Anticipation

I'm very goal oriented. How goal oriented? So much so that I had milestones as to when things were going to happen since I was 11 years old. How successful was I? I married less than a year late from my original plans and had kids 2 years earlier than planned.

Then the Condition hit and the plan went bye-bye.

Regardless, I'm still very goal-oriented. I wake up everyday with a clear idea of what to achieve; external aids like PersonalBrain help me manage these goals. I've never really been laid off before, so these past few days have been interesting. Nevertheless, I still wake up with clear goals to achieve. Except that as of today, they have devolved into a non-quantifiable goal of "find another job before money runs out". I know when I'm going to be in financial trouble - the unquantifiable aspect is in the "when do I find another job?"

Don't get me wrong, there are things to do, kids to take care of, resumes to send out, old friends to go see now that I have the time...but there isn't a single, integrated framework like employment that ties everything together. It's like writing in lined journals everyday and suddenly finding no ruled lines to follow - writing starts getting disorderly and slanting every which way.

I am attempting to build structure from existing pieces, like taking care of the kids and my now-sole-breadwinner sister. Like taking the time to retrain in the tech areas I never had the time to study. Like focusing on my astronomy course. Like doing all the volunteer work I had wished to do more of.

All of it is happening and I'm busy. I was just informed of my site closure on Tuesday, handed in my keys on Wednesday and I'm pulling out of my tailspin and will be lobbing resumes tomorrow or tonight. I'm doing all that I can to remain sane and am moving forward.

But I lack a medium term goal and that's deeply disturbing. It's weird, I have this book on order from Amazon - it's an astrophysics textbook. It's huge, it's expensive and it's apparently very very dense. I ordered after my midterm when I realized my current course's textbook was useless (a sentiment echoed by my classmates) but before I was laid off. It added an element of anticipation in my now-disturbed routine; I know something's coming and I look forward to it.

It just shipped about half an hour ago. Nuts. There goes my element of anticipation.

I obviously have quite a bit to go in developing a new life paradigm that insulates me as best as I can from the vagarities of employment. Time to start a new Brain on my PB4, I think...

Calculating education (part 4, final + 1)

A short post: yes, they *did* fix the keyboard for the HP 50G. It's a marked improvement. Also, VERSION doesn't show HP 49G+, it correctly displays HP 50G. The pleather case seems a little smaller than the HP 49G+'s, which makes it a bit hard to close.

Other than that, I'm loving it. No missed keys yet!

Surprise, surprise...

Ah, one of the joys of being unemployed is that you have gobs of time on your hands. Between doing my coursework, job hunting and generally trying to stop my brain (no, not my PersonalBrain, the *other* brain, the squishy one) from turning to mush, I found this test and took it:

Your Score: Wizard

22% Combativeness, 33% Sneakiness, 100% Intellect, 30% Spirituality

Brilliant! You are a Wizard!

Wizards are spells-casters who study powerful arcane magic. While Wizards tend to be pretty fragile, some of those spells can pack quite a punch. Unlike Clerics, Wizards aren't as good at fixing people as they are at breaking them, so watch where you toss that fireball�

Your most distinctive trait is your intelligence. You're probably well learned and logical, if perhaps a bit fragile.

Link: The RPG Class Test written by MFlowers on OkCupid

Will someone either please give me a job or shoot me before I start watching daytime soaps?

p.s. On a related note, do go read this hilarious sendup of RPG character costuming at a very nifty webcomic, Fear the Boot - don't forget the commentary after the strip, which brought some laughter into my day.

Thankfulness

I've been writing about a lot of trivial things lately and unfortunately, this entry is not - it's an update of what's going on, for my friends and family who read this.

A good friend of mine who is afflicted with the same Condition is in the hospital. I just found out about it today and have visited her. She seems to be recovering (thankfully!) but these things take time. I intend to go see her daily and keep her spirits up throughout her recovery.

I've come pretty far in the treatment plan for my Condition; I have a family that is supportive and things are going well. However, the treatment can come off the rails quickly and suddenly, which is when folks like us end up in the hospital. My friend isn't the first one this year to encounter trouble; there have been others, not all of whom survived.

