Blog of a math teacher

Hiatus?

2006-05-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

I seem to have lost the energy/desire to keep up this blog. Is this a permanent or temporary condition? I don't know. I kind of think that my blog readership may also go down.

My research is beginning to reach a point where anonymous queries about mathematical topics might well point directly back to me, and I've not done a very good job of writing about my teaching life of late.

I won't delete the blog since that seems to be an invitation to have the URL taken over by webspammers, but I'm not sure I'm coming back either.

I'll probably still do the progress bars on the projects through the end of the summer (and I'll certainly write a post when I close that last gap on the top 250 films), but that's about it.

Doctor Who: The Beginning at Netflix

2006-04-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Interesting: This is supposed to be a three DVD set, but reviews at amazon indicate that the discs being sent our are labeled as "1 of 2" (at least partially), and the set is currently indicated as "unavailable" on Netflix's detail page (although the three discs are in my queue just fine). I'm tempted to bump disc 1 to the front of my queue (it's currently at #11) to see what's going on, but on the other hand waiting for it to make its way up naturally will give them time to fix the problem assuming that it's actually a problem and it's being fixed.

Why come up with something original when you can rip someone else off

2006-04-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

So apparently this guy has a unique idea for a tribute band. And what happens? Someone steals your idea.

Alas, as far as I can find, no website for the second band which apparently only lip-syncs as opposed to the first which as near as I can tell actually plays and sings the material.

Yay! It's spring break

2006-04-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

But alas, my wife had to leave town for the first part of it (she comes back Wednesday).

My plan is to do some heavy-duty math, including working on my thesis problem.

Meanwhile people who appled to PhD programs are hearing back from their schools. My personal favorite is the guy who has to decide between UCI and UIC. If he were dyslexic, it wouldn't make a difference.

Friday random 10 - Define "random" edition

2006-04-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

"In Your Eyes," Jeffrey Gaines, KSCA Live From The Music Hall Vol. 1
"Solsbury Hill," Peter Gabriel, Muppet 05 - Disc 2
"Est-Ce Que Tu," Dusty Trails, Dusty Trails
"dinner with drac," john zacherle, (126)
"Unforgettable," Nat King Cole, The Capitol Collectors Series
"Me and Sarah Jane," Genesis, ABaCab: Wrapping Up the World in Clothes of Brass and Cellophane
"When We Collide," k.d. lang, Invincible Summer
"Solsbury Hill," Peter Gabriel, Stonybrook (Live)
"Darkness," Peter Gabriel, The Full Moon Club
"Flight of the Wild Goose," Iona, Iona

Definitely a big Peter Gabriel vibe going here. Especially with two different versions of "Solsbury Hill" showing up.

Big-O notation

2006-04-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

So in what class didn't I learn this, and can anyone recommend a good text to develop a good comfort level with the concept?

Adventures in health care

2006-04-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

After 6 (count 'em SIX!) doctor visits, it turns out that I have exactly the hearing problem that I claimed to have and that yes, surgery is called for, and no, the HMO paperwork won't be finished in time for me to get it during spring break, so it looks like I'll continue to be partially deaf* for the remainder of the semester. My students will be disappointed, but such is life. Worse still is that I'd been working independently rather than going to class in topology** on the hopes that post-spring break I'd be able to hear again (the prof speaks rather softly). It looks like that was a vain hope.

* -35dB left ear, -75dB right ear, for those who like numbers

** While going to class, I'd given up on hearing the lecture and would generally just work on my own, but I got a bit pissed after I was blindsided with a question during the course of class where because I didn't hear the initial posing of it, I didn't have a chance to think about and got lumped in with the rest of the class who had it wrong when I would have with just a little bit of time had it correct. That was enough to make me figure that class wasn't worth the effort, and in any event, Munkres works quite well for self-study.

Perhaps there is some other universe that I could live in...

2006-04-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

...because this one pretty clearly sucks.

Has anyone else noticed that a significant portion of the What's New at Snopes.com postings are clearly racist slurs against Katrina refugees (I imagine the forwarded versions of these tales come with comments along the lines of "look at how lazy those d--d n--rs are!" attached).

And then I got an e-mail sent to me today with a picture of the Mexican flag flying over an upside-down American flag with the caption, "the photo that should kill amnesty".

Assuming that the description is accurate, all I have to say is, "If you want to make decisions about immigration policy based on the actions of a couple misguided high school students, can you please not do it for a country in which I'm living?"

Sometimes I wonder if I'm from another planet

2006-04-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

A real live actual review of "The Incredible Mr Limpet" from netflix:

If you have strong feelings/opinions about the inviolability of marriage, do not get this movie for your kids. The main character makes a big deal of his compunction to take a girlfriend after he becomes a fish because he is already married but then his "feelings" change his mind and everything is suddenly OK. There are also strong evolutionist opinions expressed about how people descended from fish. I wanted to warn those who would find these themes offensive.

Gee your hair smells terrific

2006-04-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Friday random 10

2006-03-31T12:51:00.000-08:00

"Staring into Nothing," Kevin Gilbert, Point Blank
"Amigos(acustico)," Enanitos Verdes
"Don't Panic," Low Sparks
"My Father's Son," Dillon O'Brian, KSCA Live From The Music Hall, Vol 2
"Mayfair," Nick Drake, Made to Love Mag
"Between the Cold Moon and the Earth," Steve Hackett, A Midsummer Night's Dream
"The Carpet Crawlers," Giraffe, The Lamb '94 ( Boot)
"Self 'n' Other," Mike Keneally, Nonkertompf
"The Night Is Still Young," Billy Joel Billy Joel: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 & 2
"Africa," Toto, The Essential Toto

Now there's a movie I'll pay to see

2006-03-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

"The film-makers have reportedly added more gore, more deaths, more nudity and more snakes to the finished product."

100 things about me in 100 days [or more]: #39

2006-03-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

39. I was given an independent study assignment to write a novel in place of senior AP English. I think, though, that part of it was the teacher's desire to not have me in his classroom.

100 things about me in 100 days [or more]: #38

2006-03-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

38. As a high school sophomore, I took three classes simultaneously. I read the prerequisites for classes like a lawyer and since our high school had students who took algebra in 8th grade take Algebra II as Freshmen, I realized that I could take Geometry and College Algebra/Trig simultaneously. Then I realized that College Algebra was largely a rehash of Algebra II and I talked the math department into letting me do College Algebra as an independent study while I took College Trig. Heaven knows what would have happened if my grade school had let me take Algebra in 7th grade like I'd wanted to.

100 things about me in 100 days [or more]: #37

2006-03-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

37. I did no homework in my 8th grade algebra class. We were asked to grade our own homework and then the teacher called out names and had us report our scores orally.* I figured that I was at least as smart as Cindy, who was a few names ahead of me in alphabetical order, so I would take her grade and add a point or two if they were available when I reported my grade.

* A practice which clearly would not be allowable today. It might not have been allowable in 1981-82.

