My Day Will Come

By Shamus Posted Saturday Nov 24, 2007

Filed under: Nerd Culture 26 comments

My wife came over and saw me reading this technical document, which is a discussion on the various ways to derive free energy from a portal. In my previous discussion, I focused on preventing getting free kinetic energy from a portal. I never took the electrical applications into account.

My wife looked down at me, “You know, if you took your curiosity and thirst for knowledge and applied it to real subjects instead of fighting zombies and portals, you’d be a lot smarter.”

She mocks me now, but she’ll be glad for my diligence when the shambling undead are beating at our door. I just know it.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, this was said playfully. She’s actually very supportive of my various eccentricities.

 


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26 thoughts on “My Day Will Come

  1. Shawn says:

    I should direct you to Zombie Squad.

    http://zombiehunters.org/

    It was founded by friends of mine, and has grown insanely large. They actually do a lot of charity work, while preparing for the Zombocalypse. Of course, you probably don’t want to take it this far:

    http://shawntionary.com/z/willtruck.jpg

  2. Avaz says:

    Your day of reckoning is imminent, young one. Patience shall bring with it the light you seek.

    By the way, last paragraph, “but she’ll be glad…” :)

  3. Avaz says:

    And I meant inevitable, not imminent. :/

  4. Jason says:

    My wife says the same thing to me all the time, Shamus. You’re not alone in your thirst for esoteric and ultimately useless knowledge. However, I’ll bet you KILL in trivial pursuit, huh?

  5. DocTwisted says:

    It’s just a matter of time now. I’ve got my crowbar at the ready, and I know lots of place full of food to hide out.

  6. Shawn says:

    Doc:

    Do you have your bugout bag?

  7. Luke Maciak says:

    I get a slightly different variation on the same theme:

    “You are by far the biggest dork I have ever known in my life”

    I usually take that as a compliment. ;)

  8. Davesnot says:

    It doesn’t matter what you study.. your spouse will never think you know anything.. you could have the whole world hanging on every word but still have your spouse swear that you are wasting every gift you have.. You could be holding an orange in your hand and you could tell your spouse that it is orange and your spouse would have to see it before they belived it.

    After all.. they are the ones that see you wander your house looking for your (insert the thing you always lose).

    Go figure.. the one that is supposed to support you, etc, so forth questions everything you say.. but they believe the crap they read on the net.. they even believe comments on blogs!!

    Go figure. (I’m going off now to figure)

  9. C David Dent says:

    Shawn, you need to be careful, however, accidents can happen.

    To wit:

    http://www.askdreldritch.com/comic300.html

  10. Vegedus says:

    This is an old thought.

    If people studied instead of watching anime.
    If people worked instead of playing videogames.
    If people gave to charity instead of buying HD TVs.

    Then the world would be a better place.

    There’s a lot of ifs in this style, but fact is, humans generally concentrate more on doing what they feel like, than what they should do or what would be better in the long run.

    I might have misunderstood the topic though, the emphasis might have been on “zombies” rather than “if”.

  11. Davesnot says:

    As a Taoist I have to disagree with ya’ Vegedus..

    The more you discover.. the less you know.. it is the nature of things.

    There used to be so much less to not know..

    Perhaps if we ALL only watched anime, played video games and bought HD TVs our leaders would be too busy to find reason to send our kids (who’d love to be watching/playing and buying) over to be targets for angry zealots.. who’d be far less angry if they were content to (and could) watch anamie, play video games and buy HD TVs..

    Though.. I suppose I’m not sure what you meant by better. I assumed you meant less killing.. less anger.. and more peace and love… eh?

  12. Davesnot says:

    Of course.. we could study more.. and get better nukes and better ways to deliver said nukes.. and give more money to limbless war orphans..

    I think we’d be a lot better off it we had far less humans running around looking for a purpose and more of them accepting life is a good time to be happy and friendly…

  13. DocTwisted says:

    Shawn:

    I didn’t know what a Bugout Bag was until just now, but as a native Californian who could lose power or water due to earthquake at any given moment (I live on a convergence of fault lines), I actually do already have one.

  14. BlueFaeMoon says:

    Shamus, this brings to mind that saying: “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” :)

    I’ve *never* thought that any time spent pondering imaginary puzzles was time wasted. I’m sure people like Jules Verne and Albert Einstein got chided for it all the time. And Einstein was able to prove that the things he imagined were real with math. What a geek. ;)

  15. Vegedus says:

    @ Davesnot

    By “better” I mostly mean it in the sense that progress is good. The more progress, the better. Science leads to progress. Though, I’ve had discussions with plenty of people that think progress is bad, and that we had it much better before civilization began (think Tyler Durden from Fight Club) and I’m more or less undecided on the matter.
    I’m not as much saying it’s true, either, as I’m saying it’s just something many people have pointed out before. We spend a huge deal of time on non-constructive, or rather, destructive things, it’s a fact.

