Confabulous

The Internet makes it easy to get all of your news and analysis from sites that share your worldview, which has the unfortunate tendency to reinforce what you already think, while making your opponents' ideas seem increasingly ridiculous and out of touch with "reality." I find I'm a lot more reasonable and sane (and even relaxed) if I take in information from a variety of sources, including some that come from a different perspective.

I've recently been really enjoying The Confabulum, the group blog of the moderate conservatives behind Culture 11. I can't read blogs like the Corner because so much of what they say is really ridiculous to me, but I can enjoy this level of discourse.

The post "And Then What II" by Conor Friedersdorf is good and representative. An excerpt:

I’d now like to levy some criticism of my own. The fact is that most conservatives — not all, but most — believe that were their model of society adopted, human suffering would be reduced, not exacerbated or ignored. It is mighty convenient, as Freddie lays out his account of conservatives and suffering, that he ignores the many conservatives who tithe to charity, or build houses for Habitat for Humanity, or participate in Catholic charities, or whose churches adopt communities in Africa, or who donate to secular charities. Don’t they offer a perfectly respectable conservative answer to "And then what?" Who is ignoring human suffering more, those conservatives who give to charity and also favor a limited government and low taxes, or liberals who favor higher government spending on social programs and willingly pay higher taxes, but who don’t themselves donate to any charity? It isn’t so clear, is it. Someone who believes that government is on balance the most efficient or least harmful way to serve the less fortunate is surely justified in advocating for higher government spending. Obviously it makes as much sense for those who are deeply suspicious of government — who in fact believe it often harms the people it is trying to help — to favor alternative means.

Anyway, if you're in the market for a conservative blog, check it out.

Voted

I voted this morning at my local early vote location. The line was existent but not bad - I think I waited about 20 minutes. The machine seemed to work fine, though it is a receipt-free electronic touch screen thing, so there's no way to know if it actually recorded my vote properly. I would never choose this as a voting system, but without evidence of actual wrongdoing or systematic malfunctions, I'm not going to worry about it. It was certainly convenient and easy to use.

I voted for Obama and I voted Democrat for the Congresscritters. I voted to retain and not retain judges in accordance with the committee's recommendations. I skipped several of the very local races where I know nothing about the candidates; I decided to let the people who are more informed (or more partisan, or whatever) decide those races.

I voted no on most of the ballot measures.

I voted against letting the gambling towns vote to have longer hours and higher-stakes games with most of the money going to fund community colleges.

I voted against making employers have good reasons for firing people.

I voted against something that was supposed to give more money to help the disabled.

I voted against higher severance taxes on oil and gas.

I voted against prohibiting affirmative action by the state. (Correction: I actually can't remember how I voted on this. I was torn.)

I voted against defining "person" in the Constitution to include fertilized eggs, embroys, and fetuses.

I voted against disallowing local governments from taking automatic deductions from paychecks except for legally required things. (This is about unions. I've intuited from the various ads that some firefighters and other public servants get union dues automatically withdrawn, though they can opt out if they wish. The new bill would have prohibited that. I decided not to prohibit it.)

I voted FOR making it illegal to require someone to be in a union to work at a certain place.

I voted against holding company executives criminally responsible for the criminal acts of their companies.

I voted against some very complicated thing about funding education. (This offensive TV ad about it didn't help.)

I voted against requiring companies with more than 20 employees to provide health insurance.

I voted against requiring companies to provide a safe working environment and making it easier for lawsuits to be filed if a worker is injured.

So, basically, I voted Democrat on the national parts of the ticket, and on some state races, and then voted against the common man for most local measures. Or something.

Advantages of a Log Scale

One option that Excel has, and that I imagine most graphing software has, is to convert one of the scales from the regular linear scale to a logarithmic one. In a logarithmic scale, the equally-spaced intervals represent powers of 10.

In the oil industry, we use log scale charts quite a lot, and they often make the data more sensical. Today I made the following scatter plot, which shows the oil to gas ratio for some wells in Oklahoma. The x axis represents how long the well has been running, so the idea is to see how these ratios might change over time, and how they vary from well to well. It came out like this (get a bigger image by clicking):
This is obviously not acceptable as a graph. The couple of really high values near the top edge make all of the more normal values clump together at the very bottom. And no matter how much I limit the range of the y axis, I get basically the same effect. Here I've limited it to 2000, which cuts off some data points:

It's better, but it's still not great. Then I tried a log scale:

And voila. Suddenly this data makes sense.

Log scales are a bit tricky for people to read, so it does help to add the minor gridlines.

The spacing of the minor gridlines helps remind you how the scale works, and you can also use them as a guide. The line immediately above 1000 is 2000, then the next one is 3000, etc., and they are spaced accordingly.

