A New Job!

You should hear the title in that Bob Barker (or whoever) voice they use on the Price is Right to tell what's in the showcase. A ne-e-e-ew car!

Anyway, now that it's official: I have a new job. Rather than working for an exploration & production company, like now, I'll be working for an (oil & gas) engineering consulting firm. The new place is a 5-minute drive from my house, rather than my current 25-minute drive downtown. It's a small company and the people seem very friendly.

I'm super excited. I almost had a heart attack when I had to tell my boss of 10 years that I'm resigning, but I lived.

So...yay!

Old-Timey

OK, I fucking love this contest to create vintage ads for modern products. I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing.

Yelling at Coworkers

It's pretty rare that I let myself get really angry with a coworker, but today I did.

A guy I'll call Bert is one of my best pals in the office. He's cool and nerdy and has similar political views to mine, so we talk politics pretty often. He also argues politics with a Bush Republican I'll call Rufus. I never talk to Rufus about politics, though. I don't actually care to argue politics with coworkers, at all. (I don't mind discussing views on a specific issue if it can be done really calmly and respectfully, but I'm not going to seek out someone specifically to argue with them.)

So Bert came into my office a few minutes ago to tell me that he told Rufus that people who voted for Bush must have done so for one of three reasons. I can't remember the three that he listed but they were something like ignorance, greed, or pure evil.

I just sort of said, "Oh, god," and covered my face with my hands.

Then another coworker, Kristin, came in, and I happen to know she's a Republican, and Bert started to repeat this to her, and I said, "All right, if you guys are going to argue politics, don't do it in my office."

Kristin wasn't into continuing the argument, but Bert was determined to at least make his few points. Ultimately I got very serious and yelled at him (not that loudly, but definitely yelling) to get out. In fact I walked up to where he was standing, forcing him to leave. I was actually pretty angry.

"You can talk to her somewhere else," I said.

"But she's not leaving," he said.

"I'm sure she'll leave sometime and you can find her then," I said.

Kristin and I laughed about it afterwards. Our boss overheard it and thought it was funny. But I do feel bad, and hope Bert is not too pissed off at me, because, after all, he's one of my favorite people here, even if he does enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing.

My Name

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 27 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I think this figure was arrived at statistically rather than being an actual count. But until I tried a coworker with a really unusual last name, I couldn't find anyone among my friends with a more unusual name combination.

Next Semester

Today, the course schedule for next fall was released. It's always exciting for me, picking out the next semester's classes.

There are three classes I still need to take:

Principles of Programming Languages
Linear Algebra
Probability & Statistics OR Abstract Algebra

I should note that I eventually intend to take both Prob & Stats and Abstract Algebra, so it's not really that important which one I take now. But in any case, here is when the classes are available this fall (TR = Tuesday/Thursday, MW = Monday/Wednesday):

Principles of Programming Languages
TR 1:00-300

Prob & Stats
TR 11:00-1:00
MW 7:00-9:00 (PM)

Linear Algebra
TR 1:00-3:00
MW 5:00-7:00 (PM)

Abstract Algebra
TR 7:00-8:15 (PM)

I try really hard to avoid taking classes during the day. I also try, though much less hard, to get Tuesday/Thursday classes rather than Monday/Wednesday ones.

It's pretty clear that the obvious choice of two classes from this list is Linear Algebra and Prob & Stats on Monday and Wednesday nights. That puts them in a solid block from 5-9, which is similar to the schedule I started this semester with (though I have Tuesday/Thursdays instead).

My fear is that the same professor will be teaching linear algebra again. I really don't want to take it from him. It's still "TBA" right now. But if he teaches it at night two semesters in a row, then there's no reason to think he won't do it next Spring too, so there's kind of no point in skipping it for that reason.

This is a lot of hours. It's possible I could instead take Prob & Stats and Abstract Algebra. I'd have class four nights a week, and having a single class at 7PM two days a week is not that great, but I could use the time before class to do homework. And it would be 7 rather than 8 credit hours.

But linear algebra, unlike either of the other two maths, is non-negotiable, so leaving it for Spring of '09 would mean I'd have to take it at that point. As things stand now, the only class I'll actually have to take next Spring is Principles of Programming Languages.

I guess we'll see next semester if I can really get through those two courses. At least the first half or so of linear should be easy the second time through.

A Painful But Correct Decision

I made a decision Saturday night. I am dropping linear algebra.

I'm getting an A in the class. The material is, with a reasonable amount of work, comprehensible to me. I'm getting the homework done. I can probably continue this way and get an A.

But I'll flunk sweprac. (This is "Software Engineering Practices," my senior experience course. It's a big group project.)

Linear algebra is simply consuming all of my available time. It doesn't help that I have a terrible professor. (It helps that Ed loves it, and helps me with it a lot. But this doesn't save me time, really - it just gives me a better understanding of the material. And something fun to do.) It really doesn't help that linear algebra homework is so much more straightforward than working on my sweprac project, and so much more deadline-driven, that at any given moment I am bound to choose it.

But sweprac is important. It's my senior experience course. It's only taught in the Spring. I really, truly do not want to have to re-take it. I also don't want to let down my professor - who is happy for me to finally have the positive group experience I've never had. And I really do have a fantastic team for the class. I owe them my effort, and it's also a great opportunity to really do something.

The idea of re-taking linear algebra another time sounds perfectly fun and delightful, so it's not a loss in that way. Maybe I'll even get a good professor next time.

So...goodbye, linear algebra. And hello, scary sweprac project!

Too Many Things

There are too many things in my life right now. Work. School. Ed.

My current resolution is to turn screens (computer and TV, though the latter isn't much of a problem for me) off at 10 PM. Ed's under strict instructions not to talk to me via IM after that time. And, if I'm at my house, I've asked him to kick me out by 9:30. (It's a 10-minute drive back to my place.)

I have eight (8) sections of homework due next Thursday. I got a week behind, and next Thursday is the test, so it would be good to be caught up, though probably not all eight of those sections will be on the test. But our professor hasn't said which ones will, and I don't intend to go back to class again until the test itself, so I had better just finish all of them.

I've done one section, so basically, if I complete one per day from here on out, I'll be fine. But there's really no such thing as completing one section per day. While I can't exactly sit down and do several sections in a row, I also can't usually complete a whole section on the first pass. So I need to do some unspecified amount of work that averages, by Thursday, to a section a day.

This is the most boring blog post ever.

Anyway, aside from this trauma, things are all right. At some point I will need to do some work for sweprac if I'm to pass that. The week after next is Spring Break. I might survive.

Blows My Mind

Do you know what blows my mind?

This:



From Astronomy Picture of the Day, this is a Hubble telescope image of the Sombrero Galaxy.

OK, so, it's not all that fabulous, but think about this. In our sky you can see lots of stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is huge. And then, also in our sky, you can see whole other galaxies. They are so far away that they are, like, the same apparent size as stars.

It is just freakin' amazing the range of orders of magnitude present in our universe. It reminds me of this, of course (from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, which I remember seeing in the theater in New Orleans as a little kid, with my mom and her friend and her friend's kids):

New Layout

I hope you like it. I'm glad I figured out how to get recent comments to show up. I enjoy this feature on other blogs.

Brilliant Math Genius

The other day, I showed up at Ed's house, found the front door unlocked, raced up the stairs to his room, met him in the hall, and said, "Your girlfriend is a fucking brilliant math genius!"

Let's back it up.

I'm not a math genius. I am pretty good at math, and getting better all the time. I also think that almost anyone can learn and enjoy math, and that most people who think they are "bad at math" just haven't had good experiences with it and thus haven't stuck to it. (This applies double to my mom, who loves formal logic and puzzles and therefore is obviously math-inclined despite apparently never having enjoyed math itself.)

