A thought on knowledge

Knowledge is not objective. Knowledge, after all, is grouped within the same "container" as our feelings, thoughts, emotions. It is just as easily recalled as experiences of the past, as easily re-experienced as the recollection of the heartache of forbidden love or the hot anger of resentment that sometimes follows. Knowledge, jostled about within our mind, colliding with our other distinguishable "biases" becomes tainted over time to better accustom one's point of view. As a cake left uncovered in a fridge collects the aroma of the neighboring onions, so our knowledge and insight becomes swayed by our personal bias.

Faith

One of the most secure states one can find himself is in a state of understanding. The ability to speak, "I understand," is a reflection of the inner belief in one's ability to comprehend as well as the encompassing grasp on what is preeminent. It is fitting then, that a state of incomprehension is the most uncomfortable state one can find himself. Confusion and chaos are oft uttered within the parameters of a short sentence.

This also decides that the most difficult action to take is an action decided upon faith, without any understanding or grasp upon the circumstances on hand. Saying, "I have faith," can sometimes be uttered from a moment whereas there is no logic, comprehension or understanding of the going-ons of the moment.

This is why faith in Christ is so remarkable, admirable, and truly extraordinary. It comes from a willingness to forget and discard personal logic, knowledge, understanding or anything that we as humans cling to for comfort and a sense of control. It comes from a willingness to leave the proverbial "comfort zone" of ours and instead step out into a world of unknowns. It does not come from understanding or knowing what can happen when He is in your life; rather, it is a reflection of the inner belief in the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding of another being.

This is what makes faith so hard. It is fitting then, that to draw near to the One who understands, grasps, comprehends, and knows everything--every feeling, every doubt, every problem, every solution, every life, every death, and all the things that are unfathomable--one must resign to a state of faith.

Unit Circle Cake

Ta-dah! I present to you, my finest creation yet: The Unit Circle, as played by sweet, golden cake and butter-cream frosting :D

Niftily decorated in halloween-ish colors (the season is upon us, y'know), this delight doubles as a symmetrical spiderweb, leaving many-the paranoid observer haunted by the unknown where-abouts of the mathematically-inclined spider that conjured such a masterful web. And for some of you, nothing renders you a milquetoast faster than a good x and y-axis, effectively doubling to its spooky effect :-)

Ooh hoo hoo, so awesome..

Yes, through all four quadrants, those are actual functions of the unit circle including actual radians, degrees, and functions of all major angles between zero and three-hundred sixty degrees! :D

Ah, I love math so, so very much sigh

Trigonometry Identities :D

I. Am. Nerd... Hear me "Nerdspeak" ;-D :-D There is definitely a plethora of "identities" in Trigonometry. For instance (but not confined to), there are the 'Pythagorean Identities', which are basically just numerous variations of the Pythagorean Theory itself, near-endlessly manipulated by the six Trigonometric functions. Then there be the 'Quotient Identities', which are basically the aforementioned functions dividing each other to equal still other seemingly unrelated functions. And then somewhere in there, there's my identity. I so love Math

Icecream with Brian

So I took my brother Brian out for ice-cream after school the other day:

Exiting the yogurt line, our bowls filled with ice-cream, we made our way down to line of toppings; effectively starting the extremely difficult process of choosing between favorites.

Cognizant of the price per ounce, I strategically graced the top of my yogurt with a combination of gummy bears and toasted coconut. Placing my finished product on the scale, I looked down with a sense of pride—I had created a perfect combination of flavors, all for under 6 ounces. I heard Brian place his finished product on the scale and turned my attention to the cashier who was ringing us up—“That will be 12 dollars and 23 cents," she said with a smile. I froze before glancing at the scale and doubletook—
—the scale read 1.6 pounds!
I swiveled my gaze slighty downward and jumped back in shock at the grotesque sight I now beheld:
Sitting on the scale, absolutely dwarfing my bowl ,was a liberal portion of ice-cream large enough to feed three starving teenagers. This bowl, however, was intended for just one teenager—Brian.

