Uncooperative Crickets

2010-07-21T12:34:00.002-04:00

Arguments like this are ridiculous. Both Jordan and Magic have said that they never would have gone to play with another superstar, and Bill Simmons has said something similar.

First, Magic played with Jabbar, who was a superstar. Jordan played with Pippen, who was almost a superstar. According to Simmons's logic, Magic should have demanded to be traded to the Kansas City Kings so that he could beat Jabbar.

Would Magic or Jordan have objected if their teams had traded for Bird? Would Jordan have been mad at management because the Bulls gave up Oakley and two first-round picks for Bird in 1987?

Furthermore, would people be giving LeBron a hard time on this issue if Wade had come to play with him in Cleveland? Functionally, what is the difference?

These arguments are idiotic.

2010-07-16T10:36:00.002-04:00

I have a workshop on cooperative learning in week and a half in the Cities (70 miles away). Initially, I thought that I was going to have to drive, but I recently realized that I could instead take the commuter rail. Advantages:

It is cheaper: it will cost $80 for the week rather than $80 for the day (reimbursement costs)
I can read/do work/zone out on the train.
Trains are awesome.
I will be supporting public transportion.

Disadvantage:

That is all.

Story of the week: people are stupid.

LeBron

2010-07-09T15:15:00.003-04:00

So LeBron is going to Miami, and I am sure that you were all waiting to hear my thoughts on this. Ultimately, I do not care a lot. Here are my thoughts:

I wish that he would have chosen Cleveland. If you are going to go on ESPN to announce your decision in a one-hour special, you should stick with Cleveland. If you are going to pick Miami, just announce it in a Tweet. That was just mean of him.
I agree with Bill Simmons: I think that the fix was in from the start. LeBron made up his mind a long time ago, and was simply milking it for the last couple of weeks.
Many people are complaining that Jordan would not have done this, and stating that this is a move of weakness. Some say that he should have stayed in Cleveland and created a team around him to win a championship. These seem to be the same people who revere winning. But doesn't Miami give him the best chance to win? Either they win 4 of the next 6 titles or they implode, right?
James went from the most liked NBA player to the most hated in a matter of moments.
A lot of people are complaining about his narcissism, that his attitude is what is wrong with sports. He is narcissistic, but it is largely because people care too much about this stuff. Dr. Frankenstein, meet your monster.

I am serious that I am trying to ignore sports. It's a process, folks.

Crawling

2010-07-01T14:14:00.002-04:00

Blueberry crawls now. He was very close for a couple of weeks, but my dad stacked things up across the room from Blueberry on Monday. Blueberry crawled across the room to knock them down. This process was repeated many times.

Now, Blueberry does not crawl well, though. He falls on his face a lot, and there is not much in terms of efficiency of motion. But it is unmistakenly crawling.

2010-06-08T17:55:00.001-04:00

I am looking to create a list of B-list action television shows from the '80s. So far I have:

Simon & Simon
Riptide
Hart to Hart
Remington Steele
Hardcastle and McCormick

What am I missing?

2010-05-24T12:20:00.001-04:00

I was near fame on Friday night:

Congrats to Tsjaz and CHG!

2010-05-19T10:17:00.001-04:00

The Timberwolves got the fourth pick in a draft that is really three deep. Of course. I am starting to talk myself into Wesley Johnson, though.

You do not hear much about this. This is because you can only be a terrorist if you are a Muslim.

2010-05-17T17:26:00.001-04:00

We now have geothermal coils in our ground, and we are just waiting for about one more day of work to get it operations. It will probably be on Thursday. It is already awesome.

MDOT says that you should merge at the last minute.

2010-05-06T16:26:00.000-04:00

I am getting better. I used to spend hours upon hours playing a game before I deleted it from my computer. I wised up and quickly deleted Tap Defense from my iPod Touch last night. It could have been trouble.

2010-04-16T16:27:00.002-04:00

Skye and I are going on a television strike. This is largely because of Blueberry. We do not want him to get used to staring at the television—there is evidence that it might wire his brain differently by being exposed too much to it.

Since this (was) our favorite pastime, it might seem like it would difficult. So far, though, it has not been. We will still watch Lost once a week (for the next five weeks, anyway), but that has been it.

Do you know what? It has been really nice. We do more crosswords together now, and I have started reading for pleasure again (currently Game Change. I recommend it.

That being said, I am sure that I will have an urge to re-watch The Wire or Buffy this summer, but it is nice to do for stretches of times.

2010-04-14T11:38:00.002-04:00

The "unread messages" count on the Yahoo! frontpage for my Yahoo! email account is absolutely never correct. It is sometimes more (it can claim that I have up to seven more unread messages than I have), and it is sometimes less, but it is never exactly right. It seems like we would have worked beyond these problems in 2010.

2010-03-31T13:03:00.002-04:00

I am a bit of a language snob. I am not a fan of the "Tea Party." These pictures make me feel really superior.

Here is an awesome comparison of the last season of Buffy and the last season of Lost (indirectly via Derek Bruff).

2010-03-29T18:02:00.002-04:00

I started biking to work for the first time today. It went well, except that I was riding into the wind. I think that the plan will be that I bike to work this week (a three-day week, due to the fact that Easter is this weekend and I teach at a Catholic college) and start my bike/run schedule next week.

Also, here is the question that I have been thinking about: I have been trying to think of examples where it would make a lot of sense for two things to trade names. For instance, it would make a lot of sense if the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz switched names (LA is not known for its lakes, whereas Utah is. Similarly with Jazz). Also, it would make sense if Stevie Nicks (female) and Lindsey Buckingham (male) had switched names. What other examples are there?

Feel free to respond here or on my Facebook page if you have things to add.

2010-03-25T09:03:00.003-04:00

Last night was the first sacrifice of any size that I have had to make for Blueberry. Tegan and Sara played in Minneapolis, and I opted not to go. I just could not part with the time, money, or sleep. I am sorry I missed them—they might be my favorite active band (or maybe Editors or Interpol, or some other band that I did not think of in the 10 seconds I spent thinking about it).

2010-03-19T10:29:00.002-04:00

Just in case you care, I had my worst showing ever yesterday for the NCAA tournament. I went 8 for 16—I think that the lowest that I can remember is 11 for 16 (maybe 10 for 16). The funny thing is: I do not really care. Actually, it probably is not all that funny; in fact, it might be the cause of going 50%. Some combination of "new baby" and "making a concerted effort to care less about sports" led me to the point where I think that I can only name 6 non-Gopher basketball players in the tournament (and probably only 2-3 Gophers). So I am really okay with this.

It has been a bittersweet week for commuting. The "bitter:" I was hoping to start biking, but the flat tire that I supposedly fixed is flat again. I will try to fix it again this weekend. The "sweet:" depending on whether I make a stoplight, I either have a one-stoplight commute or a three-stoplight commute. I almost always have a three-stoplight commute, just because the stoplight I have to make is short (I have to cross a highway). However, I have timed it perfectly three times this week.

My life is awesome.

2010-03-16T14:14:00.003-04:00

Skye and I are currently watching The Office at nights. We are in season 5. This is important for you to know.

We thought about cutting back on television, since we watch a lot of it (technically, we watch a lot of DVDs and Netflix, but not a lot of television). It looks like we are going away from that—at least for the time being.

I am doing my best to start biking and running to work, but the tire on my bike keeps going flat. I find this frustrating.

2010-03-11T11:27:00.001-05:00

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

Katie King married one of my favorite music videos with one of my favorite television shows!

I love it soooooooo much, and I am going to watch it, like, five trillion times this week.

2010-03-10T09:41:00.001-05:00

We have an appointment for an estimate on a geothermal heat pump today. I have wanted one ever since Mr. Davis told the class about them in 9th grade biology class. I will be crushed if the estimate is ridiculously high or my lawn is not feasible.

I would love another Lost post, although I can definitely understand not having time to make one up.

2010-03-02T00:18:00.002-05:00

I am awfully excited. Skye and I got a new cell phone plan (meaning that Skye got a cell phone plan). We switched from a standard plan to pay-as-you-go plan. We should be able to replace a $50/month plan with roughly a $15/month plan, with minimal change in behavior.

