Kickback: All The Right Reasons

Years ago, when I would listen to songs that made me think of anything related to relationships, I didn’t stop to put into words what the song made me feel. I’d get a vague approximation of some thoughts, and I’d be appropriately happy/miserable/both, and that was all I needed. Now that I’ve got more time between myself and the relationship in question, I don’t get the same feelings, and so I literally can’t remember what it was that I liked about these songs. Listening to them now, I know there was something about the song, but can’t quite grasp it.

        You can see the vague, unformed idea effect in some of the music posts I made back in 2010 - I’d post the song and the lyrics, but not say a whole lot about it. A prime example is this post about Kickback UK’s All The Wrong Reasons. I was listening to the song last night and thinking it meant something to me in 2010, but I couldn’t say what it was. At a guess, I’d say I felt like I was trying to help people so I could feel better about myself - the most cynical way of reading my behaviour at the time. There were a couple people I was “friends” with at the time mostly for that reason, and it took me a while to realize that wasn’t the way to go. But that’s only a guess - I can’t say for sure what I was thinking when I made that post.

        What I can tell you is what the song makes me think now, which you will (hopefully) be glad to hear is much more positive. I was up late writing an essay for my Linguistic Analysis class, and I took the lyrics in a very different way. (Chalk it up to vague interpretations, I guess, when the same song can mean a totally different thing two years later.) I was feeling good about the essay and wanted to reflect a bit on how I’ve changed lately, and where I’m heading in the future. Moral of the story, for the tl;dr crowd - I feel like I’ve gone from “all the wrong reasons” to “all the right reasons”, and I’ve got big plans. Read on if you’re interested! Best if you take a stop by the old post, first.

        "Head’s in the future, but your heart’s in the past" is an apt description of me circa 2010. Things were looking up, but definitely not all the way up. Which is a stupid metaphor if you try to picture it, but it works verbally. “And we’ve seen it all before, you’re holding out for more” follows from that, obviously. Neither of those things still apply to me, which is a good sign. Head and heart are both set on the future, I suppose. Getting to the future I want means working hard in the present, but it feels more and more and more natural as I put out work I’m legitimately proud of. Nobody’s ever going to look at the C++ assignment I’m working on right now, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it good and shoot for a mark of 110%.

        The next line is what gets me now, and probably what got to me in the past as well. “When that call never comes it’s time to face what you’ve become - there’s no point doing all of this unless you know you’re having fun.” At the time, there were a lot of things I wasn’t terribly happy with. I wasn’t having a whole lot of fun with the work I was doing back then. Although it got me here, so I can’t complain - but it was all delayed gratification at the time. At least now I get some of that gratification! A little, anyway. Still lots of delay right now. But I’ve recently realized what I should be working towards, although I’d been thinking about it for a few weeks. I said I didn’t have many important goals for 2012, but I take that back now! I’ve got two, which I strongly feel I can accomplish, and which all of my work now contributes to:

• The first: have my name on a publication.
• The second: learn as much as possible, with an eye towards distinguishing myself from the competition.

Both of these are practical goals that will, hopefully, put me in a great position when I finish my education and set out for a job. So - “what have I become”? Someone who strives to be the best they can be. (Time will tell where I’ll fall on the sweet/awesome dichotomy.) I’m not necessarily having fun, but I’m seeing the big picture now.

        From where I stand, that means a number of different things. Most recently, it means improving my writing consciously, the way I used to while I was in AP English. (If you’re interested in that writing analysis tool but not interested in Emacs, I can look into creating an independent version, with the author’s permission.) Going back a few weeks, I’ve started to really dedicate myself to programming well. I’m getting tons of inspiration on that topic as I dig up tidbits of information about Emacs, and inevitably get linked to some other brilliant piece. There’s Steve Yegge and Avdi Grimm over the past few days, who have both Emacs secrets I can steal and general programming knowledge. Meanwhile, Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman write about quality of life as a programmer - improving your tools, improving your office, improving your lighting, etc. Aside from that, I’m always trying to synthesize what I know about the seemingly-disparate areas of linguistics (at least, that’s what the separation in course content would lead you to believe). I want to say with some confidence that I’m a linguist - not some kid who “maybe heard about that in university, but didn’t think it was important”.