I love these types of data representation issues and when I make a display that is more intelligible than it might have been, it makes me really happy and proud.

Health at Every Size

Right now I am reading Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon. Apparently Health at Every Size (HAES) is a general movement, of which Bacon is a part. The book essentially argues that you are unlikely to succeed at intentional weight loss over the long term, and that trying to do so might harm rather than improve your health, but that you can improve your health regardless of your size by other measures.

I haven't finished the book, so I won't try a full review, but although it's written at a fairly low level (similar to diet books in general) and is slightly polemical, I have only minor quibbles with what I've read so far. Bacon is an actual researcher with the kind of credentials you'd want to see. There are hundreds of citations throughout the text so that if she asserts something, you can easily investigate if you're so inclined. I think the book is worth reading whether you end up agreeing with its conclusions or not.

Bacon and some other researchers who are much more supportive of weight loss did a study in which they enrolled 78 (I think) overweight women and put them into two groups. Both groups met once per week for six months (divided into smaller support groups of 9 or 10 people), and then once a month for six months. One group followed a HAES approach and the other was a standard diet and exercise group.

After two years, neither group had lost any weight, but the HAES group had several measurable health improvements (things like fitness, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure), while the only statistically significant change among the dieting group was self-esteem, which went down.

This was, of course, only one study.

Overall, I find this approach appealing. I have lost a lot of weight (over 60 lbs) intentionally in the past, but I've regained a lot of it over time. I know that the key to maintaining the loss is to get a lot of exercise and maintain a constant focus on it, and I can't seem to do that at all right now - especially the "maintain focus" part. I can't seem to do anything systematic about my weight for more than about a week at a time.

What I can do (and I'm just starting the actual recommendations part of the book, so I'm now just writing about my own experience) is exercise and include more fruits and vegetables in my diet regardless of what or how much I am eating in general. And for now that's working out pretty well. I've got Ed going to the gym with me three times a week (which I generally enjoy a lot even though it's easier not to go) and I'm regularly eating pretty high amounts of fruits and veggies. (I'd say I average about 5 or 6 servings a day, which is not super high, but is at least within recommendations.)

I don't know. If I continue to inexorably gain weight I may have to revisit the idea of intentional weight loss. But if I can maintain some weight or other and increase my fitness to a normal level while eating a somewhat healthy diet, that might be a better approach for me.

Timely Advice for a Friend

Take note please of some pithy getting-into-grad-school advice.

Ballot Issues

I'll be voting any day now (hopefully before election day), so the other day I sat down with the government-provided booklet that is mailed to voters describing the various ballot measures I get to vote on, and giving recommendations on retention of judges. (Surprisingly, one of the judges was strongly recommended NOT to be retained. That was fun reading.)

One proposition I get to vote on, Amendment 48, would alter the Colorado Constitution to define the word "person" to include fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. Obviously I will be voting no on that.

A lot of the other measures have a deep similarity based on the TABOR bill that is active here. That stands for "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" and it says that, basically, the state government is not allowed to grow by more than inflation, and any extra tax money collected has to be refunded every year.* Any spending that wants to be exempt from TABOR has to be approved specially by voters.

So we get a million of those every election cycle.

For instance, Amendment 50 would allow the cities in which gambling is allowed to vote to extend the hours and/or the types of games that are allowed and, if they do so, the extra money collected would be allocated 22% to those cities and 78% to community colleges, and it would be exempt from TABOR. It is being billed as a way to increase funding for our community colleges "without a tax increase." Of course, the money for this does in fact come from additional taxes (it's not free money from heaven), but I suppose it's not an increase in the rate of a tax.

Or there is Amendment 59, which ballotpedia says "would create a state education fund savings account within the state education fund, to be funded from 10% of the monies deposited into the state education fund, including revenue that would otherwise be rebated under the TABOR rules, which the measure calls for diverting to the state education fund; would also require that state educational spending increase by rate of inflation plus 1% through fiscal year 2010-2011; and restricts spending of the state education fund to specific education expenses ."

I honestly don't know how to vote on these things. I mean, if they had one that said senior citizens would be charged extra for eyeglasses and that money would be allocated to a special fund to provide extra pet waste collection bags in city parks, exempt from TABOR, I would vote no. But I don't intrinsically object (in the case of Amendment 50) to longer gambling hours, local control, or funding community colleges. Except that all of these different bills make it impossible for someone (the legislature, I suppose) to sit down and figure out the state budget in a rational manner. I don't want all kinds of unnecessary money (which is, again, not free money from heaven) overfunding a bunch of pet projects.