This comes as a rude awakening for me, as things have gone well enough lately that I lead a normal life again, mostly free from pain. I've forgotten just how tough it was in the beginning, just facing up to the horrible fact that I do have this affliction and that if I don't deal with it one way or the other, it will kill me. There were a couple of times when I came close to landing in the hospital myself - these are the things one forgets during the blessed times when life is going well.

The fact is, even after I'm cured, even after they've operated, I'll still be on meds for the rest of my life. I've already had a taste of what being medicated for life may be like; after my eye operation in January, they thought I may have glaucoma and put me on drops for life. I'll do what I do to keep my eyesight. Having said that, the drops are *expensive*. Heaven help me if I'm ever without health insurance, even in Canada where doctors' visits are covered by the government but prescriptions aren't. Fortunately, they found out that I didn't have it and told me to discontinue the drops.

I'm not doing so well right now, alas. My friend's farther along in her treatment than I am; while our treatment paths aren't the same, if she can end up hospitalized this far along then I am also at risk. It may seem cold blooded to think this way but I've managed to deal with the pitfalls in my life by looking ahead and evading, not by trying to climb out of them after I've fallen in. I'm taking quite a heavy dose of meds right now, just to stabilize my Condition; one of my doctors reminded me at our first meeting that the meds carry with them the possibility of complications, up to sudden clotting and death. I, like most others in my position, figured it'll never happen to us. Or will it?

The treatment is working. I want to live. I'm happier than I've ever been before. I shall be very cross if I shuffled off this mortal coil just as I've begun to live. Trust me, you do not want an incorporeal me sliding a sheet of paper under your bedroom door with "OO EE OO EE OO" on it.*

Yes, there are many risks, any of which has the potential of landing me in the hospital, morgue or in extreme cases the loony bin as the mind unhinges from the pain. I can continue to dwell on these morbid thoughts (and being human, I will for the next day or two) but I intend to not worry about what I can't control. I'd rather be thankful that I have this second lease on life and try to be a positive force in the lives of my loved ones. I hope I can, anyway.

Update 9/25/2007: the development office that I work at was just shut down today, so I'm out of a job. On the one hand, the whole unemployment thing is frightening. On the other hand, I'm tickled pink someone's actually paying me money to go away - I've never been laid off before until today. My sis thinks I've a twisted sense of humour. Perhaps she's right. I guess I could cry and rue my unfortunate circumstance, but I think I'd prefer to stay positive and go job hunting instead. Wish me good luck!

*Pratchett's Discworld series - if you haven't read it, do give it a shot.

Calculating education (part 3, final)

Over the weekend, I submitted an order for a HP 50G. I had a look at the TI-89 Titanium and found the lettering hard to read in poor lighting whereas the HP 50G had good contrast. I've negotiated with the Family that the calculator is to be financed as my birthday gift, which is coming up in a few months. Getting a graphing calculator for a birthday is like someone giving me a good chef's knife; it's more like utilitarian equipment than fun, but I derive great pleasure from using it to do work nonetheless. Yes, I'm weird - you have to get in line if you want to tell me just that. :)

My HP 49G+ is going to a good home - I'm giving it to someone who is in occasional need of a programmable calculator and types significantly slower than I do. It's not going to be used to its fullest capabilities but let's be realistic here - how many of us really work our modern-marvel calculators that hard anymore?

Someone pointed out that the TI-Nspire is apparently programmable with the latest update. Good for them - I hope their line has great success! Heaven knows, only HP, TI and Casio are really in the game anymore. :( To be honest, if it wasn't for the fact that I had thought it was non-programmable (and it wasn't until the latest update) and that I couldn't find them in the stores (for now, it's only for sale in universities and schools only, if I'm not mistaken), I'd be sorely tempted to get a TI-Nspire. Heck, if I can find them at a reasonable, affordable price I'd get one! Umm...once I've recovered from paying off my PB4 and the HP 50G, that is...

Now I'm waiting for my calculator to arrive. I ordered in from TigerDirect.ca, from whom I had ordered other things before. Their website says it'll ship in 24 hours but my order now tells me that it's awaiting shipment from the drop shipper, may take 7-10 days before shipment. Hmm. Well, as long as it arrives before my finals, I'm happy.