Things I've learned from the tutoring center: #1-3

2006-03-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

Calculus students generally don't have much idea of what the derivative means. If you're teaching Calc I, for the love of God, assign the problems in the textbook where students graph the derivative based on the graph of a function.
Don't assume that calculus students remember slope=rise/run. They don't.
Another tip for calculus teachers: spend 5-15 minutes and teach your students Pascal's triangle so they can quickly find (x+h)ⁿ

2006-03-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

"Etceteraville [live]," Random Hold, The View From Here
"Addicted to Love," Robert Palmer, Riptide
"Ain't No Cure For Love," Aaron Neville, Tower Of Song - The Songs Of Leonard Cohen
"The Majesty Of Rock," Spinal Tap, Break Like The Wind
"Hallelujah (Live)," Jeff Buckley, Live at Sin-é
"Fly By (06)," Steve Ball, Fly By
"The Lucky One," Alison Krauss & Union Station, New Favorite
"Symphonatic," Infected Mushroom, Tsunami
"Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 "Black Mass"," Vladimir Horowitz, Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
"Inside Out," Phil Collins, Poplar Creek '85 (Disc 1)

The closest thing to a pattern this week: 3 out of 10 songs are live. 2 out of 10 are Leonard Cohen songs. Beyond that, I've got nothing.

100 things about me in 100 days: #36

2006-03-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

36. I've always been a bad student. The recurring theme throughout my career as a student, from Kindergarten to now, is that I don't manage to live up to my potential.

You think your life is a sham

2006-03-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours!

English

100%

Psychology

92%

Art

83%

Philosophy

83%

Linguistics

75%

Journalism

75%

Engineering

75%

Sociology

75%

Anthropology

67%

Theater

67%

Dance

67%

Biology

58%

Mathematics

58%

Chemistry

17%

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

Yes, I was an English major as an undergrad, but I wouldn't have guessed that math would come out that low. Via Halfway There.

The challenge, day 3.

2006-03-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

The log of cooked meals appears in the next post, although I'll let it move up as I add to it. Wednesday we were at an Ash Wednesday service at some friends' home, so that doesn't enter into the challenge. Yesterday, my wife wasn't up to cooking, but I'd prepared. I picked up a frozen lasagna on the way home, just in case. Unfortunately, it turns out that the spinach and mushroom lasagna is mostly spinach with just a little tomato sauce, noodle and cheese. They used more spinach for a small lasagna than i use for a large one. And my wife doesn't like spinach that much (alas, she's getting more with tonight's dinner).

100 things about me in 100 days: #35

2006-03-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

35. I was not raised Catholic. But since I'm trying to do things in roughly chronological order as much as that makes sense, you'll have to wait until later to figure out how that fits into much of the rest of my life.

Friday Random 10

2006-03-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

"Matte Kudesai," King Crimson, Oct. 14th, 1981 StadtHalle
"Warning Siren (Featuring Matty Safer)," Tiefschwarz & Matty Safer, Eat Books
"In the Light of the King's Countenance," Randy George, In the Light of the King's Countenance
"Old Hat," Glass House/Scott Richards,
"The Lucky One," Alison Krauss & Union Station, New Favorite
"Es Una Maquina," Enanitos Verdes, Solo Exitos Con Los Enanitos Verdes
"Night Wall (15)," Steve Ball Roadshow, Night Wall
"'s Wonderful," Monica Lewis, My Favorite Things
"Love Came," Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life
"Discipline," King Crimson, Sep. 29th, 1994 Prix D'Ami

No real patterns this week, although King Crimson and related ggroups manageg to score 3 spots.

Strangest math site ever

2006-03-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Via Not Even Wrong, the strangest math site ever. Anyone have a sarong I can borrow?

100 things about me in 100 days: #34

2006-03-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

It being Lent, I'll stick with a religious theme for a while.

34. In the highly Catholic neighborhood I grew up, the names Martin Luther and Lucifer were generally said in the same tone of voice, creating some confusion for me as a child between the two.

100 things about me in 100 days: #33

2006-03-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

33. When I was a kid, I thought that if you gave up something for lent, you gave it up forever.

Lenten sacrifices

2006-03-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

The way that I've come to understand Lenten sacrifice is that it's not about self-improvement in the secular sense: You're not trying to lose weight or save money. That's not important.

I think that it's about prayer. What you sacrifice should be something that you do habitually. So that when you want to have that cup of coffee, for example, you're reminded to pray. When you reach for the snooze button, you're reminded to pray.

But of course if you were to do sacrifice something permanently, then you'd lose the habit.

So the ideas is that the sacrifice is temporary, and because it's temporary it can be extreme.

My sacrifices for Lent this year:

My reading is restricted to math, the paper, blogs (possibly should cut these out, but the last time I got extreme in reducing my reading over Lent, they caught the Unabomber), and spiritual reading.
No snooze alarms
No food/drinks from vending machines, no eating out by myself

100 things about me in 100 days: #32

2006-03-01T08:43:00.000-08:00

32. I learned to play low brass to play in the marching band. I've never owned my own tuba or baritone, although I did borrow one a few years ago for a recording date, so I guess I was even briefly a professional tuba player. The liner notes on the CD when it was released were full of errors though, so I was only credited with playing bass, not tuba. But at least they spelled my name correctly (which wasn't the case with many of the other musicians on the album).

100 things about me in 100 days: #31

2006-02-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

31. In grade school, I would write plays whose primary purpose was to give me (as the male lead) the opportunity to kiss my crush (who would of course have the female lead). None of these literary efforts were ever finished let alone performed. I did have a good mind for special effects that could be accomplished with little budget in a grade school auditorium.

100 things about me in 100 days: #30

2006-02-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

Stealing the idea from B*

30: I always wanted glasses as a small child, I eventually got my wish. I guess I thought they looked cool, or something. And my brothers had them, so I wanted them too.

My vision is 20/50 which is actually good enough to drive without them in this state, but not the state in which I grew up. I also made a practice of cheating on driver's license eye tests so that I could, in a pinch, drive even if I can't find my glasses. I've gone through a few extended periods in my adult life where I've done without glasses (the old pair broke and the thought of spending a couple hundred dollars on new ones was too daunting to consider).

The challenge

2006-02-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

After hearing that my wife's step-father, before he got married, told his maid/cook that she wasn't allowed to repeat any meals that she cooked for him, I decided to take this as a personal challenge:

Starting March 1st, 2006 and continuing until February 28th, 2007, I will not cook the same meal twice. (Exceptions will include leftovers and lunches at school, since I'm a bit constrained in my options for what I can make with a microwave and no refrigeration).
As an added bonus: I will not repeat orders at restaurants in the same time frame.

There are some limitations on the challenge, largely dictated by civility: For example, I won't impose this on my wife. She could cook me beans and rice for the next year and I'll happily (well at least without complaining. Much) eat it. And likewise for dining at friends' houses. It would be awfully rude to pick at the food and say, "I'm sorry, I had Mahi Mahi on September 3rd, I can't touch it again until March." And the cooking and restaurant lists are separate. So I can have Mole Poblano in a restaurant, then go home and cook it as well, if I so choose (and I very well might so choose).

