blackberry wordpress.

Guess where I’m updating my blog from? My blackberry! It’s a dream come true that prob should have come true a while ago. Thx, tho, wordpress.

So what’s been up? Out of school, looking for work, looking to get out of my father’s house. More on this later, but one thing deserves a post now: I haven’t updated this in a while, but I promise to be more consistant and more post-y.

I don’t know who still reads this, but if you are now, congradulations. You passed the test.

Typed on a bberry. Thumbs are now sore.

Annoyed.

I spent last quarter in a living hell. 

Commutative algbera, as you no doubt have heard me mention, consumed my entire life.  I spent countless hours [actually, somewhere around 135 hours.  15 times 9 is a good estimate, though 15 hours a week is somewhat of an underestimate.] doing the homework and studying for this class.  I legit enjoyed some of the topics, but there was just *so much* that it was difficult to remember it all.

Regardless, during the final, my meds didn’t work [well.  after taking them.] and so I panicked for the first 30 minutes of the test.  I got up and walked around the halls a bit to calm down.  Everything was just really blurry and I thought I was going to pass out.  Have a heart attack.  etc.  Just read any panic attack account, you’ll get the gist.

Anyhow, after a while, I sat down and was determined to finish the test.  My meds started to kick in and I began to feel a bit better, but I still tasted blood, kept thinking my nose was bleeding, and thought my heart would rip out of my chest.

Despite this, I finished the exam and handed it in.  In retrospect, the questions were easy and I honestly thought I got all of them.

Now, I almost never look at my grades, but my good math buddy brk told me that she’d gotten an A, and we were doing about even.  So I figured, hey, B+ at worst.

Then I looked at my grades and saw that I had gotten a D.

Literally, my lowest grade ever.  On a class that I spent an entire quarter avoiding social interactions, endangering my mental health, and pulling more all-nighters than I can remember at this point.

What happened?  I bombed the final.

My final answers were totally off the mark, according to the prof, and maybe they were.  I don’t remember exactly what I put.  Regardless, the final was 60% of the grade.  So, getting 10% of the total grade on the final gives me a max of 50% in the class.  Hence the D.

I’m kind of upset, because this essentially ruins my chance of getting into any medium-level graduate school.  And I didn’t even get into any medium-level graduate school when I didn’t have a D on my transcript.

It’s just bothersome, because the class was so heavy on the homework, and yet so much of the grade was based on the final.  This is how many of my classes turn out.  I get an average grade not because of the homeworks or the midterm, but I completely bomb the final. 

Maybe I’m not made out for graduate school, where homework is minimal and the test is everything.  It’s kind of unfair to make mathematics a subject where one can only become good at it if they aren’t terrible test takers.

And at this point, I have to step back and say that I honestly didn’t feel before that people were good or bad test takers — you either know it or you don’t.  Of course, this depends on if the test taker can focus on the test when it is presented to him. 

I know I work better when there’s no stress attached to the assignment.  But I’m sure a lot of other kids are in exactly the same boat, and they did just fine on the final.  Which begs the question: do I really know the material?  Or do I just think I do? 

I’m not sure, but, of course, the latter is more dangerous than the former in mathematics.  Regardless, as Ohio has yet to get back to me, I feel like I’m going to be spending a year doing absolutely nothing but working and wishing I were taking classes, and then begging graduate schools to take me on.

Slacker vs. Pandora.

This is a quick update before I leave to start studying for my cRaZy commutative algebra final tomorrow — my last final, and the last time I have to think about commutative algebra for at least a week.

So, on my blackberry curve, I’ve been using slacker radio for a while.  I usually turn it on when I’m in the shower or if my ipod runs out of batteries, since I don’t like wasting the battery on my bberry.  Up until now, I’ve had it because, well, there were absolutely no alternatives that measured up.  There was that really crappy “listen to the radio” program that gives you a static-filled choppy broadcast of some local stations, but that really wasn’t doing it for me.  The great thing about slacker was that you could make your own stations to listen to — within reason.

A lot of the artists I put in returned no results, which is fine — I can’t expect everyone to stay up on all music all the time.  In addition, you can only have stations that featured artists similar to one artist.  As in, my Okkervil River station will feature Of Montreal and NMHotel, but it’s not that varied as far as artists go.  If I want to hear something a little different, I have to make an entirely new station.  And this is fine, because it holds up to 10 recent stations if you have the free version (and why would you ever get the paid version?  the only difference is less commercials, and, honestly, I’ve never actually heard one of the commercials on slacker.) but it’s annoying to switch back and forth.  I’m not sure if this is just my bb or if it’s everyones, but there’s a significant lag between choosing anything on slacker and going between menus.

