Thur or Thurs?

Brains are weird.

I just finished scripting a Thursday comic, and I got to the “Save As” dialog and brain-cramped.

My naming scheme for scripts goes like this: YYYYMMDDdayabbrev-punchline. I’ve been using this scheme since July of 2000. The script in question was going to be 20090604Thurs-Discreet.doc, but as I typed I couldn’t remember whether it was supposed to be “Thur” or “Thurs” for the abbreviation.

I’ve typed that abbreviation the same way (or at least never questioned how I was typing it) over 450 times in the last nine years. And suddenly I could not for the life of me figure out which way it was supposed to go. So I flipped to my “Drawn Scripts” folder and checked. “Thurs.” Fine.

Senility? Senescence? Somnambulance? I’m forty-one, after all, and I am a little drowsy.

Brains are weird.

32 thoughts on “Thur or Thurs?”

  1. I read this and thought “Forty-one? He can’t be forty-one because I’m only thirty-five.” Then I thought again, did some math and remembered that I am in fact thirty-six this year. Somehow my birthday last January got lost in all the other simultaneous events and failed to be remembered in the back of my brain.

    1. He’d better be forty-one, because I am, and I’ve about seven weeks younger than he is.

      I will admit to having to stop and think on how old my parents are / would have been, though. The years keep on rolling along.

      1. That last bit’s always been easy for me because my parents were born nine days apart in 1960. Math’s pretty easy that way.

  2. I read this and thought “Forty-one? He can’t be forty-one because I’m only thirty-five.” Then I thought again, did some math and remembered that I am in fact thirty-six this year. Somehow my birthday last January got lost in all the other simultaneous events and failed to be remembered in the back of my brain.

    1. He’d better be forty-one, because I am, and I’ve about seven weeks younger than he is.

      I will admit to having to stop and think on how old my parents are / would have been, though. The years keep on rolling along.

      1. That last bit’s always been easy for me because my parents were born nine days apart in 1960. Math’s pretty easy that way.

  3. It’s probably because you’ve done it so many times that when you actually tried to think consciously about it you couldn’t remember it. It’s like thinking too hard about tying a tie, or a shoelace. If you actually think about it you suddenly have no clue how to do it, but if you leave your fingers to get on with it they’ll do fine.

  4. It’s probably because you’ve done it so many times that when you actually tried to think consciously about it you couldn’t remember it. It’s like thinking too hard about tying a tie, or a shoelace. If you actually think about it you suddenly have no clue how to do it, but if you leave your fingers to get on with it they’ll do fine.

  5. That’s okay. I can’t remember my own birthday sometimes – at least two different years, I only recalled because someone asked me what the date was. “Mumble mumble.. Oh, wait. It’s my birthday.”

    I’m not even certain how old I am right now; I apparently went a whole year thinking I was a different age than I was.

    Shows you how important that is – or how senile I am, at younger than Howard. That’s probably a safe way to remember my age. “I’m younger than he is.”

    BW

      1. Well, I usually know the right _day_, but yes, it’s interesting seeing someone celebrating the wrong birthday for close to a century 🙂

  6. That’s okay. I can’t remember my own birthday sometimes – at least two different years, I only recalled because someone asked me what the date was. “Mumble mumble.. Oh, wait. It’s my birthday.”

    I’m not even certain how old I am right now; I apparently went a whole year thinking I was a different age than I was.

    Shows you how important that is – or how senile I am, at younger than Howard. That’s probably a safe way to remember my age. “I’m younger than he is.”

    BW

      1. Well, I usually know the right _day_, but yes, it’s interesting seeing someone celebrating the wrong birthday for close to a century 🙂

  7. It’s one letter. I don’t think you have to worry about it.

    Besides. Perhaps you have questioned how you type it before, but forgotten you asked. =^-^=

  8. It’s one letter. I don’t think you have to worry about it.

    Besides. Perhaps you have questioned how you type it before, but forgotten you asked. =^-^=

  9. You’ve done it (literally) hundreds of times before. It’s an automatic process by which your mind walks down the pathway and creates the filename.

    This time, something was slower than usual. Most likely because you were tired, the various chemicals that make things fire in your brain were a little behind today, and it didn’t quite make the jump to complete the name of the file. It was close, but missed the last hop or two.

    🙂

  10. You’ve done it (literally) hundreds of times before. It’s an automatic process by which your mind walks down the pathway and creates the filename.

    This time, something was slower than usual. Most likely because you were tired, the various chemicals that make things fire in your brain were a little behind today, and it didn’t quite make the jump to complete the name of the file. It was close, but missed the last hop or two.

    🙂

  11. Just-in-time compiler work order

    I have done that same thing all my life, including often spontaneously losing muscle memory for a job I have done very often. I decided some years ago that its my brain sets a flag that says “this needs to be reconsidered for efficacy and effectiveness”. Whenever it happens to me I take a real look at what I am doing.

    More than half the time the re-think comes out the same way, but sometimes I realize that there is a better/faster/less-lossy/less-wasteful way to do the task at hand.

    I think it is also the same reflex that aborts ritual before it can become an obsessive compulsive brain script.

    When you _stop_ having these procedural aborts you are finally “old and ossified” so rejoice, your brain is still interested in the mechanics of your life.

  12. Just-in-time compiler work order

    I have done that same thing all my life, including often spontaneously losing muscle memory for a job I have done very often. I decided some years ago that its my brain sets a flag that says “this needs to be reconsidered for efficacy and effectiveness”. Whenever it happens to me I take a real look at what I am doing.

    More than half the time the re-think comes out the same way, but sometimes I realize that there is a better/faster/less-lossy/less-wasteful way to do the task at hand.

    I think it is also the same reflex that aborts ritual before it can become an obsessive compulsive brain script.

    When you _stop_ having these procedural aborts you are finally “old and ossified” so rejoice, your brain is still interested in the mechanics of your life.

  13. What’s even weirder than trying to figure out how a brain works is seeing pictures of your own brain. I had an MRI done a few weeks ago and I still can’t get over how strange it is to actually see the inside of my brain. Crazy times we live in.

  14. What’s even weirder than trying to figure out how a brain works is seeing pictures of your own brain. I had an MRI done a few weeks ago and I still can’t get over how strange it is to actually see the inside of my brain. Crazy times we live in.

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