#simply brainworks

I've always liked the smell of coffee, but I've never acquired a taste for coffee or any of its related beverages.

My wife doesn't care for the smell of coffee, but has recently become enamored of her daily cup or two to drink.

Did any of the rest of you know that you can have more than 99 tabs open in the Chrome browser on your phone? Further, did you know that up until that 99th tab, it shows the total number of tabs you have open? And that once you breach the three-digit barrier, it just shows a smiley (:D) face instead of a number?

Why do I have so many tabs open? Because I surf through FB and click on a lot of links and articles. Sometimes I stockpile them while I have wireless access with the intent to read them later. Chrome has crashed on occasion, and I know I should put them in Pocket, or bookmark them as soon as I open them, but I don't always do so. I've lost plenty of articles due to this, and yet I don't change. It isn't even like it's a difficult thing to do to bookmark something in Chrome. I keep on trying to push the limit. I think I'm at about 130 open tabs right now, though I'd have to count them all on my own since all I see is that :D.

How about this? Did you know that Gmail's 15GB spac limit wasn't a hard and fast limit (I am in NO way complaining about this)?

I'm currently sitting at 15.54GB, and I've been over 15 for at least a month. All I get is a warning that, "You're out of storage space and will soon be unable to send or receive emails until you free up space or purchase additional storage."

It won't take much for me to get back down below the threshold, but part of me really wants to see how far I can push it. It's not like I'm going to miss any truly important emails at this point.

This penchant for testing limits goes back as far as I can remember, and at least for the duration of my time in the Corps. Here are a couple of examples, one from the beginning and the other from the end of my career:

I've never been good at pull-ups. At first, I just lacked the necessary upper-body strength, but over the years I added some extra body weight to that equation, which obviously didn't help either. Toward the end of my time in recruit training, just before our final PFT, one of my drill instructors asked me how many pull-ups I thought I could get, and I didn't hesitate when I told him I would try to get at least 10 (20 is required for a maximum score on that event). He couldn't believe my answer, as recruits at that point should have been brainwashed to have simply screamed, "Sir, 20 pul-ups, sir!" For some reason, my ability to know myself never succumbed to their desire that I tell them what they want to hear. The drill instructor told me that if I didn't get 20, I wouldn't graduate with the rest of my platoon. I did freak out a bit at that point, as my father had coordinated with his dispatchers to get a run out to California and enough of a layover to come to my graduation ceremony. I immediately thought about how it would suck for him to have done that for me and then find that I went and screwed up and he wouldn't get to see me graduate. Then, I got to thinking, the minimum to pass was 3 pull-ups, so how could they hold me back if I more than tripled the minimum. Either way, there was no way I was going to get to 20 in the few days between that encounter and the test itself. On the day of the test, I made at least my 10, perhaps I made it to 11, but I can't recall anymore. And, again quite obviously, I wasn't held back, I graduated with the rest of my platoon, and my father and I drove from CA to IA during the first couple days of my "boot leave".

For the last 9 years of so of my career, I had issues with weight. I went on weight control shortly after being promoted to gunnery sergeant, made my way back off, and a couple of years later, went back on for a second go-round. I, again, successfully made my way off the program, but bouncing around that line was to be a trend that I perpetuated for the remainder of my career. At one point, around year 16, I was again over the weight limit for my height, and was given a month to get it back under, or I would have been assigned to the "Body Composition Program" for a third time. If that had happened, I could have been processed for separation and thrown away a career that was fewer than 4 years from completion. In addition, I fully acknowledge and accept that an overweight gunny is not a good example. Perhaps as much because I put myself in a position where it needed to be the case as any other reason, I always subscribed to the whole Marine concept, and in most other ways, I was stellar, or at least exceedingly competent. Not many at my rank or above subscribe to that same notion, and I think it's to the detriment to the Corps. There should be a balance, certainly. Back on topic, by the end of the month I was given, I was back within standards. I then spent the much of the next two years out of standards and dodging the weigh-ins. In the last year of my career, I was once again put on remedial PT (well-deservedly), and early in that year I did get back below 19% body fat, though 5 pounds over my max weight (at long as I was within one of those standards, it counted). After that weigh-in, and with a few months to go, I dropped that pack. I could give any number of excuses, but it doesn't matter. Even with the possibility that I had tossed my career down the drain, it wasn't enough to get me over that block I'd placed in my mind. I was, once again, testing limits.

