Kak no-pyccku...

if your textbook is by Paul Garrett, don't stress too much about how your answers are different from the ones in the back of the book.

'cause more often than not, the book is fucking wrong.

i like the topics that he writes textbooks about, but as far as quality defined by no mistakes goes, his textbooks suck.

classes are over now (i have no idea how well or poorly I did in PDE). i'm pretty relieved, although I'm sort of floating in this sur-reality where I only have to work. Last week I took off 4 days to study for my finals, I think that period of just waking up whenever and going to study got me into the habit of life without job-work. So I keep having to remind myself to go into work, it's such an afterthought.

My girlfriend is pretty great. We're making some progress at keeping our lives together despite the fearsome forces involved. I do need to do some laundry soon. I haven't quite finished introducing her to my friends, mostly due to their unavailability re: school or not. But this like many things will resolve as t goes to infinity.

I spent last night talking with my friend Justin. We talked a little about languages, as is our way, then I ran him a bit ragged with a computational math game (that my thoughtful girlfriend got me!), but the passion of our conversation was kenken. After solving a few together, he thought of making one. Turns out making kenken is challenging (reminding me of my similar experiences making kakuros / cross-sums). And once you overcome the challenge of being able to make a kenken, there is the added challenge of making one that can be solved (not to mention verifying (how?) that the solution is unique). I was able to make a 4x4, and two 6x6's. Justin tried and failed to make a 10x10, but was able to make a 6x6. Then we traded, tried to solve the 6x6's. We weren't able to solve them, and couldn't even make much headway. Herein was the discovery that making solvable kenken is difficult. You have to make specific design choices to make them possible to solve, and if you don't know what these design features are, then you probably won't accidentally include them. We'd just begun to discuss these features when the night was over and I had to head home (through the horrid black quiet coldness).

I'm inspired to think of kenken in general terms, an n by n grid, with digits 1 to n going in each block. how many possible arrangements? n^3 i think. now add in the sudoku aspect, only 1 to n in each column and row. how many possible arrangements?... i don't know. then add in the many subgroup arithmetic constraints, further reducing the number of arrangements. hopefully to 1, making the solution unique. how many single-block gimme's do you need in an n by n grid? how many double-block gimme's (where you know the two numbers but not the orientation)?... etc. It's fun to think about, and I'll have some time in the next few weeks to ponder it, and play and solve some kenken/kakuros.

fun!

studying for my only midterm (a benefit of dropping all the other actual classes except my independent study in elliptic curve cryptography) on Tuesday. going ok. study sheet created, now just doing as many problems (over again) as I can stand. actually this isn't really true. i start the problems, get to the tedious part (it would appear that Partial Differential Equations involves much tedium), and then skip to the end / don't finish it. i'm not really getting much actual practice in, but at least mentally i'm going over things.

life is superb. exercise/biking/diet regimen going steadily. I seem to be in better shape than ever, though I'd like to be a little bit stronger/thinner. But I feel great now so if nothing changes I'd be fine with this being permanent.

i have a girlfriend. she is basically awesome. she encourages me to eat more often, and healthier, makes me breakfast. like tasty breakfast, eggs, french toast, etc. this makes me want to do her dishes for the rest of her life, something I can do easily and that she abhors. we shall lend each other our strengths, creating a marvelous ly satisfied breakfast-making dishes-doing machine.

I have begun to detach from her just a bit, a restoration of balance and reclaiming the individual life, as is natural after the beginning period of frenetically getting to know each other and seeing each other daily. it is very difficult to say no to her, or to be the one who initiates our spending some time apart. I will try, practice. I realize I have let some friends slip a bit outward into non-seeing-ness, and am beginning to repair this. if this applies to you, now is the time to respond and make some plans to hang out.

tomorrow I can/must/should register for next semester's classes. the big gamble again, choosing which math classes I might not drop out of / might like the material. and do I do my final/third physics class now or the next/last semester? I choose any 4 math classes and the physics class (and should I throw in another independent study class because this semester's crypto one went so well?), and after two semesters I graduate. A very simple formula, but complicated by my tendency to drop things I'm not interested in.

ciao!, and good luck students doing their last midterms and pre-finals stuff.

my roommate felt it necessary to read this to me last night, and I'm glad he did.

from 1 Corinthians 13:

"If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body [to hardship] that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."


for all your flaws... this is not too shabby, Bible.

I can play the guitar.


IF.


by play you mean throw.





I can play the guitar well.


Like 70 feet or so I'd say.

