and the violent take it by force (Matthew 11:12)

2011-03-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Do you believe that evolution is capable of producing homosapiens from single cell organisms? Nobody contests so called micro evolution, natural selection, or that incremental beneficial mutations can aggregate. The question is whether there are any irreducibly complex organisms. The existence of even one would imply intelligent design. This heated debate has been going on for quite some time, and I don't feel the need to rehash this here. It wouldn't work even in principle, because even if I could find something, your response would be that research is in progress, and that I shouldn't invoke God to fill gaps in current scientific knowledge. So what is there to talk about?

Let's consider this more abstractly. Evolution means that complex life = simple life + chance. The real question here is, essentially, chance vs design. There's no question that chance plays a significant role in how our universe functions, and it's also correct to point out that given enough dice rolls, literally anything is possible, regardless of the odds. How many dice rolls have there been? Infinite? But let's imagine I could calculate numerically the cumulative probability of everything coming into existence. That is, a number that represents something like "royal straight flush given 1000 randomized hands", or "amazing universe given 1000 trial universes". At what percent would you personally start believing in God? If I said the universe was only 1% probable without God, would you believe? I don't see how there's any justifiable cutoff except identically 0% or 100%. Until you tell me your cutoff and how many dice rolls you believe have happened, I don't see any point in talking about whether the odds are low or high. So what else is there to talk about?

There's another direction this discussion can go. Evolution, in some sense, is about how complex life came from simple life. Let's define this to be a "layer" in the universe and call it biology. Evolution starts by assuming simple life, but where did that come from? This represents another layer in my way of classification, which I'll call chemistry, and contains the question of abiogenesis. In this layer, you must throw out natural selection, since obviously molecules don't "reproduce with random mutations". How do you initiate the reproductive step? Chemically speaking, it's hard to imagine. There have been some experiments regarding electric arcs creating amino acids, but how do you marshal proteins to form life? Assuming an infinite number of molecular collisions, sure, you would eventually aggregate that first simple organism. Or maybe there's some incubator planet somewhere with ideal conditions, and life hitched a ride to earth. On the other hand, you might argue that the abiogenesis step was taken by the designer, before turning over those creatures to natural selection. We see here the same chance versus intelligent design conflict that we saw in the layer above, the same discussion about probability applies, and there's a similar lack of concrete arguments we can make.

There's a layer below that, which I'll call physics. Scientists tell us that there are a handful of freely adjustable parameters in the universe that have no known derivation, the charge of an electron is an example. It is clear that only certain ranges for these parameters are suitable for a life sustaining universe. Of course, we may find dependencies between the known parameters which would reduce the number of independent parameters, but do you have reason to believe that the number of independent parameters could be reduced to 0? As with chemistry, there is no natural selection, but now there's no known mechanism for these parameters to change at all. Some have proposed "multiverses" as an explanation, that many universes have come into existence, that the parameters take different values in each universe, and we happen to live in the one with suitable values for those parameters. As I've stated above, given an infinite number of dice rolls, anything is possible. Or you can argue that this universe was designed.

There's a layer below that, let's just call this one statistics. What does "probability" mean? You can not have "chance" without having a distribution from which you can draw random values. Six sided dice have a 1/6 probability for each of the sides being on top. This is distribution is called a uniform distribution (because the probability is uniform across all possibilities). Well what is the distribution from which those universal constants are drawn? Consider electric charge, the current value is 1.6e-19. Each universe must assign a value for that charge by sampling from some charge distribution. It would seem that a uniform distribution is impossible, because that would require the possibility of enumerating all the possible values. That is, since it seems there's an infinite number of values, the probability of any particular value would be 1/infinity = 0%. A gaussian distribution (aka normal distribution) could work, but a gaussian requires 2 parameters: the center of the distribution, and the width of that distribution. So let's argue that chance produced a gaussian distribution, which could produce our universe, granted all the other assumptions we've discussed so far. Or you could argue that the distribution for sampling electric charge was chosen by a designer.

There's a layer below that, let's call this one induction. In the previous layer, we accidentally went from one parameter to two, making it worse for the proponent of chance. But let's ignore that, and focus on an even worse problem: for we must now propose more parameter generation mechanism(s). Well, the center and the width could themselves be generated through the multiverse mechanism, just as charge was. The question now is how were the center and width chosen? Either they were designed, or they were produced by a random distribution. If you pick random distribution, then you invoked the inductive step which will generate an infinite number of layers.

At every layer, there is a contest between chance and design. Are you going to invoke chance on every layer, all the way down? I do not see how you can construct our universe without invoking an infinity somewhere, or some other irrational concept. A scientist will simply respond by asking for money to do more research, but I'm sure it's clear that you'll run out of money long before you ever get enough answers, even if such answers are available to be discovered.

There are a variety of similar inductive arguments I could compose, but in a sense they all boil down to a simple question of whether there exists an "explanation which can explain itself".

2010-07-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

I'm getting tired of going to funerals. Since 2007, I've been to 6: NT, MM, VW, ES, BL, DE from my church, plus one for my grandma. They were all elderly, so none of their deaths were tragic. But all the same... I'm getting tired of funerals. Please stop dying!

2010-03-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

A little bit at a time, all my grad school projects are getting wrapped up, my paper was accepted... and other things are getting taken care of... so now I have more and more free time on weekends. I'm discovering that I don't really know what to do with it. I don't even know what I *want* to do with it because I never really took the time to develop any hobbies. Of course, my computer & the internet are happy to fill any free time, mocking my decision not to own a TV. I can run through the list of things that I could maybe do... but then I remember why I don't really want to do it. But should I force myself to do things I'm not really interested in? I suppose the typical solution is to get married... but then I remember why I'm not particularly interested in that right now.

It's a strange and unexpected dilemma.

2010-02-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

I don't like taxes... obviously... but I was hoping to get a bigger refund this year than I did. Oh well. At least it was easier this year for federal taxes than ever before because I could use the IRS's free website:
https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
to do it. Of course it takes just as long to work out the details, and figure out what to put in each box... but at least it was minimally complicated. I've found that software like TurboTax does more for you, but it's more complicated because they make you think you can get all these exemptions or whatever, but when you look into it, you don't qualify.

Today was an interesting day. Two people from my church renewed their marriage vows today, in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary. I can't think of any other time I've been to one. During the service, I realized just how special this. It's incredibly easy for a young couple to stand up and take vows. All they need is bravery. But it takes commitment, hard work, and self-sacrifice to preserve your vows. In a world where everything increasingly feels cheap, disposable, self-gratifying, and therefore ultimately meaningless, I've realized that sustained marriages are one of the few things that are intrinsically valuable, even when considered for their own sake. So I think vow renewals should be a more common celebration, among those who care.

2010-01-10T14:56:00.001-08:00

This last trip to Seattle, the trip itself, was frustrating, with lots of little things that added up.

1) I drove myself to LAX, however, my clothes weren't quite dry, so I left my house a bit later than I wanted, and then even though Google predicted fast driving the whole way there, I hit traffic after downtown.
2) I parked in LAX's lot C. However, I missed the turn in, so I drove past it, and turned around. I didn't realize until it was too late that I was in right-turn-only lanes...
3) My flight itinerary listed both American and Alaska airlines, so I went to the terminal for the top listed one, only to discover I needed to go to the bottom listed one. This meant I had to walk counter clockwise (against the bus routes) to my actual terminal.
4) I didn't know my way around the seattle airport, and I couldn't find *any* information desks, guards, official looking people to ask. I ended up asking someone who was sorting luggage in a corner where to go.
***
5) I walked down to the lobby of my hotel to get on the 4:30 am shuttle. It seemed impolite that even though I was the 4th or so person there waiting, the other people all filled the van leaving no room for me. Fortunately, the shuttle driver agreed to do another round without making me wait until 5 am.
6) There were two security lines to get through the screening in Seattle, and they looked identical, so I picked one. It turned out the other line went 3 times faster because there were two guys working that line, and only one guy for our line, which we had to share with the "special privileges" line. So 2 guys for the other line, and 2 lines for our one guy. I told the guy that they should warn people that this line is 3 times slower, and he responded in what I felt was a sarcastic way "oh, i didn't know that", so I responded "sure you didn't", and then he said "I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean". I probably shouldn't have said anything at all, because that converted slight injury into personal insult, setting me on edge all day.
7) Then we went up to the x-ray lines. You can pick what line to join, but because of the poor layout, you don't recognize that the 1st two lines are significantly slower than the ones further down. So guess which one I picked.
8) Then standing in line, a security guard put two flight attendants on the conveyor belt before me. The guy cracked a joke for my benefit about how they were fast so it shouldn't matter to me. But jokes have the opposite effect on someone who's edgy.
9) Then the guy monitoring the x-ray machine told me to take my flipflops out of the bucket, so I did and proceeded to fold them together. He then told me to lay them flat, so I dropped them and sort of flattened them out. He noticed that I was huffy, so it felt like he was goading me when he repeated several times to be sure they were flat.
10) So I walked to the gate, and they started boarding right away, "rows 15 and higher". Somehow, it felt like it was taking longer than normal because the lady was asking almost everybody to see if their carry-on met the guidelines. So I stood there waiting a long time before the final 5 rows (including mine) were invited to board. When finally she scanned my ticket, she noticed that I wasn't smiling or whatever, and she asked something like "how are you" and I didn't answer. So then she asked me if everything was ok, and I mumbled yes, which she probably didn't hear. So now I feel guilty for not being more cheerful.
11) I step into the plane and see that of the remaining rows, 1/3 of the seats are already full of people who don't look like they had a reason to board early.
12) When I get to the shuttle stop, I have to wait ~30 minutes for a shuttle to stop. And it's not like they weren't there, it's that whenever the Lot C buses were close, there were always other shuttles (which nobody was getting on) blocking the way. This meant that none of them actually stopped.

I don't know, looking back through my list, it seems like most of them were my fault. So maybe I was just extra tired, maybe I was having problems because I was doing things a bit differently for the first time (e.g. driving to Lot C). But I don't like that emotional state I found myself in, where once you're in it everything that happens feels like an insult.

2009-12-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about something recently. Let me start by inviting you to type "war on " into a google search box, and see what it recommends you fill in. I see:

war on drugs

war on terror

war on poverty

war on christmas

as the first 4 hits. How well have we done on these battlefronts? Drugs are still with us (and some are becoming more legal). We've knocked down some gov'ts, but there are still lots of terrorists. There are more poor people because of the recession, and given obvious economic trends, the US probably has a lot further down it will go. Atheists still don't care about the "true meaning" of Christmas, and Christians still don't care what atheists think about Christmas.

2009-12-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

Sometimes criticism is good for you.

When I submitted my paper, the one that sums up most of my grad research, the reviews I got were a bit disheartening. One reviewer said it was "of some interest", and the other reviewer sounded mad, thinking I'd ripped off his ideas. Today, I finally sat down to modify my paper to address their comments. Some of it was simply rephrasing some things which weren't clear, careless, or familiar, etc, but it turns out that the criticisms highlighted the differences between the methods I developed, and those of other research groups... in ways that seemed clear to me, but now that I have to go and emphasize them more, my paper seems... more important. Of course, that doesn't mean that the other people are going to all of the sudden drop what they're doing and do it my way, but... one can hope! The moral of the story is that the criticism served to strengthen my discussion and results.

However, I experienced a first this week. A friend of mine had posted a facebook status which was, I thought, disingenuous. In my view, his status boiled down to taking a position (which doesn't bother me), and saying that the opposing position has no argument (which does bother me). In my experience, everybody has *some* justification for believing as they do. You might not agree with their arguments, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to say the other side has nothing. For example, a guy on the internet said something like "there is absolutely no reason to prohibit gay marriage". Well, I demonstrated that there *is* at least one reason, even within the context of his libertarian viewpoint. So my belief is that every position is nuanced in some way, and people who behave as if their position isn't nuanced are typically trying to manipulate you. So what did I do? I challenged my friend's facebook status, just like I had a previous one of his which was even worse in this regard. And so he's the first person who's defriended me based on an argument. I sent him a message basically saying I was sorry, and I didn't hear back. I guess I expected more from a phd who likes to argue. I don't understand, I would think that if someone was brave enough to post confrontational messages on their facebook status would be willing to defend his point of view, and the two of us could possibly come to a renewed understanding of the nuances. I would think that these kinds of people would recognize that sometimes criticism is good for you.

2009-11-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

It's kindof annoying to have to work on weekends... but there are projects that people want me to keep working on from school... and it's hard to say no. Especially when there's no clear "stopping" point. Perhaps if I were still in academia, it wouldn't be a problem to do this stuff during the week.

Anyway, I have 3 projects on the stove which have nothing to do with work, and I spent all day today (Saturday) working on one of them. I guess today's plan was to implement a simple idea I had, and see if it works. If it did, then I could package everything together and say "I'm done"... but although the idea probably helped, it didn't make much difference. So now I'm stuck with with this project, trying to get results where none are forth coming. The worst part is that I'm beginning to wonder whether this is just going to turn into some long term, never gets finished, type of project. Where do you draw the line and say "I've done what was expected of me, if you want more from me, then hire me as a consultant"? I don't know.

And then, I discovered this week that my thesis has not yet been approved by the grad office. I don't know why... but it's been sitting there for several months now, and as far as I can know, it should have been approved. But the person I need to contact has not responded to my emails or phone call.

