End 2014

2014: The end is here.

It's the end of another year. 2014 was the first full year in which I operated two blogs, this place and Fleex's Lab (for technical details and programming journals). As a result of taking the daily development logs to another place, I think the density of interesting information here rose significantly. In this year-terminating entry, I'd like to go over the best posts of 2014, from earliest to latest.

• I started the year marveling at the complexity of these tiny chunks of crystalline ice called snowflakes.
• Turning from wonderment to morbidity, I laid out a plan for disseminating information to the people I knew if I were to die suddenly. Death messages are like a Will+.
• Then jumping off the deep end into completely insane speculative not-even-anything-resembling-science, I wrote about the possible existence of a plane of existence - sentient superspace - home to special particles that are responsible for all things mental.
• That theory was extended with the ideas of shadows and de-energized psi particles.
• Moving back to actual science, I reminded overzealous macroevolution advocates that common origin does not equal common ancestry.
• Somehow keeping my hold on the real world, I explained why too much hand sanitizer can be a very bad thing.
• After getting infected with the Conduit malware, I yelled at application developers who bundle adware in their installers.
• I went on a trip to Chinatown with some of my classmates!
• After last academic year's finals finished, I pondered the immense amount of historical details we've lost.
• Returning to speculative pseudoscience, I guessed that being stressed with new things outside of one's proximal development zone brings back memories of older times.
• Thinking back to the school play, I proposed a simple system for simulating others' minds.
• After an interesting dinner conversation, I drew up an organization sketch for ministry organizations, based not on a single chain of command, but on two that converge in a central but lower Juncture Council.
• While reading about quantum circuitry and finding it very interesting, I set forth a method to learn advanced skills with recursive research.
• After experiencing the insanity that is The Prisoner episode Fall Out, I realized that meaning is not ubiquitous.
• I stumbled upon a really silly philosophy-of-time opinion on the Internet and was so shocked that I had to write a rebuttal.
• Annoyed with periodic metacognition assignments in school, I wondered about the causality of good habits and intelligence/success.
• As a member of my school's National Honor Society, I delivered Christmas gifts to refugee families in my area, which turned out to be a very crosscultural experience.

I may do something like this post for Fleex's Lab tomorrow. It's been a good year for me, and it was certainly fun going back through my life this year through this blog. Happy new year, everyone!

End 2014.

Delivering World Relief Christmas Gifts

Rivermont Collegiate's chapter of the National Honor Society partnered with World Relief to get Christmas gifts to refugee families. We set up a place where students and parents could donate gifts (we told them the gender and age of the child and they donated an appropriate gift), which we would then get to the families. I was responsible for the logistics of the whole thing and delivery to a zone containing two recipient families.

Gifts loaded, my dad and I went driving around a nearby city to locate the houses. They were both in apartment complexes in a somewhat run-down part of town. At the first house, it took a little while to find which apartment the gifts were supposed to go to - I didn't have the names of the people and several entrances didn't have apartment IDs. The one we tried first was fortunately correct. The family was Vietnamese (maybe?) and spoke no English. It took a bit of friendly-facing and motions of offering the wrapped package, but they accepted it and we left.

For the second family, we had several gifts, since they had several children. We knocked on the door of the apartment we had written down, and it was answered by an older gentlemen who, upon seeing the wrapped gifts in my hand, said "no" and led us down to another apartment. I think his family occupied two apartments and the other one was used by the children. (He also seemed to be understanding what was going on.) After some language-based confusion, they accepted the set of presents and we left.

I don't know whether either family understood any of what we were saying. I hope they understand the whole cultural thing of Christmas gift giving.

Proficiency Exam

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking the final exam for NETW 170, "Introduction to Network Security." I have not taken the class; I am attempting to test out of it to gain entrance to NETW 274, a more advanced security course that is also a CompTIA Security+ preparation course.

I didn't know I was going to be taking the exam tomorrow; I was expecting to have a little more time. It should be alright; I've been studying the book for a while and most of it is knowledge I've picked up from my own research and experimentation. It has more of an emphasis on the networking equipment than I expected, but an hour or so of rapid reading tomorrow morning should get me through it.

All I need to get credit for the course is an 80% or higher; it is graded on a pass/fail basis. It's multiple choice, so that makes it a little easier.

Another Semester Ends

Yesterday, I took the final exam for SPEC 175, "Intercultural Communication." Only the computer-scored portion is graded so far, but if I somehow got a zero on all the teacher-scored (free response) questions, I would still pass the class with a 93%.

One of the course textbooks for Intercultural Communication says that there are four stages of intercultural competence.

1. Unconscious incompetence (blissful ignorance of cultural differences)
2. Conscious incompetence (troubling ignorance of how to communicate crossculturally)
3. Conscious competence (deliberate, careful, "walk-on-eggshells" consideration)
4. Unconscious competence (smooth, practiced, automatic integration of the other culture)

I would say that, before this course, I was at Stage 2, aware that there are differences between cultures but without any idea of how to navigate them or how they differ. I believe I am now entering Stage 3; I know many of the social dimensions on which cultures vary and I know how to navigate some of them.