War and Peace

Now that I have gobs of spare time, I've started reading War and Peace. It took me a while to get into - at first I could only read in short patches - but around 100 pages in I finally started to get invested. I've just finished Book 1 (of five, each divided into parts, each of which is divided into short chapters).

There are a lot of characters, all with the Russian patronymics and whatnot. It doesn't help that a lot of names are used over and over for different characters (e.g., in the Bolkonsky family, Prince Andrei is the son of Prince Nikolai, but over in the Rostov family, there is a Count Nikolai who is part of Prince Andrei's generation. And there are two Vasilly's as well.) It also doesn't help that a lot of the book concerns the Napoleonic Wars. I am both ignorant of the history here, and generally uninterested in (and cannot easily follow) military history and descriptions. For instance, I don't know the different ranks in an army so whether a corporal or a captain or a sergeant is of higher rank, I couldn't tell you. (Yes, it is possible to look these things up, but it's not fun to read a book if you continually have to look everything up.)

On the eve (in the book) of the Battle of Austerlitz, I did stop and read the Wikipedia article about it, out of pure curiosity. I wasn't concerned about spoilers since it seems likely that Tolstoy would have assumed his readers would be familiar with its outcome. But it was very surprising to read the names of some characters from the book in the article. It is as though in some alternate reality, these characters in a novel were living people. I enjoyed looking at paintings of them as well. I've also been supplementing my reading by doing google image searches on words like "hussar" and "Cossack."

As with Anna Karenina, there are parts of this book that sort of blow me away and that I find myself thinking of over and over again. Unlike Anna Karenina, I don't find it a totally captivating read. But it's captivating enough to be worth it, given that it's also a great work.

DIY U

This morning, I greatly enjoyed Community College Dean's takedown of DIY U by Anya Kamanetz (it's the "edupunk" one you may have heard about). I haven't read Kamanetz's book, but I already basically think it's full of crap, so I surely won't.

Arroz con Pollo

Friday evening, I made this arroz con pollo recipe. I pretty much followed it exactly except that I also put in two jalapenos and two red peppers. I used chicken thighs.

It came out pretty good, though it was much improved with a few sprinkles of cayenne pepper (which I'll add next time), and it was the kind of dish that, once you've made it once, doesn't require a recipe at all. It's dead easy.

It was also cheap. I think I spent about $12 total (and you could economize by buying less-fancy chicken broth or using green rather than red peppers), and it made six generous meals, plus we had rice left over afterwards.

Next time, I don't think I'll bother dredging the chicken in flour - I don't think it added much taste relative to how much trouble it was. I would probably use even more peppers and possibly slightly less rice. But anyway, this recipe gets a big thumbs up from me.

Dreaming False Memories

When I was very young, perhaps around 4, I had a nightmare. In this dream, I would be in a room, and the floor would tilt a little bit and bubbles would start seeping in at the base of the wall. I'm not sure why this was dangerous, but it clearly was. It was something that had happened before, too. When I woke up, I knew that the bubbles had been a dream, but I still believed that it was a dream about something that had really happened before. It took me a long time (months or years) to convince myself that the bubbles were only a dream, and not even a dream I had had more than once.

Until recently, I hadn't often (as best I can recall) had dreams that implanted false memories like that, but lately, I have them all the time. I will dream of something, let's say smurfs, and wake up thinking, "God, I have dreamed of smurfs every day this week! What the hell is with the smurfs!" And then I'll think, "Shit, is this one of those dream memories?" And sooner or later I will realize it is.

Sometimes it has stages. I'll wake up being annoyed that I've dreamt about a smurf revolution all week, then realize almost immediately that, although I've been dreaming about smurfs all week, the revolution part is new, and then realize hours later that I hadn't been dreaming about smurfs at all, up until that point.

Sometimes the dream memories aren't about dreaming. Last night in bed I realized that all week, or all month, or something like that, I had been thinking and fantasizing (while awake) about something like foursquare (the playground game, not the iPhone app). And then I slowly started to question that and to realize that I hadn't even been thinking about that while awake at all, much less more than once. I only dreamed that I was, and had been, doing such a thing.