See I think part of my thesis research produced some pretty interesting results... and I submitted a paper on it. The problem there is that since my advisor's name is on the paper, I should probably wait for him before I submit my corrections. But he *still* hasn't responded to my requests for direction, and since he's out of the country, I can't just walk over to his office to get things done. Whether or not my thesis represented a good idea, I do want credit for it, either with my paper, or with my thesis. But both are stalled in the pipeline!!! :-(

Arg. At least my week-work is fun and interesting.

2009-10-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

What happened to the simple world I used to know and love?

1) I'm working for a startup company that's just now setting up it's health insurance plan, and it looks like I'm being given a bit of a choice for what kind of health coverage I want. I have a pamphlet describing like 20 difference choices, with all these tradeoffs between various deductibles and coverages etc. All my life, I just had to go to the school clinic for whatever I needed. No problem, no hassle! So how am I supposed to pick? HMO vs PPO vs HSA? Too many choices.

2) My washing machine should probably be replaced because it doesn't centrifuge-dry the clothes; they come out soaking. That hasn't been a major problem because I put up a short clothes line to drip dry them before putting them in the dryer. Well, I *could* spend 300$ to 1500$ for a new machine! So how do I choose what I want? On one hand, my landlord will reimburse me up to ~500 (exact figure not discussed), but it turns out that reasonable quality low end machines start right around there. Craigslist doesn't list a lot of choices in my area. But whatever I do, I have to worry about delivery, installation, and disposal of the old unit. What hassle! I think I'll just deal with the "hassle" of a clothes line for a little longer!

3) other stuff

2009-09-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

So last night, I finally moved all my stuff out of my campus office. I finished getting it all in my car by about 1 am, and I hadn't really had dinner... so I decided to stop at Jack in the Box, which is on my way home. I pulled up to the drive through, and saw an image very similar to this one.

MMMm!!!!! Looks tasty!!! This should fill me up when I get home! Ok, I'll take Lemonade. You don't have that? How about Dr Pepper. You don't have that either? Fine, just give me diet Coke. 7$ later, I was on my way home. I spent 30 minutes unloading my car, and then sat down to enjoy my meal. Here's what I saw:

First, let me enumerate what I saw that isn't obvious from the picture. The "toasted sourdough bread" was probably sourdough, but I couldn't really tell because it wasn't toasted, it was fried (the outside was "wet"). The french fries included the crust, as you can see, but it turned out they were oily and limp. I was so surprised opening the wrapper, that I immediately took the picture, without altering it at all aside from opening it up because it didn't look like it had anything from the side.

Now look at the advertisement picture. It looks like you get 2 slices of steak, that the two of them together are about the same width as one of the slices of bread, and that the diameter of the meat is larger than the bread. Instead, all I got was a few scraps of meat in a puddle of cheese paste. Look at the meat, it looks like it only covers about half the sandwich.

In summary, complete ripoff!
It took me 3 guesses to pick a drink, the fries were wiggly, and the wet blob didn't fill me up.

2009-09-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

Colours

The other day I was trying to find a Christian Jazz album that I remembered owning a long time ago. Actually, I probably still have it in a cassette suitcase somewhere... Anyway, the problem was that I couldn't remember anything other than what the cover looked like, and that the title had the word "night" in it. Well, I finally found it today, and what do you know, it's on iTunes! Turns out the title was "Colours In The Night" so there was no way I was going to find it... anyway, I remembered one of the songs that was on it, and that was enough. But now, typing that title into google, I found, and now remember, that there was a whole series of this kind of music:

Colours | A Time For Peace: Ivory Sessions
Colours | Christmas Colours
Colours | Colours In The Night: Saxophone Solos
Colours | Praise Beyond Words: A Colours Collection
Colours | Reflection: A Colours Sampler
Colours | Spectrum: The Colours Sampler
Colours | The Colours Of Praise Two
Colours; Bennett, Rob; Bennett, Gilly | I Love You Lord/Classical Guitar Praise
Colours; Howard, Tom | Solo Piano
Colours; Howard, Tom | The Harvest
Colours; Keene, Tom | Classical Praise Piano
Colours; Rogers, Harlan; Price, Smitty | Hymns In Colour
Colours; Rogers, Harlan; Price, Smitty | Praise
Colours; Rogers, Harlan; Price, Smitty | Timeless: Hymns In Colour
Colours; Thompson-Clarke, Robin | Classical Praise Cello

which is an incomplete list. Turns out most of these albums are not only discontinued, but unless iTunes has them they've become somewhat expensive on Amazon. On the other hand, some of the songs from one album were re-released. For example, "The Harvest" has a bunch of the songs from "Spectrum"... I think...

The songs weren't amazing... but they do bring up a lot of memories, good and bad.

2009-08-23T20:13:00.001-07:00

I accepted the job, which I'm really excited about. It's just a small startup right now, but they have guaranteed funding for 2 years, and they (or should I now say "we") have big plans for the future. Part of the reason this job is so good for me is because there's very little commercial value for people who do computational physical-chemistry, whereas there is significantly more for computational bio-chemistry, which this job is all about. So, it will be good for helping me to expand my horizons.

And, of all the places in the world where I would like to live, staying right here is a favored destination because it means I get to keep the friends and networks I have and, after all,
I love Los Angeles.

2009-08-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

I have a word of advice, for the 0 people who care. It's a tidbit from the nerd world that I think is relevant to the real world, now that the debates are becoming quite heated over health care, obamacare, whatever.

In online communities, debates happen quite often, as one might imagine. Whether they're over trivial or serious matters, people discover quite quickly that they, just as everybody else, care a lot, and have lots to say, etc. Emails or newsgroup posts or blog posts just get longer and longer until people give up from exhaustion. However, there's general consensus about one argument that legitimately can terminate any argument.

Several years ago, we learned about Godwin's Law, which states

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

where Usenet can be interpreted as email, blog, etc, and for the mathematically uninclined, "1" means 100%. That is, it doesn't matter what the argument is, how trivial it is, eventually someone will compare the other's argument to the Nazis or Hilter. This argument could be called Reductio ad Hitlerum.

It seems quite obvious to me that there is nothing in the USA today that can legitimately be compared to Hitler+Nazis. Anybody who doubts this needs to stop and think about it. It's not that we don't do anything that is comparable, because I'm sure the Nazis had a lot of policies to compare with. However, just because you do something that can be compared with the Nazis, you CAN NOT conclude that we will end up doing everything evil that they did. Therefore, if you ever make a reference to Nazis or Hitler or the likes, you instantly loose the argument. Period. At least in my mind, I denounce you as a rabble-rouser, and you loose any respect I have for you. That's Godwin's Law.

I call Godwin's Law on you, Rush Limbaugh and anyone else.

2009-08-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

I'm getting more and more worried about privacy on facebook. Why? I understand that facebook is trying to figure out how to make a business, and I can appreciate their need for advertising. However, there are lines they must not cross, and they haven't convinced me that they understand my concerns.

Here are some concerns of mine, lines they must not cross:
#1 I don't want to ever be embarrassed by facebook using my name or likeness to advertise a product that I do not endorse. I don't have a problem with the principle of using me to advertise something, but I want complete editorial control!
#2 I don't want facebook to use my network (either my address book or my friend list) to spam or otherwise bother people.
#3 I do not want my contact/personal info to be available to the public.
#4 I do not want them to retain info without my explicit permission. For example, they're allowed to store what I currently put on my profile, because that is an example of explicit permission.

And here are some examples of how they've crossed the lines:
1) They refuse to give me control about what shows up on my wall. There is no way for me to prevent people from posting their quiz results to my wall. I can hide or block an application, but only AFTER I've looked at it at least once. This is a clear violation of principle #2.
2) Whenever they introduce a new privacy setting, they have a choice for initial setting. They always choose the least private option, until I turn it off. At the very least, they could have left me a notification indicating that they had changed something. Instead, I'm forced to visit the privacy settings every once in a while to check it out for myself. I just turned off ANOTHER option that would have allowed them to use me to advertise to my friends. This is a violation of principle #1, because they give me no way to control how they use my name. And no, my profile must not be interpreted as this kind of control.
3) Facebook provided very convenient tools for finding friends, by my allowing them to access the contact list in my gmail account. Thanks! The page clearly stated that they don't retain my password. Great! What I didn't realize until recently, though, is that the password doesn't matter so much because they KEPT that list, unless you EXPLICITLY tell them to delete it!!! That is a violation of principle #4, because I was willing to let them use the list for a short time, but NOT forever!
4) Facebook let's me block applications. The text says: "You have blocked the following applications. This means they cannot access any information about you or contact you"... Because I don't trust facebook with regards to what I give them explicit permission to do (see the previous issue, 3), for example), I interpret that text to mean that unless I block the application, they CAN access information and contact me. This is a clear violation of principles #3 and #4, and potentially #1 too.

Facebook keeps doing other things that bug me too, even though I don't have a problem with them principle. One problem is that some friends talk a lot, which fills up my news feed with clutter that I don't appreciate. It's not that I don't like these people, I just don't care about all the things they have to say. My only option is to completely hide them, which means I get nothing. On the other hand, lost in the mess are the few posts from people who talk very little, but it's probably interesting. One idea I have is to set up the news feed so that people's status messages only show up on my news feed once they get a certain number (that I choose) of likes or comments.

Also, I need a way to "unsubscribe" from receiving notifications on some topics. For example, maybe I want to post a comment, but I don't want to be told every someone else posts a comment after me.

I don't want to get any application invites. If I want an application, I will go find it myself. Unfortunately, the only way facebook gives me to control whether I get invites is by ignoring application inviters. So, anybody who's ever invited me to an application has been added to the list. What I want is a way to add everybody to the list by default, but maybe approve some people to send me invites. Opt-in, not opt-out. As mentioned, same story with blocking applications; block them all by default, unless I give them permission to do whatever.

Facebook gives me control over what email notifications they send me, but not over what notifications show up as red flags in the lower right corner. Why not?

Navigating the privacy+settings+etc is so complicated. You have to review the settings for every application... and then it's hard to find what you're looking for.

I have another, unrelated gripe about facebook. When I first signed on, pretty much the only application I was interested in was the "Where I've Been" application, which allows you to indicate where in the world you've been. Unfortunately, the developers of that app took a good thing and turned it into trash. Now I can't even figure out how I'm supposed to be able to update my map, and I've tried both Safari and Firefox. The rest of it has turned into 99% advertisements.

anyway, i'm getting tired of complaining... the summary is that I don't trust fb

2009-08-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm thinking about what it will/might mean to leave Pasadena, I want to start making lists of things I've really enjoyed here.

First, food is pretty important, and the LA area has world class restaurants from a *wide* variety of cultures. It must be emphasized however that this list at least partly reflects good memories, so your mileage may vary. In Pasadena, the two major themes are Middle Eastern + East Asian, based on the large Armenian population here, and the large Chinese population everywhere.

Zankou Chicken. This restaurant is Lebanese-Armenian, and so far only has branches in the LA area. I've only been to the Colorado/Hill Pasadena branch, which I've visited about least once a week the entire 6 years that I've been here. The first thing I noticed was the garlic paste they serve, which as I understand is somewhat typical to the region, but which I'd never been served until my first visit in 2003. I like their hummus, which is somehow more tasty than what I've had elsewhere. I'm sure they think their chicken is the main attraction, and it is pretty good, but it's the combination that's been reeling me in.
Chung King Restaurant. I don't think they have a website, and I didn't even know what it was called until I looked it up just now. All I've known for the last several years is that all I have to do is drive to San Gabriel/Fairview in the city of San Gabriel for some AMAZING Szechwan/Sichuan food. I always warn people that it's so hot that the food burns on the way in, and on the way out the next day. The restaurant decor will not impress you, but as I like to argue, B rated restaurants mean they focus on making good food, whereas A rated restaurants spend too much time being fancy. Take that, Michelin! Our favorite dishes include Boiled Beef... the menu on that site is from the right restaurant, but they've updated it, so I can't remember the others. Some of the pork dishes end up being basically slices of fat, so I can't recommend all the dishes.
888 Seafood. As with other Dim Sum restaurants, I'm sure, you really have to know what you like in order to enjoy your experience. It also helps to have someone who speaks Chinese with you, because at this restaurant at least the waitresses don't speak good English. On the other hand, you get to see everything you choose before you accept it because they walk around with food carts. The Liu family took my friends and I from church here on several occasions, to be there ~10 am on Saturdays, the traditional time to eat dim sum (I guess). It's good to wear stretchy pants when you go.
President Thai. I don't like Thai food as much as others, but it's still been pretty popular in our group. For me, having grown up in the Philippines, Thai food is a "compromise" between Filipino food or Chinese food, so I'd rather have one or the other... :-) Anyway, the food is really good. We recently discovered their sour seafood soup (I think it's Poa-Tok on their soup menu), which is I think somewhat similar to sinigong (my favorite food), except without the vegetables. If you like curry dishes, then I'd recommend this restaurant (I've never found an Indian restaurant I liked...).
Din Tai Fung. This is (apparently) a world famous restaurant, and they only have one branch outside of Asia. Personally, I don't like it as much as some of the other Chinese places I've listed, but it is *quite* good. Their speciality is dumplings, which they do better than anywhere else I've been.
Heidar Baba. This Persian restaurant is a bit more spendy than the other restaurants, so we pretty much only go there when we need a break from the eastern Asian food. I think I've liked everything I've had here...
Halal Chinese restaurant that closed. Several years ago, I'd go to this place on Valley (same complex as the Ranch 99) with my Muslim friend and our Avery buddies. I guess by "Halal" it was signifying that it was western Chinese, but I never quite got that sorted out, and now it's closed. They had this bread baked with spring onions that was good.

