For one, she does not take well to be ignored. I'm sitting here typing a few hours after my first six mile run in...oh, probably two or three months, and it feels like my entire skeletal structure has been replaced with firecrackers. Tomorrow it won't hurt at all though, and the next time I do a long run (within the week), it'll be a little easier, and the next time it'll be easier still, and so on. This is how you get better at most things, but with running it's easier to quantify that improvement than with, say, writing journal articles or giving presentations: you run farther than you did before, or you run faster than you did before (or both), and that means you're doing better.
The problem with this easy quantifiability is that it works on the impractical assumption that you're always going to keep running, and thus always going to keep getting better, even if progress is slow. For example, I'll often run the same route five times in a row, and sometimes, say, the third run will be slower than the first run. But overall, there's a tendency toward improvement. But if I do three of those runs, and then Other Life gets in the way for a few weeks, and then I come back, I'm lucky if I can even finish that run the fourth time, let alone at the same speed I'd worked up to before.
My run today was 6.5 miles, and I was having a bit of trouble, physically and mentally, by the time I finished. Maybe for some of you reading, that sounds like an amazing achievement. Objectively, I suppose it is. But this past summer I was running 13 miles with fair regularity, at a faster pace throughout that I turned in today on my 6.5 mile run. So to me it feels like stepping backward.
I guess this is what bugs me about running, then: that precisely because it's so easy to quantify your ability level and your progress, it's equally easy to quantify your slips backward. It's maybe a silly thing to worry about: I haven't ran much for the last few months because we moved across the country, settled in to a new city, started new jobs, bought a dog...oh, and I've been hiking about 20-30 miles a week and summiting a peak or two or three every weekend for the last two months. So it's not necessarily that I've gotten lazy (and who cares if I had, anyway?), but more just that I'm not running.
However, knowing that I'm objectively worse at it than I once was, and that the only way to get better is to do the same training I've already done a few times is always a little disheartening. There are a lot of other things in life I can pick back up after a month or so off and at least delude myself into thinking I haven't gotten any worse at them. Like, for example, guitar. I'm certainly better at guitar if I play for an hour every day for a month, but if I play once a week, I can still play one of 30 or so songs well at the drop of hat, and I'm okay with that level of proficiency. Running is always taunting me with the knowledge that I used to be faster, or able to run further. It's hard to be happy about creaking through 6.5 miles when you know you've done an easy 13 miles, and not that long ago. And that's an attitude that I don't naturally have about most things. I'm not obsessive about improvement, perfection, etc. in most aspects of my life, but it feels sometimes like that's the only type of relationship running will allow me to have with it. Nonetheless, I'll be out there doing my 2.6 mile sprint tomorrow, snowy skies willing.
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 15, 2013
My Time-Traveling Spaceship Dream
So, as you may or may not know, I regularly have really weird dreams.
Yeah, I know, everybody has really weird dreams. Big deal. But, I'm convinced that mine are a little weird in their own way because frequently my dreams consist most prominently of emotional textures, with images, plot, characters, etc. playing secondary roles. Mostly I just feel lots of things really intensely in dreams, and then I wake up (insert obligatory Midwesterner-feelings-repression joke here).
Here's an example of what I'm talking about, which is my slightly shitty memory of a dream I had last night:
I don't remember how we got there, because my dreams frequently start in medias res, and this one was no different. "We" were, at least as far as we knew, the very last remaining humans. We were inside of a spaceship, it was cold, we were tired, and somehow the dream captured precisely the feeling of knowing that you and a few others were all that remained of your kind in the entirety of existence. Despite the fact, of course, that I've never felt this way in real life. It was a panicked, but oddly empty feeling, but the panic didn't go away after a few minutes. It persisted for hours, days, months. I think a lot of this time passed quickly during the dream (this happens to me a lot, too).
Then, suddenly, there was hope, after a fashion. A few of the remaining, science-educated geniuses, who we had brought along on our spaceship-ark in the tradition of these things, had a plan. This plan was to send us ten years into the future. I think, though I can't remember for sure, the idea behind this plan is that it would bring a lot of the children on the ship up to childbearing age before too many of the rest of us died off and were unable to help reproduce. This was talked about in an immensely logical, detached way, while we all watched with empty eyes. I remember being hungry, and having no better ideas.
Soon enough, then, time-travel day came. At this point, I was oddly fixated on two things. One, I was really concerned that time-travel was going to hurt, physically. It felt like the first time you go to the doctor with the simultaneous awareness that it is going to hurt a lot immediately but ultimately be better for you overall. Two, I was desperately obsessed with trying to impress one of the women on the spaceship, in hopes that somehow that would convince her to fall in love with me.
