A Typical Day

Since I'm working in a chemistry/imaging lab and tutoring high school kids for extra money, I decided to teach myself some more chemistry between clients at Forsyth Tech. I started today. I began reading in Chapter 1 of the same textbook I used when I took Chem I at Forsyth Tech back in 2002, and I'm shocked at how much of it I have either forgotten... or more likely, never bothered to learn in the first place.

I never thought I would need that knowledge. People never place enough value or focus on their coursework when someone else is paying for it, especially when they think they know that they're headed in a different direction and it will not be ultimately relevant. I was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

Oh well. Live and learn... in this case, the law of relative proportions. Or the chemical properties of carbon. Something like that.

I've been listening to a lot of talk radio (politically moderate, but with a strong aversion to crackpot theories) on my way to, from, and between my two workplaces.

It's nice to hear an exchange of intelligent/practical thoughts because I spend 95% of every morning and 25-50% of every afternoon in total solitude, and even including interaction with others, I spend a full 88% of my day dealing with 1) a smörgåsbord of acronyms that stand for radioactive chemicals that are in no way relevant to my life and 2) people's gross inability to understand how to convert percentages into decimals and fractions and vice versa.

88%. That's 88 out of 100. 88/100. 88, hundredths. 0.88. It frustrates me to no end that I can't make this clear... and I don't know what I'm doing wrong! Maybe I should start drawing pie charts that look like pizzas. People always respond to food, right?

AND NO THAT IS NOT PI