The only 2 Filipino restaurants I'd recommend include Goldilocks (in Eagle Rock) and Max's Chicken (in Glendale). Max's Chicken has been *packed* almost every time we've tried to go, with waits of up to an hour. The food is Filipino, so it's ok, but neither restaurant makes adobo to my standard, which I didn't think was so difficult... So I only go to one of these when I miss Filipino food too much and I'm too lazy to cook it myself.

Honorable Mentions:
Panda Express (Chinese food for those in a hurry)
Chandra's (Thai food)
Mediterranean Cafe (like Zankou)
Dominico's (really awesome pizza)
Carousel (Lebanese, pricy)
Hamburger Hamlet (good memories)
Tania's (Lebanese, only for friends!)
In-n-Out (it's not the quality... it's the experience...)
Acapulco
Sandwiches by Connal (i'm always too full after a combo meal)
Burrito Express
Chandler Dining Hall (why get anything other than their Mongolian BBQ?)

There have been other places, of course, but they made either "neutral" or negative impressions on me. It must be emphasized that this list focuses on my personal preferences. For example, we've gone to many good Japanese or Mexican restaurants, but for various reasons, I just don't enjoy it so much. I'm sure I'm missing a few, and I'll have to edit this entry...

Disappointments:
I wish there was more non-Mexican, Latin/South American food. We tried one restaurant once, but didn't like it. I know that some South American food is good (because I had some really good food in Colombia, when I visited) but I guess they just don't open many restaurants here. Also, I never found any African restaurants, not that I looked, but at least I know there aren't any close to me. I've really enjoyed the Ethiopian food I've had in Minneapolis, so I know at least some of it is really good.

2009-07-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

Now that I've been spending more time just thinking about what's next in my life, finally the fact that I've finished school is beginning to feel more real. I guess I was "in denial" a bit because it just felt like I'd just made it through more hoops. But after August, if I don't find something to do, I'll be bored (and eventually poor!).

I have one job application out for a "sort of" post-doc that I'm hoping to get, but it turns out I'm merely on their short list, so I won't even know for several more weeks whether I even have a job. In the meantime, I've been contacted by a few people, so I probably wouldn't have to be without something to do for too long.

One thing that I've been thinking about is whether or not I should try to "go solo." There are a few places online, like this one, where you can accept programming jobs on a free-lance basis. There are a few hints of people who might be happy to just pay me on an hourly basis to do scientific programming. However, this idea feels pretty weird to me... and I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do it on my own. On the other hand, this sort of thing could possibly free me to live wherever I want, and it sounds like, make plenty of money.

So, as Brett Farve would say, I feel conflicted.

2009-07-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm really proud of my school, which can now boast of being better than MIT in yet another statistic: killing off our students.

3 in 3 months! 1 is a tragedy, 2 is a disaster, 3 means negligence. Especially since, as a friend of mine close to the most recent situation has claimed, it was preventable. Add to this number the undergrad I knew from a few years ago, and the grad student from shortly after I arrived, there have been at least 5 suicides since I've been there, and that's out of a student body of only 2000 (1000 undergrads, 1000 grads). So let's assume a pool of 2000 students + 500*5 graduated = 4500 total students over 5 years. If I'm doing the math right, that's 5 / 4500 students / 5 years * 100,000 = 22 suicides per 100,000 people per year. That number, 22, is about the same as the US Army.

I can personally attest to the fact that it is not entirely the "going to college shock." There certainly is depression associated with going from top of your class to middle (or bottom) of the pack at your new school, but this explanation is not sufficient. For at least the undergrad from a few years ago and the grad student from a few years before that, I know that they were very intelligent individuals. I've talked with several people over the last few months, and we're just not sure there was a single identifiable cause. The one thing I'm pretty sure of, although I'm certainly not an "expert", is that the statement "What we do know is that in 80 percent of the cases, individuals who take their lives are experiencing a mental illness" is administrative scapegoating.

A few years ago, I agreed to be the a community advisor for my hall since the actual advisor was studying abroad that term. It didn't mean much... but I did go to one "Suicide Prevention" seminar run by the same people who run the counseling center today. I remember listening to the stuff they had to say and participating the exercises and walking away thinking that I was none the wiser. In fact, their best advise on how to deal with a situation was to call campus security. They requested feedback, so I wrote up a thing accusing their approach of being shallow, and I never heard back from them. It seemed like their solution was something just along the lines of bring the person to us, and we'll give them a pill. Now, I can't be too harsh on them, because I don't know whether the 5 people actually sought their help (so I can't accuse them of failure), and neither do I know how many suicides they have prevented (so maybe their approach is actually quite successful). I do not deny that for many people, the problem really is some kind of "chemical imbalance" that skews their perspective, and medicine is just something they'll have to accept. I just know that if I were depressed, being told that there was a pill for me would not make me feel better.

I look out at the world and see misery, corruption, and imminent disaster around every corner. I have struggles in my personal life, and I regularly doubt my abilities and relevance. I just don't see how a pill would change that. Maybe it's just to numb the pain that is, perhaps, chemically exaggerated in some people. But isn't that dealing with the symptoms, not the problem? That's perhaps what's most depressing out of it all. I do not have a chemical imbalance, so maybe I've never been truly at risk. But I also don't see how I could ever be at peace with the world or with myself without my Christian worldview, which is partly why I view pills and mushy philosophy as being impotent. The Bible tells me to find my worth in God, not in my abilities or relationship, to find meaningful forgiveness in Jesus, and to find peace in God's sovereignty. Stop and think through how comforted and liberated someone must feel if they truly believe that sentence.

But even if you don't expect a school's administration to promote religion, and I think appropriately so, then what *should* I expect them to do? I don't know. But it seems that 3 suicides in 3 months is proof that the status quo is not working.

2009-07-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

I worked my way through the PhD comic strip and picked out some of the best of what's been recent.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1185 (not too much of an exaggeration, actually...)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1147 (i have piles on the floor that i occasionally wash)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1145 (pride -> zero all the time)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1143 (i doubt my advisor has read a word i've written)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1139
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1137 (mmm.... saturdays are good for working!)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1089 (just the other week!)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1086 (sigh.)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1075 (adding it up, i figure I spent ~1.5 yrs working on stuff i didn't have to)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1072 (i figured this one out right away)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1071 (well, i'm done now)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1034 (having "fun" is a huge challenge...)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1032 (with my roommate)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1025 (i can't count how many times he's asked me to meet on sundays, and we met on saturdays instead)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1022
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1021 (lol. i'll never forget the christmas day 2005? i showed up for a meeting...)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1018
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1015 (actually, i just take long naps sometimes so that over the 48 hr period i get less done!)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1012 (so true...)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1010 (sigh. i wouldn't know to party if i wanted to)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1005 (someone should tell my advisor this)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1000 (this is my next stage in life)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=993 (shh.... don't tell anybody)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=986 (i've learned not to care which)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=984

2009-06-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Thus begins my post-academic life.

I guess one of the most gratifying aspects of my defense yesterday was that in the end, my committee didn't have any corrections to make me do. They made me significantly change one of my candidacy propositions and made me reword part of one of my props in my Props Exam, so it's gratifying that the most important submission of the three was accepted on the "first try".

Of course I don't feel smarter now that I'm done. The whole thing still doesn't feel like it's real. Maybe it will take some time for it to really sink in. What will feel real, soon enough, will be leaving CA, and all the people I've gotten to know here. I've spent twice as much time at Caltech as I did at the U of M, and more time than in high school. I've established quite a few memories based on location too, so it will feel really strange to leave it all behind. The older I get, the harder it becomes to leave people and places behind.

Was grad school worth it? After 13+3=16 years of school, (Sep 03 to Jun 09) 5.75 more years is only a quarter of the total time I've spent, so from that perspective, it definitely seems worth it. I didn't have to go into debt to pay for any of it. Well, what about opportunity-cost? While I stayed in school, they entered the workforce. Compared with my undergrad friends, I'm not married, I haven't purchased property, even though I'm not in debt I don't have much savings, they have nicer cars than I, they built on established friendships whereas I had to "start over", ... Compared with my high school friends, I don't have any children. But I guess it doesn't matter to me, because grad school was overall far more enjoyable than my previous education, and I do enjoy what I've been doing. It has been overall a very low responsibility and highly intellectually rewarding experience. I'm not saying I made a better choice, or they made worse choices, but I'm acknowledging that on a satisfaction/contentment basis, there probably wasn't much difference. At the beginning, this choice wasn't at all clear because it took me a while to even feel like I belonged. There is some (feared) risk, since nobody would want to put in this effort if at the end, they weren't rewarded with a degree in a reasonable amount of time. There's nothing quite like higher education to make you feel stupid. But after plugging away, things begin to fall into place, and unless you're setting out to be a "rockstar grad student", it will probably turn out ok.

In all, I believe I made the right choice, and I'd recommend it to anybody who has self-motivated curiosity, and most importantly patience, in some field of study.

2009-06-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

So ah... I actually wish people had more of that irrational swine flu paranoia... At the "height" of the scare, I was able to buy a rack of pork ribs for 6.50$... now the same thing is 9$.. :-( cmon people! work with me here!!!

Also, Ralphs refused to sell me, give me a discount, or even give me for free some cheese past the "Sell By" date I found. Sigh. I told the guy "just give it to me, it won't be on the receipt" so that i can't hold them liable! but he refused. Stupid. I would have given it the sniff test, and anyway, what's the worst that could happen? I get a bit of a stomach ache?

2009-06-16T15:21:00.001-07:00

and now i'm bored. i don't feel like working, but i don't have anything better to do. so i'm just sitting here revisiting websites. howbouts i coin a new word, not surfing the web, resurfing the web. sounds like "researching" so it must be a legitimate use of time!

2009-06-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

i handed in my thesis today, on the day it was due; the monday 2 wks before the defense. the thesis itself was probably the biggest hurdle of the many hurdles the caltech chemistry department has for it's students. maybe i should have gone to berkeley, a friend there reminded me that not only can they participate in the graduation ceremonies before they hand in their thesis, but they don't have to do a thesis defense! well, actually, i don't mind. it's the thesis that's the hard work, not the defense, which will probably almost be "fun." the best thing about the process is that the institute pays for a proofreader to look through every thesis, a procedure which should help to mask its last minute nature. i did proof read the entire thing myself, but i'm tired now so i probably missed some stuff. as it is, i made one mistake already, a bit of data i forgot to put in until after the printer got it. of course i can change it, at least a little bit, since it's not actually due until "the fifth week of the succeeding term" which is the first week of november.

so what do i have left to do now?

1) fix the one mistake i know about, as well as update some of the other data as it becomes available.
2) hand in the petition form to the dean's office...
3) prepare for the defense... i don't anticipate this will be too difficult. the hardest part is making the graphs & tables, which has already been done. this will simply involve taking my thesis apart and putting it into slides...
4) prepare Chapter 4 for submission as a paper, and ask about whether Chapter 5 should also be a paper.
5) interview for postdoc...
...
?) profit?

perhaps coincidentally, i got word of two possible postdocs today and yesterday, one that i applied to and one that i did not. we'll see... of course there's no need to share any details until i have more word. :-)

but for now, i think it's time to go home and take a nap cause i have a headache.

acknowledgements:

i'd like to thank my neighbor, who has consistently woken me up between 6 and 7 every morning with really loud, dry coughing. i couldn't have finished my thesis without you.

2009-06-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

man this is getting tiring... my thesis is due tomorrow, it's already 9 pm, and i STILL haven't gotten past the rough draft stage... instead, i keep finding new results to add, which will make proof reading even longer... oh well. now i'm up to 212 pages! :-)

time to take a break... i think i can hand it in at the end of the day tomorrow... right?

2009-06-10T15:35:00.001-07:00

If all goes well, I'll hand in my thesis to my committee members on Monday, June 15, which is 2 weeks before my scheduled defense. I think everything is progressing smoothly, although there have been some bumps... I've met with my advisor at least 5 times over the last week or so, which is far more often than perhaps the last year combined. This perhaps is contributing to the problems, because now he wants to review the method from scratch and try some new things. This isn't such a problem itself, and I'm enjoying actually debating with him about whether something will work, but of course it takes time away from getting my thesis done... And in any case, the best scenario here would be another appendix describing some "crazy new idea"...

Well, so far there have been mixed results... His ideas aren't working, but some of the compromise ideas that I've come up with do seem to be helping... Oh well.

But at the beginning of one of these meetings, I finally got him to say that he approves of my defense date, and what he thinks I should add to my thesis from where it is right now. Essentially, he wants me to add printouts of the source code of my analysis scripts, which themselves contain most of the "practical wisdom" that I've developed. Of course this will add maybe 50 pages to my thesis, which doesn't bother me... but of course, if this is the case, then after this all i need to do is proof reading, and i'm finished... easier said than done... We'll see though.

The good news is that it looks like I can continued to be paid (at grad student levels) until at least the end of the summer term, but maybe "until I leave". This means that I have some flexibility for this summer in terms of finding a job/postdoc and moving. I see no reason to move until my salary drops below my rent...