        In a similar vein, I’m connecting all the dots in this “cognitive science” thing. Philosophy is cognitive psychology, cognitive psychology is neuroscience, neuroscience is linguistics, linguistics is computer science… And the whole conglomerate is cognitive science. I may not use every part of it for the rest of my life, but understanding them all matters. Even if I were to be a career programmer, I’d keep usability testing in mind. Even if I were a linguist for the rest of my life, I know for a fact I’d land in a crossover field - computational linguistics and neurolinguistics seem equally likely right now.

        So what I’m getting at is: I know what I’m doing here, and I know who I am. I can’t tell you what I’ll settle on for a job, but I know what the core components of that job will be. This is where I belong. The lows may be low, but the highs are home.

The benefits of outside perspectives

I’ve gotten some surprising compliments during the past week. Surprising in the sense that I personally don’t see myself the way they were describing me. Since I don’t see myself that way, I don’t talk about myself that way, either. A stranger reading my tumblr would probably think I’m a quivering, anxious wreck that never manages to get anything done. That’s a bit of an exaggeration from the reality, but since I prefer to chastise myself for my failures, failure becomes my public face. Although, the way I think about it, the negative posts are all waiting on a future post that declares my ultimate victory over the original problem. It may not appear today, or tomorrow, but it’ll come! Probably!

        The first set of compliments came from an extremely astute co-worker, when I mentioned that Robert Biddle initially assumed I was a graduate student. She said that wasn’t terribly surprising, given that I genuinely enjoy what I do and I’m dedicated to my work (unlike some people my age). Later, when I offered to put in a couple extra hours of work, she said she’d find someone else “because I work hard enough as it is.” Given that I’m taking five classes, running the lab’s current projects, and developing new projects on top of all that. Not to mention maintaining and updating older lab work and making it as “perfect” as I can.

        When you put it that way, it paints a much more flattering picture of me than the one I present. I’ve been disorganized for months now, but I’m still pulling in 90%+ grades on almost everything, as well as managing my work in the Language and Brain Lab. I genuinely think I could be doing more, but that’s just the (probably unhealthy) work ethic I’ve picked up over the last few years. I keep telling myself to do better so I don’t fall behind the difficulty curve, but so far I’m still ahead of the game. Obviously I’m doing something right. Not only that, but as far as tuition and various other costs go, I’m soon to be financially independent entirely because of my own hard work. It’s not like I’m raking in The Big Bucks, but it’s enough that I’ll likely graduate with zero debt. Looking at it a bit more objectively, I feel a lot better about what I’ve accomplished and where things are going from here. Which is a good feeling!

        She also noted that I carry myself like a grad student, as I’m comfortable in my own skin and bold enough to approach professors and ask to work with them. I actually had someone else recently tell me that that they think I’m outgoing, too, so apparently I can make a decent first impression. While it’s a kind thought, I don’t think I really agree with them. Truth be told, I mostly manage to seem “comfortable in my own skin” and outgoing by keeping myself distant (at least, emotionally) from people. Which sort of defeats the purpose, I think. Granted, Google’s definition of outgoing is “friendly and socially confident”. I can see how someone might think I’m outgoing, from that point of view (but I usually associate outgoing with extroversion). I’m perfectly happy to talk to people once a conversation’s been started, so there’s a slightly-qualified version of the friendly part. As for socially confident, that’s definitely just a matter of appearance. It’s not like I’m confident in my social skills, and starting conversations still freaks me out. I’m mainly just surprised that it’s not utterly apparent to everyone involved that I’m shy and frequently awkward.