I tend to order the same thing a lot in restaurants (e.g., at Thai restaurants, it's very rare that I order anything but Green Curry with Chicken), so this should be a year of culinary adventures.

I'll be keeping a log here as a way of tracking what I've been eating/cooking.

100 things about me in 100 days: #29

2006-02-26T23:17:00.000-08:00

29: I once started a riot in gym class. Not a real big one, but it was still kind of fun. I had the entire fifth and sixth grade chanting "Mao Tse-Tung" in unison during (I think) a dodgeball game.

100 things about me in 100 days: #28

2006-02-25T13:05:00.000-08:00

Oh man, it's getting harder to come up with new things here.

28. I was hard-core into Dungeons and Dragons in Junior High and High School. Big time nerd. I had all the AD&D books, big piles of Dragon Magazine. Actually I still do. But apparently most of this stuff has no re-sale value on ebay. The new rules seem to have left me completely in the dust and after seeing other D&D players while in college, I lost interest. I was a big nerd, but not that big of a nerd.

SBC DSL blocking SMTP access

2006-02-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

If you're like me and you get your e-mail via someone else's mail server than your ISP (after all, I want to be able to say good bye to whoever's providing my connectivity with minimal hassles), then this helps explain why you can't send e-mail from your SBC DSL connection. I think that this might also resolve the problems with the connection at the apple store (some not all) and the wifi at school.

Teaching note

2006-02-24T15:58:00.000-08:00

I spent an awfully long time doing some cool overlay stuff in beamer for today's class. It didn't make the material any clearer. Never again will I waste that much time (I hope).I'll have to watch the homework progress carefully to make sure that the kids got it this semester. Last semester, I didn't use beamer for this lesson and I just winged my way through the class and almost everyone aced the variation material on the test. I'm not sure that I'll see the same results next week.

100 things about me in 100 days: #27

2006-02-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to try to catch up with B* any more since I've also got Vanes coming up behind me. I've got internet at home (barely: I've not yet unpacked the wireless router, so I have to actually plug in and only one person can use the internet at a time right now) so I should be back to daily with this now.

27. I play the bass. I started playing bass in third grade in the elementary school orchestra. That means that this fall will mark the thirtieth (!) anniversary of my being a bass player. Maybe I'll do a concert or something to celebrate. Or not. No one who's not a bass player would likely enjoy a solo bass concert.

Friday random 10

2006-02-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

"Character Sketch", Steve Ball, Piano Sketches
"A Life In Movies", Steve Hackett, Guitar Speak III
"Night Wall (03)", Steve Ball Roadshow, Night Wall
"One Time", King Crimson, Ulster Performing Arts Centre, 14 November 2003
"Wun'erful, wun'erful! (Side uh-one)", Stan Freberg, The Very Best of Stan Freberg
"The Only One You Need", Kevin Gilbert, Point Blank
"Santa Monica", Peter Gabriel
"What Is Life", George Harrison, All Things Must Pass (Disc One)
"Too Much Saturn ( New Version )", Francis Dunnery, The Way Things Are
"Watcher Of The Skies", Genesis, Burp 26 (Disc 1)

Whoa, this is awfully prog-rock oriented this week. And also an awful lot of stuff that's not on easily attained albums. Both sets appear to be equal.

Look, a meme

2006-02-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

Instructions: Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
~~His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman~~
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon"
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
~~Angels and Demons - Dan Brown~~
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (I guess the movie doesn't count)
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
"(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)"
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
"Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides"
"Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell"
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
"Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman"
"Atonement - Ian McEwan"
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (I've got the Spanish version on my amazon wishlist)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

An awfully long sentence

2006-02-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

If it took more than one read of

If there is someone on your blogroll who makes your world a better place just because that person exists and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence on your blog.

to figure out what it meant, post this on your blog.

100 things about me in 100 days: #26

2006-02-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

But first a couple of shout-outs: First, B*, you haven't posted anything since your visit to the boyfriend. You left off at 36. When I catch up, I'm going to give you a hard time.

Second, Vanes63, welcome to the game. As noted below, blogging hereabouts is a bit sketchy until Tuesday when our DSL gets turned on, but I figured that I'd take advantage of the WiFi in the breakroom at my wife's office (I'm waiting for her to finish while she works late).

So, let's see a new fact: #26. My earliest musical tastes were dictated by two 8-track tapes: Dvorak's New World Symphony and a home-made tape with four halves of Beatle Albums. The latter was made by my brothers with the collaboration of one of their friends (who owned the aforementioned Beatle Albums). They did the old fashioned stack the records in the top part of the turntable and let them fall as each finished and recorded me 90 minutes of Beatles. I'm not entirely sure which albums I had. None were complete, but I think I had the red and blue greatest hits albums and definitely the first half of Sgt Peppers (I never heard the entire second half until I bought the CD. And that happened in 1999!).

I didn't care for any music that wasn't classical or the Beatles until I graduated elementary school and finally gave popular music a try. Fortunately, it was 1982, and while there was dreck like Air Supply, it was also a high point for Top 40, largely courtesy of MTV's playing any video they could get their hands on. I doubt that Devo or even the Talking Heads or anything else out of that late 70s early 80s New York scene would have been as popular without MTV.

The return of Friday Random 10

2006-02-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

"SledgeHammer," Peter Gabriel, So
"Everyman's an Island," Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, Rising Above Bedlam
"Destroy All Monsters," Sum Rana
"I Cannot Believe It's True," Phil Collins, Poplar Creek '85 (Disc 1)
"Baby Won't You Come Home," Jon Randall, Baby Won't You Come Home - Single
"Counting Blue Cars (Unplugged)," Dishwalla, KSCA Live From The Music Hall Vol. 3
"Real Downtown," Vigilantes Of Love, Live At The World Cafe - Vol. 2
"Backlash," Steve Ball, Guitar Sketches
"Bird On The Wire," Ian McCulloch, I'm Your Fan: The Songs Of Leonard Cohen
"I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe)," Genesis, Fade 003 - Six of the Best (Disc 1)

Allegedly, we'll have DSL at home on Tuesday. Regular blogging to recommence at that time.

Iconographic representation of "algebra"

2006-02-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking that since my typed homeworks look more or less the same other than a small numeric designation in the corner, that I want to have something striking and visual so that if I'm looking at a stack of homework papers, I can tell which class something is without having to read. I can come up with iconographic representations of topology and complex analysis, but how do I depict abstract algebra? Any suggestions?

Stealing Becky's idea

2006-02-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

Starting Monday, I'll be meeting with all (twelve) of my students to go over their first test with them. I'm hoping that all goes well with this little plan.

The Law of Below Averages

2006-02-10T10:52:00.000-08:00

This post by Alex Tabarrok is pretty much on the money. I'm always amazed that students who copy on exams manage to pick classmates to copy from who are even worse at math than they are.

