KISS me baby!

A long long time ago (the timestamp I put on it says May 26 1996, back when WWW was new), I wrote this page, an attempt to describe the way I look at things. KISS is still something that I live by. It's something mathematicians and physicists are taught (or know instinctively), but not often applied to life. We all know that if a derivation, proof or equation looks like it's getting overly complicated, then it probably is and a mistake has probably been made somewhere. Of course some proofs and equations are naturally complex. But if it's gotten more complicated than you think it should be, it's time to step back and look for errors. It's something that's happened to me many many times. I remember working on assignments and solving equations that were getting far too involved, and then discovering I'd made a simple little mistake a few steps back.

One incident in particular that I often think about was an assignment for a partial differential equations class. Most of the assignments in that class routinely took several dozen pages to complete. One question I was working on turned into an ugly complicated 13 page writeup, at which point I tossed it and started over. Discovered a mistake I had made with a sign (something I was notorious for), and all of a sudden it became so much simpler. The 13 page solution I had written up earlier turned into a much more elegant 5 page writeup after I fixed my error.

I think the same thing goes for life. It shouldn't be complicated or convoluted or difficult. Simple, low maintenance and low stress. Makes for a much more enjoyable lifestyle.

Reprinted here for posterity and to fix some broken links.

K.I.S.S. Philosophy

This page has absolutely no relation to the rock band.

I've made K.I.S.S. one of the guiding principles of my life. It's self-explanatory, easy to follow and makes for a nice stress-free lifestyle. It works quite nicely for me, and it will probably work well for you too.

If you're not familiar with KISS, it stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. The Jargon file defines the KISS Principle as a design philosophy. However, I think it can and should apply to much more.

For me, KISS is all about removing as much of the complexity in life as is practical. Note the emphasis on practical. I don't believe it's possible or even desirable to remove all the complicated things in life. I think if you did that, life would be very boring. After all, some of the more interesting times in life come about when things get complicated.

So what's complicated and what's simple? That's something you have to decide for yourself.

What KISS is for me

KISS is...

• letting my instincts and intuition lead me around.
• low stress. KISS could even be a Zen thing. KISS is minimal effort, but not laziness. In this day an age, people are stressed out about alot of things they don't need to stress out over. They need more simplicity and less complexity.
• low brain-power. If you have to spend an inordinate amount of brain power working something out, then you're not following KISS. Some tasks do require alot of brain power, but if you think you're spending more than it should take, then it's time to step back and take another look.
• simple. KISS is straight lines. KISS is elegant simplicity.
• a low budget, low maintenance lifestyle

KISSish Readings

Winnie the Pooh

The House at Pooh Corner

The Tao of Pooh

Winnie the Pooh, IMO is one of the most KISSish...umm...people? that you can find. When was the last time you read Winnie the Pooh? Probably too long ago to really remember huh. As for The Tao of Pooh, personally, I think this is a KISSish book. Ya, ya, I know it's all about Taoism and how Winnie the Pooh can be seen as being very Taoist. I also think Winnie the Pooh is very KISSish too. Read these books. Maybe you'll receive some enlightenment like I did.

Examples of KISS

Other believers in KISS

Try doing a WWW search on

• kiss philosophy
• kiss principle
• keep it simple stupid

on one of these search engines

• Google
• Alta Vista
• Lycos
• WebCrawler

KISS...what else is there to say?

In my simplified world...

sometimes I think the world would be a safer and much more pleasant place if there were no religious zealots.

Where I am, and where I came from

According to Wolfram|Alpha

I only wish it was just a 4 hour flight back home.

Reflections before 40

40 is approaching me with alarming speed.

I've never been one to dwell in the past, or spend much time pondering "what-ifs", but over the past few years as 40 gets closer, I have found myself reflecting on what I suppose could be considered sentinel moments in my life.

During my undergrad, I decided to take a summer job that ended up switching my intended career plans onto a completely different track. Not sure what I would have ended up doing if I hadn't taken that job.

How would things have turned out if I had decided to throw caution to the wind and pack myself off to McGill to do my Masters instead of staying at U of A? One of the reasons I chose not to go to McGill was funding. McGill didn't fund MSc students, but at U of A, I could get funded as a grad student.