        All that aside, I’m doing alright. Lots of work to do, just need to juggle it the right way. My difficult/time-consuming classes are at least interesting this semester (introduction to brain and behaviour, programming in C++). Sadly, I have one class that’s a bit of a mystery. Thus far, it’s been almost entirely review of other classes I’ve taken. The prof isn’t giving much in the way of hints about what the exams are going to be like, and he’s not a good enough teacher to consciously emphasize important topics. In fact, he regularly says (and I quote) “they told me not to do this in teacher school, but I do it anyway”. Yeah. So either the exams will be completely trivial, or I’ll be blindsided by questions about unimportant details nobody in their right mind would put on a test. The midterm is a week from tomorrow, and I expect it will be an exciting adventure - just like every other time we enter that classroom.

Summer job!

I have exciting news! The title probably spoiled it, but the news is this: I applied for a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council summer research grant with Dr. Robert Biddle as my supervisor and we were accepted! That means working full-time at Carleton for four months, starting in May. Also nice is the fact that the award is enough to cover my tuition and books for next year, assuming I keep my entrance scholarship (I will, if this semester goes as well as the last).

Here’s the story: I found out who the eligible supervisors were, looked up their research interests, and contacted a few. I saw “Games and Hypermedia” on the side of the HotSoft webpage and that was pretty much all I needed to hear. Although, I had seen Dr. Biddle’s name before on a pretty neat project involving security and some awesome hardware, which would also be fun to work on too. I wound up walking over to the lab, knocking on the door and asking to speak to Dr. Biddle. After talking for a while and providing a transcript, we did our respective paperwork and found out a week ago that we’d been successful!

I dropped by yesterday after officially accepting the award and got a bit more information on what I might be working on. The initial plan is that I’ll work with Elizabeth Stobert, a PhD candidate working at the lab, on experiments related to security and usability. Later on, I’ll probably take a more active role and possibly start a project of my own. All in all, it should be pretty awesome.

—————————————————————————

On an unrelated note, I’ll also be working on a computational linguistics project with a linguist doing his PhD in cognitive science. He’ll bring the linguistics, I’ll bring the computational. This is probably the area I’ll have my eye on in the future, though usability testing is a fascinating field as well. If all goes well, I’ll soon have exciting news about that! If it doesn’t go well, the exciting news will just take longer.

—————————————————————————

On the subject of research, I’ll be posting a little blurb soon with details about my work at the Language and Brain Lab during the fall. Plus some snazzy photos of me looking like I actually belong in a research lab. It’s a bit more esoteric than computer security and usability, but I think it’s genuinely awesome. Stay tuned, folks.

2011 in review: I got edumacated

A little story about the title of this post: I took LING 3002, Phonetics I, this semester. It wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad class. There was a lot of data and practical application involved, and I’m at the point where I’ve been thinking about the phonetics of British English thanks to Xenoblade. I can even develop analyses that provide the right results without giving any of the right answers! In particular, we had one assignment involving “Homeric infixation” where I (at least, I think I did) provided a more-or-less correct analysis based on consonant and vowel clusters rather than stress patterns. So here’s to my continuing edumacation!

        If you look at my archive, there’s a pretty sharp decline in the frequency of my posts over time. At the very beginning, mid-2010, I was doing 20-30 posts per month. That was my last year of high school, and around the time when I’d stopped working at the local convenience store to focus on school. My first semester of university was more or less the same, but then second semester it was down to 10-15 posts per month. Around the same throughout the summer. I’ve practically disappeared this semester, though - I’ve got about 30 posts total from September through to the end of December. The reason for this is pretty obvious - university. I still haven’t really figured out a proper balance to get the most out of my work and my play, and “work” time is still being inflated by procrastination. The work gets done, and my grades haven’t gone down, either. But I’ve been getting more and more distant as I supposedly spend all of my time “working” and then have no dedicated relaxation periods or time for socializing.

        I’m not happy about that, but there’s a pretty obvious pattern - work gets done a lot faster when I’m motivated to do it. When it came to lab work, programming assignments, and studying for my intro to cognitive science class - I was there at all times and totally focused. But it was a challenge with my other classes. That’s probably bad. I’d say being able to do things you don’t enjoy and just generally be dedicated is good. On the other hand, I’m probably going to wind up doing more work that I enjoy as time goes on, not less. Either way, I’m planning to work on it.