I leaned closer and examined his toppings.
"Brian, are those…Fruit Loops?" I asked wearily.
"Yeah!"—he replied buoyantly— “and Captain Crunch!”
I looked down at the bowl again--My goodness! He speaks the truth!

"...and...I guess…those are nerds," I inquired, pointing to the array of colored candy.
"Yep!"
"And...do you suppose you have enough gummy worms on your yogurt?" I asked, referring to the large clump of frozen worms that pointedly intruded the airspace three inches above his bowl's rim.
"...um—

—I didn't wait for his reply—

I sighed and handed the still-smiling cashier my credit card, and watched as she swiped it in a flash of plastic.
Now twelve dollars poorer, I received my card back with a “thank you,” and, after pocketing it, I met my brother's gaze and uttered,

"Brian, you are one darn expensive girlfriend."

I left him in favor of searching for a seat, laughing to myself under my breath. My brother, though undoubtedly unaware of his monetary footprint on my wallet, was hopefully at least vaguely aware of how much he was worth to me:

Absolutely Priceless

One of those moments

Everyone has those moments. You know, the moments when they have to stop and say, "okay, now why did I say that?" While a question in intention, this line is a declarative statement admitting a blunder of word choice, yet still a bugging inquiry to oneself, asking perplexedly why you hadn't employed cautiousness. Such an expression is usually muttered to one's self in exasperated frustration and is often paired with at least one palm covering eyes that are shut tightly.

Today, I had one of those moments. :P

It was hot. It was humid. It was downright despondent. The air felt miserable, yet the stuffy air of the enclosed hallway was far better than the scorching temperature of the air out of doors. I was walking down the hallway of a psychiatric hospital, wiping sweat from my forehead with my sweat-drenched sleeve. I slowed my pace to a trot, allowing my coworker to catch up. My coworker's name was Tim, and on this miserable day, we had been commissioned to install wireless thermostats on VAV units overhead. Bribed with a contract, our company had taken on the task of converting the hospital's units to a wireless, smart controls system, and so the company had assigned Tim the job supervisor, and I was tagging along to help.

Peanut Gallery Detour: Timothy A. Short is probably one of the most difficult coworkers of mine to figure out. He has a great personality that takes a few days to work itself out into visibility, all the while causing the hapless younger technician like myself to worry over whether or not the veteran takes keenly to or absolutely dislikes him. Bind that with regular physical assaults he dishes out regularly, playful or not, and it all tends to drive a mind toward parnoidity. After a few months of working (and worrying) with Tim Short, his real personality broke free, and the talkative, playful young-gun emerged. Tim and I are half-decent friends now, though my morale and standing with him as a coworker depends much upon acting like a ‘guy.’

Allowing Tim to take the lead, I followed him into a small room where we found the box of equipment we were there to install. Tim picked up a box of something or other, gruffly saying something to the effect of, “You’ll need these.” Regrettably, I cannot quite recall what Tim was calling my attention to, as I caught notice of something when I had reached my hand out for a box of parts; rather, my finger had caught ‘notice’ of something. Drawing my hand closer, I realized that I had a problem. My fingernail was split at the end, and I had a deep hangnail, hanging with hazard off the top of my thumb.

It was an impressive hangnail—about an inch wide. Simply writing of it now causes a large shudder to engulf my body as the photographic memory of it crowds my mind.

I realized after a few seconds that Tim was staring at me, and I immediately ceased staring at my thumb and began staring at him. I allowed my eyes to focus more precisely before he asked me, “What’s the matter with your finger?” At this point, what I thought and what I actually said are two entirely different sentences. What I thought was, aw, nothing is wrong. I’m just getting some dirt off. Instead…

“I…I broke my fingernail.”

*facepalm* Why in the world had I..?

Evidently, it was his turn to stare again, and he did so with one eyebrow raised. “You…you broke your—” —he never finished his sentence as a hearty laughter erupted from somewhere behind his belly-button. Wiping tears from both eyes, he chuckled and mockingly asked if I needed to go home. Answering a shameful ‘no,’ I trudged away from him and his never-ceasing laughter and made my way back through the now even warmer hallway, accepting my lot in life as the jobsite’s wimpiest technician.