In the meantime... all of the sudden our clusters are extra busy... so i have to wait much longer before my jobs start to run... :-( arg. My quota is the typical 16 processors max at a time, which is good for 4 to 8 jobs, depending on what i'm doing. The "problem" is that several people have been given quotas of 24 or 32 processors. This really isn't a big deal because they don't typically use as many as they're allowed, and not at the same time. Except for right now, my secret script tells me so. Fairness is not the issue because after all, I do understand that their projects have higher priority than mine, but it is frustrating, especially when my advisor gives me extra stuff to do.

oh well. i should stop complaining. after all, it looks like i have a fun summer to look forward to, however slowly research goes.

2009-05-23T18:27:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm pretty much back to square one with respect to job searching. Now that I have a thesis defense date (June 29), and a desire to take time off after that, I've not been spending time searching. There are lots of possibilities, I just don't know what I want to do.

I could:

1) Postdoc. This is the typical next step for someone like me, however, I see it as a means to get, eventually, an academic position. Do I really want that? Postdocs don't typically pay as much as I could make in industry, so why should I detour to a postdoc, if I can go to industry directly? Of course, the economy factors into that as well... maybe I need to do a postdoc and wait for the economy to improve enough that there will be chemistry jobs available.

2) Academia. This could be either a teaching position at some college, or a research faculty position somewhere. I'm not sure I want either. I've realized though, that this can serve many purposes. Having a summer off every year is not so bad... but also, there are teaching positions in every country, so it seems that this has global opportunities. A friend of mine was explaining to me how I could go teach in South America, if low pay wasn't so important to me. On the other hand, many schools have hiring freezes right now, so this isn't a great time to go this route.

3) Industry. Unfortunately, there aren't many hiring these days. The Chemistry department here hasn't gotten any company representatives coming through this year, which is somewhat disappointing. However, the economy won't be bad forever.

What I would like to do is have the chance to travel. Academia would give me time to do this every summer (on my own expense), and overseas postdocs would give me a chance to live somewhere. I've sort of been telling myself that I'd accept a postdoc, if it was in a country I wanted to live in for a while. The problem with that is that it seems that most of the best postdocs are right here in the US, and that overseas ones are often only available to their own citizens. So this leaves me with a lot of uncertainty.

Part of the problem is that I've already lived in 2 different countries, and 2 different US states, and I've visited lots of other places all over the world. Wherever I go, I can imagine what my life might be like there. If somehow I see my future self bored or frustrated, then I should be able to take those options off the table. The problem is that I can see myself ending up bored or frustrated almost everywhere I look. This is a problem.

*****

Actually, there appear to be a number of interesting postdoc possibilities, all over the world... I already sent an email off to Sweden regarding the most interesting one I found, but we'll see.

2009-04-28T22:09:00.000-07:00

There's nothing quite like a trip back to Minnesota, under the belief that I'll "soon" be done with school, to make me restless. I really really want to be free to "start" living my life. Of course, there's a lot of apprehension as well... but more and more I want change, even though this is the worst time, economically speaking, in 70+ years to be looking for it.

But I can't leave until I have a job, partly because this country is a dangerous place to live without health insurance, which I would lose upon graduation. I don't have a job yet, so I'm looking, and sporadically not working very hard on my research. This process takes a lot of time, partly because the jobs I'm looking for require me to study a lot of material in preparation, stuff I thought I could forget. Well, I must step back into this fray because there's no point in letting up until I get a job offer, so I scheduled another phone interview today. Each interview I have serves as good preparation for my next interview since I make sure that not only can I answer any question I've already been asked, but it highlights areas I was previously underprepared.

Oh well. Keep working.

Today I had a nice long conversation with one of my neighbors. We talked mostly about the economy and how hard it is to find jobs, and how their business is struggling... but mostly it was nice to talk to neighbors.

2009-04-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

I had a really good time in MN this weekend.

First, I had an interview to deal with. It's for a company (that nobody's ever heard of) that I want to work for. So I arrived on Wednesday, studied/napped all evening, and interviewed on Thursday. It's hard to tell how the interview went because they haven't gotten back to me. I was asked more questions than my previous two, mostly equivalent, interviews, so maybe that's a good sign because it means that I got a lot of them right. Of course, I wasn't able to answer everything they asked me, and now I know where the holes are in the material I've tried to cover. One big gap is differential equations. Anyway, they should get back to me any day now about whether or not they've got a job for me.

On Friday, I went up to Anoka to stay with my grandparents, but was soon picked up by a college buddy to spend the night at his house playing board games, which was fun. We played two new ones he had invented, and one that he had the board for. We also drove around the Plymouth/Wayzata/Minnetonka area, and I decided that I really like the area. If I get the job (and it's a reasonable offer) I want to move to Plymouth. :-) On Saturday after visiting an antique store, another friend joined us and we all went out for dinner. In all, highly enjoyable.

On Sunday, I was back with my grandparents, and we had lunch with an aunt & uncle & cousins, and I ended up hanging out all afternoon, and into the evening. My cousins are all growing up, so there are interesting things we can talk about now! :-) I hope I don't scare my relatives though, since I tend to have different opinions than they do. Since I don't consider myself to be a conservative nor a liberal, I like to argue with everybody! Probably every extended family has some people who like to argue stuff, and the rest of the family just give them raised eyebrows... maybe I'm that person.

Anyway, perhaps short trips are better, because they tend to be more concentrated because everybody knows that if they want to see you, they better work around your schedule. On the other hand, for the first time in a while (ever?) driving to the airport, I didn't want to leave.

2009-04-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry, internet companies, you lost your chance. I don't use Firefox, and thus I don't use it's popular Adblock plug-in, designed to "turn off" all the advertisements on a webpage. I was willing to tolerate ads in my Safari browser windows, partly because I thought I was making progress in training myself to really focus on an article and ignore the distractions.

But recently, it's felt like the ads have gotten worse. I've found that at least on some websites, I CAN'T read the article unless I resize my browser window so that all the ads on the left and right margins are outside my viewing space. Somehow the ads now have much more power to draw my eyes, leaving me perfectly distracted if I try to read the article. For example, quite a few ads now just go ahead and play you movies. Resizing or otherwise adjusting webpages so the ads on the margins aren't visible takes me about 5 seconds, compared to the 30-60 seconds (presumably) of distraction the ad has in store.

Well, I got tired of readjusting my windows. The reason was basically just that if I'm only going to spend about 10-30 seconds looking at most the articles (of course I spend more time on some) then the 5 seconds "washing" the article is too much. Man, don't companies get it? Advertisers don't seem to realize that there's an inverse correlation between credibility and their volume.

Anyway, I've finally become fed up, so I installed the Safari adblocker and, as expected, problem solved.

2009-04-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to set up the site interview with the Minnesotan finance company that I want to work for. Assuming their offer is good... :-) The interview will go, I'm assuming, much like the other ones. They'll have a schedule for me to meet with 4-6 of their people one at a time, each of whom will have questions for me to answer. As far as I can tell, the questions can range from high school math topics (trigonometry, calculus) to college level math (diff eqs, combinatorics, complex analysis, statistics) to programming (c++ or java or algorithms in general) to brain teasers (conditional probability questions, more algorithms, generic problem solving) to finance (monte carlo methods, option pricing, black-scholes, stochastic calculus). Whew. I think I got it all...

Think about what this implies. I have a ton of material to cover, and limited time. The better a handle I have on all this material, the more likely I am to get a job offer. Now, I have been continuously involved in some of these topics since the last time I took a class on them (programming), so I don't need to study much. But still, it's a lot... so I'm skipping out on research for the next week. That's right. I'm not leaving my house for any extended period of time, and I'm going to spend it all studying as much as I can. Why not? I've already decided that I don't want to graduate until I have a job, and I believe that the only thing standing in the way of me getting a job is effort. So... time to work hard!

So far, the process has been rewarding because I've been reading through a book that's been recommended by several sources (even though I only have the 4th edition). It's really fascinating to discover how all this stuff works. For the record, companies that hire people like me are not looking for finance experts because, as they tell us during recruitment drives, they'll teach us what we need to know. So yea, I didn't know before, but now I'm finally beginning to understand how it all works. What's truly surprising is that for every action you want to take, there is an opposite action, which if you do both at the same time, can cancel out any risk to yourself. So you can invest in the stock market in a way such that you're guaranteed not to lose (but not "win" either). Anyway, it makes sense when you think about it, but where I previously thought it was just chaos, there are actually rational technique... I think it's far more interesting than I gave it credit for.

Let's just hope I can get a job doing it.

And yes, companies ARE recruiting. We had a very well known company on campus just last week, and they even brought one of their higher-ups to give a talk, indicating that they are very serious. Incidentally... I think I was the only American who showed up to their presentation, which given the current air of idiotic bank hiring restrictions, might increase my odds.

In the meantime, I moved an old futon onto my front porch, making it far more appealing of a place to hang out and read. Why didn't I think of that before?

2009-04-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Finally, we see some news reports on the story.

2009-04-16T01:34:00.000-07:00

The problem, as i see it, is that both parties in this country love spending tax dollars for their causes, but they hate it when the other party does the same. So here's my proposed solution: Republican tax payers pay for our wars, and Democrat tax payers pay for our bailouts.

2009-04-11T21:51:00.001-07:00

Today's meeting with my advisor was really frustrating because he began to demand justifications for things that I stopped worrying about 1-2 yrs ago... I'm really glad that I had given all those group talks over the years, because i was able to find some presentations which had the data, even if it wasn't as well done as either of us would have liked...

But what's really frustrating is that it's so hard to make progress, because every time we meet, we essentially talk through all the stuff that we had before, and wants detailed answers to things I didn't bother to look at. Hopefully my overall progress is good, even if some meetings are painful.

He did make one comment that I wish I had known before, and now that I've been his student for a couple years and understand how he works, I wish I'd been doing. That is, for everything that I take the time to study or question I try to answer, I should write up a little report with all the details + graphs. Not intending, necessarily, for it to be in a paper or anything, but when he starts asking questions, I can just pull up the document and have all the answers right there. Of course then, when it's time to publish, a paper could look like, essentially, stapling a bunch of reports together.

It's probably not too late to start.

2009-04-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to believe that the internet is destroying my life by spewing gigabytes of entertaining, but ultimately useless, data into my computer. Although I've come to really enjoy internet streaming video, news, tv shows, instant page loading, etc, I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be better off without it, especially considering that I'm trying to focus on writing my thesis. After I graduate, I'd set something new up. With this in mind, I'm carefully studying my AT&T bill.

57 currently: elite+phone (bare bones phone service is 22!!! + fastest internet is 35)
47 express+phone
45 elite
42 basic+phone
35 express
20 basic (1 yr)
0 cellphone + work in office?

"Direct" means no phone service required in order to get DSL. I guess what's odd about the pricing is that my phone bill is 22$/mo, and yes, that's the cheapest I can get. That's the 13.50 flat rate, plus "fees" which aren't flat rate, and it's surprising how much the phone service sucks because it pretty much only works in like 2 area codes, instead of the 4 or 5 in LA. Furthermore, it's not like I use the phone very much. In fact, at 22$/mo, let's pretend I talk only 22 minutes a month (and that estimate is probably high), that's about 100 cents/minute!!! Ridiculous. Especially when I have a cellphone. However, removing the phone service from the "bundle" will only save me about 12$/mo, and anyway, the phone doesn't appear to be contributing to my personal problems. On the other hand, "weaning" myself off of home phone service could save me a lot over the years.

So, let's think about the internet. Unfortunately, I don't see dialup as being reasonable, partly because a new service would probably require a 1 yr contract, but also because i'd have to go out and buy special equipment just to turn the dialup into wireless for my laptop. Assuming I want internet access at home then, 20$ is the minimum I'll pay.

Could I really just cancel everything? It's not unreasonable because I can still do whatever internet stuff I want at work, and I'll still have my cellphone so I'm not completely isolated... It's definitely something to think about. It's kindof interesting to contemplate that 60$/mo (which is what I'm currently paying) is close to what I'd pay with an iphone... so there's a new realm of options open assuming that it isn't the *cost* that's the problem with my current situation. An iphone would make the internet available, without encouraging wasting too much time. However, I could hardly buy in now, when new iphone models are just around the corner.

I'm not sure what to do... I can't do anything until business hours anyway.

2009-03-18T16:02:00.001-07:00

Reading the story of the court case in Austria, which was similar to the one I was recently a juror for, I'm struck by one similarity between the 2 defendants. In some of the media reports, Fritzl and his lawyer are not worried about defending themselves from charges of rape or sexual abuse (he admitted from the beginning he was guilty), he's apparently mostly worried that people will perceive him as a monster. This was the same in my case, where the defendant tried to convince us the jury that because he had taken his daughter to a theme park once or twice, he couldn't possibly be a monster.

In the end though, Fritzl has apparently accepted full guilt, and apparently understands all the pain and suffering he put his family through. In some sense, this helps me to have a tiny bit more respect for him than for the defendant in my case, who never displayed any sign of remorse, or indeed, never any emotion other than complete disdain.

2009-03-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hey it's time to get excited! The good people at Google have finally fixed up their map of Manila! You can type in a search such as "178 liege street, san juan, manila, philippines" and you'll find the place I grew up! If you zoom in on the marker, you need to look west of the white building. It looks like the roof of the place I grew up was painted green, since it used to be the red spanish tiles.

Anyway, someone marked my elementary, middle, and high school on the map too, so it's easy to find. My elementary was in the building bottom-center, middle school was top center, and high school was bottom-left. I'm not sure what all the other buildings are anymore because they did some major upgrading after I left.

