Girlies,
I accepted an offer of a new position at another company. It is south by southeast of here. It is a big, scary, change. I'm afraid of change, but I also know there is no life with change. There is no growth. Things can get worse, yes, but the only way for things to be better is change.
I should have more time with you girls. This should be a good thing. We will see.
-Mathdad
Friday, March 1, 2019
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Feb 2019
Hello girlies. Hello oldest, middlest, and littlest. (whisper: hello peanut)
Biggest math girl, you were my first mathbaby.
Middlest math girl, you are an artist, and a force of nature. I love your wonderful heart.
Littlest math girl, you are brave, and engaging.
I love you all. I love you dearly. You are my favorite people in the whole wide world.
I don't think you heard that. You might think you did, but I don't think you did.
Classes that I have been in say that when I am self-controlling and think to myself "I'm being a good example", I am in fact kidding myself, because on the outside you have no visibility to what happened. Those classes say I should narrate, so you can get clues, and see what you are missing.
And now... I return to work. I wish to get the right kind of free time to build this in a suitable and properly noble enough way to be valuable and meaningfully empowering to you when you eventually get to read it.
I should narrate what "I love you means" when the thought traverses my heart.
-Mathdad.
Biggest math girl, you were my first mathbaby.
Middlest math girl, you are an artist, and a force of nature. I love your wonderful heart.
Littlest math girl, you are brave, and engaging.
I love you all. I love you dearly. You are my favorite people in the whole wide world.
I don't think you heard that. You might think you did, but I don't think you did.
Classes that I have been in say that when I am self-controlling and think to myself "I'm being a good example", I am in fact kidding myself, because on the outside you have no visibility to what happened. Those classes say I should narrate, so you can get clues, and see what you are missing.
And now... I return to work. I wish to get the right kind of free time to build this in a suitable and properly noble enough way to be valuable and meaningfully empowering to you when you eventually get to read it.
I should narrate what "I love you means" when the thought traverses my heart.
-Mathdad.
Friday, February 1, 2019
January 2019
Hello girlies. All three of you. It is January. My letters are less frequent, not more. I don't like that. My interactions, face-to-face with you are more, not less, and i do like that. I don't like the zero-sumishness of that.
I love Liz Ryan. She has a heart, a soul, and a humanity that make me feel valued. Her approach is very pro-human. It is the antonym of tyrannical, a more win-win and proactive. I like it.
Here are some of her webpages:
So I would like to share some game theory with you girlies. I read this article (link). Here is the text of it:
I love Liz Ryan. She has a heart, a soul, and a humanity that make me feel valued. Her approach is very pro-human. It is the antonym of tyrannical, a more win-win and proactive. I like it.
Here are some of her webpages:
So I would like to share some game theory with you girlies. I read this article (link). Here is the text of it:
Q. You are very quick to tell people to start job hunting. Sometimes you have to stay and fight.
A. In any other industrialized country I would agree with you, but in the US we have a curious thing called employment at will.
You can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all. So staying and fighting can mean getting fired and losing your income before you have a new job.
Interestingly, launching a stealth job search and speaking your truth at work both require the same ability: the ability to step through fear.
It’s scary to launch a stealth job search, and scary to speak your truth to your boss.
Whichever path you choose, you will grow muscles. There is no wrong answer. Do what your gut tells you to do.
I would like to tell you about "Game theory" which is better called "Decision Theory" and is the math of making good decisions.
Let's say your boss is a bit of a punk. Let's say he is verbally denigrating, but not in such a way that there are recordables for HR. Let's say that he takes things you initiated, things you and only you could make, things that you pushed into being - your children - and claims that they were his, and he alone should get rewarded for them. (This is not my current boss, Jan 2019, just so you know.) So you don't like that, and you want to be able to pay rent and buy food while not suffering these moral injustices, so you want to look for a job elsewhere.
Here is a single person, single action, decision matrix. The rows are actions on your part. The columns are fundamentally distinct ways the universe responds, they are what reality is. It isn't about the boss, but about whether a husband (or hub) should buy flowers for his wife (or sweetie) if he is unsure that it is his anniversary. A guy might say getting it right is a win, missing it is a loss, but buying flowers on a non-anniversary is a slight loss, and not buying flowers on an anniversary is a wash. Wins are +10. Washes are 0. Losses are -10's. small losses can be -5.
