Sunday, April 08, 2007

What the Frequency, Installation 2 of n

I have a few more "What the Frequencies" on my mind right now that won't quite let me sleep...

1) What the heck happened today (well, Sunday) to make it such that I couldn't go to the store to get some toilet paper and some other random supplies? Did some random holiday hit without me knowing... and is it correlated with all the horrible pastels and coprophilic lagomorphs I've been seeing everywhere?

2) Why all the emphasis on appearances, especially on females when in most cases appearance doesn't really help (and is more likely to hinder) function? I don't know why, maybe it was already from being irate at not being able to get vital supplies and not being able to do much more than a brisk walk without invoking the magic word "ouch", but some creeps in pastel underwears really got under my skin with some rather scathing comments. So what if I'd rather be functionally clad in non-painful colors (grey and camouflage) and looking more like a plumber or a bow-hunter than a slut or a business-sheep? It's one thing if I'm about to interview or presenting at a major symposium and I'm supposed to look professional in a suit, but in my day-to-day functioning? Sheesh!

3) Lack of standardization in clothing/shoe sizes. Need I say more? How the heck is someone supposed to be efficient when something gets worn/destroyed and needs to be replaced if the error function is large enough to overshadow everything else? I thought sizes were supposed to help and at least be within a 90-95% confidence interval instead of being swamped within huge error functions... but maybe I'm wrong! I'd so much rather be able to zero in on exactly what fits based on the data than have to make several iterations and suddenly start feeling like I'm doing a bad bootstrapping on a computer that barely has enough CPU power!

And a pondering... how the heck do I explain to my neighbors upstairs that as much as I respect their privacy, the anti-social grad student downstairs also sleeps every now and then? Is a can of WD-40 at the doorstep appropriate? Or do I just keep a set of earplugs? Or is it time to retaliate by training on my falling-apart target with a loud, poorly-tuned compound bow in the middle of the night with arrows that have been fitted with Bunny-Buster blunts? Or do I just play up the fact to the neighbors upstairs that I'm an aspiring bow-hunter and a former pesticide chemist with experience working with uranium and arsenic...?

I swear... people also like to really bother the natural loner more than the natural social person. Oh well, time for me to get a few more rounds with working on the back-tension release and then off to sleep so I can stay awake in my lab! And I really need to find somewhere I can go jogging without having to worry about all these horrible people that like to harass solitary joggers by their very existence. I already feel like a complete slug and glutton by being short 30 minutes of my training goal (2 hours).

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