But math can really kick you around. Unlike history or literature, where you have progressively increased knowledge leading to mastery and insights, math can make you feel really stupid when you don't get it. (I might not understand the causes of the Great Depression, but this makes me feel, at worst, ignorant. When I do know some history, I am unaware of my lack of insight about it. You don't have to have the proper insights to understand what others have written.) The flip side of feeling like an idiot when you don't understand math, though, is feeling like a genius when you do.

Last week, I had a section on transition matrices and change of basis. (I promise I won't talk about this in detail.) I did all of the homework pretty quickly by stumbling (by some insight I couldn't recreate until recently) onto a method that worked, but when I triumphantly showed it to Ed, he didn't like my method (he's not a fan of the augmented matrix; he prefers an algebraic approach).

When we sat down to figure out the actual algebra, we found the section of the book rather inscrutable. (I have since seen the completely clear presentation in his linear algebra book, so I have a basis for comparison. No pun intended.) What we found by deduction from what I'd done in my homework didn't seem to make any sense, and Ed didn't feel it was consistent with the book's text. He hypothesised (hypothesied? hypothesized?) that someone different had written the questions from whoever wrote the text, and that the two didn't match. He also found that the questions and answers were not themselves consistent.

"But I did them all the same way," I protested, "based on what I read. And my answers match the ones in the back."

I said this over and over, but I couldn't show how it was true, because I had lost the understanding of what I'd done, somehow. I'd lost the knowledge of how it made sense.

I don't want to make it sound like I just rolled over, either. We worked on this hard for a long time, on two different days. We came to a conclusion about how most of the problems worked, but the conclusion was just stupid. It would sometimes require things to be multiplied backwards, in the direction that doesn't work for matrices. And it was just plain not sensible, even though it was workable in a lot of instances.

I was troubled. The night before my breakthrough, I felt that I thought about these problems all night while I slept. By morning, I had a new tack to try, and I hastened to the library to work it out.

By 90 or so minutes later, I was ready. I had figured out how to show that the book was consistent, correct, and sensible, and I was eager to demonstrate this to Ed. We had been stupid and missed a kind of obvious point. (For my fellow linear algebra students, I will state the central insight thusly: a transition matrix does not change a basis to another basis; it changes a vector stated in terms of one basis to the same vector in terms of a different basis.)

Hence my rushing up the stairs, declaration of myself as a genius, etc.

Ed was skeptical. We'd worked pretty hard and pretty clearly on this, after all.

"We're going to run this like a game," I said. "And games have rules, right?"

"Does this mean our relationship is a game?" he asked.

"Yes, but you knew that already."

"I guess you're right."

"OK," I said. "These are the rules. You can't go ahead of me, and you can't go sideways from me. You have to let me show you this. You can only interrupt me if you think I've done something wrong, or if you don't understand what I'm doing."

"No going forward, no going sideways. But I can go backwards? Got it."

We chatted a little more while he made some tea. He asked if I was going to be crushed if he didn't agree with me, once I had showed him my argument. I told him I'd only be crushed if I still thought I was right, but that I was confident we could come to an agreement either way. He was pretty sure I was going to turn out to be wrong.

I wasn't. In fact, once I gave him the central insight, the rest pretty much fell into place, though I went through my demo anyway. It was terrifically fun. Some of my algebra was wrong (for instance, in one place I divided each side of an equation by a vector, which is an undefined operation), but it led to the place we'd ended up the other day anyway, except that now that place didn't seem nonsensical. (The algebra worked in the other direction, just not in the way I'd derived it. What I provided was not in any way a proof, but I did show some relationship between our work the other day and the sensical way that the book was really working.)

Like I said. Brilliant math genius.

Exercise Music

I usually listen to music when I exercise. I'll listen to almost anything, but some songs give me extra joy when my iPod plays them. There are even songs I've intentionally bought through iTunes just so I'd have them for exercising. My tastes run towards inspirational lyrics and cheesy 80s-ness. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite songs to hear while working out.

"Africa" by Toto



(I am now trying not to let the horror of that video destroy my enjoyment of the song.)

"Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor



"Rain King" by The Counting Crows



NB: This is NOT the real video for this song, but it was the best YouTube version I found. Don't let the images inform your understanding of the music.

"Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band



This song just has a fantastic beat that I can't get over.

"Lose Yourself" by Eminem



"Success is my only motherfucking option, failure's not."

"I Wish" by Skee-Lo



"First We Take Manhattan" by Leonard Cohen

See the video here. Note that this should also be known as the only Leonard Cohen song that it is even possible to exercise to.

There are others, but this is a good chunk.

Dedicated Spaces

I am noticing a pattern - I really enjoy going somewhere specific to do something.

In the past week, I have visited my local library branch twice to work on my linear algebra homework, and both times, I was quite productive. The library just got remodeled, so it's pretty nice inside. (Unfortunately, the chairs are uncomfortable - as in, my feet don't reach the ground - but I was able to move one of the comfy sitting chairs to a table and use it instead.) There are computers there, but you have to reserve one if you want to surf the Internet, and there are no computers at the plain tables where I sit. There are virtually no distractions - just enough so that when I get bored, I can wander through the stacks for a few minutes to invigorate myself.

I am the same way about exercise. I have an annual pass to our local rec center, and going there to exercise is actually easier for me than exercising at home, or by walking around outside near my home. It's a dedicated place. It's a trip. I think I like going places to do things.

Last night, Ed and I went to Perkins (a 24-hour chain restaurant like Denny's or IHOP). We had dinner, and then pushed the plates and condiments to one side of the table while he joined me on the other. We spent the next hour or so hashing through some math that I didn't understand.

It was perfect. The flat, smooth plastic table was ideal. The restaurant was nearly empty, so I didn't feel we were stealing a table from our waitress. (I did overtip when we left.) Our drinks still got refilled. It was just much nicer than attempting the same thing at either of our homes.

I think my preferences in this respect may be the opposite of what most people want. It's not that I don't value being home. I just feel like I get more done, more easily, and with more fun, if I go to a dedicated space to work.

Movies Update

All right, I have added my fourth and (no doubt) final quote to #10, my one remaining unidentified movie. Now go solve the puzzle, please.

Not Tired

Well, OK, right now I am tired, but that's to be expected - after a three-day weekend, I had to get up at 6:15 this morning. The day should be fine, except that I also have class tonight until 9 PM. I might die.

But in general, the three-day weekend really let me catch up on rest, so that I got to a point of not being tired for the first time in about four weeks since school started. It was nice. Last night I even got bored, a sensation so unfamiliar that it took me a little while to identify it. I also did seven loads of laundry.

I spent much of the weekend with Ed - so much, in fact, that I think we kind of got sick of each other. I know I got irritable a lot, which is kind of the bane of my existence as a person. But mostly it was good. I even made food that he willingly ate.

Wednesday night, we had Valentine's Day. He was working furiously on his thesis (for which his defense is March 21 - exciting!), so we just ate dinner at a nearby place before going to my apartment for a while. I love that guy.

I had no linear algebra homework to fall behind on this weekend, but I did utterly fail to accomplish anything for sweprac, which is getting critical. Ouch.

Those New Grocery Bags

I'm not sure if they're everywhere yet, but here in Colorado, something new has shown up over the past few months: very cheap reusable grocery bags.

The bags are $1 each (or $5 or so for an insulated version, which might be useful if you shop far from home) and seem to be made of some kind of rigid, offensively synthetic cloth. They are shaped like brown paper bags, and have handles, so they are functionally equivalent to the paper bags at nice places like Whole Foods. The bottom has a plastic insert to help make it rigid.