And I too have a perfect record of students who ask for incompletes never completing the work.

A small cat problem

2006-02-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

We're keeping the cats in the large guest bathroom while we unpack and to gradually introduce them into the new apartment (I'm also very concerned about inappropriate urination, which is something that the guys have a history of).

But last night, the cats learned how to open the door. They slipped out twice. The first time, I caught them sneaking into the living room while I was doing some late night homework. Not a problem: I gathered them up, and put them back in. Then, just to be safe, I made sure that the bedroom and office doors were closed and also closed the door that connects the hallway that the bathroom is in with the living room. Half an hour later my wife shows up in the living room. They opened the bathroom door and the bedroom door, and she was awakened by one of the guys walking across her face.

When cats start opening doors, you know that it's only a matter of time before they start hotwiring cars.

My average zip code

2006-02-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

Invented by Kate, I heard about this from My Mind Is Open. I modified it a bit. I did the weighted average of zip codes, then, because my original answer didn't actually exist as a zip code, I looked for the closest zip code which did, and used that. So for all the places that I've lived, here's the weighted average.

100 things about me in 100 days: #24 & #25

2006-02-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

Uh-oh, I'm in catch-up mode here again (so now, B*, I'm not withdrawing my moral support).

24. Growing up in the seventies, I was naturally drawn to wishing I lived in other eras. In particular, I was a bit enamored with the styles of the 1920s (with a touch of the 1890s thrown in for good measure). I would have been happy to go around driving a Model T while dressed like I was on my way to sing in a barbershop quartet.

25. I would get TV shows mixed up. It took me a while to realize that MASH and Hogan's Heros were different TV shows. Likewise Welcome Back Kotter and Chico and the Man.

Should I drop real analysis?

2006-02-07T14:32:00.000-08:00

Pros:

Three classes this semester instead of four
Two classes next semester instead of two
I'd be home about an hour earlier two nights a week
Next semester, I would only have evening classes two nights a week and might be able to swing my schedule so that I'm only on campus those two days as well.
The prof who's teaching it this semester doesn't seem to really do any advance planning or work from the book which makes the course a bit stressful to me. I think that deviating from the book requires the instructor to be meticulous in his classroom planning.

Cons:

I'm adding an extra semester to the master's program (but since my objective is to get into a PhD program, and this semester takes place after I apply, does that last semester really even matter?)
I'll have a fee waiver that semester, but I'll miss out on my planned 4-6 class adjunct load to try and pile up as much cash as possible before beginning the PhD
I'd only be able to take one semester of the 2-semester real analysis sequence (or perhaps would just skip it entirely).
I'd have fewer units to push up my GPA for next fall's PhD applications (although, we're talking a difference, assuming I finish strong with all As of 3.8 vs 3.75). On the other hand, the lighter course load would make the 4.0s much easier to reach.
Real analysis is something that I'm not particularly strong in. It would doubtless build character to spend two solid semesters on it.

The drop deadline is tomorrow. Feedback is welcomed.

Crud

2006-02-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Can some one stop by the new apartment, get the box with the packing materials that I left there this morning and bring it to the old apartment?

The move that just won't die

2006-02-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

We didn't get the kitchen finished in time for the movers. Nor did I finish it yesterday when I went back. So Mrs Prosciutto is heading over to the old apartment after work and I'll join her after class so we can finish with the packing and the cleaning. Current box count is 202, with a predicted final box count of 210. We have, however, unpacked 8 boxes already.

Packing (and unpacking)

2006-02-03T16:13:00.001-08:00

If you're looking at the site, you'll notice that there's a new progress bar, "boxes unpacked". What's more, it's even got a tiny green sliver. We took a box of dishes to the new apartment last night and unpacked it so the unpacking has already started even though the packing is still under way. 79 boxes so far and counting.

100 things about me in 100 days: #23

2006-02-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

23. My childhood crushes would last for years. I was remarkably faithful for those extended periods (if I had a crush on G, then no other girl held any interest for me). It wasn't until I started junior high that I began to move towards year-long and then shorter crushes.

Getting things done == solving word problems (!)

2006-02-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's just a coincidence of juxtaposition, but I was struck by how similar the steps offered in getting things done for planning, well, just about anything (what David Allen calls "Natural Planning") matches up remarkably well with the steps for doing word problems offered in my text book (which are themselves a variation and elaboration on Polya's problem solving strategy).

Everything is connected.

Happy Groundhog day

2006-02-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

Angry Professor celebrates by eating Pancakes (mmm, pancakes, ...). But Mrs Prosciutto and me will be celebrating by sleeping on the floor of our new apartment. And doing some cleaning and dealing with a couple carloads of stuff. Although pancakes does sound really good.

My Groundhog pick of the year.

100 things about me in 100 day: #22

2006-02-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

22. Reading a book perceptibly changes my personality, at least temporarily. As a child, reading a book on a subject would make me very enthusiastic about the subject, be it Conestoga Wagons or Ancient Chinese Inventions. I tend to acquire personality ticks from novels that I read (when I read Henderson the Rain King, I was a rather unpleasant person to be around). I hate to imagine what Ulysses is doing to me and I'm thinking that Lolita might be a dangerous choice of reading material.

100 things about me in 100 days: #21

2006-02-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

21: I invented a perpetual motion machine* I was sufficiently concerned about polution as a kid that I wanted to come up with a solution. So I designed a perpetual motion machine, based on electric motors, but using permanent magnets, so that people would be able to drive without polluting the air. I was going to sell it to GM since Cadillac was the most profitable car division in America at the time and I wanted a piece of those profits in exchange for my invention. I also expected them to make their car bodies using designs from the 1920s because I thought those were the best looking cars ever made.

* Which, of course, would not actually work.

100 things about me in 100 days: #20

2006-01-31T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well, let's see, I've got 81 things to go, and since I'm working chronologically, and I've just about finished my first 5 years of life, that means that for the remaining 32.5 years of my life, I need to have 2-3 items for my life. So let's talk a bit about me as a 6-year-old

20. (Inspired by my wife) I led the reading section for the smart kids in first grade while the teacher taught the rest of the class. Because I was reading so well, the teacher decided that the best thing to do was to have me be the teacher for the other 3-4 kids who were able to read above grade level and lead them through more advanced readings. And for some reason, a bunch of six year-olds happily sat in a small group in the back of the room and read together while the other kids had to memorize bizarre fruit-color-phoneme associations. I never understood that aspect of phonetics as it was taught in 1974, but then, since I already read, it didn't matter much.

100 facts about me in 100 days: #19

2006-01-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

19. I had a bizarre obsession about Burma in the first grade. I know exactly how it came about though: I had a book about cats (see fact 17) and decided that our mixed breed domestic shorthair was in fact a burmese cat.

