Middle Name Blogging

Back to School

2009-04-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

The secret's out (i.e. my boss has been told), so it's safe to post this to a public place - i'm going back to school! i'll be starting a Master's program in Statistics this fall at Portland State University. i've been feeling like the math in my life has been sorely lacking lately, so i'm very excited about this. My goal is to get a job doing analysis for a sports team. Even if that doesn't work out, though, i'm sure i'll enjoy the next couple of years and come out with the ability to find a job that i can enjoy.

There is one caveat - i need to pass an advanced calculus course this summer with a B or better. Michelle and i are of the opinion that 'Advanced' should be reserved for things other than the description of this course, but that could just be Caltech talking. Regardless, it will probably be good to get back in the swing of things with a course like this - i really haven't done calculus in 7 years.

Michelle has been awesome throughout this whole thing - very supportive and encouraging of a big career change while raising a child. i definitely would not even be thinking of doing this if she were not behind me 110% (just kidding - 100%. i don't believe in 110%).

Huh?

2008-06-11T14:40:00.001-07:00

Can anyone explain the following sentence to me?

He was the algorithm that was supposed to make the Celtics a mathematically impossible team to solve.

i just can't parse it.

No Throw-Away Questions

2008-06-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

i don't know if you feel this way, but i am often faced with the realization that, for me, there are no throw-away questions. That is, whenever someone asks what would normally be a rhetorical question, i feel compelled to try to answer it, even if only to myself. As an example, i was recently with some friends, one of which is one of seven brothers in his family (no sisters). Another friend said, "Wow, what are the odds of that?" i'm pretty sure he just meant that seven children of one gender is a rare occurrence, and worth noting. My brain, however, had to answer the question:

Well, as long as we accept that the probability for a boy is 50%, then the probability of having seven boys (given that you are having seven children) is 1/2^7, which is 1/128, or a little less than 1%. If the question was asking what the odds are that all the children were the same gender, boy or girl, than that increases the probability to 1/64, or less than 2%. Of course, the question could also be, "What are the odds of meeting someone who is one of seven brothers with no sisters?" In that case, you'd need to know the distribution of family size... Or i could just assume that the question meant, "What are the odds that our friend is one of seven brothers?" That's easy! 100% That's my final answer.

Thankfully, i've trained myself so that this conversation is internal and not released on the general public (for the most part - i do know some people who would be exposed to those thoughts (my wife, for one - i'm so grateful for a nerdy wife!)). i've also trained myself on some elements of social etiquette. When i pass someone in the hall at work and they ask me how i'm doing, i just say, "Good." and that's that, rather than thinking for 10 seconds and then telling them how i'm really doing. i have come to understand that they don't actually want to know how i'm doing. Unfortunately (and this happens almost every time), five seconds after we've had our short pseudo-conversation, i remember that the other half of said social discourse is that i ask them how they're doing. By that time it's too late, so i leave everyone thinking (correctly) that i'm only half way to courteous. My problem is that i don't really care how they're doing. Or rather, i don't care to spend time stopping in a hallway to hear how they're doing (i usually would be glad to listen to them if they really wanted to tell me about their life). So i don't ask, and it's only after we're separated by a good 5 meters that i realize that i should have asked anyway. Really, this happens at least 90% of the time. Is there something wrong with me (short answer - yes)?

i think that's why i've had so much trouble in the past with small talk. i have trouble translating the fact that i desire a relationship with a person into a desire to talk about random topics. i'm actually much better now than i used to be - i don't mind a small dose of small talk, but i'm still bad at generating it myself. i now enjoy a good conversation with my friends, even the parts that are small talk-y, because i value their thoughts and their relationships. i still have a hard time with people i don't know as well, though. Does anyone else have this problem?

Funny Farm

2008-03-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

How's your associative memory?

