ack

i just finished moving out of my math department office. a year ago i had 3 offices at rutgers, and now i have 0. (actually, i'm hanging on to the keys until july, just to make it a gradual process, but my desk area is EMPTY).

this morning, i got an email from a friend at church who wants to plan lunch with me and a bunch of other people in a month as a goodbye party of sorts.

i mean, sure i "knew" i'm leaving, and i've been planning on packing, moving, and preparing for indiana for months now, but i think today was the first time i "felt" it.

it's going to be a heck of a lot more difficult to say goodbye to new jersey than i've been allowing myself to think it would be....

holy cow!

I HAVE A TICKET TO NEW ZEALAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i've been talking about going to the next permutations conference since the location was announced last june, but it's so much more concrete to actually have a plane ticket. holy cow...

such long layovers, and such long flights... i'm getting like 9616 miles one way and 9739 miles the other way.... awesome!

the trans-pacific legs are on double decker planes with nearly 70 rows of seats... i've been trans atlantic before, but that's still HUGE.

this is really happening.... HOORAY!

phd comics strikes again :)

take THAT circuit city!

the story:

* my mom helped me get a laptop for christmas 2006. (my christmas present was she let me build my own laptop, and she paid a fixed amount, and i paid anything in surplus of that.)

* i got an HP pavillion dv6000, which is a really cute machine, and i've liked it a lot.

* unfortunately one of the common problems with this model (which i didn't know at the time) was that the power button/speakers go out...

* i have had this laptop for nearly 1.5 years now and my one year warranty was over, when i had the power button/speakers problem.

* since i'd had a good relationship with circuit city for buying equipment and customer service throughout my time in NJ, i went there to see about repairs.

* they told me up front they charge $60-$70 as a "diagnosis fee" to tell you what's wrong (i.e. to cover themselves just in case what you think is wrong isn't the only problem). i agreed, and told them that the power button and speakers didn't work. i'd talked to HP customer support and determined it wasn't a software issue, so i needed a store to take it in person and fix the hardware. they gave me a work order that said explicitly "power and main speakers don't work." they said they'd call in 3-7 days.

* 10 days later, i'd heard nothing, so i went in in person to ask. the guy i dropped the computer off with looked surprised, and went and called the shop on his iphone and chatted across the store for 10 whole minutes. he returned to me and said "yeah, so your speakers don't work and there's a lot on your desktop"
me: "yes, that's what i told you when i dropped it off. can you tell me something new? what about the power button?"
circuitcity guy: "just a second, let me call the guy in the shop again"
(5 minutes later)
circuitcity guy: "really? he was supposed to look at your power button?"
me: (wave work order) "that IS what this says, isn't it?"
circuitcity guy: "oh... ok, well, i've been on the clock for 2 hours and not doing anything, how about if i get it and look at it myself"
me: "that would be good"
... i went home and he called an hour later "yeah, your speakers and power button have bad cables, but i can't find the part myself... if you locate it, you can bring it back here for me to install it."

$60 and TEN DAYS to REPEAT WHAT I TOLD YOU MYSELF when i dropped it off.... EERRRRRGGGHHH!!!!! circuit city... never again....

* on account of his comments, my brother and i went on ebay and found a refurbished power button and cable for my model of computer ($20), and monday night i went to my friend jared's house and let him disect my computer and replace the power button.

* this morning, i turned on my computer, and the sound was magically working too! (so apparently circuit city didn't even know what they were talking about on that!)

all this is to say, i'd had a bad experience with the people at best buy telling lies and acting like they knew all about equipment that they didn't back in february... now with circuit city, i realize that they don't necessarily have any better people. if it's luck of the draw, from here on out, i'm doing my own computer repair, because the so-called "experts" are kind of crap at it...

end of rant. :)

life...

it's amazing how quickly things change....