Sigh. So many memories! Also, it's odd to see these places on a map, because I never knew the name of half the streets we'd travel on, even though I lived there ~14 yrs. Anyway, if you compare the distance between those two places, you'll see that I had to commute half the width of Manila to get to school, which was "only" 7 miles. This took 30 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic! This is about the distance of where I live in Pasadena to Glendale, which takes me ~10 minutes. Just a quick comparison with Los Angeles (urban area = 4,319.9 km^2) using wikipedia, at about 636 km^2, Manila is about 7 times smaller geographically, while they both have about 11 million people (it's hard to be sure i'm comparing the right numbers). Wow!

2009-03-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of downsides to owning your own house... Here are some of the things that I've had to spend time worrying about:

1) My washing machine doesn't work; the clothes always come out soaking wet. Either the machine isn't spin drying, or it's not pumping out the water, or both. I don't know which because it makes a sound like maybe it's spinning, but it sounds pretty weak. The pump is getting most of the water out, but sometimes after taking out my clothes, there's a bit of standing water in the machine. I called Maytag, and they said a diagnostic check would probably run me 40-60$, a new pump would cost me 80-100$, so over all repairs might be up to 200$. Getting a new (top load) machine would cost me something in the 400's. So the right thing to do might be to just get a new machine, but this is my landlord's house, and they're reluctant to buy anything because they're not planning on advertising it as "furnished" for the next occupants. I'm not excited about paying 400$ because I'm not going to live here probably after this summer.

2) The freezer keeps building frost on the back. Due to the interesting design, this frost is blocking the cold air into the fridge, meaning that it's now warm. With some people from church, we already tried defrosting it, but it came back. Why would it do that?? There doesn't seem to be a problem with the seal. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that i like to keep 3 ice trays in there... But this has the same problem as in #1, we're reluctant to do too much to fix the problem.

3) There's something living in my ceiling... I think... I have no idea how it would be getting in there, and I don't hear it all the time, but some evenings I hear scratching. Maybe it's an opossum. I noticed that my neighbors set out a large animal trap, so maybe they'll get rid of it. I don't want to set out poison... because then it might die up there...

4) Paint is peeling on the bathroom walls. I have no idea what it would cost to repaint it.

5) The backyard needs some concentrated effort to make it look presentable.

6) One of the bedroom doors doesn't fit in the door frame.

7) Part of the floor is wooden... and creaks a lot...

8) One of the central heating vents whistles loudly if I try to close it because it's in an unused room.

9) The mailbox is in an incredibly inconvenient location, and is very small. It can't hold all the junk mail I get.

10) I have a lemon tree... but they taste horrible.

11) I also have an avocado tree. I tried one, but it was very "fibrous" inside.

12) The neighbor has two dogs, who love barking at me for 15 minutes every time I come home.

13) My back "porch" has a roof which leaks, so the porch itself isn't dry.

14) etc

I'm just trying to think of all the things I can complain about... things that if I lived in an apartment, I could maybe get my manager to take care of. But if this were my house, I'd have to worry about all this stuff myself. So... is owning a house really worth it?

2009-03-03T00:13:00.000-08:00

I passed my PhD proposition's examination!

This completes part 1 of 2 required for me to graduate. The idea is to test my ability to propose research topics, and to convince a committee to give me funding. I was required to present 3 proposals, 1 of which must be far removed from my PhD research. I've been working on these since about September. During the presentation, there were several odd twists and turns. For prop 1, they pointed out that a key aspect wouldn't work the way I thought it would, although thinking about it later, I realized it would work, even if I couldn't explain/remember it on the spot. For my second prop, they were planning on busting me on it because initially they didn't even think it was a prop, that my idea was "sociological" in nature, and not scientific. However, this was based on a misunderstanding. There was something that I had tried, and I had already successfully completed it, something new that (I don't think) anybody else has done. So because I had already done it, I didn't think I could propose doing it. So I described what I had done, and said that I needed to do work in convincing other people to do it. Once I explained this to them however, as they told me later, it went from being my weakest prop to my strongest. My 3rd prop, which was experimental in nature, had no major glitches... but they did say that I should have done a lot more work in analyzing the experimental apparatus that I proposed.

In the end, they told me to make minor changes to prop 2 so that it accurately reflects the key contribution that I already made. Based on the level and depth of the challenges to my props, I was becoming worried that I wouldn't pass... But, even though the meeting went 1/2 hr longer than it should have, they passed me! :-)

I've begun to realize something about myself through this, and the job interviews that I've had... If I'm in control, for example while giving a talk, I'm just fine, and I do a good job. If however, I loose control, then I start to get flustered and make mistakes. For example, there was a reason why I did certain things in my props, but when pressed, I couldn't think of the reason why I did it that way. I began to feel my checks glowing, so I wonder if they noticed. I'm sure lots of people have this "problem"... and it's not so bad, and perhaps there's nothing I can do about it except to practice. But it is something I need to work on.

****

What I have remaining is similar to all other PhD students: the thesis seminar and thesis defense. Not that page counts matter, but my thesis is already 40 pages. Even walking out after the exam today, my advisor was cagy on whether I could actually graduate by this June. It's hard for me to tell whether his attitude is purely one of squeezing as much work out of me as possible before I leave... but I don't know.

2009-02-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

I have my proposition's defense in 8 days, and I'm hopeful that I'll pass that. My props are much better than my candidacy ones were, and this time, I've actually got some results to show. More than likely, however, I'll get a "conditional pass", which they use to get me to do something extra, but we'll see. I was told that this was the final criteria they use for graduation, because the thesis defense is almost a given, assuming your advisor is on board.

The real question, relating to whether I can graduate, is whether I can put together a decent thesis. I feel that I've done enough work already, but my boss is holding out for more. Well, I'm nearly finished with the draft for my second paper, which in addition to my first, will give me ~80 pages of thesis. Length isn't important, but it provides a bit of a measurement since I expect my thesis could get up to 150 pages. The rest of my time at Caltech is going to be focused on writing, which I do not enjoy, but with my props out of the way, I have few remaining distractions.

The real question, of course, is about getting a job. I have a few applications floating around. The one that was my first choice from the beginning (partly because it's in Minnesota) is still active. The company has been slow about it because they need to hire more people! :-) But it seems like there's a good chance I'll graduate with no job lined up, since if the MN one doesn't work, then I have no more career fairs to attend. We'll see. There are a few places on campus to look though, including remaining in my own group as a postdoc. On the other hand, I kindof want to just move on...

None of this would prevent me from galavanting around Europe this summer, though...

2009-02-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

In school, everybody has heard of "sigma bonds" and "pi bonds", and they're probably shown balloon figures to see what they look like. Well, you have to get to college to find out that there are "delta bonds" too. Well, here's a picture of what that would look like. A sigma bond can be formed with two s orbitals, making a big peanut structure. Two p orbitals can bond to make a 2-peanut structure, and here, we have two D_{x^2-y^2} orbitals making a 4-peanut structure. One might be tempted to think that a delta bond is the strongest, but actually, it's the weakest because the more often the color changes (blue-red-blue-red) the lower the energy required to break the bond. A delta bond can only form (I believe...) between 2 transition metals. F-block metals can form even more exotic bonds since they can form bonds with f-orbitals, however, at some point, even if a system *can* do something, doesn't mean it wants to.

2009-02-04T00:02:00.000-08:00

The court case finished today. We were promised 2 to 3 weeks of excitement, but only got 5 days. Wow. A couple of posts ago, I described my boredom in the Jury Assembly room, and cut off after my name was called. Well, I got assigned.

Here's the summary:
The defendant was convicted of 18 counts of sexual abuse of his daughter, from 6 years of age until 25, resulting in 4 pregnancies including 1 abortion. He elected to act as his own lawyer and defend himself, a task at which he performed miserably, and was the reason the case went shorter than anticipated.

I'm posting my full story in the comments, just so that I have the chance to warn you that this is a disturbing story, and perhaps you don't want to read more.

2009-01-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

I never doubted in my mind that steroids were wrong. Now, after watching this very well done documentary, I'm not so sure.

When you realize how much our country does to itself to improve performance in some way, it's hard to be so judgmental to Barry Bonds. We have drugs to improve your performance at school (e.g. coffee :-P, but seriously, steroid type substances too), drugs to help musicians stay calm, legal ways of improving athletic performance, lasik to help Tiger Woods see better, Viagra, Dietary Supplements, "go pills" for our airforce pilots, etc etc.... Every aspect of your live is targeted with advertisements whereby you can improve your performance. I just don't see how you can draw the line anymore. Well, at least, I need to think about this a lot more now.

2009-01-28T20:18:00.001-08:00

Today was the first day of the actual trial... and I came home emotionally drained... I wish I could comment more, but I'm not allowed to until it's over.

Define: embarrassing. The whole court waits about a half hour for you to show up. It wasn't that juror's fault, there was an accident this morning blocking an important freeway, but even still, I'm sure she felt a little sheepish walking up.

Define: embarrassing. I have a new definition. Despite numerous and repeated warnings to turn your cellphone off, your phone goes off in the middle of a tense witness examination. The whole court has to wait for you, and is watching while you spend several seconds fumbling around. I feel really bad for that person.

******

I've started to spend time studying maps of downtown. When this is over, I'll be a professional at navigating my way to and from the Walt Disney Concert hall (since that's where we park). I took a new route today: 210 to the 710, then California + Fair Oaks down to the Fair Oaks entrance for the 110. That was several firsts. I've never used the 710 for anything serious... I've never gotten on the 110 from anywhere other than Arroyo... Anyway, I was happy it all worked out, although it did mean I was 30 minutes early because I had allotted myself extra time. It took me about 1 hr to get from my door to the court room.

2009-01-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

I have jury duty coming up this week. It's a bit frustrating because this time I don't feel like I have the time to spend... but there's no way out of it. I'll just read my comments from last time, and see what happens. Last time, I answered that I was a student, which is apparently a red flag for some lawyers. Another lawyer I know told me that if I want to get in the jury, I need to answer "unemployed".

2009-01-20T18:06:00.001-08:00

I'm happy that Barrack Obama is now president. Anybody who asked me knows that I didn't like GWB, but I like Obama on his own terms and not merely that he isn't GWB. I think I have to admit that the main reasons I like him include the fact that (I consider) his speeches to be inspirational (as opposed to embarrassing), that he's proven himself to be an able politician (outwitting both the Clintons and the Republican machine), he doesn't have foot-in-mouth disease, (I think) I agree with his foreign policy plans, and because he's black.

Why do I care that he's black? Well, for starters, I think it's highly amusing to watch certain middle eastern despots squirm in their rhetoric, calling Obama a "house slave"... Just what do they think the title "President" means?? Part of the problem with these people (and those whom they hope to convince) is that they have no idea what America is really like, and I think this helps to solve this problem. Dumb asses like Robert Mugabe have to tone down their racism when America criticizes his atrocious actions in Zimbabwe. But forget those villians. What I'm really happy about is the change that can happen here in this country now. Previously, even though it wasn't true, African Americans could always get away with claiming that "the white man was holding them down". Never underestimate the value of proof by example, and now Obama has decisively demonstrated that this country is a different place than it was even 50 years ago. Hopefully now, African Americans can shake off any lingering feelings of self-defeatism, and rise to accomplish things that they wouldn't have dreamed about before. I'm specifically thinking of that horrible phrase used to criticize young, studious African Americans: "acting white".

My hope is that now all minorities in this country will begin to realize that it's for them too, and that they'll be more willing to invest themselves in it, and to understand that we expect them to participate as equals, not as beggars. This country rewards those, any, who work hard to achieve something. And now, I don't have to feel a little bit guilty in my own pursuits, as if I'm taking opportunities away from someone else. I feel like the tone of the "affirmative action" debate has changed.

Anyway... I'm happy with the way things are working out.

P.S. I also have the slightly smug feeling that Europeans (especially French) are squirming too... Their ability to criticize our "freedom, liberty, and equality" is diminished! :-)

2009-01-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

My research appears to be moving along confidently, nowadays. I don't remember if I mentioned this here, but I was almost ready to submit a paper for publication back in September when my colleague and I discovered a bug in one of our scripts that has affected the quality of all of our results. Our previous results were not seriously affected by this bug, it seems (we were happy), but I would not have felt comfortable publishing them with a known bug.

Anyway, it was one of those kinds of bugs what once you know it's there, it's really easy to fix. However, now we needed to redo all the calculations, which was at least a couple month's worth of effort. In the meantime, I realized that this was an ideal opportunity to homogenize some of the other things I'd been doing inconsistently. To do this, I needed to decide which set of options was best, run quite a few other calculations to experiment, and now I'm happy with my set of options.

Fortunately, deciding which options worked best coincided with another problem that my coworker found (and fixed) which wasn't serious, but *might* result in a slight improvement.

So now, over the last couple weeks, I've finally gotten myself back to where I was in September!! :-) And more confident than ever! And, the new results look encouraging.

Of course, things are never as smooth as I would have predicted, especially when your goal is results, but you have to develop complex software first. In the meantime, I've been tacked onto another project associated with a company to develop Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) software. This has been a lot of fun because I can develop my code and make pretty pictures, but someone else worries about the input file. And now, my advisor thinks I've done a good enough job that I can use this project to accomplish 3 things: one of my 3 propositions for graduation, add it as a chapter to my thesis, and give a group talk on it. So it's like killing 3 birds with 1 stone!

