Spring Quarter, Thus Far

A note to readers: I sorta went memoir-caliber with this entry's length. It's sorta 3 pages in Word; I'm sorta sorting the length and lengthy word choice. It'll take a sorta lengthy time to read this. All right, I don't think I can bear to recycle words anymore. Oh, there is some math speak, in case any of you are allergic to math.

Well, it's Week 4 of Spring [quarter]. Gone are the days of Real Analysis and Topology...but Abstract Algebra marches on, and Multivariable Calculus reared its ugly head, comin' back for mohr. Actually, I take that back; MVC's ugliness is being thankfully reduced with the Tuesday class...

Tuesday: Differential Forms

For those of you who're Calculus students, do you recall (1) That integration always was done with one parameter, usually x or t, and (2) f`(x) = dx/dt "Implicitly implied" dx = f`(x) dt ? Yeah, those were good times...except when some fugnut threw an arctan in a radical into the integrand. Fugnut. Point being, with integrals there was usually one dsomething parameter.

S_a^b f(t) dt

Some of you who've had a glimpse of Multivariable Calculus may recall seeing something like this...(just pretend that this big S is an integral S, as I haven't learned how to express mathspeak here yet):

S_CP(x,y) dx + Q(x,y) dy ,

where that is math-grammatically correct. Not one, but -two- differentials under an integral. What's under that integral is essentially what a Differential Form is -- in this case, a 1-form, since for all of the summands there's only one dsomething term per summand. A 2-form would have something like dxdy, a 3-form dxdydz, and so forth to n-forms. Forms are what we're studying; we may move on to the more general Form, Tensors, in two weeks; after all, the class was originally called Tensor Analysis. It's, uh, nameless now.

This class has too many abuses of the Big Bad Sigma Σ notation, including obscene-to-read things in the book like ΣΣ. The subscripts are murder; it doesn't help that the book is so vaguely written that we can't tell if the author's laying down axioms, proving schtuff, or sometimes writing parametric equations. Reading's bad times for Tuesdays; luckily the lecture covers almost everything we need.

Thursdays: Complex Analysis
Think if you had the Reals...then add i to the set. Voilà, the Complex Plane, but everyone with an algebra background knows that. The Squa-yah w00t of negative uno gives the linearly independent iy axis, where multplication works FILO like nothin' else.

This class so far is making Green's Theorem earn its keep. The next couple weeks are going to be a buttload of path integrals in the Complex Plane, usually because we'll be deleting points here and there...see, the big deal of calculus in the complex plane is where a function is differentiable, and that oftentimes doesn't include the origin due to division by big fat love 0. So, we puncture the plane and just consider the derivative everywhere but those naughty places. Yes, "Puncture" is the [pretty] standard terminology; in describing sets, Sean even said pancake once. So, in my notes, I work in sets like "The punctured pancake of radius 1..."

The Professor: Sean

This dude's lecture style really brings the class down to earth. Don (prof. from last quarter) dispelled the illusion some people have going into college, that professors Know Everything. I don't mean that to be mean to Don, but he was a physicist -- heck, his Ph. D. was in plant physiology -- so at times it was a little obvious that pure math wasn't necessarily his field.

But Sean's a grad. student, out of Colorado State U. He tells us stories of how [ahem] well he did in Don's classes, like how Multivariable Calc just passed right over him the first time. Now he's a regular teaching assistant at CO State, teaching first-year and multivariable calc. He seems to really be having fun out here, since it's a small class...

"...Now, here's something that would annoy me. I'd be correcting homework, or even worse grading tests, and I would see that some students wrote the gradient's result as a scalar. Then I'd go to class the next day; I'd stomp my feet, I'd get pissed off, and tell the students to reference the Big Red Ink notes that the gradient is a vector. I've been doing that for three years, to engineering and math students of all calibers. Now, according to page 33 of this book (the General Relativity book, Tensors chapter), this picture is exactly why the gradient is not a vector." At this point, he hurled the book across the front table so it slid as frictionally-high as possible. "Well, Damn It. Way to make me feel like an ASS, Mr. Relativity."

