Historical Archive of Alpha-Geek.com (Entries Labelled "ocd")

Jiggling the Toilet Handle

"Where's your bathroom?"

"Down the hall, last door on the left."

"Okay, thanks."

"Oh, you have to jiggle the toilet handle when you're done to get it to stop running."

That last sentence strikes terror into my heart. I am completely incapable of just mindlessly "jiggling a toilet handle." How do you know how much "jiggling" to do? What is the optimum frequency of the jiggling? Optimum amplitude? For how long do you perform the jiggling? There's no feedback. There is no confimation that your jiggling has been successful other than sitting and watching and waiting for the toilet to finish refilling its basin. If it keeps running, you have to repeat the jiggling.

No, I can't do this. I need confirmation. When I am told to "jiggle the handle," I remove the porcelain basin covering and meticulously manipulate the stopper into its correct position. This is the appropriate way to do it. I have no idea how normal people can just randomly jiggle a handle and then go to sleep at night never knowing whether or not their jiggling was successful.

Unfortunately, it is rarely as easy as pulling the top off. The top of a toilet is usually a resting place for a variety of bathroom items. Electric razors. Air freshener. Moisturizing lotion. Various female cosmetics. Other stuff I can't identify.

So, for me to accomplish my task, I have to rearrange the other person's entire bathroom; pulling off every item from the top of the toilet. Now, I could just place the items in a temporary location; remove the top; perform the replacement of the plunger; put the top back on; and return the items back to the top of the toilet. But, I know I am going to probably use the bathroom again. So, why perform this ritual each time I have to take a piss? I just try and relocate everything to a more natural placement elsewhere than the top of a toilet. After rearranging the person's bathroom, then I can much more easily perform the more optimum "toilet handle jiggling."

And, of course, if I've had a couple to drink, I give it 50/50 that I don't end up cracking that porcelain top in two, anyways.

Damn the OCD.

Reality? Consensus? Perception?

From Scripting News:

the consensus isn't always correct

That's a philosophical can o' worms. It's Michael Dummett opening up George Berkeley's Pandora's box. Each person perceives an event or object differently. Now, if you are one way on the spectrum of thought, you say that there is a state p that is the actual state, and then there are the states q₀, q₁, q₂,...q_n
Which represent the states of all of the different persons perceiving the event or object. Then, there is r_0..n which represent the difference between p, the "real," and q_n, the "perceived." So, r₃ represents the difference between p and q₃.

But, that's if you are one way. There's the other way. The other way, there is no p and, thus, there are no r_0..n's. There is just our perceptions. There is just q_0..n.

Now, I just broke down two of the most major schools of Philosophy into about a dozen sentences. But, if I had gone to greater length, people tend to get bored, stop reading, and just believe that it is being over-thought^†.
.
..
...
"Just believe that it is being over-thought"... And, that's the paradox. People are being affected by their own perceptions when reading anything discussing reality/perception. When discussing reality/perception, you're limited by and affected by the very rules you are trying to define... (oh, I'm going to say it) the meta-reality is recursively being applied and may be discounting everything you are saying (if you buy into this).

And, there, those 3 or 4 statements just attempted to break down another 198,655,211 pages of philosophical discourse into an easily digestable chunk on the topic of "what is real?"

Soooo, Dave, it may be that the "consensus is correct"... by definition.

Or, it may be that I have issues.

^†Subtle nod to Post-modernists.

Coffee Tastes Better in Ceramic Mugs

Coffee tastes different in ceramic mugs. It's a truth. Paper and foam cups are commonplace as your standard coffee shops, 7-11, and McDonald's offer those as receptacles. And, they work; but they are not ceramic. A glass container can be used in a pinch or if you are in a place that has an unhealthy affinity for items made of hardened, super-heated sand. Plastic is unthinkable. I would be inclined to turn down coffee (even in the most dire circumstances) if it would be offered in some plastic container.

It is in inalienable truth — coffee tastes better in ceramic mugs. I am a rational person, and I understand that, at a scientific level, the molecules in the cup and the components of the coffee do not intermingle in any signifigant manner. It is not the case that, upon entering a cup, there is an orgy of atomic exchange that occurs causing the coffee to take on a distinctly different taste. I know that that does not happen. But, I also know coffee tastes better in ceramic mugs.

A clot of blood on a piece of paper is thrown into the nearest trash designated area. But, if it is nicely framed, firmly affixed to a museum's wall, titled Miscarriage, and has 4 odd looking yet interestingly attractive people staring at it and jotting things in notebooks; it's art.

My shoes fit better if they are tied in a fashion such that the loops of the laces are of the same size and perfectly symetrical (no Möbius shapes). Shoes tied in a haphazard manner are uncomfortable, and coffee tastes better in ceramic mugs.

Cursed Elevator Buttons

There are 8 floor-designating buttons on the elevator here at work, 'G' and 1-7. Each button is circular and rests flush on the panel. They are activated by depressing them into their allotted recess. The problem is that they rotate. If you draw a line perpendicular with the plane the buttons reside on and intersecting each button at its centerpoint, they rotate about that axis. Such, they can easily become askew -- the 'G' could be upside-down, the 2 could be positioned 15° off, the 7 could be rotated 90°, etc.

