Wikipedia, the antagonist of the "Know-It-All"

I love Wikipedia for its seeming endless supply of well written articles about anything from the meaning of 'Big-O' notation to the descrition of TV shows like Heroes. My only problem with it is the depth of the knowledge it holds. To demonstrate what I mean, let me take you through a normal WP session...

Hmm, let's look up Prime numbers. I start to read the description, but in the first couple of words I see links to Natural Numbers and Divisors, all of which I should, by inference, understand to better understand my original target, Prime Numbers. So I start with Natural Numbers, in the first sentence alone I come across 4 more linked references, Mathematics, Positive, Non-Negative and Integers. On and on it goes in an endless spiral of information, each linked reference leading you to more, often in a geometric progression using a common ration greater than one!

What can I, a one-time 'Know-It-All' do in the face of such depth of content? I have two options, actually: continue to click, click, click, hoping I will eventually get to that article that simply says "You've reached the END of Wikipedia, please put an icepack on your head, take two pain-relievers and check back in a few days for more links" or I curl up in a ball and whimper quietly to myself in the corner.

Sometimes I choose the former, some days the latter...

Coffee Talk

My friend Dave; late-night coffee & chat session.

Multimedia message

You've been down that road before.

Save me from myself

What makes different people react differently to stress? Why is it some people will get depressed and tune out the world while others get even more involved than they already are? Some people eat when they are upset, some people get outside and run a mile or climb a mountain. How are these people different, and how can a person turn from one to the other?

For most of my life I've been the type that deals with stress by eating and tuning out. What is the root cause of this? Is any of it genetic, or is it all conditioning from when I was a child? Did I learn my coping methods from my mother, who was my main parental role model and therefore my example source of how to behave? She was very much the same, most of the life I can remember with her was spent indoors, sitting in front of the TV.

I need to be different. I need to find a way to re-create my basic response to stress, so that I'd be the one to go out and run that mile instead of vegetating in front of the computer playing a game. Not that playing Everquest or some other computer game is bad, I love gaming and always will, it's just that ALL I do is play computer games, avoiding my responsibility to my personal health. Of course my recent back problems have made it difficult to WANT to go out and run, bike or perform some other type of excercise, but I need to find a way to at least want to try to do something when I'm upset as opposed to nothing.

I also need to teach myself that food is fuel, not entertainment. When I'm stressed I eat, and the more I eat the more depressed I get, which leads to more stress and a vicious cycle. Three years ago when I was unemployed I started a 6 month campaign to lose weight. I did an excellent job, changing my habits to where I was drinking only water and not eating any sweets at all. Of course it was easier not being out every day at a job where the candy machine proves an ever present temptation, but I was out and about several times a week either riding my bike, walking or doing some other form of exercise. I lost almost 50 pounds, but then got depressed when I couldn't quite break through the 300lb mark and slowly converted back to my old habits and gained back about half of that weight. I know I can do it again, but I'm finding it difficult to re-capture that mind-set. How did I ever quit smoking cold-turkey???

No one else is going to do this. I need to save myself from myself. I can only hope that by the time I've learned what I need to do to accomplish it that I'll have some time left to enjoy the results.

Words to code by

An old friend and mentor (thanks Lion) once taught me what I feel is the most important lesson in coding, at least while you're learning how:

Make it
Make it work
Make it work well

Ok, that may not be his exact words, but it's the best my addled brain can remember and it gets the meaning across. On days like today when I'm coding something for a homework assignment, and with every method I create I start dreaming of all the things I can make it do if I tweak this or change that, I need to come back to this mantra.

Of course the people in the OLC tend to stare when I start my chanting, but what good is a mantra if you don't say it out loud??