ThePanda

It is time to take a break from the math, even if I take a short one, not as long as the one I took yesterday when I spent far too many hours just hanging around SCE, talking to her, going to the Gate, and talking to her some more. This was like the first time I had met her since the end of summer, and post-meeting her brother’s friend and other people we both happened to know, we kind of had stuff to discuss, plus she had just moved into Pembroke, and did not know of all the many wonders this place has, the Gate being one of the big ones, so that was a longish night of talking, while sitting in front of the quiet dorm, who’s outside was not very quite, and running into both HSS dressed in shorts and jackets, a reminiscence from days gone by, think 4^th or 5^th grade, and a drunk, happy, singing person who was not singing in English, was going into the quiet dorm, and did not look very quiet. We also spoke about her work in Haskell, and literal Haskell, and it sounded kind of cool, and I finally have an answer to my dilemma of whether to use Hugs98 or GHC, and it makes some sense, so I guess I can try learning Haskell once we get to winter break, thanksgiving or whenever I have time next.

Classes, oh classes, I am not taking cryptography, mostly because it coincides with Linear Algebra, which I have been, and plan to attend all of, even though I am supposed to grade it. So I am still stuck on deciding between CS051, CS031, and MA126, each of which have their own unique reasons for why they should be taken, and reasons why the shouldn’t, and those reasons are so veritably different, that I could never really make a table and solve this problem, most of this problem does not seem to be tractable, which is OK I guess, so currently I have no less than 3 add/drop forms lying in my Analysis book, and am waiting for an opportunity to decide on which I want and hand one of them in, is amusing in my opinion. I really should have taken the Combinatorial Optimization course I picked up after dropping crypto, that might have helped me compute a solution to this problem, but well whoever came up with course timings for that particular course, wasn’t thinking about optimizing times so that more people could attend, it cuts into no less than two of my classes, I am not going to drop two other classes I was sure of taking, only so I could take a course with easter bunnies. But apart from that classes are quite fun, topology is great and the abstract class of the semester, 113, which I shall not refer to as anything other than 113 for fear of inciting gasps, is a lot more fun than I imagined, so far anyways, it’s a lot like real analysis which I remember having good time with. Differential Geometry has so far been a lot more computational than I expected, and I am not sure it gets any less computational, though it seems to be pretty fun. The people in 106 however scare me slightly, and while thanks to JKD I have a semi study group like thing going for 113, have none of that for topology or diff geometry, and I have a feeling I am missing stuff in topology, if only because homeworks are rare, and though he said all of the stuff was from chapter 1 of the book, there seems to be little correlation, I might make an effort to read up on all of it once I have the time, which might or might not be soon. German, hmm German, I am not sure I am a big fan of the immersion method of teaching I am being subjected to, I understand most (though nowhere near all) of what is spoken about in class, but then I walk out, and I am awfully confused about the pronunciation and the meanings and things, and I don’t know, I feel like I am just guessing at meanings, most of the time anyways, which may be what the method is all about but it seems somewhat scary.

Must also think about shifting to a meal plan with lower meals a day next year, if only because I don’t seem to be using anywhere near 3 a day, missing lunch most days because of the weird time my German class is at, and being scared of the long lines at the Ratty which sort of don’t allow me to get in and out and still have a comfortably long gap between lunch and class, it seems as if the only time I have been to one of the dining services place for lunch in the last few days was on the day of opening convocation when classes went out early.

I am supposed to go through pre-written code for my research, and somehow the thought of doing so makes me shudder, I am looking for approximations in comparisons, and I don’t know, I am not a big fan of reading pre-written code, I need to go through one of those books about reading code, sans which I just need to believe that reading code has good things.

Oh and for all those who didn’t know this, TV programs are actually copyrighted, and downloading one of those might annoy certain people. I was asked about this while working the phones today, I was kind of amused by the entire incident, which of course reminds me I should find out whether I can write about the funny things I run across at work, and post them here, they are really funny, and sometimes I just get annoyed enough to send weird, humorous e-mails, which are pretty much hidden references to you are stupid. I should not, especially since I get paid for doing this, and they give us these things called audit logs where we can write up things which annoy or amuse us. I don’t think I have ever really used the audit log, except perhaps to write comments on water on the keyboard.

Also what’s up with Apple not allowing people to download Apple X11 1.1 from their servers, rather insisting that people get it from the install CD, where it isn’t selected by default, it is bloody annoying to try and find someone X11 1.1 only so they can run Matlab, and be forced to tell them to dig up their install CDs, which a lot of them don’t remember anything about, and have them install it from an MPKG there.

I also just realized this is beginning to sound like an audit log, and currently I am really happy about things, and the world, the way it currently is, sure a few replies to a few e-mails I sent out earlier, and a little bit of sushi would make it better, but right now, or more precisely last night, the world was dang near perfect, good job world.

Ze Panda

PS: I was done with this entry, but the following things needed to be noted. a. TeX = awesome. b. people at Cargo, the local hiking/outdoor store which I seem to frequent more than I should = awesome. c. C and interrupts != awesome. d. I just had a lot of chocolate, and some sushi

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 2:19 pm and is filed under article, meaningful labor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.