Weird things my brain does.

1. Lately I've had the annoying tendency to confuse words that start with the same letter. So, I tell people I work on LaTrobe Street instead of Lonsdale Street (the next one down). Or I order a Cappriociosa pizza instead of a Calabrese (and end up with a pizza with anchovies. Ick. We peeled some off and gave them to the dog, and she promptly threw up). I confuse characters in books whose names start with the same letter, too. My brain must just index things that way.

2. While at work, particularly when I'm programming, I have random flashbacks, once or twice a day. Just for no reason, suddenly I start thinking about being in the parking lot of particular mini-malls back in Orlando, or ordering particular meals in restaurants in Atlanta.

3. The other day I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. As I was getting back into to bed, out of nowhere the name Gustave Flaubert pops into my head. Now, I've heard his name before, but I have no idea who he is (or I didn't until I just looked him up) and I hadn't heard his name lately, that I can think of.

Maybe I've been heading the ball too much in soccer.

At any rate, I've found a great new trick for training my brain. I'm starting a new project at work. It's a project that's been ongoing for a couple of years, and it's large and complex. I'm pretty much "drinking from the firehose" as they say, in the process of trying to assimilate it all. So, in the process of having things explained to me, I've decided to apply a method that Feynman espoused in one of his books. It's a simple principle, and it sounds obvious, but I don't think it's very widely applied, by anybody. Basically, what you do is to not let the person who's explaining things proceed until you are absolutely sure you understand the previous bit. Ask stupid questions, even if it's about something you probably should have known already and it makes you look bad. If you don't get it, make the person repeat things, even if they've just spent a half hour explaining it. Don't just let things proceed and hope that you'll get it through osmosis or something later on.

It works, and very well. My initial impression of this project is that it's pretty much the equivalent of a car that runs great but is maintained using silly putty, duct tape, and some very knowledgeable mechanics. It's my job to pretty much rein it in, or at least come up with some explanations as to why it requires such constant maintenance, so I have to pretty much get it all down cold. And to document everything, of course. Joy.