hodge podge of a day

three random quotes:

"so if you and i ever produce a movie, can we label it 'rated R for brief matroid nudity'?" ~scott

me: explain to me again why you get pleasure out of making me scream?
eric: i've tried to explain to you before. it's just fun. i think you need to be a boy to understand.

yeah, so, i was being observed today, and one of my students came in late and commented 'who's the old guy?' really loudly... i don't think i got good marks for that. ~scott

one thing i've learned today:

there is a down side to weight loss. i mean besides the cost of clothes... that's halfway fun. you may remember in july that i discovered that losing a decent chunk of body weight means you can't handle as much alcohol. scott and i had a tradition last year of going out for margaritas once a month and chatting it up and i never had a problem with it in the least,... and i used to have bragging rights to being able to drink outrageous amounts of vodka without feeling the least bit tipsy. in july, it was a glass of wine... tonight, scott and i got margaritas for the first time in forever. it was A margarita; nothing big. and i wasn't majorly affected, but feeling just a little bit happier, warmer, fuzzier, whatever after dinner. on the whole not a bad thing at all. after dinner scott and i played a game of pool at his house, and then read go, dog, go!, only instead it became go naked matroid go this time around (don't ask... we're both tired and overworked math people)("up we go! up we go! to the top of the lattice of flats!" was another brilliant quote from tonight's reading... yes, we ARE math weirdos)... the only time it was a problem was when i got home an hour ago. i was still feeling nice and warm and fuzzy, but hadn't gone out on my jog yet for the night... i started out but couldn't get my feet to keep a consistent pace for more than a few dozen feet, so i gave up on that and just made myself was 3 miles instead. i feel lazy.... how sad is that... walking 3 miles is a lazy day for me when i used to do less than nothing for exercise.

go figure.

done rambling.

ready to crash.

yay.

night y'all.

countdown?

borrowed from an occasional visitor to my blog, whose blog i've started checking out now too :-P

10 FAVORITES
Favorite Color: dark blue
Favorite Food: lately? english muffins with a little bit of honey on them
Favorite Month: may -- spring semester is done early on, summer jobs don't start til june, so 3/4 of a month to travel and ignore math
Favorite Song: varies greatly from day to day, but "all the way my savior leads me" (rich mullins) is a generally good default answer as is "vienna" (billy joel)
Favorite Movie: garden state
Favorite Sport: to watch, football (go steelers!); to play, volleyball
Favorite Season: fall
Favorite Day Of the week: thursday
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: vanilla
Favorite Time of Day: the instant when all my work is done (or i'm fed up with it for a bit) and i can start out on a jog

9 CURRENTS
Current Mood: pensive
Current Taste: nothing, i'm very not hungry at all right now
Current Clothes: favorite jeans and a red valpo hoodie
Current Desktop: collage of sunset pictures i took over lake michigan in college
Current Toenail Color: uh... regular toenail color -- they're not painted
Current Time: 11:56pm eastern
Current Surroundings: my room... details? there's a wall of misc. math textbooks, a tower of CDs going halfway up another wall, a yaffa block tower just full of picture albums,...just about every inch of wall that hasn't been listed already is covered in some sort of crazy poster or paper thing i've saved, it's a fairly colorful place, but it also screams "graduate student" with the half-library-ness of it all.
Current Thoughts: daylight savings time is disorienting

8 FIRSTS
First Best Friend: it was kindergarten; her name was nancy.
First Kiss: would you believe that i'm 24 and still haven't ever been kissed? yup, it's true. i'm just scary. :-P
First Screen Name: (still is my current email address, and i don't need new unexpected email buddies without warning)
First Pet: dude, when i was born, my parents still had a 20 acre farm instead of the 5 acres they now have... should i start with goats, sheep, all sorts of waterfowl, cats, dogs, or something else?
First Piercing: ears at age 10, but i let them grow back by the time i was 12, and then just repierced them again this past may
First Crush: it was 2nd grade; his name was josh
First Album: point of grace "circle of friends"

7 LASTS
Last Cigarette: i can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke, so never
Last Drink: chocolate milk (since i drink water 99% of the time anymore, this is amazingly surprising)
Last Car Ride: driving home from the car repair place this afternoon
Last Kiss: see previous section
Last Movie Seen: the weather man (last night)
Last Phone Call: my brother called half an hour ago... i like my brother :)
Last CD Played: the "eh mix" CD i put together last month.

6 HAVE YOU EVERS
Have You Ever Dated One Of Your Best Guy/Girl Friends: nope
Have You Ever Broken the Law: nope
Have You Ever Been Arrested: no, but i have been picked up by a illinois state trooper
Have You Ever Skinny Dipped: no
Have You Ever Been on TV: not that i remember
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: nope

5 THINGS
Thing You're Wearing: red valpo hoodie (this is redundant from before)
Thing You've Done Today: wrote a math article that will hopefully get published in the next few months (it's my first potential paper that has ONLY my name on it; no co-authors) :)
Thing You Can Hear Right Now: leigh talking on the phone, noisy radiator across the room, radio
Thing You Can't Live Without: friends
Thing You Do When You're Bored: play snood (i thought i kicked that habit 4 years ago... i recently discovered i was wrong)

4 PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY
1. home
2. wendys
3. goodyear
4. in my car

3 PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO
1. roommate (even though we live several states apart anymore)
2. my brother
3. leigh

2 CHOICES
1. Black or White: gray
2. Hot or Cold: warm

1 THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
my personal lifetime to do list includes visiting all 50 states, and all 7 continents, and owning a blue harley... as i've been to 42 states and to europe twice already, we'll say my ultimate goal to do before i die is to drive a motorcycle in antarctica. :)

happy saturday?

my day:

up at 8 to take the car to the shop. i've noticed for a few weeks that my car vibrates severely when i brake. sometimes when driving i hear a strange rattling noise in the front right wheel, and once after parking in front of my house and going to investigate said wheel last week, i smelled a faint burning smell. so my guess was something was majorly wrong with the front brakes on the right side of the car, and i'd just drive slowly until i could get a car appointment and today was the day.

i dropped the car off at 8 and they told me they'd need it all day if they were doing oil change AND extra work since saturday is busy... fine... colleen followed me there and brought me home. around 10 i got a call from goodyear... indeed, the caliper on my front right brake wasn't engaging anymore so instead of putting energy into using friction to slow down the wheel, it's just been getting really hot and warping the front right rotor.

how good was my prediction, eh?

anyhow, the rotors are old and worn enough that it just made sense to replace both in the front, and both calipers along with it so that i had a symmetric set of brakes... that and adjusting the drum brakes in the back and changing out old brake fluid (hadn't been done in about 2 years so it was due) adds up to nearly $800... add the oil change, and i was $850 more in credit debt... that's exciting right?

that's not even the end of the story... my timing belt is cracking too. so when they get the parts in to replace that and the accessory belts this week, i'll get to bring the car right back in for more big $$ work. for two years of only needing oil changes and a new set of tires all around, this averages out to being a car that's been really good to me... but everything seems to need repairing in large groups instead of spread out and it hurts the pocketbook.

at least, for the first time in awhile, it felt really nice to drive a car home this afternoon with fully functional brakes.

anyhow, i digress... i started out with here's my day and wrote an essay about car repair.

so to the car place around 8. colleen followed me and brought me home.

i did stuff around the house, exercised, and other such fun until around 1. then colleen was leaving for the day. leigh was already gone on a "fall foilage drive", not to be heard from again until about 9pm, and other usual suspects are phone-less or out of town this weekend, so even though my car wasn't going to be ready til 5, i had colleen drive me to a wendys down the street from the car place where i studied for 3 hours, and then walked on down the street to check out the scoop on the car around 4:30.

car in hand again, it was back home, theoretically to grade my calc quizzes from this week, but i really just don't want to. i like when my students do well, and i'm a little sad for them when they don't, and i know this week i'm going to be generally sad for them because it was a hard week and a lot of them were frustrated and confused. anyhow, that didn't so much happen.

instead, you might remember that i was really mad last weekend when i found a counterexample to what i had been trying to prove for the past month. after telling my advisor what i had found, he still suggested i write up a short paper detailing my discovery even if it wasn't what i had hoped it would be, so i just spent the past 3 hours doing that. it's 3 pages and that's probably a little long for it, but just the same... it's harder to write math quickly since there's all the typesetting involved... even if you're good at TeXing things (math typesetting), it still takes time to compile every so often and decide if you like the layout on the page or if there's a way to type the symbols more clearly notation-wise, etc., etc., etc.

anyhow, paper done, and i sent it to my friend steve (who is a 1st year grad student in seattle this year), and will show it to leigh when i'm done blabbing, to get feedback on my writing clarity today.

basically, that's what i've done.

i've been so unmotivated lately. at leat i managed to do something today... i should definitely be grading for quite some time tomorrow.

my head's been weird lately too. i had some bizarre dreams last week -- for once NOT nightmares (in and of itself not having nightmares is bizarre for me), but they have me thinking about a few people a lot more regularly than i usually do because i have no idea what in my head sparked to dream of them in the context i did. (yes, that's extremely vague). so lots of self-analysis going on... i'm not sure if that's the right word, but on some level, i do mean "trying to figure out what's going on in my head", so that works. only i'm analyzing my subconscious head, which is much harder to do than to analyze conscious head. ;)

conclusion: i'm bizarre and like to write lots about car parts. all long posts by me should be generally disregarded as rubbish.

the weather man

movies that make you say "hmmmm"

if you go to yahoo and read user reviews, you'll notice for the most part people loved it or hated it. there are a lot of As and Bs, and a lot of Ds and Fs, and the handful of Cs are mostly people who walked out early.