Should I abstain from voting on things I'm not sure about, allowing those who feel more strongly to control the outcomes, or should I guess that my own guesses or gut feelings are better than (or at least equal to) the firmly held opinions of people who might be simple-minded morons or ideologically opposed to me? Or should I vote "no" on things I'm not sure of, out of some general conservative instinct? (Or, as my mother once told me, "yes" because "if someone thinks it's a good idea, it probably is.") I feel an internal pressure to vote on every issue.

As far as the Presidential race goes, I am unequivocally in favor of Obama. On social issues, which are important to me, I am firmly liberal, and the Republicans of the past 8 years have done nothing to shrink the size of government (quite the opposite), which is the only thing I might (might) favor about them. They've ramped up federal spending crazily and at least Bush and Cheney have fought for (I can't even say "argued for" since they have hardly bothered to inform the rest of us) untrammeled executive power completely out of line with what the Constitution actually says. McCain was my favorite Republican in the primaries, but I haven't liked much that I've seen since. And his completely cynical and insulting choice of Sarah Palin, who started off seeming underqualified and is now shown to be incapable-of-becoming-qualified (IMO) for VP...well, it doesn't help. And, outside of his trade protectionism, I see nothing to dislike in Obama.

I'm looking forward to watching the results Nov 4.

(*Disclaimer for this whole post - I am not an expert on Colorado law and have not done extra research to ensure accuracy. If you are seriously concerned about the specifics of anything you read here, please do your own research. I am quite likely simplifying or outright wrongifying some of it.)

My Haircut

It's been a few weeks since I shaved my head. Since then, I've trimmed the hair down to 1/4" (I think) with the trimmer I have at home (a heavy industrial seeming thing that is pretty delightful to use), and then I got a professional trim at Great Clips, to 3/8", with a decent neck and around-the-ears shave. (They charged me $5. Woot!)

(Also amusing: they have me in their computer there, so when I gave the woman my phone number, and she looked it up, she looked at me and said, "So I guess you're not going with the bob anymore!")

So my head is plushy-soft all over, just short enough to still stick out in every direction and not fall down into a regular boy-type haircut. It is just slightly shorter than cutie Matt Damon's over there.

I fucking love it. I am right now at the point of thinking I will never change it against because, just, why? It's awesome.

Before I shaved my head, I was afraid it would look bad. And frankly, one of the fears I had was that skinny girls can get away with having a shaved head or very short hair, but it looks bad on fat girls. And of course, the truth is, cute skinny girls will usually look cute in almost any style. It's like Matt Damon up there - what kind of haircut would make him not hot? He starts off hot and that's a huge boon.

But I'm starting to think that a crew cut is actually a comparative advantage for a fat woman, if you don't mind looking butch. Because my observation about myself is that I am a lot better looking as a butch than as a femme. I am not really either one - a butch or a femme. But my old hairstyle was a regular girl type of cut, and this one is distinctly butch. (I suspect that on a skinny girl, a haircut like this might give you kind of a "pixie" look and not be so butch.)

The net effect on my appearance as judged by other people might still be negative, because being butch might be negative in the eyes of many. But among people who like both looks, I have to think this makes me more attractive. I certainly look more attractive to myself, and to Ed.

Last night at the gym, I picked up a couple of hand weights to do some bicep curls, and then happened to see myself in the mirror. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt. And I looked incredible. The combination of the weights and the shirt and the short hair - it was crazy butch and I just loved it. I felt super macho.

I have a slight inclination to scoff at women who claim they make some traditionally supported beauty decision (like surgical breast augmentation) not to please others but because it makes them feel more confident, but that's how I feel about the hair style. It makes me feel attractive and strong. And I'm going to keep it.

Terrestrial Critter

One of the blog I subscribe to is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, and over time I have noticed something about my responses to the pictures they have there, to wit: I am basically bored by pictures of stars or other space objects (galaxies, nebulae, etc.), but vastly interested in pictures that show planets or landscapes.

For instance, boring:


interesting:


pretty but boring:


fascinating:



intriguing:



gorgeous:



I'm not sure why there is such a disparity in how I view these.

Can't Be Much To It

Ed has a friend (who I guess by now is my friend too) who is very down on software engineering. Software engineering isn't about how to write code - it's more about how to manage and run software projects. So it is partly about how to write code, but it's more about the general procedural aspects of how to write code (e.g., is it better to code in pairs? what kind of coding standards should be in place? how does a group manage working on code together? how can we make sure we're building what the client wanted?) than on things like how to craft the perfect algorithm.

Anyway, Adam basically thinks software engineering, at least as currently taught/practiced is full of shit. He had one course in it in college and what he learned was, he felt, a lot of "buzzwords." He later had to regurgitate these in interviews, and found that basically doing some reading on Wikipedia was enough to satisfy the demands of this process. ("Oh, I'm supposed to know what 'agile' means, fine...")