Lectures from Sean are good times; it doesn't take too much goading to get him off on some weird, weird tangent, like one day when I asked him what some squiggly Greek letter was in this diagram that decided to use half the Greek alphabet. "See, Sean," I said, "I know that one of those squiggermajigs is zeta, but the other is...uh...zeta with a loop?"

"Oh, that (ξ) is xi. Oh, man, you know how important xi is? It's one of the most prized words in Scrabble; if you have an X, and no clue what to do with it, and there's an "IT" somewhere, and there's a triple word score box by it, you can set up one helluva good combo...

X I
I T

"...and you're right on top of everyone, man. Xi and xu are the most prized Scrabble words; they're top-notch in the tournament players' arsenals."

And there's one last note on how down-to-Earth Sean's professin' style is. He told us that while living in WA, he's staying with his grandma; unfortunately, she doesn't go out and buy food too often...if ever. So, he cut lecture short one day: "...Heh, I probably shouldn't be telling you guys this, but there isn't really food where I'm staying right now. ...So, I'm going home to take gramma shopping." He's professin' awesomeness.

Except on Fridays: Abstract Algebra, 3rd quarter -- Galois Theory and the Insolubility of the Quintic

Abstract Algebra, with its rings, groups, fields, homo- iso- homeo- and endo-morphisms, has the basic underlying goal of finding 0's of polynomial equations. If you thought that seemed hard in High School Algebra, you ain't seen nothin' yet, cause you never had to worry about solving some of those bad boys.

The class voted near the end of winter to continue Abstract Algebra, instead of start Abstract Linear Algebra. Sean was hoping to do ALA instead, but alas; well, it's sorta trouble for him, because he doesn't teach Abstract Algebra. In fact, he's an Analyst, the Foundations-of-Stuff type; the only Abstract Algebra he has done was in an undergrad and grad course, and those were a couple years ago...and he's jumpin' into the course in the hard part. Fridays are a challenge for everyone.

He joked about how he's going to give us our take-home final. "Well, let's see, I want to give you a test, but what about the morals of the professor understanding what's on the Final Exam he's about to dole out? And how the hell am I going to grade it? I'll probably just look at the answer key from the text...'Hmm, this solution looks different, must be wrong.' 'You should really consider taking this course over.'" I'm glad he has a good sense of humor.

Apparently he's in a metal band, too, and he's teaching himself banjo. Cool guy. I'd better get back to the work I'm doing for his class tomorrow, though. Writing about the class was a nice escape from actually doing stuff for the class; and there's even a relation. Let the good times roll...roll on to 03:00. w00t.

Sex

If it weren't for Matt, I probably wouldn't have written about this. I'd never been able to bring myself to start writing about it on my own. Thanks for the prompt, Matt.

I've chosen abstainance. I've had a girlfriend who had suffered rape and a pregnancy, and the last case of the former lead to the latter, so the act of sex became much less a sacred teen idology for me and thus a truly easy to screw up "Recreational Activity." I can not think of it as recreational; the biological purpose of sex is to impregnate, and the purpose can only be eluded for so long. How long? Right after a couple "Succeeds" on accident.

The consequences are too serious...I could never bring myself to ask my girlfriend (or lover, but I probably won't have one of those) to abort the baby, no matter what my financial and temporal mindset might dictate; I can't ask a woman to kill what might be. For that reason, and in somewhat a circular manner, I don't carry a condom. I intend to never be prepared for The Act, should it come, so I can refuse on the [admittedly lame-duck] technicality.

And then there's diseases to consider...those can be like a Boolean mark. "I've had sex, I have warts, and that was that for my pelvis-thrusting future." I understand it might be rude to assume any girl I would fancy a night with would have some horrible crotch condition (hell, put like that, scratch the "might be"), but...STDs aren't something I think I could happily live with.