1 month ago, barely sleeping from stress and working hard to finish my thesis...

now, sleeping quite well and enjoying the first break to get mundane things done in months.
the last two weekends have been awesome! this past weekend my brother was here from TN for the first time in 3 years. it was fun to have an excuse to be out and about just having fun... the weekend before that i went to a conference at UC davis and spent the day before exploring san francisco... ran into a number of old friends from various parts of my mathematical past there too.

but even over the summer:

1 month from now, i will have graduated, and have my ph.d. diploma in my hands.

2 months from now i will be flying back from a research conference in new zealand and just past my 27th birthday

3 months from now i will be driving a uhaul full of 3/4 of my earthly belongings from NJ to Indiana with my brother

4 months from now i will be teaching 2-3 college level math classes as "professor" rather than "TA" and hopefully unpacked and settled near chicago.

when things fall into place it's amazing how quickly such big transitions can happen!

mostly, i don't think it's sunk in that i'm technically a "doctor" now, but it has sunk in that i suddenly have more time to breathe and relax in spurts than i've had in years. this will quickly change, but i'm enjoying this phase while it's here!

that's all.

be parties one and all.

unhappy....

for the past 5 years i've been fairly loyal to circuit city.

when my desktop died and i needed a new one, they set me up.

when that monitor needed replacement while still under warranty, they helped me out quickly.

for dozens of little and bigger things, they've been rockstars.

then in the past few months, my laptop (an HP whose warranty expired in january) has been acting up. the current issue is that the sound doesn't work from the speakers and that you have to jam the power button really hard to turn it on. i first contacted HP directly via email in the middle of the night while i tried to troubleshoot on my own... they responded via email within 2 hours and apologized for the delay! they said from my description of what i'd done so far that it appears to be a hardware issue and that i should take it into a circuit city or best buy in person to get it addressed by someone who could SEE the problem. so to circuit city i went.

they were up front and said they'd charge a diagnostic fee to check it out for a day before working on it to make sure what i thought was wrong really was the problem. i told them that software wise it was fine, but my speakers only work when i use headphones and the power button is hard to work, so it's two hardware issues that are close in proximity. they're computer people though, so they're smart, they'll see this, agree, and take care of it, right?

apparently not.

the day i took it in to get diagnosed i also explained i needed it for a conference last weekend so i wanted to leave it for the day and pick it up for the weekend and bring it back later... that was fine too.

when i brought it back monday they assured me that now that it was diagnosed, they'd take care of it quickly and call me when it was done... 3-7 days.

today is the 7th day and i'd still heard nothing, so i called to check. after getting disconnected midcall TWICE, i went in person. the guy at the counter knew nothing so he called the guy who had my computer in the back... he reported back to me "well you have a lot on the desktop, but it seems to work fine, but the sound doesn't work"

me: "yes, that's exactly what i told you TEN days ago, when i gave it to you. i brought it here so you could try to fix the sound... and if you can't fix that, at least the power button. what's the status on that?"

guy at counter: "oh, i don't know about the power, let me check"

after 3 more minutes on the phone, he reported back to me "he hasn't really looked at the power button."

me: "it took him 6 days to repeat what i said when i brought the machine here and he didn't even look at what i brought it in for?" (and in my defense for clarity, i have a printed work order from when i brought it in the first time that says exactly that the sound doesn't work and the power button has to be pushed very hard to make it turn on...)

the guy at the counter apologized and said if i gave him 2 hours, he'd open up my laptop himself and see if he can fix anything. he called back 1.5 hours later and said "the power cable and sound cable inside are shot and we don't have the parts. if you want, you can call HP yourself and bring it back for us to install them but for now you can pick up your computer"

so i did.

when i dropped it off, i could turn the laptop on by pressing the power button hard... now nothing.

and most places are out of stock with the part i need... i just ordered a "refurbished" one on ebay.

hp's craftmanship for making a model with such a common and big flaw (power button is important no matter what you use your machine for) sucks, but at least their customer service was helpful.

circuit city, for taking my machine for a week and charging me to repeat what i told them when i handed it over to their care sucks... and returning it so that i have no power whatsoever is even worse.