ThursdayTriptych - RPG edition

2008-01-17T08:29:00.000-08:00

So perhaps the reverse triptych is a little bit too hard (at least for Tom Hanks movies - it would probably be easier with a larger set to choose from, like Asimov books). As it was, Tim might want to rethink his priorities, according to the amount of time he spent figuring it out. After days of work, he came up with War, Romance and Travel as his themes. Also, he gets crazy bonus points for admitting to the use of Excel. Congratulations Tim! You can see the rules here. This week (or week.5) we'll return to the regular format. Your themes are Assassins, Thieves and Warriors. Feel free to interpret liberally. Good luck!

Tuesday Triptych - Reverse edition

2008-01-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

i took a couple of weeks off for the holidays, but i'm not completely abandoning this site. For the last challenge, i couldn't even come up with a good list, so congrats to both my brother and the dreamy accessorizer. You can see the rules here. This week i'm going to try something different. Instead of giving you the categories, i'm going to give you a set from which you must come up with the most cohesive triptych that can be filled from in the set. For this week, you must come up with themes for movies which have featured Tom Hanks. Good luck!

Tim, you should be able to add your web address in again in the comment form. Let me know if you still can't.

Path-Optimization diagram

2007-12-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

In case my explanation partially confused you, here is a diagram to complete the process. T means traffic.

Bow before my MS Paint skillz!

Path Optimization

2007-12-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

When you're walking from one place to another, do you path-optimize? That is, do you try to determine the quickest way to get to your destination? i'm not talking just about crossing the parking lot instead of walking along the sidewalk around the parking lot, though that might be part of it. In my life, it's a little more pervasive. Here's an example:

On most days, i bring a lunch to work with me. It's fairly easy and definitely cheaper than going out to eat. On those days when i don't, though, i usually end up going to a block where there are a bunch of food carts (usually for Thai, but next time i'm going to try the Bosnian cart). They're all relatively cheap for a good meal. The carts are, from the door of my building, 2.5 blocks north and 2 blocks west. i'm pretty much forced to go the 0.5 block north, so i don't have to make any decisions until i have 2 blocks north and 2 blocks west. For completeness (because you must know this), i also have to cross 3 streets in each direction, all one-ways.

So when i come to an intersection, should i cross north or west? The streets running east/west (that i have to cross going north) tend to have more traffic on them and do not have stop signs, whereas those running north/south (cross west) have stop signs and less traffic. Therefore it is more likely that, coming on any given intersection, it will be easier for me to cross west than north. So, if i have the opportunity, i cross north first. Let's beat a dead horse examine a hypothetical example. <needlesslyLongExplanation skipIf="itBoresYou">i leave my building and head north to the first intersection, where i find myself at the southeast corner (needing to cross both north and west). There is no traffic coming on the east/west street, so i cross north and continue northward to the next intersection (i do not cross westward even though i could). At the next intersection, there is traffic on the e/w street so i cross west. By the time i've crossed, the traffic has lessened and i can cross north again. i do so and continue northward to the next intersection. Once there, my only crossing option is to cross north, but there is traffic, so instead i turn and walk down the block westward. At each intersection i come to, i again check the traffic and cross north if possible. Once i make that northward crossing, i am on the same side of the street as the carts, so i only need to travel west until i reach them (unless i haven't been able to cross until i am already as far west as the carts, in which case i'm already there).</needlesslyLongExplanation>

i make similar decisions when i walk home from the Max station after work, but i also have a goal, which is to get as north as soon as possible because the walk is nicer there. So i'm not completely enslaved to optimization. Good thing, too, because otherwise i would have a hard time going for walks with Michelle and Gavin ("You mean we're going for a walk to nowhere in particular and will end up right back here? But we're already here! We're done!").

i also know that, in downtown Portland, if i walk briskly against the flow of (vehicular) traffic i can hit all the walk signs. It works going north/south as well as east/west, meaning all the lights are timed approximately the same. i'm not even sure why i noticed this, but it aids significantly when i need to walk more than just a few blocks downtown (by myself - i wouldn't subject someone else to my frantic pace).