In this dream, darkly enough, Lindsey had already died a long time ago (fulfilling her own dream, I suppose, of dying off at the beginning of any dystopian scenario), but there was this woman on the spaceship who was oddly similar to her, and I was absolutely sure that, somehow, being with her would make sad, starving space-life bearable. In my mind, this wasn't going to be a "hook up and make babies to save the world" scenario. No, we were going to live together in a house, have a family, and do all of the things that we absolutely could in no way ever actually do again. It was hopelessly saccharine and I knew that, somehow, while still also fully needing to believe it was possible anyway (another weirdly intense dream-emotion). To her, I basically didn't exist, because the only thing that really mattered was staying warm and not failing humanity by succumbing to death. Throughout the course of the dream, her ignorance of me somehow became more depressing than the extermination of the human race. I guess 20 year old me was making a comeback subconsciously.
Eventually, we all sat on the floor in the main bay of the spaceship, cross-legged, like a huge, spacesuited yoga class, while the scientists activated the time machine. The last two things I did before we fast-forwarded ten years was pet my dog (who was the exact, eleven-week-old puppy I own currently in real life) and then put my head on the shoulder of an elderly woman I'd never spoken to before and fall asleep. I found this oddly warm and comforting. There was no pain, after all.
When I woke up, the first thing I saw was my puppy again, fully intact, but still puppy-sized. This is when things took a turn for the horror-movie-esque. Despite being the same size as he'd been before, my dog was frail, shaky, and looked back at me with the rheumy eyes of a much older dog. It was then I realized what everyone else around me was simultaneously realizing: that we had aged in a cellular sense, but not actually changed at all in a physical sense. We had children in ten-year-old-sized bodies with twenty years of wear and tear, and people who had been sixty before the time-travel who were now just laying there dead.
It hadn't really gone as planned, but in the end it felt like one in a long litany of disappointments and failed contingency plans, deus ex machinas who neglected to show up when scheduled. The dream ended with me and the Mystery Woman exchanging pained, uncertain looks. It was the first time that it felt to me that we had something in common, in an odd way. It felt hopeful in the way the littlest things provide a disproportionate amount of solace in the face of a huge disappointment. Then I woke up.
What stuck with me wasn't so much the plot, but the clarity of the feelings that accompanied the things that happened. Generally speaking, I've never actually felt any of these specific feelings (or at least these feelings with these specific motivators) in my actual life, yet I did in the dream. Sort of like how some people dream about flying or being a fish...I guess I just dream about having really bizarre and extreme emotions. I think I'd rather be a fish.
Yeah, I know, everybody has really weird dreams. Big deal. But, I'm convinced that mine are a little weird in their own way because frequently my dreams consist most prominently of emotional textures, with images, plot, characters, etc. playing secondary roles. Mostly I just feel lots of things really intensely in dreams, and then I wake up (insert obligatory Midwesterner-feelings-repression joke here).
Here's an example of what I'm talking about, which is my slightly shitty memory of a dream I had last night:
I don't remember how we got there, because my dreams frequently start in medias res, and this one was no different. "We" were, at least as far as we knew, the very last remaining humans. We were inside of a spaceship, it was cold, we were tired, and somehow the dream captured precisely the feeling of knowing that you and a few others were all that remained of your kind in the entirety of existence. Despite the fact, of course, that I've never felt this way in real life. It was a panicked, but oddly empty feeling, but the panic didn't go away after a few minutes. It persisted for hours, days, months. I think a lot of this time passed quickly during the dream (this happens to me a lot, too).
Then, suddenly, there was hope, after a fashion. A few of the remaining, science-educated geniuses, who we had brought along on our spaceship-ark in the tradition of these things, had a plan. This plan was to send us ten years into the future. I think, though I can't remember for sure, the idea behind this plan is that it would bring a lot of the children on the ship up to childbearing age before too many of the rest of us died off and were unable to help reproduce. This was talked about in an immensely logical, detached way, while we all watched with empty eyes. I remember being hungry, and having no better ideas.
Soon enough, then, time-travel day came. At this point, I was oddly fixated on two things. One, I was really concerned that time-travel was going to hurt, physically. It felt like the first time you go to the doctor with the simultaneous awareness that it is going to hurt a lot immediately but ultimately be better for you overall. Two, I was desperately obsessed with trying to impress one of the women on the spaceship, in hopes that somehow that would convince her to fall in love with me.