"the weather man" is rated R. you go to an R rated movie knowing it was given that rating for a reason, be it language, or some of the content, or whatever. if you plan to not hear the F word from time to time, you don't go to an R movie. (this was one of the most common complaints in the reviews i saw).

"the weather man" was originally slated for april 1st release, but when all the previews out before then made it look like a comedy, they pushed it back to october 28 (yesterday) so that they could hopefully advertise some more and get the word out that it's not a rolling on the floor comedy, it's a "dark comedy", or a "drama" depending on how you look at it. again, if you do your homework, you don't go into something labelled a "dark comedy", and expect to be laughing your head off all the time. (this was another common complaint on the reviews i've seen... even on the way out of the theater and older man commented "that wasn't funny... that was kind of depressing")

once i've taken care of those two major objections (yes, the movie has a fair amount of language and one scene in particular that make it R rated,... true it's not a rolling on the floor with laughter kind of movie,... but i knew both of those things going in), i thought it was a really good movie.

although still i enjoy silly "chick flicks" and comedies that portray non-realistic situations but leave you with a "happy about the state of the universe" feeling or leave you having gotten quite a few good laughs, i really appreciate darker movies too (provided there's not much gun violence, and in the weather man there's zero of that, so no problem). i admire a movie that actually portrays real people with real problems and leaves you knowing that some people in hollywood know that there's not always a perfect fairytale ending to every story.

"the weather man" is such a movie. cage's character has all the issues you can think of and more when you add up his problems and the major problems of the people he's close too, but as the movie progresses he finally snaps out of just hazily pushing his way through it all and gets some focus. it's a story about a real person with real problems and learns how to cope.

not a movie that i left feeling overjoyed about or really saddened about. more a movie that i left thinking "hmmm", and after giving it a couple hours to settle, that i could feel like in some strange way i could relate to... not on the surface of having the same life issues as cage's character, but on the finding a way to work through the troubles and figure out what's most important to focus on to make it through.

definitely not a movie for everyone. if you're offended by the F word, if you plan to leave a movie with a smile on your face, you're definitely not up for this one. but if you really do appreciate raw movies about real life, then this one IS worth checking out.

the end.

apparently it's national "let stupid boys screw up your schedule" day and no one warned us...

just a little grumpy if the title doesn't give it away.

ben and i agreed on monday that we'd see "the weather man" this afternoon and get dinner afterwards. when we talked, we agreed on heading for the first movie possible after 2 or 3. so even planning on the 4pm one was good by me. when ben called me this afternoon around 2 he decided that the earliest he'd show up at my house ready to go was 6pm at the earliest, maybe 8pm instead. without warning then, my afternoon to fill went from an hour or two to about 5-6 hours. this is maybe a little stupid to be irritated about, but really, i have a hard time concentrating on friday afternoons since the crazy week is about at its end. i generally count on something social to do with someone or another in the afternoon and then work at night... so this left me with more hours than expected to fill with no energy to do much of anything.

colleen has a similar story. she was supposed to go to the gym with scott at 3, as they usually do, but when she called him when she got to the rec center, he said he wasn't coming and he didn't bother to call her and warn her b/c he figured she'd be on campus anyhow already and it wouldn't matter (bad assumption. colleen had nothing to do out of the house today besides that).

so yeah, stupid boys who can't keep schedules... oi... (it should be noted that i call ben, scott, and eric "stupid boys" all the time, and they call me a "stupid girl" too... it's not said in quite the same level of mean connotation as you might imagine)

anyhow, whenever ben actually shows up, we're going to see the weather man... this was originally supposed to come out in april, and ever since i first saw a preview for it a year ago, it's been on the top of my "must see" list. it came out today, and i'm looking forward to it. i hope it really is what the previews and reviews i've seen make it out to be or better. review later.

at least, while i wait for ben to show up, the new issue of mental floss finally came in the mail today. i've been waiting for a month for it since i finished the last issue. their magazine staff truly are my heroes.

later dudes.

i like my students and my students like me :) (yay)

so as mentioned several times already, this week was the most challenging week in my calc class, both for me to teach and for the students to understand. during class we did tons of problems on related rates (section 3.7) but we only got to hit on one question from section 3.8 (linear approximation and error analysis). i had tons of students in my office both yesterday afternoon and today asking good questions, and last night i came home to tons of emails asking for help on their webwork. (each week they have about a dozen problems due by midnight on thursday that are graded by computer). i spent so much time yacking and typing hints that i didn't get around to this until about 11:30 last night after the email load had died down, but last night i sent this out to all my students:

> This won't get out in time to be useful for WeBWorK, but in my quest to
> update the "useful links" on my webpage for the class:
> http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~lpudwell/math135-f05.html
> I couldn't find much online on the material in 3.8
>
> Since we didn't cover much of it in class and there seem to be a lot of
> common questions, one of the links on the class webpage is now:
> http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~lpudwell/teach/error.pdf
>
> Even if you've finished the webwork, if you're still feeling a little hazy
> about 3.8, this is a little bit of my commentary on it. I typed it up
> quickly, so hopefully the backwards quotation marks don't bother you ;)
> Otherwise, hopefully it explains the different types of problems clearly
> and puts a common thread between them. And hopefully it'll help you
> figure out 3.8 long before the next exam. :) Let me know if you have
> comments or questions about it.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Lara
>
>

if you're a math person, my pdf probably makes you cringe. i could have been more careful with my texing up so that the quotes aren't backwards, and the delta x \to 0 is actually UNDER the "lim", and i could have been more precise and less chatty, but it was late, and i was trying to type how i would explain it to my students at the board. they have the book. the book can be precise and perfectly type set. i'm just trying to write up something that's useful.

anyhow, this morning, i got the following email:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lara,

Thank you so much for your summary on section 3.7 and 3.8
It was extremely clear and really very helpful. I did spend a lot of time
on that section and was able to all the webwork (struggled a bit), but
reading your summary now, makes it a whole lot clearer.

Thank you so much for all that you are doing.... you are a fantastic Math
teacher (if I haven't told you this earlier :-))

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

along with a couple similar emails.

this makes me feel good. i really DO want them to do well, and even on the crappiest of weeks, when i see large numbers of my students actually trying and taking advantage of the extra stuff i put out there for them instead of just giving up and not asking questions, that really does make me happy. :)

and next week is about using derivatives to find maxs and mins, so it just HAS to be better, right? :)

the end.

the most dramatic apprentice ever?

DUDE

i was sooo rooting for excel since alla and felisha can get on my nerves. but firing FOUR contestants at once? good bye jennifer, josh, james, and mark... dude!

the baseball idea looked brilliant, but really, when the project is "increase the sales of the sports department you're working with", and excel DECREASED sales by 34%... oi.

when they went into the final boardroom after donald sent back rebecca, marshawn, and one of the guys, i commented to leigh "dude, he's fired 2 before, just watch him do it again... both josh and jennifer really need to go after this week". then he fired all FOUR... dude.

i felt bad for james and mark. james had a good idea, and they both worked hard; in retrospect, they recognized their mistakes, but weren't nasty about them like jennifer and josh got. jennifer was obnoxious and didn't carry out her word. josh as PM totally lost focus.... this shortens the season by 3 weeks i guess?

and dude... what was up with the preview with donald firing chewbacca? bizarreness... we shall see...

official review of the TA training director

so he saw me teaching yesterday, (on my most frantic, crazy, day of teaching to date)... here's the review i got via email just now:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:45:20 -0400 (EDT)

Ms. Pudwell,

The class I observed went very well. I don't have any other comments to
make, you are a very good teacher.

T. Butler


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

40 minutes of watching me, and that's it. :P no criticism of handwriting or volume or not getting enough student participation, just "you're good, that's all i have to say". not bad. :)

the end.

my wednesday

(1) wake up at 6:45am, exercise, breakfast, email, leave house by 8:30

(2) teach from 8:55-9:50, 10:35-11:30, 12:15-1:10 technically, but, i was in section 1 and section 2 until 5 minutes before the next section, and i didn't get to my car after section 3 until 2:15
this week's material was probably the hardest two section in the whole freakin course, and i had 45 minutes to cover them... oi.
during the 10:35 section, the TA training director observed my class... i'll get his review on paper in the next day or two

(3) drive home, and spend 10 minutes there (2:30-2:40)... during the first 5 minutes, the FedEx man showed up with my new cellphone so i had to run downstairs and sign for it (haven't had time to get it out of the box), and i was on the phone with Goodyear to get an appointment for Saturday (the car is gonna cost me a few hundred this weekend which i don't have... it needs work...)... during the 2nd 5 minutes i ate lunch the fastest ever, found my stuff for tropical math seminar, stuffed it in my bag, and ran right back out the door

(4) showed up at my office at 3, and had students asking questions straight until 4:55 when i needed to leave for a seminar... (i don't normally have office hours on wednesday, but since this week was so tough of material i showed up for 2 extra hours due to popular demand)... the ones who came seemed like they felt much better about this week's material by the time they left... i was getting hoarse by the end of talking for nearly 8 hours straight though.

