brain dump

random things:

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on the reading list lately:

i'm still in an eastern europe phase

recently finished cafe europa by Slavenka Drakulic... while in europe this past summer i read her book about life during the communist era and this is a series of essays about the 5 years immediately after. it's interesting non-fiction that makes you think. she's also from croatia and this book much more than her previous one was a lot about the specific croatian experience during and after communism. i'm crossing my fingers to visit croatia and/or slovenia next summer and this only gets me more excited about that. (not that communism or its aftermath is cool... but understanding history better definitely is.)

on that note, i just started the paul street boys by ferenc molnar... i read excerpts of it in my hungarian art and culture class during my semester in budapest. it's a classic coming of age book not just in hungary but well-read in a lot of europe, and it all takes place not far from where i went to school when i lived there. quality fun.

eric and i are still teaching ourselves linear algebra (class i took in undergrad, but never really understood the big picture of as well as i wanted so i'm re-teaching myself better for fun at starbucks with eric this semester). we learned all about eigenvalues and eigenvectors today. although i could perfectly well define them before today, i wish someone had given me better intuition about why they're important years before today.

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stupid people still abound:

on my myspace page, i recently posted a rant about the stupid messages i get from some people.... how "yo, wanna chat?" doesn't really start an e-conversation and neither does "hey, vote for me on this rate-my-photo website!"... i have to give people credit though, the messages i've gotten since have been at least moderately better. today though, the following made me laugh. not so much the message i got, but the chance to give the response that i did. :P

(background: the headline on my myspace page is the tom lehrer quote "base 8 is just like base 10 really... if you're missing two fingers.")

message from random dude:
what is tenth base ??
im curious lol

(don't get me wrong i'm not stupid, i know what he meant, but it was a stupid question so it deserves the answer it got... my response was one line:)

response from me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_10

i really am an idiodacy snob... at least i'm honest about it? ... and everyone i told this story to today got a big laugh out of my answer, so at least i'm not alone. :P

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apparently i'm in demand lately, or so my schedule appears to say.

tomorrow i'm at the car shop all day... the darn "service engine light" came on as i was leaving pittsburgh on saturday... i've driven 400 miles since without a problem, but better safe than sorry i guess... in the spirit of multitasking, me, my ipod, and the 120 christmas cards i need to write will be parked in the goodyear lounge area for a couple hours bright and early tomorrow while they check things out.

tomorrow night, free dinner in princeton to thank me for giving a talk in september.

friday: i'm being observed teaching by 6 1st year grad students who are in the required "how to be a good math TA" class this year.

saturday early morning: huge important meeting at church

next monday: required luncheon for all the people like me who got the CASTL fellowship for next year

all this followed by 2 weeks of...
craziness of tutoring, helping my own students study for exams, and other such fun... i volunteered to help grade calc 1 finals 2 days before my students' final for some extra cash... since my students don't have their final til dec 21, i can't go home until then...

then my "break" is something like this 4 days in memphis (1 day driving) 2 days in IL, 2 days in IN, (1 day driving) 2 days in memphis (1 day driving) 4 days in new orleans (1 day driving) 1 day in memphis (2 days driving).... that knocks out the better part of a month... tons of fun, right?

my next year seems to have planned itself out for me as well.
january: halfway taken care of above
february: church retreat one weekend, parents probably coming another
march: possibly attending a wedding reception in NJ one weekend, probably attending my cousin's wedding in texas another
april: giving two talks two different weekends to groups that gave me extra fellowship money this year
plus i've been invited to give at least 2 more seminar talks at other schools and i've just put off signing up for when yet...

dude, my schedule's busy...

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for as much as i stress out about it sometimes (at least after seeing weekly quiz grades), maybe i do actually get through to more of my students than the ones that i'm sure would do fine no matter who was at the front of the room. my students' class average on last week's midterm was a whole 17 points higher than their average on the first midterm. i'm proud of them.

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sometimes i make myself laugh...
last wednesday, i totally made my students think they had a quiz about green's theorem the day before thanksgiving. 90% of them showed up, and we did talk math for half an hour. i got them though: i actually gave a quiz with the following 4 questions:
(1) draw a turkey
(2) (try to) parameterize your turkey in spherical coordinates
(3) explain how to compute the line integral around a turkey
(4) explain how to compute the curl of a turkey
with a guaranteed 10/10 grade if they put down something for each question. the reaction when i handed out the quiz was priceless, and reading the results was tons of fun too.

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that's the scoop lately.... i think i've actually run out of things to type.

be parties one and all. :P