Steps Forward

Aug 26 6:22 am

It’s the small things. I woke up fully expecting my usual bed, in my old home, but the air was fresher and the bed was softer. It was not the bed I had spent years getting used to, my grandmother's spare bed, in a room with air conditioning.

On August 25th, 2016, at 3 AM I boarded seat 23C on an Airbus A320. The plane had rows of six seats with a hall in the middle. It was probably not the normal model, since my row was toward the end of the craft and the maps I could find place it more towards the middle. It was a four hour flight from the Dominican Republic, to Boston Massachusetts. I moved looking for better prospects.

Unfortunately, the country where I've spent most of my life isn't the best place for me to thrive. On most days I was too busy worrying how I'd get stabbed over a cheap cell phone and a fist of cash. Or maybe get run over by a motorcycle speeding through the wrong direction of a one way street (and sometimes they use the sidewalks as shortcuts). Or maybe stopped by the police because they're low on cash and they thought I looked fairly similar to a ceramic pig. Or maybe someone would get bothered over me "not sharing" what my ethnicity or country of origin is, because apparently I don't look or talk "Dominican Enough" to justify calling myself Dominican.

The first thing I mentioned when I exited the Logan International Airport building, was how I remembered the smell here. My uncle (jokingly?) said the air smelled like jet fuel. It didn't smell like much to me, and that's what I found weird. The air was MUCH cleaner. None of the moving vehicles where farting visible emissions. I'd later find out the streets aren't filled with trash (they are pretty clean, in fact). I bet the sewer system doesn't overflow when it rains.

The streets feel weird. Dominican Republic is always in the top two spots for the world's deadliest roadways (per the World Health Organization). Here in Boston everyone drives in their own lane instead of trying to cut everyone off, and they respect road signage. It will be refreshing to be able to step on crosswalks instead of them being the "stop on this" thing for cars (I'd usually cross behind the first row of cars). I probably should've taken some pictures before leaving, the chaos seemed too mundane to be noteworthy.

I think I can finally feel safe driving around, I almost never drove out of fear accidents. I could probably lease a new car, but buying an old car would be fun (even though repairs might be a hassle).

I can hear footsteps on my roof, the neighbors seem to be awake. I make my own noise when I walk on the creaky hardwood floor. Wood homes seem foreign to me. I'm used to homes being made out of concrete blocks.

Something I appreciate: I fit in much better now. I can speak either English or Spanish on the streets without getting weird looks. Nobody is trying to price gauge me or assume I'm cripplingly street-dumb due to my skin color. Everything still feels weird, people who where close to me are now far, and those who where far are now close. Also, I now have a realistic chance of doing stuff that used to be pipe dreams.

I guess today is the second day of the rest of my life.

ATTITUDE 100 PERCENT (jerkiness 110 percent)

ATTITUDE 100 PERCENT

(jerkiness 110 percent) 

I'm really not a fan of this kind of content, so let me ruin the magic for you.

Coincidence or Not?

Wow! I never knew ATTITUDE was so important! Then again, IRRITATE is also worth 100 points on that same scale. Yup. 100 points. But why stop there? Give 110%, try out JERKINESS.

Cool, right?

Here’s how I found out:

Using JavaScript, I made a function to convert a single word into its “char sum”

 function charSum(rawWord) {

  var word = rawWord.toUpperCase();

var tot = 0;

for(var i = 0; i < word.length; i++) {

tot += word.charCodeAt(i) - 'A'.charCodeAt() + 1;

};

return tot;

 }

This is enough to get the value for a single word. charSum(“attitude”) will return “100”. Checking words one at a time would be very time consuming (you’re free to try if you like). Better to let the CPU handle this gruntwork. I downloaded a list of all English words and formatted them with help from Excel.

Given a ‘words’ array, (about 14k words):

var perfectWords = words.filter(x => charSum(x) == 100);

And, there you have it. The words that give 100%:

acceptors

accumulate

acknowledge

acquitted

adulthood

Afghanistan

aggresses

alternated

amputees

analysis

anasthetic

angulates

annually

apropos

aquamarine

asbestos

beetroot

bolstered

borrowed

botanist

boycott

Brezhnev

centipedes

chimpanzee

clippys

cutlets

Darmstadt

deasserted

Dempster

desegregated

drizzle

Edmonton

ferryman

fluorine

forsaking

gauntlet

gauntly

generating

geographer

Goldwyn

grumpy

guardings

harmonics

healthily

inferring

ingrown

inoculate

irritate

Komatsu

languished

leaseholds

misdirect

Mongolian

nonjoined

obscenely

offhandedly

outflank

overscale

papists

piggybacks

pitying

Pollux

predeceases

rasters

reattaches

receptor

reengineer

refinery

remailers

renamings

repugns

resents

restocked

roomful

sarcophagic

sculpted

semitone

sharpens

spiciest

squint

starfish

stools

subloop

Sumerian

tangents

telegrams

telescience

Tromso

truism

Tunbridge

turkey

twisted

unchaining

unclever

undress

unprimed

unrelease

Vanuatu

violins

Vivienne

wattles

Wednesday

whenever

whirling

whiskey

whistled

wholely

wholesale

windfalls

wonderbra

woodcote

wriggles

writing

Yankovic

Yarrow

Wow! WHOLESALE ASBESTOS is worth 200 points! :D

McDonald's removed the numbers from their menu

A few months ago I walked into a McDonald's and noticed they had removed the "numbers" from their menu. This could be different in other countries, I'm not sure.