+--------+------------+-------------------+---------+---------+
| | | Anniversary | Row Sum | |
+--------+------------+-------------------+ +---------+
| | | Today | Not Today | | |
+--------+------------+-------+-----------+---------+---------+
| Action | Buy flower | +10 | -5 | 5 | <-- -10="" 0="" code="" flowers="" no="" this=""> The row (action) with the highest sum is the one where you have the best result no matter the outcome. A high tech big-brother weights the scores by their estimated probability of occurrence. If you forget every day of the year, then the weight for getting flowers on the anniversary is 1/365 and the weight for buying flowers but today not being the anniversary is (365-1)/365.
So let's think about the boss. If you do a normal job search, he can (and likely will) fire you for it. If you do a stealth job search, then he is less likely to find out until you have a better place to go, and you can have a better work environment. If you tough it out he might change, find another target/victim, or he might get worse. Here is a plausible matrix. If he suddenly becomes less of a jerk during the stealth search, there is no harm and no foul, though I would say leave, because he can just as suddenly change back.
+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+----------+
| | | Current | Row Sum | |
| | | Situation | | |
+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+----------+
| | | Better | Worse | | |
+--------+----------------+--------+-------+---------+----------+
| Action | Stick it out | +10 | -10 | 0 | |
+ +----------------+--------+-------+---------+----------+
| | Stealth Search | +10 | +10 | 20 | <-- code="" this="">So people who rob, who have gotten away with it, are much more likely to do it again. Recidivism rates for all types of crimes are something like 43% over 5 years; that is with prison time, not without. Petty tyrants with no expectation of punishment do not stop, they only escalate. This would give a probability weighting to the cells, substantially lowering the "better" column.
You might have different numbers. Your stuff might look different. You could get different results. As long as the values that you place in the cells are realistic for you, and are the best you can get, then you can make better decisions.
Make good decisions, kiddos. I love you.-MathDadSunday, November 18, 2018
Mid-November 2018
It has been some time since I wrote. I should write monthly, not quarterly. I am sorry.
One of the challenges is to find both energy and unimpeded opportunity in the presence of a host of competing urgent things. You are the important, whether or not you are urgent.
I feel like, in the past week or so, my mind and heart have gone from being a single core processor to a dual (or quad) core operating at higher rate. I am thinking better, and also feeling in color (without injections of testosterone). I have been thinking about how Jordan Peterson engages the bible as myth, in the sense of epic and deeply meaningful symbolic, and started processing through the question "what are the myths that made me". It feels like I am speaking the true name of myself, and each time I do it, I gain power and life.
Should I tell you about me? Should I tell you about you? I am doing something, intentionally, that Jordan said was a miracle some several thousand years ago: I am speaking to the future, trying to make a deal with the future. This future, unlike his example with the farmer and the grain, is outside my lifetime, but in yours. The question behind the question becomes, how can I give you a great gift that you can receive outside my lifetime, that you can realize? It is a game of catch, but what to throw?
The myths that made me are terrible. They are crushing.
My mother ran away from home as a pregnant teen in the early 1970's so that my grandfather could not drive/enforce her to abort me. She started running then and has been running since. I think it both made and broke her. She ran from her ex, moving every 3 months for years and years, because he had promised to kill us all, so there was a dangerous and damaging several decades there. For me I had to ask "did I destroy her life", "do I owe her a huge debt now". It set up a reliance when I was young that became much more of a codependency as a teen. It was healthy for me to move out of her home. It was healthy for me to walk, and stumble, and struggle under my own sometimes heavy burdens without her as the context. I have been, and will be, pro-life because it is too easy to put a crushing pressure on a teenage girl, to pressure her to abort the child. I think that pro-choice folks would get a lot less aggressive opposition if they could make sure it is the girls choice, and not someone forcing her to do it, like they force her to do other stuff. It feels like they have bought into their own binary narrative, when the world is more than "either-or". There are cases where the availability of abortion on demand enables more, much more, oppression than it eliminates.
