Things I’ve been thinking about.

So right now I am in a plane, flying from Detroit to Ft. Lauderdale, this probably won’t make it to the blog until Monday or Sunday, (busy with family)

Anyway, the thing is, I am having one of those moments when I learn something new, or when I read something that gets my wheels spinning, I am really bad at presenting my ideas clearly, the problem is that I don’t think I ever write anything new, that I don’t have any ideas of my own, it seems like all I do is merely repeat what someone else has said before me. This bothers me because I don’t want to give the appearance that I am so clever or what not, since I am not, I am not intelligent at all. I get very self-conscious when I write my thoughts, since I believe my thoughts are plagiarizing other thinkers before me.

I know nothing about computers, or better said, I only know a few basic principles about computers, but I am straying from the subject, the real thing I want to say is how much I appreciate other people who do not worry about what others think, people like Richard Feynman, Copernicus, people who doubt, and ask, scientists who know what it means to know something. It makes me understand that I don’t know much of anything, I feel humbled in comparison, I only wish to understand what they are talking about.

But the thing that bothers me is that I am supposed to be an educated person, (somewhat) I am about to graduate with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering and I barely understand what my field is supposed to be about, not that I did not study, is just that I realize that I have only scratched the surface of what there is to know. I know that I don’t understand math that well, I must admit with a great deal of shame that I cannot do an integral without a calculator. I have forgotten most of what I’ve been taught about physics, so what do I know? Not much really.

Mysticism in our world

People seem to turn to mystic things to explain the world that we don’t understand, I can understand how we can have faith in the things that we cannot know, for example, science cannot prove that there isn’t a God out there.

I wonder

Just because somebody believes in evolution does not mean that they are against religion, why is that we think that?

Or why is it that we seem to associate atheism with immorality? How is atheism unmoral?

Why do we still believe in palm readers, astrology, superstitions and silly things like that? All these things that we know have to be fake, but we still believe it.

Humans are lazy

People seem to be very lazy when it comes to believing what they are told, it is easier to accept things and move on rather than to think and analyze what is going on. I think is great when we question things, like when we make our leaders accountable for their actions. I think that is a good thing, I think that’s what democracy is supposed to be about

I just want to write that like Feynman, I am not afraid of not knowing the answers to all the questions that haunt us, like what is the meaning of life and all of that, I may think about it for a second, but I am going to dedicate my life to continue to learn, but only learn those things that I can know for sure, things that I can prove with experiments, theories that have results and number that agree with it, not just some mumbo-jumbo that anyone with a typewriter can make up.

Maybe something good will come out of it, maybe I’ll work on a chip that will change the world, who knows? But that’s not what I am after, it’d be nice if it happens, but I just want to learn for the pleasure of finding things out.

Like the other day, they called me from work to see if I wanted to put in some extra hours going to the lab on a Saturday, so I had nothing to do that day anyway.

We had these medical machines that measure the performance of pacemakers, some expensive pieces of equipment that IBM makes for medical institutions, so anyhow, some of them had bugs in it so we were to take a look at them and if they had this error we were supposed to go in there and copy the log files and the software version for the engineers in Texas to figure out what was wrong, so it was a very basic thing, all we did was to look for this logs, compress them and copy them to a USB drive and then upload them to the web, the trick was, these machines run a version of Linux a bit different from what we normally use, our manager did not know Linux and this guy and I decided that we were going to figure out how to make the USB drive work. So we figured it out, well he did the USB part, I just figured out what order to do things in order for it to go faster.

So we didn’t accomplish anything significant, but the mere feeling of figuring out a puzzle, not knowing anything before, thinking about the problem and then finding a solution gives such a great satisfaction, it is great. I want to do these types of things. I like to solve problems. I don’t want to say that I am good at solving problems; I just want to say that I like doing that.

I am still a rookie, a newbie, I have ways to go. I am glad that I now know what I like to do. Let’s see how things turn out.

So this is what’s I’ve been thinking about as a cruise south across the country at forty thousand feet. It is 11:00 PM and I have one more hour before I get home to Florida.

Family

Tomorrow I am going to see my family. I want to see how Anthony has changed, he is growing up so fast, it is crazy, wow, and time doesn’t stop. My son is going to grow up and be and adult someday, isn’t that something? I mean, from a few cells to a full person.

Ok folks, that’s all I have.

J.V.