There are a lot of buzzwords, you could say, in business in general, but there are also stark differences in methodologies. I'm sure (as Ed pointed out to me) that "assembly line" was once a buzz word. It's also a significant, radical way to manufacture things. And if you're going to make up new ways of doing things, then assigning words to them enables discussion, right? So if I've decided that these five or so factors are key to the way I want to work in a team to program something, and I name that style "Extreme Programming" (or XP) then is that wrong?

And if I wanted to go to work for a company that practiced XP, it's reasonable to think I should know the term, right? And have an opinion about it? Or concerns and questions about the actual implementation. I should know whether I love or hate or am curious to try pair programming, for instance.

I feel like Adam's dismissal of "buzzwords" in software engineering is related to a general tendency that some people have to assume that, if they don't know much about something, there must not be much to it. Some things, like brain surgery, seem intrinsically complicated and aren't subject to this phenomenon, but other things, like sociology, get no respect. What, don't they just write papers about how people act just like anyone with any common sense would think they'd act?

I imagine most fields have their bullshitty elements. There are probably buzzwords in reinforced concrete structure design. But I try really hard not to assume that academic disciplines have nothing to them, just because I know nothing about them, because I've found that usually, the more you learn about a field, the more you see it expand before you into something deep and rich with detail.

Discrete Math

One of my classes this semester is Discrete Math. I ended up in this class because of a scheduling problem. I originally had Linear Algebra MW 5:00-6:50, and then Prob & Stats 7:00-9:00. Unfortunately, my linear algebra class was cancelled, leaving me just the one class. I decided that an extra math class is always a good thing, and signed up for Discrete Math in the empty slot.

I didn't actually know what Discrete Math was, I think.

The "discrete" in discrete math contrasts basically with the continuity of, e.g., calculus. When we deal with functions, we are mostly dealing with functions in the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, ...). There are things like set theory, combinatorics, probability, and graph theory.

One of the most challenging topics for me so far has been recursively defined relations. These are things like, for instance, the Fibonacci sequence,

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8

where each number is the sum of the previous two.

We've been learning different techniques for determining the "closed form" rule for such a sequence, which allows you to do something like calculate the 100th term without calculating all of the ones in between. (The "closed form rule" is what you usually get for a function, like f(x) = x + 3, instead of it being defined in terms of the previous term or terms.)

So far, the class is very interesting. There are about 12 students, so they all become familiar pretty quickly, and our professor includes a lot of class discussion and has us lecture each other at the board a fair amount by asking questions like, "Can anyone come up here and explain why this makes sense?" or "Would someone repeat what I just said in a different way?"

Shaving, Parents

As many of you know, I shaved my head last week. It was pretty much a whim - I've kind of always wanted to know what I would look like with really short hair, and Ed thought it would be a cool idea, so we did it. (He actually bet me I wouldn't do it - he doesn't think I'm very impulsive. I made him give me 5:1 odds before I would. But, no, I didn't cut my hair off for $5. That was just a bonus.)

I think it looks kind of awesome. I definitely look butch. People at work were surprised, some feared I had cancer (oops), and some were amused. My boss asked (in an email) if she could rub my head, but I told her I was not lucky like the Buddha. When I see myself in the mirror, it makes me smile.

And Ed loves it. He confessed that, had I had my head shaved the night he met me, he might have been too intimdated by my attractiveness to talk to me. What's weird is, when he says it I actually believe it. (If you know me, you'll understand it is not too often that people are put off by my intimidating beauty.)

So, the day after I shaved it, I let my mom know. She said she hoped I was kidding and, when I said I wasn't, she said, "No comment."

On Tuesday, I posted pictures to my Facebook page. They just show me in a t-shirt with my shaved head - nothing weird. But apparently it was more than my mom could take. She sent me the following email:

I have removed you from my facebook. I can't stand to see those pictures and am embarassed by you. Why would you want to do something like that. Nevermind I don't want to know. This is more than I can deal with. I really hope you will get some help. Please don't be friends with any of my friends on Facebook. I don't know what I would say to them if they saw this. I hope no one did. I can't imagine that this type of behaviour will help you at work. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you got fired. Please grow up.

I'm totally out of here no need to reply. I've had it. Too much hurt from you.

I think it's pretty unusual to get disowned by your parent over a haircut, but this isn't the first time she has said things like this to me. I care about my mom very much, but my willingness to tolerate this type of thing has significantly diminished over time.

Grocery Shopping

I really enjoy shopping for groceries. This week, I went to Walmart, and spent about $50 on groceries for the week. When I got home, I was curious about what I had gotten. I was hoping I actually had a whole week's worth of food; it seemed to me as though I had far more than a week's worth.