Graduation here I come!!! (please!!!)

So here's my plan.
1) Write up my 3rd proposition, so that it appears to be in place. I can't graduate until, I think the rules say, 10 wks after I defend my props, so I need to get that done ASAP. My first 2 are both 95% finished, I just need to proofread them, add more references, etc, but I'll wrap those up once I have a date set.

2) Finish this paper, now that the results are in place. This should count for 2-3 chapters of my thesis, since it covers several aspects together.

3) Write up a KMC chapter for my thesis.

4) This should add to 4-5 thesis chapters... I can add more based on unpublished work that never really went anywhere, but could be documented anyway... I don't know how many chapters there have to be, but perhaps I could make up the difference with the typical filler introductory chapters.

5) Continue applying for jobs... The Minneapolis job is still on track; I'm expecting them to get back to me with ticket info any day now.

6) If there's time, I might need to do "one more thing", as was requested back in March. Perhaps KMC is sufficient, but there's been an awful lot of talk about GPUs again (related to my first project). So maybe I should port my code to CUDA and be done with it.

2009-01-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

As I'm getting more and more upset watching what Israel is doing, I decided to find some of the verses that Christians use to justify supporting Israel regardless of what it does. Sure, I think any Christian who actually takes the time to think about it will realize that the current existence of the nation of Israel, 2000 years after it was destroyed, and in such unfavorable conditions, is somewhat miraculous. This fact means that quite a few prophesies in the Bible, which before 1948 had little by way of reasonable interpretation, now have many new possible fulfillments.

But I wanted to know what, specifically, Christians are telling each other whenever Israel attacks a neighbor. Well, the most interesting passage I found was Zechariah 12:1-3

1 The burden of the word of the LORD concerning Israel: Thus declares the LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him: 2"Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. 3 On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.

The burden of the word of the Lord indeed. I'm glad our author recognizes how oppressive these verses are. I wonder what Arabs think of the first part of verse 2?

But my question is this. Ok, so vs 3 says that all the nations of the earth will gather against Israel. Does that justify Israel acting in such a way to make it so? I would think not, but perhaps students of the Scriptures are afraid of the later verse Zechariah 12:9

9 And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

That is, we dare not encourage our country to go *against* Israel for fear that God will destroy us. So it's tricky to interpret what the right Christian response should be. My opinion is that prophecy doesn't trump Justice. People who blindly support Israel would do well to remember that God spends quite a bit more time in the Bible showing concern for the poor and oppressed. For example, Jeremiah 22:3:

3'Thus says the LORD, "Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

2009-01-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a TV for 8 years now. After a while of not owning one, you're glad of it. I can't claim that my reasons have to do with avoiding wasting time, because I waste an awful lot of time on my computer. I was reminded of the main reason last weekend, when I watched all 4 NFL playoff games.

I hate commercials. This has been a growing issue for me over a long time. It's not that I don't find some of them funny, or interesting, or even helpful, it's just 99.99% of them are incredibly LAME! And LOUD! And REPEATED! I hope companies realize that not only are there diminishing returns every time I'm shown the same commercial, there are negative returns: I begin to hate the company. I think I've seen that Blackberry commercial so many times, that I hate their company now. To me, they're not advertising a "Red Tag Event" anymore, it's a "Red Crap Event". By the end of last weekend, I had lost all patience, and was yelling at my friend's TV screen. Although some of that had to do with my Vikings losing, it was really giving me a headache!

I'm loosing patience for all kinds of advertisements now.

I hate the junk mail that's delivered to my house's mailbox. I'm never going to clip coupons. Or buy stuff from your magazine, or whatever.
I hate spam that fills my email box. Actually, this is mostly under control nowadays.
I hate TV commercials
I hate the commercials they put in the Daily Show episodes, because it's often times the same ad played to you for all 3 commercial spots.
I hate the banner ads that show up in youtube clips. Look guys, if your commercial on TV couldn't convince me to watch your movie, what chance do you think a banner ad has? Your movie is RETARDED! I'm not going to change my mind just because you bombard me with more ads!
I hate popup ads. Safari has a feature that disables whatever JavaScript ads typically use to pop up. But some have found a way around it. I'm looking at you, Netflix. I already subscribe to Netflix, so why should I tolerate you advertising to me more! And if I prohibit popups through my browser option, what makes you think I'm going to take favorably to you bypassing my preferences??

For whatever reason, I don't think corporates understand the ill-will they're engendering by pissing me off all the time. The best solution to this problem that I've seen so far is in Facebook, where you can vote on an ad. I think it would be a great idea to subject advertisements to a new form of "free market ideals", the freedom for people to vote and comment on ads. Companies should not be allowed to get away with producing dumb ads just because they have the money to pay for it. I, and the rest of the internet users, should be given the freedom to embarrass that company by giving its ad a thumbs-down or to leave a comment explaining to other people why the ad is misleading.

I thought Michael Scott of The Office fame was just a caricature. A guy who thinks he's loved by everybody, and all he has to do is make one of his lame jokes, and everybody will love him more. Apparently, he's incapable of honest self evaluation, and he's incapable of understanding his employees. But companies seem to parallel this. They think they're pretty awesome, and all they have to do is share their ads with us, and we'll love them all the more. What the companies don't realize, because they're not getting my feedback, is that some people, like myself, are sitting there rolling my eyes at the minimum, or yelling at TVs in extreme.

Get with it!

2009-01-06T17:53:00.000-08:00

I'm really happy that Apple and the music labels have decided to eliminate the Digital Rights Management controls they previously placed on their music. This now means that once I buy a song, it's mine, and I can do anything I want with it. To me, the DRM restrictions meant nothing, until I upgraded the stereo system on my car a couple days ago, and discovered that I could play all my music, just not the DRM'd music. That was upsetting to me, since most of the music I want to listen to was recently purchased. Anyway, I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Apple now provides a way to "upgrade" my music. Basically, I pay 30 cents to unlock each song and 30% for each album, and simultaneously convert it to a higher bitrate. Is that expensive or cheap? I don't know. I have a decently sized library already (827 items) purchased from iTunes. Right now, I can upgrade 362 songs for 92$. The number of upgradable songs has been growing throughout the day, so I assume that eventually that will include everything, but am I looking at a ~200$ bill for unlocking all the music I've purchased over the last 6 years???

Oh, and it's all or nothing: you can't choose to upgrade only some of your songs. And what's the cost of the upgraded song, as is? The same as the original price. So if I would have waited and bought all my music today, I would have paid the same amount, and had better songs.

I'm just now sure how excited I should be.... Obviously I'm happy about all my *future* purchases, but it's almost as if I got a 200$ "early adopter" fee for using the music store before it was ready.

2008-12-28T23:30:00.000-08:00

I bought a new game on Friday, called Agricola. It's a new game, and follows in the vein of other resource management games like Settlers of Catan and (I'm told) Puerto Rico. The game is currently rated #1 among enthusiasts (although the site is down at the moment).

I've played it a couple of times, and it has several nice differences when compared with Settlers (which I've played often). First, Agricola competition is not direct. You can do things to affect the choices others make, but only indirectly, so it's harder to "be mean". Second, in Agricola, you can't "gang up" on one player, so if you're doing well all along, then you should win. Third, there is very little chance. There are no dice, so your success is entirely dependent upon the choices you make. Fourth, there are really some good economic principles that the game teaches. Agricola really presses home the importance of "opportunity cost". Each turn, you're given only a small number of "opportunities" so you better make good choices. Another economic principle the game really drives home is long range planning. You need to have your main strategy in place well thought out, as well as a couple secondary strategies to act on when you can't advance your main strategy.

In summary, it's a game that really makes you think, both before and during a game. So, I'm a fan. All my games so far have taken a couple hours, partly because we're new to it. I think once you're used to it, it will go faster...

Anyway... it's difficult to appreciate the game without trying it. Unfortunately, the game itself is somewhat expensive (because there are tons of pieces), and since it's new, you're unlikely to find second hand sets.

2008-12-22T10:11:00.001-08:00

Internet started working this morning, so finally, I feel like I'm "done" moving. Of course, there are some things that still need to find a place to go, but everything I need is set up and is working. I feel very blessed to have gotten this place. It's not that this is the nicest place I've ever seen, but it's the nicest place I've ever rented. Of course, the whole reason this worked out is because it's owned by my church.

Actually, it's very nice to belong to a good church -- even ignoring all the religious aspects. The place I'm staying at is owned by the church, several church members helped me to move, other members are fixer-up types, and one of them came over yesterday to fix the fridge. I can go anywhere in the world, and I can find people with whom I can get along, and people from all over the world come to our church, and we have automatic rapport with each other. It's a community. You give of some of your time, and the community gives you some of its time. Economics requires that kind of repayment to be written down. Churches trust you to just give what you can, when you can. Anyway... fringe benefits. And people are surprised to see how strong religion can be..

However, for the first time in my life, at age 27, I'm living alone. I've always lived with family, in a dorm, or with roommate(s). Now, there's nobody to bother me... but there's nobody to do stuff with so spontaneously either. Maybe it's time to start looking for a wife...

2008-12-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

I just finished moving, possibly my hardest move. Previously, it was always just moving stuff out of a dorm room. This time, it was from an apartment, so all my personal possessions, but now including furniture, kitchen stuff, cleaning stuff, my roommate's stuff, etc etc. Thankfully, some people from my church were around (with their trucks) to help move the furniture that I couldn't sell. And some of the moving was in the rain.

Now I'm exhausted, and my arms hurt. And I'm behind on work, and almost all of the companies I applied to this round ended up turning me down (only one left, the one from the top of my list). Of course, none of them gave me any feedback as to why they turned me down, despite spending money and time on interviewing me. I'd like to know what it was, since some of them ended up being a surprise. I thought my last interviews with 2 of the companies had gone really well, and yet . Sigh. So no job, no reasons, and lost time. Yes, I gained practice, but without feedback, I don't even know where I'm deficient.

I guess one thing that's helpful to point out is that recruiters are willing to exaggerate their enthusiasm regarding your application. So if they tell you "Yea, we need like 20 new people, but we just can't find enough qualified people", you might believe that means you have a decent chance if you meet their standards. But that's not necessarily true, since it's hard for me to believe that I was rejected on the basis of qualifications, although maybe I'm not.... These companies claim they're "impressed" by a lot of things, but I don't think that word means what they think it means. Anyway, I feel like I spent a lot of time, it wasn't worth it, and now I'm behind in my research.

I think next time, when I hand my resume over, maybe I'll tell them that I'll begin an application process if they will promise me that the result will be one of the two options: 1) they offer me a job, or 2) they tell me *why* they're turning me down, without using the words {impressed, match, fit, extremely}. Oh well. I'm sure I'll find someone who likes me! :-)

2008-12-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

My last two interviews went really well, I thought. I think they were both last round, so perhaps I'll have two job offers soon? Well, if I have a 90% chance at either, then I have a 99% chance of getting at least one! :-)

I think in the end, the decision might be harder to make than I've been realizing because everybody is doing something interesting, they're all located in places I'd be happy to live, and all probably pay pretty well. Salary is the only quantifiable variable in the mix, so to most people just end up deciding based on that?

I think the hardest part will be the transition out of grad school. Here, my time is my own and I can do pretty much whatever I want. If I want to spend 3 wks in Europe to visit my friend, I can do that, almost on a whim. If today I want to work on this, I can. I don't need to set my alarm clock, since I'll pretty much be working all day/night anyway, but maybe not. Moving out of academia could be really hard... My sources tell me it can be done! It will be good for me, personally and professionally, to live in the "real world" for a while. Who knows, I might even want to stay!

Sorry, I'm not going to post any juicy details of the companies, interview process, job offers, etc.

2008-12-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

I really hate it when car alarms can't turn off by themselves, and the owner is unaware. I'm listening to one right now that has been running yesterday, and unfortunately, the battery hasn't died yet. How long would that take? But this is another example of a situation where a security measure ends up affecting innocent people. It's like a while loop in programming: they're less likely to terminate than you think they are, so you should consider putting a counter in there.

I'm thinking of driving over and attempt to steal the car myself!

I have more interviews coming up today and tomorrow, and they're all going to ask puzzle questions. I don't like them, not because I can't, in principle, figure them out, but because I hate being put on the spot. Fortunately, I'm able to maintain my composure and a sense of humor during the process... but the problem is that it's like being confronted with failure with every question because I make more mistakes. What's worse is after an interview, I don't even know how well I did because I don't know how many hints are normal or how long most people take. It seems the best I can do is try to do every kind of problem in preparation, just so I see how it all works, and then during the interview hope each question maps to one I practiced with. But I'm accustomed to being guaranteed a certain quality (relative to the class) of results with tests, homework, research, but these interviews feel more like I'm rolling dice.

2008-12-04T14:15:00.001-08:00

Now that I'm within 1 to 6 months of getting a job offer, I've started to think about buying a house, and that's an odd sensation. As I was explaining to my roommate last night, I've become comfortable living in small spaces like apartments and dorm rooms. Although I want something bigger, it's hard to imagine owning and living something as big as a house. Alone. Take a look at the pictures of houses that 500k$ can buy. I don't know, but I could *probably* afford something like that. Looking at those houses, I can imagine the excitement of pulling into the driveway and thinking "wow, this is mine", but then walking through the doorway and spending a lonely evening in one corner.