Calculating education (part 2)

A few new findings from today:
1. After using RPN for such a long time, doing things infix just seems wrong. If I want to use non-RPN calculators (i.e. anything non-HP), I'd better unlearn RPN data entry.
2. The latest HP update was from August 2006. The last TI-89 update was from July 2005.

From the way things look, TI is banking on the yet-to-be-general-released non/low-programmable TI-Nspire as the next generation of calculators. I'm not really interested in non-programmable calculators.

So, I'm back to the HP 50G, which is really what the HP 49G+ should have been. I get a functional keyboard for the HP-50G. Whee.

*sigh*

Calculating education

I finished my midterm over the weekend and have been busily completing tasks since then (thank you PB4!) but unfortunately, I'm pretty worn out. For some odd reason, I'm having a bit of an obsession with calculators lately, probably I got forceably reacquainted with my HP 49G+ during the midterm. It's a good calculator but it's got some pretty major flaws like keypresses not registering (bad HP!)

Ah...calculators! I can remember when I got my first calculator. It was one of those old seven-segment LED things with the red numbers. Being just a very bored child at the time, I amused myself by trying to figure out how many words I could spell using it, with the display turned upside down. Fast forward quite a few years and I'm in secondary school with my very first scientific calculator, a Casio. I took good care of it because my parents told me it was the only one I'll ever get from them since it was so expensive. The trend amongst my friends at the time was to wrap the whole calculator in heavy-duty Saran wrap-like substance so as to keep it maintenance free. Heaven forbid that the super-expensive display be forever marred by cloth-wipeable fingerprints!

You know, it took me over a decade to figure out that wrapping it in Saran wrap was incredibly anal-retentive for a kid. Then it took me another decade beyond that to be able to laugh about it.

At any rate, my HP 49G+ cost me quite a bit of time during this last midterm because a bunch of keypresses didn't register. Yes, I know about the KEYTIME fix - I'm already at 500. This is a serious flaw insofar as I'm concerned for a calculator: bad input = bad output. I can't really afford another calculator right now, so the HP 49G+ will have to do for a while. Just out of curiosity, I took a look at what's out there.

HP put out the HP 50G, which is essentially my calculator with a better keyboard. If my calculator broke today and if I had no time to research my options, that's what I would get because I'm a RPN gal. TI has the TI-89 Titanium which looks pretty nifty too.

I understand HP doesn't support their calculators very well. It's not a core business for them so they outsource it. It's too bad. I like HP calculators but their build quality is very poor IMHO - case in point: the little plastic flashing that surrounds my HP 49G+ cracked and fell apart for no good reason during my midterm. I reached for my calculator, heard a soft crack and suddenly there's jaggedy plastic sticking out. There's been no significant advances in decades - I mean, come on: the HP 50G is more like a bugfix for the HP 49G+ than an actual new calculator. Insofar as I'm concerned, my HP 49G+ was a dud. HPs are also very hard to find in Canada - they're mostly sold by university bookstores.

TI has a strong background in education and supports their products quite well. They seem to really work with the teachers and curriculum. They're easy to find - just go to a local Radio Shack (now The Source by Circuit City) or Staples and they sell TIs. Having said that, their latest offering (TI-Nspire) apparently has very little programmable capability. If that is the direction that TI is going, I'm sticking with HP.

I've been with HP for a long time but we're parting ways for my next calculator. I won't spend money on a poorly supported product. Furthermore, TI has won the hearts and minds of students because of their long relationship with the educators; if you graduated recently, chances are excellent you own a TI. This means that my kids will be using TIs, so I might as well get familiar with them.

Well, once my HP 49G+ breaks or when I finally have money again, whichever comes later.

Braaaaaaaiiins!

All I can say about PersonalBrain 4 Pro is this: OMG it's the best piece of mindmapping/strategic planning/thought capture application in the known universe! If it were human, I'd be so enamoured with it that I'd want to lend it money at low, low interest rates!

*ahem*

Okay, I'm better now. Thank you for indulging me. I'll go back and add more Thoughts to my Brain now...