        So while I’ve been stumbling in every other area of my life, school is going pretty well. Working at the Language and Brain Lab has been fantastic, and I’m working on a short write-up of what I’ve learned. I think you’ll be allowed to see that when it’s ready. Along with some promo photos of me looking snazzy! Aside from that, the seemingly disparate areas of my degree have started to connect in important ways. I’m starting to feel fairly competent in a number of domains - cognitive science as a whole, linguistics, and programming too (though maybe not computer science, I’m definitely lacking when it comes to algorithms).

        In reference to an article I read earlier this year, it feels like I’m getting an education, not just a degree. For all the people I knew in high school who agonized over where they wanted to go and would be willing to fork over ridiculous sums of money to go to a “better school”, you’d think the degree is all that matters. But if they don’t capitalize on the opportunities available, the way I’m doing at Carleton, no amount of money will help. While I had a brief crisis when I first read that article in April this year, I think it says a lot about how I’ve changed over the year that it now makes me feel better. Including books for two semesters and everything else, I’m probably totalling $7,000 per year of university. Four years for the degree, and I’m really not sure I could get the equivalent elsewhere.

        The only catch to all of this is that I’m probably failing horribly at a number of promises I once made. I said that I would live for the people in my life and find meaning in them, yet I’m mostly focused on myself. I promised I’d always be there for the people I care about, but now I expect them to come to me. I’ve said a lot of things I probably thought were trivial at the time, but I’ve now forgotten them so thoroughly I can only say I’m likely not staying true to my word. This kind of follows on from spending too much time “working,” but that doesn’t make it alright.

        I’ve upset people occasionally, sometimes severely so, but I think what’s worse is all the things I didn’t do. I don’t know if that’s going to change in the future. That’s probably what’s really important here. But I have no guarantees. So while it doesn’t really mean anything, know that I am truly sorry. I sincerely wish I’d been better in a dozen ways, and that I had taken the time to reach out instead of withdrawing. I’m no longer sure that doing too little is better than doing too much. For the people who still read all of this, you know who you are. To the people who cared enough to start reading, but decided to stop - I’m sorry about that, too.

        So here’s to 2011. I learned a lot, and I played a lot of Final Fantasy. Looking forward to 2012 and the downfall of Kefka.

Too busy planning for later, to think about right now

[title inspired by the least important line in Streetlight Manifesto’s ‘A Better Place, A Better Time’. The rest of the song is incredibly beautiful to me, too, but for entirely different reasons. Do me a favour and read the lyrics, alright? Whether or not you can connect the dots, I think you’ll get something out of it.]

        I read something in my psych textbook last year that’s really stuck with me. It was a single-line comment, something a good student knows they won’t be tested on, along the lines of “people with anxiety disorders often feel more in control of their lives when they worry about things.” I can guarantee that if I ask the people I know who’ve taken that exact same course, and read the exact same textbook, most of them wouldn’t even remember that part. What I can also tell you is that it’s more like a subtle reassurance than some sort of powerful feeling of controlling your own destiny. And that it takes a hell of a long time to think about the worst things that might happen, and debate how I should react or whether it’s worth the risk. It doesn’t feel good to take three hours working out a 30 second conversation; but think about what might have happened otherwise! I have to keep doing it, making mental conversation trees, guessing at people’s reactions, because to do otherwise is to give up the illusion of control, and risk facing problems I might not be prepared for.

        As you can probably guess, spontaneity isn’t one of my strengths. Makes me a terrible role player, too.

        The unfortunate problem is that I habitually use most of my downtime to think about these sorts of things. Worse still is the fact that trying to fall asleep is essentially infinite time to worry about things. Lifehacker posted an article this summer about dedicating time to worry - and not doing it during the rest of the day. It’s easier said than done, especially when you have a lot to do (and worry about), and when you’ve spent years replacing sleep with worrying. But it’s definitely something I need to work on, because it’s a big part of why I have trouble with people. Even though I know it’s true, I kind of have to remind myself that nobody is going to remember that time I said something dumb (even if I remember it forever), or expect me to be perfectly eloquent all the time (even if I regret not saying X for days afterwards, and why didn’t I think of that at the time!?). It’s a lot harder to carry on a conversation when I’m trying to keep all those things in mind. And it’s not like I often manage to map things out and predict how someone is going to react. It’s just a reassuring habit I fell into years ago.