I'm starting to find the frequency of this experience disturbing. I think it happens several times a week. (And I'm pretty certain that that is not itself a false memory; I clearly remember thinking about this while awake many times over the past year or so.) I like dreaming, but I don't like waking up believing things that are not true. Is this common?

PawPaw Jimmie

Last night before the exam, I got a chance to talk on the phone with my grandfather. This is my father's father, who is (or was, before retiring) a Southern Baptist minister. He's a delightful and warm person, full of humorous stories. I told him about my exam, and he told me a story from when he was in seminary.

He had a professor there who I'll call Dr. Smith, since I can't remember his actual name. At seminary, apparently they started every class off with a prayer, and though most professors would ask one of the students to lead the prayer, Dr. Smith always led it himself. My grandfather said that he would start in to praying and you got the feeling that he was always in conversation with God and you were listening in at this one moment.

But before exams, the prayer was chillingly different. "Father," he would says, "provided that these students have studied diligently, please help them to recall what they have learned." My grandfather said this was not the most encouraging message; during an exam you'd rather have unconditional bolts of knowledge!

At the end of our conversation, he asked if he could pray with me over my exam, and I readily agreed. (I am more or less an atheist, but I never mind being prayed over or with.) He left off the "provided she has studied diligently" condition. Whew.

(An actual picture, found online, of my grandfather and late grandmother.)

The End

Tonight is my abstract algebra final. I have a take-home part to turn in, and then the final itself is supposed to take about an hour, though we have two hours for it. I'm not as ultra-prepared as I have been for some other tests, but I think I am prepared enough. The take-home part was difficult but I think I'll have close to full credit on it, and I only need a high D or low C on the final in order to have an A in the course.

This is not just a final exam, it is the final exam. Barring the unforeseen, this will be my last act as an undergraduate. My other classes are finished. Sunday is the graduation ceremony, which I am not attending, but after which I will consider myself to have graduated.

Taking my last exam would feel stranger, of course, were I not starting grad school in the Fall. It will be different from this, but will still feature math, homework, exams, and all of that. Leaving my job in a couple of months is going to be weirder than graduating, I think.

I was thinking about my family earlier, the two sides. On my mother's side of the family, everyone goes to college. My grandfather, mother, aunt, and two cousins (which is everyone I know from my side of the family) all have degrees (did my grandmother? I wonder), and my aunt and cousins either have or are working on graduate degrees of some stripe.

College seems more rare on my father's side of my family. My grandfather went to college and seminary, but my grandmother didn't go to college. Of their four children, I believe only one of my aunts has a degree. My father took some college courses but did not graduate. Two of my three cousins started or are about to start college; probably the older has graduated by now (assuming she did graduate).

I have mixed feelings about graduating. It's not really much of an accomplishment for an intelligent person with a middle-class background. You expect it. I had a perfect opportunity to go to my dream school right out of high school, basically for free, and the only reason I didn't get my degree there was that I wasn't mature enough to actually go to classes, do work, study, and so on.

At the same time, it has taken me a number of years to get this degree while working, and I did, over all that time, develop a work ethic (at least towards school), learn how to tackle difficult material, and gain various academic skills, such that I am, these days, a good student. So I do feel a certain sense of accomplishment in finishing something that was initially hard for me. And it was certainly enjoyable as well.

Anyway, tonight is it - the end of my undergraduate career.

Data-Driven

This New York Times Magazine article "The Data-Driven Life" was pretty interesting. An excerpt (not particularly well-chosen):

For a long time, only one area of human activity appeared to be immune [to numbers]. In the cozy confines of personal life, we rarely used the power of numbers. The techniques of analysis that had proved so effective were left behind at the office at the end of the day and picked up again the next morning. The imposition, on oneself or one’s family, of a regime of objective record keeping seemed ridiculous. A journal was respectable. A spreadsheet was creepy.

And yet, almost imperceptibly, numbers are infiltrating the last redoubts of the personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood, location, alertness, productivity, even spiritual well-being are being tracked and measured, shared and displayed. On MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums for health information, more than 30,000 new personal tracking projects are started by users every month. Foursquare, a geo-tracking application with about one million users, keeps a running tally of how many times players “check in” at every locale, automatically building a detailed diary of movements and habits; many users publish these data widely. Nintendo’s Wii Fit, a device that allows players to stand on a platform, play physical games, measure their body weight and compare their stats, has sold more than 28 million units.

