Do I Have ADD?

If you know me, it may surprise you that I can only think of one person who has suggested that I might have ADD. (It's possible that others have suggested it but I was distracted by something shiny while they were talking.)

If I do have ADD, I guess it's not super debilitating. I have somehow made it through undergrad, 2 years of a job, and my first year of grad school. So, I guess I'm capable of learning things. But let's step back and look at my life on a slower time-scale. Yes, I got through undergrad with a good GPA, but I spent 6 years there and changed my major on average once a year. Every time I start something, I'm so gung-ho about it. But at some point, usually around 1-1.5 years into it, I either get bored or annoyed by the fine details that start to creep in.

It's inevitable... details catch up with you eventually. Who out there has had the following experience: You start writing a big piece of code, from scratch. At first it's all fun and games - you are coming up with ideas and slapping stuff together to see if it works. Eventually, it does work (more or less). Now you have to go back and add some minor functionality, and in the process of doing so, you break something. Then you have to track down that bug, and you start realizing that your code isn't as clean/modular/whatever as you thought it was. Now this fun project is getting annoying, right?

I think there are lots of us out there who like the new, creative phase of things, and have no patience for maintenance. I'm going to call this "wide-sense ADD". Is it a generational thing?? My guess is that most young people have this "condition" to some extent. But at some point, you're forced to deal with sticking with things past the point where it's all fun and games. Every time this happens, you grow up a little bit more. The real question is - will most people in my generation ever go through that growing up process? We all have so many opportunities, it's fairly easy to quit and do something new as soon as you get bored.

Do we keep job-hopping, or experience-hopping, ever searching for the elusive 'dream job'? Or do we eventually cut it off? If we do keep hopping indefinitely, are we missing out on something? Or is it the logical next step in societal evolution?

Support our Military

My sister is in the air force and I'm super proud of her. I think that our boys and girls in the military are brave and dedicated!

But the number one reason that I'm glad my sister is in the military is this - if she hadn't had training in Alabama, I might never have seen the funniest commercial ever made:

It's just like.... a mini-mall!

Why we put up with the rain

Will I be happy in 5 minutes?

So, I was reading this blog today...

I actually don't read a lot of blogs, but I got sucked into this one, because Penelope Trunk wrote an article about her and her husband going to marriage counseling, and it was one of the saddest things I've ever read. So now I have to read her blog every freaking day just in case she gives us an update on the relationship. (Personally, I am hoping that they stay together!!!)

Anyway, in Penelope's blog this article has the following quote: "as humans we are absolutely terrible at predicting what will make us happy..."

It's weird, because on the surface it sounds like a really simple thing to be bad at. I mean ,we're freakin' human beings! :) We create wonders from skyscrapers, suspension bridges, and nuclear weapons, to Harry Potter, the Daily Show, and cupcakes!!! We rule the world!!!

Yet, it makes perfect sense. The choices that we make have very complicated and long-term ramifications. Take this easy example: "Will eating some ice cream make me happier?" Well, while the ice cream is in my mouth, I'll be super happy. But next time I'm trying on clothes at the mall and I get all upset because my thighs are too fat, that ice cream will have had the last laugh!

So, if we can't even figure out what to eat, how can be possibly be expected to make bigger decisions like careers and relationships? Like, think about Lorentz attractors. In this wikipedia article , check out the first figure, showing the butterfly effect. These two trajectories have initial conditions that differ by only 10^-5 in the x coordinate. As you can see, they gradually start to diverge.

And people are at least as complex as Lorentz equations! Perhaps more so! When they say that people "grow apart", I think this is what they mean. What to do? Is it really possible to have a long-term, successful relationship???

In a coma

So, my mom has always told me that I go through my life "in a coma". Well, I don't deny this, it's absolutely true. Sometimes my coma adventures are embarassing, but hey what is a blog for if not to divulge embarassing stories about yourself? To be honest, I don't even get embarassed about stuff like this anymore.

In the past week I have done the following:

- gotten lost while jogging (within a mile of my house)
- on same jogging trip, returned home and spent 5 minutes trying to jam my key into the door. Only later did I realized that I'd brought the wrong key.
- driven to the wrong airport. Somehow in my mind, Palo Alto and San Jose are the same thing. Turns out they each have an airport and the two are very different. Luckily I had left myself a lot of time to get there.

But here's the story that my family loves to make fun of me for now. This perhaps sums me up in a nutshell.

A couple weeks ago, my advisor asked me to help out with a couple lab sessions for this summer workshop that she is running. The workshop is geared towards underrepresented students, so most of the students are either seeing or hearing impaired. One of the students, who actually goes to UW, is completely blind. (Yeah and he's a programmer - he's my hero.) Anyway, one of the days the students asked me to go to lunch with them. So as we walk out of the classroom, I say "I'm not sure what's the fastest way to get to the Hub." The blind student points left and says "this way".

What can I say? Sometimes, you just need a blind escort! :)

Farm Subsidies - Everybody Wins

So, who loves farm subsidies? I think it's only in the past few years (after I started reading the Economist) that I learned about how much our government spends on farm subsidies. Here are some arguments against farm subsidies:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36207.html

Now, here's a website where people click to donate food to hungry people throughout the world:

http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1

Here's my crazy idea - if our government is concerned about its farmers, why don't they buy lots of food from them and donate it to Africa? That way, we get PR points for eliminating subsidies and PR points for helping the poor. See, everybody wins!

OH I am watching the stupidest show on tv - it's called charm school. Ohhhh it's damaging my brain cells..... I... can.... barely..... keep..... tiping... how do I turn off TV? can't... remember....