        From the outside, you probably can’t tell how hard it is to break out of this pattern. It’s incredibly powerful, and incredibly pervasive. The associations get so strong that relapse is completely inevitable. Years of an almost ritualistic reliance on a seemingly harmless activity don’t go away overnight. Maybe you don’t want to see the harm it causes, or you can’t quite connect the dots. Either way, it sometimes seems a lot easier just to work around it rather than try to change.

        I’ll do it, though. I’m tired of being paralyzed as I hover over the send button, wondering whether I could improve the message (text, IM, e-mail) that I’ve been writing for 5-50 minutes. I’m tired of being tired, because I tried to go to bed early, but instead stayed up for two hours worrying, then woke up in the middle of the night and worried for another hour before falling back asleep. Tired of psyching myself out to the point where I can’t even talk to people, or talk in the presence of people when it comes to class discussion. It might take me six months, or it might take me two and a half years. But I’m tired of not being able to explain this to people, leaving them guessing as to what the problem actually is. I can take care of that problem now, while I work on the rest.

Hey Matt, Whatcha Up To?

        Had a “wonderful” experience this morning of trying to overcome my anxiety enough to speak up in my philosophy of mind class. Something I’ve done before, actually, although I’d never participated as significantly in the class discussion. For whatever reason, just the thought of raising my hand and presenting an argument was enough to leave me shaking due to anxiety. Maybe it was because I wasn’t sitting next to anyone I knew, though pretty much everybody was present (something about essays being assigned raises attendance dramatically). Maybe it was because I was doing more than just asking clarification questions after waiting to see if anyone else would (this might actually be it, because it didn’t bother me when I raised my hand at the start of class to say it was nice to finally read a more cognitive science-y paper). Or maybe it’s something else I haven’t though of yet. I still did it, though, because not only had I done the reading for the first time in weeks, it was like a checklist of all the things I’ve been learning about in other classes. Applications of Ungerleider and Mishkin’s cross-lesion studies to the multiple realizability problem? Hell yeah! Let’s get some actual evidence for our philosophical arguments, please and thank you.

        And yet, I spent most of the lecture alternately shivering anxiously, in anticipation perhaps, and then being frozen in fear after I’d finished talking and opened the floor to responses from the prof and the rest of the class. It’s not a public speaking thing, either, because I had the exact same feelings last night as I debated whether to talk to someone I’ve known for years. Figuratively shaking in my boots (what sort of savage wears shoes indoors? Come on, America) as I went to go knock on the door, though there was some potential for disaster there. Then barely able to express myself, even though I’d already spent more than a month thinking about what I wanted to say, on a pretty regular basis. There’s nothing for me to be afraid of, really, and yet it’s there anyway.

        But I manage! I’m doing pretty alright, lots better than I was anyway. Went to see Repo: The Genetic Opera with a couple of people, and against all odds I enjoyed it a lot. However, I’m not going to recommend that you watch it, unless there’s a shadowcast performing alongside. Have you heard of that? I hadn’t, but here it is in a nutshell: they take a movie, mainly Rocky Horror Picture Show and Repo, and then they have people who act out the scenes in front of it. So you take something that would (probably) suck and not be at all interesting to watch by yourself, and suddenly it’s amazing. It’s one of those “the whole is greater than the parts” kinds of thing. The next show isn’t until February, but I’m probably going to force some people to go see it with me… Hopefully they don’t hate it.