Here is what I bought (click for a giant version):

So, I was curious how this compared to my calorie intake. Assuming I might eat about 2000 calories per day (and ideally I would eat a bit less and lose weight, but in fact I think I eat a bit more, so I just chose this as a nice round number), I need 14,000 calories per week.

The groceries above come out to 12,475 calories - not quite a week's worth.

Of course, some of the groceries above will likely be wasted, some (like the jelly) will last beyond the week, and some rely on ingredients not shown but that I already own (like peanut butter to go with the bread and jelly, and pasta for the spaghetti sauce). And I also have other food in my house.

Assuming I eat about 2000 calories per day, the per-calorie cost of this group of groceries suggests I will spend about $8/day on food. It is, of course, quite possible to eat more cheaply than this - even much more cheaply, depending on your willingness to make more food from scratch and/or eat the very cheapest boxed dinners and the like.

But $8/day appears to be about my comfortable average, under present circumstances.

Taking the GRE

I took the GRE yesterday and man did it suck.

It's on a computer now, which is great for the analytical writing - I was so glad I got to type. I think I wrote a really kick-ass essay for the first analytical writing task (where you respond to a position), and a decent take-down for the second (where you analyze someone's argument about something unrelated).

But in addition to being on a computer, it also uses adaptive testing for the multiple choice parts. This means they give you a question of medium difficulty to start with, and then based on whether you get it right or wrong, they go up or down in difficulty. Your score is roughly based on the level at which you start to miss about half of the questions (or so I've read).

What this means is that, unlike in normal standardized testing, being above average doesn't mean you can mostly answer all of the questions. It means you get consistently really hard ones, and it sucks so bad.

The first section I got was the quantitative, and I only finished 22 out of 28 questions in the time allotted. It was terrible. I really hoped it was maybe not the one that counted, because they sometimes put in an extra section that they are testing for difficulty. And I felt like I had really blown it.

Then I got a verbal section, which was fine and relaxing. I finished it in plenty of time. I think verbal questions are relaxing because you don't really have to work at them and try to puzzle them out - you pretty much know what MENDACIOUS means or you don't. (I don't. Just for the record.)

And then I got another quantitative section, which did indeed mean that one of the two (the one I'd already taken or this one) was going to not count as part of my score. I tried to be smarter on the second one, and on some questions I gave up and just guessed early rather than wasting a lot of time. I still only completed 26 of 28 questions, and it was still murderously hard.

At the end, you get a choice to either keep or discard your scores. If you discard them they are gone forever. If you decide to let them stand, you then get the chance to see them, if you want. Naturally you can't see them and then decide. (Thanks, ETS!)

I was slightly tempted to just throw my scores out, but, you know, fuck it. Hopefully my future grad plans aren't going to require me to have super high scores, and I didn't really want to throw away the afternoon. So I kept 'em.

720 Verbal / 780 Quantitative

Wow! I was aiming for a 750 on Quant, and didn't care too much about the Verbal, so that was just an awesome result for me. I'm thinking it means that the second quantitative section counted, because I can't imagine how I could have gotten a 780 on the first one. I guess I got lucky there.

My advice to anyone taking the GRE:

1. Practice the math a lot. Get a workbook or something. Especially, if you can, try to practice the timing, and figuring out when to give up on a question instead of wasting time on it.
2. Expect taking the test, at least the quant part, to suck.
3. Don't take the horrible feeling of failure and misery as a sign that you did poorly.

Book List Meme

I don't really know where this comes from, but here's how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (Note from Tam: I am going to underline any books I did love, even if I don't love them anymore.)
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.

1. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
5. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
12. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
18. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
23. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm - George Orwell
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
27. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
29. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
30. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare
33. Ulysses - James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
36. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
37. The Bible
38. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
39. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
48. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
50. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
51. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch - George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
60. Emma - Jane Austen
61. Persuasion - Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
64. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
66. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement - Ian McEwan
70. Dune - Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
73. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
74. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
79. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
83. Dracula - Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal - Emile Zola
88. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession - A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
91. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Semicolons

Slate has a cute article today about the disappearance of the semicolon. It reminded me of something funny that happened to me once.

I was at Houston Community College, taking an English composition class to satisfy some general requirement. Our essays were graded based on this rubric where you got points in various categories, one of which was Punctuation. On my first paper, I got less than full credit in this category, which I found rather astonishing - I had surely not made a punctuation error. But it seemed that in order to get full credit, you needed to show sophistication.

"More semicolons!" I told myself. I was careful to include a couple in my next paper.

And, sure enough, I got the credit.

Environmental Science Paper

Today I have to do a little "minilab" for my environmental science class. I had to go outside and find some plant and figure out what it is and write 800 words about it. Fortunately, now that I've identified the plant I photographed, it seems to be dalmatian toadflax, which is an invasive species. I'm putting the pictures I took here so that I can link them in my online paper.