5 years of being a loyal customer and all down the drain in about a week.

unhappy.

twas the night before thesis defense...

... and unsurprisingly i can’t sleep.

this is funny:
145 things (not) to do at your thesis defense

and this is not thesis-y at all, but it still made me laugh
remix of the star spangled banner

but this is probably most appropriate of all, borrowed from:
http://www.letstalkscience.ca/main/ppnewsletters/vol5iss2.pdf

Twas the night before thesis
And all through the house
Not a keyboard was stirring
And neither, the mouse

The journals were strewn
’cross the floor with no care
in the hopes that the signatures
soon would be there

When I in my sweatshirt
Rolled off of my cat
And with bleary eyes woke
From a short thesis nap

I stood from my slumber
And looked ’round my room
"I’ll defend this vile thesis,
and defend it quite soon."

The coffee was spilled
On my old office chair
"I’ll clean that next Monday,
It’s no harm to me there."

When off in the distance
I heard the odd sound
"’Tis my external", said I
"That’s his plane, touching ground"
But the sounds were unlike
Any jet that I knew
Instead of twin engines
It sounded like hooves

So I went to the window
And rubbed my red eyes
And saw the external
Fall out of the skies

And instead of a suitcase
He carried a sack
Which was lumpy with boxes
’Twas my worst fears come back

"He’s brought some new journals,"
I thought out of fright
"To point out my faults,
and cause a re-write"

But he seemed not cruel
Or looking for folly
As he ambled towards the lab
He seemed quite jolly

And he opened his sack
Untying the string
And looked in my eyes, saying
"I bring you one thing."

"I remember the trauma
Of defense in my time
So instead of petty questions
I have brought it back signed."

Well he tossed out the box
With the thesis within it
And with a "Ho Ho Ho"
He was off in a minute

And then off in the distance
The portly man cried
"Merry thesis to all
and to all a good night"

... dude, in 18 hours the big scary defense will be done and my graduate career with have nothing left than possible thesis edits and easy forms to fill out.  how weird is that?

holy COW i have stupid dreams when i'm stressed....

chalk this up to being the dumbest nightmare i've ever had:

my ph.d. thesis defense is in 2 days, and this weekend i am doing everything i possibly can to forget about it until monday (i.e. i've already written the defense talk, and it's better if i don't obsess about it), however i can't stop my head from overthinking it while i'm asleep.

last night i dreamed that i was giving my thesis defense, and the audience was full of american idol contestants (which should already be a tip off that it's a stupid dream, but whatever...)... they asked so many weird questions that i only made it through 5 of the 23 slides i have to talk about that i failed. and i was really mad.

ridiculous, right? but it took waking up mad, and thinking through it for 5 minutes to put together all the absurdities and convince myself it wasn't real.

i really need to get done with monday night before i go crazy..... just 2 more days!

this also makes me laugh...

april fools

perhaps this is just illustrates the inner geek in me more fully, but the following things have greatly amused me today:

   
• NASA’s photo of the day has an awesome caption.
     
• the Google empire has gone crazy... gmail offers a "send emails from the past" option, google calendar is offering a "wake up kit" and an "i’m feeling lucky" option to set up appointments with celebrities, youtube is rickrolling all the featured videos... and apparently they’re starting a colony on mars. hmmm... and google australia is letting you search the future with gDay.  the testimonials are funny.
     
• my advisor, already famous for his online opinions, continues his almost-annual april fool’s opinion tradition.
     
• and finally..., speaking of my advisor, yesterday he sent out the following email:
  
  
  Dear Math 640 students,
  
  I just finished posting two homework sets. The first one is due tomorrow (please slide them under my door), and the second one is due Thurs. I am rather disappointed at some of you who have been late handing-in the homework (and I commend those who always hand them in on time).
  
