Quik Life Update.

Okay, quick life update. I still hate my life, my father is still moving my shit into random places (I still cannot find a whole two boxes of books. I have no idea where they are, and I’ve been looking for a few days.) but at least I have a job now.

Yes. Barely. I am a tutor. I still have virtually no hours. I still cannot seem to get another job. It’s really awful. At this point, I’m just trying to get enough money up to pay for applications for grad school. So depressing.

So what am I doing for “fun”? I’ve been doing python for a while, and that’s a whole lot of fun. I’m currently sort of working on graphical user interfaces so that not all of my programs will be DOS-text-based deals. I’ve also started to read through a bunch of those MIT open course things. I’m doing some LISP programming one, where the videos are from 1986. Cute.

I’m mainly starting on LISP, because it’s a prereq to doing the artificial intelligence open class. And that sounded exciting! I’m “working my way up” to that. Least exciting life ever.

Other than that? I’m getting really tired of going to starbucks every day to study, but I can’t study with the TV blasting downstairs, and I don’t want to even really go by my dad.

I really just need to apply to grad school. I should just take a loan out and go over to chicago and then get a job there.

Currently playing: Anno 1440, which is actually very good! Fun game. Fun times.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Long time, no C.

Alright, so, I haven’t updated in forever.  So what. 

 

I really haven’t done much.  I’m stuck at my father’s house until such a time when I can afford to move into some kind of swanky apartment.  Or regular apartment.  Or someone’s crappy basement.  Really, anything to get out of here.

Living with my father is like playing hide and seek constantly.  My things are never where I leave them, and he is cleaning and moving things around constantly.  I have no idea where any of my things are, ever.  It gets confusing and annoying when I’m looking for my car keys and I’ve got 4 minutes until work starts.

I have a job now.  Yes.  My first official job.  The neighborhood schools program I never count as a job because it was really just sort of me walking around and helping people in a school.  It felt just like being a helpful kid who skips classes in low-income schools.  I loved it.  This new job, which I will simply call “my tutoring job” is at a local but fairly successful SAT and general tutoring place.  Really, you have to be somewhat “in the money” to send your kids here — and my pay is pretty okay, to match.  It really is a fun job, and I love doing it.  It’s fantastic to see the “ah-ha” moments on those kids’ faces.  I generally tutor SAT math,  but so far all it’s been is Algebra and some factoring. 

Two things that disappoint me about this job:

1.  The hours.  Yeah.  I had something like 3 students this week, which amounts to 1.5 + 2 + 2 = 5.5 hours.  Not very many.  I may have to get another job just to be able to continue working at this job.

2.  That I cannot tutor anything higher than Algebra II.  Yeah.  Conics and such.  No calculus, ever.  It’s really upsetting, since I think I might lose my edge if I keep focusing on little things.  I’m trying to find people who need calculus help, though — I really don’t even care about the money.  I just want to derive, damnit. 

 

I’ve been learning Python via the ProjectEuler problems.  I highly recommend them.  So far, I’m not the BEST python programmer in the world, but I’m certainly not the worst.  I’ve only been programming in it for about 3 or so weeks, but I feel like I’ve made huge leaps and bounds.  For example, my first primality checking program took, no joke, about 12 seconds for a 9 digit number.  My new primality checking program takes around 0.5 seconds for a 15 digit number.  So I’m pret excited, but I know there’s always room for improvement.  I’m kind of also excited because I really didn’t want to learn C, and python seems just-as-useful for what I need it for.

I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.  This is the “personal” part of my “personal” blog.  I just get really antsy and upset when I think people are upset with me.  I don’t really want to do anything but go back to school.  Or hang out with new people.  Or make new friends.  I really enjoy my old friends, but it’s difficult making the transition from uchicago back home.  Yes.  I will be pretentious for a moment:

No one here gives a shit about any lofty culture-y shit.  It’s really bringing me down, man.

I never bring up mathematics here, EVER.  God forbid.  I even learned econ in part so that I could discuss it with people around here.  No go.  The closest I get is those dbag tech boys who love jerking off to their iphones.

Sorry, guys.  I didn’t mean that.  Really.

I shouldn’t be so critical, but I just get so upset when I see my friends and people I know just sort of coasting along in their lives; it depresses me that I’ve now become one of them.  I’m no longer an academic, I’m no longer a mathematician.  I don’t even know if I could do it anymore; if you gave me a topology exam, I don’t know if I could pass.  And that makes me really upset. 

 

Basically, if I were 15 and this were livejournal, my “mood” would be “lonely” and “upset”.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on love-interests.  There are none.  At least in chicago there were girls my age.  Where are the girls my age here?  Elsewhere.  I drove to the mall, and that was an achievement for me.  I got short of breath and almost had to pull over.  I don’t know why my body does this kind of thing to me.

Okay, enough of this personal crap.  In less depressing news, I got two new awesome-ass suits, and I look fab in them.  I get to dress up for work, which is SO MUCH FUN.  It would be more fun if, you know, boys had all the fun stuff girls had, but.  You know.  I make do with what I have.

But really.  I don’t know who reads this anymore.  So, if you do, feel free to talk to me.  The majority of the time I’m wallowing in my own tears and hunger for human contact.  I really ought to get out of new jersey and make that long, desperate trek to Chicago.

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.