nerdiness – hannah ananas

Nerd

Today, I noticed this on the back of a Golden Grahams box.

Grammatically speaking, it should read, “Remember the ‘80s” instead of, “Remember the 80’s”. See the difference? Well, the apostrophe goes before the numeral eight, because we are dropping the 19 from the front of the whole number (1980), and the number is referencing ten years as a subject, not something that is possessed by the number 80 (like a hamburger).

Well, anyway, I remembered how Malcolm Gladwell talked about how companies – I think he even said cereal boxes – bank on the crazy people who actually call the numbers on the ‘Questions or concerns?’ section of the box, because they are going to be the ones who truly notice things. And so, I turned the box around to see if there was a number to call for questions and comments…

Indeed, there was. And I called it.

After sitting on hold for a minute or two, I was connected to a representative who kindly accepted my grammatical information and then read it back to me correctly before forwarding to whatever team deals with the boxes and the words on them. He even asked for the cereal box barcode, so that he could include that in his report. It was awesome. And then we thanked one another and then parted ways happily and it was a ridiculous and awesome event.

Post-a-day 2022

Learning

I began last week learning something entirely new to me. Okay, so it isn’t exactly entirely new to me – I first learned some foundations for it back in middle school. Mrs. N**** taught us in computer lab. I think most of the other kids, the girls especially, weren’t huge fans of it and didn’t really get it too well. But I was and I did. It was HTML.

Hypertext Markup Language, that is.

And, you know, though I didn’t ever realize that I could pursue learning HTML, I did pursue learning other languages. Remember, languages and math are all the same thing to me. So, a computer language just feels like a fun cross between the human spoken/written languages and the math ones. No wonder it was easy for me to pick up, and no wonder I loved it back in middle school.

But I never knew that this was the foundation upon which all of this ‘computer programming’ and ‘software engineering’ was based. Don’t ask me how – I don’t know how I didn’t ever make that connection. But, finally, I did last week.

And I’m doing beginner work on it all now, starting off with a course on HTML. Though I’m in this course to learn HTML, I kind of feel like reading the comprehensive list of code for HTML would be easier for me at the point. The blocks of text that attempt to explain things to me are often much more confusing that just looking at the actual code itself. I regularly go back to the text after reading the code, and decipher it that way – the code makes more sense seen than talked about. Does that makes sense, how I said that? I guess it is like just about anything else: you can talk to me for days about it, but, until you show it to me, it is just words and ideas, and doesn’t fully make sense or click.

But this stuff is clicking. And I’m liking it. A lot.

I’ll finish the HTML foundations course tomorrow or the next day, I think, and move into CSS or iOS app development training next. Or both…

It’s funny, though. I can tell this is important to me, because I won’t let myself cover too much direct information in a day, so as not to confuse it all later. And I am excited every night before bed, as I plan out when I will be working on it all tomorrow.

Man… did I mention that I’m a nerd? Well, it just got a bit more obvious. 😛

Post-a-day 2021

Music and love

I shared tonight the song I wrote this week. I had in my head that it needed to be touched up somehow, but it turned out to be perfect for me as it was already. I just had to play it all together at once, when my un-callused fingers had rested and could handle playing again. 😛

But I really like the song. And it is in a different way from most of the others. This song is about heartbreak on a human level, and a heartbreak that we all share at some point in life: the heartbreak others don’t see in our lives, the hidden heartbreak.

My heart is aching like it’s breaking

And not only just for me.

How many hearts are the same today

For the things we just don’t see?

Thus goes the chorus. And how utterly true it is.

However, I believe that, though life can be terribly difficult and painful at times, when we operate on a foundation of love, and we make love our aim, our every breath, our life, life is beyond worth it all. I am grateful for this life and for all the love I find and am able to produce and experience within it.

Gratitude, Universe ❤

P.S. Tonight at 21:21:21,

It was the 21st second

Of the 21st minute

Of the 21st hour

Of the 21st day

Of the 21st year

Of the 21st century

Rather baller, huh? 😉

Post-a-day 2021

Check one

One down and two to go!

I actually wrote the paper this evening/tonight, and I like it!

Yes, it could be loads better, but I’m okay with how it is… I’m not trying to publish it, but complete it, and Inhabe done that.