  Anyway, the homework problem set that is due tomorrow should be completed by tomorrow, 11:59pm, or else you would get zero, and be in danger of failing this class (i.e. getting a B).
  
  
  this is already suspicious, since we know he loves april fools pranks, but it was worth figuring out anyhow... the problem set he posted for today is:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~
  

  First Homework Set for March 31, 2008 class, Due April 1, 2008
  [No extensions!]
  

  
  
  
  
  • Recall that for any set of non-negative integers A, mex(A) is
    the smallest  non-negative integer not in A. For example,
    mex({2,4,5})=0, mex({0,1,2,5,8})=3, etc.
    
    Define a sequence a_i recursively by a₁=2, and for i >= 1  by:
    a_i=mex({0,1} U { j a_r, j >= 1 , 1 <= r < i}),
    
    Prove the following properties of a_i
    
    
    
    1. There are infinitely many i such that a_i+1-a_i=2
       
    2. Every even intger n >= 6 can be written as
       a_i+a_j, for some pos. integers i and j.
       
    3. Define a sequence F(n) by,
       F(a_i1 a_i1 a_i2  ...a_ir)=(-1)^r if n can be expressed as a product of distinct a_i’s , and 0 otherwise.
       Let G(n)=add(F(i), i=0..n)
       Prove that |G(n)| <= Cn^.999, for some fixed constant C.
       
    
    
  • Remember that Euler’s pentagonal product
    eta(q)=(1-q)(1-q²)(1-q³) ... ,
    when expanded, has lots of 0-coefficients and the rest are 1 or -1.
    Condider the 24-th power of that
    eta(q)²⁴=[(1-q)(1-q²)(1-q³) ...]²⁴,
    and let’s call the coeff. of qⁿ,  tau(n). Prove that tau(n) is never zero.
    
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  thus, almost instantly, emails started flying between his ph.d. students as follows:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  is it an april fools joke? the homework that he posted looks hard. i don’t want to do it.
  -em
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  i assume it is.  i was just wondering if it was equivalent to one of the clay problems or something equally ridiculous ;) why else would it be due on april 1?
  lara
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~
  and finally...
  
  Don’t read below if you haven’t looked at the homework.  To make a buffer, here’s the Millenium Falcon:
  
                   c==o
  
                 _/____.._
  
          _.,--’" ||^ || "..z._
  
         /_/^ ___..||  || _/o.. "..-._
  
       _/  ]. L_| || .||  .._/_  . _..--._
  
      /_~7  _ . " ||. || /] .. ]. (_)  . "..--.
  
     |__7~.(_)_ []|+--+|/____T_____________L|
  
     |__|  _^(_) /^   __..____ _   _|
  
     |__| (_){_) J ]K{__ L___ _   _]
  
     |__| . _(_) ..v     /__________|________
  
     l__l_ (_). []|+-+-<..^   L  . _   - ---L|
  
      ..__..    __. ||^l  ..Y] /_]  (_) .  _,--’
  
        ..~_]  L_| || ... ...../~.    _,--’"
  
         .._.. . __/||  |..  ....-+-<’"
  
           "..---._|J__L|X o~~|[....     
  
              ..____/ ..___|[//     
  
                   ..--’   ..--+-’
  "Millenium Falcon" Modified Corellian YT-1300 Transport
  
  (No, I did not draw that - I don’t have the patience for ASCII art).
  
  It’s certainly April Fool’s Joke.  I didn’t recognize that a(n) is the nth prime at first, but now I see that his problems are:
        1. The Twin Prime Conjecture
        2. Goldbach’s conjecture
        3. His G is the Merten’s function (I had to look this up).  This result
        would be equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis, apparently.
  
  The partition-related function is Ramanujan’s tau function.  That tau(n) is never zero is another unsolved conjecture.  It’s a shame - I was kind of hoping this one would be a ridiculously easy problem, but that everyone would be scared off by the first three.
  
