[PREV - GOLDEN_FROG]    [TOP]

DANCING_ON_PINHEADS

                                              January 8, 2005


                Over the years I've come to realize
                that most people actually *avoid*
                talking about their screw-ups.

                   Me I can never resist...



Once upon a time, I walked up
to the cash machine, and for
some reason, I started
consciously thinking about my             You know the joke where
PIN number, and completely                someone is dialing a telephone
lost it.                                  and you try to mess them up by
                                          saying random numbers in
Try as I might, I could not               the background?  It was
punch it in correctly, and                something like that, except
had to give up.                           that I was doing it to myself.

It seemed crazy that I couldn't do
it.  I'd been using this number
frequently for many years... but
that was part of the trouble.  The
number had been moved into my body
memory, it had become a physical
gesture that I performed nearly
unconsciously.

Any attempt at recalling
it deliberately was doomed.


   Luckily, however, I'd choosen a number
   that I could retrieve in another way.
   It wasn't something easily guessable
   like a physical constant (a classic
   piece of geek stupidity, see Feynman on
   the subject), but it *was* deriveable
   with a simple mathematical formula that
   I could remember easily punch into
   my calculator.

   So I went home grumbling, and picked up my
   calculator, turned it on, and the batteries
   promptly died.

      Grumbling some more, I went over
      to the nearest computer (a                     I have a feeling
      roomate's mac), and went looking               I'm skipping some
      for something I could use to do                steps here... did
      calculations.  I found some                    I log into a unix
      spreadsheet software that I was                box and try to use
      reasonably familiar with... and I              awk or something?
      discovered that I didn't                       The emacs "calc"
      *exactly* remember this simple                 package?  Possibly.
      formula either: it had *also*                  If so, didn't work.
      moved into my body memory.

      I used an old HP calculator in
      those days that used RPN notation,
      and for some reason I couldn't get
      the algebraic form correctly.           (Do the parenthesis go here or
                                              there, do I invert this or that?)

      At this point I suspect I was no
      longer grumbling, but laughing in
      disbelief, and I wandered off to
      the store -- luckilly, I had a
      *little* bit of cash on me -- and I
      bought some more batteries for my
      HP calculator...


         And the moment I had it powered up,
         I punched in the formula, and had
         my PIN number back.

         (And afterwards, for many years, I
         would periodically nervously recite
         that number to myself, to make sure
         I still had the numeric string in
         my head.)


             I told this story to a friend of
             mine, thinking it was incredibly
             funny, and he just looked at me        Not particularly,
             strangely and said "Um... do you       compared to most
             usually have trouble remembering       of the population.
             numbers?"                              If you want "pi"  
                                                    or "e" to a half dozen
                                                    places, I've got them.
                Some people just
                don't appreciate                        If I'd been using
                the poetry of                           them recently, I'd
                stupidity.                              also have "h bar";
                                                        the elasticity
                                                        of steel; etc.


--------
[NEXT - WORDS_WITH_WHIPS]