Turning it off is also annoying, since you have to go through this “do you want the paid version?” screen, and you need to click, “naw.”  Now the most annoying thing in the world, but after seeing it 50 some times, you feel like you’re talking to your psycho ex or something: “NO, I don’t WANT the paid version.  Leave me alone!”

But, like I said, it’s the best that was out there.

Until.

Pandora radio got a bb app.

It’s no secret that I like pandora.  They know virtually every artist I throw at them, they allow you to create custom stations by inputting virtually any number of artists into a “station” which uses some crazy algorithms to figure out what music is similar to at least one of the things you picked.  This is great, since sometimes I just want something that sounds folk-y, so I pick my folk mix, but other times I want something that’s very similar to, say, Mward.  So I can make an Mward station and not add anything else to it.

To give an analogy, Slacker radio lets you make an ice cream sundae and have ONE topping.  Pandora radio lets you make an ice cream sundae and have ANY NUMBER OF TOPPINGS YOU WANT. 

And, pandora doesn’t ask you to pay for it.  You can customize your stations on the website, and it’ll transfer right over to your bb.  And if you’re not on your bb, you can download their (albeit somewhat clunky) desktop app and listen to it from your desktop, or simply listen to it from your browser window.

Maybe I’m missing something.  More music, more customizability, quicker, smoother, better access to the music — why the hell would anyone choose slacker over pandora?

Oh.  If you have T-mobile.  Sorry, guys.

But really, is there something I’m missing here?  Maybe there’s some hidden terms in pandora that make me their bitch? 

But either way, I’m keeping pandora.  Sorry, Slacker, but I like my Bright Eyes mixed with a little Ting Tings.

Botanists.

Well, the Westboro Baptist Church came to campus, and I took some pictures.  I’ll post’em later, since I really ought to be studying. 

Status: Studying for Functional on Tuesday.  0 of 3 finals done. 

I started reading that Roger Penrose book —what’s it called?  The Road to Reality?  Yeah.  It’s alright so far.  It’s kind of neat, since it summarizes a bunch’a stuff I was working on this year.  But I don’t know how good it’ll stay when I get going past the first 100 pgs. 

Next quarter is algebraic number theory, algebraic curves, diffimanifolds (MAYBE.) and sittin’ in on Alg Topology.  V excited. 

I got the g + pollack diffi-topology book.  It had “extensive notes” as advertised.  I hate other people’s notes, so I erased them.  All 222 pages of them.  It took me 6 hours.  But really, it was worth it? 

At least I have a “new” copy now.  That’s some 40 years old. 

Wow.  You know, I didn’t even think of that.  It’s from 1974, I think, which was something like 35 years ago.  Assuming the person who took those notes was an undergraduate about my age (let’s say 21.  i’m old.) which is reasonable because they kept noting what “injective” meant in the margin (?), and we tally this up — it means that this person is something like 56 years old now.  And I’m guessing the person who owned it didn’t have any kids who wanted to be mathematicians.  That’s kind of sad.

If my kids wanted to do anything but math, I’d lock them in the basement.

Jus’ joshin’.  They can do whatever they want.  So long as it’s not gender studies, art, music, or philosophy.  Or that kind of econ where you only need to take calculus.

 

Or botany.  Oh, lord, help them if they become botanists.

Not excited.

To say that I hate this quarter would be a vast understatement.  As vast as the oceans are…vast.

It’s not just that (as shown in this picture) I have to “wake up early” for functional after spending “all night” on my commutative problem set just so that I can “go to class” and then “go home and do my commutative homework some more”.  Note the goatee thing I have going on.  Don’t worry, I’m shaving the mustache part today.  I don’t want to wind up working at geek squad.

No, it’s not just that.  It’s also that I’ve disliked most of my classes for the last two quarters; the exception is commutative algebra, which I have a love-hate relationship with.  Nothing has that pizzaz like Algbera did, or like Algebraic Topology did, or like Topology did.

Hopefully, sitting in on algebraic topology this spring and doing (ugh.) algebraic number theory and (ugh?) algebraic curves will be fun.  I need to pick a third class, though.  And I’m not waking up at 9am for diffimanifolds.  F that.

