{"id":580,"date":"2008-04-15T02:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T06:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2008\/04\/15\/monday-evening-breakthrough\/"},"modified":"2008-04-15T02:24:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T06:24:00","slug":"monday-evening-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2008\/04\/15\/monday-evening-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday evening &#8211; breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pBlogBody_378977195\" class=\"blogContent\">\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t    I was out of sorts all weekend &#8230; angry and sad even though we had a bunch of fun stuff going on. It happens &#8230;.. &nbsp; &nbsp; The funny thing is my mood didn&#8217;t shift until Gabe sat me down and told me he was going to teach me Guitar Hero.. <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.productwiki.com\/upload\/images\/guitar_hero_ii_xbox_360.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">Now.. you must understand how strange it is for me.. I thing about video games all the time.. I work on the processors, I talk about their technology.. but secretly.. I just don&#8217;t &#8216;get&#8217; video games of any sort. Maybe I lack the eye hand coordination.. or the attention span.. but I&#8217;ve never, ever, ever enjoyed holding a game controller in my hand.&nbsp; (sorry EMC friends.. I&#8217;m from another planet, I guess) .. Anyway.. Gabe stuck the Guitar Hero controller in my hand and switched the thing to sub-pre-beginner-neub mode..&nbsp;&nbsp; He let me pick a song.. Well.. first problem.. no Mozart&#8230; OK.. what&#8217;s the next best thing. I selected &#8216;Anarchy in the UK&#8217; from the Sex Pistols from 1976. I have a big attachment to the song dating back to 1991 when I was writing my&nbsp; thesis in Pittsburgh.. It was a hot August day.. I hadn&#8217;t slept in 2 days.. the windows were open..and I was busy writing. Suddenly my elderly neighbors put on Frank Sinatra at eardrum splitting volume&#8230; I tried closing the window&#8230; but it was too hot.. I ended up putting on this song at full volume&nbsp;&nbsp; to neutralize the Sinatraism&#8230; <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><object type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"never\" allownetworking=\"internal\" height=\"355\" width=\"425\" data=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/JH-7kc4Qm2Y&amp;hl=en\"><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"never\"><\/param><param name=\"allowNetworking\" value=\"internal\"><\/param><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/JH-7kc4Qm2Y&amp;hl=en\"><\/param><\/object><\/div>\n<p>Anyway.. Gabe showed me how to work the controller.. and started the song..&nbsp; First I got a few notes then lost it&#8230; failure.. then I got a few more&#8230; then a few more&#8230; I kept going back and re-starting the program.. Well gentle readers.. I&nbsp; ended the evening with 85% correct and&nbsp; a string of 83 correct notes .. Yeah. It was still on easy.. but somehow it felt like a breakthrough..&nbsp;&nbsp; It was all I could think of today. I felt much better&#8230; like I could do anything&#8230;&nbsp;&nbsp; Actually the only thing daring I tried today is that I ran my morning jogging loop backward&#8230; not much of a step.. I know&#8230; but it was progress&#8230; It was stepping out of my rut a bit.. and in that, it was also a breakthrough&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>OK.. Gotta sleep now&#8230; (actually gotta go play Guitar Hero)&nbsp; See you folks.. Nite Sam<br \/>-me<\/p>\n<p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was out of sorts all weekend &#8230; angry and sad even though we had a bunch of fun stuff going on. It happens &#8230;.. &nbsp; &nbsp; The funny thing is my mood didn&#8217;t shift until Gabe sat me down and told me he was going to teach me Guitar Hero.. Now.. you must understand &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2008\/04\/15\/monday-evening-breakthrough\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Monday evening &#8211; breakthrough<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}