I Went to School Today, Oh Boy

Well, my first day of "school" wasn't stellar.

My Rails training this morning was fair, but it didn't feel like anything unusual: this is what I've been doing for a while.  Par for the course.

I started German late (I had to vote early this year, so I was off doing that), and I was distracted when I finally got to it.  Still, I suppose it's good to ease into a refresher (with Michel Thomas). Among many other things, I learned lieden means "to suffer", and Liede means "unfortunately".  This was interesting, because "Das tut mir Lied" is a common phrase, which I learned many years ago, meaning (roughly) "I'm sorry".  I have always strongly prefered more literal translations, and I had assumed in this case it was "that makes me sad/sorry".  Now I've discovered it is more accurately "that makes me suffer". ...And that is the kind of linguistic shit that I find awesome.

Knots went miserably.  I scrounged around any little scrap for rope I could use, but all I found were fraying synthetic left-overs from the tarp I'd tied to the cooler on the roof last year, and they promptly fell apart.  Fortunately, the knot I was focusing on today (I have a list of 19 I want to learn before I'm done) was very simple, and I think I've got it.

So I took the "extra" time to read up on Wikipedia.  I landed on Knot Theory, however, where I spent most of my time.  Interesting stuff, and not quite as intimidating as I suspected it might be.  Still, I'm not doing this for the math, so that was more of a... survey. Still fun, still cool, still interesting trivia that relates to knots.

Then I decided to hit the rest of teh intartubes, and found (perhaps unsurprisingly) some useful videos, including the knot I was learning today (Shake Hands).

I expect tomorrow will go more smoothly.