In this dream, darkly enough, Lindsey had already died a long time ago (fulfilling her own dream, I suppose, of dying off at the beginning of any dystopian scenario), but there was this woman on the spaceship who was oddly similar to her, and I was absolutely sure that, somehow, being with her would make sad, starving space-life bearable. In my mind, this wasn't going to be a "hook up and make babies to save the world" scenario. No, we were going to live together in a house, have a family, and do all of the things that we absolutely could in no way ever actually do again. It was hopelessly saccharine and I knew that, somehow, while still also fully needing to believe it was possible anyway (another weirdly intense dream-emotion). To her, I basically didn't exist, because the only thing that really mattered was staying warm and not failing humanity by succumbing to death. Throughout the course of the dream, her ignorance of me somehow became more depressing than the extermination of the human race. I guess 20 year old me was making a comeback subconsciously.
Eventually, we all sat on the floor in the main bay of the spaceship, cross-legged, like a huge, spacesuited yoga class, while the scientists activated the time machine. The last two things I did before we fast-forwarded ten years was pet my dog (who was the exact, eleven-week-old puppy I own currently in real life) and then put my head on the shoulder of an elderly woman I'd never spoken to before and fall asleep. I found this oddly warm and comforting. There was no pain, after all.
When I woke up, the first thing I saw was my puppy again, fully intact, but still puppy-sized. This is when things took a turn for the horror-movie-esque. Despite being the same size as he'd been before, my dog was frail, shaky, and looked back at me with the rheumy eyes of a much older dog. It was then I realized what everyone else around me was simultaneously realizing: that we had aged in a cellular sense, but not actually changed at all in a physical sense. We had children in ten-year-old-sized bodies with twenty years of wear and tear, and people who had been sixty before the time-travel who were now just laying there dead.
It hadn't really gone as planned, but in the end it felt like one in a long litany of disappointments and failed contingency plans, deus ex machinas who neglected to show up when scheduled. The dream ended with me and the Mystery Woman exchanging pained, uncertain looks. It was the first time that it felt to me that we had something in common, in an odd way. It felt hopeful in the way the littlest things provide a disproportionate amount of solace in the face of a huge disappointment. Then I woke up.
What stuck with me wasn't so much the plot, but the clarity of the feelings that accompanied the things that happened. Generally speaking, I've never actually felt any of these specific feelings (or at least these feelings with these specific motivators) in my actual life, yet I did in the dream. Sort of like how some people dream about flying or being a fish...I guess I just dream about having really bizarre and extreme emotions. I think I'd rather be a fish.
Nov 11, 2013
An Ode To Instagram
Note: This was cross-posted on Recomposing the Pines today.
So, thus far on my new work-related blog, I've had three posts. One is arguably work-related and the other two not so much.
But I realized something awesome about Instagram the other day and wanted to share, and since I at least nominally research and write on new media for a living, I don't think it's too far off the mark to post it here as well as my Super-Secret Blog of Feelings and Secrets.
As if it wasn't clear from my original post on this blog, I have a pretty ambivalent relationship with social media. I used MySpace for awhile, but I was never quite sure what it was for besides streaming other people's music. I started using Facebook because my friend Toria signed me up using my laptop while I was in the bathroom one day at work. I started using Twitter because it was required for a class. I started using Foursquare because I needed another example of digital storytelling to talk about in my dissertation. I started using Google+ because I was just curious if it was actually better than Facebook.*
In short, I didn't really start using any of these services for what they were meant for; namely, for socializing. Like a dog with a type of food he's never encountered before, I've always been content to just take a lick here and there and then spit the thing back out, because, frankly, the food I usually eat has always been good enough.** I started researching and writing on Americans' use of social media not because I was a huge fan, but because it was so fascinating to me that we could collectively become obsessed with a form of expression that was simultaneously so full of promise and yet so empty in execution.
I post a lot on Facebook, but it feels fairly pointless, unless I'm sharing news that I know will interest or entertain someone specific. I post a lot on Twitter, but it's the internet equivalent of having "conversations" with the colleagues that speed past my open door en route to their class: it's nice for a quip or shout-out here or there, but ultimately not much beyond that. I still use Foursquare from time to time, but only because it's fun from a gaming perspective: I like earning new badges and mayorships in that shallow Unlock Steam Achievement way. If each Foursquare interaction took about a second longer, I'd probably stop using it entirely.
Instagram, though...Instagram is cool. I realized this the other day as I was waiting for one of those things you occasionally find yourself waiting for, like someone to call you back or your girlfriend to use the restaurant bathroom. During those little spaces nowadays, when you know you don't have enough time to Accomplish Something but there's also not enough time to Fall Into A Deep Reverie And Reflect On The Meaning Of Life, I usually pull out my phone and tool around. In this case, I went to my Instagram feed and started looking at the pictures posted recently by the people I follow. And I realized after about four pictures that it was just really awesome, interesting, and creative in a way that all those other social networks rarely are.