Really well.

i don't even need chocolate. but i buy it sometimes, nice stuff too, just to have it on hand in case someone is over who really likes chocolate. in fact, i can almost never imagine this to be a guy, so it's a chocolate bar for a girl who i don't even know. or maybe it's not about being a good host to guests, maybe i'm just reveling in this power that i have, power over chocolate, something that usually makes people weak.

but i can tell you one thing. if it was salty and crunchy, I'd have eaten it and its brothers and their cousins like fifty times already. fifty times tonight.

ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!


damn it. last night was so perfectly autumn. i was digging it.

not ready for a change of season yet, not not not ready.

i hated it, but I cleaned up all the LaTeX in my crypto doc and now there's not hundreds of lines of warnings to sort through when something really goes wrong. Also in doing so, I understood what LaTeX even cares about enough to give a warning, an experience.

all this, just 'cause I couldn't find the bug preventing me from compiling my last modification, arg.

well, one thing I haven't yet tried is to pull an all nighter. like needlessly.

this might reset things. or it might cause a disaster. well, every day is almost a disaster already.

Autumn spirit floating on the cold night air,

i need you.

i need you to enter my lungs, and fill my bloodstream,

with your soothing qualities.

for my blood burns, it boils, it churns, inside of me.

i need you now.

i have been to the video store too often, in the past few weeks. clearly it is providing a release of some sort. however it grows harder and harder to pick a movie there, the pain of picking a movie is very real and difficult to bear. Each time I wonder if I can ever return. it seems my tastes are growing narrower. I'm starting to see patterns, of things in movies that I do not care to watch. I'm making categories.



Category 1: Monster movies with a crappy looking monster on the front of the dvd. There are too many to count. As soon as I see one of these, I imagine the terribly made film it entails, all the scary thrilling moments that lead up to first seeing the creature, and then the rest of the unsatisfying film. in a moment, it is over, and I am bored, and made all the less for this moment. I think I saw a movie like this when I was thirteen, can't remember what it was called. They've made this film, no need to remake it, which itself is an entire category of movies, but I'll skip that.


Category 2: A thrilling new action movie starring your favorite set of familiar actors who really really needed this job. Dean Cain, Christian Slater, any of the Baldwins (sorry Danny Boy) are examples. These actors' names or faces are generally enough to get people to rent a film, and these actors get paid, transaction complete. Except for being entertained. Yes. This part was missing from the process. So, I cannot watch these films again.


Category 3: Love movies. they are quite happy. people fall in love, inevitably. I do not wish to watch these movies. They are for people who want to watch other people's fake happiness, and derive enjoyment from this. I cannot.


Category 4: Good movies. Quality movies. Dramas. Foreign films. This is very hard to admit, but often I recognize that a movie might very well be an excellent film. But I cannot rent it. I do not want to watch any good movies right now. Starring excellent actors, who make the performance of a lifetime. This is sad. There have been many other times in my life, most of the times, when I sought out the best movies I could find. This is not the case right now, but it may phase back into what I like later on.


Category 5: TV Shows. I do not watch cable TV for a reason. I will never rent these.


Category 6: Many no doubt interesting characters deal with personal trauma, and then somehow meet in a very unlikely circumstance, drawing all of these stories together. This has been done.


Category 7: Horror movies that rely on some evil killer person. Most of the movie is seen through the victim's eyes, everyone is very afraid and then usually most people are killed. At the end, the evil killer person is killed, by some good guy like a cop, or sometimes by the last would-be victim. Mostly I'm just tired of this fear-thing. It does not stimulate me anymore.


Category 8: Movies with almost no text on the back. If you do not care enough to describe the movie and make it sound interesting, I am not going to make an effort either. Sometimes I've watched movies that were worse than they seemed from reading on the back, so I definitely can be sold on a movie even if it doesn't pan out. Read This Comment, you people out in the world who are in charge of writing the blibs on the backs of dvd's. This is good feedback.


Category 9: Movies that are For Display Purposes Only. You have no text on the back. If all I have to go from is the name of a movie, a picture of some thing or some actor on the front, This Is Not Enough For Me. I will never rent you. Video rental stores, read this comment.


...


So what is left? Are there any movies left? I don't think so. I am asking you. I am asking Fate, and The World, God, or Chaos, or any being more powerful than me. If you tell me new things, it's possible I'll invent a new category of things that I do not want to watch and include what you've told me into this, perhaps as the defining template. I do not doubt this. Mostly I look for sci fi, action, werewolf or vampire movies that i have not seen and that do not take themselves too seriously. I can basically re-watch any movie in this category of movies that I do like, which is fortunate because I physically want to rent a movie certain occasions and when the selection sucks I have no choice here. Movies like Starman. Or Underworld. X-men. Spiderman. The Punisher. Hmm. there are a lot of movies about comics here. Hmmm. This is a new pattern.