There you have it. I avoid sex, by edict of Mortal Terror.

Broke the Dell. Blast.

Last Saturday, my dad decided it was high time our computers got a firewall -- so he came home with McAffee's Firewall and had me install it on everything: The VAIO, the laptop and the Dell. The Toshiba ended up losing its connection to the network, until my dad System-Restored to Friday. The Dell ended up not being able to keep Windows running for more than 15 seconds (halfway through the desktop loading images). I don't know -how- we fixed the Dell, but it started working again. The VAIO luckily survived the Firewall unscathed.

Now, Damian got me into Warcraft III, so I would play him a bit over his Spring Break (which ends in 4 hours when he gets up outta bed, buahaha). He even beat me once, because I got stuck with Night Elves and I have no clue how to use them, so instead of trying to win I humored myself with picking up trees and clubbing his buildings without mercy or effectiveness. He was quite proud of that victory, and refused to give me the chance to beat his Winning Streak of 1 for a couple days.

Saturday, before I installed a firewall on the computers, Damian and I had a game of Warcraft going. After I installed the firewalls (saving the game for later), the Dell was shot so I gave up for the day. Sunday it was fixed again, but when I tried to start Warcraft, DirectX wouldn't run. Quelle ennui...so I assumed DirectX went sour with the Firewall, and reinstalled it.

Now the F*$^ing OS won't even get past loading the taskbar. Interestingly, the Caps Lock key is non-functional, but the Num Lock key will turn the light on on the keyboard; Scroll Lock fails, too. However, that extra Windows key causes Kernel32 to fail and everything to lock up, while that "Right-Click" key does diddly squat. I can ctrl-alt delete two programs, neither of which seem to do anything; and hey, to round everything off, I can't even start Safe-Mode. The only thing that does work is the network connections between hard-drives, so I can offload (not remove) data from the Dell to elsewhere. I'm sure I'm iterating somebody when I say this: Windows 98 buh-lows.

The options now are to move schtuff off the Dell and then install: (A) Windows XP Pro, which my dad can get for about 13 bucks through some professor's discount, or (B) try to get that Linux OS that David gave me working. I tried it once before, on a 200 Megaherter box, with so little operating speed I couldn't muster the patience to learn it.

Er, scratch (B). I can't find the install discs...oh well. A little more Windows won't kill me...I suspect that last sentence will cause as much havoc as my other coinage this morning. I'd better get to bed before more computer-savvy people string me up and Windex the Windows outta me.

Gripes: Homework, Left Index

Well, I changed the bandaging once since my last entry, and I realized I slightly understated one of those gashes. 'Tis a through-the-flesh wound; I'm not exactly sure if I should keep it bandaged for a week or see my doctor about it. I may have to schedule a check-up on my toe anyway; I think I'll be going to Group Health next Monday.

Until Monday, I have a more immediate complaint with tomorrow -- today -- whichever. Sean (the new prof) has things to learn about assigning Abstract Algebra exercises out of the Fraleigh text -- mainly, the theory questions are actually kinda hard. He checked the solutions manual to the ten (10) exercises that he assigned last Friday, and came to lecture with that "I hope they don't kill me" look on his face today. And I quote: "...Yeah, if you can do three of those problems, that's fine." That's 3 < 10/3. I'm at 1 and a third right now. That's 4/3 < 9/3 much-< 30/3. F*$%ing prime ideals. Field generating's tricky business.

I'll throw in the towel at 2:30. Then I'll have to re-read this chapter, which has got to be the hardest in the book so far, even more than conjugacy classes in the factor groups section...

For those of you still interested (read: reading), I'm actually typing two-handed now. I have Fat Finger Syndrome with my left index finger, since I'm using a 2"x2" gauze pad folded in thirds and rolled around the tip; but the right hand's no longer dominating. I'm curious about how my shower's going to be...lessee how long I can hold my arm up.