Part of it, of course, is the requirement that one uses visuality to express themselves on Instagram. There's a huge gap between posting "I ate veal tonight" on Facebook or Twitter and turning that written expression of mundane fact into poetry.*** However, even if you take the most soulless, robotlike photograph of your food and post it to Instagram, you're still making decisions about how to frame the photo, what light you're taking it in, the angle you're taking it at, etc., etc. You are forced, at the options screen, to make choices about the frame that goes around your picture, if you want a caption, if you want to apply a filter, and so on. Even if you opt out of all of these choices, that itself is a choice. It's a social media app that requires you to express yourself artistically and creatively, even if only in the smallest of ways, and for that I love it.
Of course, this also democratizes interesting content creation in the sense that you don't need to be able to describe your plate of veal like Whitman or Keats to make it interesting: visually, to me at least, it's really exciting to be able to actually see what other people I know find important in their lives. Written language is a fun tool to play with, but not everybody likes to play with it. Not everybody is comfortable enough using it to play with it. A neat photo on Instagram is just a click away (a few more if you want to apply the Amaro filter first, which you should probably do).
There hasn't been a single time over the last year or so that I've checked my Instagram feed that I haven't found something that struck me as a legitimate piece of point-and-click art. I'm lucky if that happens once a week or three on Facebook or Twitter. Other social media networks feel a bit like I'm living on a street with everyone I know and we all leave our curtains open and our windows open and talk really loudly, even when we're just talking to ourselves. Instagram, instead, feels a little bit like those times in my undergrad Creative Writing classes when we'd all write some super-sloppy, semi-outrageous, but totally earnest poem and read it out loud to the rest of the class. There was always something a little bit silly about everyone's poem (including your own), but the fact that everyone was sharing made it so everyone deserved to be taken seriously.
I think this happens with Instagram at least in part because the platform forces you to share in this way if you choose to use it at all, but I think I'm okay with that.
* It is, but nobody uses it, so it's sort of a hollow victory.
** This is a strained metaphor, but it's also happening on the carpet in front of me right now, so it's what came to mind.
***And here I mean lowercase-"p" poetry, not uppercase-"P" Poetry.
So, thus far on my new work-related blog, I've had three posts. One is arguably work-related and the other two not so much.
But I realized something awesome about Instagram the other day and wanted to share, and since I at least nominally research and write on new media for a living, I don't think it's too far off the mark to post it here as well as my Super-Secret Blog of Feelings and Secrets.
As if it wasn't clear from my original post on this blog, I have a pretty ambivalent relationship with social media. I used MySpace for awhile, but I was never quite sure what it was for besides streaming other people's music. I started using Facebook because my friend Toria signed me up using my laptop while I was in the bathroom one day at work. I started using Twitter because it was required for a class. I started using Foursquare because I needed another example of digital storytelling to talk about in my dissertation. I started using Google+ because I was just curious if it was actually better than Facebook.*
In short, I didn't really start using any of these services for what they were meant for; namely, for socializing. Like a dog with a type of food he's never encountered before, I've always been content to just take a lick here and there and then spit the thing back out, because, frankly, the food I usually eat has always been good enough.** I started researching and writing on Americans' use of social media not because I was a huge fan, but because it was so fascinating to me that we could collectively become obsessed with a form of expression that was simultaneously so full of promise and yet so empty in execution.
I post a lot on Facebook, but it feels fairly pointless, unless I'm sharing news that I know will interest or entertain someone specific. I post a lot on Twitter, but it's the internet equivalent of having "conversations" with the colleagues that speed past my open door en route to their class: it's nice for a quip or shout-out here or there, but ultimately not much beyond that. I still use Foursquare from time to time, but only because it's fun from a gaming perspective: I like earning new badges and mayorships in that shallow Unlock Steam Achievement way. If each Foursquare interaction took about a second longer, I'd probably stop using it entirely.
Instagram, though...Instagram is cool. I realized this the other day as I was waiting for one of those things you occasionally find yourself waiting for, like someone to call you back or your girlfriend to use the restaurant bathroom. During those little spaces nowadays, when you know you don't have enough time to Accomplish Something but there's also not enough time to Fall Into A Deep Reverie And Reflect On The Meaning Of Life, I usually pull out my phone and tool around. In this case, I went to my Instagram feed and started looking at the pictures posted recently by the people I follow. And I realized after about four pictures that it was just really awesome, interesting, and creative in a way that all those other social networks rarely are.
