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.

Just two more sections.

I’ve been fiddling around with my blackberry, trying to learn polish, trying to keep up in my schoolwork, and trying desperately to find meaning in life (lol, jk) and so, maybe, I’ve neglected you.

Oh, who am I kidding.  Come here, you.  Give me a hug.  I’ve missed you.

I have two sections left on my math studying.  It’s functional analysis, so I’ve already done it, but it never hurts to look over things before an exam.  The exam, of course, is in a little under 4 hours.  I hate 9am classes.

What’s worse, though, is that my sleep schedule is all f’d up.  I’m staying awake all night and I’m sleeping all day.  How did this happen, you ask?  Commutative Algebra.  And being generally lazy.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to actually stay up.  But, you know how I do.

Maybe I haven’t been doing things like I should because it’s been just way too cold to think about anything like, you know, going out to see friends, working, walking around, shopping for food, etc.  It’s going to be 28 degrees today, which is a high for this week, so maybe I’ll go to the store.  It’ll only be a LITTLE below freezing.  Ugh.

Now, as you all know, I like to keep on the cutting edge of things.  I have a twitter now [jsal13], and also am trying to get a qik for my blackberry-adventures.  But, since I’ve gotten my blackberry, I’ve had a lot of time to sort of, you know, just sit places and think.  Unfortunately, these thoughts are limited to 160 characters, because of twitter’s limits!  I was considering getting a blog which was purely for me to blog about my life from my blackberry.  This would obviously not be as extensive as this blog, but perhaps I wouldn’t ramble so much.

Why should you care?

I’m a middle-class white bi male on medication for anxiety at a university studying math.  What more could you want from a person?

What would be a bit cooler about the new blog would be this: my blackberry has a camera, so I would be able to upload pictures straight from my bb to the new bbblog.  or bbb for short.  That would be a cool name for blackberry blogs.  BBB’s.  TripB’s.  3B’s.  B^3s.  BeeCubes.

B Cubes.

Anyway, I’m trying to get a flickr account and figure out a way to get some sort of app that uploads them directly from my bb, so when I figure that out, I’ll give you guys a holla.

I’d also sort of be curious to see who still reads this blog.  Surprisingly, I’m still averaging about 5 – 6 hits a day, even when I haven’t been updating so much.  I know some of you have this rss’d, and I appreciate that!  For those of you not in the “know”, rss feeds (really simple syndication) can be read from things called “feed readers”.

Google has one, Feeddemon is the one I use, there’s a bunch more.  Basically, it’s a one-stop-shop for all the sorts of news that you like that you read every day anyway.  Do you find yourself clicking cnn.com, npr.com, porn.com, etc., constantly?  You may want to check this out if you haven’t already.

Alright.  I don’t think I’ll be updating for a little while, since I need to spend this weekend catching up on my finances so I don’t go broke, and figuring out the gas situation [oh!  stay tuned for that, it's going to be fun.] and also, I NEED TO KEEP APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOLS.

Ugh.  Life!

Comcast.

About a week ago, I think on thursday, our modem stopped working so great.  So on Friday, I called comcast to see if there was a problem.  After waiting ~15 minutes and speaking to someone (I think her name was Shanelle.) who was obviously not qualified for a tech job, she told me to wait until the morning and call up billing.  So I did.  After ~15 minutes, billing said there’s nothing they could do because it wasn’t a billing problem.  So they transfered me to another person who clearly had no idea what she was doing.

So, she told me that she’d schedule an appointment for a tech to come over on Sunday, the following day.  So, I said okay and hung up.

The next day, no tech.  All day.  So I called back and ~20 minutes later, I got some guy who told me that my account was blank — some tech had probably erased it, and they probably also forgot to put my appointment down or my appointment was canceled because of it.  So I asked him if there was anything he could do.  Yes, he said: schedule an appointment.

The only apt was on Wednesday, so I said okay.  It was 10 – 1, which would mean that I’d have to stay home and miss class.  I said okay.

On Wednesday, 9:30, I got a call.  I didn’t get there in time, so I had to call back.  Comcast.

~20 minutes later, I got to someone and asked what they called for.  Apparently, this was some sort of wake-up call to see if I was home; since I didn’t answer, the tech was told to skip my house.  Again, note that this was before my scheduled appointment.  I asked the woman if there was anything I could do.  She said, yes; schedule another appointment.

So she said, how about tomorrow at 10 – 1?  I said okay.  Fine.

So I slept with the phone next to my ear so that I could get it.  It rings at 11:00.  I grab it.

“Hello?  Hello?!”  I scream into the phone.  Silence.

No one is on the other end.  It disconnects.  I frantically call comcast back.  ~15 minutes later, I’m talking to this chummy guy who is telling me that sometimes comcast will call one day ahead of time to make sure that the individual is home for the following day — and, in fact, my appointment was scheduled for Friday, so this was probably my pre-wakeup call.