(5) tropical math seminar from 5-6, and now here i am in my office, eating the apple i packed for this morning between sections and never had time to touch.

i am soooooo ready for a good jog when i get home (esp. since it's been raining the past two days so i haven't gone since sunday)

don't you wish this was your day?

later dudes.

revelation

i can actually teach related rates coherently!

not that i didn't think i couldn't teach them, but....

related rates are what my students are doing in calc this week...
for example: like a car heads north at this speed, and a truck heads east at this speed, after 3 hours, how fast is the distance between them changing?

that and differentials and error analysis
for example: i'm calculating the volume of a sphere and i measured that the radius is 2 inches. if i could have been off by .1 inch when i measured the radius, what percent will my volume be off?

these are seriously 2 of the hardest sections in the book, and once we get past them, it's pretty intuitive how to teach it. i can do the problems, but to explain them clearly... oi...

AND i'm being observed by the TA training director tomorrow, so it'll be entertaining.

BUT one of my students met with me an hour ago for extra help and it went brilliantly... light bulbs were turning on left and right,... i was pretty happy by the end of our visit.

i CAN teach related rates, and this makes me feel good.

combo lecture time... later dudes.

what a life

Rosa Parks dies at 92

random quiz

i've seen this before in a past life. my answers to a lot were different than before, but i still got a 38 -- what do you think? moreover, what's your score?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don't be overly sensitive! The following is pretty accurate and it only
takes 2 minutes. Take this test for yourself and send it to your
friends. The person who sent it placed their score in the subject box.
Please do the same before forwarding to your friends. (send it back to
the person who sent it to you) Don't peek but begin the test as you
scroll down and answer. Answers are for who you are now...... not who you
were in the past. Have pen or pencil and paper ready. This is a real test
given by the Human Relations Dept. at many of the major corporations
today. It helps them get better insight concerning their employees and
prospective employees. It's only 10 simple questions, so..... grab a
pencil and paper, keeping track of your l! etter answers to each
question. Make sure to change the subject of the e-mail to read YOUR
total. When you are finished, forward this to friends/family, and also
send It to the person who sent this to you. Make sure to put YOUR
score in the subject box. Ready??

Begin...

1. When do you feel your best?
a) in the morning
b) during the afternoon ∧ early evening
c) late at night

2. You usually walk...
a) fairly fast, with long steps
b) fairly fast, with little steps
c) less fast head up, looking the world in the face
d) less fast, head down
e) very slowly

3. When talking to people you..
a) stand with your arms folded
b) have your hands clasped
c) have one or both your hands on your hips
d) touch or push the person to whom you are talking
e) play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair

4. When relaxing, you sit with..
a) your knees bent with! your legs neatly side by side
b) your legs crossed
c) your legs stretched out or straight
d) one leg curled under you

5. When something really amuses you, you react with...
a) big appreciated laugh
b) a laugh, but not a loud one
c) a quiet chuckle
d) a sheepish smile

6. When you go to a party or social gathering you...
a) make a loud entrance so everyone notices you
b) make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know
c) make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed

7. You're working very hard, concentrating hard, and you're
interrupted.....

a) welcome the break
b) feel extremely irritated
c) vary between these two extremes

8. Which of the following colors do you like most?
a) Red or orange
b) black
c) yellow or light blue
d) green
e) dark blue or purple
f) white
g) brown or gray

9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before
going to sleep you are...
a) stretched out on your back
b) stretched out face down on your stomach
c) on your side, slightly curled
d) with your head on one arm
e) with your head under the covers

10. You often dream that you are...
a) falling
b) fighting or struggling
c) searching for something or somebody
d) flying or floating
e) you usually have dreamless sleep
f) your dreams are always pleasant




POINTS:
1. (a) 2 (b) 4 (c) 6
2. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 7 (d) 2 (e) 1
3. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 5 (d) 7 (e) 6
4. (a) 4 (b) 6 (c) 2 (d) 1
5. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 2
6. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 2
7. (a) 6 (b) 2 (c) 4
8. (a) 6 (b) 7 (c) 5 (d) 4 (e) 3 (f) 2 (g) 1
9. (a) 7 (b) 6 (c) 4 (d) 2 (e) 1
10. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 6 (f) 1

Now add up the total number of points.





OVER 60 POINTS: Others see you as someone they should "handle with care."
You're seen as vain, self-centered, and who is extremely dominant. Others
may admire you, wis! hing they could be more like you, but don't always
trust you, hesitating to become too deeply involved with you.

51 TO 60 POINTS: Others see you as an exciting, highly volatile, rather
impulsive personality; a natural leader, who's quick to make decisions,
though not always the right ones. They see you as bold and adventuresome,
someone who will try anything once; someone who takes chances and enjoys
an adventure. They enjoy being in your company because of the excitement
you radiate.

41 TO 50 POINTS: Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing,
practical, and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center
of attention, but sufficiently well-balanced not to let it go to their
head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone
who'll always cheer them up and help them out.

31 TO 40 POINTS: Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful &
practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a
person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's
extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expect the same loyalty in
return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake
your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to
get over if that trust is ever broken.

21 TO 30 POINTS: Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see
you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It
would really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on
the spur of the moment, expecting you to examine everything carefully
from every angle and then, usually decide against it. They think this
reaction is caused partly by your careful nature.

UNDER 21 POINTS: People think you are shy, nervous, and indecisive,
someone who needs looking after, who always wants someone else to make
the decisions & who doesn't want to get involved with anyone or anything!
They see you as a worrier who always sees problems that don't exist. Some
people think you're boring. Only those who know you well know that you
aren't.

4th?!?! post of the day?

i should get this mad at math more often... 5 miles in 71 minutes... the previous record was 75... i'm getting good at that game at least.

the end.

fact:

(16*22^4+13*22^3+3*22^2+8*22+2)/(2*22^4+8*22^3+3*22^2+13*22+16) is an integer

(16*22^3+13*22^2+8*22+2)/(2*22^3+8*22^2+13*22+16) is not

this makes me angry.

why?

it's the first counterexample the computer came up with to something i conjectured and have been trying to prove for a MONTH. days and days and lots and lots of paper, and i was trying to prove something that was false anyhow.

mad at math. going for a walk... i take that back... it's 50 freakin degrees outside... i better be at least jogging if i want to stay warm.

later dudes.

yay

my current phone that has survived two years of abuse from me:
motorola v120c

since i got it with a 2 year contract with verizon in august of 2003, i've been due for a free new phone from verizon. between my $100 "new every two" discount, and a complementary extra "shopping online discount", i could basically get any $150 phone or cheaper from verizon for free.

after spending the past two nights on the phone on the balcony in 50F weather in the wind and rain because i broke the antenna off my phone a year ago and can't get calls in the house without dropping them periodically, i decided i was due to get my new free phone before winter.

i like motorola and i don't trust LG, so basically i got the nicest motorola phone i could with the discounts and still get it free.

hence, in the next week, my *new* phone will show up:
motorola E815

this should be lots of fun. i'm going from the free "no frills" phone that came with my original contract, which has been reliable and functional, but has not many extra options after text messaging, to a monster of a phone that does video and picture messaging and can double as an mp3 player.

for free.

how yay is that?

i, for one, am excited :)

later dudes.

etc.

this is me today:



far from the best picture of me ever, so what gives?

see the butterfly pin on my shirt collar?

today is the first day since my grandma died in july that i've had the guts to go through her old jewelry box and wear something of hers myself.

the least significant thing in the world to anyone but me, but to me this is huge.

i miss my grandma.

the end.

i am addicted

...to snood, that is

at some point in undergrad snood was all the rage... everyone had it on their computer, everyone played it as their procrastination technique of choice, everyone talked about it for a portion of nearly every conversation. it was crazy.

it's also a highly addictive game.

some people were smart, and noticing their lack of productivity, removed it from their computers again. i was not one of those people.

i had kicked the habit years ago. it's been happily on my desktop, mostly untouched. from time to time i would open it, play a few games of "puzzle" or medium, or evil, and then put it up again.

but at some point in the past week, i opened it up and played a game of "journey" (where you get a succession of games: child, easy, medium, hard, then evil until you lose, and rack up points from all the consecutive games you win).

i have not been able to close the program since.

i wake up, i play a game of snood.

breakfast cooking in the kitchen? time for a quick game of snood!

come home and don't want to start math immediately? play a game of snood

shuddering to balance that checkbook and see just how little $$ is left after paying the bills? play a game of snood.

the thing is, often "play a game of snood" turns into, play repeatedly until i feel guilty for not doing my other work or until i get on the high score list again for journey. me (and my mom and brother from borrowing my computer when i made it home with it throughout undergrad) have a mighty impressive high score list for journey ranging from 60,029 to 101,887. while in my recent efforts i've been able to get up to 57,000ish, beating even that 10th place 60,029 requires beating 2 consecutive games of evil or having the best streak ever on the lower levels. so yeah, i'm obsessed. i keep getting close, but i'm not quite up to my previous record highs of years ago.

computer games... such a bad drain of productivity time.

oi.

changes, busy-ness, and other such fun

my day:

* class. lecture started off something like this. "here's an open problem for all of you. in every theory, there are many hopeless problems. i promise this is not one of them"
later in class:
leigh: "so why is that true?"
prof: "oh, because i've been up since 5am today and the coffee is not working anymore. you are right, i am lying to you all again"
oi.

