Let me guess this out there before I forget

I started writing this big post about the discussion of intelligence versus using it when it dawned on me what I really wanted to say.

I had a whole bunch of stuff, none of which is finished. I'll post that stuff under the cut. While I was flailing on the keyboard, my MP3 player came across "Third Uncle" by 801. For those not familiar, 801 was a jam-like side project of Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera (more the latter than the former, actually). Eno wrote the song "Third Uncle", which you may know from Bauhaus's cover. It's not a great song for lyrics, but it is a breakthrough compared to the rest of the album. I bet Eno purists would disagree. Point is: had he gone further in that direction instead of electronica and pensiveness, he'd not be remembered at all but he could've driven punk rock into a completely different direction. It was in his nature to eschew his own pragmatism, so it wouldn't happen.

What is the use of the brain? Finding that break in the middle of a ton of crap and hearing the other song inside that one snippet. Whenever I hear people talk shit about rap, I realize they've never sat down with a couple good albums -- only the radio stuff. Sit down to De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising and tell me that isn't an impressive opus, not to mention a wicked enjoyable one?

The brain can synthesize. It can also criticize (and it must in order to know what's worth synthesizing) but it has a duty to posit as well. Don't just say "this thing sucks" -- build something better! If you're like me, though, you have a bunch of halfling creations that need finishing. You have no fear of creating -- it's the birth part that stops you cold. When you have to hand it to the world...

I am still hung up on my tools. I am sending up my 2.8 and will soon be setting up the AMD as an Athlon Barton 2800, just to compare. I think I avoided all of this because I knew I'd get caught up in billions of rococo details. Finding a tool to fix the names on my MP3 files (or worse, writing my own), getting everything installed, getting to my learning. I am talking myself into all of this because I spend far too much time doing hardware projects that aren't necessary but teach me a lot. I need to get happy with the tools I have and use them.

I want to learn enough about two specific programming languages -- C and Perl -- to see how each handles a program and would allow me to handle others. I have spent far too long wondering which combination of machinery is more powerful per second per dollar. Time to code.

Then again, I still need to install...

I'll bet this post didn't make any sense. Lemme know, eh?

Trivia vs minutiae (warning! Incomplete post -- no coherence)

Ah, the follow-on post! I was about to make a long comment involving this string from dilletante which came from a post by quinnclub that was tangentially involved. I said a line that I really like: "It's part of our design to use what we have instead of just having it."

I get embarrassed about my test scores when people want to talk about them. I worry people stop seeing me and see this number instead. It came up at work recently and three people said to me "what are you doing here, then?" Making much more than I did as a tech writer.

Sometimes I think I should've applied to an Ivy League school instead of taking early decision on SUNY-B -- a tougher challenge. Instead, the school kept me plenty busy and I had a good time in a cheap town with an amazing radio station. My scores said "you're a shoo-in at that school"; my upbringing said "not WASP enough for schools your grandfather built"; my bank account eventually said "bachelor's degree: $300." I got scholarships and didn't tell most of my fellow students because I didn't want them to think I was some prima donna. After all, I wanted to learn, not necessarily be top of the class.

I've been working out a lot of these issues over the years. Some of you that went to Ivy League schools have explained to me that the League isn't so amazing. Fair enough. Then the MIT grads make feel seriously inadequate because I spent so much time delving into the tale of Tiresias. (Y'all don't mean to, but it happens.)

Shrewdness isn't something you can teach, I've come to learn. You can say to someone over and over "buy low, sell high" but what do you buy and what do you leave for others? When do you realize you've been so worried about straddling the fence that you got off the fence too early?

My parents never told me my IQ scores or such because they knew too many people that never did anything with themselves because they assumed having this high number obviated any other effort in life. "Well, I'm smart. This digit says so." I think my parents made a good choice.

Meanwhile, I got obsessed with proving my brains were useful. One thing that scared me as a kid was everything I'd studied about China and its inclination to kill its intellectuals every so often (the Cultural Revolution of 1966, for example). The red-book-clasping youths would I got good at fixing things because... uhhh... idle hands?

