I'm an engineer, and people sometimes like to point out how engineers created things like the atomic bomb and hydraulic fracking.  You know, the bad things.  I don't need to point out that engineers have created good things too, like jet engines and artificial body parts. 

What I do want to acknowledge is that engineers are simply tools.  They solve problems by creating or fixing or enabling or removing something.  They're like a hammer or a screw driver.  Is a tool inherently capable of amazing or terrible things?  No.  It simply does the job it was asked to do.  That doesn't mean engineers are completely free from blame or responsibility.  But it at least adds some perspective. 

In a similar vein, tools are capable of nearly anything.  Or more accurately, there is a tool for every job.  I have a tendency towards pessimism, so I usually have to tell people their ideas are impossible to achieve in the allotted time and for the budgeted price.  One of my colleagues likes to put it another way:  "With enough money and time, literally anything is possible." #science

The concept of luck comes up in competition sometimes, like "That was a lucky shot," or "He got knocked out by a lucky punch."  I think the general consensus is that there's no such thing as a lucky shot or a lucky punch.  You could say luck had almost nothing to do with it.  Plus, calling it lucky detracts from the hours and hours of practice and perfection and skill that went into that one event.  It's not just insulting to call it lucky.  It's ignorant. 

But I think there's a deeper level of luck involved in some cases.  Not luck in the sense that a random action was taken at a random time and happened to produce a positive result.  But rather that a series of well-executed actions took place in the exact right order and produced a positive result.  The shot itself wasn't lucky, but it was predicated on the precise timing and exact positioning of the previous event, which itself benefitted from similarly perfect preceding events.  The final result is like a series of probabilities multiplied together:  70% chance of the first event succeeding, 50% chance of the second event succeeding, 20% chance of the third event succeeding = 0.7*0.5*0.2 = 0.07 or 7% overall chance of all events succeeding.  A probability like 7% looks like luck, and it sort of is.  But it's much more than that. #sports

Two scents that go from 0 to 100 real quick:  Patchouli and tea tree oil.  I didn't realize what patchouli was until someone pointed out to me it's what every live music event, hippie, and health food store smell like.  I don't mind the smell, but there seems to be no reasonable amount of it.  It's either absent, or there's a gallon of it invading your nasal passages. 

Tea tree oil has the same effect on me.  Maybe it's just me, but there's no acceptable amount of tea tree oil scent.  It has the very weird effect of making me feel like I can taste it, even when I'm quite confident I didn't put it in my mouth. #lifestyle

I recently, unintentionally, made one of the biggest changes in my life since switching to black coffee:  I stopped putting ketchup on my eggs and started putting just salt and pepper.  I was traveling one weekend, and there were eggs but no ketchup.  In an effort to salvage a breakfast, I went with some simple salt and pepper, hoping to at least make the eggs palatable.  It turns out ketchup is essentially made of salt and pepper, and some sugar and tomatoes.  The sugar and tomatoes don't really matter for me in terms of adding flavor to eggs.  It all comes down to the salt and pepper.  Not only did it salvage the breakfast, it was good enough for to me switch permanently.  Now when I go to restaurants, I don't have to convince the waiter that ketchup is a reasonable condiment for eggs (it's a regional thing apparently).  Salt and pepper for the win. #food

I got my first sinus infection last year, and it was quite an experience.  I usually kind of tough it out when I get a cold or feel sick; it doesn't really matter if I'm sitting around with a runny nose at home or at my desk at work.  I don't interact with a lot of people at my job, so I can usually maintain my regular levels of activity when I'm sick.  I even try to go to the gym to sweat it out of me.  I'm sure there's science that contradicts that idea; I don't care.  It's at least partially a mental game:  Pretend to feel better, proceed to feel better. 

But a sinus infection was a whole other ballgame.  I had a meeting scheduled for that day, and I went to bed the night before feeling kind of crappy, but oh well.  So I toughed it out and went to work and proceeded to lead my meeting successfully.  But after an hour, I was really hurting, so I told my coworkers I was leaving.  My commute home takes me over some decent-sized hills, and the blinding pain I felt in my face and skull was something memorable.  I purchased some pseudoephedrine, which thankfully didn't cause me any negative side effects.  For the next few days, I was nonfunctional.  And we happened to get a pretty big snow storm the following day, so I was outside with the snowblower, trudging along blindly, trying not to make any sudden movements that would disrupt my relative stasis.  It was brutal. 