* post-class, i came home and putzed around for a good long time... i've been in a bizarre mood

* "lunch" with scott. i say lunch in quotes since it was 3pm, but whatever.
quote:
"here's the way i see it... if i can dance, *anybody* can dance... because i'm a white mathematician from wisconsin" ~scott
otherwise, it was a good catching up chat... since scott takes his oral quals in a month he's hard to track down lately, but i like when we do actually match up our schedules long enough for more than 5 minutes. so yay for scott.

* pretty shortly after coming home from that, scott went home to study, and i went with leigh and colleen to see "elizabethtown". it took a long time to get where it was going, but the ending (and the last 20 minutes) were completely wonderful. we all enjoyed it. plus, it's not often that all THREE of us do something together instead of in pairs.

* immediately after the movie, went on my daily 5 mile jog/walk. beat my old time by half a song on my playlist on leigh's ipod, so major yay for that

* just as i was warming up in the house again, i got a call from tammy. i've been emailing people i haven't heard from in awhile for fun (maybe a person a week or so?) and i emailed her today and her response was to call and chat for nearly an hour and a half. we hadn't chatted in a couple months, so it was a long overdue time to catch up, and it was lots of fun. life is treating her and marcus well, and there's even a new puppy in the background to make all kinds of trouble too. :P it was good to just chat with an old friend and not think about math for awhile.

* finishing on the phone at like 11pm, it's too late to think, so i started remodeling my blog. it's been awhile, so i decided it was time for a new look. comments anyone?

so here i am at 11:30, not having accomplished much today, but good chat with scott, and good chat with tammy... and quality time with my roommates... and it stopped raining long enough for me to get in my jog and set a new record time. :)

that's my day, now on to the top 3 rants / topics occupying lots of time in my head of the week....

rant #1:
you might remember my "vaguest post ever" a couple days ago. to make a long story short and still hide names, one of my college friends and one of my grad school friends are now dating. the grad school friend took me out to eat the weekend before this was official and basically asked my permission to date my friend. i told him that i don't have any control over his social life, nor should i, but i really appreciated that he talked to me about it. his main concern is that he "values my friendship" and doesn't want to throw a wrench into it if the idea was super weird for me. generally my college friends and my grad school friends live in two separate parts of my head, so yeah it's a little strange in my head to picture, but whatever, i'm happy that they're happy. the only thing still frustrating me is that my college friend never said a word to me about it until i emailed her last week, after she was officially seeing my grad school friend. again, not to ask permission, or anything like that, i just thought that after 2 months of being interested in someone she met through me, she might drop a comment or something about it. whether it's exactly true or not, the thought has run through my head periodically this week, "i guess we're not as close as i thought we were", and that makes me a little sad. as a result, i haven't had much to say to my grad school friend all week, which is probably unfair to him too, and such is life....
summary: unexpected collision of two previously separate worlds (in my mind) left my head reeling for a bit and i'm still trying to figure out equilibrium. scott and eric both affirmed this week that this isn't a psychotic reaction at all, that it's actually a fairly healthy one in their opinions.

rant #2 of the week:
i got a card this week from my mom... it was a "thinking of you card" that basically said "thinking of you" on the front and had a smiley face on the inside, and all she wrote inside was "always like to hear how things are going, love, mom". completely the opposite, a month and a half ago, she said if i was going to sound stressed all semester, she was just going to not call me until after my orals were done (date for that still TBA). last month, while driving around pittsburgh with her for stuff for my cousin's wedding, she broke down in tears complaining to me how she can't talk to her mother anymore even if she wants to and now she has a daughter who doesn't like talking to her anymore. i've been trying to piece together how to respond though. really, i don't like talking to people regularly anymore. i don't call people usually. i type a lot. i find typing therapeutic, and then i get back to my work. i get irritated when i'm stressed and mom, for example, comments every few breaths "are you depressed? should you quit grad school? should i call the chair of your department and complain about this prof you don't like?" that doesn't happen every chat, but when i'm busy and stressed it's easier not to have to explain all over again. for the last month or so though, i get the sense that she really wants to hear from me more (which i hypothesize is brought on by her mom not being around anymore after this summer, and that's more setting in). the thing is, i want to help and make it better, and have no problem calling regularly to chat, but it's hard to dramatically change the current habits of our relationship and have it be "normal". if i started calling her as much as she keeps leaving voicemails and IMs, it would just feel like fake reaching out in return (which probably makes no sense). i'm not ignoring my mom. i do return her calls at least once a week (and usually get the answering machine while the family is out). i do respond to her IMs when i'm actually home (which is rare b/c i'm at school a lot)... i'm maintaining the level of contact she's maintained with me for the past several years, and now suddenly she wants to increase it.

i'm probably overanalyzing it all. and i will call her tomorrow just to say hi. i'm just much happier being a hermit lately, and wish that people would mostly just give me space (wonderful friends and family included) so i can work and get less stressed, so her need for more of hearing from me comes at a time where being more in touch is actually MORE stressful for me. oi. i'm officially a nut case.

rant #3:
here's a quote i've had on my math website for awhile:
most mathematicians are bipolar disorders waiting to happen... one of the reasons that mathematicians tend to be eccentric is that we confront failure and disappointment every day, and try to find ways to surmount it. ~(from a mathematician's survival guide)
i have been feeling that a LOT lately. i sit down and work for 12 hours, and have nothing to show for it, since my attempts at proofs lately just seem to go around in circles. if you're in a lab science, you can show "ok, i did this experiment" whether it worked and gave the data you wanted or not.... if you're in a more humanities related discipline, even if it's not as quality or as quantity as you wanted, you can actually have read some amount of pages, or written some amount of text after a bit of time. if you're not a student and have a real-world job, then generally you can show something for your time in having done something on the computer, answered phone calls, been through meetings, and whatever else had you. math is the only thing i can think of that's so abstract that you can sit and work your head off for days and have absolutely nothing to show for it. it can be incredibly irritating when you're having a bad spell creatively and/or intuitively to figure out how to prove what you should be proving. it's a headache.
hopefully this weekend will be more fruitful than last one.

what a note to end on... i'm really not as unhappy as my posts seem to be lately. generally i like what i do. my students love me as far as i can tell, and i know that i enjoy working with them. my advisor actually makes me feel good about math on the days when i feel really dumb, and i like working with him. if only there weren't so much to do, and so many things (see rants above) for me to overanalyze and get grumpy about... oi.

nonetheless, yay for surprise phone calls and for good chats with the scott, and for movie time with the roommates.

happy weekend all?

pictures

this is one *scary* picture

dude, i've been there... luckily not when the waves looked like this

in other news...

this is one *beautiful* machine

(personally, i'm counting down the years until i can afford a harley sportster 883... it too, would have to be blue... motorcycles are such awesome machines :P)

apprentice, week (whatever it is)

cool project, unstellar players.

the guys work well together, the women don't... most of them (well half of them) are very cliqueish and it doesn't help the team function at all. the women did make a smart choice in picking randal to join their side this week, but he wasn't put to work in any sort of way that he could shine.

when they were showing the guys work, i asked leigh (who watched with me this week), "what the heck is markus doing?" just moments before they started playing comments from the other guys of "we have no idea what markus is doing or what he adds to the team". luckily, they won in spite of him.

kristi, although i LOVE her accent, had to go. she puts a lot of effort and energy into tasks, but she isn't a team player at all. i was so certain that jennifer was going home going into the final boardroom, but as can be the case, she made one brilliant point and suddenly had donald on her side. i don't see her winning it all though.

favorite of all is still randal, followed by marshawn. they are the only two people who have consistently not been catty, have been really hard workers, and when they speak it's not to add drama... they're both clear, well-thought-out, and to the point, and often very astute when most of their competitors are all about the drama and "he said, she said" of it all. i really hope one of the two of them takes it all at the end of the season.

still counting down the weeks until markus is fired.

the end.

a small rant

for any of you out there who are students,

if you make an appointment with a professor or a TA for extra help, SHOW UP!

my office hours are from 3:30-4:30 today. normally, i spend thursday morning up until about 2pm working at home in my PJs. i got up early this morning though because a student who works on thursday afternoons requested that i meet with him at 10:30.

i've been in my office since 10:25, and it is now nearly 11:15. still no student.

ergh.

i want to be patient, but it's hard not to be incredibly irritated too.

the end.

happy comment

as you may have gathered by now, i have a hearing impaired student in one of my calculus classes this semester.

a sign language interpreter, provided by the university, comes in every week and signs the lecture to my student.

last week, i asked the interpreter how it works out to sign math words, and she's incredibly friendly and likes to chat for 5 minutes after class, especially after I inquired about what she does. :)

anyhow, here's the paragraph she spun off to me (whispering) while my students were taking their quiz for the last 10 minutes of class today.

