L'histoire de sa vie

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.” Check out all my past Confessions here.

Not always. And it’s not always simple. But often, I get overly excited about things that by this time in my life should be routine technologies. For example, as my plane landed in Houston last night, I was temporarily marveled by the idea that humanity has achieved flight.

Consider how amazing it is: we’ve built giant metal tubes, ridiculously heavy tubes, and filled them with people, food (on Continental anyway), luggage, and who knows what else. Then we figured out that if we burn the right kind of oil in the proper number of engines, we can shoot these tubes all over the world.

This is a technology that we have all come to accept as fact but every so often I get really excited about it. When I try to explain this to others, they laugh at me. But consider how much heartier the laughing would have been if I were discussing the possibility of flight only a little over a century ago.

Other technologies amaze me as well sometimes, including technologies that I understand fully. For example: I purchase a lot of hard drives. Three years ago or so, I bought a 500GB drive. It’s composed of two 3.5” drives in a single enclosure. It was $300. It’s clunky and huge. A week ago I purchased a different hard drive, for one third of the price. It’s twice the capacity, 1TB, but it’s tiny: composed of a single 2.5” drive, it’s about a quarter of the size of the old one.

I understand how we do this, but I’m still continually amazed that we do it. Consider that we can fit a powerful video camera into a cell phone, when only a few years ago, home video cameras were the size of suitcases and produced ultra-grainy video.

Consider that we can record and play back music. Consider that we can do the same with video and so well that it’s becoming more preferable to view broadcasts of events than actually be at the event itself.

These things aren’t that exciting to most people. But every so often, I get really excited about them. It’s amazing to me how humanity has improved itself.

Dear Lance Berkman -

I’ve followed the Astros my whole life, and will continue to do so until I die. On that day, when my grandchildren ask me who my favorite player was, it won’t even be a question.

Yours is the jersey I wear to baseball games, both in the majors as a spectator, and at the park as a player. The number 17 is a special one for me. Your name evokes feelings that other names do not.

In 1999, as a kid, I ran the bases of the Astrodome, with tons of other kids who stayed after a game. I don’t remember if the Astros won or lost that day. I don’t remember who the away team even was. What I remember is waiting in line to run the bases, listening to a rookie player named Lance talk about how it was to play in the outfield.

Since then, I’ve watched you play for my team, and I’ve watched you, year after year, be simply amazing. I’ve happily stated that you’re my favorite player. That you’re my baseball hero.

Yesterday, I had to say goodbye. I’m not happy about the trade that sent you to the Yankees. I think it will be good for you to get a ring or several, which you undoubtedly will. But I’m not happy that I’ll probably never again see you with a star on your cap.

You’ve been the greatest player to wear “Astros” across your chest as long as I’ve known. You will be missed.

-Nathan Miller

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.” Check out all my past Confessions here.

I didn’t bring detergent to camp this year. This isn’t shocking, because it’s heavy and I can just pick it up in town when I get here. The same is true for shampoo and eye contact solution, both of which I successfully picked up in town. The same cannot be said for detergent, which I still don’t have.

Because I need to do laundry today, the sudden realization of my detergent dearth has dawned on me, the implications hitting me with full force. As a result, I will be borrowing detergent in order to ensure that my clothing is clean.

However, this is not a new problem. I always forget detergent. Every year at school, I get to my first laundry day sans detergent. Every summer at camp – same story. Two quick detergent stories:

When I was in Israel, I went to the store on laundry day to get detergent, and I got what looked like it was probably the right thing. It said “economica” on it in Hebrew, so I assumed it was a good deal. Before I did laundry though, I checked with my counselors to ensure I hadn’t made a rookie mistake, like thinking that “economica” doesn’t mean “bleach.” (True story – “bleach” in Hebrew is “economica.” Seriously? What the hell.)

So I had to go back to the store and buy a different detergent. This time I got one that advertised “ze lo economica!” (“It’s not bleach!”) However, I was again fooled by the Israelis, in that this too was not detergent but rather stain remover. It turns out that you cannot buy a large jug of detergent in Israel – only powder or very small jugs – and this was the basis of my mistake.

Second story: two years ago at school, it was raining hard on laundry day so I borrowed detergent from someone. The next laundry day, it was the same story (yes I had failed to get detergent since the first laundry day, since that’s how I work) and I borrowed from someone else. I realized I didn’t have to buy detergent and the entire year just borrowed from different people. I felt a bit like a bum, but it was a worthy experiment nonetheless.

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.” Check out all my past Confessions here.

I despise unnecessary verbal abbreviations. Allow me to explain.

In writing, abbreviations are often necessary in order to save space or resources (such as ink or time spent typing). It is reasonable for someone to write “Adv” instead of “Advanced” or “MLK” instead of “Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.”

However, because speech is significantly different than writing, abbreviations have to be considered in different light; the same abbreviations that save resources in writing may not save resources in speaking, simply because a speaker need not concern himself with the number of letters (written length) in a word, but rather the number of syllables (spoken length).

Thus, “NIMBY” is an abbreviation both in writing and in speech. However, while “BTW” is an abbreviation in writing, it is actually less efficient in speech: “By the way” takes only three syllables to pronounce while “Bee-Tee-Dou-Ble-You” takes five.