As grocery bags, they kick the ass of canvas tote bags, are a substantial bit nicer than ordinary plastic grocery bags, and they are $1, folks. It's finally become easy, convenient, and cheap enough for me to start bringing my own bags to the store. (Considering I get a credit for bringing my own bags, they could conceivably even pay for themselves.)

Every store seems to have their own logo version.

I also have to admit, having cheap-ass, ugly $1 grocery bags emblazoned with the King Soopers logo (left) satisfies my tiny bit of anti-elitism: I like not looking like some yuppie who was willing to pay $12 for a damn grocery bag. When I carry them into Whole Foods, it will give me a funny little pleasure (although, to be fair, I am sure Whole Foods is also selling these).

15 Movies Meme

(via Note of the Living Deb)

The rules:

1. Pick 15 movies you know/like/love.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

These are listed in the order I thought of them, which could help.

UPDATE: I have added additional quotes (not necessarily by the same character) to the unidentified entries.

1. In one way or another I've always suffered. I didn't know why exactly. But I do know that I'm not so scared of suffering now. I feel more than I've ever felt and I've found someone to feel with. To play with. To love in a way that feels right for me. I hope he knows that I can see that he suffers too. And that I want to love him.

One scoop of creamed potatoes. A slice of butter. Four peas. And as much ice cream as you'd like to eat. - Secretary, Mosch

2. Like I'd marry you! You'd be the meanest wife ever, okay? And I know that you weren't bored that day because there was a lot of stuff on TV, and then 'The Blair Witch Project' was coming on Starz and you were like 'I haven't seen this since it came out and if so we should watch it' and 'but oh, no, we should just make out instead la la la' - Juno, Cartaufalous

3. I just remembered something from a long time ago, I think it may help you. Once, when I was little, I dropped my shoe into a river. When I tried to get it back I fell in. I thought I'd drown but the water carried me to shore. It finally came back to me. The river's name was the Kahaku river. I think that was you, and your real name is Kahaku river. - Spirited Away, Ed

4. The lake goes around for miles. You, and your children, and your children's children, will dig for a hundred years, and you will never find it. - Holes, Debbie

5. You don't know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. And they won't allow it... because I raise issues.

Lots of things. That jewel thief movie, for example. He's very well respected. Anyway, the point is... this is a very odd thing. It's Supernatural, for lack of a better word. I mean, it raises all sorts of philosophical-type questions, you know... about the nature of self, about the existence of a soul. You know, am I me?

Have you ever had two people look at you, with complete lust and devotion, through the same pair of eyes? - Being John Malkovich, Robin

6. Ned, there is no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire. - Simple Men, Cartaufalous

7. It's a philosophy. A poetics. A politics, if you will. A literature of protest. A novel of ideas. A pornographic magazine of truly comic book proportions. It is, in the end, whatever the hell I want it to be. And when I'm through with it it's going to blow a hole this wide straight through the world's own idea of itself. - Henry Fool, Cartaufalous

8. Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend? - 12 Monkeys, Ed

9. I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms. - Brazil, rvman

10. Family entertainment? Bollocks. What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats. Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here's the theme music. Goodnight.

Shut up, you American. You Americans, all you do is talk, and talk, and say "let me tell you something" and "I just wanna say." Well, you're dead now, so shut up.

You see that house? That is where I was born. My mother said to me, "Garcon. The world is a beautiful place, and you must spread joy and contentment everywhere you go". And so I became a waiter... Well, I know it is not a great philosophy but...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet thats evolving
and revolving at nine-hundred miles an hour
it's orbiting at ninety miles a second
so it's reckoned
a sun that is the source of all our power
the sun and you and me
and all the stars that we can see
are moving at one million miles a day
in an outer spiral arm at forty-thousand miles an hour
of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself
contains a hundred billion stars
its a hundred thousand light years side to side
it bulges in the middle
sixteen-thousand light years thick
but out by us its just three-thousand light years wide
we're thirty-thousand light years from galatic central point
we go round every two-hundred-million years
and our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe - The Meaning of Life, Sally

11. How am I not myself?

I've thought about hacking you up with an axe Albert, and smashing your face in with a baseball bat. - I Heart Huckabees, Mosch

12. His destructive programming is taking effect. He will be irresistibly drawn to large cities, where he will back up sewers, reverse street signs, and steal everyone's left shoe. - Lilo & Stitch, Ed

13. Now, what is it that has four pairs of pants, lives in Philadelphia, and it never rains but it pours? - Duck Soup, Sally

14. Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'? - O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Sally

15. Nothing's more suspicious than frog's breath! - The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sally

Guess away!

My Personality

I took a personality test based on five personality factors.

I'm an O59-C2-E53-A69-N32 Big Five!!

It was fun and didn't take long.

Electoral Compass

This was pretty fun. Here's how I came out:

A note: I answered the questions in a way that would achieve the political outcome I wanted. For instance, when asked whether the federal government is responsible for providing people with a retirement outcome, my truthful answer is, "No, but I think it's a good idea," and thus I answered yes. In a simple quiz like this, I try not to let the framing of a question deter me from answering its intent. (However, sometimes that's impossible. The death penalty question asked whether I thought the death penalty dettered crime. Well, I'm against it, but I do think it deters crime. I answered truthfully.)

Juno

Mosch and I saw Juno last night - a movie about a smart, quirky teenager who gets pregnant. I thought it was pretty fabulous, with consistently smart dialogue, unexpected humor, and a lot of warmth.

At first, I was concerned that the main character (played by Ellen Page) was going to just be too much - too amazingly quirky and cool in a way that even the best high school kids aren't. Instead, I really bought into the character and fell in love with her almost immediately. And I loved Michael Cera here (similar to how I loved him in Superbad). All of the characters were great, actually.

There are times when you think the movie is going to take potshots at easy targets (yuppies, for instance) and...it doesn't quite, or it does so only gently.

Ultimately, the movie is very cool, but not too cool. It's clever but not in love with cleverness. It doesn't idolize coolness or cleverness above other qualities.

Go see this movie, or put it on your Netflix queue.

Wrong But Not Ridiculous

In the car last night, Ed and I were discussing the blog I Blame the Patriarchy by Twisty Faster. It is a favorite read of mine even though my style of feminism is pretty far away from Twisty's in many ways. For Ed, the blog goes wrong in many ways, and he appreciates it less than I do.

Twisty could be reasonably accused of holding that all heterosexual sex is rape, a position that strikes most people as ridiculous. It's an idea that is often used as a straw man. But we were talking about this last night and I wanted Ed to understand why I see this argument, like many on Twisty's blog, as wrong but not ridiculous. (I can't find an instance of Twisty actually arguing that all heterosexual sex is rape, and she may not actually espouse that position, but it doesn't actually matter for the purposes of this post. You could read this delightful post about anal sex, or this one proposing a legal solution to rape to get a general idea.)

I argued it to Ed this way. Is consensual sex possible between a slave and a slave owner? Even if the slave wants it? You might answer yes, but surely you can see how it's possible to answer no.

Consent is really a continuum, from the enthusiastic and informed "yes" of free, sober persons, to actual forced sex. At some point, we draw a line and say, "This isn't consensual enough." I think sex with a willing but drunk lover is fine, but sex between a teacher and a horny 16-year-old is not consensual enough for me.

So, slaves and masters: consensual enough or not?

Assuming you can see this point, it's not such a stretch to say that insofar as women are subordinate to men in a culture, sex between the two is less consensual than sex between free people. If you don't think there's real consensual sex between masters and slaves, do you think there is consensual sex between husbands and wives in Saudi Arabia? What about 1940's America?

What about present-day America?

For me, the question about present-day America is easily answered: sex between willing adults is plenty consensual for me these days. It's not really a close thing for me at all. But Saudi Arabia is.