I got my new lock.  That was speedy!  Unfortunately, it not only was the wrong lock (I got a $20 kryptonite “original series” i guess lock, and they sent me a $37 “second series” model.  And charged me $37, too.) but I also didn’t get my little speedometer thing.  It was $5, people.  Come on.  Sometimes I like knowing how fast I go.

In other recent purchases, I had built up enough credit to pay for more than half of my cello.  So, I got it.  Yeah.  I bought it.  It’s mine now.  I, mysteriously, got $1k to spend on, you know, whatever, so I spent about half of it on my cello and I’m going to spend the other half to pay off my credit card debt.

Oh, come on, people, I’m not a spend-a-holic.  I put groceries on my credit card.

That picture is really creeping me out.  I’m not gonna put any more pictures of me on this blog, since it just frightens me to look at them.

The last few days, I’ve been sort of listening in the background to people like Jordan Maxwell et al (if you don’t know who they are, they’re just some loony conspiracy theorists.) and then those guys who did the zeitgeist video debunking all of those people.  It’s like crazies fighting crazies, and I’ve got a front-row youtube seat.  But, I have to admit, it really gets me in the mood to study egyptian and assyrian again.

In case you’re wondering, the form of the videos usually follows something like this:

Modest claim, factual evidence that I learned in class, some more factual evidence, logical leap of faith, crazies.

but sometimes they leave out the actual facts.

Because of this, I started looking at my old books: lacan, derrida, deleuze, nietz, hegel, and all the rest.  I kind of miss them.  I don’t know.   I mean, it’s great to study mathematics, but I started studying it because I loved it.  If I don’t love what I’m doing, then why am I doing it?  So whenever I start to hate mathematics [usually around 6am with half-way-done commutative homework] I start to look for other partners.  Usually, I fall back on my ex-lovers: psychoanalysis, linguistics, developmental psych, dead languages, and, of course, sexual studies.

Instead, I took a new route this time: I decided to ignore my craving for crazy psychoanalysis, and started to do flashcards on byki again.  I don’t know if you guys know about this thing, but it’s a language community that works with a [free limited] desktop application that uses flashcards to teach you useful phrases for dozens of languages.  For example, I’m doing polish.  Nice.

Anyhow, so I learned that they had a new iphone application.  Here’s where I become insanely jealous and search for a blackberry app.  There is none.  BUT HOW COOL WOULD IT BE, RIGHT?  I mean, business men have blackberries, and they go all over the world.  WHY WOULDN’T BYKI DO THIS FOR US.  ugh.  byki, you disappoint me.

So, I go over to livemocha, my second favorite place to go for language learning.  Think of it as the myspace of learning languages.  Actually, let me stop this.  I sound like a commercial.

My point was…uh.  Oh.  I get bored a lot.  And I’m hating my 4th year, which is contrary to what I thought would happen: I took all my core classes first, because I figured I could take whatever I wanted 4th year.  Turns out, “what I want to take” is basically whatever three classes that are in the math department which aren’t horrible.

Plus logic, discrete, algorithms, so I can get a BA.

Oh, and math majors I know from other schools who like bragging to me?  If you haven’t taken topology or algebra, I don’t give a shit if you’re graduating with honors.  That’s like being a highschooler who can read picture books SO MUCH BETTER than a 4 year old.  Pls learn galois theory and get back to me, thx.

And, as always, let’s end on a good note.

golden pos.

He did other stuff too.

So, today was a great day.

I got my bike lock off after trying to pry it off for FOR-EV-ER. 

I officially hit 5000 songs on itunes.

I cried myself awake.

 

jk.  But I prob will.  So much homework left to do!

Waking up drunk, makes me happy…

So, there I was, 9am, snow gathering around my feet with my dremel in one hand and a hammer in the other hand.  I didn’t wanna get sparks in my eyes.

I didn’t get my lock off my bike yet, and I’m sort of worried someone else will finish the job and steal my bike.  But, really, who would want my bike?  That’s kind of ridiculous.

I just woke up.  I feel sick.  I wanted to shower, but my roommate is in the bathroom.  I still have to do my commutative algebra homework, but I think I might try to get an extension on it.

How does everyone like this new picture thing on my blog?  I can upload pictures from my blackberry to flickr, and then actually post them from there.  I think it’s kind of a cute idea, and my blog was certainly lacking that “pics or it didn’t happen” appeal before.

Things to do:

1. finish dremeling off my bike lock.

2. commutative algebra.

3. functional analysis [tuesday due date.]

4. pay gas bill, make sure credit card is usable.

5. pay actual rent.

6. post more.