Oftentimes, my limit-testing isn't self-destructive (or even possibly self-destructive), but at times, it is. I don't know if it's the thrill of the chase, the feeling of living on the edge, or what else, but it's something that I know I do all too often.

It wasn't a major accomplishment, but two of the lights in our house, both of which have dimmer switches (rheostats), started not dimming a while ago. They'd still turn on, but only at their brightest setting.

I succeed at most things I do, but I've come to accept that the reason for that is that I don't really push my limits or try new things. Even in the Corps, I've been in a rut for a few years. It's one reason why I'm retiring this year, and as a Gunny. Granted, retiring from the Marine Corps, at any rank, should, and will, be measured as a success, but at this point, there isn't much that the Corps can throw at me which is "new" to me.

I usually think I'm quite truthful with myself, and for the longest time I considered that the only fear I have is a fear of falling. I realize now that fear of failure is at least as prominent. I know I'm not alone in that, and I'm not trying to make myself out as having it worse. It's just made me look at things a lot differently once I acknowledged the fact.

I've always enjoyed foreign languages. I studied French for four years in high school, Latin for one, and Spanish for just over a semester (fun story there, if you haven't yet heard it). In the Marine Corps, I was given the opportunity to study Arabic for 16 months as part of my job. I pick up foreign languages easily enough to be somewhat proficient. Nothing spectacular, but when I focus on them, I can perform better than average. Even knowing that, I've always told people that, though I can listen and read in a foreign language, I've never been a good speaker. I say this even though, in July of 2000, in Morocco, six years after my last French class (though only about 10 months since my last serious Arabic class), I was able to communicate my wishes to cab drivers in Rabat, Morocco, in a pidgin of French & Arabic, conjugating the verbs (mostly) properly, and using vocabulary which seemed to appear in my linguistic toolbox from out of thin air. I should, and do, count that as a success, but I still hesitate to speak in foreign languages, except in the rarest of circumstances (such as a French restaurant in Djibouti, or Arabic marketplaces across the Middle East). They taught us in our Arabic courses that fear of sounding stupid is the biggest thing that holds us back from speaking in a foreign language, and even with that knowledge and my own experience, I've been unable to get beyond it.

Even though I'm a Marine, I'm not much of what most would consider to be a "man's man". I'm fine with that. I have no desire to fulfill much of that stereotype. I don't care to get dirty, but when I do get dirty, I get DIRTY. It's all or nothing.

I'm no good with cars, and no good with handyman type stuff around the house.

I have grand aspirations to study to be a mechanic, and at least be able to take care of most things with my own vehicle(s), but my fallback has always been that my youngest brother got all those skills in my generation (and he's taken great care of my vehicles). He likes those challenges, and I've always shied away from them.

When it comes to upkeep of our house, my fallback is the subcontractor we have living across the street. So much of what he's been able to do for our home, as I've watched him, are things I could have easily done myself if I'd just gone to the neighborhood hardware store and asked a few questions.