Since that experience, whenever I feel even a hint of sinus pressure, I fear for my general well-being.  It was such a unique type of pain, it's something I'd rather avoid in the future.  Thank science for drugs! #health

So I had an idea the other night as I was falling asleep in a hotel bed with an uncomfortable pillow:  I usually sleep with a neck pillow, but I don't feel like traveling with it.  Wouldn't it be cool if there was a pillow that wrapped around your head like a helmet, with the neck support of a neck pillow?  It would work in hotel beds, as well as car trips and plane rides.  There's a thing called an Ostrich Pillow, but it doesn't have neck support.  Million Hundred dollar idea here. #products

One of the ideas behind my post on political apathy was "outrage fatigue", which the Onion satirically wrote about over a decade ago by describing liberals reactions to all the Bush-era stuff that was going on at the time.  I guess it's kind of an old concept, and perhaps it's more of a liberal problem than anything, but it generally feels like a sense of exhaustion and apathy about whatever issue is currently center-stage.  It's frustrating because I feel like I'd like to be more outraged at things like Trump tweeting "Any negative polls are fake news", but I just don't have it in me.  I think part of it is a rational response to the results of previous outrage, i.e. nothing.  Outrage, opinion pieces, protests.  These things accomplish nothing when literally 50% of people disagree with every fiber of your being.  I'm done here. #politics

Maybe it's a product of the type of entertainment I enjoy, but I feel like there's a common thread in a lot of TV shows and movies consisting of a character or group of characters walking or hiking from one geographic location to another in search of something, be it freedom or safety or revenge or whatever.  One element that's nearly always missing is the issue of normal human sustenance.  I realize this is a boring topic, which is why an entertainment medium would simply gloss over it.  But honestly, if you go hiking in the woods for a couple hours without water, you'll be thirsty as hell.  If you think you can hike overnight without food or water, you're an idiot.  "Oh I'll just find water along the way."  No you won't.  You'll get a bacterial infection and shit your brains out.  The simple act of surviving in the most mild of wildernesses isn't rocket science, but it does require water, food, and shelter, something that's clearly missing from a lot of storytelling. #entertainment

I bought of 12-pair pack of black, ankle-length Hanes socks about 4 years ago.  Literally in the past month, holes have appeared in at least half of them.  It's almost like they're programmed to degrade at a fixed rate, which honestly I'm fine with.  I prefer reliability in my failures. #products

I realized one day, while I was eating leftover salmon which I didn't microwave long enough and was still cold in the middle, that I'm just not a food person.  I ate cold leftover fish.  It wasn't very good.  I ate it anyway.  I didn't feel like walking to the microwave again. 

I view food in two ways:  As a source of enjoyment, or as a source of calories.  I find it fairly easy to separate the two.  A bacon cheeseburger is enjoyable, and it's also a calorie source -- a double win.  Poorly microwaved fish is completely unenjoyable, but it's still a calorie source.  My goal of surviving by consuming calories can still be met, even though I don't particularly enjoy the experience. 

I was a picky eater as a kid.  I didn't like ham and cheese sandwiches.  I didn't like hot dogs for some reason.  I remember many situations where I was forced to eat or drink something ("Finish your damn milk!") and not enjoying it.  Maybe I got used to forcing myself to do things I don't enjoy.  That sounds like a rabbit hole I'll avoid for the moment.  Either way, I gained valuable experience in eating things I didn't enjoy, simply to prevent my death from malnourishment.  It worked; I'm not dead yet. 

I got over my pickiness.  Now I just actively eat things I don't enjoy, and I continue eating them until my plate is empty.  My wife cooks dinner most nights, and sometimes she'll try something new.  In 12 years of marriage, there has been approximately one meal I didn't eat, and it might've been because she used a cup of red pepper instead of a teaspoon, or something like that.  I ended up finishing the dish some other time, mixed with some less-spicy stuff. 

Honestly it's just too much of a hassle to be a picky eater.  Would I rather be eating something I enjoy?  Sure.  But this is what's in front of me right now, and quite simply, I don't feel like preparing a different meal, and I don't feel like not eating. #food