After I finished my Masters degree, I spent a few months doing sysadmin work and being the resident computer geek for a couple of departments at the U of A Hospitals. I got a call asking me if I was still interested in a residency position in Detroit that to this day I still I don't remember applying for. I moved to Detroit with nothing more than a couple of suitcases and a few hundred dollars in my bank account and spent three years there learning my craft. It was arguably the biggest leap my normally conservative and safe self has ever made so far. Where would I have ended up if I didn't move?

A few years ago, shortly after starting this blog, I had a chance to take a research position at Duke University. I decided to stay. It would have switched me to a slightly different track had I taken it.

A few months ago, I decided to pursue an opportunity to do a PhD. It's not something that's necessary for me to do my job, but has been on my TODO list for a long time. In a couple of months, I should be starting classes. The voices in my head that say "WTF are you doing!" are getting a little louder, but I'm still looking forward to this. It's going to be a big shift for me for the next 5 or 6 years.

I've never regretted any of the decisions I made. Looking back, I don't know that there were really any other decisions that I could have made. If I had, I'm pretty sure my life would quite different from what it is now.

When I find myself in these moments, I can't help but think of this scene from The Matrix: Reloaded:

Neo: Well, that didn't go so well.
Morpheus: Are you certain the Oracle didn't say anything else?
Neo: Yes.
Trinity: Maybe we did something wrong.
Neo: Or didn't do something.
Morpheus: No, what happened, happened and couldn't have happened any other way.
Neo: How do you know?
Morpheus: We are still alive.

Interesting times.

It has been said that there is an ancient Chinese proverb/curse that goes "May you live in interesting times", although the authenticity of this is doubtful.

Interesting times, I haz dem. Lots of dem.

A road taken

There are images rolling around my head that are hard to describe and difficult for me to interpret and integrate.

My brain is trying to process things it hasn't encountered before. The brain, it hurts.

I thought I knew where I was going but now, not so much anymore.

The desire to find a safe dark spot to hide away from everything is strong. Stronger than it's been for a long time. I need my Star Trek.

It's dark and I don't know where I'm going. Where's my flashlight?

Have I made the right choice? Moot question now that I've made it I suppose.

This is a strange place I find myself in. Regardless of how things turn out, this is sure to be a huge learning experience for me.

Enough sappy indulgence. There's homework to do now.

A choice

A choice needed to be made. Choice 1 led to exploring something new, and venturing outside the confines of my safe shell. Choice 2 took me back to familiar settings but with many things changed.

It was a bit of a rushed decision made in less time, with less information and under more pressure than I normally like. Never good circumstances under which to make choices that have a large impact on your life.

I chose the latter. It was not an easy choice to make. I still don't know if it was a good one or the right one, but it's one I'm committed to now.

I don't think I've ever felt quite so conflicted in my entire life as I have been these past few days. It does not feel very good to be like this.

Time will tell if I have chosen wisely.

How do I get off this ride?

This combination of work, school, research and regular life is starting to seriously kick my butt.

I think I've reached the point where I go "What the h*** was I thinking?!"

There are too many things going on. It's tough trying to keep track of it all.

I have a tendency for being absent minded and having tunnel vision when I work on things. Normally it helps me focus on the task front of me and get things done. Lately it's been getting me into trouble.

I'm involved in too many activities. The introvert in me is off in the corner whimpering.

To be fair, much of it is self-induced. I know I'm not working as efficiently as I can, and I'm not using the tools I have the way I should be to stay organized.

I have no plans on quitting anything. I have however reached the stage where the need to do things differently is finally hitting home. It's one of those things that I knew I'd have to do, but was like "I can handle it. I'll see how things go for now".

"If you knew you'd have to do things differently, why didn't do it from the beginning?" Yeah, I'm dumb like that.

I need simple again.