Nobody move! I've dropped me Brain*

WARNING: long rambling posting about outliners and mind-mappers below. If you liked my former entry titled Notebook buying hoops then you'll like this one. Otherwise, you may wish to consider skipping this entry.

I blew up yet another outliner a couple of days ago. The good bit is that I've done a lot of research into outliners, mind-mappers and task managers in the last few days. The bad news is that I blew up my entire list of tasks after I decided to stick with my existing outliner app.

Before you ask, yes, of course I have backups. Unfortunately, the latest backup is over 6 months old. Bad Kate! Do backups regularly!

I had three choices: switch over to a pen/paper daytimer, rebuild my tasklist using the old backup and what's in the old noggin or get a new app that's got proven scalability.

I have already been trying to use a pen/paper solution for some time now. It doesn't work for me because daytimers can only hold up a year's worth of calendar entries and my detailed planning horizon has always been 3-5 years. It may not seem like much but for me, it's a deal-breaker.

I tried rebuilding my old tasklist but while I was reviewing the items in the backup file, I was unprepared for what a dear friend of mine calls "cognitive dissonance". Simply put, when I started the very first version of that list many years ago, I was a very different person - literally! I took a look at my life goals last night and realized that they just don't fit who I've become anymore. I carried this primary goal around for two decades: I want to be definitively, unarguably successful. The thing that's changed is subtle: I still want to be definitively, unarguably successful...in taking care of my family. That doesn't involve making megabucks - it involves raising the kids right (but I will be the first to admit that money helps). I'm not interested in seeing how high up the corporate ladder I can go anymore; I do want to help and support my sis to be the best she can be. In that light, most of my goals and tasks carried over from the backup file rang hollow. So I binned the lot.

I started over with a fresh OmniOutliner file but then quickly realized that what I needed was a goal-centric planner, not a tasklist manager. So I reinstalled PersonalBrain Pro 4.0 and started building a thought map of who I am and what was important to me. It just took off from there: free from the tyranny of due dates and task hierarchies, I rebuilt my life goal from scratch.

That was last night. In less than 24 hours, I have well over a hundred thoughts and goals mapped out, all with flexible links that not only let me quickly adapt to changes in my daily life but more importantly, keep my goals in sight and in mind.

So I bit the bullet and purchased PersonalBrain. Fortunately, they have an educational discount and by flushing my entire discretionary budget for the next few months, I could just barely afford it. I did some quick math a few minutes ago: in less than a day and I'm down to just less than 25 cents per use of each thought. Not a very stringent metric but it indicates one trend: the intense usage pattern fits a critical daily app rather than an occasional app, so I will definitely get at least my money's worth.

For those of you who knew me in my previous life, this will be poignant: remember when I used to barbeque using a stopwatch? I *needed* precision and control in my life then and my tasklist reflected that - everything has a due date and is sorted into one of a horrifically complicated ordering system of Now, Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, This Month, Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year, Next 3 Years and Next 5 Years. Today, I have exactly four categories in my PersonalBrain: Expedite, Soon, Later and Done!

It's too early to tell for certain but I know this: I'm far less stressed or afraid of my To Do list now. The simple change of not being confronted from the get-go by a solid wall of due dates has seriously helped my stress level. Yes, I know I'm insane for spending so much time and effort into this and at the first glance, you're absolutely right. Then I hear the kids softly snoring upstairs - if this lets me plot a safe path for the family through an uncertain future by identifying what needs to be done at the right time for the right person and for the right reasons, then yes, it'll all be worth it.

*A quote by Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End.

Chalk outlines

At least once a year, I get hyper-stressed and two things start happening: I start playing chess and I start looking for outliner applications.

Yes, I know I can get better results by sleeping more and eating better. Hush.

The chess part refocuses my mind and I start being able to see my way through the morass that is my To-Do list. The outliner apps help me organize my tasks.

Over the years, I've gone through quite a few. Right now, I'm using OmniOutliner. It's quite powerful but not really what I want. In all the years, I've only found 2 that fit my style: Bonsai and PersonalBrain. I no longer own a Palm, so Bonsai's out. PersonalBrain takes a little while to get used to, but it's really powerful.