Tuesday, I’ll present about it, and I likely’ll get super nerdy about everything I learned in my research, as well as all the new research I kind of want to do now, based on things I found that left my appetite unsatisfied. 😛

I’m a dork and nerd at heart, and I totally know it…

That’s a big part of why I’m in school again – I’m opposed to our grading system and standard assignment styles, but I love to learn and to share what I’ve learned. 🙂

Now, to do the whole paper thing over again tomorrow morning and daytime, with a presentation of that paper in the evening! (Yikes!)

Post-a-day 2018

Work your nerd

I found out today that my brother had felt unease about his nerdy knowledge on various topics. Quite frankly, I had always admired him for said nerdiness. Whenever he was interested in a topic, he’d do what he could to learn as much as possible in a short period of time. And then, if it was something that he really enjoyed, how continued to learn about it in the years that followed, becoming ever more the genius on the topic. Possibly the best part of it to me was that these often were topics that had almost nothing to do with his work or schooling – it was purely things that interested him. Nowadays, he is still the same about it all, though he definitely has certain topics on which he could be considered an expert after so many years and hours of study and work dedicated to them.

I guess, growing up, I just didn’t know his world of friends and classmates and, eventually, colleagues, because I was so much younger than he was. I had no idea that they didn’t know about his nerdy areas in his life, too. They apparently only knew about his cool, chic, sporty side (from what I understand now). He, it seems, was afraid of being rejected for his knowledge and studies. Now, though, he has begun to embrace his nerdiness, and publicly so (think social media, etc.), and he has been discovering how much respect exactly that aspect of him; especially since he is cool, chic, and sporty, but loves knowledge and nerding out over certain things. He is discovering that he had no need to be insecure about his interests and knowledge. Plus, despite the fact that the public has been responding really well to his nerd side’s being exposed, he already knew that it doesn’t really matter what other people think of him anyway – that’s their own business, not his. What matters is what he thinks about himself. If he is happy with who he is, then there is no reason not to express that in his life. So, he started finally expressing himself, nerdiness included. Now that he has been doing that, he has also found that people are grateful to him for sharing himself and his passions with the world. Super duper win-win, I say. And I am proud of him doubly, for keeping up the nerdy knowledge, and now for sharing it with the world. 🙂

Post-a-day 2018

Nerd-ing

I am years into having a smartphone, and my most visited webpages remain almost exactly the same as when I started using one. They are translation websites and dictionary websites. Originally, it was wordreference.com and dictionary.com. Wordreference.com was an easy one, because I had already done the research for my preferred translator for French, Spanish, and German. But, after some research into different dictionary websites, I found that I preferred merriam-webster.com over dictionary.com. So, today, my most visited webpages are wordreference.com and merriam-webster.com. (I would add in Google Translate, because of my constant use with Japanese on it for kanji translations and photo translations, but I had to download the app almost immediately, when I moved to Japan, so that I could use it almost constantly to understand things around me. Therefore, it isn’t a website I’m visiting, but an application I am using.)

I’m just a word and language nerd. It’s like that day at work, earlier this year, when I spent an hour looking up information on certain punctuation marks – I am a word nerd, and there is ample evidence to support the claim.

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Post-a-day 2017

Washington

My mom is on a sort of artist retreat in Washington right now. She called me up to show me the place where she’s staying for the retreat, and it’s gorgeous. The barn-like house and other beautiful, wooden buildings on the plot of land look fabulous amongst the unfamiliar greenery. I kept looking at it all, trying to place it. It looked somehow familiar and yet totally not. But I’ve never been to anywhere that has foliage like Washington, so it’s no wonder I couldn’t quite figure it out, place it all – it actually is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

The temperature was in the 50s, with humidity in the 80s, as it was early morning. I found myself asking my mom how far she is from Forks. I had to spell the name for her, as well as tell her that it’s a city in Washington. She had no idea that I was semi needing out. But that’s okay, because it turns out that she’s something like four and half hours away by ferry and car. So there’s no chance she’d be able to pop by for a quick look and a photo for me. (Aka I’m not missing out on a total nerd opportunity.)

So, that was fun, discovering that I’m a bit more of a nerd than I had expected. 😛 Gotta love nerds, though, right? I know I do. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017