Like most people I suspect, I didn’t know the difference between an acronym and an initialization until quite recently.
An acronym is a series of letters pronounced as a word. An initialization is a series of letters pronounced as individual letters.
For example, ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, is pronounced “an-see.” But AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, is pronounced “aigh-aigh-are-pee.”
Now you know.
Updated: November 2, 2016. Floyd Jasinski wrote me and explained that my selection of AARP as the initialization example was incorrect as it is pronounced as a word, sounding a bit like “harp”. He suggests that FCC, pronounced “eff-see-see" would be a better example.
Somehow I completely forgot about and missed the eleventh anniversary of zanshin.net. The Whois record shows that this site was registered on February 20, 1996.
The nearly 1200 entries here (most since 2000) catalog just a fraction of what has happened in my life in the intervening 3,989 days.
Here’s to the next eleven years.
Happy Pi Day!
More Pi goodness.
My latest karate related blog posting is now available. Go have a read.
Recently, and quite by accident, I discovered what appeared to be a legitimate karate dojo just five minutes drive from my new office location. After conferring with a friend who had studied in the style himself, and learning that the association was well regarded, I decided to have a look.
The dojo facility is incredible, perhaps the nicest dojo I’ve seen. My tour left me impressed and so I made plans to return and try a workout or two or more. I’ve been rehabilitating a pulled groin injury and the lower back compensation injury for months now - my primary question was, “am I healthy enough to do this once again?”
After some scheduling delays, and some time screwing up my courage, I went for the first workout this past Tuesday at noon. It was very good. A surprising amount of what I had known intimately before came back from the recesses of my mind. The time passed quickly, and by the end of the workout I was pleasantly surprised to find I wasn’t in pain. I know that my motivations for starting karate again are far different from what they were when I originally started in 1990. Whether my new motivation is drive enough for me to continue the path back towards black belt rank remains to be seen.
You can read more about my adventures in karate at zanshin.wordpress.com.
To turn on inline autocomplete in the Firefox web browser…
Why this isn’t exposed in the preferences I’ll never know.
This morning I attended a piano pedagogy workshop that focused on 20th and 21st century music and the techniques for teaching these pieces. Even though I don’t play piano I find striking similarities between some of the body kinetics of proper posture and arm weight, and of energy flow from the hips to the hands that you find in martial arts with what your find in properly taught piano.
The single most interesting thought I got from the workshop today was the idea of starting with the ending, and working backwards. The difficulty in music is learning the notes at the same time as you are learning the rhythm at the same time you are learning the fingering or playing technique. To many things all at once and it becomes overwhelming. In martial arts we break complex (and even basic) techniques down into pieces so that the student can focus on one thing at a time. The maxim used is “you learn fast what you practice slow.”
The idea of starting with the goal is not unique to piano pedagogy or martial arts instruction. It can be found again and again in all facets of life. The newest software development techniques, known commonly as extreme programming, center around the idea of a user story that describes the goal for the software or interface. The test-driven development technique starts with a test for each function in the module. Once those are in place you code until all the tests run successfully. Steve Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Successful People talks about imagining the goal first and working backward from there. Even going so far as to have you imagine your funeral and what people will say about you there.
So much of our lives are centered around moving forward, around starting with number 1 on the list and working down. Perhaps we should step back and take note of the power of starting at the ending and working backwards more.
Last year, after getting all the necessary 1099 and W2 forms in the mail, I sat down and did my taxes. They are mildly complex since I live in one state and work in another and, at the time, worked for an employer who couldn’t be bothered to withhold the proper state’s taxes. So I file in my state of residence first to get a huge refund, and then take that money and file in the state of work to pay what I owe. I netted about $200 in the process so it wasn’t all bad.
Federally last year was a bit complicated too. Michele’s death during the year took me down a whole new path in TurboTax, and the sale at a loss of the house in Illinois made for interesting answers to questions too.
I know that I wasn’t thinking too clearly in early February last year, and my memory of that time is a bit hazy as well so I can’t say for certain if TurboTax offered to help me recalculate anything in preparation for this year. What I missed, and what no one told me, is that my W4 filling with my employer had the wrong exemption category checked. I was down as married and not single. This meant that not enough money was being withheld from each check. Oops.
I’ve not completed my return this year, but a quick and dirty run through the process indicates that I’ll owe a couple grand. Fortunately I’ve managed to save a couple of grand so I should be okay. I hate to have to start my savings all over again, but not adding to my IRS woes is a very good cause for the money.
Still, I wish someone had told me sooner about the need to re-file my W4 based on my change in status. You’d think that the IRS would note my change in status, after all it was prominent on my 1040 last year, and automatically trigger a notice to me to adjust my withholdings. You’d think that and you’d be disappointed.
In the world of software construction, refactoring is the activity whereby code is modified or enhanced. Perhaps you discovered that two separate pieces of code are performing the same function; you create a new home for the common code, remove it from the two original locations and replace it there with a call to the new, shared routine. You have refactored the code.
Some refactorings I am currently working on:
What are you refactoring in your life?