    But can you be happy while only being constructive? And isn’t happiness what it’s all about? Does being constructive really make things better, or is progress really degradation?

    That’s a far lengthier subject matter.

  16. Davesnot says:

    Vegedus… the crux of the matter is that “constructive” and “destructive” are both subjective… Is it destructive to keep your brain’s synapses firing in a task that brings you pleasure but doesn’t gather food for the tribe?? Or are those brain cells put to better use trying to fix some perceived societal short-coming?

    We humans love to fix things… we’ll fix things all they way until we’ve fixed it into little pieces… and then we’ll wonder how to fix the pieces.

    I think that fighting zombies is better than being a zombie.. mindlessly following a directive.. the quest to be “productive” and “useful” leads many a soul into dispair…

  17. Snook says:

    Being surrounded by like-minded people, rather than getting no support and being called a dork for my quirks, I’m rather lauded for it (or at the least I fit in.)

  18. Zaghadka says:

    The difference is courage, and giving up our fear of failure, and by extension, death.

    In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with getting in a little practice. Tell her that. ;^)

    Best of luck to you.

  19. Joe says:

    Wow, Shamus, you are a very rare and fortunate man to have found a woman who eschews all frivolous pursuits.

    Either that, or you’re married to a hypocrite, which is much less rare, and not particularly fortunate. :)

    It’s important to exercise the mind on frivolous subjects, as it allows you to expend your screw-ups in areas that don’t matter. Imagine an Olympic athlete who showed up at a sprint never having run before, since it would be pointless to run if you’re not going to get that gold medal if you win. It’s an analogous situation to a keen mind that only tackles Important Problems.

    @vegedus: The human death rate has been holding steady at 100% for quite some time, and shows no signs of changing anytime soon. Progress and civilization allow that time between birth and death to be a lot longer, and to be filled (occasionally) with something besides farming (or otherwise procuring food). There is an equilibrium point, where people die at the same rate they’re born. Progress, along with low birth rates, has kept us from reaching that equilibrium point. Halt progress, and we will reach it. In the best case, we would reach it by lowering the birth rate. The best case is, as usual, unlikely. Remove civilization, and the equilibrium falls back to a point that we’ve already passed, and the population reverts to match that equilibrium. And by revert, I mean that lots of people die, and the rest learn how to farm.

    It is sometimes an overly-deep topic to think about progress, civilization, and the application of subjective terms like good, bad, and ugly to those subjects. If I ever figure out the answer, I’ll be sure to let you know. :)

  20. Phlux says:

    This is probably already present in some of the zombie apocalypse material above, but here is a fantastic article I was shown recently. It describes five actual real-life scientific possibilities of a zombie apocalypse.

    Some you’ve heard of, others you may not have.

    http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html

  21. Davesnot says:

    Joe… I hear ya’… except one thing.. you seem to equate progress with civilization… seems to me (being the choir to which you are preaching) that progress is the act of slowing down the human infestation of the planet..

    Why do the developers and polluters get to have the word progress.. Progress to me mean we stop clear-cutting.. we think before we act.. we share.. we agree to disagree without gunshots.. to me that would be progress… here’s a thought.. progress could be walking somewhere instead of driving.

    What if C-A-T spelled dog?!!

  22. Casper says:

    It depends of what kind of progress you talk about. Using a car instead of walking is technological progress. Ability to finally afford your own car can be called economical progress. Choosing to walk instead of driving to keep environment clean is social progress. Having a car that does not pollute environment in any way is a combination of all three.

  23. ravells says:

    Shawn of the Dead?

    They make movies about what you do!

  24. Boingophile says:

    Hey Shamus, I saw this and thought of you. I know you love things that light up, and love to get your geek on, so this might be up your alley…
    http://www.computergear.com/binaryclock.html
    (not spam, I swear – I really think you will dig this)

  25. Dev Null says:

    Just discovered – and cacked myself over – this Faulty Logic comic, which reminded me of the discussions we had on here. Hope its new to some…

  26. Jacklyn says:

    Hi it’s me, I am also visiting this site on a regular basis, this web site is really nice and
    the visitors are actually sharing nice thoughts.

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