Oh, ps, I don’t know if all ya’ll know, but I’m on twitter now: just look up jsal13.  I tweet regularly, so, if you do too, add me.

There’s nothing like productivity.

So, now, I’m posting from the windows live writer beta.  I’ve been fooling around with my blackberry a lot, and I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life.

Oh, right, math.

Well, right now, math is killing me and I don’t even want to think about it because I’m so stressed out about it right now.  It makes my neck tingle and it makes my tongue taste blood.  Ew, right?  Oh,

So.  This week was exceptionally strange for me.  For whatever reason (and sorry for saying this, since I know any readers will begin doing it after I say it,) I couldn’t stop manually breathing.  Every minute of the day, I had to remember to breathe in and breathe out, and I kept gasping because I kept getting it wrong.  I kept trying to hold my breath and think of other things — I figured my body would just readjust, but it didn’t.

So, what did I do?  I just waited it out.  I couldn’t sleep for two nights because I kept waking up gasping and scary stuff like that, so I basically said on the second day that I was tired of this shit: I took a whole 1mg of Ativan [which is 4x more than I usually take.  I don’t need very might.] and that didn’t work so well, so I took an atenolol.  That worked a little better, but I was still thinking about it, so I started to just drink.  I mixed 2 parts vodka with 1 part lemon juice and a bunch of sugar, and it was a really great “russian lemonade”, I guess.  If that’s the name for it.  It probably isn’t, but I like it.

So, anyway, now I’m sort of worried because I’m really not that good at math.  No, that’s not me being, you know, down on myself — I find myself actually not being able to do problems and not being able to remember theorems and things that I used to be able to.  It might be because I really don’t care too much about the topics we’re doing, but I have no idea.  Regardless, these past two quarters have just made me want to die.  Discrete math was a big waste of time, Logic was horrible and I hated it, Rep theory was the biggest waste of time ever: usually after failing horribly at a class, I want to learn it just to prove to myself that I can, but that class ruined representations for me.  This quarter, algorithms is “okay” fun, but it’s nothing amazing, and I have a feeling I’ll do horribly on the final and fail even though I’ve done okay in the class.  I’m actually getting really tired of this habit of doing okay in the class, and then doing terrible on the midterm and final and then averaging a low B or something in the class.  Homework essentially counts for nothing, but I‘ve completely sacrificed my social life and mental health for it.  So, needless to say, I’m sort of pissed at the “system”. 

Oh, but I’m also in functional.  Nominally, I guess.  Because I’ve gone, I think, a total of 3 times, and once was the first class, once was for the midterm, and once was that one day where I stayed up all night and couldn’t get out of the room after turning in my homework, because the teacher came in.  I hate.  hate.  hate.  hate that class.  And it bothers me more, because I don’t even know what to expect on the tests: the midterm included definitions and some random-ass problems that I wasn’t really prepared for.  My bad.  But I’d much rather fail than sit through it.  That must say something about me.

Commutative Algebra.  I spent 17+ hours last week on the homework.  This class literally takes up all of my time.  I sometimes don’t go to other classes because I’m too tired from doing work in this class.

I don’t know if it’s worth it.  I mean, it’s hard, but are commutative rings really that important?  I don’t know why I think the topic is so cool, but it definitely is.  This will probably be one of the two classes that kicked my ass, but that I loved.

But, that being said: who am I hanging out with?  Jon, Anna…and that’s about it.  I don’t go out anymore; just to starbucks.  It’s too cold.  I kind of miss having a whole bunch of friends, but if I did now, I’d probably have to ditch them all the time for commutative algebra anyway. 

I haven’t gotten into any grad schools yet.  If I don’t, I don’t care.  I think I need some time off of math.

I broke the key off in my bike.  You’d think that someone who’s so into locks wouldn’t do that, right?  But, I did.  But I need my bike.  So, I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do.  I guess, tomorrow, I’ll just dremel off the lock and figure out some other kind of locking deal. 

Spring quarter is coming up.  March 8th is when the days get long again.  According to the weather reports, it’s going to be in the 40’s around then, but rainy. 

I’m sort of glad I got my anxious week out of the way now.  It usually falls on finals week.  So maybe I’ll be fine then. 

I don’t know what I’m gonna do.  Maybe I’ll have a fling in spring.  Maybe I’ll brawl in fall.  Maybe summer’ll be a bummer.

r-r-r-right.

Sbux Bathrooms!

What’s the difference between the men’s room and the women’s room at starbucks? Mysterious crates.

Bberry.

This is kind of a test. I’m posting from my blackberry.