Tuesday Triptych - I Am Legend edition

2007-12-18T16:05:00.000-08:00

Last week's winner, with a set of movies, was my brother. i would have taken the win myself, but i was unable to complete my set of heist movies. You can see the rules here. This week's themes are Disease, Mutation and Survival.

Eating Customs

2007-12-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

Recently, i spent a week in Virginia participating in some software training. Since i was not able to cook my own meals, i was compelled (oh the horror!) to visit a number of the local restaurants. It might not surprise you to know that, for dinner, i had Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, Japanese, and Italian (for lunch, i had leftovers, Chik-Fil-A because i can't get it in Portland, and Chinese to help fill out my Asian tour. i also almost had Korean BBQ instead of Italian (it was just across the street)). i have to tell you, it is kind of weird being the only customer in a large restaurant as the employees lounge around and 2004's Top 10 Indian Romance Music Videos plays on the televisions adorning the walls.

My Indian experience made me wonder what customs i was violating/profaning. What am i supposed to do with my left hand when i'm not using? Is there a certain order that i should eat my dishes? Is it acceptable to use my fingers? i really have no idea, and that applies to all the restaurants i went to (the Italian place less so). i'm glad that the people who run the restaurants are gracious and understand that i'm not really offending the honor of their wives when i mix my rice with my curry.

Triptych Tuesday - Wednesday Edition

2007-12-12T14:37:00.001-08:00

i'm late because we were flying across country yesterday. Last week we had a great set by my former roommate, with a tv shows theme. You can see the rules here. This time, in honor travel-induced lateness, your themes are Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Tuesday Triptych - Sci-fi Edition

2007-12-04T17:19:00.000-08:00

i figured i'd try another one of these. Last week, the clear winner (and only player besides me) was the Dreamy Accessorizer, with a full complement of fairy tales. You can see the rules here. This time, your themes are Robots, Space Travel and Aliens. Good luck!

Not With a Bang

2007-11-30T15:14:00.000-08:00

whimper...

In the future, my posts will (hopefully) be better thought out and not just random ramblings because i have to. i'm still going to try to post frequently, but i'm not going to force it. Thank you for your patience.

Reading List Meme

2007-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

i'm not normally high on memes. This one, though, piqued my interest (found here). So here you are, a random list of books (compiled by who knows who) showing which ones i have read or started. Sadly, the ones i have read are a very small subset. i don't currently have any on my reading list because i tend to keep a very short reading list. i'm open to your input though: which of the books am i absolutely missing out on? Here are the rules.

Bold those you’ve read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your To Be Read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov (currently reading for a second time)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Triptych Challenge

2007-11-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

Triptych is a word from the greek words for three and fold. In normal usage, it means a work of art that is divided into three parts. i, however, am going to subvert the word for my own usage. My triptych challenge will be a game for you with the following rules: i will give you three themes. Your challenge is to come up with some work of art (book, song, video game, ...) that incorporates different subsets of those themes.

For example, if i give you Ocean, Music and Death, you might come up with Mr. Holland's Opus (music, not ocean or death), Crime and Punishment (death, not ocean or music), The Red Violin (music and death, not ocean), and Titanic (ocean, death and music).

The challenge is to come up with one example for every subset (A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC, and, for good measure, none). One point for each subset. Bonus points would be given for completing all subsets as well as for constraining your answers to one genre (different amounts for different genres - could be movies (broad) or 19th century Russian novels (narrow)). i don't know that i'll actually give out points, but if i did, that's how i would score it - well, that and points via whim.

So here is your first set of themes: Royalty, Food and Sleep. Good luck! i'll post a comment later with what i come up with.

It's hard to come up with themes that are diverse enough to not overlap too much (so it's hard to find one without the other, like ocean and whale) but not so diverse (or narrow) that it's impossible to find anything that really has all of them, like aliens, dolphins, and rain (except for something like Douglas Adams' books).

Recall

2007-11-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

i'm sure you've noticed that you recall some things much easier than others. At least i do. Maybe you recall everything perfectly. If so, remind me never to play Trivial Pursuit with you. If you're like me, though, you depend on some combination of association and indexing for most of your recall needs.