Combining this with my switch to Skype at home, and we are saving almost $800 on phone bills over what we used to pay.

In less exciting news, snowshoeing is not terribly exciting unless you have good terrain surrounding you.

2010-02-28T23:56:00.001-05:00

OMG! More podcasts on great apes who behave like humans, please! I love that there was a bonobo who could sort of speak English!

2010-02-27T15:00:00.002-05:00

I am now on spring break, and this is the first semester I have taught where I wish spring break came later. I am really enjoying the semester and find it tough to believe that we are half done.

Blueberry has started laughing. He laughed once on Monday, and then he laughed on and off for three straight minutes last night. I find this to be terrific fun. I looked forward to having kids, but I imagined that I would start to really enjoy them when they turned five or so; I was really looking forward to having a conversation. I have learned that babies can be a lot of fun, too. They cannot talk (although I swear he is doing his best to say "hello"), but they can communicate in a lot of different ways. I underestimated this.

On deck for spring break: buy a new refrigerator, get the oil changed, do some work for my class, do some research, and maybe go on a date with Skye to the Science Museum and an Indian restaurant.

2010-02-20T13:13:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I had the first experience of "bad day at work, but coming home to the baby makes everything better." It was not a very bad day, but there was one thing that was bothering me. Holding Blueberry for 5 minutes made me forget about it. He is starting to smile and focus on faces more, and that makes a big difference.

Today is the first day that I have him alone for a significant period of time. Skye joined the board of the local food co-op, and she has a four hour meeting today. This means that it is an all male/feline house right now. Things are going well so far. I am planning on taking my first one-parent shopping trip with him soon, stopping by the board meeting so Blueberry can get a snack, and then coming back time for more man-time.

Here is roughly what Blueberry looks like now,

only he has more hair on his head, less on his body, no green tongue, and does not eat turnbuckles (yet).

There are several exciting work-related things, too.

After a long, healthy, frustrating debate, my department came to a decision. It was the decision that I wanted.
I got funding to attend a summer workshop on cooperative learning.
A have funding to virtually attend an online workshopon Sage.
Someone, possibly me, in my department is going to apply for a grant to support undergraduate esearch.
I have been making good progress on my research project with my partner, Aminal Beast.

This post was clearly for me—I make almost no attempt to make it entertaining for the reader. Sorry.

2010-02-18T15:30:00.002-05:00

It makes me happy that 80% of Americans disagree with the SCOTUS ruling on campaign financing.

2010-02-03T16:27:00.003-05:00

I went to a caucus last night. I am now both a delegate and a precinct chair. I have power.

Here is an alpaca.

2010-01-25T12:41:00.005-05:00

So the Vikings lost. At least they did it in a way that did not break my heart. In 2000, they lost 41-0, completely underachieving. In 1998, they lost by playing almost perfectly until the last field goal. In 2009, they lost by simultaneously playing well and playing horribly; they would look great until they fumbled. So they gave me hope without giving me too much hope. I thank you, 2009 Minnesota Vikings, for that.

I fully planned on rooting for the winner of the NFC Championship at the Super Bowl. However, I am planning on rooting for the Colts for the following reasons:

The Saints are not the best team in the NFC. They should have destroyed the Vikings, considering how many turnovers the Vikings had. They did not earn my support. (Note: I am not claiming that the Vikings are the best team, either. I think that there probably were no good NFC teams, although I am going to pretend like the best team in the NFC just somehow missed the playoffs. Let's just assume that Atlanta was the best).
I think that the Saints were playing dirty. I really think that they were trying to hurt Favre on a couple of those plays (they had three personal fouls within 30 minutes of gametime—ridiculous).

I could also add that I have relatively new-found respect for Manning (as with everyone else) and that my wife is from Indiana, but that is not why.

Go Colts!

2010-01-22T13:55:00.003-05:00

We finished BSG, meaning that I have now seen all of my favorite series at least twice. I think that this is a sign of a life well-lived.

It is a social weekend. We are going to have the Rockroads over for dinner tomorrow (first time hosting with the baby) and my parents over for the Vikings game on Sunday.

After trying to get football out of my life, I have found myself extremely interested in the playoffs (the Vikings have something to do with this). I have watched several (portions of the) playoff games, and have been really enjoying following the games via podcasts (Bill Simmons, in particular). I am really happy that three of the four teams are likable; I came around on Peyton Manning a while ago (maybe it was when I moved away from New England), and it is tough not to be happy for the Saints. I am not a fan of the Jets. Still, I am not sure that football is "good" for society. I will worry about this after this postseason, though.

I have never liked any of the New York teams, with the exception of the Mets in the early '90s. I am not sure why this is, although I find it curious: I liked Boston teams growing up, and I disliked New York teams. When I grew up, I found that I really like the city of Boston, while I really do not care for the city of New York. In fact, I tend to prefer Boston bands over New York bands, although this is not nearly as polarized (e.g. I really like Interpol).

2010-01-14T22:28:00.002-05:00

OMG! Radiolab just did a show on animal minds! I love it.

One more day in my very busy first week of class (two meetings, prep, and subbing for two extra classes). So far, Skye and I have been working well with Blueberry when I am gone for 8 hours per day. The main goal right now is to make sure that Skye and Blueberry get enough sleep. (Right now he is sleeping next to me in a wrap. Great stuff).

2010-01-12T14:42:00.001-05:00

Upcoming television events: Lost on February 2nd, and Caprica on January 22nd. I think that this will be the only television I keep up with this semester, although maybe I am forgetting something. I missed Dollhouse last semester, so we will have to Netflix it.

2010-01-09T21:44:00.002-05:00

I fell in love with a song last night. This rarely happens, but I love it when it does. What normally happens in this situation is that I will listen to an album several times without necessarily paying attention to the songs. Eventually, I will listen to the album again, not pay attention, but a song will jump out and punch me in the neck (in a good way).

The first time I remember this happening was in graduate school when I suddenly heard "Ellen West" by Throwing Muses with new ears. It was after midnight, and I listened to the song repeatedly for at least an hour.

The second times was when I was driving to visit my parents from graduate school. "Flood" by Throwing Muses clicked for me tnen, and I listened to the song for most of the ride home.

The third time was when I was a post-doc. I was in the library listening to my iPod Shuffle, and "The Con" by Tegan and Sara attached itself to my brain.

Last night? "The Ocean" by Tegan and Sara. I was working on my class for next semester, again after midnight, and I had to listen to the song repeatedly.

It seems as if Tegan and Sara and Throwing Muses are the only bands that do this to me. I had a similar experience at the album level with Antics by Interpol, but that is a different thing. I still really like all of the songs, but not as much as I liked them at those moments.

2010-01-08T01:01:00.001-05:00

My son slept on my chest for 6 hours tonight. About 3 hours were while watching BSG, and the rest of the time was reading about cooperative learning. It was a good night.

2010-01-03T15:45:00.003-05:00

Commericial seen today:

Bald, Goateed Guy: The Malibu is more fuel-efficient than the Camry.
Howie Long: Yeah, I read that the EPA estimate is 33 miles per gallon. It says that right on the window.
Bald, Goateed Guy: Really? Then why does it cost so much less than the other cars?
Howie Long: Because it's a Chevy.

That is not necessarily good logic, Backdraft.

Bald, Goateed Guy: This bag of dirt has fewer Calories than the average meal at Spago.
Howie Long: Yeah, everybody knows that.
Bald, Goateed Guy: Really? Then why does it cost so much less?
Howie Long: Because it's a bag of dirt.

2010-01-02T14:54:00.003-05:00

The holidays are over, and everyone survived. We had a couple of great Christmases, and a non-eventful New Year's. Thankfully, most of the family has decided on a policy of "presents for babies, but no presents or charitable donations only for adults." I think that this is wonderful.

Skye and I (and Blueberry) are wrapping up season 3 of BSG. I find so many of the characters to be admirable. It is a joy to watch, even though the plots are often sad.

The baby has landed.

2009-12-26T00:35:00.002-05:00

Our baby Blueberry was born on December 21st. I am thrilled to have a solstice baby.

