on repairs - adventure awaits and so too inertia

 First, I think most of us are familiar with the fact repairs take time, usually longer than new installs.  And it commonly takes longer to remove the current piece (or what keeps it in place)  than it does to reverse the steps once you've gotten to the replacement stage.  Perhaps this is a generalization on hill-climbing, where to climb a hill takes longer than to fall down that hill.

Today's repair was a  single handle cartridge value replacement to stop a leaky faucet. This is not a difficult repair at all.  (I had the needed cartridge model from having replaced this years before when it was leaking at the stem handle. So I had that as a head start. )

As to the actual replacement done today, initially the set screw that held the decorative handle to the valve stem was stuck. This set screw didn't not want to budge. No. When it finally did, I considered that I might have snapped it. And then with the set screw removed - the decorative handle took minutes and minutes of prying it and nudging it off with a screw driver tip, plus a hard vertical pull.)

After these stuck pieces were separated, the rest was textbook (erh, YouTube step X).  And it reminded me of how much plumbing repairs can be like IT repairs. (Yes, it usually takes longer than you thought it would.)  Specifically, the bit about getting the parts corroded and stuck to move, so one can advance with the needed replacement.  In IT repairs getting to the replacement can be stymied by the inertia in the system. And you can place blame, but really it is just inertia in the system.  While adventure awaits, inertia is always there, too.

Prelude: The rate setters' children

 Is it a sucker punch, or a sucker's payoff?

Either you see it or you don't. And both of you lose in the end if one of you is left to lose.

What?

Maybe, You've got the problem all wrong. The problem space, the way you think about it.

Is it likely possible, or likely the case?

Oh, who are you?  And where do you live - 

We live in the house of knowledge. We are the rate setters' children

On being a novice

 There’s this feeling or knowledge that I am a novice.  Such a novice, in this age, in this day, in this moment.  I am rather sure there’s not a way around it.  Sure there are moments, perhaps of grace when I feel the sense of expertise at some process.

The sense of expertise is fleeting and back comes the opposite sense.

And the feeling/knowledge of being a novice is being aware of my human nature, and the human condition. It is exciting and anxious, fun and dreadful, depending on the nature of the newness, and the strength of my imagination set in the firmament of my faith.

There is the past. And given the past, perhaps I could be less a novice and more an expert. However, the moment breaks new today, and while the past informs it doesn’t dictate exactly a path.  And even if it did it might not be taken, because I am a novice.

There are paths, roads and rivers.  Some of these created by me, some by others, and some by the effort of me and others. Hand in hand, stone by stone, step by step I and we progressing on.  Each of us appreciating the novice in the other,  the moments of graceful expertise, and all the other points between those extremes.

Breath for another step, faith to catch me when I stumble on a stone. I am still learning as long as I breath.

On Rust expressions and statements

 Compared to C and Ruby there is a fundamental difference in the way Rust treats statements and expressions.

Statements do not return a value.  

Expressions return values.

Rust is expression heavy, statement light. Yet from a control aspect…statements are primarily used to create a boundary  and proscribe orderliness of expressions.  It can be a tangle.

Guide to Rust reader.  Remember statements end with semicolons.

Semicolon ending code fragbits are statements.  Yes, expression statements, one of  three statements, yes it ends in semicolons too.  Yet, if your expression statement is just expressions, when ending the block with cruscteans curly bracket claws can skip the semicolon, but that way requires the result type is ().

The other two statements, which are declaration statements , are let statements and item statements and they require semicolons regardless.

Non-semicolon ending code are expressions, generally, see the expression statement bit above and take it for what it is, confusingly crazy to reading Rust and parsing the world as statements and expressions as an easy first pass.  

But there is a joy to in delving into the mystery of logic writ by others.  Especially when we know how much trouble a programmer ( and the body of code of such programmers) can easily fall into with a language like C.  C is a form of beauty. I feel fear in writing C. And what ever comfort level with C, Rust is a languages which codes more safely. I feel less anxious coding in Rust. And what ever code I might produce for use.

Still many more things to learn about a Rust…

For addition information see https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/statements-and-expressions.html

On school resources

 First, a while back I was surprised to hear that schools pay police as school resource officers. Seriously, I thought it a cruel joke.  On somber reflection, it sounds right for some situations as a community can determine for themselves. Still it is a sad set of affairs and not one we should come to expect.

I do think in the face of  a global pandemic we should afford resources for providing school health resource officers.  Yeah - bring back nurses in schools. 

If we want to prevent additional suffering and lost of lives  in this pandemic, we can do that with school health resource officers in schools.  There are a list of important duties this role would hold. For one follow the history of the polio pandemic in America and the part that schools played in reducing the paralysis of polio.  And the role they can play in making sure students have other vaccinations.  And the thousand other smaller things nurses do like check temps, calling for help when needed, conducting eyesight test, etc.  

On change across time

 First, an environment with two alleles in competition, one at 10 percent, the other at 90 percent will swap  relative percentages if the population having 10 percent increases its efficiency by 10 percent per generation.[1] Now the relative speed of change between populations in a system of systems depends on the time span of the generation. 

Generation upon generation, the overlap of one cycle in another has rate with relative change to a common time base.  For example, consider the days of a week, the weeks in a year, the seasons in a year, and the rate of change for two populations, where the population having 10 percent is spawning a new generation every day versus every year. 

Thomas J Watson Sr  said: To increase your number of successes you have to increase your failure rate.”   Thought another way: to increase your success rate then decrease your failure number.  To increase your success rate pay attention to the individual failures, and celebrate the successes!

1. Wilson, E. O., & Kaspari, D. C. (2019). Genesis: The deep origin of societies. Pp 44 - 47.

On exhilaration

 First, the complete unknown of the situation was exhilarating in ways I later came to appreciate. I came to a point where the day was the day, and yes it was new and yes there were different choices available. Yes, mistakes may occur.  It came on a moment when I reasoned about forfeiting to not now. It came on a moment when faith in the future was fanciful. And it abided at the edges of many starts and even some finish lines.

It caught me at the most when I tried to trap it. I felt the wildest wilderness when I came just to watch it as what it was.

The exhilaration was sustaining, as much as what some might call anxiety. If the anxiety about the universe can vibrate in a moment, then why not exhilaration?