So, I see this; and it drives me crazy. I try to resist. Whilst other riders are accompanying me, I usually do. But, when it's just me and those buttons riding up the elevator, I can't contain myself. Here's the catch. The amount of force it takes to generate enough friction with your fingers to rotate the buttons is nearly equivilent (within 1 micro-Newton) to the amount of force it takes to depress the button thus selecting a floor.

What this results in is me, about once or twice a day, making a stop at each and ever floor as I am hunched around the panel with two gingerly pressing fingers meticulously placing the buttons in their correct upright positions.

Me [addressing group]: Hi, everybody, my name is Jeremy...
Group [in unison]: Hi, Jeremy.
Me: I have a problem....
[extended pause]
Group Leader: It's okay, continue.
Me: My problem is you dumb fucks keep fucking up the damn elevator buttons! Can't you see they have a correct restful state, and they should always be serialized in that state when not in use!! Listen you fuck-tards, if you fuck up the positioning of the elevator button, replace it to its correct position!! If you fix it while that floor is already selected, I won't have to sit there...
Group Leader [interrupting]: Maybe we need to try a different approach.
Me: If people would just adhere to the right way, this wouldn't be a damn problem! *grumble* *grumble* damn crotch-weasels...

Ironing Clothes

Ironing clothes is one of the most difficult tasks for me to perform. Everything works out fine if I am just quickly ironing a shirt or just a shirt and pair of pants in preparation to skedaddle out the door on my way somewhere. In terms of the entirety of my OCD, as long as I have another place to divert my mental focus towards or I have something that will preempt my current focus, everything works out fine.

However, if I am just ironing for ironing's sake because I, let's say, let my clothes just sit in a dryer for several hours allowing them to raisin-ify (<-- that should so be a word), it is an unaccomplishable task. It is like cleaning a pond. You will always make visible progress. There is always dirt to pull from the pond and there are always more wrinkles to remove from your clothing, thus signifying that you are making some sort of headway. But, the task can never be completed. You can continue until you are blue in the face, there will always be more dirt and more wrinkles.

You never know when to stop. What's an acceptable amount of visible wrinkling? Does this accepted amount change depending on the type of clothing or the material of the clothing? Does it change depending on the location upon the clothing in which the density of wrinkles is located i.e. is it okay to have more wrinkles on the inside crease of the trouser leg versus the front face? I needed to invent some kind of heuristic lest I sit there ironing my clothing until the sun rose again. So, I grabbed a beer; left the presence of my clothing; went on to the porch; smoked a cigarette; and arbitrarily invented the "Official J$ Ironing Process Completed Litmus Test."

Finally, I Can More Accurately Develop My Fluid Intake OCD

I drink a lot of coffee (a lot). I, also, from time-to-time imbibe in the heavenly brew of beer. Now, maybe it is from playing high school sports where coaches adamantly reinforce the notion that allowing yourself to dehydrate is a cardinal sin punishable by extra calisthenics (if that makes sense) or maybe it is just another form of my OCD leaking through, but I absolutely have to stay hydrated. Caffeine and alcohol are both diuretics, so I knew I needed to increase my water consumption to compensate, but I never had an algorithm to use. I had to just "play it by ear."

Well, if you suspend your disbelief of the Internet doling out less-than-accurate statistics and take at face value what two Internet sites have to say, I now have an actual calculation I can perform.

Here's what I am looking at:

The Foos Has Gone to All New Levels

Just when you thought the game could become no more exciting.

So, I am a pretty avid foosball (table soccer) player. It's a great bar game. It's such a great bar game, I went out and got myself a foosball table (from that exact store I linked to, as a matter of fact). Over the course of playing foos, it was often bantered about that we should be keeping statistics. For a while, some of us kept track of our respective records against one another, but nothing formal came of it. But, now, it has been standardized and finalized -- here is the official "J$" nomenclature for tracking foosball scoring.

Geek Syndrome vs. OCD

Just because it was posted on Slashdot in PDD, Asperger, and Geek Syndrome?.

I had a girlfriend who was completely convinced I suffered from a de-habilitating case of Asperger. I told her that it was just OCD and not some crazy pop-psychology catch-all mental disorder. I don't think she ever bought it.

Media Organization

Another exploration into the effects of my neurosis. This one, however, is so simplistic, it should be obvious -- DVD's, CD's, and books.

Dualing Toilet Paper Protocol

When you walk into someone's bathroom, and you are encountered with two rolls of toilet paper hung on the wall, which roll do you pull from?

There are people out there that do not know...

Buy Book, Bestride Bike, Blog Bifurcation

It's a nice day out here in C-town, so I should be going for a bike ride. However, early today, I had made the resolution to go and finally purchase Programming Web Services with Perl, which of course, leads me down the long, long path of post-work Borders OCD. If I know that I am going to Borders, I must recognize the fact that I will inevitably sit in Borders, read, and drink coffee for an hour. If I know I am going to be drinking coffee directly after work, I need to stop somewhere and grab a bite to eat lest I become afflicted with caffeine-mind-fuzziness. If I am going to stop for food and go to Borders, I need to realize that I will not be arriving home until 8:30 - 9 o'clock. So, it comes down to bike ride vs. book.