This sort of thing appeals to me but I won't usually keep up with it if it's not very easy.

One Down, Two To Go

My math seminar met this morning for the second-to-last time. I was hoping we wouldn't meet during our final exam period (as required by law), and indeed we will not. And I was hoping the homework assigned today would be the last one. Instead, the professor assigned no homework today. ("I know it's the end of the semester," he said.) Next week will be a little bit of a wrap-up plus a show and tell from him about Daubechies wavelets.

Even though not having this last homework is a very small thing, I'm immensely relieved by it. I'll go next week, of course, but as far as having to do actual work, the course is over for me. He did say that if we aren't quite at an A, we can have an extra assignment due finals week to make it up. My average, however, is something in the A+ range, so I can safely skip that.

Whewwwwwwww.

Tigerlily's Unfortunate Adventure

This morning, around 7 AM, I awoke to the sounds of Sammy meowing, and Ed starting his shower. It's not unusual that Sammy wakes me up before my alarm goes off at 7:30 (which happens 7 days a week so that he is fed at more or less the same time every day), so I promptly went back to sleep.

But Sammy kept meowing, wandering around, and I realized that (a) it is unusual for him to meow in the morning - he usually wakes me up by purring or touching me, and (b) hey, wait a minute, that's not his feed-me meow, that's his Tigerlily meow!

And I remembered wondering about why Tigerlily hadn't come to bed yet, when I went to bed.

And I remembered closing the open balcony door right before bedtime.

And I got up and rushed over to the balcony and opened the door.

And Tigerlily was pressed into the opposite wall-hugging corner of the balcony, looking terrified. She meowed piteously several times after I opened the door, but wouldn't come in right away, so I went to tell Ed what had happened, and she came in shortly afterward, still looking all scared and moving around in the tail-down, low-running way of scared cats.

Poor Tigerlily! She seems fine now (all rubbing on everything in the house), and I'm just really grateful that it wasn't a super cold night. (We've had snow and freezing temps lately, so this isn't a silly consideration, but I don't think it got much lower than 40 last night. She felt cool when she came in but didn't seem to be shivering or trembling.)

I am such a bad cat mommy.

The Trouble with Infinity

Infinity has been giving me some trouble lately - not the concept, but the symbol. You see, when I write it, it comes out all wonky-looking. You'd think it's just a sideways 8, so what's the trouble?

Actually, there are two ways that I write the number 8 - I either start at the top, go counter-clockwise, and make (not coincidentally) a figure 8, or I draw the two ovals separately. It kind of just depends on my mood.

The infinity symbol doesn't look good either way, when I write it, but I recently realized that part of the problem is that, when I write it in the "figure 8" way, I start off going clockwise, which is opposite to how I write an 8. So I started writing it counter-clockwise instead. Now my infinities look great!

...and my 8's look like crap.

Exams

This week, I have exams in abstract algebra and advanced calc. Next week is the last week of school. The following week, I'll have finals in those two classes.

The abstract algebra exam is tonight. I'm well-prepared for it, and should do well, though the tests in that class are harder than the class generally is, so I'll still have to think and work hard to do well tonight. I'm on track to get an A in the class, which I'd like to do, especially since I really enjoy the material.

Tomorrow night is the advanced calc test. I'll finish studying for that tonight, but I don't feel very well-prepared for it. There is also a take-home portion due next Monday that I'm not looking forward to. I feel in some ways really done with this class. Of the three test grades (not counting the final), one is dropped, and my other two grades are an 83% and a 92%, so I could let this one go non-catastrophically, but I'll need to know the material for the final exam anyway, so I might as well apply myself and try to do well.

Assuming this test grade is not higher than an 83% (and is thus dropped), I'll need about a 10% on the final exam in order to pass the class with a C (required for graduation), or about a 50% to get a B. It's very unlikely I would get less than a 50%, but I'd hate to scrape by with an F on the final.

