Current Events

Currently reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I got this from paperbackswap a while ago and have been meaning to read it; now I've finally started and dug in about 100 pages so far. It's a bit of a head trip, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it'll take me.

Currently playing: Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 (an excellent game for those of you who love old-school console RPGs); I've also recently started Dragon Quest V for the Super Nintendo (again) on my computer.

Currently playing: Also playing lots of board games. I got Nomeda the Swiss Map expansion for Ticket to Ride: Europe for Christmas, and she got me Bohnanza. Aside from that, we've also been digging into our game library and playing some of our other games while I'm on vacation.

Currently studying: Analysis and Algebra for the qualifying exams in January. I'm not too worried, but I'll still need to study - I've started looking at previous years' qualifying exams.

Currently planning on studying: Algebra 2, Topology 1, and a Graph Theory reading course in the Spring term. Algebra I expect will go quite well, and hopefully it won't be too difficult to keep up with 3 classes and my TA duties.

Currently located: At my in-laws' place for New Years. We'll be venturing out into the mall world this morning so that Nomeda can get a trim and we can have fun otherwise.

Happy New Year's everyone!

My coworkers are lamenting that I will be leaving at the end of July to go back to school and are (jokingly) trying to convince me that I want to stay. Here is an excerpt from my coworker's email to me the other day:

Don’t you know the saying,

Those who cant,

Teach

Those who cant teach teach Gym

Those who cant teach Gym spend endless hours explaining esoteric mathematical theorems to people who in the end are really only pretending to understand and are actually thinking about what they are going to have for dinner.

Fun with Lazorz

I discovered a fun puzzle thanks to puzzlinks.com: http://www.gamingdelight.com/games/laserlogic.php

Each round has a grid with some lasers and targets of various colors, and you have some mirrors, prisms, and filters at your disposal. The goal is to hit each target with the right color(s) of light. I'm currently on puzzle 16, and it's starting to get very interesting. Highly recommended!

Password Rant

Everywhere you go, you read articles about using strong passwords. Make them long; mix numbers, letters, and symbols; avoid dictionary words. I generally abide by this. I use a password scheme that's easy to remember and generates a strong password for each of my many many accounts (while keeping the passwords distinct enough that it's not a simple matter to crack my other passwords based on just one of them).

But sometimes, the website fights your attempt at creating strong passwords by not allowing you to use nonalphanumeric characters. This annoys the snot out of me. As a result, I need to have a slightly altered password scheme for those special sites that won't let me use esoteric characters such as the hypen. What is so hard about allowing symbols? I'm not asking for the ability to make my password šáüê♣τ - but come on people.

Weird foreign kaleidoscope scientists

Spelling tip of the day: 'i' before 'e', except in the alphabet.

The Wheel Turns

I recently re-read Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. I first read it (as well as four other books in the series) over the summer after 7th grade. I remembered liking it a decade ago, so I decided to give it a try again.

Wow. I still love it. The beginning is a little cliché - farm boy leads a sheltered life, something big happens, and he goes to explore the world - but in a way that makes it feel like it started the cliché. The world is so well-detailed, rich and full of history. And the best part is that after finishing the 800 page book, my first thought was "I want to read the next one."

Most of my paperback purchases are made at thrift stores, where I can find books for 50 cents. This works great for building my collection, but not so well when I want to find a particular book. So I decided to give PaperBackSwap.com a try, listed 9 books, and now I have The Great Hunt on its way.

That's one thing I will miss when I become a grad student - copious time for reading. Now, since I sometimes commute from Dedham to Cambridge and vice versa, I get about 4 quality hours a week of reading time. Once I put in the time to actually get into a book, I usually start making some time other than commute time to read it, but it sometimes just takes me a while to get over that initial hurdle.

Genesis

Axiom of Ability: I am capable of maintaining this blog.

Axiom of Interest: I would enjoy maintaining this blog.

Axiom of Happiness: If I would enjoy x and if I am capable of x, then I will do x.

Theorem: I will maintain this blog.

Welcome to my hopefully-not-ill-fated blog! Where I will explore math, games, poetry, and sentence fragments like this one. I'm not sure where precisely my ramblings will take me, but that's part of the fun!