I asked my grandfather, when I was in 6th grade, if he did that, if he pressured her to abort me, and if he really wanted me dead. He said his baby girl was in a scary and dangerous place, and he just wanted to help her. I saw in his face, that in my asking the question, he looked in some reverential fear at that moment toward the holy ground that he had transgressed when my mom was pregnant with me. He saw a piece of the terribleness, of the just consequences of his actions. He wished she had a different trajectory in life, but he had taken a presumptuous hand, he had committed the sin of hubris against something great, in what he had done.
If I write here, in this public forum, one that is searched and analyzed by many robots, by many actors, some of my other myths, then I will set myself up for harm. There are things that most folks simply cannot process. They have no capacity for thought in the domain, and only a pre-programmed response, and I can see that response from here. I would tell you some of the others, as I figure them out, but not the government(s), not the business entities (A,G), not the employers or potential employee analytics firms, have any right to know or use abuses that happened against me as a child as weapons against me or against you. They can't help themselves. I see the clusters and chains in how the algorithms candidate youtube videos, or feed posts at either facebook or linked in. The humans view through the broken lens of the machinery. That eye doesn't capably measure itself, so it can't self-diagnose, or self-improve.
Your lives are rich, and busy, and sometimes hard. There is, thank God, so far, very little in the way of terrible. The bears that mauled me, and your mom, you have not yet even seen them with your own eyes. I like to think that is protection, but not over-protection.
I am going to have to re-read "Letters from Dad" and try this again. I think that I have "departed from the way", though I didn't know it. I sincerely hope to try again at this, and get it right.
I love you. I delight in you. I admire you. You are the best of me. You make me delight to work hard, and try and enable and empower you in life. May you have a good and healthy life. May God make you great, and make your life meaningful. May your hearts be full of integrity, and may you do the best things. You are blessings to me. Thank you.
One of the challenges is to find both energy and unimpeded opportunity in the presence of a host of competing urgent things. You are the important, whether or not you are urgent.
I feel like, in the past week or so, my mind and heart have gone from being a single core processor to a dual (or quad) core operating at higher rate. I am thinking better, and also feeling in color (without injections of testosterone). I have been thinking about how Jordan Peterson engages the bible as myth, in the sense of epic and deeply meaningful symbolic, and started processing through the question "what are the myths that made me". It feels like I am speaking the true name of myself, and each time I do it, I gain power and life.
Should I tell you about me? Should I tell you about you? I am doing something, intentionally, that Jordan said was a miracle some several thousand years ago: I am speaking to the future, trying to make a deal with the future. This future, unlike his example with the farmer and the grain, is outside my lifetime, but in yours. The question behind the question becomes, how can I give you a great gift that you can receive outside my lifetime, that you can realize? It is a game of catch, but what to throw?
The myths that made me are terrible. They are crushing.
My mother ran away from home as a pregnant teen in the early 1970's so that my grandfather could not drive/enforce her to abort me. She started running then and has been running since. I think it both made and broke her. She ran from her ex, moving every 3 months for years and years, because he had promised to kill us all, so there was a dangerous and damaging several decades there. For me I had to ask "did I destroy her life", "do I owe her a huge debt now". It set up a reliance when I was young that became much more of a codependency as a teen. It was healthy for me to move out of her home. It was healthy for me to walk, and stumble, and struggle under my own sometimes heavy burdens without her as the context. I have been, and will be, pro-life because it is too easy to put a crushing pressure on a teenage girl, to pressure her to abort the child. I think that pro-choice folks would get a lot less aggressive opposition if they could make sure it is the girls choice, and not someone forcing her to do it, like they force her to do other stuff. It feels like they have bought into their own binary narrative, when the world is more than "either-or". There are cases where the availability of abortion on demand enables more, much more, oppression than it eliminates.
I asked my grandfather, when I was in 6th grade, if he did that, if he pressured her to abort me, and if he really wanted me dead. He said his baby girl was in a scary and dangerous place, and he just wanted to help her. I saw in his face, that in my asking the question, he looked in some reverential fear at that moment toward the holy ground that he had transgressed when my mom was pregnant with me. He saw a piece of the terribleness, of the just consequences of his actions. He wished she had a different trajectory in life, but he had taken a presumptuous hand, he had committed the sin of hubris against something great, in what he had done.