  -Baxter
  
  

hooray for clever fun. ;)

i. can’t. sleep.

welcome to the latest installment of almost-done-with-grad-school angst. ;)

i seriously cannot sleep anymore. this is a problem.

my advisor assured me today that thesis defenses, at least in math departments, are basically a formality; that the thesis and your advisor's word are what really count. but still, with mine now 10 days away, it's not that i'm un-calm about it... but my mind won't turn off. seriously. why am i awake at 3 in the morning?

as of today, i have the job contract in my hands that will send me to indiana this summer. i just have to sign it and mail it back tomorrow. i feel like i should put it in a scrapbook or something instead though.

so weird to be talking about "job contracts". it's like that's an "adult concept" and although i'm nearly 27, i guess i perpetually view myself in this inbetween world of independent, but not an "adult"... the following line in quarterlife episode 36 a couple of weeks ago couldn't have said it better:

"In really serious situations I always feel like I'm pretending to be an adult. And it occurred to me recently that I might always have that feeling. Maybe everybody's pretending to be an adult. After all, we're not that young anymore. We kind of are the adults."

in my head, an "adult" is defined as someone closer to my parents' age, who owns a house, has a "9-5 job", etc., etc. certainly people my age do those things too, but i've been "postponing" the real world and getting paid mostly to study for the past number of years. i wonder if i'll ever fully want to classify myself as an "adult".

right now though, adult or not, i'm a ph.d. candidate who is just hoping that it will be possible to get more than 2 hours of sleep in the next week and a half rather than be a perpetual insomniac on account of stress and anticipation of big and rapidly approaching change...

we will see.

i wonder if there's any chance of me falling asleep before 4am.... oi...

technology...

... amazes me.

it's not like i'm incompetant with it... in fact i get along fairly well with most technology and am a decent computer programmer as needs be, but still.

i have several flights coming up, and logged into the airline website to check my itineraries... and one had changed slightly, and i was required to call the airline to confirm the new times were ok. anyone who knows me well knows i hate making phonecalls. i will call people i know periodically, but i do anything i can to find an alternative to calling businesses... personal quirk.

so i called the airline and in the past couple months (because i also confirmed a flight with the same airline via a real person on the phone in january) they've completely automated the process. and it's not just like the computer voice on the phone says "press 1,2,3, or 4" or accepts only a limited number of answers... it can parse quite a bit. in my whole phone conversation, it only made one mistake and it realized it was weird (for the date of the flight i was looking for i said april 11 without the year, and it asked if i really wanted a flight in 2011).

i shouldn't be so amazed at the capabilities of computers to process speech... i did, after all, take a course in speech and language processing 5 years ago as an undergraduate, so i have some vague idea of the process that goes into it. still, i find it awe-inspiring to see just how detailed of an interaction i can have with a computer over a phone these days...

that's all.

mind block

is there ever an image you just can't get out of your head?

i love rainstorms.... like seriously, LOVE them. the more thunder and lightning the better... and if i have a cup of tea and a porch to sit on to enjoy mist without getting soaked, then life is perfect.

but, when there's a storm and i can't see my car, i seriously can't clear my head. (yes, that's weird)... last night, we had a huge storm that woke me up from 4:30-5:30, and instead of enjoying it, i kept wondering if i should go check my car.... about a week after i got the car 5 years ago, a huge storm hit memphis and a giant tree fell on it and smashed in the roof... it was in the shop for a month. and now i can't enjoy a storm without picturing another tree falling on my car. it's ridiculous.... and it's funny how clearly some images stick with you.

that is all.

we want entertainment!

last week i ranted about how i'm disappointed in new tv game shows... now, i have a new complaint: i was shocked when i read this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2748604320080228

tuesday, NBC premiered this new show "quaterlife".  the previews got my attention... it's all about a group of 20 somethings, one of whom writes a very detailed blog about anything and everything.  i enjoyed it, and appreciated that it wasn't at all like the glitzy overproduced shows that are often on.  at the end of the show, they said that it would move to a usual slot on sundays, but when i went to check what time on the nbc website this morning, it wasn't there, and hence the search that found me the link above.  sad.