"seriously, i just wanted to tell you how impressed i am with your teaching style. i hated math, but after listening to you for 2 months now, i'm convinced that if i had a teacher like you, even i could understand calculus. you're also so nice. i've never seen a graduate student incorporate a deaf student into a class so well before. you don't put her and me off to the side or seem unnerved by it at all, you respond to her just as you do to everyone else so that she's not afraid to ask questions in class, like most of the students i sign for are intimidated by their profs and TAs. you always seem so positive. so even if i'm not your student, thanks -- you're fantastic!"

that made my day. :)

the end.

eh

so back in the day when it was the cool thing to do to make a quiz about yourself online and send the link to all your friends, one of my favorite questions on the quizzes i'd make up about myself was something along the lines of:

which of the following has lara NEVER done:
(a) been stranded with a trucker in a blizzard
(b) watched TV with a pig (literally)
(c) been stuck in an elevator
(d) been picked up by a state trooper

that's not word for word how it would go, but it was close.

as usual with me, the correct answer is the most normal sounding one.

(a) yes, i've been stranded with a trucker in a blizzard. i was driving from college to my parents' house for christmas break in 2000. around the paxton, IL exit on I-57 south, i noticed a jackknifed truck up ahead blocking the right lane and switched lanes to go around it, unfortunately, when i switched lanes, i hit black ice and my car did a figure 8 before landing (thankfully right-side-up) in a pile of snow on the side of the road and i couldn't get it to start again. (story continues below)

(d) (continuing from part a) before i could even think to do anything but call my mom, a state trooper had pulled up next to my car and while muttering something about stupid southern drivers who can't handle winter weather, insisted i get in and get a ride to the nearest restaurant to hang out til they could dig out my car... the trooper also picked up the trucker from the jack-knifed trailer and we spent 8 hours hanging out at a hardees until the weather had improved enough to dig out our respective vehicles.

(b) yes, we had pot-bellied pigs for pets from when i was 9 until i was 19. one of them was especially tame, and my dad would let us bring her in the house on saturday mornings, and as long as she sat on the floor instead of on the furniture she could hang out with us while we watched cartoons. (this was around when i was 10). seriously, pigs are very personable, like dogs only bristlier.

as far as (c), up until today, i had never been stuck in an elevator. hence me bringing up this post. frankly, i would rather do a, b, and d all over again before i try c again. when you're several floors up and have no idea what the darn thing is about to to, i'm not claustrophibic, but i do worry about it falling.

anyhow, summary: as of today, i've managed to do a more "normal" bizarre thing that i had avoided doing for the first 24+ years of my life.

woohoo?

the most vague post ever

it's completely bizarre when two previously distinct (at least in your mind) worlds collide without much advance warning or time to react.

it's like there's point a of everyone involved (other than me) being deliriously happy, and point b of me being happy that everyone involved (other than me) is deliriously happy, and it shouldn't be a big jump at all from point a to point b, but it's a little bigger of a jump than i can make instantanously.

to the those of you who are involved in this (you know who you are and i doubt you read this, but just in case... :P), no i'm not mad at you, but give me a few days at least to let my head catch up with life so i can get to point b.

to those of you who are not involved in this, by all means be confused. ;-P

the end.

if ever a picture was worth a thousand words...

...then this one's definitely in the running:

here's the story.

scott and i walk into the math graduate lounge on thursday. the board says "for a good time -- ", then has a phone number.

scott and i debate whose cellphone it is, and then for fun, scott added "for a better time -- ", and put his own number below it

still amused, we decided together to put "for the best time of all -- ", and then wrote colleen's number.

i still had to finish out my roll of film, so here's scott, pretending to be WAAAAAAAY excited about calling the unknown number, his own, and/or colleen's: (i did black out most of the numbers for the privacy of my friends.)



still, the mystery remained... whose number was the first one?

the next day, before pizza seminar, the numbers were still there and people were discussing them. tom told me that paul ellis had written "for a good time --" above the first number, but they had tried to call it and got no answer. on the way to church this morning, paul confirmed that too.

still, yesterday, the question still remained... who did the first good time number belong to?

last night, leigh was looking at pictures on my computer and started laughing hysterically before she even heard the story to this point. when i commented "you don't even know the story yet, what's so funny?", she told me to tell her the story and then she'd explain.

apparently, the first number was leigh's number. she had a student taking a quiz while she was working in our office, and wrote her cell number on the board for him in case he had any problems with people trying to kick him out of the room. it never got erased, and she had no idea what had happened to the board since to produce this picture.

sooooooo, even though it was funny before the missing chinks were filled in, scott, looking extremely eager to call leigh for a good time, himself for a better time, or colleen for the best time of all, makes it just that much more priceless.

aren't math people entertaining? :P

later dudes.

chronology

a timeline:

me in july 04, december 04, april 05, and august 05:


so i've been shrinking... i babble about this from time to time. current victory is 55 pounds down, 45 to go.

the thing about shrinking is... even if you're not spending money to join a gym or anything (i just go walking around the neighborhood and eat healthier food), it still costs.

i am now 4 clothing sizes smaller than i was in the july and december pictures above. i am now 3 sizes smaller than i was in april... (the august picture is with the size that currently fits me).

last weekend, when i was in valpo, it was quite noticeable to me at least that my dress pants were 3 sizes too big... and i realized partway through the day that if i wasn't careful, since my pants had no beltloops... if i took a deep enough breath, i'd be as risk of not wearing pants anymore... (which is *exactly* what you came here to read about, right?)...

this wednesday, it was freezing when i left to go teach, so i had to grab a sweater out of my closet... my sweaters are all i bit tattered from being worn for a few winters, but, not only that, i was swimming in the darn thing that fit perfectly last winter.

since (a) i have to dress as least a little nicer than jeans and a hoodie on the days i teach, and (b) my black dress pants, after last weekend, are pretty much out of commission on account of the fact they have no beltloops, while out and about today, leigh and i decided that money or no money, i could go visit the kohl's sale and get an outfit or two that actually fits.

here are the results:

new black dress slacks (WITH beltloops!) that fit perfectly, and the fuzziest softest long sleaved top ever:




new corduroy black pants (with beltloops, but less casual anyhow), and warm sweater off the less than $10 clearance rack:




same as first outfit, i just liked this shot :P




comments anyone? :P

:)

i really like getting emails like this from my students:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi My HERO :-D

How much does attendance count for calculus? I have missed a few classes due to illness... and I
was just wondering how it affected our grades?

THANKS SO MUCH!

Love your favorite person in recitation :-D

(name hidden to be nice)

P.S. I got a (grade hidden to be nice) on the exam, I think the only reason I got it was because you taught us the stuff
in recitation again. Thanks so much!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my students like me :)

proof

so tonight, eric and i went to see proof... i'd heard about it as a broadway play in years past but never seen it, then it came out on the big screen a month ago, but nowhere within 45 minutes of here until the last couple weeks. as it was, we still had to drive 10 miles or so to get there.

plot: a famous mathematician dies, and you follow his daughter going back and forth in her head from the past to the week after his death, while she tries to cope with who he was, fearing that she inherited not only some of his brilliance, but also some of his insanity, as most of his life his mind was really out there. (the plot on the website tells it better). it was a really well done movie, and eric and i both enjoyed it immensely.

it brings up two things to mind that i think about from time to time

(1) famous mathematicians are always portrayed as literally insane people. this is moderately humorous to me since at least 75% of the people i interact with on a daily basis are mathematicians or aspiring mathematicians and they're who i think of as normal, and most of them are completely mentally stable. i guess we all do have our quirks, i just find it humourous that i can't think of one mathematicians who i've seen portrayed as a mentally balanced individual.