That's why I think the position (which may or may not only be held by strawfeminists in any case) is wrong but not ridiculous.

Looking Forward to "Sweprac"

Next semester, I am taking my Senior Experience course, which is Software Engineering Practices (aka "sweprac"). It's the big project class. Last semester, I took Software Engineering Principles, which is where you (theoretically) learn about the things you're supposed to do in sweprac.

I kind of am and am not looking forward to the course. I've historically hated group projects, like most people, and project management seems like a kind of horrible thing.

At the same time, not only is it with a professor I like, but I really did enjoy the first half, even the (bad) group project that we did. I love doing software design in a group. I love working in a code repository with other people. I like writing requirements. I basically like just about everything about it.

I think my reluctance towards the class is more a sort of slight intimidation than it is about not enjoying what we'll have to do.

I did email the professor lately, to see how his current Principles class (which will be the feeder for my sweprac class) is going:

So...is most your sweprin class going to pass? Are there any women in that class?

I'm just curious who I might see in sweprac next semester. Should I be afraid or very afraid? :)

and he wrote back

Most of the class should pass. No women. Some good students. Issues are (as expected) with respect to working as a "team", but awareness definitely raised during this semester. Should be interesting. :)

You'll no doubt be hearing (reading) a lot about this next semester, so be prepared!

Some Kind of a Tetrahedral-Figure?

I love this Saint Gasoline comic.

Fuck you, Land's End

I was at Land's End's web site today, messing around looking at some coats they have. There's a button for "try it on" somewhere, and it took me to a site that appears to be run by "My Virtual Model" where you can set up a whole model of yourself to try clothes on with.

When I put in my actual height and weight, I got this message

We're sorry.

You cannot create a model with the height and weight combination you have entered. You may be able to create a model close to your size by adjusting one or both of these measurements.

Or, click "Cancel" to use our generic model.

I am fat, but not some freakishly sized person that it would be difficult to build a model for. So fuck you, Land's End, and My Virtual Model too if they are a different entity, for wasting my time so you could essentially insult me at the end of it.

I think it's really stupid to release this product with these limitations.

Presidential Candidates

A coworker sent me to Glassbooth, one of no doubt numerous sites that helps you choose between presidential candidates. I enjoyed this one because it includes the step where you indicate what your actual priorities are.

It's helpful to distinguish between different meanings of "priorities." I think the Iraq War is really important, but it's not something I'm likely to distinguish very much between candidates on. What I want the next president to do is to see what the actual situation is and respond appropriately. I care that their general attitude is not "we can solve our problems only by attacking everyone" (hello, Giuliani), and I don't think immediately withdrawing all of our troops is sensible (or even possible), but this is an issue where I'd be judging between candidates based on their credibility rather than their stated positions.

Civil liberties and domestic security, on the other hand, is a real issue of concern for me right now.

At any rate, these were my results, from best to worst.

Bill Richardson 79%
Barrack Obama 78% [my actual top choice]
Christopher Dodd 77%
Mike Gravel 74%
John Edwards 72%
Dennis Kucinich 72%
Joe Biden 72%
Hillary Clinton 69% [my actual 2nd choice]

Ron Paul 59%
John McCain 59%
Mike Huckabee 54%
Fred Thompson 54%
Rudy Giuliani 52% [my very least favorite candidate]
Mitt Romney 49%
Duncan Hunter 43% [who?]
Tom Tancredo 39% [I HATE this guy]

It's interesting that all of the Dems fell within a 10-point range for me, there is then a 10-point gap between them and Republicans, and then the Republicans cover a 20-point range of their own.

I didn't totally follow my own advice about priorities, or at least it wasn't possible to in all cases. One of my disagreements with Obama was on gay marriage, but IMO there are only two viable political positions for a presidential candidate: I'm against it, or I'm against it but civil unions are a good idea. I don't hold it against Obama that he takes the civil unions position. I think his stance on gay rights is actually peachy.

My breakdown on Obama is as follows:

Abortion: 100%
Medical Marijuana and Drug Policy: 100%
Environment and Energy: 100%
Health Care: 100%
Civil Liberties and Domestic Security: 88%
Trade and Economics: 75% [I’m less protectionist]
Immigration: 75%
Taxes and Budget: 75%
Iraq and Foreign Policy: 50%
Social Security: 50%
Gay Rights: 25% [I am in favor of gay marriage]

All of these types of quizzes have major limitations, of course. I think the 10-point gap between Obama and Clinton, and the fact that Kucinich came up higher than Clinton, makes me look a bit more liberal than I really am. I disagree with Obama on trade and economics more than this quiz thinks (because I think it only had one or two questions about it). And stated policy positions are only part of the picture.

Work Work Work

I'll have to be careful what I write here; a couple of my coworkers at least potentially read this blog.

But anyway, I've been getting behind at work for months. And what is bad about me and getting behind is (a) I am really good at getting behind under the best of circumstances, and (b) once I get behind, my natural response is to sort of hide under my desk and try to avoid thinking about all the stuff I haven't finished.

In my job, I get a lot of different tasks from different people. Some of them - the technical ones - I basically enjoy, and others - the administrative ones - I loathe and detest. I should point out that I'm not at all resentful of having tasks I loathe. They pay me a lot of money to do these things. Nevertheless, it's hard for me to get them done. And besides that difficulty, there is the fact that my job often turns into a stack, where anything I am doing is interrupted by the next new thing that needs to be done, and I can never burrow back down to the bottom.

I'd say 10% of this difficulty is the structure of my job, and 90% is me.

The week before Thanksgiving, I had a talk with my boss about how much I need to get caught up and some other things. My boss's boss had talked to her about me (among other things) and she felt I was in danger based on his attitudes. (I was not surprised to learn this, but again, head-in-the-sand thing.)

Since then, I have really caught up a lot. The week of Thanksgiving, I started with 17 items on my to-do list, and since then I have finished 13 of them and only 3 new ones have been added. (Some of the remaining ones are huge projects, but I am waiting on information from other people to be able to finish them.)

Part of what I've accomplished is updating a lot of information in my own databases, etc., that's been out of date for a while. I needed to take care of those things in order to finish some of the tasks, and when a task requires a bunch of back work to be done, I get intimidated easily.

This morning I spent an hour reorganizing some files for a due diligence guy who is coming in today. (I don't generally do filing, but we changed the organization of a few items and it was too complicated to hand over to our filing person.) Filing is something I detest in large quantities, but in small quantities, it's like solving a puzzle, plus it results in something very neat. I enjoy that.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I'm enjoying my job a lot more, having a lot less stress about it, and being a much better employee. Kudos to my boss for helping me get to this point.

Anesthetic Awareness

Slate has an article about anesthetic awareness today. "Anesthetic awareness" is when you are under general anesthesia, but accidentally awake, just unable to move. This can happen because patients are given a paralytic in addition to the thing that makes you unconscious. So, were the unconscious-making thing to fail, you might be conscious and unable to let anyone know.

It's the stuff of nightmares, obviously.

I felt sheepish asking about this, but before my surgery I did ask the anesthesiologist, "How do you know I won't be awake and just not able to say anything or move?"

I got the reassuring answer that I would not personally be receiving any paralytics, so if I were to wake up, I would in fact be able to move. This is because, since they were operating near my spine, they were going to hook electrodes up to my skull, arms, and legs, and pass signals in both directions (brain to limbs, limbs to brain) and see if they were received. There are minor risks from this procedure, he told me, but it greatly reduces the risk of spinal cord injury, because they can see right away if what they are doing is affecting your spinal cord.