The real question is: when does being smart fuck you up? Can you be so smart that you can't be savvy? Shouldn't your goal be to round yourself for a full functionality? I may be smart, but there are smart folks that get so lost in their heads that they don't bathe and can't function in public. I may not be particularly cool, but I can sniff out bullshit, the hip from the schlock, the marrow from the dip. I may not be rich, but I have some taste. The Epicureans were onto something -- then again, the Bacchists were on something and that can be more fun.

Do I use my brain well enough? I can't always tell. I feel like I do when I write stuff like this -- the stuff gnarled up in there gets plastered onto a canvas so I can stare at it. My fingers fly as I justify my existence to myself. Oh wait, that's narcissism wrapped in self-deprecation, isn't it?

Perhaps it's better that I studied the Canon and the Anti-Canon before I got too heavy into electronics. This has given me historical perspective on anything I accomplish. It's also meant I wailed on my pedantic parts before I let them destroy me. Then again, I wound up very lost in my head for a couple years after college in an attempt to integrate my studies without doing anything.

I think what I'm saying is that I'd still rather write 2000 words than take out the garbage, but the 2000 words may actually be the garbage. I'm also out of garbage bags in the real world whereas I can post as many of these journal entires as I like.

Blah blah teleblah. Blabbitty bloo. Skimmerickity. Chi-changoo.

Suggestions from the spell-checker

I must be a in a really good mood. Writing a lot, even when it makes no sense, does that to me. I must write more often. Anyway, here are the results of a spell check from my last post. See what kind of associations you conjure from any one of the stacks and reply with that, please.

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<td>lj</td><td>LBJ, J, L, j, l, LC, lg, LA, LL, La, Le, Li, Lu, Ly, la, ll, lo, DJ, LP, Ln, Lr, Lt, NJ, OJ, SJ, VJ, lb, ls, Lek, kl

dilletante	dilettante, dilettantes, dilettante's, detente, diluent, distant, pollutant, detonate, sultanate, militant, delineate, dilated, debutante, tolerant
quinnclub	quinn club, quinn-club, conclude, corncob, kinkily, jungle, conclave, conical, jungled, jungles, concluder, conicals, conically, jangly
embarassed	embarrassed, embarrasses, embraced, embarrass, embarrassedly, unembarrassed, embossed
SUNY	SUNNY, SUN, SONY, SUNG, SUNS, SUNK, SUSY, SUZY, PUNY
didn	did, din, Dian, Didi, Dido, Dion, dido, dding
prima	Priam, prim, prime, Porrima, pram, Purim, prom, primal, prims, primer, promo, primp
ve	vie, voe, V, v, veg, vet, Be, Ce, be, E, e, VA, VI, Va, Vi, vi, we, VD, VF, VG, VJ, VP, VT, Vt, vb, vs, DE, De, Fe, GE, Ge, He, IE, Le, ME, Me, NE, Ne, OE, PE, Re, SE, Se, Te, Xe, he, me, re, ye, VAR, var, veer, vier, view, vow
isn	USN, INS, ins, sin, ISBN, Ian, ism, IN, In, Sn, in, is, ISO, Isa, inn, ion, isl
Shouldn	Should, Shelden, Sheldon, Shouldn't, Shoulder, Shielding, Holden, Shield, Shoaled, Shulman
Epicurians	Epicureans, Epicurean, Epicurus, Epicurus's, Epicures
Bacchists	Bacchus's, Backrests, Backseats, Backsides, Backrest's, Bauxites, Bigamists, Buckshots, Backside's, Backstairs
narcissicism	narcissism, narcissisms
teleblah	teleplay, Delilah, Tallulah, treble, tabla, relabel, Denebola, Delila, tillable, telltale, tribal, gelable, temblor, tenable, tenably, Tylenol, relabeler, tubal
Blabbitty	Blab bitty, Blab-bitty, Babbitt, Bobbitt, Blabbed, Babbette, Blabbing, Blabber, Babita, Blabbers, Blubbery
bloo	bolo, Bloom, blood, bloom, bloop, boo, blow, blob, bloc, blot
Skimmerickity	Skyrocket, Scorecard, Segregate, Scrimmaged
changoo	chan goo, chan-goo, Chang, change, changer, Chiang, Chinook, Cheng, Chung, Chang's, changed, changes