figured out yet, be mindful of opportunities to move in the direction I want to go. Spend time with the friends I already have, one-on-one if I can't come up with group activities. If there's any social stuff I've had in mind but have been putting off, do them now. Keep going to the various activities and groups that I've gone to in the past.

02:09 pm: "Ask not what your new friend can add to your social life - ask what you can add to your new friend’s social life."

This seems like a reasonable way to organize the project of growing my social circle. If you're regularly planning or participating in group social activities, then you always have something of value to offer new people you meet - entertainment, the chance to meet your friends, and enjoyment of your company in a comfortable social context. I've found that without this element, new friendships I form seem to sort of "dead-end" - I'll meet someone for coffee now and then, but it always feels like something is missing.

It's only recently that I've begun thinking about these things explicitly, but I've of course been vaguely aware of these issues for years. So why haven't I acted on this principle more often? Well, I realize that when I contemplate developing my social life in this way, various worries and objections get in my way:

- I can't think of entertaining things to do.
- I'll forget peoples' names and embarrass myself.
- If people turn me down I'll feel rejected and give up.
- I'm an introvert and introverts aren't good at this sort of thing.
- Most people I meet are couples, and it's weird to hang out with couples as a single person.
- When I meet new people, I don't know what they're interested in.
- I'll forget to stay in touch with people.
- The bastards will expect me to use Facebook.
- And so on and so forth.

The notable thing isn't that these objections are terribly serious - some of them aren't even true, and those that are true are well within my ability to change. It's that there's so friggin' many of them, and I let them bog me down.

What I've posted so far feels like one complete "chapter" of my thoughts on this subject; when I have more I'll continue in another post.

05:02 pm: On my walls:
( Read more... )

06:20 pm: As we all know, the recent flu pandemic is caused by a strain of H1N1 that combines genetic material from human, swine, and bird flu strains. But I imagine much scarier. Like, what about a cross between human flu, bear flu, and shark flu?

01:31 pm: router password: retrieved.
wii: connected to internet.
tech support fee: not paid.

10:42 am: i know this and i'm not even governor of south carolina
My advice for Mark Sanford is this: before you fly to Buenos Aires, post a hasty LiveJournal entry explaining where you're going.

09:39 am: I'm searching for a word or phrase..."organizing principle" might be what I'm looking for, or they might be a better one.

You can pursue some goals most effectively when you are guided by very broad rules that aren't necessarily obvious. For example, if you're playing Magic: The Gathering, and if your goal is to win, then it's very useful to think, "I need to neutralize as many of my opponent's cards as possible using as few of my own cards as possible." As soon as you realize this, you'll get better at every aspect of the game, from designing your deck to choosing your tactics during play. It's a principle that's not necessarily obvious when you start playing the game, but once you start organizing your thoughts and strategies along those lines it's hard to remember how you ever did things differently. (note: it's possible that some people never consciously think in terms of card-efficiency and yet still apply the principle successfully.)

Another example, from my recent post on home organizing: "Make sure everything has a place." Until I started thinking in those terms, the task of keeping my apartment organized seemed impossible and demoralizing, and my efforts to do so were scattered and ineffective. But once I started applying that "organizing principle" (or whatever you want to call it), I was easily able to develop a sort of momentum, so that now my apartment almost seems to stay organized of its own accord; it's mostly organized most of the time, and when some particular domain of it gets cluttered (right now I've got loose books all over the place) a solution suggests itself fairly quickly (I've been trying to figure out where I could best accomodate a second bookcase.)

This is all leading somewhere; I want to post my thoughts about how I might go about building a social circle in Sacramento. Right now I'm trying to gather and refine what basic assumptions and principles I'll work with (I anticipate it'll be things like, "When you meet someone, you should always be thinking about which of your friends this person would get along with"; just an example) But at this stage I'm not even sure what the umbrella term is for those assumptions and principles..."organizing principles" is such a clunky, ambiguous phrase, you know? Can anyone think of a better one? It seems like these rules/guidelines/assumptions are a fairly basic part of how we learn and become effective at new activities, so it frustrates me that there seems to be no clear term for them.

02:37 pm: In early January I posted a long list of mini-resolutions. Mid-year, my life situation has changed in unexpected ways (e.g. I'm single now), so it's time to evaluate and reconsider. I fulfilled some of the resolutions; others are roughly half-complete at six months. A few, I flubbed.

My resolutions in January were small and specific; most were pledges to do little things I'd been putting off. That was fine for the time, but now I'm more interested in developing some broad areas of my life in open-ended ways:

- I want to establish a thriving social circle in Sacramento and spend as much time as possible doing things I enjoy, especially with other people.
- I want to join a writers group and begin publishing nonfiction.
- I want to make the most of my current job and take steps toward moving to something that pays better.

11:07 am: an oldy but a goody
The diversity paradox.

I'd call it more of a dilemma than a paradox, though.