What would I do with 5000 sq ft? I'd feel like I'd hear the echos of my movie off the walls.

My roommate's idea was to just get a small place and save the rest of my money until I get married or something. My idea is to buy a small place near my job, and buy *another* small place in France or Ireland for vacations... Of course the problem with earning money at a decent job is that you don't have time to spend it.

This is undue excitement at this stage... I mean, talk about counting your chickens before they hatch! But regardless of what job I get, I'm going to have to think about buying.

2008-12-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

I bought myself a new MacBook a couple months ago, and with it came a free iPod touch, the little sister of the iPhone. I like the iPod a lot, enough so that I really want an iPhone. It's not that I'm unwilling to pay 300$ to get an iPhone, it's that I'm balking at paying 70$/mo for the cellphone + dataplan. Given that I don't talk on the phone that much, that's too much to pay. What I'd really like is an iPhone with prepay cellphone service, and then something like T-Mobile's 1$/day prepay data service. That appears to be too much to ask for right now. Of course I could buy an iPhone for 300$, buy out the contract for 175$, and then put in a SIM card of my choice; prepay if I like. But I'm not sure I want to pay 500$ for a prepay iPhone, when I already have an iPod touch...

Of course all this hassle is, I believe, temporary since it's only a matter of time before there are competitors out there. It's unlikely, I guess, that the cost of the iPhone device will go down substantially (the iPod's price never really went down much), but there will be more cell/data plan choices, where the bulk of the cost lies.

What's ironic though was that I described what I wanted to a Best Buy attendant today. I want a prepay cell service, and then prepay data or data plan. She pointed out that the T-Mobile Sidekick they sell for 219$ can do exactly that. How can I be willing to pay 300$ for an iPhone, but then not be excited at all about something pretty much as functional as an iPhone? Of course it's not as good of a product, but in terms of practical utility, they're close. What's wrong with this scene? I guess part of it is just how attractive the Apple brand is.

Actually, the real solution here is that I'm discovering that pretty soon applications will be available that download to your iPod most of what you might want "on the run". For example, in a couple weeks maps can be downloaded onto your iPod. Of course it's nice to have GPS functionality with your maps, but this is pretty good. Actually, I assume that soon enough the regular Maps program will be able to download some data (as well as fixing several glaring shortcomings...). For example, let me download a low resolution map of California (the highways), a medium resolution map of the city I live in (roads), and high resolution data of where I'm going (all roads, pictures, satellite, etc). This way you don't have to save a 1.5 gb database, just a couple hundred mb of relevant data. Next, wikipedia is nice to have available, and this guy has an app that will let you download 2gb worth of data. But that seems a bit much; perhaps you can just tell it: get me the 1000 most important articles on topic x.

The other application I want, and I assume is on the way, is something like a simplified version of Mathematica or my TI-89 graphing calculator. It would be nice to have something that can do symbolic integration/differentiation, evaluate most functions, solve equations, matrix manipulation, etc.

The outlook is great.

2008-10-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I just accepted more work last night.

I met with some friends who are working on a "software product" that will be released within several weeks, and last night they gave me a product demo. They're in "stealth mode" right now, meaning that nobody except for them, and a patent lawyer, know what they're working on, but it's 4-6 Caltech alumni+students, so you know it will be good! :-) I can't say more. It's the sort of idea that's disarmingly simple, and yet could have huge impact...

They want me to help them out. I'm not sure that it's because of any special skills that I have, but as a programmer, and as a friend. How can you say no? It's an interesting project, and a fun opportunity! But it will cost time, and I'm trying to graduate...
I agreed to help out. I'll take it slow, and see how it goes.

2008-10-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the fall career week at Caltech. We had ~90 companies come visit us, from software companies, consulting, research, finance, engineering firms, etc. This means that for those of us students who are looking for jobs had a busy week, preparing for the fair, preparing for interviews, and then the interviews. I had 3 interviews this week already! And I know that lots of other companies didn't stay after the fair, but said they'd get back to me.

It's exciting to see all the finance companies show up. I counted 16. That's amazing! In the midst of financial crisis, they still come to Caltech! I was talking with the people at one of these companies about whether they would have gone to my undergraduate school (one of the giant public universities) located close to their company. They said no, they only go to Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc. They're a small firm, so they have to pick their battles... but I guess it's gratifying to see that the skills a scientist/engineer has are respected across board. It's also pleasing to see that it's actually easy to transition from a PhD in science into a variety of industries. They all readily affirm that they don't expect you to have knowledge about finance, but that you can figure it all out yourself. One thing it readily demonstrates is that Caltech opens doors for you.

Perhaps the most interesting encounter, probably just because I didn't think about it before, is to go to business school. I talked with a lady representing Harvard Business School, recruiting for the Fall 09 class. It's a 2 year program, costing 174k$. Wow! On the other hand, jobs gained with HBS on your resume would certainly make it worthwhile. But looking around, I can get into a wide variety of careers with just a PhD, so what do I want with an MBA? It's something to think about, to say nothing about how hard, I'm sure, it is to get in.

But now I'm going to have to start thinking about making a decision. What do I really want to do? Write software for Wall Street? Consult for the navy? Stay in science, but work for a company?

It's going to be hard to choose.

2008-09-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Mexico, which was a lot of fun! I had never been there before, and so when the opportunity came, even for a short trip, I jumped at it. My roommate needed to renew his US Entry Visa, and to do that, he had to leave the US. The consulate in Tijuana is the closest to where we live, so I decided to drive with him there. And while we were there, we decided to spend the night, and have a mini-vacation. Insurance for only 2 days cost only 26$, so it seemed like it was almost cheaper than parking and walking over. I'm glad we drove. Although they arrange their street signs differently, and it takes some getting used to, it's pretty easy to get the hang of driving there. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time anticipating stops, so there were a couple of times when I nearly got in an accident... Maybe it was just because I didn't get much sleep for 2 nights in a row.

We were worried about traffic, so we left at 5 am from Pasadena, and made it through the border by 7:50 am. Crossing the border into Mexico was the easiest entry into a country I've ever experienced. We drove to the end of I-5, crossed some road-spikes, and kept going without stopping at all. It took us a minute or so to realize that we had crossed. I had been reading all this stuff about "Mexico Tourist Cards", but we didn't get them, and nobody ever stopped us or asked to see them or anything. It was easy to drive to the Rio Plaza, the shopping complex 2 blocks from the consulate.

Everything went smooth. Jeremie's appointment was at 9:30, and he wasn't done until noon. I visited the grocery store and wandered around and then just waited at Starbucks. He could have picked up his visa at 3 and then returned home, but instead we drove down to Ensenada. The food was good there, surprisingly much better than the "Mexican" food I've had here in LA. Unfortunately, the town is basically one big tourist trap for the cruise ship visitor who wants to get drunk, buy cheap prescription drugs, or get laid. Seriously, I've never been in a town where the sex trade was as visible, and we didn't even leave the "tourist store" streets. Not just women, but the "swear word" t-shirts, explicit wood carvings, and other "artwork", in the tourist shops. We even had a guy walk up to us and try to get us to enter his "massage parlor". Sigh. I would have to say that this disqualifies it from being "family friendly". I guess that for those of us who aren't interested in this stuff, there's not much to do there.

Another surprising element was the persistency of the beggars. There were lots of people on the streets who looked like pure native-Mexicans, who were as poor as any I've seen in Manila. It was sad to see. But what was even more sad were that they'd sic their 3-4 yr old children on you, and then they'd hold out their hand, walking in front of you, for up to 20 meters. Perhaps the typical American tourist has never seen such poverty, and are "easy pickings".

Despite these things, there was a lot of Mexican pride, evidenced in the number of people who were flying flags on their cars or businesses. I had thought this was an American thing, but Jeremie, who lived in Canada for about a year, said it must be a North American thing. Europeans are taken aback at the site of such outspoken patriotism, he says because of the past connotations connecting flag waving with fascism. We have no such qualms on this continent. We saw flags strapped to the hood of cars, we saw one of the largest flags flying that I've ever seen in the Ensenada harbor, lots of people had flags tied to the radio antennas of their cars, etc. In the US, a lot of Americans like to complain about the Mexican-Americans flying Mexican flags. Well, Americans can be assured that these people are not doing it just because they're in the US. Furthermore, just as there are tons of Spanish signs here, there are tons of English signs there. I think people like to get uptight about "cultural invasion", but I really don't think it's a big deal anymore (not just because of this, but lots of other reasons too).

Another positive aspect of Mexico, at least the NW region, was all the construction and renovations. Yes, it is an annoying eyesore, but at least it proves that the place is doing well economically, which is always encouraging. In this case, I think the region is preparing for an invasion of American retirees, because the buildings are all costal hotel/apartment complexes, and half the English signs on display are for property purchasing. Honestly, the cost of Baja California is as pretty as just about anything you'll see in California, and probably orders of magnitude cheaper. I think this area is probably going to fill up fast. And why not? Given the new (parts still under construction), fast highway system that connects Tijuana with Ensenada, you can live a life of scenery, comfort, and easy access to the US on the cheap. Mexico keeps sending us poor people, and soon we'll start sending our old people. The only concern is security, but the military was disconcertingly visible. Soon enough I assume that the pestilential (but *very* dangerous) Mexican drug gangs will be beaten down.

The most exciting part of the trip was the line to get back into the US. It took us 1 hour to get to the gate, but then about another hour to finalize Jeremie's entry visa. We're not sure whether the consulate forgot to stamp one of his papers, or whether that was supposed to happen at the border. Either way, we got to sit around in a separate parking lot and watch security teams search suspicious people and their cars. AND THEN, we got to sit around in BOTH San Diego rush hour traffic, AND Los Angeles rush hour traffic!! Who could ask for a better trip home sweet home?

One tip for visiting Mexico is to bring cash. They didn't accept credit cards at the gas station we went to, cash was required to pay for the stamp at the border, cash was required for the visa renewal at the consulate, etc. On the other hand, I think you could maybe get by without buying pesos, at least in this border region, since practically everybody accepted US dollars.

Anyway, I'd like to go back, but not to the Tijauna-Ensenada-Tecate triangle (and I'm sure the rest of the border zone), which are just a bunch of tourist traps. Authentic Mexican experiences are off of those beaten trails.

2008-09-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is supposed to turn on for an initial test. It will still take a while before real results are available, since they will start at low power, and work their way up to full capacity. For reference, Fermilab in Chicago has been operating at higher energies for a while now. However, once the machine is turned all the way up, we will probably discover some exciting things.

Some people, such as myself, are quite excited about this. I just hope stupid people don't contaminate the public's view.

2008-09-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

About 2 months ago, I changed part of our code, rewriting some bits that have been unchanged for 5.5 years. The problem that I saw was that the code could handle s, p, d, and f basis functions, which had been hard coded in. I wanted to add g functions, and higher, but I didn't want to hard code them in because that would have been a lot of mistake-prone typing. So instead, I programmed everything as functions, made sure that the new code duplicated the old code. I was happy with this improvement, since now we could handle any basis function, and the code looked more elegant. I thought nothing more of it.

I've been trying to prepare a publication, and over the last couple of days, there have been some calculations that I wanted to add to my collection, to round off the paper. However, the new calculations were not agreeing with the previous calculations, by a significant amount, and I've been spending a lot of time in the last couple of weeks trying to sort out the discrepancies. There were a lot of possibilities that I needed to try out, so it took me a while. It was getting to be really frustrating, because I had no idea what I had changed over the last 6 months or so (or since whenever) and it was impossible to ignore the disagreement I was seeing.

I finally figured out what the problem had been today. The code that I had changed 2 months ago had fixed a bug that nobody had ever noticed. The results post-bug-fix disagreed with all my results from pre-bug-fix. The problem was that even though our code handled s, p, and d functions correctly, there was a subtle mistake in 6 of the 10 f functions, unnoticed perhaps because it was all hard coded. Now that this bug has been identified and fixed, it means that there are slight errors in ALL the calculations I've done over the last year or so, and the error is of unknown magnitude or bias.

Perhaps it is a testimony to the capabilities of the QMC method that it can produce good results even if there is a flaw in the wavefunction. It's surprising that the results were as good as they were, given the mistake, which is why nobody suspected any problems until now. Fortunately, this is not a disaster. The reason is that most of the computational effort was spent optimizing parameters in the wavefunction, and it is reasonable to assume that the parameters are still quite close to their optimal values. All I need to do is reoptimize the parameters a little bit more. I guess one good thing about this is that now I can be more systematic and do things in a uniform fashion from the start.

I'm just really glad I figured this out before submitting the paper.

What's interesting to think about now, though, are all the curiosities that I had discovered over the last year or so. I wonder now how many of them were the result of this bug. I suppose this is bad news for my thesis since presumably most of them will go away.

2008-08-25T23:33:00.001-07:00

I had a brilliant idea today. I wanted to have some popcorn (stove top, obviously), but I didn't know what to put on it. My typical options are:
1) plain w/ salt
2) butter + salt
3) peanut butter + corn syrup

I would have gone for option #3 tonight, but I only have chunky peanut butter, which doesn't work as well as smooth. So I was looking through my cupboards and a popcorn recipe book I have, trying to figure out what I might do for flavoring. Most of the interesting recipes used ingredients I don't have. So I was wondering... Italian seasoning? Dill seasoning? Melted cheese? All of the sudden, I knew.

A ramen flavor packet!!!