The other day, I was listening to an old This American Life episode, and because they were repeating the phrase “I’m not here to make friends,” the reporter announced that it would be abbreviated “INHTMF,” which, as you can count, takes an equal number of syllables and therefore time to say. In fact, because of the way English works, it actually takes less time to say the full sentence than the ‘abbreviation,’ simply because some letters do not go well after others. The ‘H’ causes particular difficulty.

Ultimately, this comes down to an economy of speaking. When you’re speaking, it may not necessarily make sense to abbreviate things that you would in writing. In fact, it may be counterintuitive. And frankly, I despise it.

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.”

Admittedly there are some things about me that are a little OCD. Along with eating in order, I also like to prepare my food according to routines. These are harmless routines and usually I’m not even aware I’m following them. However, I make a lot of sandwiches, and recently I noticed a pattern with my mayonnaise spreading that can be best described with the help of this flow-chart:

As I said, it’s perfectly harmless, but where I spread my mayonnaise dictates the entire makeup of the sandwich. Everything goes on top of the foundation that the mayo creates, so my whole sandwich ends up on the left side. Finally I place the last piece of bread on top, and boom, my plate is left-heavy.

Actually this left-heaviness, now that I think of it, is convenient since I hold my plate with my left hand and my glass of whatever beverage I’m consuming with my right. So far from being harmless, this particular OCDness is a major benefit to my sandwich mechanics!

A continuation of my “Confession” series, modeled after Alana’s “Sunday Confessional.”

The title says it all: my handwriting is what can only be termed abysmal. It’s pretty much always been this way, at least as far back as I can remember. There was a time, in early elementary school, where I was given a notebook with large space for practicing handwriting with the goal of preventing this exact problem.

You probably know exactly the notebook I’m talking about: it had blue lines and red lines, with a big dotted line in between. The idea was that short letters (lower-case, I suppose) would be below the dotted line, and connecting bars on tall letters (like the horizontal bar on ‘H’) would go on the dotted lines. The area was divided into two areas, those areas legal for small letters and parts of big letters and those areas legal only for the tops of the big letters.

Having been taught that prejudice is wrong, this seemed awfully letterist to me and I rebelled. Or perhaps I just lacked the motor-coordination required to write neatly. Either way, my penmanship grades were always the lowest of any grades I’ve received, even to this day.

It also helps that I don’t know cursive. I mean, I can read it, and I suppose I could probably write each letter if I tried hard enough, but I never learned to string them all together as necessary. Especially not with any reasonable speed.

So when I read this article at Neatorama, I was thrilled, shocked, and saddened simultaneously. Thrilled to find out that others share my problems. Shocked that handwriting is so judged (even though I certainly experienced this in middle and high school). And saddened by the fact that the SAT Writing Exam provides lower test scores to those with poor handwriting. [I never took the “new SAT” with the writing section though, so I avoided this.]

Therefore, I urge any of you who otherwise judge people on their handwriting to stop doing so; there are too many of us in the world with poor handwriting but otherwise good writing skills. Handwriting should not be what holds us back from being able to exchange ideas; rather, it is an impediment that should be removed. This blog, after all, is not handwritten. If it were, the results (see above) would be disastrous!

Finally, on important forms, I write in all caps. My caps handwriting isn’t that bad, so it works out. But sometimes when I’m distracted, even that looks bad. It really comes down to the amount of time I have to write. The more time available, the better my handwriting will be. Contrast this to typing, where, even if I have hardly any time, I can still produce a beautiful document using LaTeX. Once again, technology frees us.

A continuation of my Confession series, modeled after Alana’s Sunday Confessional.

“Happy Holidays” is a phrase that everyone has to hear all the time around this season. In the post office, paying for groceries, in the airport security line, at a restaurant, at a bar, and even walking on the street. Everywhere you go, it’s “Happy Holidays.”

Which you might think, from my point of view, is nice. You might be tempted to think that it’s awfully considerate of the Christian majority to remember the tiny minority of people who aren’t celebrating Christmas, and instead of saying “Merry Christmas” choose to simply say “Happy Holidays.”

You’d be wrong. On the contrary, the phrase “Happy Holidays” annoys me to no end. In many ways, I am far more offended by it than by the few people left who do still say “Merry Christmas.” When someone says “Happy Holidays” to me, I always respond with “Merry Christmas,” and often I don’t even give them the chance; I start the volley whenever possible.

The phrase “Happy Holidays” is not only tinny, it’s also naive. It’s as if the people who say it are unaware that I might know that Christmas is the actual holiday at this time of year. Sure, there’s Hanukkah, but that ended over a week ago, so I’m pretty sure the ghost of Judah Maccabee will rest easy if I am not greeted for Hanukkah this late in the game.

And according to the post office, there’s also Kwanzaa and Eid at this time. However, I’m pretty sure anyone who celebrates Kwanzaa (does anyone celebrate Kwanzaa?) probably also celebrates Christmas, and as for Eid, I’m not sure these “Happy Holiday” greeters have any idea such a holiday exists.

So please, everyone, let’s drop the act. You’re not fooling anyone. When you say “Happy Holidays,” we all know what you mean. Better you should come out and say it. “Merry Christmas.”