I May Be Weird
I'm not certain, I may be weird. I can't put my finger on any one thing... But here's some recent reasons I've thought I may be odd.
I've been reading a book recently called Flatland. I LOVE it. It is an excellent book. When people have seen me reading it recently, they asked what it is. I usually respond, "It's a Victorian science-fiction story about a two-dimensional world consisting of geometrical figures." Blank stares. I usually stupidly continue with, "It's a social-allegory based on then-present society told in a setting making strong use of geometry and mathematics." More blank stares. I might need to think about stopping after the first blank stare.
Related to the above reason only indirectly...the above book is mentioned in the book described in this story. We went out for a night on the town with another couple. We went to see Walk The Line, and followed it up with a trip to a coffeehouse and a bookstore. (By the way, Walk The Line was absolutely, mind-blowingly, skin-tingly incredible!) In the bookstore, we're all wandering around looking at our own interests. Eventually, as we're checking out while the store is closing, this exchange occurred between myself and the husband of the other couple:
Him:You're buying a book on mathematics?!
Me:Wait a minute. A guy who just bought a book on STALIN is giving me crap about buying a book on mathematics?!
For the record, I was indeed buying a book on mathematics. An extremely interesting title called Introducing: Mathematics which covers in broad sweeps mathematics in history, its evolution, different aspects of math, current trends, et cetera. An excellent little tome. I highly recommend it. I even more highly recommend the entire Introducing series.
I placed an order on Amazon recently. Here were some of the contents in random order:
- Corelle Livingware Urban Black 16-Piece Set, Service for 24
- Jeeves & Wooster - The Complete Third Season
- Robert's Rules of Order: Newly Revised [Hardcover]
- Sango Gold Dust 2 1/2-Quart Covered Casserole, Black
- The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure, 4th Edition
- Sango Gold Dust Covered Storage Bakers, Set Of 2, Black
- Robert's Rules for Dummies
- Sango Gold Dust Ice Cream Bowls, Set Of 4, Black
I guess I really felt a need for a lot of dishes as well as a way to maintain order with so many dishes trying to turn our Wodehouse Appreciation Society meetings into anarchy! Is that odd? I can't tell.
I think Doctor Who is Good Televisiontm! All 27 seasons and running!
When I find a bug in a vendor's operating system's driver, I get excited. Seriously.
I think writing code can be fun.
I HATED American Pie and all of that bullshit string of movies, but Super Troopers makes me laugh so hard I cry.
You've not lived until you've had a well-made Reuben sandwich. The fact that there is no good place in Louisville to get a well-made Reuben makes me sad. The fact that there was for a short while and now they are closed forever makes me want to cry.
When I walk into a new place, I find myself looking for cameras, points of egress, number of guards, places to hide, et cetera. But I've never used that knowledge in a larcenous fashion.
I collect dice.
Grits is good food. And so is fried chicken and waffles.
I'll spend countless hours of my life researching the mathematics behind dice, their use in games, and other useless minutia about how dice work. When I have a "breakthrough" and understand something that was gibberish before, I get a rush of excitement.
I code dice probability math in Perl and release it as a CPAN module.
I actually bothered to contact other CPAN dice-module authors to discuss a unified module API with a common dice notation syntax.
This is just the short list of why I think I might be a bit off... To continue would mean too many more reasons, and me missing dinner. So that's all for now.