PS Meredith just wrote Comment 1000 for Forest Shaded Howls. Yay!

A Testament to the Right Hand

Beginning time: 0927.

My dad got some mini-baguettes, hoagy-sized, from Costco yesterday, instead of larger loaves of bread. That's all the had, and our house was pretty thin on the non-Aktins bread (which has a taste so dietary, even Sherry won't eat it. She takes a bite, chucks it to the floor, and that's that). So, he comes home with a half-dozen hoagies, and they're already pretty hard-crusted. Slicing them last night took a bit of effort.

This morning, I wanted Damian to make a batch of French toast, but alas, he's such a culinary wuss that he wouldn't even try to make the batter. "But I don't know how much of whyat nyuhnyuhnyuhnyuh" and more crap like that (slight embellishment on my part to his wussy side). So, I said I would make the batter and even slice the bread for him.

The f$*^ing knife slipped on that crust, which had gotten a little stiffer. I now have two little grooves in my left index finger, happily bleeding if I don't have pressure applied. I'm gauzed up, with the same Neosporin dose my post-surgery toe gets -- that has almost stopped bleeding completely, btw. Nothin' profuse, just a little left on the gauze when I change the dressing in the morning.

Anyways. I typed this entry entirely with my right hand. "Nyuhnyuhnyuh" is fun to do right-handed. Try it some time.

Endtime: 0937.

Jorge Borges; Bodily Percussion

Title of our seminar book in "Advanced Math Topics," for Tuesdays: A First Course in General Relativity.

That flopped. Sean's learning things about running seminars. "It's funny, I was a student here for three years, so I've had countless hours of seminar. Yet I can't remember a thing about them. I mean--" Too late. Those of us who got kinda spacey during the Philosophy seminars last quarter had a good long laugh about that.

Anywho. Sean decided we'll look over the one chapter of that book Don recommended, on (^M_N) tensors, and maybe seminar on that in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, he's learning from his lesson and having us read Jorge Luis Borges. Our seminar material just jumped from Special Relativity for Those Who Know Special Relativity to fiction.

My God, Borges is an excellent writer. To remedy that unqualified statement, I present the following passage from The Circular Ruins, in Labyrinths:

"Then, in the afternoon, [the Dreamer] purified himself in the waters of the river, worshiped the planetary gods, uttered the lawful syllables of a powerful name and slept. Almost immediately, he dreamt of a beating heart.
"He dreamt it as active, warm, secret, the size of a closed fist, of garnet color in the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; with minute love he dreamt it, for fourteen lucid nights. Each night he perceived it with greater clarity. He did not touch it, but limited himself to witnessing it, observing it, perhaps correcting it with his eyes. He perceived it, lived it, from many distances and many angles. On the fourteenth night he touched the pulmonary artery with his finger, and then the whole heart, inside and out. The examination satisfied him. Deliberately, he did not dream for a night; then he took the heart again, invoked the name of a planet and set about to envision another of the principal organs. Within a year he reached the skeleton, the eyelids. The innumerable hair was perhaps the most difficult task. He dreamt a complete man, a youth, but this youth could not rise nor did he speak nor could he open his eyes. Night after night, the man dreamt him as asleep."

I entered the Olympia Chamber Orchestra rehearsal room today, an hour before rehearsal, to set up the orchestra's seats and stands as I always do. There was a student in there, a dancer, whose pants covered her legs down to perhaps 8 inches above her ankles; her powerhouse calves were quite evident, as were her muscular feet. You read right.

We chatted a little about OCO; she was a cellist for the group some years back. Now, she was...well, her. I didn't press. I told her I didn't need to set up the orchestra right away, and she could use the room to practice as she intended: She pulled a few of the rug-tiles away from the smooth black floor and popped a tape into her boombox. I sat in the back of the chamber and pulled out Borges, intent on reading The Circular Ruins.