I was so into Burma, I really wanted the continuing saga of "Happy Hippo" which we were writing in class to go to Burma, so at the end of each story, I wrote, "Next: Happy Hippo Goes to Burma". But at every turn I was foiled by the assignment we were given. When I finally did get to write "Happy Hippo Goes to Burma," I was so habituated to writing "Next: Happy Hippo Goes to Burma" at the end of every story, that I wrote it at the end of that one as well.

Moving tips from my mother-in-law

2006-01-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

We should take the more delicate things to the new apartment ourselves rather than let the movers take them. Like the cats.

100 things about me in 100 days: #18

2006-01-29T09:54:00.000-08:00

18. I've chewed gum exactly once in my life. September 17th, 1974. It was Brian P's birthday and he passed out gum to everyone. About a year earlier, my father had declared that his children were no longer going to eat candy, and being sufficiently young to consider what my dad said to be unassailable dogma, I went along with it. Except this one time. Of course having no gum chewing experience, I didn't know what to do with the gum so after chewing it a while, I swallowed it before we went across the hall for our math and science instruction.

Packing packing packing

2006-01-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

I've been periodically updating the totals in the progress bars at the right. In particular, the packing one is one to watch. To get sort of a live view, you can try clicking on older posts and see how much the bar goes down with each post.

100 things about me in 100 days #17

2006-01-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

17. As a young child, I absolutely worshipped cats. So much so, that I wanted to be a cat, and I would "comb" my hair by licking my hand and rubbing it over my head.

100 things about me in 100 days: #16

2006-01-27T17:02:00.000-08:00

16. I worked out the mathematics of Eenie Meenie Miney Moe so that in the hypothetical case that the two girls that I was in love with at the age of four came marching to my front door from opposite directions down my street, I could pick the one that I was really in love with while making it all seem random. Yeah, I was a big nerd already then.

Friday random 10

2006-01-27T17:01:00.000-08:00

"Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta," Geto Boys, Geto Boys: Greatest Hits (Screwed & Chopped)
"Dance Me to the End of Love," Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love
"Pensando en tí (Dust in the Wind)," Mägo de Oz,
"Staring Into Nothing," Kevin Gilbert, The Shaming Of The True
"Asleep," Adrian Belew,
"I Like It," Mark Pender Band, Mark Pender Band
"Est-Ce Que Tu," Dusty Trails, Dusty Trails
"Georgia," Ray Charles,
"Dead Man's Party," Oingo Boingo, Best O' Boingo
"Atom Heart Mother," Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother

More classes

2006-01-26T22:26:00.000-08:00

I've now been to one of every class that I'm taking. One prof speaks rather quietly which is a bad match for my bad hearing. But this will apparently be remedied next week.

I talked with quiet prof afterwards because he's one of the few people in the department with any acquaintance at all with the area of mathematics which most interests me, and described the idea that I had last week at the workshop. He thinks that it shows some promise. There's at least one book that I need to pick up.

100 things about me in 100 days: #14 & #15

2006-01-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of music things:

14. I taught myself to play the piano before I started kindergarten. Granted it wasn't much more than a single song, which I was happy to play over and over again. My parents on the other hand were less excited about hearing this particular 8-note song repeated ad infinitum, so they sent me to piano lessons, more out of self-defense than anything else, I suspect.

15. I learned to read music about the same time that I learned to read. It must have been a bit later since I couldn't have learned the abovementioned song without some reading skills, although I suppose I just needed to be able to identify numbers and connect them with the pictures. One consequence of this is that I really have no memories of not being able to read words or music (although cursive was a mystery to me until the 3rd grade).

Synchronicity

2006-01-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

I picked up Reservoir Dogs at the library and re-watched yesterday. Chris Penn turns up dead.

I think I'm going to go get all of their John Travolta movies today.

First day

2006-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

I've got 16 students in theory, although only 15 came today.

I really need to look over the printout of my slides before class and keep them handy while lecturing.

This group of kids is really passive. But I do already have a couple favorites who are going to be extra-motivated to do well. I've asked for some information on students which is a bit new for me, and I'm hoping that it will help build a raport. Also the smaller class size should help.

100 things about me in 100 days: #12 & #13

2006-01-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

We tackle some of my earliest academic factoids today:

12. I could read when I started kindergarten. I credit Sesame Street. And I suppose my mother, although my memory of my mom's teaching me to read is primarily of her lying on the couch, demanding that I recite the alphabet to her and ignoring my claims that "the alphabet is for sissies."

13. I was kicked out of the afternoon program in kindergarten because I was badly behaved. Because I could already read (and presumably do some basic math, my school had a program where the brightest kids in kindergarten came back after lunch and had some classes with the first graders. It was mostly math, but I imagine there must have been some reading. About a month into the program I was kicked out because I was a discipline problem. My mother, enragegd with me over this disgrace, didn't allow me to spend my newly freed afternoons playing, but rather required me to learn math and reading from workbooks that she'd bought at Jewel or A&P or something like that. Of course my mom, not being trained in any sort of teaching apparently bought the wrong books or did something incorrectly because when I started first grade, I was doing math at a 3rd grade level and reading at a 5th grade level.

Getting ready for the semester

2006-01-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

I've been busy today getting stuff ready for the first day of class (tomorrow). I've got syllabi and the first assignment copied, turned in my office hours and syllabus at the department office and cleared up most of the old cans and bottles from my desk (I'll need to offload these to the car perhaps tomorrow so that I can take them to the recycling and get some cash).

One of my courses was cancelled for low enrollment, so I've instead had my hours in the tutoring center upped. A bit of math shows that teaching two classes would have given me a total of ten hours scheduled per week. I currently have 14 hours scheduled. That carries the implication that the second section would have required four hours per week of time outside of class for everything to be equal. Not the case, so I'm hoping that I've picked reasonably low-traffic hours to work so I can get some of my own work done while in the tutoring center. Probably not though.

The big bonus is that the section that is still running only has 15 students registered. I'm hoping that it stays that low come the actual start of classes. I'm guessing that there might be a last-minute influx of students when winter intersession grades come in, but if the intersession students in general followed the advice I gave my students last semester, there should be a low fail rate for that class. This will be a pretty high-stakes semester for the students since failure requires them to attend summer school. I'd hate to teach the second summer session version of this class: That's the last chance to pass before being shown the door.

I have a notice about one student from last semester who apparently, since he failed the class, didn't drop and didn't show up for most of the semester will have to pay back some of his financial aid (!) if he didn't have some sort of academic activity for the class after a certain cut-off date. I was thinking of cutting him a break and considering his last e-mail to me as an academic activity: "advisement"), but it's before the cut-off date. Since I offered to give him tutoring and help try to keep him prepared for the re-take of the class and he didn't take me up on the offer, it looks like he owes the university some money.

A bowl of week-old carrot ginger soup in Karl Rove's lap.

2006-01-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

(It's a mystery.)