——————————————————–

        On an unrelated note, as for why I haven’t been all that talkative lately, school’s pretty busy right now. I’ve got a midterm thursday and another friday, both of which I’ve barely studied for so far. Hopefully it’ll be ok! One’s a multiple choice exam for my research methods class, which will probably be super easy. The other is in systems programming, and I may not survive. If I do (and against my better judgement), I’m going to go out for the cognitive science social event (the one and only, unless you count D&D) and maybe make a token effort at drinking. Meanwhile, assuming there are no hardware disasters (and I can’t guarantee that), we’re ready to run a few practice tests for the project I’m interning on! After that, it’s time to start running participants and collecting data, which is pretty exciting actually. We took some press photos for the lab, to use for all the “look what sorts of cool research students are doing here!” things. I think I’ll be allowed to post those, and they turned out fairly well actually. I clean up nice, guys.

        Oh, and apparently, interning is a word. Who knew!

Not Antisocial, Just Shy

[title courtesy of this XKCD shirt I’ve always liked, but known it would be stupid to actually wear. Also, I wrote this post… nearly two weeks ago, and since I’ve started talking about it with a few close friends it’s gotten a lot better. I’m only just posting it now because I know the rest of the people who will read it are exactly the people I haven’t spoken to enough, and I’m not sure how you’re all going to react. No pity, alright?]

       Now that classes have started again and I’m starting to see people I never spoke to last year, I’ve realized something strange. Without noticing it, I’ve developed pretty severe social anxiety. To the point where going to meet up with a bunch of linguistics students was physically difficult for me. Thinking about it hours in advance made me sick to my stomach - that was my first big hint. When I got there, I couldn’t even think of things to say, or was always ten minutes behind the current conversation. It was pretty brutal.


        Then I got to thinking about how little things have changed between Brittany and I now that she’s moved in at my mom’s - we see each other physically about as often as we used to speak by text/IM (both of which we’ve mostly stopped doing) when she lived in PEI. And I realized that I’ve been a bit off around her, too, never really knowing what to say and dreading the thought of starting a conversation. And it’s sad to think that one of my closest friends is now my roommate (half the time), and we never hang out, and I say it’s because I don’t want to intrude when I’m really just afraid. And worse is the fact that I’m sitting in the basement, trying to force myself to study, but I wind up being unable to concentrate because I’m just miserable and lonely. And I could just walk upstairs and say “hey, what’s up?” But I don’t. It’s been almost three months, and I haven’t done that once. It’s baffling, honestly, but only when you really think about it. As you can see, it’s taken me this long to notice, so there’s some positive self-deception for you. I’m slightly curious about whether I’m the last person to realize this, and whether I’ve always been like this, but I haven’t had the guts to ask.


        It gets worse, though, because then I think about it some more and realize it’s been a couple of years since I started a casual conversation like that at all. Including over IM. Only two or three years if we’re talking zero conversations whatsoever, but then, an epiphany - I’ve been like this since I first got on MSN in 8th grade. With few exceptions, I’ve always waited for other people to start the conversation or only ever started to talk to them when I had something specific to talk about - a funny webcomic, comment about a new game, whatever. Vael and I talk a lot over IM, but nine times out of ten, he starts the conversation, and the rest of the time I have something to show him or ask him about.

        [Errata: Vael says he counted and it’s roughly 50/50. But I was mainly thinking about a sort of “hey, what’s up” kind of thing that just leads naturally into a conversation. Plus, a lot of the time you don’t actually have anything to talk to someone about yet, so you don’t have much else to say.]

        So suddenly it’s come to light that I’ve never been comfortable starting a casual conversation. You can see how that might be a problem when it comes to getting to know people. It seems like I’ve made most of my friends by accident, considering the number of new friends I made during high school (just Vael) and the number I’ve made since moving to Ottawa (one, a few more depending on how much you lower your criteria for “friends”). Not to mention the piss-poor job I’ve done of keeping the friends I’d already made. And the others I’ve driven away trying to “help” them with all of their problems, because I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about… Or worse, the people I got to know simply because they needed someone to talk to about stuff like that.