Heading into decade 5

The past 10 years, upon reflection, have been pretty interesting (in that "Chinese proverb kind of way":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times). Thanks to the blog, events of at least 6 of those years have been "reasonably well documented":http://blog.imabug.net/archives. Among the notable events: * Started off the decade settling into a new job in a new city * Got married * "Added":http://blog.imabug.net/archives/2004/11/the-wife-and-i.php a furry 4-legged family member * "Bought a house":http://blog.imabug.net/archives/2005/01/i-think-we-foun.php * "Moved":http://blog.imabug.net/archives/2005/05/20/ into new house * "Added another":http://blog.imabug.net/archives/2006/04/a-new-addition.php furry 4-legged family member * Expanded my social circle with things like "Lowcountry Bloggers":http://www.lowcountrybloggers.com/, "Twitter":http://twitter.com/imabug, "Identi.ca":http://identi.ca/imabug/, "Facebook":http://www.facebook.com/eugenem, "Friendfeed":http://friendfeed.com/imabug, "CSCLUG":http://csclug.org/ and other social things. * "Fostered":http://blog.imabug.net/cgi-bin/MT4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=12&tag=foster&limit=20 several other furry 4-legged kids * "Started a PhD":http://blog.imabug.net/cgi-bin/MT4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=12&tag=phd&limit=20 Like previous decades, 4 had ups and some big downs (which are not documented), not unlike the economy. Heading into decade 5, PhD work will probably dominate the first half, although I'm looking forward to a lot of other fun things to go on as well. So far it's starting off on a pretty good note.

Politicking

The thought occurred to me today.

US politics isn't about politicians representing their people.

It's about politicians trying to convince the people that his/her beliefs are their beliefs.

Political pontificating

Talking politics is something I try to avoid, mostly because it's a topic I'm not all that well versed in aside from the sound bites I get through the news, or only develop half-formed opinions/responses.

Road tripping to Florence, SC yesterday though, there was a lot of NPR being listened to. Half-formed or not, I figured I might as well spit these thoughts out.

Prop 8

I fail to see how anybody can reasonably defend the position that gay marriage is ok as long as it's not called a marriage. If you're going to reserve the term "marriage" for only church/religion sanctioned unions, then I guess all those heterosexual couples that got married by a judge or some other officiant are SOL too.

Social Security

Employee social security taxes are apparently capped at something like the first $93k or so of your income. How much more could be added to the social security trust fund if the cap was removed? Perhaps not too much, but some is better than none, right?

Repealing the Bush tax cuts

When it came to extending unemployment benefits, there was much gnashing and wailing by Republicans who said that the extension shouldn't be passed because it wasn't paid for. Well, here's a way to pay for it and maybe a few other things.

Cropmob

One word: genius

Back to my irregularly scheduled ramblings

Solitude

I think the older I'm getting, the more introverted and anti-social I'm becoming.

I just want to do what I'm doing and not have anyone bother me.

I'm tired of being around people. Most of the time I find watching the dogs at the dog park more interesting than the people there.

I used to like to go places just to people watch, but lately I don't even want to do that anymore.

I feel like I'm almost within grasping distance of a moment of enlightenment, but not quite there yet and no idea how to get closer. I'm missing something again.

I'm becoming Clint Eastwood's character from Gran Torino.

On a bike friendly Charleston

This is a post I've been mulling over for several years, and has taken a couple of weeks for me to jot down my ideas on and get to the point where I find it acceptable to publish.

After several recent high profile car-bicycle accidents, there's been a lot of discussion about making Charleston more bicycle-friendly. It's something that has been a long time coming and there is much that Charleston, North Charleston and Mt. Pleasant can do to make the area more convenient to ride around. I'm not entirely sure that it's possible to make the Charleston area completely bike friendly though.

Some background on my bicycling history.

I grew up in Edmonton, with my primary mode of transportation being my bike for the 26 years I lived there (never owned a car). Edmonton is what I would consider a very bicycle friendly city, with its extensive network of bike routes, paths and trails, relatively low speed limits (usually 50-60 km/h) and layout of the roads (possibly excepting the newer neighbourhoods that have popped up since I left). These factors made getting around Edmonton on bike very easy. During my undergrad, I made the 24km round trip between home and school pretty much every day as long as the weather permitted (meaning as long as there wasn't snow on the road). Most of the time I could even beat my friends who drove to school. I knew how to get around the city better on my bike than driving around.