Most of us are familiar with free association games. If you are asked to say the first word that pops into your mind when hearing the word red, you might say apple. i might think fire truck. Someone else might respond with 650 nm (if you ever play this game with Techers, be prepared for some really random associations). Even better is playing non-sequitur, where you have to say a word that is not related to the word just said by someone else. It's actually very hard to keep up, especially if you're trying to be fast, and reveals the power associations have in our brains.

<grossGeneralization apologiesTo="Dan" >Our brains are made up of billions of neurons, each with many connections to other neurons via synapses. When a neuron is activated, it communicates its activation to its synaptically connected neurons, which may or may not activate them as well. The more a certain activation pathway is used, the more likely that it will be activated in the future.</grossGeneralization> i like to think that association works the same way, but on a larger scale (i think that makes it homologous, but i'm not absolutely sure. Maybe analagous is a better term?). On this scale, your brain is made up of a bunch of different words or concepts, with connections of varying strength to other words or concepts. So when you hear the word house, you might think of a door and see an image of your own house, which reminds you of other houses you have lived in, and so on down rabbit trails and off on tangents. i think that tangents, then, could be explained as particularly strong associations down which you are easily led (or just enjoy following). Some humor, as well, could be defined as finding somewhat obscure associations and raising our awareness of them. As with neurons, these connections between words/concepts grow stronger the more we use them together and weaken over time if not used.

Personally, i find that i do free association very well, particularly in the context of multiple choice questions. It's a big part of the reason i do well on standardized tests (honestly not that great of a skill - i don't have standardized tests at work, and Gavin didn't come with one either). Over time and repeated practice, i have learned to 'trust my gut' when faced with a question that i might not know a lot about. As long as i have run across the information asked for, it is possible that i will lean towards the correct answer. This is by no means infallible, but i tend to do better than random, even when i don't really know anything about the subject. i just have these faint associations calling out, "Pick me!" The more information given, the better we tend to do (in general), because we have a greater number of possible paths to light up the correct answer (as long as our initial associations are good - it's easy to pick up bad associations). That isn't always true, though, because sometimes the information might be given in order to lead us off the mark. Framing a question differently can often lead to different answers. A Pavlovian response is also the product of a strong association that may not be based in any rational method. When i hear a fire alarm, i think doughnuts. i can feel the tangents pulling me all over the place. Must. Stay. On. Track.

Indexing is a much less commonly used idiom for memory recall. It might not really be used at all, but i'm going to manipulate the term until it means what i say it means. When i say indexing, i think of databases (there goes that association thing again). One of the most common ways to speed up the response time of a database is to use indexes. <grossGeneralization apologiesTo="DBAs, anyone who actually reads this" >When a database table is created, it doesn't know how you want to search it. For example, i can create a table called Friends, and it has fields for first_name, last_name, and coolness (no, i don't rate my friends like this, it's a much more complex algorithm). When i want to find all friends with a coolness greater than 5, the database has to go through each record in the table to compile my list. Alternatively, i can tell the database to index the coolness field. The database will then keep a separate structure of the coolness values, along with which rows they relate to. It gets a bit complex in implementation, but the basic idea is that searching that separate structure is much faster than searching the entire table. </grossGeneralization>

i think that our brains index as well. As an example, think of the rooms in your house. You likely can come up with a comprehensive list fairly quickly. Yes, there is association going on here. Maybe it's all association under the hood. But when coming up with lists, some constraints make it easier than others. It's easy to think of boy names that begin with B - Brian, Bill, Bob, Bart, ... But try to come up with a list of boy names where R is the second letter (admittedly a smaller pool) - Arthur, Brian (by looking at my previous list), and i quickly degenerate into trying random sets of syllables (Dray... Draw... Drew - that's a name!). i can feel my brain stuttering. i can't constrain my search set well, so it feels like i need to examine each name out of all boy names to see if the second letter is R. i simply don't index names by second letter. i suppose you could say i don't have strong second-letter associations, but i find it slightly easier to think about it as indexes. i think a lot of memorization falls under the indexed category - the strongly associated set. Presidents of the USA. Noble gases. Elementary particles.