Part of it, of course, is the requirement that one uses visuality to express themselves on Instagram. There's a huge gap between posting "I ate veal tonight" on Facebook or Twitter and turning that written expression of mundane fact into poetry.*** However, even if you take the most soulless, robotlike photograph of your food and post it to Instagram, you're still making decisions about how to frame the photo, what light you're taking it in, the angle you're taking it at, etc., etc. You are forced, at the options screen, to make choices about the frame that goes around your picture, if you want a caption, if you want to apply a filter, and so on. Even if you opt out of all of these choices, that itself is a choice. It's a social media app that requires you to express yourself artistically and creatively, even if only in the smallest of ways, and for that I love it.
Of course, this also democratizes interesting content creation in the sense that you don't need to be able to describe your plate of veal like Whitman or Keats to make it interesting: visually, to me at least, it's really exciting to be able to actually see what other people I know find important in their lives. Written language is a fun tool to play with, but not everybody likes to play with it. Not everybody is comfortable enough using it to play with it. A neat photo on Instagram is just a click away (a few more if you want to apply the Amaro filter first, which you should probably do).
There hasn't been a single time over the last year or so that I've checked my Instagram feed that I haven't found something that struck me as a legitimate piece of point-and-click art. I'm lucky if that happens once a week or three on Facebook or Twitter. Other social media networks feel a bit like I'm living on a street with everyone I know and we all leave our curtains open and our windows open and talk really loudly, even when we're just talking to ourselves. Instagram, instead, feels a little bit like those times in my undergrad Creative Writing classes when we'd all write some super-sloppy, semi-outrageous, but totally earnest poem and read it out loud to the rest of the class. There was always something a little bit silly about everyone's poem (including your own), but the fact that everyone was sharing made it so everyone deserved to be taken seriously.
I think this happens with Instagram at least in part because the platform forces you to share in this way if you choose to use it at all, but I think I'm okay with that.
* It is, but nobody uses it, so it's sort of a hollow victory.
** This is a strained metaphor, but it's also happening on the carpet in front of me right now, so it's what came to mind.
***And here I mean lowercase-"p" poetry, not uppercase-"P" Poetry.
Nov 10, 2013
Linux Mint Wants To Be Your (Work) Friend
Note: This was cross-posted on Recomposing the Pines today.
It's true. I won't go into depth on why it's true, I'd rather leave you to figure that out yourself if you're so inclined. But I wanted to do a little mini-post here simply to say that I've been using Linux Mint (first version 13 and then version 15) for all of my work-related tasks since mid-summer, and it's been absolutely fine.
A lot of people seem to have the perception that Linux = Difficult, or that you have to be some sort of crazy computer whiz to be able to use it. I say this because that was exactly my perception until I tried out Mint.
There are, it turns out, a lot of different distributions of Linux. Many are obviously built to serve particular purposes (for example, Puppy Linux is built to work well on old computers and netbooks, but has less flash and functionality than something like Ubuntu). Many are unique in ways that would be basically unnoticeable to the non-guru, but are, I'm told, mightily significant to The People Who Know Computer Things.*
But, generally speaking, Linux is appealing to a certain kind of person (read: "not just a computer person") because it is the early-90s, manual-transmission car of the operating system world. At a time when it's getting harder and harder to look under our "car"'s hood and find the radiator, to learn to change the oil by ourselves, or to diagnose a fluid leak without hooking everything up to a computer, Linux still has an easily navigable, wide-open space under the hood, easily identifiable and removable (and installable) parts, and so on.
Obviously, in this metaphor, a lot of people are going to prefer to have a car that "just works." Of course, that is, until it doesn't work, in which case you either have to take it in to the mechanic (Windows) or just buy an entirely new car (Mac). But if you have a modicum of interest in at least slightly understanding the machine in front of you that likely contains your entire professional (and maybe personal) life and on which your ability to discharge your workday responsibilities relies, Linux gives you a foot in the door.
Mint, specifically, is built to mimic the Windows UI (pre Win7) in a lot of ways. It comes prepackaged with a lot of software and drivers, to the point that if you're one of those weirdos who can happily sit at a work-provided computer for years and never think about installing new software, or changing your desktop background, or changing the arrangement of the taskbar icons.
I've never really had any trouble with Mint on install before, and I've installed it on five different computers now, from three different manufacturers. The only times I've had issues that required some serious troubleshooting was when I started trying to install new programs, change system settings, etc., and most of those "errors" and system failures were more a result of my own clueless flailing around than any inherent instability in Mint.