I said, “what?  Friday?  No, thusday.”

“No, I’m checking the appointment book.  Friday at 10 – 1.  I’ll see if I can get you anything sooner.  [...]  Nope, Friday.  Should I schedule you for Friday?”

I was confused.  Wasn’t I already scheduled for Friday?

“Sure.”  I said.

“Make sure you pick up the phone when we call, otherwise we’ll skip over you.”

“Thanks.”  I said, and hung up.

Now it has been one week without internet.  It’s not too big of a deal, but I have graduate applications to do, and on a shotty internet connection, they’re a pain.  I’d go to the library, but it’s freezing outside and I frankly like to stay around in my pj’s.

So what the fuck am I paying comcast $60 a month for if this shit is going to keep happening?  This is a new modem that the guy installed less than 6 months ago.  It’s annoying, but I know people probably have tons of worse comcast stories.  It just annoys me that I need to take off from class three days in a row because comcast can’t get their shit together.

Translator.

I cannot express enough gratitude towards the individuals who made Nice Translator possible.  It has made Polish go a lot smoother.

Oh, I don’t know if I updated on this, but I’m trying to learn Polish.  Yeah, I know, no one speaks it.  Yeah, I know, it’s basically useless.  But I think it’s really pretty and I like it, so that’s enough for me.

Case in point, yesterday, I was going through a pdf of Mazur [which, I hear, is one of the standard introductory texts.  I don't know how true this is --- I don't even know what we use here at the UofC.  I'm just going by what people say on the internet.  you know.] and I got to the word: tutaj.  It wasn’t in the introduction part, and it wasn’t in the first chapter part, and I wasn’t about to go to the back of the book to look that crap up — I was stuck, in a manner of speaking.  So I skipped over it and went to bed.  This morning, I found nice translator, and the first sentence on the bar is, “Just start typing here…” which was translated to polish below automatically [after choosing "polish".] as a bunch of stuff and then the mysterious word, “tutaj”.  So.  Tutaj means “here”.

In addition, Nice Translator makes it so that you can translate into more than one language at once.  This may seem sort of unimportant for the normal, everyday language enthusiast, and perhaps more of a tool for those who have multi-lingual blogs or a multi-lingual family, but it does come in handy: for example, now I don’t have to even use the mouse to change “english to polish” from “polish to english” or vice versa — instead, I just type in either language.  If I typed in something english, it’ll just repeat it on the english part and translate it into polish on the polish part.  If I typed in something polish, it’ll repeat it on the polish part and translate it into english in the english part.  Especially useful when you want to say something to a polish person (eg, I need to go to sleep, That’s funny, etc.) but their english is pretty bad and your polish is worse.

I need to stop being so lazy and do my grad school apps.

Bettie Page.

Bettie Page died today.

Two down, one to go.

I really didn’t mind logic too much — but I almost never went to the class.  One and a half hours of pure doing-nothing-ness.  I didn’t hate it as much as rep, but I hated it more than discrete.  Whatever.  It’s over.  I’m never taking a logic class again.

One down, Two to go.

Discrete’s done. I honestly don’t even care how I did in that class. I really didn’t like it very much.

Tomorrow, Logic. Wednesday, Rep of Finite Groups. Thursday? The world.

No, I haven’t forgotten about you: or, happy cyber monday.

Merry Cyber Monday, ya’ll.

Oh, you haven’t heard?  Cyber Monday is the internet’s Black Friday, minus the stampedes and races to get the hottest deals first.  From what I can tell, it’s exactly the same as most fridays, except for free shipping in a few places.

Some places, like amazon, are mentioned on the cyber monday website, but don’t seem to mention cyber monday anywhere on their front-page — and on the cyber monday website, it advertises Amazon’s “free super-[duper] shipping for orders over $25 some restrictions apply!”; but wait, isn’t that something amazon always does?

When you spend $75 or more, B+N is going to give you a free winter throw along with it (holy fuck!).  When I think of B+N, the first thing that comes to mind is their winter throws — so what better a time to give them away than Cyber Monday?  Except, it doesn’t seem like it’s an exclusive CM deal…it just seems like it’s a regular deal that they have going.  Well.  Surely SOMEONE is giving something good away on Cyber Monday — after all, it IS the internet’s Black Friday, right?

Overstock seems to have some sort of free shipping deal going on, but that doesn’t seem to be CM exclusive.  In fact, some of their electronics look like they’ve increased in price since I last looked at them — but that may just be my Cyber Monday paranoia setting in.