So, let's outline some different questions that apply to association and indexing to different degrees:

Free Association:
Question: Name 5 words you associate with green
Difficulty: easy

Grass
Oscar the Grouch
Go (traffic signal)
Felt
Gavin's Bumbo

A lot of variation here

Constrained Free Association:
Question: Name 5 blue things from college
Difficulty: medium

Blue Books
Tommy
Merzbacher
Jackson
The paper around those white erasers

Easier once i came up with a theme (textbooks - basically turning it partially into an index)

Non-Sequitur:
Question: Name 5 things that aren't associated with movies
Difficulty: medium-hard (mental thrashing)

Computer monitors
Sudoku
Log cabins
Leap frog
Gardening

It's hard to come up with things that aren't associated in some way. i'm not satisfied with the list i came up with, and i ended up not using a lot of the ideas that i did think of. It's so easy to come up with association paths ( sudoku -> crosswords -> didn't they make a movie about crossword aficianados? If not, then -> scrabble, and i know they made a movie about big scrabble tournaments).

Simple Indexing:
Question: Name 5 authors in your bookcase
Difficulty: easy

Isaac Asimov
Orson Scott Card
David Eddings
Frank Herbert
JRR Tolkien

For this one, i almost look through my shelves to make the list. i know more or less where the particular authors are located, and it's basically an exercise in 'looking' at the shelves in my mind.

Bad Indexing:
Question: Name 5 book titles that include the word Free
Difficulty: hard-impossible

i am pretty much terrible at this sort of thing. Doesn't work for me at all.

Defeat

2007-11-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

So i've been trying to do this whole NaBloPoMo thing without mentioning it, but i am, as of now, admitting defeat in that particular endeavor. Things have just been too busy lately, with preparations for a trip and holiday events. You can view this post as the result of a brain washed clean. Have you ever done a cleansing fast, where you only, say, drink juice for a week along with a few other things to clean out your system? i feel kind of like that - there's nothing left anymore. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Thankfully, you only have to endure a few more days of this. i don't think i'll be doing it (NaBloPoMo) again.

Trip

2007-11-25T22:38:00.000-08:00

In a week, Michelle and i will be taking our first major trip with Gavin. We're flying across the country to Georgia to see her parents, with a trip up to Tennessee (driving) to visit her grandparents. i'll also be traveling to Virginia for some training for work. So we're combining work with vacation and flying long distances in a plane with driving long distances in a truck. i'm sure it will be an adventure. Hopefully we'll all stay sane.

The trip to Virginia will mark the first time i've really been away from Gavin for more than just the work day. i am not looking forward to that part, especially because Gavin has been developing so rapidly, changing daily. i know that he'll be different in those few days. Hopefully he won't develop too much - i'm kind of selfish about that, i suppose.

Photo Organization, Revisited

2007-11-24T22:41:00.000-08:00

We recently purchased Photoshop Elements in order to be able to do some more advanced editing to our photos. It happens to come with a photo organizer, so i thought i'd try it out. So, the last couple times i downloaded photos from our camera, i used it rather than Picasa. i took Adam's suggestion and started keeping the photos in folders by year, month, and day taken. i'm trying out the Edits subfolder as well, but it's kind of hard, as Elements automatically saves any (quick) changes you do to the same folder with an _edited-x added.

Anyways, i'm glad to say that it has been working out pretty well. i like the organizer in Elements better than Picasa's because it allows me to visually see my tags and drag them onto sets of photos. It is much quicker than manually tagging every photo (maybe there's a better way in Picasa, but i don't know it). i can also get the tags to automatically show up on Flickr when i upload them, so that's a plus as well. Picasa makes it easier to do simple edits to your photos (like lightening, color temperature, straightening, ...), but i'm pretty sure that i'll learn how to do them properly in Photoshop, and i'll have better control that way.

