The Q Continuum

I'm a learning junkie. I'm always fascinated by new "things" : toys, technologies, tunes, trivia, etc. That's probably why it took me 11 years to finish my undergraduate degree. That, and I kept changing majors. Telltale sign of a learning junkie - I couldn't decide what I really wanted to focus on in my college days. In reality, the reason I finished my degree in Computer Science was because that was the degree plan I could finish quickest. I could have stuck it out in Physics, or Electronics Technology, or Music Composition if I had wanted, but I had a real incentive to finish: my wife was graduating, and my younger brother already had his Master's degree under his belt. I suppose if I didn't really have to get into the "real world," I would have stuck around a little longer and added to my 200+ college hours before graduating.

In the 6 years since I finished my degree, I've often thought about getting my Master's degree, but I've always been plagued by the key question: what field of study? I started work on a Master's in Computer Education and Cognitive Systems (a 4.0 average, I might add), but then the big job shuffle started, and it became impractical for me to keep going down that road. I've taken a serious look at a distance education graduate degree in Astronomy from a University in Australia, which would be really cool since I've never studied the southern sky. I've looked at a number of education programs, including several distance education degrees. However, each time I zero in on a program of study, the next big question comes up: what do you do with the degree once you've got it?

When I started college, I had a plan to go straight through and get my Ph.D. in Physics before I turned 30. Needless to say, that plan didn't work out exactly that way. I still would like to have my terminal degree, if for no other reason than to be "Dr. Neale," which I think has a really nice ring to it! To paraphrase a rather famous movie line, "What would you do with a Ph.D. if you had one?" (I'll avoid a number of apparent academia jokes that could easily be inserted here.)

Are my desires truly altruistic ones? Am I truly interested in education for education's sake? The more I ponder these questions, the more I come to think that may indeed be the case. I've always enjoyed the education process (with the exception of exams, homework, quizzes, essays, labwork... hmmmm... maybe this is the real reason I haven't jumped back into grad school...) and love learning new ideas and concepts. I can get sidetracked occasionally, or perhaps frequently, when I delve into some learning challenges. Once, a long time ago, when I was really struggling with memorizing my German vocabulary, I decided to write a quick program for my PC to quiz me on vocabulary (I couldn't afford to skip a few meals of Ramen noodles to buy flash cards or anything else to help me learn words). So I spent several days putting together the system that would be my salvation in passing German III. At the end of the semester, I had a much better understanding of user interface design concepts and database implementations than my Wortschatz. The same thing happened when I started working on this blog. Even though my goal was to exercise my creative writing, I spent far more hours learning CSS style sheets and blog template design than I did my wordsmithing.

Anyway, I struggle again with the question of how to educate myself in the short-term. Given my current employment situation (none), I am considering completing a few certification exams, which would lead me to study my chosen career craft in a focused direction for the next several weeks. I could also use this time to seriously focus on my writing by enrolling in a creative writing course. Once I resume gainful employment, however, I am still tempted to further my graduate studies, but not knowing where I'll be working (or living, for that matter), I'm hesitant to even research options outside of an entirely on-line program.

So in the meantime, I'll continue as I have been the last two months - taking one day at a time and seeing what I can learn from each day that presents itself to me. I continue to keep my mind open to all possible sources for the most important education of all: life lessons.

I've been accused, on occasion, of butchering the English language. As my wife will attest, I've even been known to annihilate what little Spanish and German that I know. But nobody mutilates English like businesses trying to translate their native language into English for manuals, documents, or, even worse, ad slogans.

One of the best places to view the horror of maligned English comes from our friends at www.engrish.com.

All your base are belong to us!

Christmas Eve is finally here! Rather than drone on and on about how as I get older time passes more quickly (the time from the end of lunch to the opening of presents, while only a few hours, felt like years when I was 7 years old), I'll pen a few words about how the meaning of Christmas has changed for me in the same time span.

When I was 7:

• all Christmas was about was who got the best present
  
• my cousins were annoying creatures who just got on my nerves
  
• my brother was an annoying creature who just got on my nerves, but I had to live with him
  
• I had a favorite set of grandparents
  
• I never dreamed that Christmas wouldn't be exactly the same from year to year

Now that I'm older than that:

• I don't get presents that are as "cool," but that doesn't matter
  
• I haven't seen my cousins in years and sometimes wish I could
  
• I'm looking forward to spending some time with my brother
  
• I won't see any of my grandparents again, and the ones who weren't my favorite are the ones that had the most impact on my life
  
• I long for the simpler times of my childhood but still enjoy spending time with my newly extended family