        I’m working on it, though. Friday before last, I invited someone over for supper just for the sake of having some company. And I’ve felt a lot better since then, because it was a lot like hanging out with people once upon a time. And I’m not deliberately avoiding sitting near people I kind of know in class, though I’d still feel weird going and sitting down next to them. And thinking about just how deep the problems run has made me realize just how little I need to do in order to improve on my previous behaviour. So how’s that for low expectations! Spoke to a human being today, I’m so proud of myself. But, seriously, this is where psych 101 comes in and I realize I’ve had this avoidance learning thing going on for years. And I don’t intend to keep it up. Which is why I’m writing this, instead of posting sad song lyrics, or about how I’ll be FOREVER ALONE T.T, or how much I identify with Socially Awkward Penguin.


        I’m not looking for pity, and I’m not going to say “this is just how I am” or look for ways to cope with the symptoms (without actually dealing with the real problem). But hey, I have a cell phone and unlimited texting. If you don’t know it/aren’t in Canada, when my IM status doesn’t say I’m busy, feel free to say hello. I’m not ignoring you, and I don’t hate you either. I just don’t know where to start most of the time. But don’t do it too much! I can’t keep relying on other people to start conversations. I’ll be around, anyway. Plus, if you’ve read this far, I can only assume you’re either very interested in my life, or can’t think of anything more exciting to be doing. To both of those kinds of people, you may as well just say hello - I’ve got tons of contact info on facebook if you’ve got me there, or you can scroll down my ugly tumblr page and find a few options.

Be Nice To Customer Service Agents; Or, How I Got Myself a Smartphone

Last summer, when we moved to Ottawa, my mom decided that we should all have our own cell phones. My dad already had his own, so she got a 3-year contract family plan for herself, my brother, and I. Her phone, the main line, cost $35/month + $20/month for countrywide My5 call/text. The other two lines were each $30/month. Total: $115/month. We got the most basic crap phones you could get, because hey, we never needed fancy cell phones before. I started itching for an upgrade after a few months, but the reality was that all I needed to do was making one call per month and send text messages, so anything would do.

        BUT THEN DISASTER STRUCK. About a month ago, after being crushed and scratched by 30 kg (66 lb) bags of concrete mix, my phone’s signal quality went down drastically. To the point where I would have no signal anywhere in my house, for days at a time. My mom and brother had identical phones, and when placed beside each other, I would have no signal and they would have a perfect one. This was the excuse I was waiting for! The phone either needed to be repaired/replaced, or I’d get an upgrade. However, I can’t afford a data plan, so I needed to see if I could upgrade the phone without paying for wireless data. When Lifehacker posted about Geekaphone, a site that would suggest the perfect phone for your needs, I made a list and set off for the phone store.

        I asked after a handful of phones, and the only way I avoid a data plan would be to buy the phone off-contract for $400+, with the phones at the top of my list being $600. If I got a data plan, I’d get the “with a 2-year contract” price. However, I needed to pay a $35 administration fee for changing phones (offset by a $50 mail-in rebate), and a $120 “early upgrade fee” for not waiting out the contract. But again, this requires me to sign up for a $30/month data plan. I certainly can’t afford a $600 phone, and I definitely can’t afford to spend $700 on a data plan over the next two years. Well, I probably could in the long term, but with no income during the school year, it might be tough. And so, I resigned myself to finding out my options for an out-of-warranty replacement.

        Returning home, we dialed up our wireless provider and made our way to a customer service agent. It would cost $20 to replace my phone with an identical model, but for $40 I could get a Samsung A886 (meh), and for $80 I could get a Sony Ericson Xperia X1 (meh-ish). No matter what I got, I’d keep the same contract and not need to shell out for a data plan. To give me time to research the phones, my mom (who is nice and polite pretty much all the time) asked if we could change our plan to match the current offerings. Eventually, we came out of the deal paying $65/month for the main line and $15/month for the two additional lines, with 500 extra monthly daytime minutes and countrywide My5 for all three phones. Total: $95/month, for a better plan. Not bad, and we didn’t even have to yell and scream and talk to customer retention!