One other drawback to the Photoshop organizer was that it ran a little slow. That, however, was taken care of by a recent (today) RAM upgrade: 1 to 3 GB. It amazes me how quickly prices drop on computer components, especially memory. i would definitely recommend, if your computer seems a bit slow, to first make sure you have enough RAM. That is the easiest way to speed up your computer. Remember, though, that your computer can't address more than about 3.5 GB, unless you're running a 64-bit OS (this useless bit of trivia brought to you by the fact that i read random technical blogs).

Kindle

2007-11-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

i like to read. Actually, i love to read. i grew up with a book in my hand (literally - my mom made me to put the book down when i was in the car because i couldn't get home from a mile away. i was 13). i can still sit down with a good book and not look up for multiple hours.

i think it was last year that Sony introduced the Sony Reader, a digital device utilizing e-ink. That means that the display is much more readable than a regular computer screen and doesn't fatigue your eyes. It sounded pretty cool, but was a bit expensive and used a proprietary format for the books that you bought. Plus, it was a first-generation product, and i'm not an early adopter. i like to know what is out there, but i'd rather wait a few generations for a product that has been developed with some real-world feedback.

Well, Amazon just released the Kindle, a similar product with more features and such. You can check out the link if you want specifics, but the things that jumped out at me were that it is wifi enabled (it will also log on to phone networks as well, at no charge), has some internet connectivity (wikipedia, certain newspapers and blogs) and has a keyboard for annotation and full-text search.

It looks really cool, but again, it's a bit out of my price range. Plus, the books you buy for it aren't that much cheaper than buying the physical books. Since i am in a city with one of the best bookstores in the world and can find plenty of used books to read for significantly cheaper than the new price, i'm not sure how many books i would be willing to buy in electronic format. There are a lot of public domain books that i could read for free, but i like some of the newer books as well.

So i guess i'll wait another generation or so, to see if prices come down and functionality gets better. Hopefully, there are enough early adopters to push the development of the devices. The good news is that the Kindle is currently back-ordered, so at least there should be some good feedback. Here's hoping...

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! i'm extremely thankful that i can spend it with my family - my wife and son as well as my more extended family. It's always great to be with them. i can't believe how blessed i've been with the relationships and love present between me and my parents, me and my siblings. i wouldn't trade any of them for anything.

i'm also thankful that there are other people who appreciate my nerdiness. Thank you for reading this blog, and yes, for laughing at with me.

Gavin does not communicate well yetkk,v mb

2007-11-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

But he seems to enjoy the keyboard.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv ............................................................,z ZZZZ .l nkkjhf b b........ ////////////////////////////////////.................................kkkkkkjjjjjjd c

Google Analytics

2007-11-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

Google Analytics is really cool. i check it way too often (there are numbers and graphs everywhere!), and i've noticed that a few people have found my site by searching for something like fun things to do with my wife or wife fun. i'm pretty sure they end up here. i imagine that's not what they had in mind. Poor guys.

Things i (have done || do)

2007-11-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

Biking to work is not nerdy. Figuring out how much the wind affects you while riding is.
Watching your child develop is not nerdy. Thinking that the second derivative of his cognitive abilities (w.r.t. time) is positive is.
Liking math is not nerdy. Laughing at (or making) jokes about second derivatives (see above) is.
Knowing words is not nerdy. Assigning numeric values to them (with your own private algorithm) is.
Liking puzzles is not nerdy. Having already seen and solved all the ones in this post is.
Watching science fiction movies is not nerdy. Discussing the geophysical impossibilities in a Vin Diesel film on the ride home from the theater is.
Celebrating pi day is not nerdy (ok, maybe it is). Celebrating pi day at 1:59 AM is. Not having to look up what time to celebrate it definitely is.

Photographs

2007-11-18T23:36:00.001-08:00

Does anyone have any tips and tricks they use for keeping their digital photos organized? We have quite a catalog of photos, and it's hard to keep them organized. i do have some things i do to try to stay organized, but i always fall behind.