January 2010 Archives
Why I love the Internet
Here’s one awesome reason I love the internet. Last night I was planning out how to spend an Amazon gift card, and first on my list was to finish filling out the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi. (I own two, and want the other two.) But Amazon doesn’t sell it directly, meaning I couldn’t use Amazon Prime to get free shipping on it. So I tweeted about it – something to the effect of “How is it possible that Amazon doesn’t carry Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series?” And less than 5 minutes later a response popped up from @scalzi himself, saying that it appeared to be a glitch, because the same thing is true for other books from his same publisher. I didn’t even address my tweet directly to him, I was just throwing it out there for the world to see, so it was very unexpected and very cool to get a response directly from him!
And as it turns out, I was just one of the early discoverers of the Amazon and MacMillan price war. I think that the moral of the story is that I should buy my books from Powells. Also, the internet is awesome.
Bussing it
I’ve been taking the bus to and from school/work for about 4 months now, and I have to say that overall I love it.
Pros:
- Time to read every day (this is huge!)
- Less money spent on gas/car things
- No parking garage/rush hour stress
- I’m always on time now (because the bus won’t sit across the street and wait for me!)
- Good for the environment
- Feeling smug when I tell people I take the bus
Cons:
- Adds a fair amount of commute time
- My bus doesn’t run very frequently
- No listening to NPR on the drive (exchanged for reading)
- I drive so little now that I get more nervous when I do have to drive in the rain/dark/rush hour
- I drive so little that at one point my battery went totally and completely dead.
To help offset those last two cons, I’ve been driving more in the evening when C and I go somewhere. C always used to drive, because he enjoys it and I don’t. Now I try to be the one to drive, both to keep my battery running and to keep in the habit of driving, so I don’t become too squeamish about it. But overall, I’m way happier taking the bus than I was driving and dealing with the horrible parking garages.
Barefoot running
This article is one of many I’ve read about barefoot running. (It’s also about other things, but I won’t go into them.) I’m not convinced it’s everything that the fanatics claim it is, but I think it’s worth giving it a shot. When I hit the 1,000 mile mark – which should be less than 2 months away – my reward will be buying a pair of Vibram Five Fingers and give them a try. I’ll start slow and be careful. And even if they turn out to be not for me, they seem like fun shoes to have anyway.
Good running weather
Week 2 of half-marathon training was successfully completed today with a 7-mile run in nearly perfect running weather. High 40′s, light sprinkle – it was lovely. The only downside was that I chose to run in a park that, when it rains a lot, can be entirely under water. It wasn’t entirely under water this time, but there were a lot of puddles and mud to splash through. Fun at first, but kind of a slog after about the 5-mile mark.
And I saw a gorgeous, pure-white heron of some sort. (Or it might have been an egret.) I thought it was a seagull at first as it came in for a landing, but it kept getting bigger and bigger as it approached, and there was no gray on it anywhere. It was a nice little pick-me-up.
Math joke
Two math professors are sitting in a pub. “Isn’t it disgusting”, the first one complains, “how little the general public knows about mathematics?” “Well”, his colleague replies, “you’re perhaps a bit too pessimistic.” “I don’t think so”, the first one replies. “And anyhow, I have to go to the washroom now.” He goes off, and the other professor decides to use this opportunity to play a prank on his colleague. He makes a sign to the pretty, blonde waitress to come over. “When my friend comes back, I’ll wave you over to our table, and I’ll ask you a question. I would like you to answer: x to the third over three. Can you do that?” “Sure.” The girl giggles and repeats several times: “x to the third over three, x to the third over three, x to the third over three…” When the first professor comes back from the washroom, his colleague says: “I still think, you’re way too pessimistic. I’m sure the waitress knows a lot more about mathematics than you imagine.” He makes her come over and asks her: “Can you tell us what the integral of x squared is?” She replies: “x to the third over three.” The other professor’s mouth drops wide open, and his colleague grins smugly when the waitress adds: “…plus C.”
