A winding look at several topics

Eating breakfast this morning, I’ve been contemplating a few things.  The first is a YouTube video showcasing why I don’t believe in the Big Bang Theory.  If you are just reading this, here’s my argument. 

Before we begin, we have to agree to one fact.  Here is that fact: the universe is not infinitely old. 

Good?  Do we both agree?

Here’s the question I have for anyone who believes in the Big Bang Theory.  How did nothing become something?   If your answer is “we don’t know, but we think science can figure it out”, I’ll give you a pass and we can agree to disagree.  At least you are thinking deeply about the subject and understand the limitations of your argument.

For the rest of you, let’s go to Chemistry.  In lab Chemistry, we are taught the output of a chemical reaction is always equal to the input.  Matter is neither created nor destroyed in the process.  It simply assumes a new shape.  If that is true, then it has always been true.  So, despite everything we are still dealing with the same amount of matter that was there when the world was first created.  Right?

If high school Chemistry is true and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and our first premise is true that the universe is not infinitely old, then we have all the information we need to deconstruct the Big Bang Theory.  So, if you know the age of something, you know an age at which the object didn’t exist.  Except the object we’re talking about here is time, space, and the universe.  So, if we know that the universe is X years old, we also know that at any point greater than X, the universe didn’t exist.  Neither did matter, or mass, or time, or anything else. 

If you want to argue there was something there, you are violating our only rule.  Remember, the universe is not infinitely old.  If the universe is not infinitely old, there was to be a creation point.  Before the creation point, there was nothing.  No time, no space, no matter, no cosmic mismasa, no ether, no nothing.

So the question becomes again: how did nothing become something?

The other thing I’ve been contemplating was a parallel between evolution and animal conservation.  Evolution says “the best equipped of an animal will survive”.  That may not be the fastest, or the smartest animal.  It may be the one with different coloring. 

So the question becomes why do we conserve animals and prevent them extinction? 

The answer always seems to be human encroachment.  But think of the pigeon.  The pigeon is a good example of adaptation versus human encroachment.  Pigeons used to be primarily white.  Now, most are a dingy grey that blends in with buildings.  The best equipped pigeon to survive did despite the encroachment of humanity.  The pigeon adapted to survive and thrive in new environments. 

So the answer isn’t human encroachment.  The survival of the pigeon also makes me wonder about other “endangered animals”.  If a pigeon is capable of adapting to human habitation and thrive, why can’t other animals?  Given the general thought of many “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”, then animal conservation makes no sense.  What makes these animals that haven’t adapted to new circumstances and situations worth saving?  What makes them better than any other animal?  Do the rules not apply?  The greatest good for the greatest number of people is the entire idea. 

I don’t believe in the idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”.  I’m also not arguing for keeping endangered animals. 

So the logical conclusion for me is to simply let the animals that can’t adapt perish.  If a pigeon can adapt, why can’t any other animal?  Can a cow start tasting bad?  Certain plants have evolved that defense.  Yet despite years and years of breeding, cows still taste good.

So it seems evolution has been very selective about where it has been applied.  Seems strange.  Maybe I just haven’t drug time out far enough.  But then if you drag time out far enough, then eventually some other animal should evolve to sentience. 

And that hasn’t happened yet.

Behind Schedule

So, I’m behind schedule.  And now that I know it, I can do something to fix that.  Sure, this is a long term goal set out over a long period, and it’s hard to guesstimate how long something is going to take.  But tracking a bit of data can be effectively used to determine whether you are ahead of schedule or behind schedule.

Here’s how I did it with a book.  I have a spreadsheet.  It keeps track of current location, total pages, percent complete, average increase, and days between reading.  I have all these to determine if I’m putting in the work necessary to accomplish the goal.  In this case, I’m reading a book to learn material.  Once I have read the book and learned the material, I will then build a prototype.  The prototype will be working by January 1, 2015.  So I’ve got limited time in which to read the book to learn the material.  So I need to be going through a certain number of pages per day.

After a few days of reading, I then calculate the average increase.  Then, it’s simple math.  

(Total pages – current page) / Average = days to complete the book

Now, with that number I can figure out whether I am ahead of schedule, behind schedule, or right on track.  I have a goal of completing this particular book in 60 sessions of 30 minutes per session.  I based that off 15 pages per 30 minute session even though I usually read faster than a page a minute.  But if you aren’t putting in 30 minutes of reading per day, then you aren’t going to hit your targets.