My third class, the "seminar" that is not, has becoming increasingly abstruse to me. I still need to finish up the homework that was due last week, that I got stuck on and got some hints in class about, plus this week's homework. I am hoping that we'll only have one more assignment after this, rather than having one due finals week. (We won't have a final exam, at least.) I can usually fake my way through the homeworks; I have about a 98% average in the class so far.

I'm ready for the semester to be over. It still boggles my mind that I'm actually graduating.

America's Next Top Model

America's Next Top Model (hereafter ANTM) is one of my favorite TV shows. This might be surprising, considering that I have never shown any interest in fashion, conventional female attractiveness, hair and makeup, or anything you'd normally associate with modeling.

I started watching because I am basically a sucker for reality shows in which someone is dismissed at the end of each episode (I will watch almost any show of that type) and because there are a lot of ANTM episodes out there to see. I think there have been 14 seasons of the show by now, and every weekend, Oxygen broadcasts an entire season back to back, which I have my DVR record, so that basically whenever I want to just space out in front of the TV, it's likely to be ANTM that I'm watching. I think I've seen 6 or so seasons in their entirety at this point.

The setup is the same each season. Out of thousands of women who send in videotapes or are recruited in malls and the like, Tyra Banks (the supermodel who produces and hosts the show and is like a "mother hen" to the contestants) chooses 35 or so to show up. During the first episode, this gets narrowed down to about 13, and these finalists move into a fabulous house. Each week, there is a "teach" (where they learn more about runway walking, acting, posing, dancing, makeup, or some other relevant skill), a challenge (where whatever was taught is tested, with some prize for the winner), a photo shoot (or sometimes commercial shoot), and a judging, in which one woman is sent home. The finale each season has them choosing between the last three girls to see who will become "America's Next Top Model." (The prizes for winning the show include a modeling contract with Cover Girl, representation by a modeling agency, and a cover and spread inside a magazine, usually Seventeen.)

The contestants are generally all (or almost all) within the physical parameters of models - that is, tall, and thin, except that usually one or two are plus-size models (which is a specific range of size as well). Some are conventionally very pretty and others are more odd-looking. The odd-looking ones can generally skate by a bit longer in the competition by virtue of their odd looks; conventionally pretty women need to shape up quickly or they will be kicked off for being too commercial or relying on their looks.

All of this doesn't exactly sound appealing to me, but the actual show is very interesting to watch. They are always striving to make the women more edgy, less commercial, more editorial, and basically more strange. (On one episode, Tyra helped the women develop a "signature pose." One of the women - Marjorie, shown at left in a different pose - wanted to do "the hunchback of Notre Dame" as her pose, and Tyra loved it, and helped her mold it into something awesome.) The women who look strange, like Marjorie, tend to be my favorites. I usually have a favorite every season - someone I could look at for hours - and my favorite usually makes it pretty far, but so far has never won.

One thing that interests me is watching and cataloging, over time, what traits are needed to succeed on the show. The most important one I've seen is that you have to be simultaneously completely aware of your body (how it looks, how it's catching the light, what positions you personally look good in) and completely un-self-conscious (willing to try anything, look foolish, be over the top). You need to be confident but also open and willing to learn and listen to advice. Being either arrogant or insecure will not work.

I'll never be a model, but this is an attitude I want to work on having more of for grad school especially - the willingness to try things, and work hard at them, without any guarantee of success, but also without apology or insecurity. And, of course, I want the ability to receive and profit from advice from people who know more than I do.

In my own experience, humility is the key to hitting both points. Humility makes you not too afraid about failing, because you don't see your awesome glorious self as being put on the line. You're just there doing your best and learning as you go along, and you basically don't view everything as being about you and your image. I mean, I don't know any of this for sure, since I don't really have the quality that I'm talking about, but it seems to me that if I could cultivate it, it would help.

Brand Recognition

When the very first slide (shown at left) of this semi-animated ad came up in my browser, it drew my eye. More than that, I knew exactly what company it came from -- a combination, I think, of the font and what is shown in the ad (which I had not seen before, as far as I can recall). I think it's pretty impressive that the company in question has made its mark on me to this extent.

Do you recognize it too?