the thing that makes the cancellation "ok" (whatever that means) is that one episode isn't the only thing i have access to.  apparently, "quarterlife" started simultaneously on myspace and on its own website back in november and they plan to contine releasing two 10 minute mini episodes per week.  but cancelled after one episode?  sad...

on the other hand, all the characters have their own myspace pages... not as like fan club pages, but as actual people.  i'm not sure what to make of the intentional blurring of reality and fiction.  it's intriguing and slightly disturbing at the same time.  nonetheless, i can enjoy the story for awhile without getting into the whole character pages on myspace... whatever.

otherwise, i'm still waiting for my favorite shows to resume with post-strike episodes, and will greatly rejoice in april when they're back.  in the meantime, i've fallen into reality TV for lack of anything "better" on.

i've enjoyed "the apprentice" a little less each season, but i'm still stuck on celebrity apprentice... i like lennox lewis, tito ortiz, trace adkins, and steven baldwin the best, so it was too bad that tito was fired this week... i'll probably stick with it til the end because it's there.

this season though, the bit of personal behavior that confuses me most is... i've somehow gotten hooked on american idol.. it's currently season 7, and i've had absolutely no interest in it at all before this year.  but with so many days of just typing, typing, typing for my thesis, i need background noise, and the auditions for that a few weeks ago trumped any other options for background sound, and now i've gotten hooked on a few of them...David Archuleta and Carly Smithson have *amazing* voices... Jason Castro was impressive on the 1960s songs week and Kady Malloy has been impressive on the videos but not on stage yet; for both of them, I'm really hopeful to see a really outstanding performance in the next few weeks...how i got hooked after this many years of avoiding it... no clue, but it's something to have on in the background.

why all the TV? i realized at some point in high school that you can get totally physically exhausted from thinking really hard... days of working on my thesis do just that... i need something relaxing at the end of the day that involves zero effort from me...

nonetheless, there's other good entertainment to be found from time to time too... last weekend, Rutgers had a gospel choir concert evening with 4 choirs: two local to central NJ, and two older groups from Mississippi, and it was fantastic.... tonight, the youth at my church are putting on a play that me and a couple of my friends are going to... and of course, there's always the best entertainment: books. :)  i'm in the middle of a math philosophy book, and the people at mental floss magazine never cease to make me laugh....

moral of the story: thank goodness for books and for live entertainment,... because i can't trust the TV to do much right anymore...

songs

new ipod playlist for the car for the first time in over a year... what does this say about what i've been thinking on lately? :-P

1. You Are a Child of Mine (Mark Schultz)
2. Blue Skies (Point of Grace)
3. Lovely Day (Michelle Tumes)
4. In Christ Alone (FFH)
5. What Trouble Are Giants (Rich Mullins)
6. Be Unto Your Name (FFH)
7. My Glorious (Delirious?)
8. [Be Still and Know that] I Am God (Kirk Franklin & tobyMac)
9. Begin With Me (Point of Grace)
10. Lift Every Voice and Sing (Women of the Calabash)
11. It Is Well With My Soul (Rebecca St. James)
12. Legacy (Nichole Nordeman)
13. Love's Been Following You (Twila Paris)
14. He Leadeth Me (Candi Pearson)
15. The King of Love My Shepherd Is (Mormon Tabernacle Choir)
16. All The Way My Savior Leads Me (Rich Mullins)
17. Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone (Chris Tomlin)
18. Be Ye Glad (Glad)
19. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (Chris Rice)

happy week to all y'all. :)

game show night...

wow. yesterday, our part of NJ got around 6 inches of snow, ice, and other fun. classes were actually cancelled (not that i really take classes any more), so even though i'm capable of driving in crazy winter weather, i elected to spend the day comfy at home rather than scrape off my car and deal with chaotic roads.

towards evening, this ended up with me and my housemate leigh watching TV while i solved sudokus and she graded calculus homework. (we're grad students, what do you expect? ;) ), and the TV of choice last night was game shows.

there was jeopardy, then wheel of fortune, then 1 vs. 100, then amnesia....interestingly enough the shows appeared in the order they were created. jeopardy has been around for 40 years, wheel of fortune for 25, 1 vs. 100 for 2, and this was the first episode ever of amnesia.

tellingly, our attention waned throughout the evening and just made us increasingly sadder about american culture.