(sorry, no photo, the employees didn't like my camera)

After giving it some thought, it was probably for the best ("best" for them, at least). Ordering a "number five" doesn't really have the same emotional impact on a consumer as stating the actual product's name, plus it further differentiates them from brands that also used a number system. I bet this is also the reason that Starbucks uses their own measuring system for the size of their drinks, plus it also forces their clients to think of them more than they should (hell, I've never gone to Starbucks and I'm talking about their order sizes).

There is also some sneaky psychology at work behind this. People who used to prefer saying the numbers will now be saying the names of the products (assuming they just don't stop going over this), and thinking something (product's name) doesn't affect your brain the same as saying it out loud (citation needed). It also removes a bit of clutter from the menu, one less point of interest should mean that people either spend more time looking at the rest of the menu (images, menu, prices, etc.), or spend less time looking at the menu (which is better for them if there isn't a line).

Something else to consider is that I've only seen the "core" products listed with a number, the cheaper and more expensive options just going by their names. Maybe they just want everything to merge better within the menu. The space they save should also help.

Another point is that I remember that I once heard an employee ask another if the "number four" was ready, having this level of abstraction could cause errors to happen if someone confuses what a "number four" is supposed to be. Even worse if it's the client that confuses the numbers and gives a wrong order, then complains over not receiving the "correct order".

So yeah, that's pretty much it. I couldn't find any info on this online (I like giving out links), so I guess this post is just my way of giving SEO the middle finger. (kudos if you came here through a search engine and where stuck with my article, for lack of options).

Why I made this blog + When my old laptop was stolen

This ended up being longer than I wanted. Sorry about that.
(just scroll down to the underlined words if you don't care to read a side story)

About two or three years ago my laptop was stolen, right from my lap, while I was sitting in the porch next to my sister. The memory was burned so hard into my neurons that I remember it in slow-motion. I can still feel the weave-patterned texture on the metallic rocking-chair. I felt a slight shadow, a blur to the right of my peripheral vision as I gleefully browsed YouTube videos. I saw those pair of hands swiftly, smoothly, move down, closing the lid, grabbing the sides, carefully lifting away my most prized possession.

I would barely even let people even touch my laptop, so the split-second reaction in my head was that it was probably a friend of my sister's playing an awful prank on me. But no, I saw him straightening up after leaning over the the division between the lawn and the porch, turn away, briskly walk towards the street. He was stepping onto the sidewalk when motorcycle silently cruised next to him, and he got on.

This was probably the first time in my life that I experienced a genuine "fight or flight" situation, This was also probably the first time in my life that I experienced a genuine brain fart. My "fight" response kicked in, and though at the time it seemed like the right action to take, there's no way to stress enough just how bad of a decision it is to run alone and barefoot at night after two criminals that where both bigger than me, and probably armed.

I sprinted. I sprinted so fast that at the end of the block there was only the length of about three cars between us. I yelled "thief, thief". I saw his eyes. His expression clearly conveyed that he wasn't expecting this, it was as if his sight reached out to me and asked "what you doing, dumbass?" (the same I now ask of past-me).

At the corner of the block, I saw cars and motorcycles across the street. I kept yelling, this time in their direction... but nope, they all just looked on in interest, just stayed there. I yelled some more, but that didn't really help much.

They took a right turn (with me on tail).

Unfortunately, the new road was clear ahead for quite a distance, so they accelerated greatly, and the distance felt longer and longer, until they didn't feel as "within my reach" as before that final, crushing moment when I gave up.

I punched a chain-link fence.

I would continue the story, but it would be pointless.

I never saw them again, I never saw my laptop again.

Now, my frustration wasn't so much about a petty physical good (even though having a laptop had been a childhood dream of mine), but what was in it. Just the previous day I finally personalized Windows Vista settings perfectly for my tastes (all desktop icons hidden, but heavy focus on the start-menu structure) for which I felt amazing at the time, but more importantly, that was where I had my journal.

I had been keeping a journal, almost daily, for almost two years. All the events in my life that I considered important to me. The notes I kept about my relationships with people. Things I wouldn't ever tell anyone. Vivid descriptions of my plans, my dreams, my hopes. All the messages I would leave "future me"... GONE

Some things you can't replace.

The worse part about it was that I never got back to having that same journal-keeping habit. Maybe it was the thought of starting from zero, maybe it was the frustration of it all.

In any case, I'm not trying to complain about what happened and it's not something I've ever really vented about until now. I know people with real issues, real problems, real worries, that keep their heads up and push forward, since it's the only thing they can do. And there I was, running to find myself a problem. I was lucky I wasn't faster.

Again, going back to the subject of why I decided to start a blog:

I've spent so much time online reading and consuming the content of others that I decided that having my own presence would be a natural progression. Though I don't plan to pump out stuff to the internet every day (or even every week), I've found "getting out there" to be very satisfying. I've met some very interesting people since I started doing this, and I'm better off for it.

Keeping an online presence has been a lot like keeping my old journal. I can at any time go back and see things I've done or said. It's even better, since I sometimes get to read people's opinions and comments on things that I myself have done or said. From trivial things, like a photo-montage of a local singer, or bit of school related info that was only available as a hard-copy before I shared it (and would make a really boring hyperlink).

The final tipping point was a comment I received on a poorly written article I made 10 months ago for HubPages (under a pseudonym, in case someone ended up burning their house down). Guess what? I got a comment! Guess what else? I now have actual traffic to the article! (only a bit more than 300 views though). I didn't even do any promoting for it, so unless there's a new surge of faulty power bricks in the market, some of the stuff that goes through my head might actually be of interest to people (instead of me shoving it into their face)

So yeah, all's well that ends well.

Hi!