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DANCING_ON_PINHEADS

                                              January 08, 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
PIN number, and completely
lost it.

Try as I might, I could not       
punch it in correctly, and          You know the joke where you
had to give up.                     try to mess up someone     
                                    dialing a telephone by     
It seemed completely crazy          saying the wrong numbers in
that I could do this, I'd           the background?  It was    
been using this number              something like that, except 
frequently for many years,          that I was doing it to myself.   
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* a     
   mathematical formula, simple enough for me      
   to remember easily and 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 roomate's              I have a feeling    
      mac), and went looking for something           I'm skipping some    
      I could use to do calculations.  I             steps here... did    
      found some spreadsheet software that           I log into a unix    
      I was reasonably familiar with, and            box and try to use    
      discovered that I didn't *exactly*             awk or something?    
      remember this simple formula either,           The emacs "calc"    
      it had *also* moved into my body               package?  Possibly.    
      memory.                                        If so, didn't work.
                                                                             
      I used an old HP in those days,                                    
      with 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 to this day, I periodically
         nervously recite it to myself,  
         to make sure I've still got 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 populous.
             numbers?"                              If you want "pi"
                                                    or "e" to a half dozen
                                                    places, I've got them.
                Some people just
                don't appreciate                    If I've been using
                the poetry of                       them recently, I'd
                stupidity.                          also have "h bar"
                                                    or the elasticity
                                                    of steel, or whatever.

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