(2) at one point in the movie gwyneth paltrow's character is ranting to jake gyllenhaal's character how her education didn't come from a university and she pities the people who are struggling to just barely get a ph.d. when there are people without formal training who have an especial knack for things and their brilliance is shunned. it wasn't a main theme of the movie, just came out in one angry line, but it strikes a chord.

i have an aunt who is always telling me how brilliant i am, etc., etc., and when i point out that i'm generally around people much smarter than me, so in the grand scheme of things i'm not quite so brilliant as she likes to play up, she argues against me and tells me i shouldn't be so modest.

that's the thing about math people though. there are some mathematical giants (like paltrow's character in the movie) who are brilliant and prove these giant results with great clarity. then most of the other math people fill in the little chinks. i guess the thing is, yeah, math grad school (for example) is intense, and you have to be reasonably intelligent to get in. but once you're there, you're in a more focused group of people who are all at least reasonably intelligent. when the average person you're around is at least as smart as you, it's really easy to feel defeated and realize that you and most of your peers are just those people just barely scraping by to get their ph.d.s, with no strokes of brilliance to revolutionize their fields. i realize this most of the time. eric's response to that was that he knows it and just doesn't care and keeps hoping that one day he'll prove something brilliant, and in the meantime keeps chipping away. i guess that's my hope too, but i guess the knowing i'm not that brilliant in the more focused pool of mathematicians gets to me more often than it does to him. sure i'm competent enough to study my way through to a ph.d., but i often feel like i'm being paid to do something i'm not that great at doing. don't get me wrong -- most days, it's a great blessing to be paid to study things i think are interesting, and i don't want to trade that in at all. on the whole i really like the idea of what i do, even when i'm incredibly stressed. just looking at my colleagues and fellow mathematicians, it's hard to not feel like i'm at the bottom of the smartness totem pole.... sure i can study hard and probably work my way through finishing a ph.d., but i can also name hundreds of people even within a couple years of my age who are much more brilliant than i am at what i do.

i've spent an hour on this post, and i'm just making it more and more circular.

summary:
* proof was an awesome movie -- see it.
* not all mathematicians are insane
* more mathematicians have inferiority complexes than you might think

the end.

my pizza seminar

so i gave my talk today.

the abstract:
All about 1089
I will tell you why 1089 is cool without any scary (insert most feared math field of choice) techniques whatsoever. This talk is perfect for anyone who has a short attention span at the end of the week as I'll be changing gears every 10-15 minutes. Along the way I'll teach you a fun game (to be translated as nifty trick to baffle all your non-mathematical friends), I'll explain an early paper of a famous mathematician whose work you've probably never read, and I'll tell you a bit about British experimental mathematics of the late 1990s. All thanks to 1089.

my advisor came. he was the only professor there (professors normally aren't invited).

his review?

wow lara! that was a really good talk. you were entertaining, but more than that i was impressed with how you presented on so many levels and covered so many different topics at once. even i learned something new!

i'd say that's a success, eh? :)

later dudes.

apprentice, week 4

so last night, while grading all my calc exams, i had on martha stewart's apprentice show, so i have given at least one episode a chance... i didn't enjoy it as much though. i guess partly because i have a very different philosophy of home and atmosphere and things like that from martha, so i have a harder time getting into her projects. while i am interested in some of donald's projects more than others, on the whole i think they're more stuff i find intriguing to think about how to do even if i wouldn't necessarily be good at doing it.

on to this week's show. i can't believe the guys didn't protest clay's exemption. he really was a tyrant. his team was functioning really well, even when he wasn't in the room, but he ripped apart lots of their work without even really giving it a chance. nonetheless, their work paid off, and it was also hilarious to see a guy dressed up as a genie. they done good. randal is still hands down my favorite, not only on that team, but on the whole show this season. every time he's on camera, he's not griping about this, that, and the next thing. he's calm, and focused, and getting his job done. i like him.

the women are another story. last season, i was pulling for kendra the whole time, and really liked her. this season, i have yet to find someone on the womens team i consistently like. they were all so cliqueish this week too which really annoyed me. toral should have stepped up more. but really, kristi, felisha, alla, and sometimes jennifer were so nasty. jennifer the least so. when she speaks up, she does for a good reason, but she kind of associated herself with the other three. i like kristi's accent, and on the whole her attitude of "everyone needs to step up" is healthy, but she can turn on people so quick and be unjustifiably snappy. alla, i really liked at the start, but this episode she was more of a shadow to kristi and felisha's bad attitudes. felisha struck me as two-faced and fake this episode. the whole deal with forcing toral into a job that didn't really fit her was ridiculous. they just wanted something to be catty and pin on her. they would have been much more efficient to have someone play the mascot who was already at the costume designer's location. instead they go out of their way to make toral look bad. i didn't approve of the was felisha went about that at all and bullied her. toral did screw up by not being more assertive, and she was a fair choice to fire, but felisha would have been equally choice this week. i guess of the annoying people, jennifer is least annoying. rebecca, i'm still trying to figure out. she is at least consistent and thinks before she speaks so that she doesn't come across as catty and/or stupid. i haven't seen enough of marshawn. she seems fairly level-headed and as managed to stay out of alliances/cliques. i'm curious to see her come out of the woodwork a little more.

anyhow, a fair ending to a week with lots of stupid girls, and one really bossy guy, but the people i like alright are still going strong. markus wasn't even that annoying this week, so major score.

we'll see how this goes.

i give the pizza seminar tomorrow, so i should be asleep.

night y'all :P

heh

i totally knew this was coming, but it was funny to see it in print.



he'll be observing the liveliest of my 3 sections, and the one where i know the most of my students' names, so unless i totally screw up, i'm certain to get good reviews. :)

yay for that.

later dudes.

rain, rain on my face

hasn't stopped raining for days
my world is a flood
and slowly I become one with the mud

(yay for jars of clay)

besides being a quality song, this completely describes the weather around here lately... it started raining in the middle of last week, and rained the whole time i was gone to valpo, and has rained pretty much non-stop since i've been back.

weather.com's forecast for the next few days?

tonight:
windy with rain early... then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. low 59F. winds NE at 20 to 30 mph. chance of rain 90%. rainfall around a half an inch.

tomorrow:
overcast with showers at times. high 68F. winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. chance of rain 50%.

tomorrow night:
showers in the evening, then cloudy overnight. low 56F. winds N at 5 to 10 mph. chance of rain 30%.

so more of the same for the next 24 hours at least.

i've been trying to figure out why i've been so hyper for the last bit. leigh can i came to the conclusion it's because i haven't been able to go out for my daily walk/jog since i returned from valpo 3 days ago all on account of weather. i need to MOVE.

killing time in office hours.... no students here to visit me today, but oh well. that just means i get to work on my own math... while sitting around in my half-flooded office... see, like i said... it really *hasn't* stopped raining for days, and my world *is* a flood.

back to work.

later dudes.

ode to the art of away messages

Auto response from (dave): Away.
(me): that's not very descriptive... try again
(dave) returned at 11:59:15 AM.
(dave): my away messages need to inform and entertain?
(me): yes
(me): your profile does not
(me): so your away message should
(me): capishe?
(dave): yes'm
(me): good work :-)
(me): are you a party these days?
(dave): you know me. I'm always a party
(me): oh good
(me): i'm not
(dave): why not? your professors and your students love you
(me): but because i'm working so hard at that i don't have enough time for doing my own research/studying for quals that i should be doing
(me): crap... i just ftped to the wrong server
(me): hang on a sec
(dave): aod'oh
(me): what do you do on thursdays?
(dave): it's my day off
(me): obviously not only was your away message lacking in entertainment value, it was also lying, so you were right there to answer my attack
(dave): I had just put up the message so I could go take a shower, clean, etc.
(me): then you should think of a clever way to say that
(me): like i say "in the people cleaner"... you can't steal that though
(dave): I have to be creative on my own, not just being creative by using your creativity?
(me): that's not creative
(me): that's plagiarism
(me): i thought you should be good since you're a pastor in training
(me): plagiarizing isn't being good
(dave): what if I give you credit?
(dave): properly cite my sources?
(me): "lara says i'm in the people cleaner" sounds scandalous... even worse than plagairism
(dave): hmm...
(dave): "I'm in the people cleaner. (borrowed from Lara)"
(me): but you're not borrowing a people cleaner from me
(me): that's too far away
(me): and sounds clumsy
(me): you should be clever on your own
(dave): that's too much work for my day off, though
(me): you were a CC graduate... there has to be some clever in you for all occasions
(me): even for days off
(me): you could quote songs
(me): that's allowable plagiarism
(me): "splish splash, i'm takin a bath" comes to mind
(dave): I'm glad I have you to tell me what is allowable
(me): i know, aren't i helpful?
(dave): except it'll be a shower, not a bath
(me): the people don't have to know that... besides, splish splash and bath sound better than "flower power, i'm in the shower"
(dave): true
(me): all though you could use the shower one for added dramatic effect
(me): your away message readers wouldn't expect it at all
(dave): also true, and what I was thinking of doing.
(me): good work
(me): let me know how many comments you get
(dave) is away at 12:13:05 PM.
Auto response from (dave): Splish Splash, I was taking a bath (I mean shower).
(me): scared of "flower power", eh?

misc fun with teaching

(1) this morning, one of my students came up to me after class to comment "guess what... you did research in prague with my girlfriend's brother this summer... i was looking at your website, and was really surprised when i saw a picture with sam in it... isn't it a small world?"

(2) in one of my recitation sections i have a hearing impaired student, so rutgers provides a sign language interpreter for her. i finally asked the lady after class today, "so, i can't watch you while i'm lecturing, but i've been wondering for awhile: are there set signs for calculus words, or do you and students agree on some signs ahead of time and stick to them?"... she explained that there's a whole set of signs for math words and she had to go through technical courses to get certified... she showed me some of them for like derivative and integral and stuff, which was kinda cool,... her comment was "i can sign the words, i just have no idea how to do the computations, so as long as you know what you're doing, we're all set." :) it makes sense... just no one thinks about how you would sign a lecture that's all math... so it's kinda fun to discuss. :)

(3) i like getting emails like this:
"AHaaaaaaaaaaaaa (light bulb goes off in head)... i get the answer now.
Thanks for taking the time to help. See you next wednesday."