100 facts about me in 100 days: #9, #10 & #11

2006-01-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

As I crack into the double digits, a couple facts based around my earliest memories. I have no idea if any of this is unusual. When I've mentioned these to other people, I've gotten the sort of looks that cold either mean, "well, duh, that goes through everyone's head at the age of 3" or "my God, are you some sort of space alien?"

9. I was apparently a philosophical 3-year old. Because I can remember contemplating the meaning of life at that age. Of course being three, my conclusion was that I could lock myself in the bathroom forever as long as people would pass me food through the linen closet, since I would have everything that I needed in life then: Food, water and someplace to pee and poop.

10. I was aware of the aribtrary relationship between the signifier and the signified as a 3-year-old. In particular, I realized that there was no particular reason that certain words had the meaning that they did, or that certain ideas were connected to certain combinations of sound. I particularly disliked the word "hamper" and resolved that when I had a family, we would not use the word "hamper" in my house.

11. I was concerned about the reality of TV shows as a 3-year-old. I was very concerned about people ~~dieing~~ dying on television and insisted that my mom confirm that they were just sleeping. It didn't occur to me that they could just lie very still with their eyes closed.

100 things about me in 100 days: #7 & #8

2006-01-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

What I was like as a very young child:

7. I was a quiet baby. So quiet in fact that apparently my parents once forgot to put me in the car when they were leaving the house. Only my brothers' intervention kept me from being confiscated by DCFS.

8. As a young child I was apparently very gregarious. Or at least open to suggestion. I remember overhearing my parents say that I was a very friendly child, and the next day while in gymnastics class at the Y, I figured that since I was very friendly, I should start talking to the girl behind me in the line of kids waiting to do tumbling on the mats. Her name was Carol and as far as I know, I never met her again.

The patron saint of mathematicians

2006-01-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Talking about saints with my wife, we started wondering if there was a patron saint of mathematicians. It turns out that there is. Actually, there are at least two, but one of them has a little problem: Apparently she didn't actually exist.

100 things in 100 days: #5 & #6

2006-01-22T08:44:00.000-08:00

I suppose I'm getting up to my birth in the chronology now, so here's two more about that point in my life:

5. I'm the youngest of three sons. Or perhaps more interestingly, I'm part of a family in which female births are exceptionally rare. We're currently at ten consecutive male births.

6. My maternal grandfather took an instant liking to me when I was born. Not that notable until you're aware that up until that point, my grandfather had no interet in babies at all. He didn't pay much attention to my cousins or brothers until they were walking and talking, and even then he wasn't too interested. But with me, he apparently saw me at the hospital and decided that here was a baby he could like.

100 things about me in 100 days: #3 and #4

2006-01-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

Continuing on the catching up with 1B*, I offer a couple facts about my name:

3. I'm almost but not quite named after my father. Usually it's the oldest child who gets named after dad, but in my case they waited for son #3. And then gave me a different middle name, so the only way to distinguish myself from dad is to write at least a middle initial. When I started college I contemplated switching to my middle name (so I could have been V. Tony Prosciutto), and in fact, I used a sort of random selection to determine whether or not I would do this: On half of my college applications (based on whether they let me write V. Tony or Vito T.), I used my middle name as my preferred name. As it turned out, I attended one of the first name colleges and now I'm forever Vito.

4. My first name is from a language that has no connection to any part of my ethnic heritage. OK, this is a bit of a stretch on a thing about me, but it has kind of annoyed me. I really would have liked an ethnic first name (and I made up for it with my blog pseudonym, by going way ethnic). What's more, because I share a first name with a well-known cartoon character, I've endured endless jokes about it as a consequence throughout my life. And yet I would still like to name one of my children Atticus.

Unfulfilled goals

2006-01-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

I had set a goal for myself at the end of last semester that I would prepare beamer presentations for every class session this semester before the semester began. I start teaching on Wednesday. I've got two classes done (the second is actually the first exam of the semester, since I've decided it makes the most sense to write the tests first, then prepare the lead-up lectures.

The big things I got from the workshop

2006-01-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

I was a fair amount out of my depth at the conference.
But not so much that I wasn't able to follow the gist of most of the talks that I did attend
And this is definitely a field that I want to pursue.
And a part of me kind of wishes I'd stayed till the end, but there's enough to be done here that I'm glad I'm back.

100 things about me in 100 days: #1 and #2

2006-01-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

Because 1b* indicated some flagging enthusiasm for her 100 things project, I've decided to offer her some moral support by giving it a shot myself. I'll do two a day until I catch up with her though.

My plan, try for chronological order. I'll start with a bit of ancestry factoids, which, if you believe that genetics is destiny says something about me, and if you don't, it still is interesting that these would be the factoids that I would choose.

1. I'm a direct descendent of a Catholic priest. One of our family legends is that my great-great-grandfather was a Catholic priest. We're pretty sure that it's true, and it's a big part of why my great grandfather was bitterly anti-Catholic his whole life (he knew who his father was and hated that he never acknowledged him as his child). The family legend that we're less sure of (because, apparently, my great grandfather was less consistent about this) is that my great-great-grandmother was a nun.

2. My great grandparents, across the board, were communists. My ancestors all immigrated to the US at about the same time (the first decade of the twentieth century), and the American Communist Party was quite effective at recruiting among immigrants of this era. Apparently a bit part of their appeal was in playing on immigrants' nostalgia for the old country by doing things like putting on plays in the old language or having social activities based around the culture of the old country. My personal favorite artifact of this part of my family history is a photograph (which has my grandmother in it somewhere), of the Karl Marx Singing Society.

Books for sale at the library

2006-01-20T09:39:00.000-08:00

On my way back to Megalopolis from Cosmopolia, I stopped at a library which was selling some math books (they had the only copy of Projective Planes available at amazon, and I'd emailed the seller to find out where they were in hopes of sparing myself the steep amazon marketplace shipping charges). Among the books on the shelves that they were selling, Pruning Library Collections.

My church gets one right

2006-01-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

There'd been some nail-biting among Catholics who reject Biblical literalist interpretations of Genesis 1 (and the perfect thing to ask the creationists that you encounter: How many coats do you own? And then ask them why they reject reading Matthew 5 literally but insist on reading Genesis 1 literally. But I digress.)

So we have a report (via Palaeoblog) that the Vatican has finally reaffirmed its anti-creationist stance (and in particular has rejected the rather perplexing offering from the creationists, ID, which manages to be both bad science and bad religion in one compact package).

Should I stay or should I go... I'm gonna go

2006-01-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

but a part of me regrets it. All week at the workshop, I've known that I've been out of my depth (the talks by Dr Mumbles being the low point), but I realized as I was falling asleep that I am picking up stuff. A question which occurred to me on Tuesday, I was able to formulate in the terms of the workshop topic yesterday. It probably falls into the category of really easy to state problems which are really tough to solve, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it's not (in particular, if I can find a way of eliminating one of the variables in the equation and changing its form, it becomes a well-defined equation from which I can in a well-defined way find the solutions and prove something of some significance.