And despite my best intentions, I now know that I am behind my schedule.  The “so very easy” 15 pages in 30 minutes turned out to be more than I’m currently reading.  That’s one thing I gathered from Timothy Ferriss in The 4 Hour Work Week.  Anything working doing is work measuring and recording.

Rather than try to guess at how successful you are, find something to measure it.  Playing in the backyard with my kids, I’ve been trying to do a cartwheel.  Mostly for fun, but slightly because I’m moderately interested in the idea of parkour.  The goal of parkour is seamless movement through an environment at a high pace.  In order to do so, you need a decent bit of athleticism and coordination.  So I’ve been doing small things to work towards that. 

On cartwheels, I got to the point of thinking I was doing a decent job.  So I decided to record me doing a few cartwheels to see what I looked like doing cartwheels.  The hand position looked good, but I wasn’t fully extending my legs.  So I was kind of cramped looking, and my cartwheels looked weird.  They also lacked the seamless look that I was interested in the movement. 

So, far I haven’t fixed the cartwheel.  But I know  I need to read more than I have been reading in order to accomplish what I want to achieve.  

measuring task without end

I think I’m faced with an endless task quandary.  Or at least I think that’s what I’d like to call it.  I’m working on a new short story that will go with a collection of other short stories from various times and eventually be published as my next book on Amazon Kindle.  I’m currently sitting at about 11,000 words on the book.  It’s probably going to take a good six or seven thousand more to finish the story the way I want to finish it.  It will be a nice section in a fairly decent outpouring of work.

Here’s the problem.  I don’t know when this story is going to end, so I have no idea how much more I’m going to write on it.  I don’t know if it’s going to be done in ten sessions or in thirty.  I know I’ve still got quite a bit to go, and making it all interesting and worth reading is part of the challenge. 

In comparison, I’m reading a book about 30 minutes a night and have completed about 1/3 of the book.  I can keep track of how much I’m reading every day and realize just how close to finishing I’m am.  I can judge progress so I can put a deadline on finishing.  With the story I’m writing, all I can do is write, and continue to write at a decent pace so the word count increases on a steady basis and I can see progress being made. 

Since I started taking good track of how much I write, I’ve probably written 4,000 words.  And I’ve done that in less time than it took me to write the original chunk.  So I guess I need to go with what Steven King said and just write.  Write and write and write and write.  Show up every day and write.  Because that’s the only way the story is going to get done. 

If you’d like to know why I haven’t added a new story in three or four years it’s because I haven’t put the effort into writing that I originally put into creating the first story.  I wrote Seven Days over a decent amount of time, but the main part of it was finished in about 2-3 months.  I’d go to the Student Center every day, find a bench and sit down with my laptop and crank out story until my laptop battery died.  Which sometimes didn’t take long, because my laptop battery sucked in those days. 

In the end, it was nothing more than sheer work to get the story finished.  Really, it seemed to me like I had to treat it like a job.  I had to show up every day, regardless of what my brain was telling me.  Because there is always a little part inside your brain telling you to wait until the motivation strikes.  Or wait until you “get an idea”.  Strangely enough, most of the ideas I used in the story flowed together in the midst of writing the story.  I had no idea where anything was going until I started writing it, and even towards the end I still didn’t know.  I would reach the end of an idea, and a new idea would be there, waiting for me to work on.

Hence the purpose of keeping track of my writing.  To see progress and to make sure I’m actually doing the work necessary to complete the story.  

The problem in the mirror

We started our kids in home school yesterday.  We’ve been called crazy by a lot of people, but I’m okay with that.  Generally, those people that call us crazy are also the same ones that keep asking for money because they don’t have any food.  They don’t have any food because they wrongly prioritized their income and paid the cable and internet bill instead of buying food.

It’s been 2 ½ years of hard budgeting since the last time I had trouble paying rent or buying food.  Maybe more.  I guess I learned the right way to do things, and now I do those things constantly.  These are the same people who try to show off their brilliance by doing intelligence tests on Facebook.  It takes 5^th grade level math to run a budget.  Maybe even less than that.  But 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  Where’s the intelligence? 