Part of what's held me back (in addition to the fear of failure) when it comes to handyman type things, or even cooking, has been my deliberate nature. I'm naturally stiff. Though I'm able to fall asleep anytime, anywhere, I'm not relaxed. It shows through in my "dancing", cooking, and even when my brother and I made a set of cornhole boxes. I take so long to do things, because I want them to be perfect, and though I know that perfection is unattainable, I still find myself reaching for it. I know that, with repetition, things will speed up, but I usually can't find the desire to get over the hump of those first few attempts, or convince myself that it's worthwhile

That brings me to yesterday evening, and fixing the dimmer switches on those two lights. I'd bought the new switches last weekend, and decided to change them out one evening while my wife was at work, to surprise her. I opened up the first panel, remembered that I should probably shut off the circuit, so went to the garage and did so, returned, opened the new switch and pulled out the "Easy-to-follow Instructios" (obviously, I need to work on my series of actions when attempting something new), and proceeded to change out the first switch. It took me about 5 minutes. I went and turned the circuit back on to check to ensure the new switch worked before I screwed it back into the wall. It worked. Though the whole evolution took about 5 minutes, I felt like Tom Hanks' character in "Cast Away", when he made fire.

Changing out the next switch went quicker, of course, and when my wife got home last night, she was very pleasantly surprised.

These are the thoughts of a Saturday morning...

I can only snap the fingers of my left hand, and even that only through many nights as a child where I literally laid in bed practicing (yes, I was an odd child). For that matter, I also cannot gargle, whistle, or curl my tongue (though I was once told by a cute dentist that I have a very strong tongue (I consider hers to be a professional opinion), and I can roll my Rs with the best of them).

Back to my hands, however...even with my lack of snapping ability, I'm actually quite dextrous (interesting side note discovered when I used dictionary.com to check my spelling of that word; "dextrous", alternately "dexterous", can mean, literally, "right-handed"), and perhaps even slightly double jointed (including this thing I can do with my thumb). I just can't figure out how to replicate snapping with my right as I've learned how to do with my left. I can snap quite loudly with my left hand. My girls know it well, and generally don't continue what misbehavior they may have been involved in once they hear it (they're good girls and don't hear it all too frequently these past few years).

It was after I snapped my fingers to instruct skittish girl to get back in her crate while I prepared her & her sister's breakfast this morning (read, poured the dog food into their bowls) that I had an epiphany.

The story I've been told for as long as I can remember is that I was born left-handed, but my maternal grandfather (basically) forced my mother to raise me right-handed (the bad joke I tell about this is, that I was born left-handed, but raised right). I have no outside verification of this story, and while I could ask my grandfather about it, there are a number of reasons why I don't think I'd believe him unless he told me that it was true.

Regardless of the validity of that story, there are at least a few things that just seem to come naturally, or at least as easily as doing them right-handed, for me to do left-handed. I'd never, however, connected my finger-snapping reality to this possibility until this morning.

I now believe it may be the strongest evidence yet that I may truly have been born left-handed. It got me to thinking about how we go about learning to do things, specifically with our hands.

At about the same time that I was teaching myself how to snap my fingers, I was also teaching myself how to rap them, as against a wall. Much easier to learn than snapping, apparently, I am equally adept at rapping the fingers of both hands. Hard as I've tried, however, snapping the fingers of my right hand is a skill that has evaded me. It could be that the age when I was actively learning these things was the optimal age for doing so, but why, then, was I only able to learn on one side? Perhaps I was practicing at the tail end of that optimal age range, and that's why I still haven't been able to solve that particular riddle (though I'll grant I haven't put nearly as much time into it during these intervening years.

This whole thing has led to many questions:

Does your dominant hand have anything to do with your dominant brain hemisphere (I firmly believe that I'm predominantly left-brained, which would likely therefore lend itself to my being born right-handed if this were the case)?

If connected, which comes first, your dominant hand, or dominant brain hemisphere (I'd lean toward brain hemisphere, though only because it's the body's CPU, and it seems counter-intuitive that it may be affected by anything so mundane as one's dominant hand)?

Is it easier to learn how to snap the fingers of your dominant hand?

For those who are able to snap with both hands, do you recall a difference in ease of learning how to snap the fingers of one hand vice (I love that "vice" may be used as a preposition; I don't think it was on the list I learned in school) the other?

Are there others of you out there who are able to snap with only one hand? If so, is it your dominant hand, or your non-dominant hand?

This will serve as an introduction to a series (ok, a few different, but related, series) of posts I'll be submitting over the next few weeks or months.