Everything started at 2 am on the morning of December 20th. Skye went into labor. We mostly went about our day until roughly 6 pm, when we called the doula, Little Bitty (wannabe doula), and midwife over to the house; Skye's parents were already there. Skye continued to labor with the six of us for the next 12 hours, making for a long night for everyone. It was also amazing. I am impressed at how seven people can come together and work toward a common goal. I am proud of everyone who was there, particularly Skye, who, of course, had the most painful part of it.

Unfortunately, labor stopped progressing at around 6 am. The midwife let us know, and Skye and I decided to go to a nearby hospital to finish off the labor. The doctor at the hospital informed us that the baby would have to come out via Cesarean section. We agreed, and baby Blueberry arrived at 9:25 am.

This was not what we were expecting. We signed up with a midwife for a natural home birth. We are both at peace with the way things went, though. Everyone made the right decisions at each point of the delivery: the midwife knew when to tell us that labor was not progressing, we knew to go to the hospital, and the doctor knew that a C-section was best—possibly only—option. I am very pleased that we decided to go with the midwife, in spite of the fact that we did not get our home birth.

Transition to parenthood has been rather smooth. It was surreal to have a baby at first, but I am rapidly getting used to it. Blueberry has been fun to have around, yet has not been very fussy (yet). I am looking forward to seeing him grow up.

2009-12-18T15:07:00.002-05:00

The semester is done. It is amazing how quickly it goes.

The small news is that we are buying a car tomorrow. My parents are buying a new Prius, and we are buying their old one. We are excited about this. The bad news, especially to regular my weblog readers, is that this is the beginning of the end for my electric car. This is sad, but we do not need three cars. Heck, I am not even sure that we need two, but I like our Echo a lot and Skye wants to have two cars. Happily, I think that I will wait until spring to sell it, since it will be much more popular among buyers then (it has no heat, no defrost, and is short 8 volts until it warms up enough that I can stand to work on it in the garage).

The big news is that the baby is coming any day now. The official due date is tomorrow. Finals are done, so I am all ready for the baby (although it would be nice if he waited until after I got the new car tomorrow).

2009-12-10T12:51:00.002-05:00

The semester is winding down. There is not much left to do but grade. In fact, I have my last non-exam class in 30 minutes, but even that will be evaluations and review of the semester. Skye and I decided that this is a pretty relaxing time in a professor's life (a student likely has a different opinion).

I am hoping to spent a lot of time on research in the next week, although I think this might be difficult. I have reached a milestone in my research, and it is sometimes difficult to start new phases. My computer program is doing almost exactly what I want it to do, but I now need to use it to determine the pattern that is (hopefully) occurring. Since I have a sense of accomplishment from creating the computer program, I fear that I might dwell on that rather than starting to look for a pattern.

2009-12-05T12:38:00.002-05:00

I am in the middle of proctoring a really hard 6 hour math exam. The students are volunteers.

Now I am going to code a computer program. This is all for this post, except...

...BSG makes me happy.

2009-11-30T11:57:00.001-05:00

Skye and I started watching Battlestar Galactica last night. She likes it! I think that Dexter must have switched something on in her brain, so that she now can really appreciate good television shows.

We spent the rest of the weekend eating food with other people.

2009-11-25T14:56:00.002-05:00

Olivia the cat has changed—she has suddenly become more affectionate. She actually spent 45 minutes purring in my lap today. I initially thought that this may have been because I started taking over some of the food duties (We started putting the food up in her kitty condo, since we do not want Baby Awesome to be crawling around and eating cat food. Since I have a good foot of height on Skye, it is natural that I start taking over these duties). However, Skye has reported the same thing. This leads me to believe one of three things:

Olivia can sense that a baby is coming, and is sucking up to us in an attempt to remind us not to forget about her once the baby arrives.
Olivia is now completely an adult. She is now 1.5 years old, so maybe something that naturally clicked.
She has a sinister plan, and is lulling us into complacency.

Frankly, I'll be happy if either of first two prove true, and disappointed it ends up being the third.

2009-11-20T16:21:00.003-05:00

I was able to mostly fix my car. I haven't figured out how to remove the 60 pound battery out of a narrow space, but that is a project for later. Instead, I just re-worked the wiring so that the car runs on 72 volts instead of 80 volts. It doesn't go as fast now, but it works.

The semester is beginning to wrap up. I have all of my exams written, and I have only one more lecture in one of my two classes (the rest of the days will be review activities and a midterm). I'll need to figure some stuff out for my other class, but something just fell into my lap yesterday, so I should be fine.

Things I saw on the side of the road while running: a bed, a television, and some sort of an animal bone on the running trail.

2009-11-16T15:28:00.003-05:00

My electric car broke down on the way to work. I pulled over to see what was wrong, and I eventually found that one of the batteries had become disconnected. When I tried to reconnect it, I noticed that the terminal was gone. It had completely melted. I'm going to have to buy a new battery.

A special thanks to the nice man who picked me up and drove me to work. He was much kinder than he needed to be.

Finally, a special video from a Tea Party held in my own home town. I am proud of my people, and the speaker in this video demonstrates why.

2009-11-11T12:22:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking that I might go back to "run 5 miles every other day, and leave the car overnight." It is a bit of a pain to go through all of this.

We had a busy day of wills, volunteering, and going to a "holistic birth mother" meeting. The meeting was okay, but I was mostly annoyed. It seems like some people were really down on the local hospital for their birthing practices, and they were taking it out on the hospital representative.

Now, I am not crazy about the hospital birthing practices. This is why Skye and I are planning a home birth. However, it seems to me like some of the people at the meeting had an over-inflated sense of entitlement. They had many options: they could have done a home birth, they could have gone to a birthing center in the region, or they could have gone to the hospital. None of these options are perfect. I think that these people really wanted to go to a birthing center; the drawback is that the nearest one is an hour away.

Fine. I do not blame you for not wanting to drive an hour. And you probably had reasons for not doing a home birth. Fine. The hospital may have been your favorite option. But do not get mad at the hospital representative for not being the perfect choice. You are choosing to live outside of a major metropolitan area, and it is unreasonable to assume that you deserve to have every amenity that you want. Go ahead and request this from the hospital, but do not be mad when they do not provide before a lot of people do.

I actually have more sympathy for the person than I am letting on; I do think that there may be a little bit of bait-and-switch going on at the hospital. They claim to be very "holistic birth" friendly, but I do not think they are. However, I do feel like they were mostly upfront about the situation. They told us that there are very few restrictions on practices like water births, but they also told us that the doctor will have a lot of say in what actually happens. AND they told us that we will have whatever doctor is on-call, not necessarily the doctor we signed up for. The message could have been clearer, but there were definitely clues.

2009-11-09T16:20:00.004-05:00

Skye has been on a Dexter tear. She loves it. She normally likes to watch one episode of a series per month,^† but she was watching up to four episodes at a time. It was impressive.

I have little to report except that I spent all Friday and Saturday grading. The grading is done...for now.

In other news: It looks like I get to teach two sections of my favorite class ever: abstract algebra! It also looks like these might be my only two classes, thanks to a nice "parental leave" policy at our school (and a great department chair who is bending over backwards to make sure that I get it after I dropped the ball on it).

^† This may be a slight exaggeration.

2009-11-05T11:50:00.002-05:00

Mano posted a great Daily Show clip about Fox News. I think that it is worth watching the whole thing.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

For Fox Sake!

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

2009-11-03T10:24:00.003-05:00

I'm planning on changing up my running schedule. I had previously driven in on Monday morning, run home Monday evening. Run in on Tuesday morning, drive home on Tuesday night. Repeat for Wednesday and Thursday, drive both ways on Friday. Alter schedule according to weather.

This was nice, because it gave an easy 20 miles of running (5 miles per day). It also took minimal time; it takes me about 15 minutes to drive, about 35 minutes to run, so I get a 5 mile run for only the cost of 20 minutes. Also, the logistics of clothing were easy—when I drove, I just needed to bring an extra pair of clothing, keep it in my office all day, and bring it to the locker room right before I ran home.