        I had grudgingly decided to go with the X1, if only for its sliding keyboard. However, since we’d earned a lot of goodwill from the customer service lady, I asked what kind of phone I could get for more than $80. The next step up was the Motorola Quench (known as the Cliq XT in the US) for $130. Officially, it’s stuck at Android 1.5 because there was no way to get 2.1 to perform adequately on the mediocre hardware. But recent updates to CyanogenMod have added support for the phone, so the decision was made: get the Quench, root it the day I get it, and optimize everything for performance. Since I spend most of my time either at home or on campus, I’ll have access to secure-ish WiFi most of the time. Why bother spending $30/month just so I can check Facebook while I’m on the bus?

        The only potential downside here is that the phone might just suck so much that nothing runs well on it, but with all the customization options, I’m hoping I can manage. As long as I keep in mind that it doesn’t have gigabytes of RAM, I should be able to run things pretty smoothly… one at a time, anyway.

        Until I get a hold of it around Friday, you’re safe from me talking about all the stuff I’m doing with it. But when I get it, expect to be inundated with an absolute nerdfest of Android-love.

Love Should Be Selfless, and Thoughts on Cheating

Part 2 of my post from yesterday. If you haven’t read it, this won’t make as much sense. I said that I would write about “how I see love, why I say that Brittany "cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it.“ Read on if you’re interested, and if not, you probably hate me by now. Sorry!

        I think the ideal form of love is selfless. If you really, truly love someone, then you should want them to be as happy as possible. If being in love requires you to get something out of it, then you don’t love them as much as you think you do. If I had forced Brittany to stay away from this guy, because I really did think that being with her was the only way I could be happy, that wouldn’t have been love. Or, at least, it would have been showing that I loved myself the most, and cared more about my happiness than hers. I let her go because I knew that if it worked out, she would be happier with him than she ever would be with me. We might have been content together, but because she didn’t truly love me, it wouldn’t be a perfect, happily-ever-after kind of thing.

        This is mainly a romantic thing, because it’s not like you ever formally agree to spend the rest of your life with your closest friends. Still, when you care about someone a lot, you should be more interested in what you can do for them than what they can do for you. Since they (hopefully) care about you the same way, they’ll take care of you just as selflessly. And everyone wins.

        So, as for infidelity specifically, I should start by saying that I wouldn’t ever do something like that to begin with. The fact that I could accept it from my partner doesn’t mean that I condone it. To me, the worst thing about a one-night stand would be if it was kept a secret - that’s a betrayal of trust, which hurts. Who cares about the sex at that point? If they come clean right away and don’t make a habit of it, it’s forgivable. And could you really blame someone if they fell in love with someone else? It sucks, but sometimes people just click. Again, if they keep it a secret and start seeing someone else, that’s intentional and wrong. But it’s love, and if they’d be happier that way, let them go and move on. I do think that we can be monogamous with the right partners, and I’m willing to forgive a lot. And, yeah, I’m tough enough to let someone go so they can be happy. It’s hard to appreciate right away, but I think it’s the best decision to make.

        It never really bothered me that much that Brittany was with this other guy, that she had feelings for him, and so on. It was never a secret - she asked for my permission repeatedly, and I gave it every time, with the one condition being that she not do anything behind my back. If she’d done all of this and pretended our relationship was fine until the day that we broke up, I would have been infinitely more hurt. I would have no issues telling people that she cheated on me. If I were to say that now, it would make it seem like I was victimized - when in reality I personally encouraged her to go after this guy. Yeah, we were "officially” together while all of this was going on, but that really doesn’t matter. She didn’t want to hurt me, but at the same time, she was falling in love with this guy and going back to me would have been impossible. I can’t honestly say “no, you should stop yourself from falling in love, and also you should stay in a relationship where you are content rather than search for one where you are truly happy.” Even if someone could do that, why would they? And why would you want them to?

        Anyway, now you probably understand better why neither of us is honestly worried about old feelings coming back. The people who were worried about that, they don’t know this stuff - they just know that we dated in the past and now I’m offering her a place to stay. I’m still surprised that I’ve never posted about this before, but now I have and now you know! It’s probably not worth the effort to explain all of this to people so that they can understand why we could live together and not consider being more than friends. But the people who know we were together ought to know why we broke up, and not just that we did.

        I mean, man. How did I not write about this before? Still amazed by that.