If I write here, in this public forum, one that is searched and analyzed by many robots, by many actors, some of my other myths, then I will set myself up for harm. There are things that most folks simply cannot process. They have no capacity for thought in the domain, and only a pre-programmed response, and I can see that response from here. I would tell you some of the others, as I figure them out, but not the government(s), not the business entities (A,G), not the employers or potential employee analytics firms, have any right to know or use abuses that happened against me as a child as weapons against me or against you. They can't help themselves. I see the clusters and chains in how the algorithms candidate youtube videos, or feed posts at either facebook or linked in. The humans view through the broken lens of the machinery. That eye doesn't capably measure itself, so it can't self-diagnose, or self-improve.
Your lives are rich, and busy, and sometimes hard. There is, thank God, so far, very little in the way of terrible. The bears that mauled me, and your mom, you have not yet even seen them with your own eyes. I like to think that is protection, but not over-protection.
I am going to have to re-read "Letters from Dad" and try this again. I think that I have "departed from the way", though I didn't know it. I sincerely hope to try again at this, and get it right.
I love you. I delight in you. I admire you. You are the best of me. You make me delight to work hard, and try and enable and empower you in life. May you have a good and healthy life. May God make you great, and make your life meaningful. May your hearts be full of integrity, and may you do the best things. You are blessings to me. Thank you.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Late august, 2018
I saw this and it was beautiful.
And I wish I had said it to you.
Here is the link (where will it be in 10 years)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dear-daughter-leave-when-you-valued-sara-johnson/
Here is the woman who wrote it:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarajohnsonsj3/
Here is the content, lets see if this blog is around in 10 years.
And I wish I had said it to you.
Here is the link (where will it be in 10 years)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dear-daughter-leave-when-you-valued-sara-johnson/
Here is the woman who wrote it:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarajohnsonsj3/
Here is the content, lets see if this blog is around in 10 years.
I was encouraged to share this letter. Most of us know the feeling of rejection or not feeling valued. Unfortunately rejection and not being valued has no age requirement. I wrote this letter to my daughter when she was cut from her volleyball team. She was the hardest worker, dedicated to the off-season, and most passionate person I knew when it came to the love of volleyball.
The letter:
Dear Daughter,
Unfortunately, in life, there are times you will not be valued. Do not stay where you are not valued. Do not waste time in self-pity because someone did not value you. Your value, your worth, comes from your heart, not from someone else.
Today you were rejected by someone. Your heart felt broken, it was not. You even trusted the person who did not value you. They led you to believe they valued hard work, passion, off-season dedication, and attitude. They led you to believe these qualities were important to them when in fact to them they are not. Your heart hurts because you believed the words of someone who let you down. You are better leaving when you are not valued.
It is ok and normal to grieve when you close a chapter in your life and start another. Do not confuse self-pity for grief. Grief is part of celebrating what was joyful and good, grief is sadness to saying goodbye, grief is leaving to move onto the next journey. Self-pity is subjecting yourself to another person’s power. Self-pity is allowing imperfect people’s errors to consume your energy.
It is ok to grieve today and tomorrow to focus on what’s next. Take all your hard work, all your contributions, all your passion, all your heart, and put it to the next thing. Do not feel like everything you did for all those years was a waste. It was not. You are the amazing person you are because of your journey.
You will be able to recognize the next time you are not valued easier and when that happens (because it will), you will have the strength, experience, and self-worth to leave it. You might be in a friendship, a relationship, or a job where you are not valued. You will have the strength, experience, and self-worth to leave it. You can even grieve leaving, but you will know your value in your heart and you will take all that hard work, passion, energy, and attitude and apply it to your next journey.
You will not be valued by some people. People are imperfect. Leave those who do not value you. Grieve the closing of one chapter and then move onto the next journey.
Be proud of what you value. Be proud of your hard work, be proud of the attitude you displayed, be proud of the sportsmanship you demonstrated, be proud of the energy you expended and be proud of the skills you developed. You put yourself out there when others wouldn’t step into the arena. You gave your heart. It was hurt, not broken. Give your heart again to your next journey.