Fortunately, basic functions work well "out of the box," as it were, and pretty much all the software you'll need to perform typical work-related tasks are already installed, and your sound, graphics, etc. should work right away, to a surprising degree. I installed Mint recently on a two-monitor setup in my new office, and both monitors came online immediately -- something that didn't happen even when I installed Windows 7 on the same computer.
I guess the big catch for using Linux for typical work tasks would be that you'll need to learn how to navigate some programs that are going to be a little different than what you're used to. For example, there is no Microsoft Office. There is, however, LibreOffice, which for my money is faster, more reliable, and nicer-looking than MS Office anyway.
Plus, it can save documents, slide shows, spreadsheets, etc. in all the typical Microsoft formats, so you can pull the same documents up later on a computer in the meeting room and have them run just fine. Admittedly, sometimes there's some formatting, etc. lost in the process of moving from LibreOffice to MS Office or vice versa, but honestly I've never had as much trouble as I've had moving from, say, MS Office 97 to 2003 and back or 2003 to 2010 and back, and so on.
If you want to try Linux Mint, but not totally commit, the site I linked to above will explain how to make a LiveCD and boot your computer from it. In this state, you'll be able to play around with Mint "on" the CD, so there are no changes made to your computer while you test it out and see how you like it. If you want to install Mint alongside Windows 7 (or lower), so you're not making One Big Choice as much as letting yourself make the choice every single time you boot up the computer, you can do this. In fact, this is how all my computers are set up: they start up to a simple menu at which I choose either Linux (for 95% of my day-to-day tasks) or Windows (for the occasional movie-editing or sound-editing task that it does better than Linux, plus video games). There's a really easy-to-follow tutorial for this, which is right here.
Anyway, once I got everything installed, I found Mint to generally be more reliable, faster, and better-looking than Windows, at least as far as doing the typical word-processing, emailing, and messaging tasks that I do at work every day. I boots up way faster, too.
If you want to explore the system a little bit more, it actually lets you, too, and as long as you don't jump into doing things like editing system kernels right off the bat, the learning curve is pretty shallow and there's a number of great communities online that are willing to help you figure things out and answer newbie questions.
Oh, plus everything's free. I suppose I should have mentioned that before. Mint itself is free, and all the software that comes with it is free. All the programs you might want to install are free. Don't like the default music player? There are literally hundreds more to choose from, and none of them cost a cent. The Adobe Photoshop analogue? Free. High-end music editing programs used by real DJs? Free.
You get the idea.
Anyway, just something to think about. Switching to Mint will likely stretch your brain just a little bit, but in a good way. Plus, over the last few months I've come to find that it's not just a good alternative for work than your typical paid operating system, it's actually better in a lot of significant ways.
* I finished my undergrad a measly nine credits short of a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and do not consider myself smart enough to be counted among these people.
It's true. I won't go into depth on why it's true, I'd rather leave you to figure that out yourself if you're so inclined. But I wanted to do a little mini-post here simply to say that I've been using Linux Mint (first version 13 and then version 15) for all of my work-related tasks since mid-summer, and it's been absolutely fine.
A lot of people seem to have the perception that Linux = Difficult, or that you have to be some sort of crazy computer whiz to be able to use it. I say this because that was exactly my perception until I tried out Mint.
There are, it turns out, a lot of different distributions of Linux. Many are obviously built to serve particular purposes (for example, Puppy Linux is built to work well on old computers and netbooks, but has less flash and functionality than something like Ubuntu). Many are unique in ways that would be basically unnoticeable to the non-guru, but are, I'm told, mightily significant to The People Who Know Computer Things.*
But, generally speaking, Linux is appealing to a certain kind of person (read: "not just a computer person") because it is the early-90s, manual-transmission car of the operating system world. At a time when it's getting harder and harder to look under our "car"'s hood and find the radiator, to learn to change the oil by ourselves, or to diagnose a fluid leak without hooking everything up to a computer, Linux still has an easily navigable, wide-open space under the hood, easily identifiable and removable (and installable) parts, and so on.
Obviously, in this metaphor, a lot of people are going to prefer to have a car that "just works." Of course, that is, until it doesn't work, in which case you either have to take it in to the mechanic (Windows) or just buy an entirely new car (Mac). But if you have a modicum of interest in at least slightly understanding the machine in front of you that likely contains your entire professional (and maybe personal) life and on which your ability to discharge your workday responsibilities relies, Linux gives you a foot in the door.