The lost post

2006-01-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

I noticed that Tuesday's post disappeared. I'll try and recreate it somewhat: The Y has internet access. I noticed a shared playlist in iTunes, "Rose Moore's Music" I browsed through it, and discovered that Rose Moore is apparently a musician since she had some music of her own in her iTunes (labelled Rose Moore demo). Nice stuff. You can download her CD for the ridiculously low price of $1.37.

But mostly, hey Rose Moore, if you're ever googling yourself and you find this, "hey, nice music. I kind of wish you hadn't turned off your computer before I was done listening to it."

The cosmopolis curse

2006-01-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

I've been to Cosmopolis several times in my past. And it always ends the same. I just have to leave. Sometimes I last a week, sometimes, like this time around just a couple of days, but I need to get out of here. In theory, Cosmopolis should be my kind of place. Heck, when I arrived Monday evening, I walked around and thought, I could live here (which would be good since two of the potential good PhD institutions I could attend are in the Cosmopolis area). But it didn't last. So tomorrow morning, I check out early from the YMCA and head back to Megalopolis. I'll stop and visit some friends on the way home, so it will be a full day of travel for me, most likely stopping for dinner somewhere on the way home, but I'm done with the workshop.

Workshop observations

2006-01-18T07:05:00.000-08:00

Macs by far outnumber PCs, I'm thinking about 2-1, both among presenters and attendees.
If you're giving any sort of talk, and you have a slide of the definitions and terminology that's central to your talk, let it linger on the screen long enough that the guy in the front row furiously scribbling notes can get it down.
Just because you don't like the way people's voices sound through the microphone does not mean that you don't still need one. Granted I have hearing problems, but I should still be able to hear you from the front row. Actually it doesn't matter because you ran through unfamiliar concepts with no firm grounding in any examples at a pace that I couldn't keep up with. Tomorrow I leave early.
It would be nice if the computer files for the presentations were made available before the talks.
College campuses constructed on hilly terrain are evil.
While looking for the math library and walking across said evil campus in the dark, every campus map I could find was unlit. When I finally found one, I looked for the "you are here" marking and realized that I was in front of the math library.
Canned food and microwaves: A great way for grad students to stretch their budget when attending a workshop like this. If I were getting a per diem, I might actually be making money this week.

Packing

2006-01-16T21:16:00.000-08:00

Russian Violets inspired me to post a bit about packing with her tale of finally (after six months) almost finishing unpacking the books.

This is the exact opposite of my usual modus operandi for unpacking after moving: I unpack the books, the stereo and the CDs, then lose interest in the process and have boxes of stuff lieing about until the next move.

My wife, naturally, is not pleased with this state of affairs, so as an attempt at appeasement, as I've been packing for the current move, I'm also taking stuff out of boxes and throwing away, or sorting the stuff. Among some of the discoveries have been at least two brand new, never-before-worn sweatshirts, an out-of-focus photograph of me with a bird no my shoulder, some old dry-erase markers which STILL WORK (if only they would buy these for the classrooms where I've had to use a whiteboard), and some other stuff that I remember thinking that I should blog when I first saw them.

But now, I'm out of town for a week for a workshop. But I've got free internet, so I'll likely be posting more this week.

Friday random 10

2006-01-13T06:56:00.000-08:00

"You Oughta Know", Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill
"I'm In Love With My Car", Queen, Greatest Hits, We Will Rock You Edition
"Embrace Me", Gabriela Anders, Last Tango In Rio
"Manteca", Dizzie Gillespie, Dizzie's Diamonds
"I Cannot Believe It's True", Phil Collins, Poplar Creek '85 (Disc 1)
"Rise Again", Steve Hackett, Darktown
"Knock On Wood", Stone Soul
"Will I Ever Make It Home", Ingram Hill, June's Picture Show
"Dirt", Phish, 2000-7-15
"Blow It Out", Features, Exhibit A

Organizing my life: The 3 minute shower

2006-01-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

One of my chief difficulties in mornings is getting in and out of the shower in a reasonable amount of time. What's more, I'm often so tired, I don't remember things like whether or not I shampooed my hair already or not. My idea of how to get around this: Record a "song" on my computer which consists of reminders of what to do at particular times. I timed myself in the shower this morning and figured that 20 second intervals would work out fine and I could do something along the lines of:

Wet body/hair
Put shampoo in hair
Rinse hair
A bit of just basking in the hot water
Put conditioner in hair
Rinse hair
A bit more basking
Lather body
Rinse body
A bit more basking

If I give myself 10-15 seconds for each basking, that comes out to a 3 minute shower.

The only catch is that I don't currently have a CD player in the bathroom (and it's unlikely that I'd buy one just for this).

Or perhaps I would: It turns out that I can buy a shower CD/radio off the internet for $35!

Who do I look like?

2006-01-11T06:51:00.000-08:00

According to MyHeritage.com (via Marginal Revolution), I look like:

Kevin Costner (57%)
Amitabh Bachcham (55%)
Wilhelm Frick (55%)
Mel Gibson (54%)
Jack Kirby (53%)
Hugh Grant (52%)
Rodney Mullen (52%)
Robert De Niro (52%)
Billy Bob Thornton (51%)

I left out the links for the famous actors because, come on, you all know what they look like.

One nice thing about myheritage.com is that while it doesn't support Safari, their response is to suggest firefox for mac rather than windows and internet explorer. Two points for trying.

My dad, satellites, and Howard Stern

2006-01-09T19:29:00.000-08:00

Last night I spoke with my dad on the phone. At one point in the conversation, he decided to read (from the TV guide channel), all 100-some-odd music-only channels (many of which are from Sirius) that his satellite TV company (don't worry, I'm working my way to a point). Rather than interrupt him, I figured, hey, my dad's gonna be 74 this June. If he wants to read the channel guide to me, then I guess he can (he later went on to enumerate all the pornographic pay-per-view channels).

So later today, my wife and I were talking about this, and the topic of Howard Stern came up. We're both in agreement that a lot of Howard Stern fans probably went out and got XM radio to listen to Howard Stern.

Which is kind of unfortunate for them because Howard's on Sirius.

Yet another reason to love trader joe's

2006-01-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

I was making lasagna for dinner. And in a fit of efficiency, I cleaned the kitchen before putting the lasagna in the oven.

Cleaning the kitchen included throwing out the package from the lasagna which said what temperature and for how long to bake the lasagna. This is the part of using the oven that I'm hopeless at (and by "using the oven" I mean any dish which requires the oven, I never know how long or how hot without a recipe).

So what do I do? I call up TJ's and the manager runs to the refrigerated section and reads the directions to me over the phone. Ain't that great?

Controlling my life: Finances

2006-01-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have been trying to work out a way of being able to easily keep track of our finances in a way that gives us equal access to the data. Quicken falls sadly short on this front since it doesn't really seem to want to provide a way to synchronize between two computers (much less two different platforms, since I'm MacGuy and she's WindowsLady). After some searching, my wife found Mvelopes which we're in the midst of the free trial month. It solves the multiple-person access by putting all the data on an internet server and having (password-protected) access through a java applet.