I have no memories from my surgery at all. Of course, I suppose it is possible that I had some kind of experience during it and simply can't remember it, but I'm going to assume I was really out. It doesn't matter at this point, at any rate.

Outrage du Jour

In this "On Ethics" column, we learn that a graduate student who plagiarizes a paper may receive an Incomplete in the course.

An incomplete? Are you fucking kidding me?

The minimum penalty I can imagine for an undergraduate is an F on the assignment in question. (Penalties were much harsher at my original college, but I know that's unusual.) But for a grad student?

I am not usually one of those "where is this country headed" lunatics, but seriously, are there no standards at all? I bet there are plenty of people who would be happy to take that student's position at the school and write their own papers.

New Debt Snowball

About a year ago, I posted the results of a debt snowball calculator that I ran on the debts I had at that time. I've just updated it for the debts I currently have, and I'm going to share the results.

I put in that I can pay $1090 per month to my debts (including minimum payments). This is based on the average of what I've paid over the past 11 months, so it shouldn't be an unreasonable figure.

Here are the results (click for an expanded view).



Eagle-eyed readers will note that I have paid off a little over $10,000 in debt over the past year, and I am paying about $86 less in interest every month. You can calculate your own debt snowball here.

Creamed Spinach

Any combination of spinach with fatty dairy things is like my favorite food ever. (Saag paneer probably is my all-time favorite because it's also spicy.) So for the potluck we're having at work today, I decided to try making creamed spinach.

I found a recipe online, which is sometimes challenging. It is easy to find 100 recipes for something online; what's hard is finding the recipe for something. And, if you're like me, you often want the recipe. But the recipe for creamed spinach that I linked is quite evidently the recipe.

It was easy. Thanks to Sally teaching me how to make a white sauce, I wasn't afraid of that step. Then you just cook tiny onions in butter, add the frozen spinach and cook it, then mix together the spinach, white sauce, sour cream, and parmesan cheese. It came out as perfectly canonical creamed spinach.

I am very pleased with it.

Flight Schedule Confusion

Next week, I am flying to Nashville for Thanksgiving. These are my flight details.

Wed, Nov 21, 2007 Denver International Airport, (DEN) to Nashville, (BNA)

Flight: Frontier Airlines Flight 232 (on Airbus A319)
Depart: 10:25 AM, Denver, CO (DEN)
Arrive: 01:53 PM, Nashville, TN (BNA)
Total Travel Time: 3 hrs 28 mins

Sun, Nov 25, 2007Nashville, (BNA) to Denver International Airport, (DEN)

Flight: Frontier Airlines Flight 231 ((on Airbus A319)
Depart: 02:33 PM, Nashville, TN (BNA)
Arrive: 04:27 PM Denver, CO (DEN)
Total Travel Time: 1 hr 54 mins

Now I find this a bit confusing. First of all, if you look at the total travel time, it's way longer on the outgoing flight. But it appears to me that they haven't adjusted for time zones in this calculation, which is weird. Denver and Nashville are an hour off. (It's an hour earlier in Denver.)

But if you do adjust, then another strange thing pops out, which is that my outgoing flight takes 1 1/2 hours, and my return flight takes...less than an hour? Really?

I remember Houston to New Orleans as taking about an hour. Can Nashville to Denver really be that quick?

Belief Systems

Today I saw a bumper sticker that said

If you fall for nothing, you fall for everything.

The best sense I could make of it was as an argument against having no foundation of beliefs because you are then open to whatever nonsense comes along. I can see someone like Orson Scott Card making an argument like that: choose your nonsense now before some other nonsense chooses you!

As a rationalist atheist, I do see some value to belief systems that are at least exclusionary. Once you're a Methodist you're probably not going to also believe in a bunch of other baloney. This is, in fact, probably what I don't like about New Age folks. Their beliefs aren't exclusionary and therefore they can believe all varieties of nonsense - even varieties that contradict each other.

I'm a fan of empiricism. It has the twin values of being exclusionary (in that whatever is not empirically supported should not be believed) and corresponding to observed reality (in that it is intrinsically designed to have that exact quality).

(Yes, I realize that this is approximately on the philosophical level of a bright 7th grader. Give me a break, it's just a blog.)

Katamari Damacy

I currently own exactly one functioning console game: Katamari Damacy.

In this game, you are the alien pilot of a small round thing (katamari), and you roll it all around a cartoon landscape (inside a house or around a town or whatever). If you roll it over something roughly smaller than itself, it will pick that thing up and grow. The point of various levels is either to grow the katamari to a certain size, or to pick up a number of objects that follow some theme.

The music is great.

I find this game really relaxing and just lovely to play. The controls are easy and there's nothing complicated.

If you'd like to know what it looks and sounds like, here is a rather poor-resolution video of the first level.

Open Letter

Via Language Log, check out this brilliant open letter by "eternally stressed semanticist." An excerpt to whet your appetite:

Dear [□ Sir / □ Madam / □ Representative / □ Journalist / □ Idiot],

I know you believe you know a great deal about [□ linguistics / □ children's literature / □ law / □ psychology / □ other (please specify)]

simply because you [□ use language / □ read Harry Potter and Goodnight Moon / □ watch Law & Order / □ have a mind],

or because you've read a newspaper article about [□ the lack of numbers in Pirahã / □ Dumbledore being gay / □ some Supreme Court decision / □ Prozac].

Besides being funny, the letter makes an important point - there is something to these fields. In fact, there is something to most fields, and you could write this letter about any of them.

Depending on the person's attitude, it is either annoying or an interesting opportunity when someone makes a pronouncement that is not just wrong, but wrong in some fundamental way, in a field about which one knows something. I find this happens to me with linguistics a lot, possibly because the combination of "I know something about it" and "People like to comment on it a lot" is so high.

Competitions vs. Grants

The Economist has an article this week about robot cars, which have improved a lot in the past few years, largely (it seems) as a result of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) competitions, which set out conditions and then award large prizes to the best competitors.

I say "large," but of course a few million bucks would be miniscule for a robotic car research program, and wouldn't even be a lot of money for grants.

This improvement in “autonomous vehicle technology”, as the jargon has it, is partly a result of prodding by America's defence department, which hopes a third of its ground vehicles will be robotic by 2015. To that end its research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has scaled back the traditional process of handing out large research grants and getting nothing useful in return. Instead, it has been running a series of grand prix for such vehicles. The prix in the latest, due to take place on November 3rd, is $3.5m—of which $2m will go to the vehicle best able to negotiate its way round Victorville, a former air force base in southern California, with $1m and $500,000 to those in second and third places.

Competing are university research teams (some of which have big-name sponsors because of success in past years), amateur enthusiasts, and even a corporation or two.

I really like this idea. It seems to motivate (financially and psychologically) all the right people, and you only have to reward people who succeed. Obviously the money to fund the research has to be out there to begin with, and it will never be fully compensated, but it's great to be able to harness existing money and motivation this way.

Plus, the resulting competitions are really fun to hear about.

Searching for Myself

Via Pharyngula (not that he directed it at me on purpose), a meme: what is the first thing that comes up if you search for yourself on Google Images?

If I search for Tam, this is the first thing:

for the normal version of my full name:


My name in quotes yields a picture of a woman who is not me, but linking it would give away my full name :-)

Anger in Relationships

Before Ed, I hadn't been in a relationship with anyone for...8 years? Something like that. Having a boyfriend again is lovely, but also strange in some ways. One of the problems I keep having is dealing with anger - both my own and his.

On my side, it's like this. I'm an irritable person, and I tend to snap at lovers. I've gotten way better about this over the years (and this was something I could work on with Mosch as well), such that I really no longer say things like, "Can't you eat like a human being?!?" but I'm still a bit over the top. Ed tends to take my irritation very seriously, which hurts him and is not the best response to it.