I think we’ve become caught up in a race to learn useless knowledge.  I think there is a belief that states “if the answer is simple, the answer is wrong”.  And people just keep trekking after supremely complex answers to simple problems.  It takes knowledge learned in 5^th grade to balance a budget.  Yet 70% can’t.   

So it leads me to believe that there is considerably more to the economic failures of individuals than is originally assumed.  I guess you could say I try to look at root causes to solve problems.  And one of the ideas I’ve thought about is the root cause of financial failure in most people is victim thinking. 

In victim thinking the problem is always someone else.  It is never the individual.  Because the person believes the problem is never their fault, they never work to fix whatever the problem is.  It’s easy to blame a manager for not getting promoted.  It’s hard to say “I’m a lazy bum”.  But frequently that’s the case.  It’s obvious from people on the outside, but not so obvious from people on the inside. 

I think it narrows down to a basic fact: you can either admit the problem is you and start succeeding, or you can blame other people and give up.  It’s a simple choice.   But a hard one. 

As Dave Ramsey has said though, if you admit that you are the problem, then you can also know exactly what to fix to get rid of the problem: you.  You are the only thing you can change in your life.  You can’t change your past.  You can’t change your race.  You can’t change your ethnicity.  But you can change your blaming, complaining mindset and turn the world inside out.

As for book recommendations today, I’d say QBQ! The Question Behind the Question by John Miller.  It’s a short book, but a good one.

Return to Quicken

I’ve been contemplating buying Quicken 2014 Deluxe.  My last version was Quicken 2011 Deluxe.  Intuit decided they needed a new paycheck to do the exact same thing they did previously, so I can no longer download my bank information and have it automatically entered.  All manual entry if I want to do that type of thing.  I really don’t.  I manage my account well, so I know how much I have and I review it several times a week.  Note the “managed” part of the account. 

So I guess I wonder if I should repurchase it.  I’ve been out of service with Quicken since the end of April, though I slowly quit using it prior to that because the darn thing wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do.  It didn’t seem to understand the term “monthly budget”.   Telling me I’m over budget because I’ve got rent scheduled for the next year and I don’t have the money to pay Decembers rent in February is kind of stupid to me.  But that is what Quicken does.  Maybe it thinks I’m trying to prepare for apocalypse. 

So stupid.  Have they fixed any of this?  I doubt it.  But some part of me thinks I should go get it just to see if it anything is better.  I do wonder if Quicken is the best because everything else sets the bar so low.  But I digress.  Could be I’m just complaining because I feel like it.  Seems like a good thing to do.

I think the other, and real, problem is a mental problem.  When my gas account gets up high, I think of things to go off and blow it on that don’t have anything to do with vehicle maintenance.  I need to go replace my front tires and all my shocks.  But that wouldn’t be “fun” or exciting.  Buying tires is kind of like having a root canal.  I haven’t had a root canal, but I have bought tires.  It was somewhere in the “supremely boring” category.  And did I mention expensive?  Yeah, that too. 

Going back to the budget I wonder if there is really anything useful for me in Quicken that I don’t already do.  Other than categorizing things and figuring out where money goes, I don’t know.  I do yearly budgets with an Excel spreadsheet and that works fine.  Seems to work a lot better than the over complexity of Quicken.  See, Quicken operates for casual budgeters.  I’m an “every dollar on paper on purpose” budgeter.  There is no “left over” money at the end of the month.  Because I spent every single bit of it before I ever got it.

Now, sometimes that money is spent in the “blow” category.  Sometimes it’s spent on rent.  But it’s all got a name and a purpose.  I know when the bills come due and I know the generally amounts.  I know electricity and gas swap being horrible based on the season.  I know when I’m going to put money into savings and when I’m going to be short.  I always know.  Because my life is balanced off a budget of me not working a single minute of overtime.  And I always work overtime.  There is always a degree of flexibility there that allow me to do whatever I need to do.   And if I truly am short, then I’ve got $1,000 in an emergency fund to make the problem go away.  Simple.

I guess the end of this is I don’t want Quicken.  I just thought I did.  There is nothing it can provide me that I don’t already do or have.  And that $55 (or $65 or $48, depending on where you look) can easily be spent paying off debit or buying tires.