* jeopardy was fun. it was the championship night of teen jeopardy, so we had a much increased chance of figuring out answers, but it was still challenging.

* wheel of fortune was what it normally is, and we enjoyed it too... and were excited when we figured out puzzles before the actual contestants...

* 1 vs. 100 was the borderline. the plot of the show is fun.
(if you've never seen it, one player is asked multiple choice trivia questions at the same time as a "mob" of 100 people gets the same questions. after everyone has locked in their answer, if the player is right, they go on; but for anyone in the mob who misses the question, they're eliminated. so after each successive question, the game becomes 1 vs. (some smaller number). the more mob members that get knocked out, the more money you win.) the format is interesting. and actually last night oscar the grouch (from sesame street) was one of the mob members, which was hilarious.
what made us sad was this. one of the questions was "which celebrity marriage has lasted the longest?", and the player and the mob knew, no contest... another sample question was "alphabetically, which number comes first: 22, 24, or 26?", and this stressed the player and the mob out severely. it wasn't even like it was severe mathematical computation or something... when did following the fleeting lives of celebrities become more important than knowing how to spell and alphabetize?!

* amnesia was even worse. if you know the player, i imagine it becomes more interesting. but the whole plot is to ask a person questions about their own life for an hour. which after a point gets silly. some of the questions were just ridiculously hard. it would be the equivalent of "hey lara, what was your locker number your junior year of high school?". it's not something i remember... there's been a lot of life in the meantime. and if they miss, they make a spectacle of it......

i guess my summary is this: i have a hard time getting into the gawking nature of parts of american culture. like i said above when did "length of celebrity marriages" get to be a more fundamental memorization skill than "how to alphabetize and spell english words"? why do we enjoy gaping and making fun of others so much? i'm probably purposely more oblivious than some, but i see little point in memorizing the life stories of others and would rather choose to focus on living my own life story... it's not to say i totally ignore celebrities; they do such ridiculous things sometimes that it's fun to hear from time to time what they're up to, or at times they use their power and clout to accomplish tremendous things and that's cool too. but what bothers me is not what people pay attention to, but the relative value/weight they put on what they remember. why is "lives of those i don't know and probably never will" more important than spelling, arithmetic, and other fundamentals?

end of rant.

all this is to say... i just don't get it... and perhaps that just further solidifies my status of "nerd", but whatever.... i'm thankful for jeopardy. :)

happy saturday!

this is funny...

... if you have any idea what it's like to be a graduate student.

last night, tired and frustrated, i googled "doctoral thesis angst", and came across the following link that made me laugh:
How to Write a Ph.D. Dissertation

the title doesn't sound all that funny, but the tone is sooo worth it.

my job right now is to write tons and tons summarizing everything i've done in the past several years, and i'm trying to get a rough draft of this 100 page-ish document done by spring break. (we will see...) some days i can sit still and work for hours and get lots done. other days, it seems hopeless, and i'm just grumpy for awhile before i get to work. but when it comes down to it, the thesis defense is kind of an odd feeling -- that 5 years of grad school will be summarized in a super long document that not that many people will read, and into an hour presentation. it somehow seems anticlimactic. of course, it will be somewhat stressful, but it's odd to think that after all this time and all this stress it basically comes down to this.... oi...

anyhow, hopefully you'll find the link half as humorous as i did...

the end.

ponder

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

attributed - sir francis drake -1577

some laughs...

freakin hilarious...