Nobody doesn’t Cyber Monday like Dell.  Or at least, that’s what the tagline says.  It’s nice that Dell at least mentions cyber monday; that’s a step up from the rest of them!  And, wait a second…it looks like there are legit deals going on at Dell.com.  Look at the dell mini 9 — at $300 and less than 3 lbs, it’s the perfect give for anyone who needs a really small, really cute computer.  But don’t hesitate: this deal is ONLY good for CYBER MONDAY!  Oh!  And what about that one relative that got really into blu-ray because they thought it was the future of entertainment (“Yeah, when DVD’s came out, no one bought VHS tapes anymore; blu-ray’s gonna make DVD’s obsolete.”)?  There’s a phillips blue ray player on sale!  Holy shit.  There may only be nine or so deals, but certainly Dell is getting in the Cyber Monday spirit.

But what about hp.com?  Oh, yes.  They’re taking advantage of the Cyber Monday crowd, too.  Unfortunately, it looks like all the same shit, but free shipping.  And some of the deals are “cyber monday” deals “good for four days only!”  — so, according to hp.com, cyber monday is almost a business-week-long event.  It’s easy to get confused, hp: monday is one day; it’s not four days.  I used to get four days and one day confused when I was little, too.

I didn’t look at Office Depot, but I did learn that their little motto thing is “Taking Care of Business”.  Get it?  Haha.  Yeah.  Funny.

There’s a lot of stuff.  If you go through shop.org’s cyber monday website, then I think you can earn some kind of “rebate dollars” which will be sent to you via snail mail as a check.  Excellent.  Also, I think it sponsors some sort of scholarship fund.  So you’re doing good for kids; what more could you ask for in a black friday equivalent?

The ONLY site that I THINK took any time to think about Cyber Monday seriously was, unsurprisingly, wetseal.  20% off their entire stock one day only, and free shipping on any order over $15?  That screams cyber monday to me.  I know what I’m getting this cyber monday!

But in all seriousness, Cyber Monday isn’t the biggest failure ever — and, really, it’s a good idea.  Black Friday is great for people who have the time and get-go to really get out to stores and buy their stock; but what about those online-only websites?  Amazon, Buy.com, etc., are missing out on the Black Friday spendings simply because they live in the abstract cyber space and not in the tangible “drive-to”able universe.  It’s kind of upsetting to not see them getting more into the Cyber Monday spirit.  Maybe they all thought “Cyber Monday” was that one special day a year when people get together online and have intimate IMs with each other.  I don’t know.

My disappointment with Cyber Monday doesn’t come close to matching my disappointment with this quarter, though.  Rep of finite groups was a gigantic waste of time — I have learned next to nothing, and now I care about finite groups less than I ever have.  Discrete Math was alright, but I don’t care enough about it to really make it worth my while.  Logic was a constant nightmare: I was continuously behind and confused in the class, and having only some of the material available in the books was somewhat annoying.  The ONLY saving-grace of Logic was the ability of the TA to make logic interesting. I might be biased — I’ve never been a huge fan of mathematical logic.  Oh well.

Next quarter should be better.  Commutative Algebra?  Yes.  Logic 2?  Hopefully the class won’t be as bad as Logic 1.  But Maybe.  And functional analysis?  At 9am?  In the wintertime?  I probably will go all of 3 times, and then give up.

So why three classes?  Because Comm algebra will be hard.  And because I need to start applying to Grad school.  Really, I need to step it up a bit.

But what have I been up to besides complaining?  Well, I’ve been cooking a lot.  I made a chocolate mousse that turned out “okay”.  Lots of sausage and meatballs.  I think some sorts of dips that I can’t really remember.  And a lot of cake.  Oh, and varied meat products: salmon with lemon-mayo sauce, “deviled” chicken (which is just chicken with deviled egg yolk stuff on top.), and — oh! — Jon and I made hot sauce.  Yep.  We’ll see how it comes out in 3 weeks when it’s done.

I’ve been trying to learn polish, except it’s become increasingly obvious over the past few days that I suck at it.  Eh.  At least I’m having fun!

Okay.  I’ve wasted an hour on this.  But now you know how I’m doin’.  Happy cyber monday, everyone!

what have i been doing.

Lots of work.  Really, it’s getting ridiculous.

And when I’m not doing my legit work, I found this and started watching some Stanford compsci class — just because I don’t want to be completely useless when I get out of college.

For some reason, it’s ridic hard to wake up on time this year and I find myself skipping classes more and more.  I don’t know if it’s just because there’s more work this year or if I got lazier or what, but it’s disconcerning.

I also got an rss feed reader — and it was the worst mistake of my life.  Now I spend literally something like an hour a day reading all the posts and listening to all of the pitchfork music.  It’s slowly consuming my life.

I hate logic.  I hate rep theory.  I hate discrete.  Let’s hope next quarter won’t be so bad.

I should really start my job.  ugh.  So lazy.