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Category: School

Saturday, March 5, 2022
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Where I went

Posted in random updates, and School

Okay, so today is the first day I’ve blogged since last June. Hi. I’ve been busy, basically. I haven’t been writing much of anything besides Facebook updates. I got a part-time job for a while, and right now I’m doing small bits of part-time work (just a couple of hours a week) while taking a math class at the community college. Once again, I’m on the path to learning calculus. No, I haven’t given up on that yet. I’m determined to make it through trigonometry this semester. It’s half over and I have a B in the class so far. A low B, but hey, I’ll take it.

I met with my prof yesterday, as I did badly on the last major test (which I took this last Wednesday). He’s fantastic. When I told him I remember math stuff visually, he immediately had the idea for me to memorize the unit circle as it looks on the graph of the sine function (which I have down cold already). So I’m going to work on that. He also drew some parallels between how I think about coding and how to use that when thinking about math. Great guy.

I’ve been depressed and stressed enough lately that it’s affecting my health, but I’m working on it. I’ve barely been crafting, and I haven’t written any new fanfic in ages. Sigh. But hey, I’m still alive. And I’m doing something besides sitting at home brooding. I have a social life (shocking) with many people in it (even more shocking). So it’s not all bad. Just difficult sometimes.

Friday, March 12, 2021
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What the hell am I doing?

Posted in books, magick, programming, random updates, School, and spinning

I never updated the site about it, but I had to drop my fall 2020 classes because of mental health fun. I’m trying again in summer. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to apply for a full-time job, and did. Didn’t get it because I wasn’t willing to move, but I looked at jobs on LinkedIn and Glassdoor. Talked to my therapist and realized I’d be happier freelancing. So I set myself up an account on Fiverr — contact me if you want the link — for doing WordPress stuff. I’m thinking about adding some automation stuff, as I’ve been writing Python scripts lately to manipulate images and PDF files. So I could offer file processing. I might do that.

Meanwhile, I did a huge spinning commission, almost three pounds of yarn. I just finished it Tuesday, and shipped it off today.

So: freelance coding, spinning, and a trigonometry class. Should be enough to keep me busy.

While I spin, I read books. I have a Bluetooth foot pedal that turns pages in ebooks. It was designed for musicians, but it’s wonderful for hands-free reading. I do spinning purely by muscle memory in my hands; watching myself spin makes me screw up. So I have one foot on my treadle and the other turns the pages on my tablet.

I should start blogging about what I’m reading. During this last commission, I read:

  • Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult — Richard Metzger, editor. A really mixed bag. I didn’t enjoy most of the pieces in it, and there were few ideas that intrigued me. I enjoyed the biographies of women occultists, though.
  • Life After Death — Damien Echols. Echols was one of the West Memphis Three, innocent men who were railroaded into prison for being “Satanists” in 1993. He was in jail for 18 years. His story is depressing but ends with him being freed. Good biography.
  • The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry — Rupert Sheldrake. This book blew my mind. That said, I didn’t agree with everything in it. But some of the problems he has with traditional materialist thinking raised a lot of questions for me. I’ll write more about that a future post.
  • The Elements of Spellcrafting: 21 Keys to Successful Sorcery — Jason Miller. Interesting thoughts about the nuts and bolts of magick. I liked it, and plan to read it again.
  • Don’t Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master — Brad Warner. I don’t have a lot of experience with Buddhism of any type, despite my dad and sister both following it. This book blew my mind a little too. I plan to write about it in future as well.

What can I say, it was a big commission.

I got all of those books except the DisInfo one as recommendations from the Adventures in WooWoo Discord server. I’ve been talking to AIWW’s creator, Tommie Kelly, quite a bit lately. I built him a Discord bot for his Forty Servants divination deck. (I then modified it into a tarot bot, if you’re interested in such things.) He’s pretty cool. I haven’t actually read much of his blog (I should fix that) but I’ve been binge-listening to his podcast. I like people who freely admit they don’t know everything. (Especially occultists. There’s a lot of big egos out there.) I need to read his comics, too….

Speaking of occult podcasts, my other favorites are Anti-Fragile Tarot and SassafrasCast. I’ve been talking to the hosts of those as well; they’re friends (of each other; I barely know them yet), and Rorie Kelly (the Sassafras host) is a fantastic musician. I’m a goth and normally don’t listen to singer/songwriters. She’s different though.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Life’s been strange but I like it.

Sunday, July 26, 2020
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Back to school

Posted in School

I’m registered for two classes this fall at the community college: trigonometry, and pre-calculus. My goal is twofold.

One, for years I’ve wanted to learn vector calculus just for fun. There’s something awesome about the idea of plotting spaceship trajectories, even though I’ll never go to space.