(4) yesterday when i picked up my half of the calc exams to grade, the prof said he normally gets a class average in the high 60s when he gives that exam, and the half he graded averaged in the high 70s... the average for the half i graded was 81. actual scores covered a large range, but that's still a really decent class average, right? at least i'm fairly content with it.... and i'm glad to be done with that stack of papers... it took me about 9 hours to get through my share of the work, 8 of that done today...

now, to crash.

quotes of the day

none of these are hugely hysterical, they just made my day better/easier

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(when i went to visit a professor this afternoon to ask him to be the 4th member of my orals committee, the dialog went something like this)
me: hi, i'm lara, i was in your algebra class 2 years ago
prof: yes, i know who you are, sit down
me: so i was wondering if you'd be willing to be on my orals comittee
prof: let's see, who is your advisor?
me: dr. z.
prof: oh, very good. yes, i will do it.
me: thank you!... here's my syllabus draft. you can keep this copy if you want to.
(note: all my other committee members looked over it in detail, making suggestions for changes)
prof: (nods at the paper, he can't have read more than 2 words from it) no, i don't need it. i have looked at it now.

commentary: dude, um, ok. so i have a 4th committee member, and this prof will be nice, but i expected him to care a little more about the topics on the paper than he did. not that it's bad that he didn't. that means he won't be adding lots of things to my to do list, but yeah... i was amused at his attitude.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(this morning, running into the prof who runs TA training and who observes every new TA during a class their first semester)
prof: oh good morning! how are you today?
me: i'm doing just fine, how are you?
prof: i'm pretty good myself. so when am i coming to visit your class?
me: i do not know. i haven't gotten a note from you yet.
prof: oh, well, it seems most people are teaching on wednesdays, and i can only visit one person a week. i figure you're doing fantastically though, so i saved you for towards the end. i'll be in in a week or two.

commentary: (a) it's good that this prof likes me. his reviews of your performance make or break how easy it is for you get to sections you want from higherups in the department. (b) i was flattered that he commented he put me off til the end of the line because he had incredible confidence in my teaching ability. that was nice.
when eric was observed by him a week or two ago, eric was amused that the only comment he got back was "your session went fine. you should work on having more regular boardwork, and making your lines of text on the board more horizontal." eric was betting that was the exact comment i'd get back too... we'll see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(talking to the prof. i TA for, and picking up exams from him... he gave out two versions of the test -- same exam different numbers in the problems, and he graded all of one version already, and is having me grade all of the other)
prof: so actually, this is a standard exam for one of mine. classes in the past have averaged in the high 60s on this one, but the average on the ones i graded is in the high 70s, so i'm fairly pleased. i even had one with a 104. (out of 105 possible)

commentary: of course there are many factors that go into a higher class average, including previous knowledge/studying habits of the students, variations in the professor's lecture that particular term, etc.,... but i'd like to think that my teaching is at least *a* factor in the 10 percentage point higher class average, so that made me feel good about my students too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

final comment for any of you who actually read my rants and ramblings... if you're still a student, know that it's much easier for your professors to grade your work if you know what you're doing, do it right, and write it up clearly. you may not like bad grades, and think your teachers like bleeding in red pen all over your work, but trust me, it's much easier and more pleasant to grade a good paper than a bad one.
i've got a lot of calculus exam grading in my immediate future... (50+ exams to grade completely by friday morning on top of all my own work)... oi.

woohoo?

i officially have an oral exam committee now. :) and no one is on my committee that i'm scared of. i'm happy with that. in the order i asked them i have professors from israel, new zealand, hungary, and russia. so it's an international committee at that!

now i have lots of calc exams to grade, and i need to do their homework so that i have something to teach tomorrow.

aren't you jealous? (riiiight....)

dinner time, then work time... later dudes

things that make me grumpy

(1) not getting enough sleep for the past 3 nights
(2) not being able to figure out my homework... (whether it's because of lack of awakeness or lack of cleverness is to be determined... i have a feeling i'm not quite clever enough whether i were more awake or not)
(3) having my bed soaked with water because first my water bottle opened itself inside my bookbag and soaked all my work on the way home today, and then i stupidly left the wet bookbag on my bed while i went out for dinner with ben.

this sums up my current mood:
(me): i'm too dumb to do more math
(me): too tired for it tonight
(me): too dumb to figure it out even if i were awake
(ben): lol, I am wide awake, and can't do it either.
(me): math makes me want to cry
(me): maybe i will
(ben): oh, don't cry
(me): oh, i'm about to
(me): (seriuosly)
(ben): don't. Pizza hut!
(me): stupid boy.... not even pizza can distract me from my rejection by math
(ben): oh dear
(me): i'm going to quit and move to an island
(me): antarctica sounds good
(ben): I'd join, except it's too cold there
(me): i'll light a fire
(ben): not hot enough
(me): if you jumped in the fire you'd be plenty hot
(ben): lol

the end.

yay?

back in jersey... research meeting in 40 minutes and i have no good results to show for my week.... oi.

on the other hand, this email was in my inbox thanks to the church emailing list when i got back:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi All,
Praise to our God who gives all to those who wait!!
Pastor Qualman called Beth yesterday evening and he has accepted the
call. I do not have any other details. I will be speaking to him latter
today and will pass on any further info to you as I get it.
Thanks be to God,
Don
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

summary: after 11 months of hard work and searching and amending outdated church rules, we finally have a new pastor -- AND he's the one i've been all excited about and hoping for since i first read his bio.

this is happy news. :)

if only math hw were even partially as happy.

later dudes.

good old val-pa-rain-snow, wind-iana

ok, so not so much with the snow or rain, but wind and cold we've got down this weekend.

it's been a whirlwind of a couple days.

yesterday, i got up at 4:15am to leave my house by 5:10... leigh took me to the train station in the pouring rain so i could get to the airport by 6:15 for my 7:45am flight, only upon arrival i found out it was delayed until 9... then, instead of waiting at midway airport in chicago for an hour as originally planned, i ended up landing within minutes of when roommate did.

by the time we actually got through the rental car line and got a car from the enterprise people, it was nearly 11:30 (central time, 12:30 in eastern time where i woke up)... we got to valpo in time for kristin to drive me straight to the math building 10 minutes before the math department homecoming open house ended, and before she even made it to the hotel with our stuff.

i love my undergraduate math department. when i arrived all the professors were milling about chatting with various people, but within 2 minutes flat of when i arrived, they all sat down in a circle around me to chat for a bit.

quote:
prof. treanor: wow! are you getting taller?
me: pretty sure i haven't grown taller in years
treanor: you have to be kidding... i think you're taller
me: um no, narrower, but not taller
treanor: well it definitely makes you look taller
:P

besides all the profs i wanted to see, my friend katie stopped in for a few minutes too. i wish we had had more time to talk, but it was good to see her and give her a hug too... margie was also around, and as neither of us had had lunch, when the profs started dispersing, we went to broadway (one of my two favorite restaurants in town) for lunch and to catch up. she's teaching math at a local HS now and it was fun to compare teaching stories. after lunch we also explored the new library... the old library that was around the WHOLE TIME i was at valpo is completely gone with nothing but grass there... the new one is pretty darn spiffy. that whole side of campus has gotten a total facelift!

anyhow, after that, CC reception, only dean franson wasn't there and neither were anyh of the professors i actually talk to there, so whatever...

after that, dinner at panera with kristin (aka roommate), then to the chorale concert on campus, which was gorgeous. i miss hearing music like that when in jersey.

after the concert, i told nicole's parents that i had a "small something for them" and would stop by their room when we got back to the hotel.

my "small something" though was a 20 by 28 inch crossstitch that i've been working on for 2 years for them... it's sheet music of amazing grace, and i just got it back from the framers last week. kristin and michelle came with me when i gave it to them, and when nicole's parents read the essay i wrote in the card that went with it where i explained why i made it and why it was for them, we all cried together for a bit. ... after that, michelle showed us a scrapbook she had put together of her memories of nicole, and nicole's mom showed us a scrapbook of memorials of nicole and the building process for the labyrinth, which was pretty cool... the 5 of us (nicole's parents, michelle, roommate, and me) all just chatted away a couple hours about what we're all up to and how we're doing, and then before we all crashed, michelle suggested we all pray together too, which was also nice.

and that was just one day!

well, almost... after kristin and michelle got ready for bed, i went to check out the hotel's exercise room and worked out for awhile, and then had a really had time sleeping all night, waking up all ready to go every half hour starting with 3:30am... oi. when the real alarm went off at 6:15, it was so loud, and scared roommate and michelle so much, that i started laughing hysterically at the situation and had to bury my head in a pillow to not annoy them. :)

today was crazy busy too. after the early awakening, roommate and i got ready and got to campus by 7:45am... i was hoping to buy some fruit in the cafeteria or something but it wasn't open yet... instead we just hung out in the chapel until the service started. it was kinda cool. we started in the main part of valpo's huge chapel, but after the sermon, we processed outside to the front of the building where the new prayer labyrinth for nicole is. they dedicated it and then served communion outside, encouraging people to walk the labyrinth when they had gotten communion. there were soooo many people i hadn't seen in forever, some of who i talk to more than others, but nonetheless good to see them all.

the labyrinth, by the way, looks AMAZING.

