Procedural Rhetoric and Ergodic Interactions

So, I’m enrolled in online school, and taking my first couple of classes.

One of my first classes is basically a “How to go to college” class, which covers some diverse topics as time and stress management, academic writing, reading strategies, and most recently – critical thinking.

As part of the assignment for critical thinking, I am tasked with reading some academic articles (of my choosing) and writing about them.  Since I am in an IT program, it is recommended that the articles have something to do with IT.

So, I found: http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2008/mp2008_paper_66.pdf

I picked an article on games…. go figure.

For a while, when initially reading this article, I felt like I was talking to Ron Penton.

I had to read it several times, as well as look up terms like “ergodic” and “procedural rhetoric”.

So far, I’ve about half-digested what the four page paper is saying (I think!).  A lot of it looks like someone used a thesaurus bazooka on it.

In the end, I think I’m starting to get a bit of a bead on something that I didn’t really have before.

Previously, I had no appreciation for academia.  I am an applied sort of guy.

I am starting to see how it is a very different world view, which has value in its own way.

I recently had a similar realization about the world view of manager-types.

So, in any case, I’m starting to be less of a “world view bigot”. Managers and adacemic folks are people too, it seems.

Some Stuff

First, I am now 35.  I had a birthday party yesterday.  Technically, it was a “Bid Yap” party, as my family and I have anagrammed “Happy Birthday” into “Harp Thy Bid Yap”, and we sing the Harp Thy Bid Yap song.

Second, with the exception of the aforementioned Bid Yap party, I have been on a 1500 calorie per day diet.  Last week I lost 8.5 pounds.  Then I had my party, and ate a whole lot.  Today I’m back to the 1500 calories, although the leftovers for lunch probably put me over, but I did better than I usually would have.

Third, my attempts at gardening are finally bearing going somewhere, as I finally got dirt in about a week ago.  So far, I have only a few cucumber seedlings and some tomato plants that my sister in law gave me for bid yap.

Fourth, I am going to be attending college starting in late July.  I will be pursuing an IT degree.  My job does tuition reimbursement, so it’s like getting a 70% discount on it.  Furthermore, my status as “having once been in the military and having the word ‘honorable’ on a piece of paper” entitles me to a significant discount on the cost per credit. Even better, some of the training I received while in the military should transfer credits to my university.  Even more better, the fact that I wrote four books should make it so that I don’t have to take any composition or technical writing courses.  We’ll see later on how the book writing helps or not.

Fifth, as a ministry opportunity, my wife and I are organizing a yard sale for the purposing of ministering and gospelizing people, by getting folks in my church to donate their stuff to it, and donating both whatever money is made to a charity (because of weird bylaw stuff, not my home church, but an outside organization) and whatever stuff is left.  In this I am going to do my level best to make it obvious enough to a person who would regard what the yard sale is as some sort of “entrapment proselytizing brainwashing indoctrination” that ministry is the whole point of the yardsale, so that the people who come to it will not be completely surprised that they will be told about Jesus, but not so over the top that ordinary people are scared away by the freaky Jesus people.