Then I realize it'll cost me $249.

Suddenly, OmniOutliner doesn't look too bad.

*** Update ***
Looking at all the outliner/mindmappers made me realize I haven't taken a close look at my current To Do list. So having decided to stay with OmniOutliner, I opened my file up and started updating it. A few hours later, I finish adding some large number of items (800-1000), save it and went to bed.

The blasted file won't open the next morning. No, seriously, I couldn't open it - it kept telling me that the document wouldn't open.

Great, I've broken yet another outliner. *sigh* I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I break my outliner/task managers on a regular basis due to sheer volume of tasks entered.

Now, I'm back to square one. Do I stick with OmniOutliner or do I spring for something new? My thought processes have changed significantly since I first bought OO and I'd have to update my AppleScripts to do it the way I want. Hmm. Mayhaps further investigation is in order.

Beautiful math

I recently switched to Pages and while it's beautiful, it doesn't have the embedded equation editor that Microsoft Word had. I used the free LaTeX Equation Editor and I was happy for a time.

Then it crashed one night and I couldn't get it to work again. To cut a long story short, what was a simple application crash turned into a Quest for the Ultimate Equation Editor.

Snatching spare moments here and there over a day and half, I investigated practically every equation editor for the Mac until I finally settled on MathType. MathType is heart-stoppingly beautiful. I normally do an equations/formulae index for my courses and this used to be a chore with Microsoft Word's equation editor. Now, it's another form of procrastination as I lovingly craft each equation in Pages.

Perfect little equations with crisp serifs. Can STM typesetting get any better than this?

Distance learning

My dear mother lives in another country. She's getting rather along in her years and I delayed telling her about my Condition for as long as I could. She's a worrier and I figured she didn't need something else to obsessively worry about. Our family's like that - we spread good news fast but tend to hold back the bad news. So there was precedence and I made peace with my conscience.

I ran out of time around Christmas of last year when she surprised me during one of our semi-regular phone calls with the announcement that she was going to come a-visiting with one of my cousins. I would have welcomed her into my home with open arms. My ultra-religious cousin is another matter altogether - we got along quite fine when we were younger but our circumstances have changed significantly as we became adults.

So I told her what was going on through my brother; after nearly two decades away from home, I was no longer fluent in her native tongue and given the complicated medical nature of my Condition, the last thing I wished to do was to flub up the details due to bad translation.

It went over reasonably well, I guess. My brother, who was also hearing about the details for the first time, coped surprisingly well. I was quite relieved that he didn't overreact and eternally grateful for his assistance in translating the situation to my mother. And so it sat, like the proverbial white elephant in the centre of the room for the past 8 months.

My brother has been unstinting in his love and support. My mother had a tougher time dealing with it, given the extreme nature of the treatment. It has taken months but over the last 3 calls or so, she's started to ask questions about my Condition. She's trying to learn more, which is something that my late, cold and unforgiving father wouldn't have bothered trying. It's hard, given the distance both geographically and generationally - the medical world of her generation was far simpler than the scary complex one today.

There is an unspoken gap between us still, one where she attempts to cope with the Condition that her child has. It makes my heart ache that I had to put her in this position. My sis has been a great comfort but what I yearn for is the closeness that used to exist between us. I can only hope that love, time and understanding will help my mother heal.

Cocoa-Baconic Divide

I ran across the Vosges Chocolate Bacon Bar just now. As the blurb says, it's a bar of milk chocolate with bits of bacon in it.

I suspect this would immediately elicit one of two major responses from anyone encountering it, either "Ewww!" or "Bacon! Yum!". I further suspect that one's initial position won't change until one has actually tasted the chocolate bar. I, myself, fall under the first category. I'm quite liberal about what I'll taste but this just seems....wrong. I like chocolate and I like bacon within the constraints of my waistline. I'm just thinking the two of them together isn't such a good idea.

Postulate: gals will strongly respond with "Eww!" and guys will weakly respond with "Bacon! Yum!".
Corollary to postulate above: guys will overwhelmingly respond with "To heck with the chocolate, just give me the bacon!"

Thoughts/votes? Comments now open...