She had an intense session of stretching before she started the dance, so I got about a page of the story read before she asked if music would bother me. I told her I would be fine; I figured if the music and text disagreed, then I could just focus on the text.

As I read, I became engrossed in the semi-South-American setting, around a temple devoted to a god of Fire, with a statue "colored as brilliant fire before, but now passed into the shade of ash." (Loose quote, but what a line.) And then I heard drums, with an odd woodwind instrument; tribal chanting; and a clear pedal rhythm.

I looked up and saw that the dancer was in a horse stance (though I doubt she would refer to it as that); she stomped a little in time with rhythms, but not just chaotic foot-slaps on the floor: At the beginning of the sixteen-measure phrase, she would stomp and let her body have a little silence. Amazingly, it was a 2-foot stomp, and she moved naught but her feet; I knew there was a good reason I could see her calves below her pant cuffs.

I found myself staring at her foot rhythms, and snapped myself back into reading. I had already spent an inordinate amount of time Saturday staring at a girl's pants (more on that later; don't worry, that story's as G-rated as this one). The tribal-style dance she did drummed on the floor, swooshing her heels, clapping the balls of her feet, side-shifting inches at a time; and all the while, I read of a man who dreamed into existence his Son, after 1001 nights.

The music was something out of India, so I don't know how to describe it better than I have. The book, though, I recommend to everybody here. It's brilliant; Borges's first story of the text is of a world so carefully, encyclopedically created that it dominated the real world, and it should entrap you for the rest of the book. Do expose yourself to that Argentine.

WWJD

"Y'know...in situations like this...I think to myself: What would Jesus do?
...if he had a hammer...in one hand...
...and in the other...a Molotov Cocktail?"
"How would he light it?"
"...He's fuckin' Jesus."

This Easter Sunday moment was brought to you by Reverend Evil, inspiring confidence in Incredible Bastard.

Ahem. Kidangel.

*Clears throat*

Well, I got Firefox. Whither yon endorsement? I see no secret blog...though my eyes may be playing tricks on me with a hallucinetic menu that tells me its a hallucination...

Like Sleepin' on a Brick

[Hypothesis: My pain causes Hannah joy. Testing.]

I don't normally wake up at 6 in the morning, but today was an exception. I told Damian that we would have some yumilicious hash browns (with garlic-basting), eggs & bacon for breakfast, no matter the cost of ....lessee...oh, crap, it was just 5 hours of sleep. Hm. Hadn't thought about that.

Damian woke up before me, since he operates on a schedule not unlike the rest of the world, and I operate on a schedule 4 hours behind the rest of the world (down from 7 :( ). I didn't notice anything odd about the tilt in his head...

While we were at the stove, baconating and hashinating, Damian told me about a crick he woke up with -- it was pretty bad stuff. He took a break from spatula-duty and looked at himself in the mirror, suspecting there would be some visual cue as to why he couldn't turn his head at all to the left. He faced me and had me take a guess at what was wrong.

I'm gonna enter a little math speak here:
Recall that 90° is straight up; let's have Damian's right shoulder be the x-axis, or 0°. Now, Damian's neck had a definite list of about 15° from normal, coming in at about 75°; even worse, his head had an added tilt.

I was immediately concerned; then we started joking about it and my concern dropped, and I even started laughing at his not-quite-vertical predicament. Then it was my turn.

As I bent slightly to the right, looking under the huge hash brown island continent to check for adequate browning, I had another chuckle with Damian about his neck. In this curved position, there was pressure on my right abs, which froze in place and threw a motionless temper tantrum. Until I stretched three minutes later, I had to hold my side as I contorted (read: Bent 5°) to check the hash.

The gutbuster came easy that morning; a little too easy, in fact. Here's the current suspect:
The Bra Brick Fairy

Ob-viously the bra fairy turned Brick and deftily defiled both of our mattresses in a chaotic, offensive-to-muscles manner in our short hours of rest, whisking the offensive rectangular mortar-prisms away before the whee hours of dawn.

