![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Every so often, little interesting chunks of life come up. Here are a few of them.
- the gospel of John and gas stations in middle Georgia
I'd meant to write about this a while ago... but I'm doing it now. Last week, when I was driving back home from Tech on Wednesday afternoon, I stopped in at this little "Marathon" gas station in the middle of Georgia to fill up, and the place had little chunks of scripture on cardboard all over; it felt like the work of one particularly biblically-minded individual, and when I was paying for the gas, I got the impression that this individual was the woman behind the counter... she just felt like that. As I stepped from the store, I looked at the front window again, and on a big thing of white cardboard was a handwritten sign that read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
- John 1:1-5
For whatever reason, I think to myself, "I wonder how much she's thought about this..." ... and I step back inside and without preamble, I ask the woman at the cash register about this; just in these five lines, we get both a) "without him nothing was made that has been made" and b) "the darkness does not understand it"... leading us to "so where's the darkness from?". She seems unsurprised, though, and calmly says to me, "Oh, here's the preacher."
So clearly, right behind me, in the convenience store in the middle of rural Georgia, when I'm asking the woman behind the counter about the gospel of John, is The Preacher, whom you wouldn't've have recognized as such. But he was pretty cool; this very southern fellow with calloused, somewhat greasy hands, a bit overweight, wearing camouflage pants... and we talked about that particular bit for a while, walked around the whole "so where does the darkness come from?" bit, and he eventually pulled the "Well, there are some things that we just have to accept on faith, and we'll know when we get to heaven" card. Which was about what I'd expected; can't really fault him for that. What was interesting was his willingness to talk about this... he definitely gets Cool Points.
- trip back: Taqueria Jesus Maria
In Omega, Georgia, which is a small town that I always drive through on my way between Tallahassee and Atlanta, there's a little place that I've always wanted to check out: the Taqueria Jesus Maria ("Jesus and Mary Taco Store"), which is right near the Videotienda Jesus Maria, both of which are done up with red/white/green signs (which are the colours of the Mexican flag). You probably won't be suprised to read that it's a super-authentic Mexican place, staffed by actual authentic Mexican folks and serving an authentic Mexican clientele.
So this time, first time ever, I'm driving back from Tallahassee to Tech, and I think "this time, I'll stop in." So I do. And the two women working at the counter look quite confused to see me walk in... they won't speak to me (although I think I greeted them in Spanish), and they go in the back and come out with another girl, whom I suppose is the official English interpreter... I tried to speak to her in Spanish as well, but she kept switching to English... and hers apparently wasn't very good, because she seemed kinda confused as to what I meant by asking what was in the sopes... I thought I was pretty clear about how I wanted a veggie sope...
... but apparently it wasn't, because I found after biting into it (whilst driving) that it had ground beef under the cheese and lettuce... bleah :-\
As a general rule, gentle readers -- if someone addresses you in your native language, trust that they speak that language and let them continue speaking it.
- the most beautiful girl on the entire planet
So on Tuesday, I'd been up all night to get my cs4001 paper done. That went pretty well, actually. But after this experience, I was, you know, sleep-dep'd from having been up all night... and I saw this beautiful Asian girl sitting in front of me in my prob-stat class. I just sat watching her, for a while, and felt inspired, so I started jotting down (I edited it a bit, tonight):
( poem: "second day" )
... I was wondering why I didn't remember this lovely creature, or hadn't seen her before, or something... but then she turned around, and didn't turn out to be all that attractive. *shrugs* The mind does strange things, especially on day #2.
- the most beautiful language on the entire planet
Common LISP is freaking crazy. I just need to start on things earlier. For that last AI project, I had one function that had an array of lambda bodies, and I was making use of the "loop for ... collect" thing, where you can have a loop whose return value is a list. How can you not love a language that does this? I think I'm getting comfortable thinking in LISP-y terms, which is good... if I keep doing the AI thing, then there will be many more opportunities to make LISP-y thinking happen.
- tonight
We went to the Disco Diner, and Marty![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
samarin and myself were at the Erato coffeehouse, and people were reading poetry (Andrew and Marty, particularly -- Marty read this really excellent poem that he'd written, which dealt with his experience as a forest ranger, and he's Poet Man), and I got up and had a fairly well-received reading of that last chunk, which was pleasing... because obviously approval from other people is what makes the world go 'round. I like the Erato folks, I've decided :) Pretty cool...