My SOP Word Cloud

I think it's safe to say my SOP was a bit less focused than Sally's. It also looks, to me at least, a bit more me-me-me.
Incidentally, when I made this word cloud it contained the name of a state my university is not in. I really hope that was an artifact of saving drafts at the wrong time and that I did not tell University of [Delaware] that I looked forward to studying at University of [North Dakota]. I guess it worked out all right regardless, but sheesh.

Getting Rid of Stuff

Due to a server glitch, it wasn't possible to work at my job today. I thought about coming home and taking a nap, but instead I came home and got rid of some crap, namely

• a saxophone, donated to local middle school
• 7 of the $1 reusable grocery bags full of books (and I mean really full), dropped off at the library
• 1 box of Ed's books (hanging out in the car for a while now), also donated to the library
• my camping equipment (tent, sleeping bag, and a foam mat), dropped off at a thrift store
• a big pile of DVD's (most of a $1 grocery bag), sold to a used CD/DVD store

So that was good. I am now down to about 3 shelves of books, total, and a couple more shelves of things I can't get rid of, like photo albums and binders full of CD's.

Fun with Word Clouds

Sally has posted a couple of word clouds from a recent paper and presentation. It made me think how much more...well, boring, a word cloud from a math paper would be. I don't write papers very often, but here, for instance, is the cloud from my last one (via wordle.net):



See?

Grad School Applications Round-Up

Earlier this week, I accepted the one funded offer that I received as a result of my grad school applications, and as of tonight, I have declined my offers of admission from the four other schools that admitted (but did not fund) me, and withdrawn my applications from the two schools I hadn't yet heard from. I of course did not need to communicate with the two programs that rejected me.

One of the four schools that admitted me informed me I would not receive funding. One had me on a waitlist for funding. Two had not said anything one way or the other. It's possible that I might have received an offer, especially after April 15, but now we'll never know.

So, I guess that's all done with.

Sweet Little Pandora

In the spirit of this XKCD cartoon, I will share with you all an experience I had tonight. A song came on Pandora that I think I have literally not heard since high school -- a song I would never in a million years have remembered -- and it immediately touched me, and I remembered loving it quite dearly. It was "Blue Savannah" by Erasure:



(I can't recommend the video, unfortunately. If this song were more famous it would be absolutely ripe for one of those literal video remakes.)

Erasure is one of the only two bands I have ever seen in concert, and I was totally into them in high school. There is a swoony (gay) voice thing they do that, for my adolescent self, brought up vast feelings of romantic and sexual longing -- you can hear that when he sings "to you only" in this song. In the development of my musical tastes as well as what I thought was sexy, Erasure fell chronologically right between George Michael and Depeche Mode.

Thank you, Pandora.

The Fantasy of an Uncluttered Life

Tomorrow, assuming we can make it in the snow, Ed and I are headed to our rental cabin for four days of relaxation. I plan to do a lot of math homework, read for hours on end, hang out in a hot tub (for which the snow is a bonus, assuming, again, that we can get to the cabin), eat homemade food, and just generally chill.

Aside from the hot tub and the general beauty of the surroundings,the aspects of this vacation that I'm most looking forward to are theoretically possible at home. No Internet. No TV. (The cabin has one, but I don't plan to use it.) No distractions. A lot of reading. But I wouldn't do that at home.

Sometimes I feel like it's the sheer amount of stuff in my home that keeps me distracted and unproductive. I don't really have that much stuff - we are not hoarders or anything - but I wish I had even less. I have a persistent fantasy of living in a place that is sparse, simple, utilitarian, and not only uncluttered, but incapable of becoming cluttered, by virtue of not containing things that could clutter it.