But when it comes to actual anger, I have a really hard time expressing it. Instead, I let it build up until I either go passive aggressive, or come out with the anger is an overly harsh way. (I was talking to Sally the other day and realized I have never, ever gotten outwardly mad at her. I really don't think I have. And, you know, I've known her for 15 years, so it's not like she's never pissed me off in all that time.)

When I do act angry, I usually end up feeling later that I was in the wrong. I can't really tolerate being wrong or unfair. So I usually either just try to get over what is bugging me, or else I express it and then feel wretched later.

On the other side of the coin, Ed is also irritable, and gets irritable with or angry at me more often than any boyfriend I've had. His anger is really clean - he's not scary and he doesn't say intentionally hurtful things. I sometimes think of it as a "clean, protective anger." It is usually about a demand for fairness or to be taken seriously. (Belittlement is intolerable to him.)

But it crushes me. I think partly because I grew up as the only child of a single parent, when my partner is angry at me, it feels like the end of all relationship. (Think about it. In my family of origin there was exactly one relationship.) It feels like he hates me. I don't usually get angry or defensive back - I just crumble inside, and want to do anything to appease him.

It's bad. I wish I wouldn't respond this way. I am still able to respond somewhat rationally to whatever he's saying - weigh his arguments, decide (generally) that he's right, apologize, and whatever is required. Sometimes I will make a case for myself when I think there's one to be made. He listens too. We often handle it well in the moment. But afterwards, or maybe later when he jokes about something unrelated, I'll cry. It builds up.

I want to learn more healthy ways of dealing with this on both sides. I'm less concerned about my own anger, because Ed can handle it, and I do eventually get my points across somehow. But I'm afraid my response to his, if I don't get over becoming a basketcase whenever he gets mad, may destroy things.

The Schooling

I took this semester off from school, which was painful but necessary in light of having surgery. (I already work full time. School or surgery seems doable, but not both.)

I have four classes left before I can graduate, as follows:

• Software Engineering Practices (my Senior Experience course)
• Principles of Programming Languages
• Linear Algebra
• Abstract Algebra or (more likely) Probability & Statistics

Next semester, I'll take Software Engineering Practices (hereafter known as "sweprac") and Linear Algebra. I'm really looking forward to it, and I have a decent schedule (Tuesdays & Thursdays, 5-9pm).

This means I should graduate in December of 2008. I've been in school for a long time, and I do want to keep taking math courses basically forever, but graduating would be great.

The Boyfriend

Ed and I started dating in late May. It's been about five months now, and we are still together, with no signs of that changing any time soon.

He makes me really happy. He's in love with me (which is mutual, as should be obvious), and he's wonderfully emotionally supportive, a drama whore like me, and just great. I can't believe how great he is in these emotional ways. Also, the sex is the best I've had.

He's still working on his master's thesis. It's hard for him to stay productive with hardly any external constraints, but that's sort of the nature of theses. I have no doubt he'll get it done.

Lately, we spend about two evenings and one weekend day together each week. We also play an online game together (EVE Online), which gives us a light way to spend time together (online, of course, not in person) without it being too intense. (We have a habit of getting intense over IMs, and it doesn't always turn out well.)

His birthday is Monday, but we're celebrating it Friday. He'll be 24.

The Surgery

On August 29th, I had ACDF surgery - anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. In this surgery, which is to handle a badly herniated disc, they go in through the front (anterior) of your neck (cervical), remove one of the discs that acts as a shock absorber for your vertebrae (discectomy), replace it with a piece of bone (like a shim), screw the vertebrae together using a titanium plate and screws, and then hope your vertebrae will grow together with the bone shim (fusion).

The pain I've been dealing with on and off since 2003, and which was really terrible starting in January of this year, is 95% gone. I'm no longer taking any pain meds - not the gabapentin that I'd been taking since March, not even tylenol.

The tiny bits of pain I do have seem unrelated to anything that I do, and that itself is a huge relief. For years I was careful about how I moved my neck, how I held it, how I slept, etc., knowing I could easily trigger a flare-up. Right now I'm being careful because I'm still healing from the surgery, but nothing I've done seems to make anything hurt more.

It's too early to know for sure whether the fusion itself is succeeding, but the success rate among healthy young people (at least based on the control group of one study) is about 98%, so the odds are in my favor.

The surgery itself was pretty easy. I was miserable in the hospital afterwards (a ton of anxiety), but I never had much pain afterwards.

I am really glad I did that.

Updates Planned

I haven't posted here in for-freakin'-ever.

Partly it's because I've just been busy. Partly it's because one of my regular readers isn't speaking to me, and that's painful to think about. And partly...hell, I don't know. The most interesting parts of my life are things I can't write about here.

But I plan to write a series of small updates on various facets of my life, and I expect I'll keep this blog more updated after that point.

I wonder how long it will be before anyone even finds this post?

Surgery Update

I emailed all of this to my mom, but here's an update on the surgery I'm having in 13 days.

My surgery is two weeks from yesterday - August 29th. I had my pre-op appointment Monday and they went over everything.

Well, first this horrible nurse talked to me. She was friendly but useless, and didn't talk to me like my surgery was a serious thing. She usually works for a different surgeon and she came in not knowing anything, and asked me what kind of surgery I was having and when. I guess it was lucky for her that I knew, huh? She told me some wrong stuff, like that I wouldn't have a bone growth simulator (I will) and that I shouldn't take ibuprofen for six months after - she denied that the other NSAIDS (aspirin, naproxen) were included in the ban, but my surgeon confirmed that they were later.

Then I talked to the resident who works with Dr. Patel (my surgeon) and he was cool.

And then I talked to Dr. Patel himself, and he went over everything again. And then to another nurse who actually gave me her direct line (unheard of at this place) and was pretty awesome.

Here's some stuff I learned.

I'll have a collar (brace) for six weeks after the surgery. The company that fits them will call me and arrange to come out and meet me at my house or whatever two or three days before the surgery, and I'll get the fancy collar then. I'm supposed to wear this all the time. But what Dr. Patel told me - which was really nice to learn - was that plenty of surgeons do this exact surgery and don't ask their patients to wear a collar, so it's more of a precaution than an absolute necessity. I'll wear it anyway, but this should cut down my paranoia about it. (I'm really paranoid about my head breaking off after the surgery. I mean, not literally breaking off, but the idea is for the bones to fuse, and I'm worried about that not happening. The resident told me that the success rate for healthy young people is 98% for this, so my odds are good. I wonder what the other 2% do wrong?)

I'll also have a bone growth simulator, which is like a shock collar that I'll wear a few hours a day for . I've been told that it does not hurt, which I assume is true.

I was worried that I might have to stop taking the gabapentin before the surgery. I don't really notice if I miss a dose, but if I miss two doses, I have really intense pain in my tricep for a while. (The tricep is the back of the upper arm.) I hate that a lot. But Dr. Patel said he wants me to take the gabapentin straight through the surgery, and continue taking it afterwards, and then wean myself off of it over time as the nerve heals. So that's good.

I couldn't get a consistent answer on whether to stop taking the Pill. (Ed and I use the Pill and condoms, so stopping the Pill doesn't really change much.) The only issue there is that it increases the risk of blood clots, and that's one of the major risks of surgery too. (I'll have special hose on after surgery and I'll wear those for a while afterwards - I'm not sure how long, but a week?) Dr. Patel said not to worry about it, his resident said I should stop taking it, and the bad nurse said I should ask my ob-gyn or gp. I'm going to stop taking it. We don't have that much sex and we do use condoms already anyway (not that we couldn't start if we didn't, but since we already do it's even easier) and I am really anti-death.