The main draw back was that I would leave my car overnight at work twice per week. I didn't like this, so I came up with a new plan:

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: run to work, and run back. Tuesdays and Thursdays: drive to work, drive back. Alter schedule according to the weather. Now I get 30 miles of running in (40, if I run on either Tuesday or Thursday) and I don't have to leave my car at work overnight.

The catch is: clothing logistics. Here is roughly what I need to do, starting with the assumption that I have already left a pair of jeans, a jacket, and a hat at school.

Drive in on, say, Tuesday.
1. Wear work clothing, except running pants instead of jeans and other shoes instead of work shoes.
2. Bring an extra shirt, undershirt, underwear, socks.
3. Get to the office, change into jeans and work shoes.
4. Work all day.
5. Change into running pants and other shoes; leave jeans and work shoes at office.
6. Bring shirt, undershirt, underwear, and socks to locker room before leaving for home.
7. Get any dirty laundry that is in locker from day before.
8. Drive home.
Run to work on Wednesday.
1. Wear running gear, including running pants and running shoes.
2. Run to locker room.
3. Shower.
4. Change into clean shirt, undershirt, underwear, and socks left the previous day.
5. Keep running pants and running shoes on.
6. Wear hat and jacket that are already at locker.
7. Go to office.
8. Change into jeans and work shoes.
9. Work all day.
10. Change into running pants, running shoes, hat and jacket.
11. Go to locker room.
12. Change out of hat and jacket. Leave them in locker.
13. Change into running shirt.
14. Leave dirty laundry in locker.
15. Run home.
Repeat.

2009-11-02T17:25:00.003-05:00

I was looking forward to Halloween. After the first seven doorbell rings, I was less excited.

I am getting caught up on life. In particular, I replaced the battery caps on my electric cars. My electric car needs to be filled with water every month or so. The company that converted my car put on quick release battery caps. This is a nice idea, except they were put on in a way that I had to disconnect the batteries in order to refill the water. This is annoying.

Thankfully, Johnson Controls (the battery maker) was kind enough to send me the original battery caps for free. Thank you, Johnson Controls.

2009-10-30T17:26:00.003-04:00

30 Rock is a quality show. Very nice.

My stupid Microsoft Outlook program thinks that "math" and "center" are not words. The former is a real problem for me. The good news: the GMail experiment seems to be working well, so I rarely have to use Outlook now.

My students gave me a hard time about not dressing up today for Halloween. One of the two main culprits was dressed as a wizard; the other was not dressed up at all. When I pointed this out as she was making fun of me, she claimed that she was dressed as a "muggle." When I asked if I could be a muggle, too, she said "no." I tried to deduce that I was then a wizard (If I am not a muggle, then I MUST be a wizard, right?), but she didn't buy that.

A third student bailed me out by suggesting that I was already dressed up as "a giant."

2009-10-27T12:30:00.002-04:00

I am not a superstitious man. I am not. But even I am starting to believe that the Los Angeles Clippers are cursed.

Two good Daily Show clips:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

CNN Leaves It There

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Ron Paul Interview

2009-10-26T13:06:00.003-04:00

We had a great baby shower this weekend. Thanks to all who attended---it was really fun.

Skye and I finished watching Buffy last night. This was my third time through the series; it was Skye's second time. Always enjoyable. It won't take long until I miss the characters.

Up next: probably a break, and then either The Wire or Battlestar Galactica. I would slightly prefer BSG, since I have only seen it once. Skye, I think, would prefer The Wire. I can't really argue with it, though, even though I watched it this summer.

2009-10-23T16:53:00.002-04:00

I just finished setting up my GMail accounting to automatically get my work email. This is awesome for two reasons:

My work email used Microsoft Outlook, and I think that I now no longer use any Microsoft products, and
I now have an email account that I can read on my iPod Touch without having to zoom 200 times.

I am celebrating my Microsoft-free day.

PS---Other substitions: I use LaTeX instead of Word and PowerPoint (it is a bit tough to learn, but it is a better product once you do) and Google Docs or OpenOffice instead of Excel (I actually have nothing against Excel, but it is guilty by association).

2009-10-21T09:44:00.004-04:00

A secret, likely-soon-to-be-made-public announcement from the Awesome household: Skye and I are likely to opt for a home birth. There are many reasons, which I might go into later, but it comes down to this:

The medical literature has a lot of evidence that a home birth with a midwife is at least as safe as a hospital birth, except that your chances of a medical intervention (e.g. c-section, episiotomy (i.e. "slicing up my wife to make the birth canal bigger"), etc) go waaaaaaay down.
Skye (and I) will be much more comfortable, and we hope that this will make the process easier.

Part of this experience means that ~~Skype~~ Skye will not receive any medication to ease the pain of childbirth, which must be administered by specialists. In a show of solidarity, I decided to forego anesthesia when I received my filling at the dentist today.

That's right, Dirk=Manly Man. Many of you, particularly those who know me well, may not have known this about me. But I am one tough hombre.

Actually, there are two things wrong here: first, there was no pain. Second, it isn't all that manly to go through an experience that isn't painful. So I guess there isn't much of a story here, other than we are offered more medication than we probably need. I hope that Skye has a similar experience in December.

Finally, for those of you who are concerned about my streak of "no cavities on my adult teeth," do not fret: my filling was to replace a sealant that had come loose---there was no cavity involved.

2009-10-19T15:56:00.003-04:00

Another great article by Malcolm Gladwell. He suggests that football players are basically like the dogs people put in dog-fights: they are both loyal to fault, and both keep going until their bodies are destroyed. He gives some scary stories about brain damage in former football players.

This is the latest in a series of events in my life that have caused me to want to watch less sports. I do not want to support the destruction of young men by watching football.

That said, I did watch the end of the Vikings/Ravens game yesterday, although I put off watching it until I knew that the ending was going to be close (Baby steps, Dirk...baby steps). What an awful way to win: they missed a very-makable field goal as time expired. Horrible.

I'll probably watch more of the Vikings this season, especially since they are winning. I don't feel great about it, though.

2009-10-14T09:51:00.004-04:00

A nice article on McDonald's. They seem like such nice people over there.

Andrew, from Buffy, appeared in my dreams last night. Here is what he had to say:

When I'm NBC's Director of Thursday Night Programming, I'm going to create a series called Nathan Fifties! It stars Dabney Coleman and Betty White as jewel thieves on the lam.

Why can't the FBI catch them? Or won't they?

It was better in my dream, since "Nathan Fifties" sounded more like "nineteen fifties," which is apparently when the show was suppose to take place.

2009-10-13T12:42:00.003-04:00

I had an important letter to mail for work. Basically, yesterday was the very last day to mail it, and I barely got it out. Many things could have happened differently to make my life easier, as I will detail below.

My original plan was to mail the letter last week, even though my school had vacation days on Thursday and Friday. I had planned to go to work on Thursday or Friday to take care of a couple of things. This, of course, did not happen. Instead, I ran errands all day on Thursday, and I graded at home all day on Friday. Had I come in to work, this would have been the first thing I did. I could have walked to the local post office, mailed the envelope, and be done with it.

Instead, I did not go into the office. I had a beautiful four-day weekend, and forgot about the letter until yesterday morning. Fine---I can simply go to the local post office to mail it. The problem is that yesterday was Columbus Day, causing the Post Office to be closed.

This letter needed to be mailed yesterday, and the Post Office was not an option. Rather, I had to use UPS or FedEx. I used Google Maps to locate the nearest drop for UPS, which is about six miles from my work.

I had the time, since I only taught one course yesterday. The problem is that I drive an electric car, and I cannot afford to drive around town without some planning. Since I had already driven 5.5 miles, this would give me a total of 23 miles for the day. This should not be a problem under optimal conditions, since my car can go roughly 30 miles. However, the temperature was close to freezing and it was snowing---these conditions decrease economy in every car, and my EV was no exception.

So I drove to the UPS drop, and got the letter in the mail. I was concerned about the EV on the drive home---it was much more sluggish than usual. Instead of driving straight back to work, I decided to stop midway at my house for an hour's worth of charging.

I charged, ate lunch, and returned to work in time for my class. Instead of parking in my usual spot, I parked farther away so that I could finish charging while at work. I went to teach, finished up some paperwork, and then prepared to leave for the day.