That’s from this site. Some of the jokes are funny, some not so much, but they’re worth a read.
Half-marathon
Today I completed week #1 of a 14-week half-marathon training course. (A half-marathon is 13.1 miles.) I ran 7 miles out in the suburbs of Beaverton/Tigard as my long run for the week, and the weather was quite nice. I’ve been planning on doing this for a few months, so I’m excited to get started! I’ve not yet registered for the half-marathon I intend to run (Race for the Roses) because I want to wait a bit to make sure that I think I can handle it, both schedule-wise and physically. I’ve started a second part-time job this term, plus I’m still doing school full-time, so it’s possible that training could get pushed to the side in favor of homework or socializing. And my knees do occasionally hurt a little bit after longer runs on pavement and/or hills, so I’m going to wait to sign up until my knees have made it through a few long runs.
I am going to register for the Shamrock Run 15K as an intermediate goal. 15K = 9.3 miles = about halfway between a 10K and a half marathon, so it seems like a good stepping stone. Plus I’ve already run 9 miles on the treadmill and my knees handled it okay, so I’m not too worried about them being able to handle it on pavement after a couple of months of training. I did the Shamrock Run 5K last year and it was kind of miserable because of how many people there were. However, I don’t expect there to be nearly as many people running the 15K, so hopefully it will be fun!
Scratch that.
Okay, fine. No Computer Graphics for me. Now I’m taking Network Routing instead. 3rd time’s the charm, maybe? It better be, because it’s almost too late for any more adding and dropping.
A new term
This was an excellent winter break! I got to spend a week in Sunriver with C and his son, which was a lot of fun! After a lovely few weeks of no class, the term has started again. It will be tough for this term to beat last term – I think I learned more last term than I have any other term of school, and all of the classes were fun and had good professors.
This term I’m taking Programming Languages, Computer Graphics, and Counting, Probability and Computing. (That last one is one class: Counting, Probability and Computing.) It looks like it will be a mathier term than usual, which I’m looking forward to.
Programming Languages is one of the 3 required courses for CS grad students, and it looks like it will be a good class with a good professor, but I’m not anticipating it being earth-shaking. We’ll be using Scheme, which I’ve never used before, so that’s good.
Counting, Probability and Computing is already my favorite class ever, although I suppose that could change as the term goes on. It was learning some of this basic stuff that made me decide to minor in math as an undergrad, and I’m really looking forward to going more in-depth. Today we did counting problems, and I had so much fun! How many different ways can you order a total of 6 donuts when there are 3 possible types of donuts? How many different ways can you arrange the letters of the word MATHEMATICS so that every consonant is adjacent to at least one vowel? I know this is super-nerd coming out here, but I can’t wait to do the homework! Squee!
Computer Graphics will probably be the most challenging class. It wasn’t one of the classes I originally registered for. But I discovered earlier this week that the professor who was teaching the other class I originally registered for has no web page and doesn’t respond to e-mails. I might be willing to accept this from, say, a history professor. I would probably be willing to accept one or the other from a CS professor. But both? Since it wasn’t a class I was dying to take, I dropped it and added Computer Graphics instead.
I picked Computer Graphics because it looked the most interesting of the remaining classes I could register for, plus I have absolutely no experience at all in it. I’m using my time in grad school at least partly to try to get a feel for many different areas of CS (while still taking several courses focusing on a couple of specific areas), and this seemed like a good way to broaden my horizons. I had a humbling experience though: I totally bombed the math prerequisite quiz! To be fair, most of it was covering things I haven’t used since I took Linear Algebra in 2003 (maybe 2004?), and some I hadn’t even used since geometry in high school! Determinant of a matrix? Nope. Law of cosines? Nope. Convert from degrees to radians? Nope. I knew all of this before, and was very proficient at it, but 6-10 years of no use tends to make one forget. I’ve been reviewing like crazy and I’m sure I’ll be fine, but it will be challenging!