Having surgery is like having furniture delivered in this one way: you call the day before and they tell you what time to show up. They schedule a few for the same day and they can rearrange the schedule at the last minute. At least it's not a "window", though in practical terms I guess once you show up, there's no absolutely guaranteed time that they do stuff. You know how doctors are. (The bad nurse kept apologizing about not being able to tell me right now what time to show up. I wanted to say "It's ok, I'm taking the whole day off, it really doesn't matter.") I can't eat any food starting 8 hours before the surgery, but I can have clear liquids (including gatorade, water, coffee without cream, clear juices, etc.) until 2 hours before.

Mosch can go with me into pre-op, where I meet with the surgeon again, and the anesthesiologist, and get blood tests, and have an iv put in, and stuff like that. (This is the part I'm nervous about. Pre-op.) Then when they take me into surgery, he goes into the waiting area. They'll give him a pager so he won't feel like he can't leave. I'll be gone 2-4 hours, but the actual surgery part of the surgery only usually takes about an hour.

If I were adamant, I could theoretically leave the hospital the same day, but they like to keep you overnight to make sure you don't have problems with breathing or swallowing. (Since they operate through the front of the neck, there is a possibility of damaging your windpipe or esophagus, though the resident assured me that all of these things, including major nerves, are "in the same place in every patient" and so this is not too likely.) I'm cool with spending the night. I'm not that big a fan of choking to death at home. (Of course, just being in the hospital gives you some chance of getting an antibiotic-resistant infection or something too. But this is a very new and fancy hospital and hopefully they know what they're doing over there.)

Of course they want you up and walking around as soon as possible after the surgery - this is to help prevent blood clots - and the next day, you can go home as long as you are walking, peeing and pooping, breathing fine, and eating and drinking. I'm supposed to have some soft foods at home because my throat will be really sore, as though I had a tonsillectomy.

Mosch is planning to spend the night at the hospital with me. Ed is going to come with us (according to the current plan, anyway) and wait with Mosch, but Mosch will drive him home for the night. I hope Ed will come over the next day, when I'm home again, and help me if I need anything (while Mosch sleeps). I trust Mosch more at the hospital than Ed, because he has more experience being an advocate for a patient in the hospital and he knows me and my preferences really well. Also it's a lot to ask from a boyfriend of 3 months.

My Lolcat

This is moronic. But cute. But moronic. But cuuuuuute! (And my result seems oddly appropriate.)

Your Score: Ceiling Cat

50% Affectionate, 25% Excitable, 37% Hungry

You are a master of stealth. They never see you coming. But you always see them coming. HEY-O!

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I Won Two Arguments

Because I am a jerk and a smart-ass, I won two arguments today.

First, two coworkers and I were discussing the problems that can arise in pregnancy due to Rh factor. (Rh factor is the thing that makes your blood type "positive" or "negative.") Coworker C was certain that if the mother's and father's factor differed, it would be a problem no matter who was positive, while I felt certain (based on the logic of how A, B, and + work in blood typing) that only if the mother was negative and the father positive could problems arise, not if the mother is positive and the father is negative. She was insistent, so I looked it up online and confirmed my theory.

Bad me!

Later in the day, my boss (who had been privy to this earlier conversation) gave me a document to proofread. The document stated that we gave up a certain lease because of its "proximity" to a well that we drilled. The lease was actually far from the well, and while I think technically "due to its proximity" could convey that, it sounds much more like we dropped it because it was close to the well.

She insisted that "proximity" refers to something being far away. I argued. She looked it up in the dictionary. I stood by hoping that the definition therein would be conclusive. It was.

"Well then a lot of people use that word wrong," she huffed (mildly).

"I hate her now too, C!" she called out a minute later.

I swear I do not wake up in the morning trying to be a jerk. And I stand by my actions in the second case, since using the word wrong would have made the memo confusing. But I probably could have let the Rh thing go.

Caffeine Withdrawal

The weekend before last, I drank a whole lot of caffeine, mostly in the form of nice delicious soft drinks. Oh, and iced tea. Lots and lots of iced tea!

I drank so much caffeine that I actually got sick from it twice, on two consecutive days. I had a terrible headache and felt fluttery, anxious, and nauseated for two or three hours each time. (Two days in a row? Obviously I don't learn.)

So I gave up caffeine last week. The last caffeine I had (not counting chocolate) was half a soda Wednesday at lunch. Prior to my weekend overdoses, I'd been drinking about 1 or 2 caffeinated beverages (soda or iced tea) most days, so it's not like I was having a crazy amount or anything.

Why did I give it up? Well, I hate the idea of being dependent on a drug, even one as mild as caffeine. I guess Nancy Reagan's attempt to make every child of my generation terrified of drugs worked on me. Also, I'm having surgery in a month, and it would be really nice to not go into that as a caffeine addict. I don't want to wake up feeling crappy from caffeine withdrawal on top of the rest of it. (Caffeine withdrawal is mild - nothing like, say, heroine withdrawal - but it still sucks.)

But it really sucks right now. I've had a headache on and off since Thursday. (It varies from about 3-7 hours per day, I think.) And I have the usual drowsiness and not-good-for-anything-ness.

The worst part is the "dysphoria," which I was almost relieved to hear is in fact a known symptom of caffeine withdrawal. I'm basically having kind of classical depression symptoms. I'm down and very pessimistic. Little problems make me think whole enterprises (like my relationship with Ed) are doomed. And this is really not like me.

I'm really hoping this goes away soon. Stupid caffeine.

A Haughty Intellectual? Moi?

Via the great science blog Pharyngula, this:

Your Score: Haughty Intellectual

You are 71% Rational, 42% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant.

You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsession with yourself as well, thus causing everyone to hate you for being such an elitist twat. On top of all that, you are also introverted and gentle. This means that you are just a quiet thinker who wants fame and recognition, in all likelihood. Like so many countless pseudo-intellectuals swarming around vacuous internet forums to discuss worthless political issues, your kind is a scourge upon humanity, blathering and blathering on and on about all kinds of boring crap. If your personality could be sculpted, the resulting piece would be Rodin's "The Thinker"--although I am absolutely positive that you are not nearly as muscular or naked as that statue. Rather lacking in emotion, introspective, gentle, and arrogant, you are most certainly a Haughty Intellectual! And, most likely, you will never achieve the recognition or fame you so desire! But no worries!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Schoolyard Bully. (Bullies like to beat up nerds, after all.)

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Braggart, the Hand-Raiser, and the Robot.

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If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

About Saint_Gasoline

I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Deliriously Happy

So much stuff about and with Ed makes me just deliriously happy. I know this is just kind of typical in-love stuff, so I won't bludgeon my readers with the sappy details. But being in love with someone who is really, unequivocally, openly in love with me rocks.

Range of Neck Motion

I've been doing some research into the type of surgery I plan to have. One question that comes up about having vertebrae fused is whether I'll still be able to move my neck all around, or how compromised I will be. (After all, having two vertebrae become one piece of bone is obviously not how the spine is designed to work; the discs are there to let the thing flex.)

Alan Hilibrand has an article in the journal Spine (Jul2006, Vol. 31 Issue 15, p1688-1692, 5p) with this abstract (emphases mine):

STUDY DESIGN.: Prospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVE.: To precisely measure the effect of anterior cervical fusion on neck motion.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA.: Anterior cervical decompression and stabilization procedures are successful in treating recalcitrant cervical radiculopathy and cervical myelopathy. Most assume that these “fusion” procedures result in a loss of neck motion, although changes in overall motion following anterior cervical fusion have never been precisely quantified.

