August 08, 2024
Yesterday, I stopped by my old high school to visit some of my teachers before I head off to grad school. I graduated from high school only four years ago and it doesn't feel like it was too long ago.
On my way out, someone yelled at me, "Hey mister, where is the band hall?" I walked them up the stairs and pointed towards the band hall. During this thirty-second encounter, I mentioned that I was only twenty-two years old and that that was likely the first time someone had referred to me as "mister."
Later, I remembered that some of the newly-hired teachers might also be twenty-two. Also my mom pointed out that this was likely an incoming freshman, probably fourteen, so the kid's perception wasn't entirely unreasonable.
Does this have any impact on how I perceive myself? No, not really. Just an amusing anecdote. For the past couple months, I've been ironically referring to myself as a college-educated adult anyway.
Puzzles were a big part of my childhood. When my grandfather was living in Boston, we would frequently call on the phone and collaboratively work through books of sudoku and crossword puzzles. That plus the Smullyan and related puzzle books are how I developed my interest in mathematical, linguistic, and logical problem solving.
This past year, I've been back on the puzzle rush. In the spring, some of my labmates and I would work on the NYT Connections and Strands. Sometimes I would also do the Wordle and various variants including Duordle, Quordle, Octordle, Sedecordle, Duotrigordle, Sexaginta-quattuordle, Verticle, and Qwordle (quantum Wordle).
At some point, I also started doing the Mini crossword. It turns out my sister is also an avid puzzle solver, so we've been racing the Mini every day. We're typically in the low twenties and occasionally sub-twenty.
We still get the San Antonio Express-News paper every morning, so when I came home for the summer I had access to another set of puzzles. My sister consistently works through every puzzle every day, so I would sometimes look over her shoulder and poke at the Jumble, Cryptoquip, and Sheffer crossword. Occasionally we would work on the NYT crossword (reprinted in our local paper on a one-week delay) as well. This is a great side dish to accompany breakfast or lunch.
The main dish of this section is that for the past two weeks, I've also been working on the daily NYT crossword in the NYT Games app. Since July 29th, I've only missed the Friday and Saturday. I've solved almost all of the rest: I did the first 90% of Sunday on my own before giving up, and I needed a hint for the final letter of last Thursday. Anyway, it's super enjoyable to rack my brain for trivia I have stored away, and it's fun to chip away at each puzzle until I break through. Last night I even solved my first rebus puzzle! I'd love to keep doing this for a while.
I will end this section by mentioning that my access to NYT Games is provided through the San Antonio Public Library. Let's go public libraries!
When I was in Switzerland, my roommates pointed me towards an app called Slopes, which allows one to track and log one's ski runs. The app tracks statistics including number of runs, length of longest run, top speed, and total distance traversed.
As expected, I was immediately obsessed by this gamified version of skiing. A couple of my roommates remarked that I had gotten a bit too obsessed with the app versus the skiing itself. This does seem to fit a pattern with my Strava usage.
My Slopes and Strava usage has been down as of late, but I recently downloaded Kaya, a similar kind of social media app for bouldering and rock climbing. My local climbing gym, Armadillo Boulders, posts all the gym's routes to the app, allowing one to log one's attempts and successful ascents and keep track of one's progress. People also post videos of their ascents for others to admire or study. Given that my social media footprint is otherwise minimal, I think I'll continue posting to Kaya so that I can easily track my climbing evolution.
My interest in climbing has continued to grow since Zürich, and I'll just have to make sure my newfound interest in Kaya doesn't grow at a faster rate.