These are from my new digital camera, which is giving me much better pictures than my old one.

GRE Prep

On July 12, I'm scheduled to take the GRE, which these days consists of a couple of essays you have to write, a verbal section, and a quantitative section. I am most interested in my quantitative score, though I plan to do well on the other parts as well, of course. I am generally good at standardized tests, and did well on the SAT back in the day.

One interesting thing is that the GRE uses adaptive testing, where the questions you get depend on how you answered the questions that came before. It's all on the computer, of course, and there is no going back to previous questions. In the beginning of a section, you'll get a question of medium difficulty, and then they move the difficulty up or down depending on whether you answer it correctly. So it's especially important to get the earlier questions correct so that you move quickly into the more difficult questions. My understanding is that once you reach a point where you are answering about half the questions wrong, that level of difficulty determines your score.

I took a sample test for the quantitative section and scored a 690 (out of 800 total), which is pretty bad. I feel like I need a 750 to be a credible candidate for a science-based graduate program. (I'm calling this a "feeling" because I don't know or can't remember where I may have picked up this magic number, if indeed I didn't invent it completely.) Granted, when I took the sample test I wasn't giving it my full and complete attention, but then I wasn't stressed as I might be under actual testing circumstances either.

I had a particularly hard time with the geometry problems, as always. And in general I think I have a hard time accessing my cleverness to solve the problems, which is what they require. (The math GRE questions are a pretty low level of math - basic algebra and geometry - but they often have a "trick" to them.)

My tendency is to employ brute-force methods, which is a terrible strategy when you don't have a calculator and you're under a time crunch. Take this question, for instance:

If the average of six consecutive numbers is 18.5, what is the average of the first five of those numbers?

This can be solved by brute force, as was my initial inclination. Letting x stand in for the first number, you know that

((x) + (x+1) + (x+2) + (x+3) + (x+4) + (x+5)) / 6 = 18.5

It's pretty easy (though arithmetically annoying) to solve this for x, and then take the average of just the first five in the series. But there is a very easy way to solve this problem with a little bit of thought instead, and that's the way I need to remember to do things on the GRE.

So, to that end, I bought a GRE Math Workbook, specifically the Kaplan one. The first part is large review sections on Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry. These are divided into sections, each of which ends with a test with easy, medium, and hard GRE-style problems. Each test has an answer key with descriptions of how to solve the problems, sometimes with several methods described. The second part is divided according to the three question types used on the GRE, with several practice tests for each question type.

I haven't been reading the actual review sections, because I basically do know math, of course, but I have been taking all of the tests, even the ones in the Arithmetic section. (It's not basic problems, but GRE-type tricky problems.) I feel like this process is making me more clever and definitely more ready to kick the GRE's ass.

A part of me rebels against the idea of preparing for a standardized test. What am I, some kind of goody-two-shoes who has to work hard because I'm not that bright? Fortunately, that part of me has been hastily stuffed into a sack and sat upon.

Off-Goofery

I don't goof off anywhere near as much at this job as at my old job, but when I do get some down time, it is major, serious, heavy-duty down time. Right now, for instance, there is simply no work. I finished a couple of projects (one small, one larger) for our president earlier, and now she has left to attend a conference. The senior tech is also on vacation. I have spoken to the other techs and none of them have work to delegate to me (or, for the most part, work at all). I haven't been here long enough to have files that need organizing or a particularly messy desk. So I can goof off with a completely clear conscience.

The truth is, I hate seeking out new work, but I love it when I have work. If people would give me 10 long projects with no deadlines, I would be as happy as a clam, knowing I could come in for many, many days without running out. I much prefer showing up to work in the morning, rather than coming in between projects.

When I do have work, I have to work pretty solidly. They're billable hours, after all, and I'm not willing to have my company bill other companies for my time if I'm half-working, half-surfing the Internet. So I stay pretty focused and only take occasional short breaks. We bill down to the quarter hour. It's...rigorous.

So I am enjoying today's (hopefully) brief respite.

Durable Goods Moratorium

I am declaring a moratorium on purchases of durable goods, starting now and effective through August. This means no new clothes, furniture, kitchen supplies, toys, etc. - basically anything that is not consumed. (Obviously it would be much more radical to try to survive without groceries, paper products, cleaning supplies, etc. I'm not that radical.)

I think I have everything I need at this time, so I hope I can stick to this.

Taking Math Forever

For a while now, I have spoken of wanting to take math classes forever. I like how learning math makes me feel (the short version: initially frustrated, then brilliant as I figure something out). I should graduate in about a year, and then the question is, what next?