I rode a lot in Edmonton.

Based on this, these are some of my opinions on making the area easier for bicycling.

Geography
Charleston is flat. Really flat. The biggest hill in the area is the Ravenel bridge. That makes riding pretty easy and largely effortless. Unless you're like me and like riding up and down hills, this is a big plus. Charleston has a lot to offer for bike riders.

The down side of this is that there are a number of areas that flood during heavy rain. This makes things a mess for both bikes and cars though. At least a bike won't stall out though.

Bridges and roads
Being a coastal place, there are a lot of rivers and streams. Have a look at most of the bridges in the area. Many of them are built with sidewalks on them. What is noticeably lacking though, are sidewalks leading up to the bridges. What the heck is up with that? The other problem is that most of those bridge sidewalks are pretty narrow, barely wide enough for one person to walk along.

The two major rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, present pretty significant geographic barriers for moving between West Ashley, the peninsula and Mt. Pleasant. The Ravenel bridge makes crossing the Cooper relatively easy. Crossing the Ashley is an entirely different story. You're either braving highway speed traffic and taking your chances crossing entry/exit ramps on the James Island Connector or trying to ride the skinny sidewalk over one of the two Ashley River bridges, only one of which has sidewalks on both ends off the bridge. A recent proposal to add on a side pedestrian/bike bridge to the existing bridge was deemed impractical due to the added weight. I've also seen proposals that call for converting one of the car lanes to a bike lane which I personally think is not such a good idea. However it would provide a better way across than what's currently available. It's definitely a case of "If you build it, they will come". One only has to look at the bike/pedestrian sidewalk across the Ravenel bridge to see proof of that. A better long term solution would be to build a pedestrian/bike bridge over the Ashley and make it easy to get to.

A bicycle friendly place would have a network of bike routes and paths that let people ride in relative safety. There are a few obstacles to setting up a such a network in Charleston but I think it can be mostly done.

As I see it, there are two major problems with the roads in the Charleston area: the layout of the roads, and the speed of traffic.

If you look at the layout of the roads in Charleston, you find streets in developments and neighbourhoods that all dump traffic onto major arteries. Unfortunately that's the only place most of those neighbourhood streets go. In most developments, particularly newer ones, once you're in there's nowhere else you can go. The lack of connectivity to anywhere means the only way to get from one place to another is along the major arteries where you're riding with traffic that's more often than not moving around 70-80 km/h. Sadly at this point there's probably very little that can be done about the roads without demolishing houses and redoing entire neighbourhoods.

The majority of Charleston area roads are designed for vehicle traffic and nothing else. Roads are usually fairly narrow and without much of a shoulder, if any. If you're riding on the main roads, you're riding in traffic that's usually zipping by going at least 50 km/h faster than you are. For the casual bicyclist, that's pretty intimidating. I've ridden on highways with high speed traffic before, but there's always been a pretty wide shoulder to ride in. On many roads around here, that traffic goes by with not much room to spare and leaving little room for error.

Attitudes
The attitudes of many motorists to bicycles on the road is pretty poor in general. Attitudes ranging from "only cars belong on roads" to "only kids ride bikes, get a car" seem to be pretty common around here. I attribute this to people just not being used to seeing riders on the road, the "have to have a car" mentality that's prevalent here and general ignorance. It's something only time and education will change.

The behaviour of many bicycle riders I've seen riding on the roads is pretty atrocious. Riding against traffic, squeezing past cars at lights, blowing through stop signs and lights and generally breaking every rule of the road there is. Again, something that needs to change with bicycle safety courses, preferably starting at the elementary and jr high/middle school level.

With all this said, bicycling is possible around here if you're willing to brave the hazards. I see lots of people do it. Getting around the peninsula on bike is easier than most places around here. There are several riding groups and on any weekend morning you'll see a bunch of road cyclists riding their usual routes. High heels and two wheels is a blog about a local woman who successfully gave up the car for a bicycle commute.

There's a lot of work going on to make the Charleston area more bicycle friendly, which is good to see. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, and the hardest of it is going to be changing the attitudes of bicycle riders and car drivers towards each other.

What do you see