On the walk to my car's unusual parking place, I noticed a FedEx drop that probably 200 yards from my office.

Oh no...

2009-10-12T15:34:00.002-04:00

I found out yesterday that I am becoming someone I never wanted to be. Specifically, I wrote a letter to the editor.

I believe that I wrote about this article before, but there is an infuriating article by Duncan Greenberg on billionaires.

The letter I wrote is a little, well, snarky. I hate to be the person who hides behind the anonymity of email. On the other hand, I decided to be snarky because I think that Mr. Greenberg is very slightly dangerous. I feel justified.

Here it is:

Dear Editors,

I just read Duncan Greenberg's article "A Recipe of Riches" online at http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107927/a-recipe-for-riches.html?mod=career-leadership. I have two comments:

First, it seems like Mr. Greenberg should provide a citation when he states that mathematical prowess is hereditary. If it is true, then I would like to read the study that concludes this. If false, Mr. Greenberg is perpetuating a stereotype that some people "just aren't good at mathematics," and is helping young people to give up in mathematics classes by giving them genes to scapegoat.

Second, even if mathematical prowess is hereditary, it appears that Mr. Greenberg did not inherit this gene. "Want to become a tech titan or hedge fund tycoon? Up your chances by dropping out of college..." Mr. Greenberg goes on to state that 14% of billionaires dropped out of college. This means that 86% of billionaires--over six times as many that dropped out--finished college. Really? You can up your chances of being a billionaire by doing something that almost 9 in 10 billionaires specifically chose NOT to do?

I sincerely hope that no children read your magazine. Duncan Greenberg just gave them false excuses to give up in math class and--worse yet--drop out of school.

Sincerely,
Dirk Awesome

2009-10-06T22:00:00.001-04:00

I am in love with the Twins. It is always better when they are in the playoffs.

Marathon

2009-10-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

I ran the marathon yesterday. It went well, except that I did not meet my goal (I knew I wasn't going to do this at least a month ago); I did meet my secondary goal, though. It was a good run, though, and fun. Thank you to the people who came to watch.

Here is what I have learned: I need to train with more intensity. It isn't enough to just put the miles in, but I need to run them hard. This, combined with the fact that I haven't been running much for the past couple of years, explains why I didn't meet my goal.

Skye and I finished the most depressing Buffy DVD in the universe: season 6, disc 5. There is not a happy episode on the DVD.

2009-09-29T15:32:00.003-04:00

We did some good work on the baby nursery this weekend. The in-laws are visiting, and we painted the room (a pastel-ish green) and put together the crib.

At some point I need to write about health care. Little Bitty semi-requested a post on this, and there is stuff happening. This won't happen today, though, since I have a meeting in seven minutes.

In good news, the Twins are within one game of the Tigers and could tie them tonight.

2009-09-25T17:30:00.002-04:00

I have an iPod Touch waiting at home for me. I can't wait.

I had given up on the Twins earlier this season. This was not intentional, and I wasn't even aware that I had given up; I simply stopped checking up on them. I have regained my hope, and I fully expect to be crushed by the end of the season--it is unlikely they will make the playoffs.

In running news, I am smack in the middle of tapering for my marathon, and loving every minute of it.

Señ or Smoke

2009-09-23T13:17:00.004-04:00

I attended my third bachelor party ever on Saturday. The first was for my friend Yeti, and it involved a bunch of guys and go-carts. The second was mine, where Jocko, Supertaster, and I went to Six Flags. The third was a friend from college.

We rented out the home of the St. Paul Saints, a popular minor league baseball team. We then took batting practice from Juan Berenguer. He was very nice, and he made each of the batters look (as) good (as possible).

Sunday was CHG's birthday, and we had a great brunch at the Triple Rock. Monday was Jocko's birthday. Happy birthday to those two.

2009-09-16T16:31:00.005-04:00

I did like Watchmen, but it wasn't great for a couple of (other) reasons:

The masked crime fighters were superheroes. They could really bring it. The allure of Watchmen was originally that these people, with one exception, weren't super. It is interesting to think about what type of a person would want to fight crime if they were just normal.
Oxymandias was not played well. It was too over the top, and it telegraphed what was coming at the end of the movie. The character in the book was a good, smart, guy. He should have been played as such.
The action scenes were a little too intense. This goes back to the first point: these people were just good fighters, not super.

The best thing about the movie? Jackie Earle Haley playing Rorschach. He was fantastic, and I hope he wins an Oscar.

On to real life: Monica Crowley scored some points with me last night. I was listening to The McLaughlin Group, and she actually complimented President Obama. Granted, he was saying something that conservatives had been saying for a long time, but this is a reversal from many in the media who would never give credit to someone from the other party under any circumstances. This is why I like The McLaughlin Group.

2009-09-15T15:32:00.002-04:00

We watched Watchmen last night, which I was really looking forward to. It was fine, not great. It was too long, but I was pretty interested in the story. However, I am pretty upset because they did a horrible job with the McLaughlin Group. John was okay, Eleanor was a little above average, but the actor playing Pat Buchanan apparently has never seen the real Buchanan speak or move. I didn't even know it was supposed to be him until the McLaughlin character addressed him by name.

Shame.

2009-09-14T18:10:00.002-04:00

I am not commenting on the validity of their position, but rather I am just going to comment on their tactics: Republicans lie a lot as a tactic. This link points to a conservative rally where organizers cite ABC news as saying that 1-1.5 million people attended. However, ABC News only reported 60-70,000 people attend. They inflated the number by 2000 percent.

Many Republicans also forwarded a photo of the rally, showing the National Mall filled with people. Except that the photo was from a different rally ten years ago.

This doesn't happen by accident. These were lies. The Democrats probably do this from time to time, too, but the Republicans do it regularly. This is hurting national discourse.

The sad thing is that Republicans have some interesting ideas - some of which I might even agree with. However, they have found that it is more effective to simply lie (sometimes disguised as calling someone else a liar; for most people, I would write this off as a mistake, but a Congressperson should know that the bill explicitly says that illegal aliens will not be able to receive care).

Moral: I don't like lying.

2009-09-14T16:39:00.002-04:00

School has started, and my life is again reasonably under control. I'm a little uptight, so "under control" means that I am working at least a couple days ahead of schedule (ideally, one week).

Pitchfork came up with the top 500 songs of the Aughts. I am a little over 12% cool, based on the number of songs I know. This is a lower bound, because I went through quickly, and I surely missed some.

2009-08-25T19:56:00.002-04:00

Now that school is starting again, I'm doing the bike-to-work-run-home/run-to-work-bike-home two-day cycle. This means that I have to use the locker room at school, since I should really shower at school on the days that I run to work. I have a lock on a locker, but I haven't used it since May. This means that I forgot the combination (I had a lock that I had been using for about 10 years, but it got got off of a locker last year when I came down to the locker room 10 minutes after the gym closed).

Anyway, I forgot my combination. Well, I found out that there are ways of quickly determining the combinations of certain brands of padlocks. This algorithm, along with my vague memory of some of the numbers in the combination, allowed me to recover the combination.

I've always wanted to be able to pick locks ever since playing D&D with Tsjaz as a kid.

2009-08-22T19:17:00.003-04:00

School starts next week, and I hope to post here regularly again. I will probably only post 2-3 times per week, since I will also be trying to write a weblog for my professional life, too.

By popular demand, Olivia!

2009-07-24T00:24:00.002-04:00

Skye and I are going on vacation tomorrow, so my infrequent posts will become more so.

We recently saw three movies on DVD.

Nick and Norah's infinite Playlist. We both liked this. It was ultimately probably forgettable, but it was definitely enjoyable while I was watching it.
Beverly Hills Cop. So-so. I remember liking it for Foley's shenanigans, but there really aren't that many in the film. The rest of the movie is mediocre.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button HA-ATED this one. Awful. Terrible. And long. I was wishing that it would be over when we were less than 40 minutes in; this is unfortunate because the movie was two hours and 40 minutes long. First, it was boring. The movie starts with three different stories: two from the past, and one in the present. All three were boring.