... and that, as they say, was that. Pretty long entry. Thanks for reading :)
- the gospel of John and gas stations in middle Georgia
I'd meant to write about this a while ago... but I'm doing it now. Last week, when I was driving back home from Tech on Wednesday afternoon, I stopped in at this little "Marathon" gas station in the middle of Georgia to fill up, and the place had little chunks of scripture on cardboard all over; it felt like the work of one particularly biblically-minded individual, and when I was paying for the gas, I got the impression that this individual was the woman behind the counter... she just felt like that. As I stepped from the store, I looked at the front window again, and on a big thing of white cardboard was a handwritten sign that read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
- John 1:1-5
For whatever reason, I think to myself, "I wonder how much she's thought about this..." ... and I step back inside and without preamble, I ask the woman at the cash register about this; just in these five lines, we get both a) "without him nothing was made that has been made" and b) "the darkness does not understand it"... leading us to "so where's the darkness from?". She seems unsurprised, though, and calmly says to me, "Oh, here's the preacher."
So clearly, right behind me, in the convenience store in the middle of rural Georgia, when I'm asking the woman behind the counter about the gospel of John, is The Preacher, whom you wouldn't've have recognized as such. But he was pretty cool; this very southern fellow with calloused, somewhat greasy hands, a bit overweight, wearing camouflage pants... and we talked about that particular bit for a while, walked around the whole "so where does the darkness come from?" bit, and he eventually pulled the "Well, there are some things that we just have to accept on faith, and we'll know when we get to heaven" card. Which was about what I'd expected; can't really fault him for that. What was interesting was his willingness to talk about this... he definitely gets Cool Points.
- trip back: Taqueria Jesus Maria
In Omega, Georgia, which is a small town that I always drive through on my way between Tallahassee and Atlanta, there's a little place that I've always wanted to check out: the Taqueria Jesus Maria ("Jesus and Mary Taco Store"), which is right near the Videotienda Jesus Maria, both of which are done up with red/white/green signs (which are the colours of the Mexican flag). You probably won't be suprised to read that it's a super-authentic Mexican place, staffed by actual authentic Mexican folks and serving an authentic Mexican clientele.
So this time, first time ever, I'm driving back from Tallahassee to Tech, and I think "this time, I'll stop in." So I do. And the two women working at the counter look quite confused to see me walk in... they won't speak to me (although I think I greeted them in Spanish), and they go in the back and come out with another girl, whom I suppose is the official English interpreter... I tried to speak to her in Spanish as well, but she kept switching to English... and hers apparently wasn't very good, because she seemed kinda confused as to what I meant by asking what was in the sopes... I thought I was pretty clear about how I wanted a veggie sope...
... but apparently it wasn't, because I found after biting into it (whilst driving) that it had ground beef under the cheese and lettuce... bleah :-\
As a general rule, gentle readers -- if someone addresses you in your native language, trust that they speak that language and let them continue speaking it.
- the most beautiful girl on the entire planet
So on Tuesday, I'd been up all night to get my cs4001 paper done. That went pretty well, actually. But after this experience, I was, you know, sleep-dep'd from having been up all night... and I saw this beautiful Asian girl sitting in front of me in my prob-stat class. I just sat watching her, for a while, and felt inspired, so I started jotting down (I edited it a bit, tonight):
( poem: "second day" )
... I was wondering why I didn't remember this lovely creature, or hadn't seen her before, or something... but then she turned around, and didn't turn out to be all that attractive. *shrugs* The mind does strange things, especially on day #2.
- the most beautiful language on the entire planet
Common LISP is freaking crazy. I just need to start on things earlier. For that last AI project, I had one function that had an array of lambda bodies, and I was making use of the "loop for ... collect" thing, where you can have a loop whose return value is a list. How can you not love a language that does this? I think I'm getting comfortable thinking in LISP-y terms, which is good... if I keep doing the AI thing, then there will be many more opportunities to make LISP-y thinking happen.
- tonight
We went to the Disco Diner, and Marty
samarin and myself were at the Erato coffeehouse, and people were reading poetry (Andrew and Marty, particularly -- Marty read this really excellent poem that he'd written, which dealt with his experience as a forest ranger, and he's Poet Man), and I got up and had a fairly well-received reading of that last chunk, which was pleasing... because obviously approval from other people is what makes the world go 'round. I like the Erato folks, I've decided :) Pretty cool...... and that, as they say, was that. Pretty long entry. Thanks for reading :)