You will have the strength to leave when you are not valued again. You will grieve again. Your journey will be more amazing than the last because of it. It wasn’t for nothing. It was for the next thing.
I can’t wait to see you shine again in your next journey!
Love,
Mom
The letter:
Dear Daughter,
Unfortunately, in life, there are times you will not be valued. Do not stay where you are not valued. Do not waste time in self-pity because someone did not value you. Your value, your worth, comes from your heart, not from someone else.
Today you were rejected by someone. Your heart felt broken, it was not. You even trusted the person who did not value you. They led you to believe they valued hard work, passion, off-season dedication, and attitude. They led you to believe these qualities were important to them when in fact to them they are not. Your heart hurts because you believed the words of someone who let you down. You are better leaving when you are not valued.
It is ok and normal to grieve when you close a chapter in your life and start another. Do not confuse self-pity for grief. Grief is part of celebrating what was joyful and good, grief is sadness to saying goodbye, grief is leaving to move onto the next journey. Self-pity is subjecting yourself to another person’s power. Self-pity is allowing imperfect people’s errors to consume your energy.
It is ok to grieve today and tomorrow to focus on what’s next. Take all your hard work, all your contributions, all your passion, all your heart, and put it to the next thing. Do not feel like everything you did for all those years was a waste. It was not. You are the amazing person you are because of your journey.
You will be able to recognize the next time you are not valued easier and when that happens (because it will), you will have the strength, experience, and self-worth to leave it. You might be in a friendship, a relationship, or a job where you are not valued. You will have the strength, experience, and self-worth to leave it. You can even grieve leaving, but you will know your value in your heart and you will take all that hard work, passion, energy, and attitude and apply it to your next journey.
You will not be valued by some people. People are imperfect. Leave those who do not value you. Grieve the closing of one chapter and then move onto the next journey.
Be proud of what you value. Be proud of your hard work, be proud of the attitude you displayed, be proud of the sportsmanship you demonstrated, be proud of the energy you expended and be proud of the skills you developed. You put yourself out there when others wouldn’t step into the arena. You gave your heart. It was hurt, not broken. Give your heart again to your next journey.
You will have the strength to leave when you are not valued again. You will grieve again. Your journey will be more amazing than the last because of it. It wasn’t for nothing. It was for the next thing.
I can’t wait to see you shine again in your next journey!
Love,
Mom
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
And now it is June (2018)
Girlies,
You are going to the Terracotta army exhibit today. (link) I hope you enjoy it, are challenged by it, and such.
More wins:
Year/s long glory:
You are going to the Terracotta army exhibit today. (link) I hope you enjoy it, are challenged by it, and such.
More wins:
- Earn rating as "Expert" or "Master" in Chess. (link)
- Save a life: life-long quality; this means that life is more than a heartbeat, make a lifetime meaningful.
- Build and race in the American Solar Challenge (or equivalent)
Year/s long glory:
- Learn and be functional in a programming language (alice, scratch, python, r, ...)
- Save a life: heartbeat; this means one person who would physically die doesn't. (one year per life)
- Save a life: year quality; this means that life is more than a heartbeat, make a year meaningful.
mid-june 2018
Hello girlies.
I had dreams/nightmares from Ready Player One last night. I dreamed that someone in an avatar like Kali, and someone in an avatar like "Aech" were trying to destroy my world. It was no fun. Looks don't make destruction any less painful. I think that I'm thinking about yesterday. Yesterday was hard, and I think it is dangerous to talk too much about it on a public forum because folks who don't take the time to understand, who want to cause some sort of harm, might manipulate my words badly, and use them against me later on.
Let's talk about something else.
Someone up-voted one of the better, harder, posts that I've made on parenting.stackexchange.com.
https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/22370/how-can-i-become-part-of-my-daughters-life-again/22381#22381 . I wanted to share it on the Parenting forum within Yammer at my work, but I'm afraid that when people find out about the excrement I have had to walk through in my life, they look at me like I'm covered in poop, and it compromises friendships and community. I'm a survivor, not a victim, yet the culture isn't capable of looking at what I survived and thinking it tainted me. I had no choice about going through it, I was a kid. That is shame.
Can I share about some, what seem to be pretty good ideas? Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psN1DORYYV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o
When you finally read these, assuming they last, I don't know if youtube or the videos will be around. I hope they will, but only God owns the future.