Next, the movie is about a guy who ages backwards, YET THE PLOT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM AGING BACKWARDS. Seriously. With only very minor changes to the script, this could have been a boring movie about a guy who ages forwards. They decided to take a potentially interesting idea and do nothing with it.

Third, I generally like it when movies/TV shows/etc. use different story arcs to support each other. In this movie, there was a side story about a clockmaker who made a clock that ran backwards. This seems like a nice idea to reinforce Button's situation, right? Wrong. They simply had a character describe the clockmaker for maybe 5 minutes, but it did not interact with any of the other stories at all. Button didn't seem to know about it, and it didn't affect him. Don't just make up supporting story arcs for the heck of it - INTEGRATE, MAN!

Finally, it was looooooooooooooong and boring. Also, boring.

Happy early birthday to my bro and my cuz! Happy end of July to the rest of you.

2009-07-21T20:20:00.002-04:00

I am in a workshop this week with a bunch of other professors. I have attended workshops with high school teachers in the past. Do you know what the difference between professors and high school teachers at workshops is? Professors act like good students, high school teachers act up. All of the professors this week sat toward the front of the class, paid attention, asked questions, and showed up on time. Most high school teachers I've seen do the opposite - in fact, they act like high school students do (roughly).

I don't mean this to be inflammatory.

2009-07-20T23:28:00.003-04:00

My advisor and I were once talking about how wonderful our Mac laptops were. He commented that it was so versatile that he even used it as a flashlight - the power had gone out that week, and he used his laptop to light his way to a real flashlight.

My response was something like: "Well, it is an awfully inefficient flashlight. It uses a lot more energy than a regular flashlight." My advisor didn't say this, but I wish he would have told me this: "You just ruined a perfectly good story."

2009-07-16T15:38:00.002-04:00

I've been slacking quite a bit - sorry.

An interesting article on why America doesn't do so well with science. Basically, Hollywood only presents scientists as nerds or evil. The former has always been obvious, but I had never considered the latter is true. The article cites Crichton as being particularly guilty of this (scientists turn dinosaur DNA into terrorizing dinosaurs! Science is bad!).

I have some ideas, and I am trying to figure out if I should write them down or save them for tomorrow in case I don't have anything interesting to write. This is because I have an idea that creativity is finite, and a person only has so many songs/stories/paintings in them. I think that I am wrong about this, but the attitude lingers.

In the spirit of fighting that attitude (and considering that I haven't posted in 6 days), here is a little more:

Here are three songs that are surprisingly popular in my new home town. I didn't hear them much on the radio in the other places I've lived. This could be due to the fact that I had radio stations that I really liked in all of the other cities, where I have to make due in my new location. Here are the three songs:

"Carry on my Wayward Son" - Kansas. This isn't surprising, since it is a classic classic rock song. I also like the song, and think that it is well-put together; there are several different parts to the song.
"Kyrie" - Mr. Mister. It seems like this should have dropped out of the rotation about 30 years ago.
"I Hate Everything About You" - Ugly Kid Joe. It seems like this song was barely popular when it first came out. Maybe that wasn't fair - I remember seeing the video a lot as a kid. Still, it doesn't seem like this quite holds up to the test of time.

I also remember that the lead singer of Mr. Mister was offered the lead vocalist duties in Chicago after Peter Cetera left. I think that he should have accepted.

I have more to say, but I'll save it. This is due to laziness, not fear of exhaustion.

2009-07-09T17:08:00.003-04:00

The Lost post is back! OMG!

I wasn't going to write this after first, but Bad Z commented that she and onefourfive were planning on watching The Wire soon. So, here is my The Wire-related comment: "Is there a cooler person on Earth than Bunk Moreland? Seriously, the man exudes style."

I am feeling like a genius. First, I fixed our Skype phones that had stopped working for no good reason. Okay, so all I did was reboot the router and the base station, and - fine - one of our two phones still doesn't work, but we have a working telephone now.

Next, recall that I had a couple of leaks fixed in my EV, and that it didn't start so that I could bring it home. Well, I fixed it last night. There were really only two problems: the first is that I needed a new accessory battery, which I got last week. The car still didn't start.

Let me break this down: the car didn't start with the old accessory battery because the battery wasn't able to provide enough current to the main contactor to start the car. The battery didn't start after the new battery because the connection to the main contactor became dislodged while I was changing the battery. Initially I thought that this was completely my fault, and that I just forgot to reconnect it. In fact, the connection was connected between the main contactor and something that I didn't mess around with at all, so it really wasn't my fault at all.

As a bonus: I now know how to hot wire my car. So if my keys even disintegrate, I can still get home.

2009-07-08T17:35:00.002-04:00

A nice video of our new senator beating up on Ann Coulter, via Mano.

Ann-coulter-al-franken - The best video clips are here

I find that I am only really thinking about six things right now:

Math
Running
Buffy
The Wire
Yardwork
My electric car

This doesn't make for a very interesting weblog.

2009-07-07T21:57:00.003-04:00

I'm very close to proving the conjecture I made a couple of weeks ago. Now the problem is: is the problem too easy? There is a chance that this result is known to a lot of people, all of whom deem it too trivial to publish. That would be a shame.

Michael Jackson fans are crazy with a capital "nuts."

2009-07-06T11:25:00.002-04:00

I'm re-watching The Wire while re-watching Buffy. My life is great. Jimmy McNulty is one of the greatest TV characters ever.

Today is the day I turn from getting background on my research to actually thinking of new stuff. I came up with a conjecture last week, and today I decided that I should be able to prove it soon. Basically, I just need to be very careful in keeping track of a bunch of things. It is promising.

2009-07-03T19:58:00.002-04:00

Do you know what I loved? When MTV had blocks. I think that they had "Rock Blocks," "Hard Blocks," "Rap? Blocks," and "Buzz Blocks." They would show several videos from the same type of music in a row. I loved that summer (summers?).

USA! USA! A US All-Star football team is dominating in a world championship. They beat Mexico 55-0 and France 78-0. Now: isn't this like India beating the US in cricket? Is this really something to be proud of? I think not.

2009-07-02T22:09:00.002-04:00

Headline: Vegetarian Diet 'Weakens Bones'. Pretty interesting headline, huh? It seems like maybe a vegetarian/vegan diet isn't such a good idea, right? Read on: it says that the association with vegetarianism and weak bones "is clinically insignificant." I suppose a headline saying "There is no significant link between a vegetarian diet and weaker bones" is quite a bit less attention grabbing.

2009-07-01T22:46:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to Tsjaz and CHG for letting out the big family secret yesterday. Grandma is now in the know.

2009-06-30T22:30:00.003-04:00

We finally have two senators! This is great news, and should have been decided in January. This election/re-count has literally occurred in four different seasons. I give Senator Coleman credit - he gave a very nice concession speech.

An article that will help you understand me.

2009-06-29T21:46:00.002-04:00

Okay, so after thinking and reading about it a bit, I reorganized my favorite players for the NBA draft:

Blake Griffin
Ricky Rubio
Stephen Curry
Jonny Flynn
James Harden
Tyreke Evans

Here is the order that the players were selected:

Blake Griffin
Hasheem Thabeet
James Harden
Tyreke Evans
Ricky Rubio
Jonny Flynn
Stephen Curry

Recall that the Wolves had the 5th and 6th picks. So we got my 2nd and 4th favorite players. However, notice that the 3rd best player slipped to the 7th pick. I sure wish they would have picked Curry - a Rubio/Curry backcourt would have been awesome (potentially), and Rubio would be happy about coming to Minnesota if they hadn't picked someone who plays the same position as him.

That being said, I think that Flynn has potential, so I could have been more upset.

Skye and I put a fence up around the garden this weekend. It felt like a sense of accomplishment, although I am thinking that maybe it wasn't. I think that I built something independently, but I really didn't. Other people build the chickenwire and the fence posts - Skye and I merely bound them together in a rectangle.

I would feel the same way if I built a house - I may have put it together, but I still used boards that someone else sawed, still used nails that someone else created. I think that I have a need to create something completely from scratch. That's too bad, because I don't have those skilz.

