The Long Slow Saturday

As has been noted previously, my Introduction to Linux class was pretty boring.
After all, it says a lot about just how boring the class was that I found it preferable to leave early and go in to work.
The biggest problem with the class? We never actually used Linux. Not once.
Even though Red Hat was installed on all of the workstations, we actually booted into Windows and used a terminal program to SSH into a Unix box.
(If you’re confused by any of this, don’t worry: it won’t be on the test)
Still, the point was to teach the fundamentals, which I guess it did, though how well I’ll remember them is debatable.
In fact, I found myself disturbed by the fact that I seemed incapable of paying attention in the class, which was kind of disturbing.
After all, my inability to focus was severely impacting my ability to learn anything.
So I was concerned, as in earlier years I was always a decent student and could learn things with a bar minimum of effort. So what had changed? Had I suddenly developed ADD? Is it a side effect of years of hard drinking?
Upon reflection, though, I realized that, in terms of my ability to focus, nothing had changed. When I was in high school and college I never paid attention either, it was just that I had a much greater ability to divide my focus.
It’s actually my ability to multi-task that has degraded. In high school, for example, I was able to sit in a class and doodle pictures of fellow student Jennifer Simpson’s legs, pass notes back and forth with my friend Joel, think about nailing the hot student teacher, nailing my girlfriend, nailing my girlfriend and the hot student teacher, and nailing my girlfriend, the hot student teacher, and special guest Jennifer Simpson, and still manage to absorb enough of the lecture to ace the test.
My college experience was largely the same (minus Joel and with various other contemporary women filling in for all of the imaginary nailing).
However, in the Linux class I found myself sitting there thinking about nailing Liz Phair and failing to learn anything about the effective use of the vi editor.
(Alternatively, I thought about nailing the semi-attractive blonde chick in the class, but it was mostly Liz)
So really it’s not that I’ve lost my ability to pay attention; I’ve lost my ability to not need to pay attention.
In fairness, it has been over a decade since I was last in an academic setting and had to call on this ability on a regular basis, so it’s possible that I could regain it with practice, though it’s equally possible that I’ve simply reached the “old dog” stage and find it difficult to learn new tricks.
One of the things about the class was that when it came time to do the exercises he encouraged us to “cheat,” which is to say we were encouraged to collaborate with each other.
He was one of those kinds of instructors who tries to force a class to be interactive and complains about the lack of vocal participation.
In any case, I took the command to cheat to heart and would wait until one of the other students completed an exercise and then cd into his or her directory and copy the finished file into my directory.
Sure, maybe I wasn’t really adhering to the spirit of his directive, but if he’d known, I would like to think that I’d have gotten points for my inventiveness.
It’s not like we were being graded, or even as if he was checking to make she we completed the exercises, so it can’t really be considered cheating, and I did put forth some effort into figuring out how to right the particular script before giving up and seeing how other people – people with temperaments more suited to coding than mine – had answered the challenge posed by the exercise.
Ah well, it’s all over now, though more Linux training lies ahead of me, but not any time real soon.
My commute to and from work has been getting increasingly irritating as of late.
The worst traffic I face is on Friday nights on my way home, which is why I take the Greenway, a privately-owned toll road.
The Greenway has two advantages over my usual route: the speed limit is 65 and there are no stoplights. With my Smart Tag I barely even have to slow down to go through the toll plaza.
Which brings us to the disadvantage: the Greenway costs almost $3.
Still, one night out of the weekend it’s worth it.
Las night was the exception, though, as for some reason the last two miles of the Greenway were stop and go traffic. Irritating.
It’s not as bad as my usual commute, though, which involves driving on Route 7, which has lots of stoplights, and upon which people will not speed.
The really irritating thing is that they could go faster if they wanted to, they just don’t. Even worse, they travel in these slow-moving packs. You manage to weave your way around one pack and think you’re in the clear as you spot the open road ahead of you – until you nearly slam into another cluster of slow-moving cars.
After a while I get tired of the constant dodging and weaving and decide to just give in and try to temporarily lobotomize myself so that I won’t be driven insane by being forced to drive under the speed limit.
Of course, over the years I’ve learned that it’s when you decide to bend over and take it that life reams you the hardest. That’s when it grabs you by the hair and yanks your head back and you can feel its hot breath in your ear as it grunts, “That’s how you like it, isn’t it bitch? You’re a dirty little whore who likes it rough. Say that you’re a dirty little whore!:” and when you do, quietly, admit that you are, in fact, a dirty little whore, it makes you say it again, louder, and you…uhh…
Anyway, once I decide to force myself to stop fighting and just go with the flow the other drivers respond by going even slower, until finally, crawling along at 35 in 55 MPH zone, I decide that there’s no way I can force myself to accept in any longer and am back to dodging and weaving my way home.
As an aside, I just got back from picking up lunch for Scott and me from Chili’s and Brian’s lunch from Charlie Chiang’s, the local Chinese restaurant. As I walked into Charlie Chiang’s I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of…Lo Pan! Seriously, it was frickin’ Lo Pan. Total stereotypical wizened Asian guy.
I would have taken a picture, but that would have been rude, and you don’t want to go around pissing off Lo Pan (especially not to no end).
To add to the weirdness, last night on the way home Brian and I both saw a guy who looked like Dr. Klopek from the movie The ‘burbs just standing on a corner looking pissed off.
In any case, this long, slow Saturday post has been long and slow enough, though I may actually be back with more later.