Mint, specifically, is built to mimic the Windows UI (pre Win7) in a lot of ways. It comes prepackaged with a lot of software and drivers, to the point that if you're one of those weirdos who can happily sit at a work-provided computer for years and never think about installing new software, or changing your desktop background, or changing the arrangement of the taskbar icons.
 |
| Mint 15 UI with the taskbar and an image preview open. |
Fortunately, basic functions work well "out of the box," as it were, and pretty much all the software you'll need to perform typical work-related tasks are already installed, and your sound, graphics, etc. should work right away, to a surprising degree. I installed Mint recently on a two-monitor setup in my new office, and both monitors came online immediately -- something that didn't happen even when I installed Windows 7 on the same computer.
 |
| Different is terrifying! |
Plus, it can save documents, slide shows, spreadsheets, etc. in all the typical Microsoft formats, so you can pull the same documents up later on a computer in the meeting room and have them run just fine. Admittedly, sometimes there's some formatting, etc. lost in the process of moving from LibreOffice to MS Office or vice versa, but honestly I've never had as much trouble as I've had moving from, say, MS Office 97 to 2003 and back or 2003 to 2010 and back, and so on.
If you want to try Linux Mint, but not totally commit, the site I linked to above will explain how to make a LiveCD and boot your computer from it. In this state, you'll be able to play around with Mint "on" the CD, so there are no changes made to your computer while you test it out and see how you like it. If you want to install Mint alongside Windows 7 (or lower), so you're not making One Big Choice as much as letting yourself make the choice every single time you boot up the computer, you can do this. In fact, this is how all my computers are set up: they start up to a simple menu at which I choose either Linux (for 95% of my day-to-day tasks) or Windows (for the occasional movie-editing or sound-editing task that it does better than Linux, plus video games). There's a really easy-to-follow tutorial for this, which is right here.
Anyway, once I got everything installed, I found Mint to generally be more reliable, faster, and better-looking than Windows, at least as far as doing the typical word-processing, emailing, and messaging tasks that I do at work every day. I boots up way faster, too.
If you want to explore the system a little bit more, it actually lets you, too, and as long as you don't jump into doing things like editing system kernels right off the bat, the learning curve is pretty shallow and there's a number of great communities online that are willing to help you figure things out and answer newbie questions.
Oh, plus everything's free. I suppose I should have mentioned that before. Mint itself is free, and all the software that comes with it is free. All the programs you might want to install are free. Don't like the default music player? There are literally hundreds more to choose from, and none of them cost a cent. The Adobe Photoshop analogue? Free. High-end music editing programs used by real DJs? Free.
You get the idea.
Anyway, just something to think about. Switching to Mint will likely stretch your brain just a little bit, but in a good way. Plus, over the last few months I've come to find that it's not just a good alternative for work than your typical paid operating system, it's actually better in a lot of significant ways.
* I finished my undergrad a measly nine credits short of a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and do not consider myself smart enough to be counted among these people.
Nov 2, 2013
I Have a Puppy Now
I have a puppy now. He looks like this:
He is very cute and almost shockingly smart, but it's also a very strange new experience getting used to living with something that literally needs you to keep it from becoming dead.
I'm sure this won't be news to anyone who has children or who has raised a dog before from the puppy-state, but to me it's a pretty steep learning curve, existentially if not necessarily practically. My family had dogs while I was growing up, and I've always wanted a dog of my own. I've been prepared for a long time for the whole daily cycle of taking the dog out, walking the dog, feeding and watering the dog, etc. But there's a lot more to it than just those things when they're puppies, it seems. Or, at the very least, the amount of times you have to do each of those things are much higher than when you're dealing with a full-grown dog.
So, a whole lot of my day now (to the point that I'm frequently finishing lesson plans at the last minute and bursting into department meetings five minutes late and slathered in dog hair) is paying attention to the dog, and remembering constantly to do so in such a way that teaches him to behave toward me in a certain way that'll breed good habits in him as he gets older. How much I need to teach him is not necessarily surprising; it's how much I need to learn myself in terms of my habits in responding to him, playing with him, etc. that takes lots more time than I expected. Remembering to respond a certain way when he nips at my heels (which he does A LOT) is hard. Remembering not to rough house or play tug-of-war with him is hard. The hardest thing is remembering to take him straight out back to "go potty" as soon as I come home from work and not praise him before, because as soon as I walk in the door he's wagging his tail and jumping around from being so happy to see me. Ignoring that affection until it's appropriate to acknowledge it is difficult. Especially when he's so absurdly cute.
When we're both "good boys," though, it's pretty wonderful having a dog. Luckily, we're both pretty smart and we both learn quickly, so I think it's just going to continue to get better.
