misc.

i'm tired and irritated with math.

last night 4 different times, i thought i solved, (and then proceeded to unsolve my solution to) one of my combinatorics problems due next week... today i finally got it, but last night i went to sleep really irritated with it.

tonight, similar story. my last reading class of the year with dr. z. is tomorrow, and i have absolutely nothing to show him for it. i've been working for the past 6 hours on stuff for him, but absolutely nothing has proven productive. last week i made up for lack of actually proving stuff by showing him my new web book... this week, i have absolutely nothing to show, and i feel bad about it. :-/

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insert 45 minutes of being on the phone with eric
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eric says that i have no reason to feel bad about my lack of finding solutions and life goes on and that gives me something to work on over the summer too... research... oh joy :-P

in other news, mohamud, the oldest student working for my advisor, had his thesis defense today. i'd never been to a defense, but i figured an "academic big brother" was a good one to start with. other than the jury of professors there were vince, eric, and me (3 of the other 4 of us working for dr. z.), and then a handful of students who came in the same year as mohamud. basically, he talked for an hour about the content of his research, followed by questions from the general audience, followed by all of us except the jury getting kicked out so that they could talk to him. 15 minutes later, the verdict was that he passed. so now there's only 4 of us and mohamud is officially dr. mohammed (yes, both his first and last names are mohamud, spelled differently :-P). i was excited for him. :-)

here's my last random news of the day before i crash... new pictures posted at the usual spot enjoy!

some of my favorites:

random block near my house


dogwoods :-)


john nash and me

(nash didn't pay much attention to who had what cameras when, but besides being me with a famous person, i think it's also a really good picture of me :-P (no bragging intended :-P))

now, to sleep, and hopefully to have a better math day tomorrow...

night y'all!