I could keep taking math at Metro for many more years - there's plenty of math I haven't gotten to. But it would be nice to have something to show for all that math. It would be nice if my resume could say something more than "BS in Geographic Software Engineering, and oh yeah, I also took 45 more hours of math after that."

While Sally was here, she helped me look for master's programs I might be able to do without quitting my job. And we discovered that Texas A&M has an MS program in Computational Math that is fully online. It was a great find, because math master's degrees are not that common as distance education programs. (You can find a lot of math education master's, but not so many other kinds of math.)

The program requires 36 hours of coursework, i.e., 12 classes. They give you 7 years to finish. I figure I can easily finish in 6, taking one class per semester, which ought to be doable. And if you have taken the GRE and graduated from college, you can enroll with "G6" status, which means you don't have to actually apply and get in. Once you've taken a couple of courses, you can then apply with (hopefully) great grades in the program already under your belt, and the classes will count towards the degree.

It'll be great to be working towards this degree. At worst, I'll get interrupted somehow and not finish it, in which case I'll still have been taking math as per my wishes; at best, I'll end up with a nice master's degree in math. Whee!

A Shameful Confession

I love Moby. (His music, I mean, not him personally. On a personal level I think he's kind of a flake.)

I feel guilty about this, believe me. The music is...well, a bit formulaic, to be honest. Want to make a Moby song? The most common formula goes like this:

1. Get a clip of a black person or choir singing 1-30 seconds of something.

2. Play the clip a few times with a simple rhythm behind it.

3. Play the clip a few more times with some more sounds behind it.

4. Add some soaring electronic chords.

5. Continue adding more and more sounds to the clip, but never letting go of the original simple rhythm.

There are other types of Moby songs, but these are the kind I like best. And I mean, I totally adore them. I just put a new Moby CD in my car today and I could not get past the first song because I had to play it over and over. Here, see for yourself:



Embarrassing. Oh yeah, here's another one I like. This isn't the original video, just someone's collage.

Time Estimation

Let's say you had 53 categories or data items. And you needed to make four different graphs of each item, and then put them in a binder by data item, with tabs. You would have 53 tabs, each of which would have four graphs behind it.

You've been working on the graphs for days. New and corrected information has shown up, requiring you to redo a lot of the work. And you just now got around to making the fourth graph. And everything needs to be finished today, by 4 pm.

Let's further assume that you had acquired more than 53 tab dividers, the kind that use labels you print with a computer and then stick on, and you gave them to the receptionist at 10:30 am, confirming that she had time to do them.

How much time would you estimate it would take to put the finished binder together? Would you allot a full hour for this activity?

Guess what I just spent the last hour doing (including waiting for the dividers to be finished, punching holes, and watching the engineer - who eventually left to catch a plane with his mostly-but-not-entirely-finished binder - pace)?

Gas Tax Holiday

John McCain and Hilary Clinton recently both came up with plans to suspend federal taxes on gasoline over the summer. This is a stupid plan for reasons I'm sure are familiar to all of my readers. But what's refreshing about it is to see a public discussion of an economic issue that is actually simple enough that people can think it through. Understanding comes in stages that seem to go roughly like this:

• It won't save people a lot of money, and it's bad because the government will lose revenue.
• It encourages oil consumption, which is the opposite of what we need to do long-term.
• Wait - it won't actually lower the price of gas anyway. It just means the oil companies will get more profits and the government will keep less. (Some might view this as a feature rather than a bug, but few Democrats would.)

Of course, many people get to the point of realizing merely that the oil companies will raise the price to compensate. If they can charge $3.50 (or whatever) now, including the tax, there's no reason they wouldn't continue to charge that in the future. Oh, those greedy oil companies - is there no level to which they won't stoop?

As far as I know, the oil companies (at least in America) are not a cartel. They do not actually control the price of gasoline. It's a free market, which means that the price is (more or less) a function of supply and demand.

Please note that I'm not saying they wouldn't control the price if they could. I'm not saying the oil companies are virtuous and trying to get us a fair deal. They want to make as much money as possible, just like we want to save it. But they no more control the price of oil than realtors control the price of houses, or than Kroger controls the price of oranges.

Ahem. I really didn't mean to lecture on points familiar to everyone. So, let me return to my earlier point - it is great to see some public debate on a simple economic issue. And this one is apparently so simple that Clinton's campaign couldn't come up with a single economist to support the gas tax holiday. People thinking their way through economic issues, even though it has mixed results, is a good thing.

Billable Hours

At my new job (which I started last Thursday), I have to do billable hours - we're a consulting firm. So I have a record every day of how many hours I've worked on various projects, and how many hours I did other things (generally recorded as "G&A"). This is how I've done so far:

Thursday (1st day at work):
Billable - 5 1/2
G&A - 2 1/2

Friday:
Training - 5
Billable - 2 3/4
G&A - 1/4

Monday:
Training - 1
Billable - 4 1/4
G&A - 2 3/4 [I ran out of stuff to do]

Tuesday:
Training - 2 1/4
Billable - 5 1/2
G&A - 1/4

So far today (as of lunchtime):
Billable - 3

So that's all going rather well, I'd say.