What's also nice is the envelope-based budgeting. Rather than post-hoc analysis of your spending, you allocate your income to an assortment of different "envelopes" and then as transactions are loggged, you can assign them to the different envelopes. It's a very nice way of handling budgeting, although it remains to be seen how well this will work over multiple months, and this month will be a rather atypical month courtesy of spending relating to our move.

Another good feature: It automatically logs into your on-line accounts to get transactions for you, and seems to do a much better job of it than Quicken ever did.

The big down-side so far is that the java applet is a bit slow: It's unusable in safari, but passable in firefox on the mac. It seems fine under windows (curse those lazy developers who only test/optimize for one platform). It remains to be seen whether we'll go ahead and pay a subscription fee for the service when the trial is up at the end of the month. I'm leaning towards yes, but I think that I'd like something that was a local application and perhaps used Rendezvous or somesuch to allow syncing between different computers.

Small things I've learned in 2005: Shorter is better

2006-01-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

I had a very long daily routine in my initial attempts to be a good Flylady. It was too long. And it wasn't really prioritized. I never got through the whole thing, and the less that I did, the more likely I was to just blow off the routine. My new routine is about half as long. And I'm setting it up so that the first things on the list are the first things that should be done. My new daily routine looks like:

Make Bed
Shower
Get Dressed
Blinds
Feed Cats
Cat Water
Clean Litterbox
Shave
Cat hair
Comics/News
Sink Clean
Hot Spots
Workout
15 Minutes of house cleaning
Diary

I need to add a before-bed checklist, which will include making sure that the sink is empty and dishes are put away, a re-clean of the litterbox (yes, we're doing it twice a day now), bedtime snacks for the monsters and checking tomorrow's to-do list.

Post-travel, post-illness blogging

2006-01-04T22:05:00.000-08:00

Things have been a bit busy with packing up the apartment and looking for a new one on the other side of the megalopolis (which generally means that a full day has been lost on any apartment-hunting day).

A quick RBOC I forgot to blog at the appropriate time:

Two English majors sitting across from me as I lay trying not to die in the airport coming home after Christmas last Friday. I guess their college is on the quarter system. One is reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The other is switching between The Crying of Lot 49 and marking up a print-out of a movie script. I used to be them. I wish them well.

I'm writing paragraphs but these aren't much different than RBOCs, are they?

Getting organized has meant a new, shorter daily routine. I eliminated the divisions into morning, afternoon and evening routines, but I think I do want to bring back a before-bed routine, which will be fairly short. Mostly make sure that there aren't any dirty dishes about, the cat box is clean and who knows what else.

I have a bunny too.

2006-01-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

it's all about me. deal with it.

Who's Your Happy Bunny?
brought to you by Quizilla

Starting a new year

2006-01-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

We've got less than a month to be packed and ready to move (especially if we end up moving on the 15th which is a real possibility.
I've got a plan for being organized. What I'm doing right now is not part of it.
I ended 2005 by being sick. Fortunately, I began 2006 by not being sick. I can live with that, although after eating next to nothing the last 48 hours of 2005, I'm a bit hungry.
As near as I can tell, the pet hotel where my cats spent the holidays didn't brush them once. I don't think that they're going back there.
Objectives for this year:
- Finish coursework at MTU.
- Applications for PhD programs
- 3+ articles in the publications pipeline (two of these are fairly short and a bit trivial, but will be good for Mathematics Teacher).
- Finish non-fiction book project which has been kicking around for 15 years.
- Now that I know what's wrong with my ear, get it formally diagnosed and fixed. (It's actually a bit more than that: I also have narrow windy ear canals, which I inherited from my dad's side of the family, plus the otosclerosis from my Mom's side of the family. I got all the family hereditary defects in one complete package.)
- Finish the top 250 IMDB films (only 29 to go).

Great for water fights

2005-12-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

From a recently posted (in the wrong category) ad on the listing service where my wife and I are looking for our next apartment:

Living room dinning room, vaulted ceilings, 1800sf huge lot, duel patios, firepits, stainless steal BBQ, huge shared bathroom with duel sinks

You can fight outside or in the bathroom. But watch out for your BBQ. It might be stolen by the stainless.

Grade protests

2005-12-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

I have internet access at my brother's house where I'm staying until nearly next year, but for some reason he has port 25 (SMTP) blocked on his firewall so I can't send e-mails.

Which means--so sad--I can't send anyone responses to their "I really deserved a better grade" e-mails.

I really kind of like that.

Computer follies: MySQL

2005-12-19T21:55:00.000-08:00

A note of explanation: When I got my current laptop, in the process of installing Panther and transferring files from my back-up HD onto the new latop, I managed to screw up the OS installation. This resulted in some problems with a memory leak that affected Safari and caused some other minor inconveniences. I decided that the best route was to do a clean install. I'm part-way through the aftermath of that (and an upgrade to Tiger). So as I re-install assorted software, item one has been to re-install MySQL. What's wonderful is that with MySQL 5 (and possibly eariler), the software is now distributed from mySQL.com as an OS X package complete with a preference pane. Very nice. I wonder if Apache and PHP have done this too?

Friday random 10 (because why pack when I can blog edition)

2005-12-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

"Lonely Man," Swinging Steaks, Three, Two, One - It's Alive From Studio A
"With a Little Help from My Friends," Joe Cocker, Easy Rider
"Stand By Your Man," Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers Soundtrack
"Dodo - Lurker," Genesis, ABaCab: Wrapping Up the World in Clothes of Brass and Cellophane
"Headed For A Fall," Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Live At The World Cafe - Vol. 4 (fifth anniversary)
"Let Go (LP Version)," BarlowGirl, Another Journal Entry
"PC99," Tom Smith
"Private Conversation," Lyle Lovett, KSCA Live From The Music Hall Vol. 3
"Sexuality," k.d. lang, Live At The World Cafe - Vol. 4 (fifth anniversary)
"7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," Simon & Garfunkel, Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

2005-12-16T02:32:00.000-08:00

I booked my travel back to the city of my birth using frequent flyer miles. The current scam with frequent flyer miles is simple: They'll give you 10,000 miles for brushing your teeth, but will make it damn near impossible to redeem them. Even with a couple months' lead time, my ONLY travel options were to leave the 16th and return the 30th (my wife who has a REAL job where she has to go in to the office EVERY day, will be coming to join me next week).

Of course the problem arose that (a) I had a final Thursday evening. A killer final. It took me an hour to do the first problem. I turned mine in (note the careful avoidance of the word "finished") after 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was the second person to leave. And (b) I had to return the rental car (that I had because my car STILL isn't back from the shop). And (c) take the cats to the pet hotel. And (d) finish grading. So, you can look at the top of this post, see when I'm writing and then realize that I haven't started packing and, I'm really hoping that you'll feel some pity for me. For being so unbelievably dumb.