I still find myself taking things for granted, even as I've become older and wiser (those of you in the back row can stop laughing now). That has changed pretty significantly this year for a number of reasons:

• being unemployed for the first time in my adult life
  
• spending Thanksgiving with my parents for the first time in years
  
• communicating with old friends and family by e-mail and IM and actually maintaining contact

But the last few days have been especially influential on me. Today, my wife spent her Christmas Eve morning at the hospital having an ultrasound. (No, she's not pregnant. You can pick yourselves up off the floor now.) A few weeks ago, she noticed a lump under her arm and was enough unsure about it to mention it to her doctor. He referred her for a mammogram, which ultimately turned itself into an ultrasound (much to her relief). Everyone we know that has anything to do with medicine reassured her that it was probably just an inflamed lymph node as the result of an infection, and that's exactly what it turned out to be. But that doesn't mean we didn't consider the other possible outcomes.

I've given a lot of thought lately to what I would do if Anna wasn't around. Fortunately, this particular lump isn't going to take her from me, but who knows what may happen? Again, I've been taking a lot of things for granted, and having Anna with me was one of those. Have I told her how much she means to me lately? Have I done anything lately to make her feel special? Probably not as much as I could have. She is the most important aspect of my life, and I don't know that I let her know as often or as much as I should.

I'm not a real believer in New Year's Resolutions, or resolutions in general. My last affirmed resolution was "Date free in '93" and I was engaged before the year was half over. However, I'm planning on being more attentive to the relationships I have developed and been able to maintain over the years. I sincerely want to be the best husband, brother, son, and friend I can be to the special people in my life. So I will strive to pay even more attention to others than I've been paying to myself. Its time to become selfless instead of selfish.

Who knew that naked muppets would cause a change in my musical direction.

NAKED MUPPETS??

That's right, naked muppets. As I was crawling the web for references to the letter "Q" to use in random links in this blog, I ran across Avenue Q, the web site for the Broadway musical of the same name. I didn't really search the site in great detail, but a notice on the main page warns of "full puppet nudity." Granted, they also have a disclaimer that their show has not been sanctioned by the Jim Henson company or Sesame Street, but there's no mistaking what the "puppets" were designed to emulate.

So why should I care? Well, I've been working on a few musical numbers over the last three years under the working name of "Ave. Q" based on a number of factors: the Q in my name, the fact that the Green Chili CD was recorded in a studio on Ave. Q in Lubbock, and I just like the way it sounded. Obviously, I can't use that name any more, or the company producing the musical will come after me, or there will just be mass confusion by people trying to find either organizations music. With Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste, it's pretty hard to get confused with someone else.

So now I get to come up with another musical name to use for future projects, including the tunes I'm wrapping up in the studio right now. I'll use another post to work out 'band names' in more detail.

OK, to further overextend myself creatively, it's time to set up an new Blog. Obviously, it's been a while since I updated my Job Hunter's Diary, because I frankly got tired of the daily "looked on the job boards, sent some e-mails, got no response" entries. Plus, I'm sure it was going to cut down on the readership quickly, too. But that's really a story for that blog, not this one.

I decided to get another outlet for my writing (fiction, prose, ramblings, whatever) other than just Word docs on my Mac. Plus, I run across all sorts of weird, random information in my daily activities, some in e-mail, some while surfing the web, and I needed a place to store them all for my future reference or to share with others who may or may not be interested in the unusual or just purely random.

Take, for example, these examples:

1. Joel Veitch's Animation Site
   
2. What to do when you're bored
   
3. One of my favorite on-line comics
   

That, and I just may post some practice writing exercises. I've got plenty of time on my hands right now, and I've been really wanting to sharpen my writing skills, and, well, it's just not all that exciting to sit down in front of Word to write. Maybe I'm a little ADD (probably more than a little) and perhaps I'm just a bit obsessive compulsive (like my favorite defective detective), but having other gizmos surrounding the screen is more enticing to me than just the Word interface.

In addition, some of my activities around the house have uncovered some interesting tidbits, like my college notebooks from my first two years at UNT, back when it was North Texas State University. I actually started (several times) a journal in one of my notebooks, and I was amazed to see how much of the emotions and memories of those days came back to me by just reading a few handwritten pages. I've done some journaling several times in my life, but never consistently, outside of therapy. So if I make it really easy to journal on a regular basis, maybe I can actually keep up with it.

So, here goes nothing. I'll conclude this first post to the new blog, get it posted and make sure all the techno-wizardry is working correctly. Then I'm off to help my wife bake cookies, get to the bank, and take care of other mundane daily life issues.