METHODS.: Twenty-five consecutive patients undergoing anterior cervical fusion of ne to four levels underwent cervical range of motion testing in three planes using an unconstrained instrumented linkage before surgery and more than 3 months after surgery. These data were compared with that of 10 volunteers with no prior history of neck complaints. Motion data were compared between patients and volunteers, and between the patients before surgery and at last follow-up, using RMANOVA and Fisher’s PLSD post hoc test.

RESULTS.: Before surgery, the patients had significantly less motion than the volunteers in all directions. Following surgical fusion, patients gained a statistically significant amount of motion in all planes, although they did not achieve the motion seen among the volunteers. Gains in motion were seen among all patients, including those undergoing four-level fusions, and there was no correlation between postoperative motion and the number of levels fused.

CONCLUSIONS.: Patients undergoing anterior cervical fusion have diminished neck motion compared with normal volunteers. Following surgery, they may be expected to gain motion, even when undergoing multilevel fusions. However, these patients are unlikely to regain the neck motion seen among normal individuals without neck complaints

This is fairly reassuring. My range of neck motion right now is indeed pretty minimal. I can't look up very far, can't look sideways nearly as far as normal people, and both directions (especially in combination, which is really bad) hurt me. For instance, if I'm in the driver's seat of my car, parked, and talk to someone in the passenger seat for more than a couple of minutes I get a lot of pain.

Surgery Scheduled

My surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, August 29th. My plan is to return to work the Monday after Labor Day, i.e., September 10th.

Before the surgery, I have a pre-op appointment on August 13th. Also, the company that makes or sells the neck braces (one of which I must wear continually for six weeks from when they put it on during the surgery) may contact me for a fitting. If not, they will fit me on the morning of the actual surgery.

I know it is strange to be excited about going under the knife, and I know I won't enjoy it in the event, and will probably be scared, and the aftermath will probably be very unpleasant, but I actually am excited and happy to have it scheduled. I kind of "can't wait," as silly as that is. It's not so much that I anticipate having my problem solved - though that's certainly the hope based on which I'm choosing the surgery at all. I think it's just the new and exciting proposition of having surgery.

(Yes, I am looney tunes.)

I am saving up questions for the surgeon. So far, I have

• How do you make sure that you operate on the correct vertebrae? Do you count them or are they each just really distinct to you? (It's not like having your leg amputated where you can just write on the other one with a sharpie ahead of time "NOT THIS ONE.")


• Do they insert the urinary catheter before or after I'm under? (I have anxiety about this.)

The Fourth

Ed and I spent yesterday at his parents' house in Longmont. When it got dark around 9:15, we saw a lot of neighborhood fireworks, plus the fireworks at the county fairgrounds some miles away. We all sat out in the street in lawnchairs. It was suburban in the best sense.

I enjoyed seeing the family again, and I was more relaxed this time. Ed's mom (Jean) was feeling better than last time and we got to spend some time together fixing up her cell phone and installing some software on her computer. She told me that last time she had had the aunts interrogate me since she wasn't feeling too great.

"Did you get some good intelligence?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she said.

Ed's dad (Ed) sat with me and Ed for the fireworks and we joked together quite a lot. After arguing about who was whose straight man, the general pattern seemed to be that he would set up the jokes and I would knock them down. Ed bore the brunt of most of it.

We also had another fabulous dinner with two kinds of pork loin (cooked on the grill), three kinds of potato salad, cole slaw, corn, and two kinds of garlic bread. It was feast-like. I had milk with my dinner, which is uncommon for me but seems to be a regular thing in their household.

I think they like me OK.

You're Dethpicable!

Came across this classic Bugs Bunny cartoon ("Rabbit Seasoning") on Andrew Sullivan this morning.


some features:

• massive cartoonlike violence that would probably not be aired on network TV today
• the early part: a new marketing suggestion for Texas Parks & Wildlife?
• Bugs Bunny: master of rhetoric
• Bugs Bunny in drag
• Bugs' seductive accent is a southern drawl...I wonder how many men do find that sexy?

More Surgery Info

My doctor gave me this link where you can see what he looks like and learn more about this type of surgery. If you click on "patient education" in the sidebar, then choose "spine" and then "cervical" and then the last procedure in the list ("anterior cervical discectomy, fusion instrumented (ACDF)"), you can watch an animated illustration of exactly what the surgery consists of. It starts with a good illustration of what the actual problem is.

Surgery

In March of 2003, for no particular reason, I woke up one morning with a crick in my neck, which then worsened to the point that I had several emergency room visits before being diagnosed with a herniated disc.

Basically, your spine is made up of vertebrae separated by these slightly springy (like a hockey puck) discs. The discs have some kind of jelly-like interior. A herniated or ruptured disc is what they call it when the disc tears and the inside of it pushes out. This can be harmless - some people have ruptured discs and no symptoms - but if the material impinges on a nerve then it can cause numbness, tingling, pain, or weakness. When this happens in your lower back, the result is called "sciatica," and a lot of people suffer from this, but there's no common name for having it in your neck.

It basically sucks. The original thing in 2003 was horrendous, and since that kind of faded I've just been careful all the time, to the point that I feel like people think I am some kind of weird hypochrondriac about it. (I feel like some weird old person who has a trick knee or a hip that aches when it's going to rain or whatever.) It sucks to continually tell people that you can't do some very commonplace thing (turn your head a certain way, sit in some particular chair, etc.) because of your neck.

And it's not black or white. I can do lots of things, it's just that they aggravate my neck, and if the aggravation is bad enough, I get a flare-up.

But this has been pretty manageable until this January, where on the heels of irritating my neck slightly in various ways, I committed the unthinkable crime of sleeping one night on my couch. That started a really heinous flare-up that is still ongoing.

Stupid neck. Bah!

Anyway, last Friday I talked to a surgeon. I already emailed my mom about this, so I'm going to just paste that email into here.

I think I'm going to go ahead and schedule the surgery. They say they are about 6 weeks out in the schedule, but I think I'll aim for mid-September because Barbara is having her hip replacement in early August and it's hard if we're both out at the same time.

The nurse practitioner and the surgeon showed me my MRI and the x-ray they took while I was there on the computer and it's really easy to see how the disc is making my spinal column veer around it.

The surgeon said that I basically have three options:

1. Wait and let it heal on its own. I did this in 2003 and it did basically heal but I've needed to be careful ever since because I always have little flare-ups and now I've got a full-blown breach again.

2. Try a steroid injection. Some people get no pain relief from this, some people get a few hours, and some people get six months.

3. Have surgery.

The reason I don't really feel like trying #2 (the injection) is that it's not pain that's my primary concern. If I just knew I'd have this pain forever, I probably wouldn't have the surgery. What I'm tired of is having to constantly be careful about my neck Every Fucking Day because if I'm not it's going to flare up and be really bad. I'm tired of only have two positions I can lie down in. I'm tired of not being able to snuggle with my boyfriend (and I really do mean "snuggle") because I just can't lie with him in any nice positions.

For the surgery, they go in through the front of the neck. They remove the disc completely, and they take bone from somewhere else in your body (not sure where, but probably the hip or
something) to put between the vertebrae in place of the disc. Then they put a metal plate in the front and screw it on to help hold the vertebrae together. (It's called "spinal fusion.")

It is pretty safe and works for most people. I'd probably go home the day after the surgery and need to take about two weeks off work. I'd wear a neck brace for six weeks to help while the bones fuse together. In 2-6 months the nerves themselves (the ones previously impinged by the disc) would start to heal and that can go on for up to 2 years.

The danger of spinal fusion is that, when that one joint in your spine can't flex, it puts more stress on the adjoining joints. But in follow-ups over 20 years, there isn't an increased risk of needing further neck surgeries for that reason, if you compare people who had this problem and did or didn't have surgery.

Anyway, I'll keep you guys posted, but for now, those are my plans.

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