Leaving the jobsite hours later with Tim, we drove toward another jobsite for what was to be an afterhours frenzied push to help close down the jobsite. Upon arrival, we met up with 4 technicians and 2 engineers from our company in a small computer room. Bidding the others farewell, I grabbed a few parts and left to install a few override dials. I pocketed the previous shame and buoyantly started down the hallway, eager to start my task.

Returning ten minutes later down the same hallway feeling a bit proud of myself after a job well-done, I heard feverish laughter as I approached the computer room. Walked into the room, I discovered it to be filled with 5 technicians collectively and quite literally sitting, all but one, doing absolutely nothing.

Well…almost absolutely nothing.

Standing in the doorway, the collective attention turned upon me and the laughter died to faint giggles erupting every few seconds. A tall, dark-haired technician named Lance spoke up, eyes sparkling and teeth showing beneath his all-too-wide smile:

“We were just talking about you.”

*facepalm*

I was having one of those moments all over again, and I hadn’t even opened my mouth.

Hammer and Nails

*Bang*

 *Bang*

*Thump.*

Ouch. I'd done it again. The sixteen penny rink-shank nail previously held steady by my ever so steady hand, was now abandoned—left to fall two stories down to the concrete reality of concrete patio below as I pulled my throbbing left thumb nearer to my face for a closer examination. Throbbing wildly back and forth in synchronization with my pounding heart while systematically gracing between deep lavender, dark red, and pale white colors, my thumb emphatically protested; openly opposing its lot of opposability.

Inspecting my thumb for signs of intolerable stress as this was not the first time my hammer had struck my thumb in such a fashion, I realized that this was the third time this morning that I had inflicted such pain upon my thumb, a notion that worried me further as I discovered a stress line growing on my nail. I also realized that all three times thus far, my left thumb had been the blunt of my hammer’s fierce kinetic energy—a perfect 3-0 record. How very odd…

Peanut Gallery Detour: I am undecided pertaining to word choice at this point, which is not a position that I find myself in often. To say that the sudden consciousness my left thumb’s sudden stroke of terrible luck puzzled me, might be slight embellishment, as my mind was still at least half-heartedly focused upon the stout pain which had engulfed my thumb and began to spread down toward my wrist by this time. To simply shake the following thoughts away as never having occurred, however, would be terribly uninteresting and underly dramatic, almost like reading a 12 page synopsis regarding the function of chicken bouillon cubes. Yeah, drama is my weakness…

Plagued with incredulousness, I wondered in speculative awe as to why my poor left thumb was the lone one of two to suffer the hammering punishment dealt by a hammer. Calculating the mathematical odds, I concluded that the odds of my left thumb being hit all three consecutive times was 12.5%, or about 1 out of 8 odds. For you mathematically deficient, that’s a so called ‘fat chance’, a find that was all the more perplexing.


Slightly bothered by life's great mysteries, I stared off into the far reaches of the front yard, searching for the door of wisdom. After a long pause, I blinked and checked my phone and realized that I had been staring blankly at a tree for two minutes. Rats. Realizing that I was still a few brain cells short of an answer, I terminated my search and shrugged off the overwhelming grasp of mystery, remembering all at once that I was still standing on the roof of a tall house and my task was still to fasten trim to the edge of the eaves.

*sigh*

I unimaginatively selected another nail from the box of screws (don’t ask) with my left hand and reaching for the hammer with my right…

…the door of wisdom opened unto me and enlightenment imparted: You're right-handed stupid. There, standing atop wooden shingles and under both the fierce Oklahoma sun and the stark weight of realization, I realized that my right thumb was far too busy being opposable and holding a hammer to be bothered by being hit with it. My right thumb’s mathematical odds of being hit: 0% , 0 out of 10, and, for you knuckleheads out there, absolutely none.

*facepalm*

Slightly worried about the affect the sun was seemingly dealing to my intellectual prowess’s former glory, I closed my eyes…

…and immediately began to wonder why it was so dark inside my eyelids.