It's still difficult to accept on some fundamental level that my life isn't just about me anymore. I'm responsible for another living thing in a way that's much more basic and unrelenting than, say, with a family member, friend, or significant other. But I'm getting used to it. It's hard not to when he's so cute. I think, in my head, owning a dog was going to be 50% Taking Care Of The Dog and 50% The Dog Making Your Life Awesome. I think, in reality, that's still true...for a dog. For a puppy, it's more like 80%/20% or maybe 85%/15%. But, like I said, it's getting better.
I was thinking the other day that a lot of my twenties was taken up by my grappling with and eventually accepting the idea that it's not "selfish" to take care of yourself and your own needs before trying to be a functioning member of society. I had a hard time for a long time understanding that life wasn't just about giving of yourself irrespective of your own needs. In reality, it turns out that nobody really likes you if you make yourself miserable trying to make other people happy, because, at the core of things, you're a miserable person. So, I've spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years improving my own life under the assumption that I'm ultimately able to give back others more and better when I'm coming from a happy, content place.
While this approach to life isn't "selfish" in the negative sense of the word, it's still ultimately self-focused: I better my own life so I can better others' in return. I'm wondering if my thirties will be the time when I move on to what seems like the next logical step in this thought progression: applying a lot of my resulting, positive energy and happiness to another living thing that actually needs that from me, rather than just wanting it because we're friends, or family, or roommates. Bettering my own life so I can actually support something (or someone) else's. It's weird, but as I get older it also seems like something I should do, lest life continue on as if I'm 29 for the rest of my life.
We'll see how the dog goes, I guess. He's already peed on the floor once while I've been writing this.
I'm sure this won't be news to anyone who has children or who has raised a dog before from the puppy-state, but to me it's a pretty steep learning curve, existentially if not necessarily practically. My family had dogs while I was growing up, and I've always wanted a dog of my own. I've been prepared for a long time for the whole daily cycle of taking the dog out, walking the dog, feeding and watering the dog, etc. But there's a lot more to it than just those things when they're puppies, it seems. Or, at the very least, the amount of times you have to do each of those things are much higher than when you're dealing with a full-grown dog.
So, a whole lot of my day now (to the point that I'm frequently finishing lesson plans at the last minute and bursting into department meetings five minutes late and slathered in dog hair) is paying attention to the dog, and remembering constantly to do so in such a way that teaches him to behave toward me in a certain way that'll breed good habits in him as he gets older. How much I need to teach him is not necessarily surprising; it's how much I need to learn myself in terms of my habits in responding to him, playing with him, etc. that takes lots more time than I expected. Remembering to respond a certain way when he nips at my heels (which he does A LOT) is hard. Remembering not to rough house or play tug-of-war with him is hard. The hardest thing is remembering to take him straight out back to "go potty" as soon as I come home from work and not praise him before, because as soon as I walk in the door he's wagging his tail and jumping around from being so happy to see me. Ignoring that affection until it's appropriate to acknowledge it is difficult. Especially when he's so absurdly cute.
It's still difficult to accept on some fundamental level that my life isn't just about me anymore. I'm responsible for another living thing in a way that's much more basic and unrelenting than, say, with a family member, friend, or significant other. But I'm getting used to it. It's hard not to when he's so cute. I think, in my head, owning a dog was going to be 50% Taking Care Of The Dog and 50% The Dog Making Your Life Awesome. I think, in reality, that's still true...for a dog. For a puppy, it's more like 80%/20% or maybe 85%/15%. But, like I said, it's getting better.
I was thinking the other day that a lot of my twenties was taken up by my grappling with and eventually accepting the idea that it's not "selfish" to take care of yourself and your own needs before trying to be a functioning member of society. I had a hard time for a long time understanding that life wasn't just about giving of yourself irrespective of your own needs. In reality, it turns out that nobody really likes you if you make yourself miserable trying to make other people happy, because, at the core of things, you're a miserable person. So, I've spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years improving my own life under the assumption that I'm ultimately able to give back others more and better when I'm coming from a happy, content place.
While this approach to life isn't "selfish" in the negative sense of the word, it's still ultimately self-focused: I better my own life so I can better others' in return. I'm wondering if my thirties will be the time when I move on to what seems like the next logical step in this thought progression: applying a lot of my resulting, positive energy and happiness to another living thing that actually needs that from me, rather than just wanting it because we're friends, or family, or roommates. Bettering my own life so I can actually support something (or someone) else's. It's weird, but as I get older it also seems like something I should do, lest life continue on as if I'm 29 for the rest of my life.
We'll see how the dog goes, I guess. He's already peed on the floor once while I've been writing this.
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