(Note: certainly there are various exceptions to the above categories, and I am no hypocrite for making exceptions. sometimes an item is just exceptional. So I exception exception exception your exception exceptionally. Exception. Gesundexception.)



...this is all for now. After watching The Punisher to boost my enjoyment of life levels, I am ready to watch the two movies I have not seen, for better or probably worse.

occasionally i watch crap films. i admit this freely.

tonight's farce included Anonymous Rex, starring Daniel Baldwin. It's a weird film, part two of my weird films night. I'd say it's worse the first movie, Immortal, by far. Were I to sing the praises of even the tiniest portions of either of these two films, I wouldn't waste any time with Anonymous Rex, and I'd put all my efforts into getting you to watch Immortal.

But that's not why I'm here tonight.

...actually, I'm here to grow on a personal level. Instead of bashing Daniel Baldwin for not having his shit together, as I was intending to, I'm going to reach out to him, and try to relate to him. I sure don't have my life together either. And there are ways in which I am definitely flailing (though it's not as obvious as crashing cars and getting busted for coke). Hang in there Danny boy. Hang in there.

Also, as a side note: it was accidentally effective to have a few big fat actors cast in AR, namely because they are supposed to be dinosaurs in the story, and big fat men sort of give you the impression that maybe, just maybe, under some sort of hologram, they actually are dinosaurs. Fat dinosaurs.

never before has this icon been more appropriate.

.... i'm at work, really hungover, and it's all I can do to barely do my job, and with a horrible expression on my face (that I make sure no one ever sees).

i give you some evidence that i am a weak-variety nerd who likes comics 'cause...

...it's Haiku time.

Watching over you, ten miles above your cities, I am Superman. I'm depressed but still, absorbing harm meant for you, I don't have a friend.	I nap, snort cocaine, have sex, booze, and save your ass. I am Iron Man. I make love to steel, bears anti-artillery, armor to protect you.	The city hates me, joking, jesting, but it hurts, I am Spiderman. Agiley flex, twist, I aim, shoot, soar, web-slinging, Better than flying.
I'm Incredible, boundless strength, intelligence, Say it. Say my name. For all my Hulk Smash!, this world killed my queen and child, My hate never stops.	Stomp foot double makes, but now clever detecting, I'm Multiple Man. Doubled far too much, psyche fractured, but who cares? I'm very boring.	In my cousin's blood, the seeds of my genesis, I am the She Hulk. Defending villains, in court, weird?, but you have to, Law comics can suck.

i drank lots of beer,
secrets you wish you had heard,
to me were revealed.

"I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough"

and hence Your Face recovers the wave speed as it should!!!...


...


...


I am studying. for a test. tomorrow. and suddenly I realize parts of my shitty-not-a-real-textbook need a good beating.

my very down mood right now has to be either completely random... or exactly related to some crappy things happening in school. also this song has very bad associations, so perhaps by listening to it several times i'm using it to stab myself in the head. in addition to it being a sad sounding song.

basically at this point it looks like i'm going to drop two classes this semester. Analysis is going terribly. I'm not prepared for this class. I meet the prereqs without meeting the prereqs.
this is a bad semester. i see that now. the causes could be nothing, or that i'm working more than ever (though less than many people i know, but different people have different limits). or... that my working two jobs instead of one is adding an extra dimension of difficulty in the commute. or perhaps fall is a cursed semester for me, since last fall i dropped spanish and barely passed my proof-writing class.

so far I still can meet the demands of PDE and EC/Crypto. i should be able to. i only meet a total of three times per week for these two classes.

my sleep is for crap, erratic. i usually am up to 1 or 2, though often i've been up to 5 even on weekdays, getting up at 10 (thanks to a dropped class and lax bosses i can do this).

i don't know. i am floundering.

Troy-fail.

Saturday nights in neon lights, Sunday in the cell
Pills enough to make me feel ill, cash enough to make me well
Take me, take me to the riot!
Take me, take me to the riot!

so apparently dropping one class (before the magical drop deadline) resulted in a financial aid whiplash of me now owing them almost four thousand dollars.

i did not foresee this. i thought going from full-time to part-time would result in a loss of about one thousand in adjusted tuition.

i did not realize that two huge portions of the financial aid would be canceled outright.

even with the original student loan money i got from them, i don't have four thousand.

...

Paying for school is retarded. This country is lucky that anyone can even read.