Challenges – Page 4 – My Truant Pen

#28daysoftshirts – Day 3 Latin on Superbowl Sunday

“It is better to know useless things than to know nothing at all.” – Seneca

My parents had these shirts made for our family about ten years ago, on the occasion when my little brother graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in Classics. He’d offered to do the graduation address in traditional Latin (they declined). I was smug about the fact he’d found a more useless degree than mine (Medieval Studies & English double major) until he went to seminary and it turned out to be useful. Jerk.

I thought I still had a Red Sox Championship t-shirt somewhere in my collection (vintage 2013), but it appears to either have been entirely lost in the bottom of my drawer, or purged in the move. I was surprised to discover I did not have a single appropriate shirt to wear in order to watch the New England Patriots play in the Super Bowl tonight. The closest I could get were a pair of shirts that are running focused. But instead I decided to wear the shirt that was least Super Bowly. Well, kind of – depending on whether you consider football knowledge to be a useless thing.

Color: Blue
Fabric: Stiff
Front Text: SATIUS ES SUPERVACUA SCIRE QUAM NIHIL. -Seneca
Circa 2007

#28DaysofTshirts – Day 2 “No Comment”

This is one of my oldest geek t-shirts. My husband goes to Gencon in Indianapolis every year, and has for the last 15 or so years. That represents 15 weeks in August that I’ve been home alone with the kids. In recompense, I demand dice and geeky tshirts. This was one of the first he brought back for me, at a time when I was still writing code every day.

I’m lucky that this particular syntax has aged well. I’ve used the following comment styles – let’s see if you can identify them all!

/*This should never happen*/
//I have no idea what this variable does, but if I try to remove it the whole thing breaks

<!– This may be a comment, but you can totally read it in the finished version –>
<!— I usually don’t publicly admit that this was my primary language —>

Color: Black
Fabric: Stiff
Front Text: /*No Comment*/

28 days of t-shirts

As part of my great attic shift, I went through all my clothes and moved them from one set of drawers to a new (smaller) set of drawers. One entire drawer is astonishingly full of nothing other than t-shirts with text on them. I like t-shirts quite a lot, especially funny ones. I have a personal schedule of wearing funny t-shirts every Friday, and often pack relevant t-shirts for trips. (Eg. a mountain t-shirt for a trip to the mountains.)

I curated my t-shirt set down to the ones I really liked, and was thinking about all the stories behind them. I have stories behind most things in my life (as you, beloved reader, are likely well aware). And I thought that it would be fun for the month of February to wear a different shirt every day, take a picture and share the picture and brief story with you!

So with no further ado – here’s today’s shirt:

Color: Red
Fabric: Soft
Attribute: Long
Front Text: Google
Back Text: I make things

I got this t-shirt for participating in a Maker Fair at Google. Most people there brought electronics or robots (there was an amazing one-man-band). I brought jams and did a tasting, which was rather popular. I had a fun time talking about jam and foraging and got some good tips from my colleagues. And all the presenters got t-shirts.

I particularly like the softness of the fabric on this shirt, and the length. I chose to wear it today because there’s a call for people to wear red for women’s heart health. I wouldn’t usually go out of my way for something like this (I doubt effectiveness), but it was a way for me to overcome the paralysis of deciding *which* shirt to wear first