2009-06-24T12:21:00.004-04:00

The Wolves now have the 5th and 6th picks in the NBA draft. I don't know exactly how I feel about the trade, but I guess it seems like it isn't horrible (I like Mike Miller, and I am glad that he isn't playing for a young team anymore).

Here are the top six picks in the draft: Griffin (obviously the first pick), Rubio, Thabeet, Harden, Curry, and Evans. I am hoping that Rubio and Curry slip to the 5th and 6th picks. And I am PRAYING that Kahn is smart enough to take those two if they fall that far. They are going to end up being the 2nd and 3rd best players in the draft.

I am hoping for two of Eric Maynor, Terrence Williams, DeJuan Blair, or Sam Young with the Wolves two late picks in the first round (especially Maynor if we don't get Rubio).

2009-06-23T17:48:00.001-04:00

Juno, Maeby, Har Mar Superstar, and Steve Perry all rolled into one!

2009-06-22T12:24:00.002-04:00

OMFG! President Barack Obama reads my weblog! Hi, Barry!

Skye had the idea of letting part of our lawn run wild, and I was thinking about about using part of it for bamboo. Here are a list of pros and cons for putting in bamboo:

Pros:

Bamboo would provide privacy from the road in the back of our house.
Bamboo grows ridiculously fast, and would be fun to watch.
I just really like bamboo.

Cons:

Not native.
Requires work to keep it from spreading (3 times per year, roughly).
Costs money.

Comments on what I should do are appreciated.

2009-06-19T17:12:00.002-04:00

I ran four 800 meter runs yesterday without any hamstring issues. Tomorrow will be a tough day - 6 miles at race pace. I guess that I maybe shouldn't look at it this way, since I am going to have to run 26.2 miles at race pace in October.

One of the worst ideas I have heard in some time: train your husband like you would your dog. Please allow me to enumerate:

I resent the fact that we are being compared to animals. The implication is that husbands occupy the same place in the house as pets. I love pets, but this is not how I want to be treated.
As a Swedish friend and I were discussing, a woman training the man to do stuff might actually be bad for the woman. If the woman's goal is to get some sort of a task done, then her "training" the man or ordering him to do it relieves the man of responsibility for the task in some ways.
If you marry someone, it is naive to think that they are there to do what you want. You are really signing up to live in close proximity to another human being who has its own wants and needs. This husband is not a device to make your life easier - if you want a maid, then maybe you should get a...maid. (Note: I am not advocating that the woman does all of the housework; I am advocating treating husbands like human beings - why not engage them in discussion about division of labor?)
Skinner may be a "towering figure in psychology," but only because he is historically important. His ideas of behaviorism have fallen away in favor of constructivism. If you write a book that claims to have a psychological basis, you should at least base it on psychology that has been en vogue within the past 50 years.

2009-06-18T09:59:00.004-04:00

I dreamed that I was playing one-on-one with Tsjaz last night. He did one of these:

He wasn't happy when I (incorrectly) compared him to Paulus in the video.

Some conservatives think that Colbert is actually conservative and only pretending to be ironic. (via Mano)

Where is Bad Z going now?

BREAKING NEWS/RUMOR: There are rumored talks between the Timberwolves and the Suns about an Amare Stoudemire for Al Jefferson and the 6th pick. I hatehatehate this. Jefferson has better stats (granted, he played for a worse team), but it seems like they are roughly on the same level, talent-wise (although Amare is definitely better...now). Jefferson is younger. Jefferson is cheaper. Amare only has one year left on his contract, so he would either bolt or require an expensive extension. Both are coming off of injuries, so that is a wash. Neither plays any defense, so that is a wash.

Basically, I would be hesitant to do Amare for Jefferson straight up (Amare is better, but Jefferson is cheaper). But it is the draft choice that really breaks the deal for me. Don't do it, David!

2009-06-17T16:39:00.002-04:00

I stayed at home trying to toilet train our cat. We just progressed a bit, and we have had some problems. So far today, though, there haven't been problems.

I've had a good day of research, too. I now have a conjecture that I can prove. Here are potential problems:

Someone else may have done this already.
It might not be a big enough result and/or it might be a trivial corollary of a previous theorem.
I haven't proved it yet.

Tomorrow, I test my balky hamstring. I have been running, but slowly. Tomorrow, the plan is to run 800s. We'll see how that goes.

2009-06-16T13:58:00.002-04:00

Here are two songs that I have been enjoying on The Current:

"This must be it" by Röyksopp:

"Heavy Cross" by The Gossip

2009-06-15T11:31:00.002-04:00

We celebrated Skye's birthday a tad early last night with the Awesome family. We introduced the units to Japanese food, and Skye and I went to the Cold Stone Creamery afterwards. We decided to get the "Country Time Pink Lemonade" sorbet, since it was the only vegan thing on the menu. Skye asked me: "Does this taste artificial to you?"

If you think about it, this is a really befuddling question. You see, the sorbet tasted almost exactly like Country Time Pink Lemonade. So it did not taste like artificial Country Time Pink Lemonade. This is the answer if your basis for comparison is Country Time Pink Lemonade.

If your basis for comparison is "pink lemonade," then the opposite answer is true, since there's never been anything close to a lemon in it.

I submitted my paper, and I hope that it will be accepted this time. Now I can work on other things.

2009-06-13T00:02:00.002-04:00

I've been having hamstring problems. I think that I can run slowly, but I can't push myself. I'll try to run 5 miles easy tomorrow. If that goes well, I'll try to do my 11 easy miles on Sunday. I don't have any speed work on my training schedule until Thursday, so I think that I might be able to heal.

I have a draft of my paper that is due on Monday done. I wouldn't be terribly embarrassed to hand it in, although I am not crazy about it. In part, this is because I am not crazy about the suggestions that the referee made (although I can see why he made them - basically, I am probably writing this paper for the wrong journal).

It will be nice to have this paper done - then I can work on a new math problem.

2009-06-11T10:10:00.003-04:00

A white separatist denounced the shooting at the Holocaust Museum because "it makes [the white separatist community] look bad."

Interesting take. I would have gone with "Because it is wrong to shoot other humans" myself, but that's just me.

Here are some awesome, awesome white kids (via Mano):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

White in America - The Children

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

2009-06-10T12:14:00.002-04:00

Up is down! Down is up! Bill O'Reilly blatantly lies about calling the late Dr. Tiller "Dr. Killer". I would believe that it was not intentional (although, it was an easy slip for him since he used to call him "Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer," so he is still a jerk), but his false outrage over a newspaper pointing this out is unbelievable. I don't believe it. It is unable to be believed.

Also unbelievable: I cannot believe that he is claiming that newspapers are going out of business because they are too liberal. Really, Bill? This is the main problem? The rise of the internet and poor management has less to do with it than the papers being too liberal?

Here is my brilliant idea of the day, foreign relations division: President Obama should make an appearance at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. People loooooooove their soccer, and Obama acknowledging this would go a long way to getting people to like us again.

2009-06-09T12:09:00.003-04:00

Since I last posted: train trip, conference, friends visiting, and our one-year anniversary.

The train trip was great. The trip to Chicago got to be just a little long, but not bad. Then I got my own bedroom on the sleeper car (it cost extra), and that was fantastic. I want to do that more often. My only complaint was that I didn't get much work done due to the fact that I really enjoyed just looking out the window.

The conference was great, and I saw some old friends. I am now inspired to do math again, but there isn't much to write.

We had a great visit with friends from Boston. They stayed for 6 days, and they never got old. I am sad that we didn't see them more often when we were living in Boston.

We had our one-year anniversary. I slept most of the day, and Skye worked.

Here is an exciting new electric car. After tax credits, it ends up costing somewhere in the $30,000s. This seems like it is getting close to being affordable.

A couple of great weblogs:

Mano continues to be extremely thoughtful on torture.
Tim Gowers is great read for college math instructors. He has a great post explaining what it means to be well-defined.

EDIT: Look down the funnel of a tornado!

2009-05-27T14:57:00.002-04:00

I'm taking a train trip tomorrow, and I am really excited about it. I'll be in Pennsylvania for a group theory conference, which I am also excited about.

I'm beginning to remember why I was on the Jesse Ventura bandwagon 11 years ago. I like that he is going on talk shows and smacking down people who need to be smacked down.