(1) in church, one of the lines we have in a typical lutheran (or many other denominations) service is:
pastor: lift up your hearts
congregation: we lift them to the Lord.

in the church bulletin this morning, however, the response was printed as:
pastor: life up your hearts
congregation: we left them to the Lord.

both typos are pretty funny, i thought. :)

(2) ziggy, as always, is my hero today:


that is all. happy weekend!

back to the real world...

i love conferences. i just spent 4 days listening to math talks and hanging out with a bunches of people who i know from various mathematical parts of my past... it probably sounds nerdy, but being in a convention center of 5000ish mathematicians for the week feels like a mini-reunion of the past 10 years of my life rather than a chore or responsibility. and a trip to san diego for said convention was awesome too. now, alas, i'm no longer in math reunion land...

however, it appears that i now know what i'm doing with my life post grad school, but i'm hesitant to give all the details until they're all completely ironed out (which they should be within a month or so). it looks highly likely that this is my last semester of grad school and that i'll be moving in late july, which is exciting and moderately terrifying at the same time (seriously, i've ALWAYS been a student, and in a few months i won't be anymore... and i have a LOT of stuff (mostly books) that i'm dreading packing). but complain as i may about packing and transition, this is an exciting one, and the more i process the decision i made on monday (TBA in a month or so ;) ) the more enthusiastic i feel about it. :) life is crazy.

back in TN for the weekend. apparently i get to teach my mom's 8th graders for half an hour tomorrow morning. she wants me to tell them what a mathematician does. exciting, right?

this is a post composed of completely random paragraphs, so the conclusion will be no different. i flew memphis -> chicago -> san diego last saturday, san diego -> las vegas yesterday, and las vegas -> denver -> memphis tonight.
on the plane from denver to memphis, i ended up sitting next to brit, a hilarious 30-ish year old arkansas soybean farmer who really wanted to chat the whole time.... it started with
brit: "what do you do?"
me: "i'm a grad student, i study math."
brit: "oh! so see if you can beat my score on this quiz (pulls out a magazine quiz of which the first problem is "compute 2/3 x 3/4 x 4/5 x 5/6 x 6/7 without using a calculator"). my dad got a degree in accounting, if you beat him i'm impressed" (the dad sitting across the aisle didn't understand how i quickly concluded the answer was 2/7 and had me explain it slowly on the way off the plane later ;) )

quite some time later of oohing and aahing over math tricks, sharing crazy travel stories, and talking about gun control and soybeans....

brit: well, lara, i'm sure glad i sat by you this flight. it's made the last 2 hours a heck of a lot more fun.
me: yeah, me too. out of the 5 flights i've been on this week, you're the first person to be any kind of friendly.
brit: well, i bet you anything the rest of them were yankees!

(... it's good to be a southerner ;))

the end.

one of the cooler things i’ve learned in a bit...

i spent a large chunk of my afternoon at the main memphis library today to get some programming/research/writing the talk i give next week done. instead of going straight home though, i went to raid the math section and see if they had anything interesting or new since i last checked it out in may. amongst other things i found a book called "1089 and all that" which was a quick easy (150ish pages in about an hour) read, with lots of cute facts, most of which i knew already.

but one chapter amazed me. "the indian rope trick" is a magic trick where the magician throws a rope into the air and somehow, defying gravity, it stays in the air, and then a small child climbs it. if you google it, there's all kinds of speculation about how it's a hoax and how it might be pulled off.

however, inspired by this, the author looked at a different idea:
instead of a rope, think of a pendulum hanging from the ceiling and attach another pendulum to the bottom of that, etc., etc.... so it's like a giant stick that can bend in a bunch of places

now instead of attaching to the ceiling, attach the pendulum to the floor. clearly, if you let it be, it's going to collapse.

HOWEVER, the author proved that there's a "natural frequency" that if you move the base of your stick of pendulums UP and DOWN the right amount at the right speed, the stick will stay up... you can even push it up to like 40 degrees off center and it will correct itself.

the author's website has an illustration program. click on the upside down pendulum theorem at http://home.jesus.ox.ac.uk/~dacheson/1089comp.html

how cool is that?