Biggest mathgirl. I'm about to wake you up, kiss your cheek, and say happy birthday. I really should have woken you and middlest mathgirl up at like 6am on your respective birthdays and took you to breakfast. I might try that this weekend. I feel like I missed that this year. We did it last year and you both loved it. The littlest mathgirl is still just a few months old, and can't yet appreciate such things.
Littlest mathgirl, our little Valentina, you are getting big. You smile and fuss, and you coo (that is what they call the making baby noises trying to figure out speech). You are learning to articulate your hands, and control their positioning. You support your bottle, and sometimes you push it out of your mouth mid-drink, and get angry at yourself. You still sneeze a lot. I installed a new activated carbon air filter. I'm tempted to get a section installed in our AC that allows 3" filters instead of just 1" ones.
We sold the Phoenix house, and made nothing on it. Paid 10 years, bought right before the 2008 crash, and have nothing to show for it except a deep sense of relief to not be there. Never buy a home when you are "nesting". Never let someone falsely tell you it is a "good investment". If they use a period of time under the life of the loan you are going to have to get to argue about value, then they aren't being fair. Salesfolks can skew the facts in order to make a profit.
I have to get to work. They don't pay me to not work. I'm trying to change the world for the better, but it is hard.
God keep you all three. God bless you and God keep you. May he bless your going in, and your coming out, and along the road you walk. May he bless your rising up and your laying down. May he bless you in evening, and night, and morning. God bless you my loves, and God keep you.
I had dreams/nightmares from Ready Player One last night. I dreamed that someone in an avatar like Kali, and someone in an avatar like "Aech" were trying to destroy my world. It was no fun. Looks don't make destruction any less painful. I think that I'm thinking about yesterday. Yesterday was hard, and I think it is dangerous to talk too much about it on a public forum because folks who don't take the time to understand, who want to cause some sort of harm, might manipulate my words badly, and use them against me later on.
Let's talk about something else.
Someone up-voted one of the better, harder, posts that I've made on parenting.stackexchange.com.
https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/22370/how-can-i-become-part-of-my-daughters-life-again/22381#22381 . I wanted to share it on the Parenting forum within Yammer at my work, but I'm afraid that when people find out about the excrement I have had to walk through in my life, they look at me like I'm covered in poop, and it compromises friendships and community. I'm a survivor, not a victim, yet the culture isn't capable of looking at what I survived and thinking it tainted me. I had no choice about going through it, I was a kid. That is shame.
Can I share about some, what seem to be pretty good ideas? Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psN1DORYYV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o
When you finally read these, assuming they last, I don't know if youtube or the videos will be around. I hope they will, but only God owns the future.
Biggest mathgirl. I'm about to wake you up, kiss your cheek, and say happy birthday. I really should have woken you and middlest mathgirl up at like 6am on your respective birthdays and took you to breakfast. I might try that this weekend. I feel like I missed that this year. We did it last year and you both loved it. The littlest mathgirl is still just a few months old, and can't yet appreciate such things.
Littlest mathgirl, our little Valentina, you are getting big. You smile and fuss, and you coo (that is what they call the making baby noises trying to figure out speech). You are learning to articulate your hands, and control their positioning. You support your bottle, and sometimes you push it out of your mouth mid-drink, and get angry at yourself. You still sneeze a lot. I installed a new activated carbon air filter. I'm tempted to get a section installed in our AC that allows 3" filters instead of just 1" ones.
We sold the Phoenix house, and made nothing on it. Paid 10 years, bought right before the 2008 crash, and have nothing to show for it except a deep sense of relief to not be there. Never buy a home when you are "nesting". Never let someone falsely tell you it is a "good investment". If they use a period of time under the life of the loan you are going to have to get to argue about value, then they aren't being fair. Salesfolks can skew the facts in order to make a profit.
I have to get to work. They don't pay me to not work. I'm trying to change the world for the better, but it is hard.
God keep you all three. God bless you and God keep you. May he bless your going in, and your coming out, and along the road you walk. May he bless your rising up and your laying down. May he bless you in evening, and night, and morning. God bless you my loves, and God keep you.
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