Sometimes it is Binary

I do not see many things in life as being either black or white, but mostly I see them as gray. This is especially true when we are speaking of ethics, psychology, religion, etc. This is actually a bit of a curse, but that is a topic for another night of rambling thoughts.

Even in physics – or maybe especially so – things are not either/or, that is the point of quantum mechanics.  I have a vague understanding of this field, but the key word is vague (very vague).  The state of any particular particle is a matter of probabilities rather than certainties. The first time I read that light was both a particle and wave, I scratched my head until it bled.

However, in life, we are sometimes given a binary option.  We can hang on to a wrong, a slight, an injustice – perceived or real, stewing in it to the point of becoming bitter, or we can let it go. This is especially true as there is no way to go back and change the past. Life moves on whether we do or not.

Just saying.

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What started this particular piece of rambling was a group text chat that I was a part of.  It started as a rant against that horrible waste of protoplasm known as tRump.  I chimed in with a comment. What I got back was a bitter statement about a situation in this person’s life that only had a vague connection to the subject of the group chat.

And yes, I am self-aware enough to know that I am not nearly as self-aware as I give myself credit for being self-aware.  All by way of saying that the above applies to me as well.

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Just saying… Or to whom it may concern

Anyone with a vague knowledge of computers has heard of binary numbers (base 2) – the famous 1s and 0s.  Those of us who have programmed have used the binary system of numbers in our work.  On a few occasions I have used the octal  numeral system (base 8).  Outside of the ubiquitous decimal system (base 10), count your fingers,  the numeric system I am most familiar with is hexadecimal (base 16),  sometimes referred to as hex.  Before I switched over to Oracle systems, I spent a large portion of my programming career working with mainframes using COBOL, some Assembler, and rarely PL/1 programming languages (there were other languages I used, but I won’t bore you).  Working in these languages on a mainframe platform it is mandatory to have an intimate knowledge of hex and hex math.

In case you are not up on your hexadecimal… the digits in this numeral system are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, a, b, c, d, e, f.

Now scribble in a corner of your mind with disappearing ink that I was born in 1952.

In the year 2000 I started giving my age in hexadecimal, i.e. 30.  I continued  to use hex numbers until 2010.  Somehow or another saying I was 3a left even a more perplexed expression on peoples’ faces than when I was saying I was 30 at the start of the new century.  In 2016 I was able to switch back to hexadecimal and truthfully assert that I was 40, and I can currently,  with a semi-straight face, claim to be 45.

And so it goes.