2009-05-26T12:19:00.002-04:00

Tsjaz and CHG visited on Saturday, and they brought a gift: the board game Pandemic. I love it. The four of us (with Skye, of course) played four times in 12 hours, Skye and I played another four times last night, and I played by myself another 5 times. I really like it.

Tsjaz got it for me because he knows that I like cooperative games. I like the idea of working together with people instead of against them - particularly when it comes to my wife. I am also pleased that this is starting to infiltrate my life. For instance, I was at a workshop last week where we had to do a silly exercise: we had to stand back-to-back with someone, turn around, look them over for 30 seconds, go back to back-to-back, change 3 things about your appearance, turn around, and guess what changed. We repeated this several times. I tried to make my changes as obvious as possible, since I thought this might be hard. Someone else - who is known to be a little competitive - said that she liked that she got to "challenge" the other person. Well, I liked making life easier for the other person.

Plus - OMG - the cooperative games link above mentions a Battlestar Galactica cooperative game. Awesome.

2009-05-22T15:44:00.000-04:00

Skye is back in town, which is nice.

We are cat-sitting, and Olivia is not happy about the visit. Hissing abounds. Skye, though, is doing a good job of getting them to co-exist - I didn't feel that I could even do that.

I had meetings today about picking architects for the new academic building. My architect was unanimously chosen. I am very excited to work with them.

2009-05-20T23:48:00.001-04:00

I had a really nice evening with the Rockroads.

CHG inadvertently convinced me to run the Twin Cities Marathon. I signed up and am in training. I ran three days in a row, and I feel great - I had forgotten how great running makes me feel. It somehow makes me feel "strong" all day long. It's weird.

2009-05-19T21:07:00.003-04:00

I went to see Paula Poundstone last night with Tsjaz. It was a great night. First, Paula: about half of her act was pretty clearly scripted, the way a comedian normally goes about her business. This was decent. The other half was clearly material that was being thought up right then and there. This is why Paula is a genius. She is ridiculously quick on her feet, and this makes her hilarious. Several times, she asked a person in the crowd, "And what do you do?" The person's answer led to 5 minutes of material about the job/location/whatever information the person gave (the lute maker gave her closer to 15 minutes worth of material, unsurprisingly).

My only complaint about the performance is that our seats were screwed up. We were supposed to be sitting a lot closer than we were. It's fine, though.

Also performing at the same venue (but different stage) at the same time was Rockie Lynne. Paula's and Rockie's fans mingled together in the common area before the show and during intermission. Now, in case you are ever in the situation where Paula Poundstone is performing at the same time and location as Rockie Lynee and the crowds are mingling, you can tell Paul's fans from Rockie's fans by the following simple rule: Paula's fans were big, plastic glasses and Rockie's fans all wore some sort of "We Support Our Troops" indicator.

We then went home on the light rail. I loooooove trains, and this was the first time I had ridden Minneapolis's light rail. It was great, and helped support the night's theme of "I wish I lived in Minneapolis."

Finally, we walked to Tsjaz's house from the light rail station. It was such a beautiful night - it was comfortably cool. I loved it.

Today's Brilliant Idea

2009-05-07T11:21:00.002-04:00

Chevy is coming out with the Chevy Volt, which is supposed to be the first "series hybrid" in mass production. A "series hybrid" is different from a "parallel hybrid" (the Prius is a parallel hybrid). In a parallel hybrid, there are actually two engines in the car: one is an internal combustion engine (ICE), and the other is electric. Roughly speaking, these two engines work at the same time, or in parallel (this isn't quite true in the Prius, but close enough).

A "series hybrid" only has one engine: an electric engine. The "hybrid" part comes from the fact that there is a generator onboard that produces energy from some sort of fuel. The basic idea is that there is a store of batteries than can be charged at night from a regular electrical outlet, the car runs for about 40 miles on the batteries, and then the generator kicks in if you need more electricity than that for your trip.

The advantages of a series hybrid are that it is more efficient and more simple (it only has one engine rather than two). The disadvantage of the series hybrid is that it requires batteries. Right now, the only practical solution are big, heavy (but cheap) lead acid batteries. These take up so much space that only die hards (like me!) are really willing to work with them, but they do work really well.

The solution is to develop small, light lithium ion batteries. The chemical properties of these batteries allow them to store much more energy per unit mass, which is why they are smaller and lighter - you just need less mass for the same amount of energy. These are popular in small items like laptops, but this is largely because laptops don't remember much energy, so the batteries are pretty small and cheap. Cars require a lot of energy, and there require a lot of battery to run them. This can be done in two ways: make a really expensive (but awesome) car, or figure out a way to make the batteries cheaper.

Chevy believes it can produce the batteries cheaply. Toyota does not believe that anyone can yet. I tend to trust Toyota on this one, due to their success with the parallel hybrids and their relative success in the overall car industry.

So what can be done now, assuming that Chevy doesn't come up with small, light, cheap batteries? This is where my brilliant idea comes in (I am probably not the first, though). Why not build a series electric car without the battery? You would have an electric motor on the car, but this motor would be run by a gasoline generator (for now) rather than batteries. Here are the advantages of such a car:

Electric engines are much, much simpler than ICEs.
All of the technology that would be used is proven. These electric motors are currently running our fridges, computers, golf carts, and electric cars. There isn't a lot of risk, since we are removing the only risky unknown (the batteries).
This appears to be much, much more efficient than an ICE. A typical ICE is roughly 20-25% efficient. That is, if you have a 10 gallon tank of gas, you are actually only using about 2 of those gallons to make the car go forward. The other 8 gallons go toward making the car noisy and hot (which can be good in the winter, but it would be much better to only create heat when you want it and not in, say, August). On the other hand, a home electric generator is roughly 80-85% efficient (it converts one gallon of gas into 30 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which ends up being 83% efficient, since one gallon of gas contains roughly 36 kilowatt-hours of energy). Even accounting for losses at other stages in the engine, it seems like we would immediately have a car that is 2-3 times as efficient as an ICE.
These cars could easily be retrofitted once the battery technology is ready. It would not be hard to add batteries to a car later. These means that consumers would not have to be scared off by the "there will be a better technology in five years" thing.
Detroit would be able to start preparing for the future today. If it could get a headstart on the basics of the electric car, it could be the leader once we make the inevitable switch.
We could gradually change our infrastructure. The first people to buy the cars would use them exactly as we use our current gas cars. As the cost of batteries goes down, the wealthier will replace them first (the batteries will still be expensive, but less so). We could produce a little infrastructure to support the early adopters, and gradually add more as more people get the batteries.

Basically, this seems like it could be the stepping stone to electric cars, and an awesome opportunity for GM (or Ford). They should do this.

2009-05-06T14:05:00.003-04:00

Awesome. Of course, this destroys my "Republican governor-gay marriage law" correlation, but I can live with it.

2009-05-05T12:54:00.005-04:00

I went to pick up my cap and gown today, and I have a story about it. A little background, first: I work as a professor at two schools: one is all male (College A), and one is all female (College B).

So I go up to the desk and ask for my cap and gown. Since my office is on the College B campus, I had to go to the College B bookstore. I asked the woman behind the desk for the cap and gown. She asked me, "Are you graduating from College A or College B?"

Now, initially, you might interpret this as a compliment. I have not yet gotten so old and wrinkled that I look completely different from a student - she basically shaved ten years off of my age. I like that.

But if you think about this for a second, something else is going on. Recall that College A is all male, and College B is all female. So while I look like I am 22, I might look like a woman. I guess that I need to extend my five day beard growth to ten to remove ambiguity.

2009-05-04T15:33:00.000-04:00

It's a crazy day. At least I get to show off my electric car at the Environmental Studies end-of-year picnic today.

Surprise Saturday Post

2009-05-02T15:59:00.002-04:00

Here is an article on sugar facts. Much of the article is "sugar is bad." The eighth fact is "Turns out that cancer's preferred fuel is none other than glucose." They neglect to tell you that it also turns out that the brain's preferred fuel is none other than glucose, too.

I'm not saying that sugar is good for you, but I think that it (along with fats) gets an unfair reputation.