Maybe she finally realized she was getting jipped compared to the Tooth Fairy, with her stockpile of calcium that could last centuries. Perhaps we should begin to appease this wrathful Bra Fairy by placing under our pillows our...

...right. Refraining.

Foxy

Well, I've finally gotten FireFox installed. I went to Cassie's after Fools Play Saturday night, and she wowed me with an on-the-fly CSS Style-editing software bit. I've done a little tinkering with my blog...I'm itching to throw in background images, at least for the sake of throwing. (Cassie, what happened to that blue-green-purple splash you uploaded for me? "For loupvert.jpg"? I seem to have lost it.)
I've noticed that the CSS quick-edit plug seems to flub around some colors.

Otherwise, I'm happy with the software. It functions on all...uh, 5 websites I visit, and I can do some quick color-flipping. Thumbs up, I s'pose.

Blog entries to come, if I can get myself to write them:
*Flopjacks
*Infinity and xi
*"My Favorite Food Ever," or "Rampage of the Anti-Social Vegetables"
*A picture of a tree between the Evergreen labs on a clear day; it'll make sense when you see it.
*Proper lobbing of Damian's Pesky
*Retroactive blog about my last blood donation, and the floor of the downtown Blood Center

I'll most probably finish the blood donation one first, as I'm curious what Hannah will say to this one. I still don't know how to interpret that last comment about me traversing six feet in the bathroom to reach the shower with one leg.

Operation & Anesthesia

Six years ago, winter break of seventh grade, I hadn't clipped my toenails for a little while longer than normal. No good reason; probably a testament to my laziness of the era. At some point at a late night, I kicked the floor and bent my large nail back. Sucked, mucho; I bent it at an angle, too, so it changed the growth pattern. Well, that changed growth pattern and a bad pair of shoes made the toenail ingrown. Circa: December 1997.

Two Fridays ago: I finally saw a doctor about the damned toenail. He prescribed some antibiotics and told me to get an operation in two weeks.

Wednesday, eight minutes after 2: I was on an operating table in a room...bedroom-sized, I suppose. A doctor shot my toe up with anesthetic until I couldn't feel him poke it with anything, and then removed the offending material. A quick dressing later, I was out and walking; about 20 minutes total. He told me that the anesthetic would wear off about 6 to 8 hours later. So, my toe had two choices of when to wake up and realize "Something is amiss, I'd better scream bloody murder in the nervous system": Dinnertime or bedtime.

Wednesday, before 8 o'clock: For hours and hours, I walked around without feeling my big right toe. I found having recently read Oliver Sax's chapter on disembodied/phantom limbs seemed oddly appropriate; I knew there was a lump of bone & stuff attached to my foot, but I could only sense it through my second toe, the top of my foot and my shin, not the actual toe itself. Sensory was still asleep, so what I was walking around with was an odd clump of clay; only, that clump was twice as big as a normal toe with the bandaging and gauze. I half-jumped whenever I brushed my foot through my sock ("What the hell is THAT?! Oh, my toe et al").

~9 o'clock: "Bloody Murder" was thankfully mild. It wasn't so much "Bloody Murder," as "Nose Bleed."

The next morning: I walked with a definite limp around the house. The first thing on my mind was to shower so I could re-dress the bandage; it definitely needed changing. Once I took off the bandage, and my now-responding toe had diminished to its regular size, I felt an immobilizing wave of pain. -Any- pressure applied to the unwrapped toe caused an unpleasant sensation similar to having my entire leg fall asleep and trying to move that. Moving around the bathroom, I had to support myself pretty fully on the counter so I could pendulum-swing my leg a few inches over. It felt like I was in a handicapped bathroom stall...

By the time my shower was over, I could walk [limp] again, so all was good. ...Almost. I thought I had bought medical tape from Group Health, but alas...so, all day today, I've been walking around with skinny masking tape holding my bandages together. I should feel less silly in the morning.