Tuesdays and thursdays I have a rather long block of classes followed by work, which means some times the first meal I have all day is dinner time. On those days (today is one of them, although I had half a bagel at work) I get rather hungry. I am hungry now.
Archive for March, 2006
I am hungry
Thursday, March 30th, 2006Watch it Now!
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006I was trying to get a printer working today. Opened up notepad, typed ‘test’ real quick, and was about to hit ‘print’ when i realized that i hadn’t typed ‘test’, but ‘twat’. Apparently the ‘w’ and ‘a’ keys are right next to the ‘e’ and ’s’ keys. It’s a good thing i didn’t hit the print button…
Abstract Algebra
Monday, March 27th, 2006In order to get all 3 of my majors finished, I’ve started taking an Abstract Algebra course on my own, just reading through the textbook and taking notes. One of my professors is going to give me some problems to do or something, and hopefully I’ll finish in time to start the next semester.
For me, Learning about all of these different things is like being a kid with a new toy. I see all kinds of connections between group theory and languages and automata; I want to find out how deep the connection goes, who has explored this before, and if nobody has, then why not?
Mathematical discovery is such an enjoyable process.
A Good Sunday
Monday, March 27th, 2006Today I went down to Xavier to exercise around 4:30 or so. After that, I went to help my buddy Dan with some thermodynamics homework. I had done it a while ago, and so I could not remember for the life of me how to solve some of those problems. This particular book doesn’t make things easy. The author will ask a simple question, but use complicated terms that disguise how simple the question really is. After having asked the question, he will either give you a “hint” or else pontificate on the meaning of the answer that you are about to derive. The net result of all of this it can be very difficult to figure out just exactly what the question is and how you’re supposed to go about answering it, but once you get that much figured out, it’s all pretty simple.
When I finished helping Dan out, I called my friend Mike, who is a physics grad student at OSU. He was down for the weekend visiting his girlfriend Alice, who is a student in my year. Me and Mike talked politics while Alice did homework, but eventually she either finished the homework or just couldn’t work with us making all of that noise. I had forgotten how entertaining it was to have a good political discussion. We went out to dinner and talked a bit more.
When we got back to the Commons building, I called my friend Mike Hellman, a high school buddy who went to Xavier with me. We were going to live together on campus until I decided against my better judgement to live at home. We played a couple of games of chess, all of which I lost, and did a bit of talking.
I am so happy to be spending my days with friends and having fun instead of just sitting at home by myself playing video games, as I did for the first 2.5 years of college.
On the Symphony
Sunday, March 26th, 2006I had to go to a Symphony performance for my music class at school. I went with a girl that I met at the math conference who said she liked the symphony. I was looking forward to the performance because I figured i’d get a chance to enjoy some good music, but at the back of my mind I figured i’d probably become really bored about 10 minutes into it because the music just wouldn’t hold my attention. I was right. The first piece was pretty cool because it had a sort of creepy sound to it, like something from a horror movie. The rest of the time was just boring music that didn’t seem to go anywhere or do anything. There was a cello concerto, and I could tell that the soloist was good but I didn’t really have any interest in the music he was playing. I found myself ‘playing over’ the various things I have experienced in the past couple of days, and then realizing ‘oh yeah i’m supposed to be listening to this thing’. That went on for a while and then I remembered that while Anneliese was studying for the math GRE she pondered about L’Hopital’s Rule and how it could be proved. My intuition told me it had something to do with a taylor series, while hers told her it had to do with local linearity.
I was thinking more about the rule and trying to remember exactly what it was, when I came up with what I thought was a pretty cool way that you could prove the theorem to be true. It turns out the alley of proof I was pursuing would have worked if I had been clever enough to think to use the Mean Value theorem. Unfortunately, I was not so clever. I spent a while thinking about and trying to prove the theorem my way before I realized I had missed half the final piece.
I guess symphony music just isn’t my thing. Oh well.
A Programmer’s Lament
Monday, March 20th, 2006I found this in my Abstract Algebra textbook, and I really like it:
A Programmer’s Lament
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it
It never does quite what I want
but only what I tell it
-Dennie L. Van Tassel, The Compleat Computer
Must Be Tired
Sunday, March 19th, 2006I was reading for my thermodynamics class, and after an equation called the ‘Debye T3 law‘, I read “experimental results for this dragon are plotted in figure 4.10″ I had to re-read it a couple of times before it came out correctly: “experimental results for argon are plotted in figure 4.10″
Whoohoo!
Friday, March 17th, 2006I just recieved an email informing me of my acceptance to the REU at Harvey Mudd college. That was definately my top pick. They told me earlier that I wouldn’t find out until, but they knew I was anxious so I guess they made an exception for me.
I am so happy right now.
Weird Coincidence
Friday, March 17th, 2006My friend called me to let me know that our group of CS/Math people was going to head to a place called ‘The Dubliner.’ She wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get in (on account of not being 21), and suggested I call them to find out. I looked up the place on google, found a number, and dialed. I got no answer. I then found an article from january 2006 further down, saying that the place was being forced to close. I was skiming the article, when I saw an exhoration to call the owner of the property, Dan Neyer. I recognized the name and address right away – it was my uncle! I called him to ask if the place was still open or not, and he told me it’s been reopened under a new owner – now it’s the ‘New Dubliner.’ It is open and ready for buisness. Very strange, indeed.
New Homepage!
Thursday, March 16th, 2006I redid my personal homepage today. I use it to get to all of my different websites from one handy little place. I was going to use word or some program to write the HTML for me, but I figured if I did it myself, it would be smaller and easier to edit in the future. I even learned how to do CSS in the process, which is something I should have known a while ago. Hooray!