Lovey Dovey

Sally is coming to visit me for Memorial Day weekend, three weeks from now, which is very exciting. She'll finally get to meet Ed, who I started dating just shortly after her last visit here. We drove practically right by his old apartment last time, but it didn't seem right to introduce them. Both of them have (rightfully) given me crap for this ever since.

Meanwhile, sometime around Sally's visit is our one-year anniversary. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since we started this goofy experiment. The time has been well spent.

Overall, the relationship is just great. Sometimes when Ed is stressed, or I'm just weird, things get worse between us, a bit, and I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing here, but then we get some time together, talk, have sex, cry, or whatever, and things are fantastic again. I'm crazy in love with him and it seems to be mutual.

So, yeah, life is good.

Spring Cleaning

In an utterly out-of-character move, I took advantage of having five days off and have gone through everything in my entire bedroom (including the closet). I got rid of a lot of things including

• just enough books that I could shelve all of the remaining books
• all of my clothes that don't fit or are stained
• giant amounts of papers that I don't need or want
• a kite I never fly
• five of my seven pairs of snow gloves/mittens
• a scarf I would never wear
• shoes I don't like
• sheets that are not the same size as my bed
• one of the six pillows I own
• a tiny cooler and a giant thermos
• about six backpacks and other similar types of bags
• my Miami J collars from when I had my surgery
• connectors and cables for tech equipment I no longer own
  

I also finished going through all the papers I have from childhood. When I bought my beautiful file cabinet a couple of years ago, Mosch and I went through almost all of my papers and filed them away or discarded them. But I left one medium-sized box of papers from childhood because I just ran out of steam, and figured I could get around to them later.

I like to keep almost everything like that. I love to look at elementary school reports cards, the paper on solar energy that I wrote in 3rd grade, my high school journals, and all kinds of stuff like that. And now they are all filed properly in my filing cabinet.

The nice thing about a serious filing cabinet is that, once you have one, and until it is full, there is no cost to adding more things to it. It takes up the same amount of space whether it is half-empty or mostly full. So it was really wonderful to get all of the papers in there.

We also, while filing all papers, emptied out my "to be filed" file folder and either filed or discarded everything in it.

I had a lot of help from Mosch and some from Ed, but I worked really hard, and I'm super pleased that I've thinned out my possessions somewhat, and organized and cleaned the rest. The room and closet got an excellent vacuuming too, so everything is just super nice.

I still feel like I own too many things, but at least in my bedroom, I don't own anything I don't actively want to own. When we did the closet, we took every single thing out first, just to make sure that (a) it was just as easy to throw things out as to keep them, and (b) the stuff would get reorganized. Obviously I couldn't do that with the whole bedroom, but still - almost everything was gone through.

As much as I love getting rid of things I no longer need, and seeing the useful things go to thrift stores where other people who actually want them can get them, I'm usually way too lazy to clean and organize. But since this was my last week at my old job, and I had to work hard all week to get caught up, I was in the habit of working, and since I spent the last day at my job cleaning out my old office, I was even in the habit of organizing and cleaning.

I'm very pleased with myself tonight :-)

Irritates Me

A while back, this office building moved to become more environmentally conscious. One of the changes was that they took away our trash cans. We still have trash cans in the common areas, but the ones at our desks are unlined and are for commingled recyclables: paper, cans, plastic bottles, glass, or whatever. But you are not supposed to put garbage in there, i.e., used paper plates, discarded kleenex, food waste, etc. (The fact that they are unlined is a good reminder of this.)

It's inconvenient because you tend to get little trash piling up around your desk. I keep a paper cup on my desk in which to put things like small candy wrappers and used tea bags, but sometimes other things pile up in an annoying way. But overall I think it is a good plan and it has greatly reduced the amount of waste our building produces.

But recently, two different people have admitted to me that they just put their trash in there anyway. That pisses me off because, you know, it just means someone at the processing facility has to go through and take out your own personal garbage and route it to garbage. I'm sure I sometimes throw away something that isn't really recyclable because I'm just mistaken about it, but I try to do it right.

And just this morning, another coworker picked some dead leaves off a plant in my office and then threw them in my trash. "You can't-!" I started, but it was too late. So I pulled them out. She didn't understand why they couldn't go in there since they are biodegradable.

"But they're not recyclable," I said. "You can't put them in here."

"Oh. I always put them in mine," she said, shrugging.

Argh.

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!