Two, grad school. For over a decade, ever since I took an intro to statistics class for my undergrad degree, I’ve been wanting to get a PhD in stats. I loved that class, and it was ridiculously easy for me. My two upper-level classes on experiment design also used stats, and those were equally fun. My local university has a pretty good stats program, but I need to get through calc 3 just to apply to it.

I love math. But I didn’t learn to enjoy it until I was an adult. As a kid, math was boring and I dreaded it. Which is annoying now, because it means my arithmetic skills aren’t that sharp. I rely on a calculator more than I’d like to, just because certain elementary skills aren’t ingrained.

I blame my teachers. Math classes were always dull. My high school geometry teacher, for example, had us spend half of each class period copying proofs into our notebooks, and we barely used the proofs. But the notebook was a huge part of our grade. She spent very little time teaching, and I dreaded that class all year.

So I am at a disadvantage compared to those who were taught to like math as young people. But I’m not going to let that stop me. If I suck at calculus when I take it in spring, I’ll go to grad school for something else. But I hope I’m good enough at it to get into the stats program. Because statistics are amazing.

Right now I’m doing the algebra course on Khan Academy, because it’s been ages since I took a math class and I want it all fresh in my head when the semester starts. I am enjoying it immensely. I do at least a little every day, and it’s a rush when I solve something correctly. Like, for a brief second, everything in the universe is just right.

It’s a nice feeling.

Sunday, April 5, 2020
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Happy things

Posted in health, random updates, and School

I didn’t blog yesterday because my antibiotics are making me tired. I slept a good portion of the day, but this morning my face doesn’t hurt despite me not taking Sudafed since 13 hours ago! (And I have the short-acting stuff, which can be taken every 4 hours.) There’s definitely still some sinus pressure, but I no longer feel like there’s an icepick in my right eye. Definitely improvement.

Yesterday morning I registered for classes at the local community college. I’ve always wanted to learn calculus, and have never gotten the chance. Also, it’s on my bucket list to get a degree in statistics. (Preferably a PhD, but I’ll start with a bachelor’s in it to see if I want to commit to a doctoral program.) Getting into the local university’s stats program requires completion of Calc 3. I never got higher than College Algebra when I was getting my B.A. in psychology, so I’m going back to learn calculus. If I hate it, that’s okay. I can find other things to study. But you never know until you try, right?

So this fall I’m taking Trig and Pre-Calc, so I can take Calc 1 next spring. (I’m planning to take Chemistry then, too, simply because I’m interested in it and never got to take it in high school. When I take Calc 2 I want to take Physics as well, for the same reason.) I’m doing both classes in person, because I’m good at math but not so much at arithmetic. When a real person grades my work I tend to get good marks, because I can show my work and they can see I know the material. If a computer is grading me, all it cares about is my final answer. It’s the difference between getting an A and a C, for me. I think I have mild dyscalculia, actually…

If I get a job between now and August, I can of course put off classes for a bit, or take just one at a time after business hours (once I get used to being employed). But for now, I’m signed up for Tues/Thurs morning classes. I researched the professors and chose carefully. Hopefully that will help. I get disabled student status at school and get help on note-taking, etc., but some professors are more sympathetic than others.

Otherwise, yesterday was pretty quiet. Lots of resting, some cheesecake… I didn’t play my cello because I was honestly unsure if I could lift my instrument. That’s how tired I was all day. I’m going to take it easy today, too, although I want there to be cello. Practicing is rewarding and I don’t want to skip it.

I have so, so many things I want to be working on lately. I’m enjoying cello. I have knitting, weaving, and spinning projects in progress. I’m in a Coursera class (Data Science with Python), and want to score some points on HackerRank in JavaScript. I have a web site I want to build with Python/Django, and a Discord bot I wrote in JS that I need to repair. I have a handful of fanfics I want to finish. Oh, and I’m learning a new language. It’s not that I tend to start stuff and never finish it. I’m pretty good at completing projects. The problem is that I’ve got too many of them at the moment, and they’re all fun.

I need to prioritize them, I think. Hm. Spinning commission first — I’m almost done with it, and that makes money. Cello doesn’t take long every day, nor does half an hour of language study. And I’ll only work on one programming thing at a time, starting with fixing that Discord bot (shouldn’t take too long, and a friend is waiting on it). Okay, yeah. That’s enough per day, and if I get inspired to work on a fanfic I’ll add that in. I fell better having a plan. I can’t set a schedule for myself — those never work out for me — but I can limit how much I’m doing at one time.

I have another blog post to write, then I’ll have breakfast, and then get to work…