I've been thinking recently about things that I'll miss once I retire from active duty, some things I won't miss, and things that have changed over the nearly 20 years since I originally enlisted.

I had a discussion with one of my Marines this afternoon about some things I won't miss. I've never been one to complain, and I don't plan to start now or anytime soon. It did get me to thinking, though, about how my perception of things may have changed over the past couple of years.

There have been some actual changes recently. Things that, if I wasn't so close to retirement, I probably would have shrugged off and not really given a second thought to. It seems, though, that since I've begun to accept that I'll likely be hanging up my cammies before the end of next June, I'm looking much more forward to the end of certain things.

It makes sense that how long you'll have to endure something has a lot to do with how much of a hold you let it take on you, or at least how much you look forward to the end of its hold. I just never really thought about it before. I guess its similar, though in an opposite manner, to looking forward to Christmas when you were kid.

Or perhaps it is the same thing, I'm fixated on the fact that my retirement is getting ever closer, and that is causing outside things related to that moment to take on a magnified presence in my mind. That doesn't make much sense to me now that I see it in writing. It seems like it would be a bit of reverse tunnel-vision, but I can't really think of another reason.

I received a couple of responses in reply to this post, and they brought up some points upon which I felt I might expound.

maximumliteralpunk answered: i remember the challenger, oj’s verdict, waco, tx, 9/11. i remember where i was. were you traumatized? maybe you blocked it.

spiralingsidewayz replied: You were a kid during most of those things and children are inherently self centered. If it didn't have much of an impact on you, there's no real reason you should remember the exact locations of things. They just blend in with the landscape.

I don't believe I was traumatized. I don't recall ever being traumatized. That said, I do have a very easy time blocking things. This may be fodder for a future brainworks post. I'm not sure that these events, in particular, fell victim to me blocking where I was as they occurred. I just can't recall those details. Granted, that may be me blocking them. It just doesn't feel like it.

As for children being inherently self-centered, that does make sense, and I don't think this is the first place I've heard it. To what age does that usually last, though? I was 10 or 11 when Challenger exploded, and around 14 when the Berlin Wall came down (and only a couple of years younger when Reagan issued his challenge to Gorbachev). I would think that by those years, I would have grown out of that sort of self-centeredness. I know that everyone is different, but I've always been the sort who likes to know, who thirsts for knowledge, so it seems odd to me that I wouldn't also remember the links from my physical world that correspond to those moments I've lived through.

I was 8 at the time, so well able to remember the bombing in Beirut and, like many people, remember where I was when I heard the news, but for some reason, I don't (I'm curious, however, how much effect this may have had on my eventual decision to enlist in the Corps).

It's the same way with many other seminal world events of my life. I don't remember where I was when Challenger exploded. I don't remember where I was when Reagan told Gorbachev to, "tear down this wall". In fact, the first event that I can truly recall exactly where I was when I found about about it is the attacks of 9/11/2001.

As much as I appreciate my memory, I don't know why that is. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just too selfish, and though they were significant happenings, they had so little to do with me, personally, that I just sort of put them off to the side of my mind and didn't end up filing them away in the same fashion that others did.

What other events left such an impression on you that you remember where you were when you heard the news?

Does anyone else have the same issue I do with these, or other, events?

I noticed as I was taking my audiogram yesterday (passed with, mostly, flying colors) that, as I would hear low tones, my eyes would look down (it even happened as I was expecting them). Then, as the tones got higher in pitch, my eyes would look higher as well.

I did the test with my eyes closed, so as to block out other distractions, but still noticed the plane of where I would be looking rising with the pitch.

I don't know if this happens, however slightly, in day-to-day activities, or just when one's focus is so absolutely on the sounds themselves, but it is something that I never noticed before, and it interests me.

I know that our senses are connected, most notably (at least to me) our senses of scent and taste, but this is the first connection I've come across that may demonstrate a connection to the sense of sight in how we process or evaluate sound.