after the dedication, there was brunch served for the nicole's family and everyone they invited... so we were there for quite some time too.

even later, kristin and i went to walk the labyrinth while it wasn't crowded and take lots of pictures... we went to the bookstore to buy new valpo gear (i'm shrinking... i need warm clothes that fit!), and then off to more adventures.

as for me, i went to one of the dorms to meet up with liz, a current valpo senior who is also a math major... i actually grew up knowing her grandparents at my church in memphis, with her g-ma always trying to set the two of us up to be penpals, and then we meet at valpo... go figure... anyhow, liz had a million and one questions about what it's like to be a ph.d. student in math, and about applications, and all kinds of other fun... we chatted it up for an hour and a half and hopefully i was moderately useful. :P

i was under the impression that there was some sort of vespers going on in the chapel at 3 then, but it was some sort of bach institute production... lots of alumni who live nearby were involved. namely, karen and katie, two music people who graduated when i did were there... i had no idea that karen is a "visiting professor of music" this year, and katie's teaching cello as well, but without an official snazzy title. running into the two of them, katie, karen, roommate, and me all went out to el amigo (my other favorite valpo restaurant... $4 burritos the size of logs!) for dinner... it was a lot of fun to catch up since i hadn't heard from katie at all since graduation, and karen i hadn't heard from in the better part of a year again. so major yay for that.

that brings me to now. roommate is out getting a beer with a senior theology student to talk about seminary and catch up. not one for american beer, i'm sitting here at the hotel typing away, and will shortly be going nuts attacking the cross-trainer in the hotel exercise room... it'll be great.

so for eh... something on the order of 36 hours, not bad, right?

but definitely busy enough that it already feels like a week.

so, here i am in small town indiana, and tomorrow midafternoon i'll be in my advisor's office for a research meeting (although i've got nothing to show this week) in urban corridor new jersey, in a whole different time zone all over again.

sometimes life moves waaay too quickly at once.

next post from back in good old jersey again.

later dudes.

quotes

quote of the day yesterday:

but analysis is meaningless... it's even worse than false... it's true and completely MEANINGLESS! ~dr. z. (i mean, could i possibly have an advisor whose personality matches up better than this to mine? i think not)

quote of the day today:

me: bye scott! you're going to forget about me when i'm gone this weekend aren't you?
scott: forget about YOU? never! ... although i might forget about bits and pieces of you since they keep seeming to disappear...

now to sleep... 8:35pm bedtime... this is so 2nd grade.

later dudes.

etc., etc., etc.

happy friday?

i just now got to watch last night's apprentice. toral is abrasive, but rebecca being adamant about why she did what she did spoke well for her even if she wasn't perfect either... jennifer w. just couldn't admit that she was wrong. oi. for not being able to do a good job with what she specialized in... yeah, she deserved to go for falling down on the event planning part of the task. major yay that the guys won while randall was PM... he's still my current favorite.

yesterday was long.... my students had their first exam this morning, so i had office hours for almost all day. no one from my first section came in... other than 1 or 2 students, i don't think that section likes me very much... my second and third sections are generally a bit livelier, and the people who did come in to ask me questions were from one or the other of those sections.

one guy thought he'd be funny... when we were talking about a problem with the squeeze theorem, and the largest function went to zero, and the smallest went to zero, i asked where the middle function was going, and he enthusaistically answered "TWO!", and i was amused and laughed and said "sure, if that's what you want the answer to be", knowing that he knew exactly what was going on... then when the other students in my office were all confused i had to go back and explain...

it happened on another problem too, where a bunch of things cancelled and the final answer was -1, and he answered that the answer was "negative... just negative, no one", to which i had to unconfuse the rest of the room too... but it was at least more entertaining than *just* working on problems with a non-excited audience.

i got free lunch from dimacs yesterday... they had a luncheon for all grad students who have done something through dimacs in the past year, and me being REU guru, i got free food too. :)

i meant to get a 4th person for my qual committee yesterday, but my pre-test office hours went too long and i didn't catch the 4th prof i want before he left the builing... i'll have to try again at his office hours next tuesday.

yesterday's exp. math seminar guest speaker was a prof from pitt. when i applied to grad schools 3 years ago several profs at pitt (this one included) wrote me several emails trying to convince me that attending pitt would be good for me and that i could work with them, and etc., etc., etc. it was flattering but once i visited rutgers i was set on going to the rutgers department instead. this was one of those professors. he actually has proved some really famous results. and he was a fantastic speaker. but hearing exactly what he's working on and what angle he's taking towards his work, i think i'm a much better fit with dr. z., my advisor here at rutgers - both personality wise and math-interest wise. affirmation that past decisions were good decisions is a very happy thing.

last night after dinner with the seminar speaker i went on my walk, and spent most of the time between getting home at 9, and going to bed at 12:30 answering last minute frenzied emails from my students who were last-minute studying for their test... i hope it went alright for them. i was actually praying for them all to be calm and clear-headed today while they were taking it and i was in combinatorics lecture. i'll see how they did when i pick up the tests to grade my share on tuesday.

anyhow, i've rambled lots and lots.

plan for the next 24 hours?
*pack a suitcase for the weekend
*go to department colloquium at 4... since dr. z. is hosting the speaker, free dinner with the speaker after, courtesy of dr. z.... since we had indian food last night, maybe tonight will be thai instead?
*sleeeeep
*get up super early to catch the 5:30am train to the airport in the morning, and fly to chicago
*meet up with roommate in the rental car area and truck it to good old valpo
*go to the valpo homecoming math dept. open house from 12-1, and track down all my favorite undergrad profs... go do something or another with margie... putz around campus and/or the hotel and hopefully get some of my work done
*i'm really pulling for dinner at el amigo tomorrow night... i'd kill for one of their log-sized burritos today.

sunday, the labyrinth that was built for nicole will be dedicated at the early church service in the chapel. it'll be nice to be there with nicole's parents, michelle, and roommate (too bad heather won't be there too...)... it'll be good to be back at valpo too. probably seeing a play on campus or who knows what else... probably doing some more of my own work, and also meeting up with a current valpo math major senior who wants to talk to me about what grad school is like. i'm now a rutgers math dept. ambassador whereever i go. ;-P

monday: to the airport early... lose an hour in the travelling east... get to jersey and get a ride straight from the airport to campus to be on time for my weekly research meeting with dr. z.... only i'll have nothing to show him unless brilliance strikes while i'm working on the plane rides... we shall see.

summary: it's been a busy few days... it'll be a good weekend... then already from the moment i get back, it'll be a crazy week next week. fun, right?

done rambling... this entry really had no coherent point.

later dudes.

a definition

stupid boy (pronunciation 'stü-p&d, 'boi) -- a boy who either purposefully or inadvertently does something rather unthoughtful, obtuse, and/or frustrating

e.g. a boy who
(1) hasn't called you in 9 months
(2) stopped calling you 9 months ago after the equivalent of a breakup, without actually having a relationship
(3) knows that you're INCREDIBLY stressed out
.... and yet calls you for the first time in 9 months just to get you to explain how to solve x=2^y for y, and THEN pronounces that it must be a good idea to call you regularly again since he doesn't hear profanities on the other end of the line.... = stupid boy.

an "easy" weekend?

in a way this is good, in a way it's bad...

so i'm going to valpo this weekend for the dedication of the new prayer labyrinth in front of the chapel that was built in memory of my friend nicole. i fly out waaaaaaaaaay early on saturday and get back mid-afternoon on monday.

my current to do list is like 10 miles long. however,...

* even though my 105 calc students take their first test on friday and i'm responsible for grading half of the test, i'm not allowed to take the tests on a long-distance trip (lest an airline lose them or something... oi), so no grading this weekend.

* even though i have a lot of crap do get done for my work with my advisor, i won't have access to all the programs i need, so there's not much of that work i'll have access to work on

* there are only so many books you can reasonably fit in a carry-on suitcase for oral qual studying...

so my capability of working while in valpo is fairly limited. i will bring work, but, not being able to bring grading and not being able to work on maple while i'm gone means

(1) next week, tuesday and wednesday i'll have to grade my half of the 105 calc exams that i would otherwise grade over the weekend PLUS the quiz i give them next wednesday.

(2) since i won't have that much to show to my advisor next monday, i'll have to work double time next week even though i'll be grading like crazy too

(3) i give the pizza seminar next friday so i need to practice for that

(4) diane wants me to give a talk in the seminar she runs, and so i need to start meeting with her next week to discuss the details of the paper she wants me to present (which is a really hard paper)

so basically, i'll be free to have fun most of the time while i'm in valpo this weekend, and i'll return to a highly chaotic week when i get back.

not excited about next tuesday, wednesday, thursday, OR friday.

oi.

time for seminar.

later dudes.

...and what are you?

You Are A: Bear Cub!

Bears are strong and independent creatures who roam in the forest in search of food. Bears are usually gentle, but anger one and be prepared for their full fury! You're tough, you won't back down from a fight -- classic attributes of a bear. Intelligent and resourceful, though lazy at times, you are a fascinating creature of the wild.

You were almost a: Parakeet or a Kitten
You are least like a: Monkey or a ChipmunkWhat Cute Animal Are You?