Some of this is pure fantasy, but I do want to get rid of a number of things before I leave for grad school next year. I have a lot of things I need (or choose to) hang on to, but there are other things I really can get rid of. Some highlights:

• A few years ago, I got rid of most of my books, and I'm ready to do that again. (I haven't gotten many new books in the interim, I'm just ready for the next stage.) Most of my books I will never read again, so why should I hold onto them? I plan to take these to the library nearby, where they happily accept donations for their various fundraisers.
• I am finally giving away my saxophone, which I got several years ago, and really enjoyed taking lessons in before I ran out of time and energy for it. This kind of entails giving up the fantasy of playing sax regularly, which feels sad, but it's not as though I couldn't buy a saxophone and take up playing again in the future if I wanted to. I found a local middle school that is, in the words of the band director, "always looking for quality instruments," and I will drop it off there.
• I have way more pairs of shoes than I need. Most will just go in one of those ubiquitous clothes + shoes donation dumpsters, but I have a couple of new pairs that I got a few years ago but that didn't work out for me. I have scheduled those to go up on eBay.
• Once I finish the process (begun years ago) of putting my music CDs into binders, my music collection will be reduced to three or four binders, which will take up a lot less space than the gazillion CDs in their original cases did. Most of my music is on the computer anyway.
• Various old computer equipment can go to Goodwill or a pawn shop or something.
• I am going to get rid of my tent and sleeping bag. I never, ever go camping.
• Almost all of my DVDs and videos can go. I won't watch most of them again and it's not hard to rent a movie when you want one.
  

In addition, here are some things I do not plan on moving with me to a new place:

• My dining room chairs, which do not match my table either aesthetically or in terms of height, and are just annoying.
• A couple of my bookcases, which will be empty after the book purge.
• My entertainment center, video game consoles, DVD player, receiver, speakers, or TV. I could change my mind on this, but for now I think I'm just not going to bother having a TV or any of that in the new place. (If Ed moves with me, we'll probably take this stuff, but I hope not to really have TV service. If I live alone, I think I just won't have any of it.)
• Most of my framed posters - I don't seem to care about them enough to hang them up, and they're kind of a pain to move. I can always get something else for the walls.
  

My dining room table and desk are both useful pieces of furniture that can be disassembled into a much more convenient size, so they will stay (unless Mosch decides he wants the desk back). I may get another sparse type of desk - I would like to have one that doesn't have my computer on it at all, since computers are very distracting to me. I'd like a desk like this or this from Ikea.

Here are some other things I plan to keep:

• My bed (it's great, very comfy, and everyone needs a bed)
• My clothes (at least the ones that fit)
• Towels and sheets
• Kitchen equipment
• Photo albums
• Yearbooks
• Seymour (my first stuffed animal)
  
• My filing cabinet and its contents
• My little nested teak end tables
• Cat equipment (litter box, carriers, etc.)

That's the plan.

Or There Is Always Plan B

Next week, after my cabin vacation with Ed (woot), I am flying to visit one of the graduate programs to which I have been admitted. I think I might get a pretty sweet financial deal there and I want to get a feel for the department. Meanwhile, given that I don't have financial packages piling up on my doorstep, I have made preparations for a solid Plan B.

Plan B would consist of doing a master's degree in applied math at a local public university. I hadn't applied to this school, but the deadline is April 1 (and it's not a very firm deadline), and today I filled out the application, wrote the SOP, had the transcripts and GRE scores sent, begged one more letter from my poor recommenders, and am about to mail them the signed forms and stamped, addressed envelopes, etc., so that should be completely taken care of. (In other news, I have gotten pretty good at doing at least basic graduate school applications.)

I don't feel that this master's program is very competitive, so I think I have a good chance of being admitted, especially as I am not seeking any funding. My plan would be to do this program full time, but cut back my actual job to half-time. I think a 20-hour job plus full time graduate study is doable (many TAships take 20 hours anyway), particularly at a perhaps not terrifically demanding program, and half-time at my job would pay more than most graduate stipends, even with full tuition and fees deducted.

In related news, today I let my boss at work in on my graduate plans. She was happy for me, and supportive, but afterwards also (jokingly) called me "bitch" and "ignorant slut." She was quite grateful for the ~ four months of notice, which should give them enough time to hire someone to replace me. She said she is selfishly hoping that the Plan B option is what happens, so that they can keep me part time. (This company is also quite possibly moving to within a few blocks of the Plan B University, which would be mighty convenient.)

I am pretty excited about both Plan A and Plan B at this point even though they are rather different paths. The idea of Plan B is that afterwards I could either work in industry (or government) in a more professional position, or apply to doctoral programs as a (hopefully) stronger candidate.