Avast, ye landlubbers, Captain Bookstooge is here to tell ye a tale that’ll shiver ye timbers right into toothpicks!
Back in my youth, I’d sailed the wide seas and rassled with many a critter that’d give an ordinary man nightmares. Things that devoured men, body AND mind.
And the time came where circumstances forced me to sail those self-same seas again, regardless of the consequences. Not being a captain who kills his crew, I let mine go. None of them deserved the fate I had in store for myself.
A good manly crew but not even they were prepared to sail with me into the darkness. I didn’t blame them and paid them fairly for the time with me. They deserved to go on with their lives.
So I, Captain Bookstooge set forth on a journey that will either raise me to heights I have never experienced in this mortal life or completely destroy me and crush my very soul. I set my sails for the shoals of Arithmetic. I cast forth my harpoon and my first nemesis appeared. It will be a battle waged for months before a victor can be decided.
Haha, so if I’m interpreting this correctly, you’re going to be reading an Algebra book? If so, I wish you the best of luck! My experience with math textbooks is that they take the simplest concepts and explain them in the most convoluted and unclear manner possible.
One nice advantage that modern students have is that there are a lot of tutorial videos and such online that explain things more clearly, so it isn’t as much of a “sink or swim” situation as it was back in the olden days!
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You are correct. I’ll be diving back into Algebra, geometry and trig over the next year or so. I’ve got to get the fundamental concepts back into my brain.
Hoping to do 3-6 lessons a week after work. Which is really going to cut into my reading and sit-around-and-do-nothing time.
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Good luck! A few years ago I took several university courses to help get myself into the IT/programming field. I expected it to be torture, especially since I was already working long hours at work in those days. I actually had fun with it for the most part, although I had almost zero spare time for a long time. I think it made a big difference that I was doing it as an adult by my own choice. Not only because my motivation was a lot higher, but also because I had more real-world experience that made the things I was learning seem more relevant and interesting.
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Thanks. I’m hoping my experience is similar to yours, ie, doing it for a real reason makes it go better. It’s been over 20 years since I cracked a text book, so I’m hoping I don’t crack at the change 😀
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Gosh, and here you got me so excited to read about your adventures on the high seas only to get to the end and find out this was all about…math. You cruel jerk, you 😛 😉
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Ah hah! Mutiny rears its ugly head already! 40 lashes for you, missie!
Our cook Svenn will administer the punishment with a wet noodle. Would you prefer a garden vegetable pasta sauce or a white sauce with your pasta for after the flogging?
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Hmm, white sauce please. I’m afraid the vegetable sauce would to much resemble my back after that flogging, and one likes to keep an appetite after a beating 😛
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That’s the spirit, keep an optimistic outlook!
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LOL, I was about to type in something which sounded like a quote from Captain Hook after I read your piece, but alas! I realized I didn’t know how to speak pirate. Cracked me up, this one! Best of luck on the Math! Best intro ever
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Well, if ye are ever in a pinch again, me beauty, this here site will save your bacon:
http://talklikeapirate.com/wordpress/how-to/
Ye’ll fit right in with all the scurrilous dogs and bilge rats that ever sailed!
Plus, it’s just fun to talk like a pirate every now and then 😀
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Good to know 😁
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For a second, I thought that was a real picture of a crew you once captained… Soooo is this new adventure into Algebra-land because you need it for work/a new job? Or just out of pure curiosity? Maybe because you just have a thing for self-inflicted torture? 😀
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It’s related to all the changes going on in Life. I’m currently writing up my Monthly Roundup post and I have a whole section about all the changes. It’ll be up this Saturday 🙂
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Yuk! Algebra! Well I wish you the very best of luck with it, of course, but I spit in the face of Algebra! 😀
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Thankyou.
It helps that I’m one of those people who LIKE math and algebra and stuff. Of course, we’ll see if I still like it as much as I think once I’m done this book 😀
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Algebra, geometry and trigonometry? Oh, you brave soul!!!
I’d prefer to face killer sharks, fiery dragons and giant squids….
😀 😀 😀
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Well, it does go right along with my job and I’m hoping to advance, so….
Plus, I like math 😀 Hence my fandom of Magic the Gathering…
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Oh wow, congrats on the catch – hope it’ll turn out better for you than for Ahab… 😀
Hope your life changes are going as planned!
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Well, it is going to be a whole lot of changes, that is for sure.
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Fingers crossed, then! You’ve made me very curious about it all, so get on with writing that recap post! 😀
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Already written and scheduled for Saturday 🙂
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😀
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hehee this a brilliant post! Good luck with it! Quite the catch! 😉
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Thanks 🙂
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Man i cant even work my wifes bra, and alger jus sounds really off putting… i am a dumbo when it comes to maths, my body shuts down… good luck🌹
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No worries mate, different subjects for different folks. Look at me and music 😀 I’ll do the math and you can have the music and poetry.
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This post slipped through the cracks so to speak…
I’m not familiar with those two algebra books. What made you choose them? Are particularities about them?
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I chose these books because they are the ones I had in highschool, so I’m familiar with how the program works. And I know it won’t have even a whiff of the stench of “new math” about it 😀
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Math is fundamental to lay charlatans bare…see the mundane world of money and politics: US President Richard Nixon once famously said “the rate of increase of inflation is decreasing”. Mathematicians will recognised this as a very sophisticated ruse. Inflation is the first derivative of the money supply, it’s rate of increase is the second, and the fact that that is decreasing just refers to the third derivative. Inflation is still going through the roof all the same…
So maths has everything to do with the real world. It tells us why nature is beautiful and lays bare charlatans. For those of us who like to ask questions, that is.
Ah politicians!
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I can see you’re a zealot for math. Just make sure it doesn’t turn into Math, with a capital “M” 🙂
I’m with you about politicians, but since we’re speaking of money, I’ll say that Economists are just as bad, if not worse. Or maybe just a different version of politicians. Keynes has done more harm to our world than we’ll ever know and he’s going to have a lot to answer for at Judgement Day.
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