I'm a genius. Unfortunately, there were only 2 flavors available, and I don't particularly like either. I picked the one I disliked less, and put it on, and it worked! It tasted great! Now, I'm just excited for when I have the chance to pick ramen flavors with popcorn in mind.

************
I was talking with a guy in my research group about this a little bit last night. He had another interesting idea:
4) ketchup + mayo
5) salsa

He said #4 looks gross, and that he initially thought it wouldn't taste very good... but then he tried and liked it... I guess I'll have to give it a (very) controlled and limited test myself!

2008-08-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with laptop security. There are programs you can install on your computer that will "phone home" with special information, useful for finding out where your computer is physically located. The reason for this is that if your laptop gets stolen, then perhaps it will still phone home (unless the thief has managed to disable the security programs). You can then take this info to the proper security enforcement, and hopefully retrieve your laptop. There are 2 commercial applications that do this, Undercover and Lojack, and one free, "academic" program Adeona.

The relative merits of the commercial products are examined in quite a few blog articles. Basically the problem though that I don't know if I should trust these guys because I'm permitting them to install essentially spyware on my computer. I have to take their word that they're not doing anything nefarious with my private data, or spying on me in other ways, etc. I suppose they're somewhat trustworthy, but I'm not so sure. I don't want to use this if there are alternatives.

Adeona is being written by some people at U Washington to address the privacy concerns. They're not actually trying to provide a service, but they are willing to let you use the software they're developing for their own purposes for free. Their idea is that I install spyware, but it's encrypted and only I, with my password and hash key, can access the data. I set up their software yesterday, and here's the pic it took of me this morning (no, i'm not irish):

What I think would be a better solution, however, would be for them to let me choose my own server to store the data. That is, they provide me with software to install on my laptop, and they give me software to install on my server, so that after installation, my machines don't talk with theirs at all. Maybe they'll do this eventually... They're still developing their program.

I guess the real question is whether I trust a commercial company (who have a reputation to maintain) or a school (with academic standards, but perhaps curious students) or neither. So, I've been working on my own script, since it's not that hard to do the basics at least.

Here's my perl script so far (sorry, the code formatting looks pangit):

#!/usr/bin/perl

use MIME::Lite;

$pic = "/Users/amos/bin/isight.jpg";
$screen = "/Users/amos/bin/screen.jpg";
$date = `date`;

$txt = "\nifconfig:\n";
$txt .= `/sbin/ifconfig`;
$txt .= "\nTraceroute to caltech.edu:\n";
$txt .= `/usr/sbin/traceroute caltech.edu`;
$txt .= "\nnetstat:\n";
$txt .= `/usr/sbin/netstat`;

$msg = MIME::Lite->new(From => '******@gmail.com',
To => '******@gmail.com',
Subject => "[spy] $date",
Type => 'multipart/mixed');
if(1){
`isightcapture $pic`;
`screencapture -x -t jpg $screen`;

$msg->attach(Type => 'image/jpeg',
Path => "$pic",
Filename => "$pic");
$msg->attach(Type => 'image/jpeg',
Path => "$screen",
Filename => "$screen");
}

$msg->attach(Type => 'TEXT',
Data => "$txt");

$msg->send(); # default is to use sendmail(1)

This works fine in my office at school, but sendmail doesn't work so well using my Yahoo ISP service. Maybe email is not such a brilliant idea, but I'd prefer this over setting up a dropbox somewhere and ftp'ing data in. Perhaps sending all this data in clear text is not such a good idea. Maybe I could just gzip it as a simple kind of encryption.

Unfortunately, there's little you can do that's foolproof since there are ways to get around these security measures. For example, just turn it off. But, hopefully I would be able to catch any stupid thieves.

Comments or suggestions?

2008-08-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I took advantage of Apple's "Back to School" plan, and got a MacBook (2.4 ghz) + iPod touch for 1099$. What a deal! Actually, I got the 16 gb ipod, so that's an extra 100$, but still.

The ipod is the coolest toy I've ever had. It can do so many things!! It's so much fun to surf the web at whim (well, all my friends have wifi at their apartment). It can check mail, find your location on a map, get sports, applications, news... because of the software, it is infinitely extensible, since random people can program apps for it. because of the tilt and accelerometer and touch screen, there are interesting new game possibilities. it can be a remote control for itunes on my computer, and it works from at least 50 ft out the door (when i couldn't hear the music anymore. oh, and it can play music too. wow!!

the laptop is cool too. because it's a core 2 duo, it has the equivalent of 4 processors, at 2.4 ghz, which is faster than my old 1.0 ghz g4 titanium power book by 2.4*4 = 9.6 times! it has 2 gb of ram, which is 4 times as much as my last laptop. the hard drive has 2.7 times more capacity. it has an intel chip, while my old laptop has a motorola chip, so this means my new laptop can run whatever OS I want. and, it has OS X 10.5 Leopard, which I didn't bother obtaining before. This 10.5 update has new features (Time Machine, Spaces, and the new Terminal) that I think i'll actually find useful (unlike Dashboard and iChat).

anyway, i'm happy. for now. this is what happens when you upgrade after 5 years!

one of the things that's nice about being a part of a school is that i can get a lot of software for no cost to myself. i updated my versions of MS Office and Mathematica, neither of which had been upgraded in 6 years. I assume there are tons of new features in both that I can now use. However, due to licensing vagaries, I'll keep the old versions around anyway.

There are only a couple things left to do.

1) I need to figure out how to access SMB directories with OSX 10.5.3. This is an issue many people have complained about to Apple, so presumably they'll fix it soon.

2) Connect to the older printer in my office, since the newer printer is probably not reliable yet. Where are those random drivers again?

3) Install Windows XP. Actually, I already did this, but I'm not sure it will work with the Boot Camp drivers since I didn't install the SP2 that it says it needs. Also, I installed the 64 bit version... The installation worked... but there were explicit warnings against trying this, so there are probably some remaining issues.

4) Decide on VMware fusion vs Parallels... VMware is cheaper in our school store, but parallels might be better.

5) Figure out whether Spaces is really a feature, or whether I should just revert to my old method.

2008-08-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

I had a discussion with a friend recently about the financial cost of the war in Iraq. The question was whether it really is expensive, and ignores all other cost factors.

Before anything else, it is important to discuss initial estimates. When things started, Donald Rumsfeld dismissed as "baloney" a 200 billion $ estimate[7,8] saying that instead it should only cost 50-60 billion[6] (which is about what the Gulf War cost us). These figures underestimated the actual costs by a factor of 1900/60 = 32. If you don't like that estimate, then you still have at least 845/60 = 14, an order of magnitude difference. A serious miscalculation. In my mind, that is a serious problem. It represents either incompetence or deception. Most likely, some combination of both. At the very least we expect a government to be honest with it's own people, since we're the ones who will have to pay. It is obvious (to me at least) that if we knew back then that it would cost 2.4 trillion dollars, we wouldn't have done it. Some people respond with comments along the lines about how we didn't expect to stay this long. But doesn't that miss the point? It still represents a serious miscalculation. How do people get it wrong by a factor of 32? It's like planning to buy a happy meal for 5$, but end up paying 160$.

Regardless, we're there now, and we're stuck with the bill, or will be as soon as congress starts raising taxes instead of just borrowing more money. The US has the world's largest economy by far, so it's clear we can afford more than what other countries can. It's one thing to toss around big numbers, but it's another thing to consider them in light of America's GDP. With this in mind, I want to know how much this will affect my wallet. So let's do some math.

Since the important monetary figures appear to include both Afghanistan and Iraq, I'll have to do so as well.

Assumptions (we'll play around with some of these later):

All the money paid comes from Individual Income Tax, which was 1.16 trillion $ in 2007[2]. That is, we're assuming corporations don't pay a share.
All the cost is spread equally among all 139.3 million tax payers (e.g. no tax brackets)[3].
The cost of the war in Iraq 1.9 trillion $ by 2017[1], or 2.4 trillion $ including the costs associated with Afghanistan, according to an office in the US government. This includes the costs starting from 2001. This figure includes the half trillion we've borrowed and spent already, and all the costs remaining, including interest on the borrowed money. Whether it does or not, it should include long term health benefits for soldiers. Apparently, congress has already appropriated 0.845 trillion[5].
We ignore the cost of any alternatives to war, or any "rebate" scenarios.
We assume that all these numbers remain fixed through the entire period of payment.

Is 2.4 trillion $ a lot? Well, let's break it down into more useful chunks. The war started in 2003, so that's 15 years of paying it off at 0.16$ trillion = 160 billion $ per year. By comparison, the 2007 budget was 2.77 trillion $[2], so that's about 5.8% of the total spending last year. Or, we could say that is 28% of what we spent on Social Security, or 29% of defense. However, I think I can do better than that. Assume that the entire price falls on the individual tax payers, who paid 1.16 trillion $ in 2007. A 160 billion increase to them would represent an increase in tax of 14%, or for me 293$ in 2007.

We could also look at the numbers a different way. 160 billion/year $ for 139.3 million people is 1,149 $/person/year. Now perhaps this seems like a lot to me since, since 1,149 is not a 14% increase in my taxes, but I don't know how to incorporate tax brackets into the estimate, so I have to assume the 14% figure, or 293$ is the better estimate.

Now, my estimates are almost certainly high because of assumption #1. That is, it's reasonable to expect companies to take a hit as well, but still assuming that everything is spread evenly, that would only drop the percentage figure from 14% to 10% tax increase for me.

I don't understand the 2.4 trillion figure, so let's play around with assumption #3, which might be a bit high. Other economists have said that the figure is closer to 3 trillion[5], which corresponds to an 18% increase in taxes, or 366$ for me. By comparison, that same article[5] said that WW2 cost 5 trillion $. But the 2.4 trillion $ figure is more useful, since this is perhaps a number more persuasive to those who don't think the war is expensive.

Another of my assumptions was that the cost will be paid out over 15 years. I don't know if that's reasonable or not, and I'm sure there are uncertainties involved, including the question of how long we, the US, will stay in Iraq. But let's try the following alternative approximation. Let's pay off all 2.4 trillion $ right now, by pulling out the troops tomorrow and preventing any spending not already accounted for. This would mean paying 3 times as much taxes, or for me 4,400$. What about 6 years to pay it off, approximately the length of the conflict. This would raise all figures by a factor of 15/6, or 2.5. This means a 34% increase in tax, or for me, 733$/year.

Now which figure is most reasonable? 300$ over 15 years, 733$ over 6, or 4400$ total. Of course what people typically don't consider when they're splashing out big bucks from their credit card and paying for it over a long time is that in a couple year's time there is going to be something else they want to buy. For example, it looks like many people want to pay for a war with Iran within a couple years, and Hurricane Katrina cost us a lot of emergency money. Based on this, perhaps of the 3 numbers, the middle range of 6 years payment is the best.

That is, the war should have cost me 733$ in 2007, based on the 34% increase in taxes that should have been implemented. Is that high? Perhaps that depends on your perspective. I personally think that is too high to be worth it, but that evaluation is based on other considerations. Can I afford it? My bank account grew by more than 733$ in 2007, so I would have still ended the year in "black". This doesn't account for the amount my personal savings is supposed to grow. I guess I have to admit, though, that I can (uncomfortably) afford my share.

I suspect that most Americans, who have considerably more expenses than I do would not agree. For example, I don't have medical expenses, debt, or children, so I'm maybe not typical. I wonder how much the average American could afford? Apparently only about 24% of all families had no debt in 2004[9], and for people in the 20-40k income bracket like me, we're on average 10,000k in debt (subtracting the house category).

Sources:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
[3] http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977170369
[4] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
[5] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece
[6] http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/01/sproject.irq.war.cost/
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey
[8] http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/10/news/economy/costofwar.fortune/index.htm
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/20/business/20debt-trap.html#3/1

2008-07-29T11:51:00.001-07:00

wow! that was the strongest earthquake i've ever felt!

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/ci14383980.php

2008-07-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

I finally went to go see Wall-E today. I enjoyed it very much. Very cute, but this is perhaps the first exposure kids will have to the importance of environmentalism. One of the aspects that I found most compelling was the question of AI/robot dominance, partly since this was the theme of the Hyperion books I just finished reading.

What if you could live your life on a yacht, would that be a life worth living? Would that be an ideal life, an "Axiom", if you will? I don't think anybody would agree that it is, so how do you set your expectations? How do you prevent yourself from becoming too dependent upon technology? How dependent is too dependent?

2008-07-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

At my church, we've been studying 1st Peter for the last couple months or so. One of the last things mentioned in that book is one of Paul's frequent commands is to Greet one another with the kiss of love, a verse young male Christians find quite compelling. But this time, it got me thinking about something else. In the US, and I'm sure in other individualist cultures like ours, we do not greet each other with a kiss. For us, kissing in public of any sort is a bit taboo. By contrast, during my visits to Colombia and France, I was kissed more than the entire rest of my life put together. So latin cultures do kiss, and frequently. For me, I realized that it would be far more embarrassing if I resisted or refused, so I swallowed my discomfort and went with the flow. There were of course, no sexual connotations at all.

Anyway, my point is that Christians in the US don't do this, even though it's commanded 5 times (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Peter) by 2 different authors (Paul and Peter), and it's described multiple times in the rest of the Bible. How do literalists explain this, I wonder? That is, some people tend to be very careful about how to interpret verses, and defend their position based on the most literal possible interpretation of different scriptures. I'll not mention any specific examples. The commands regarding kissing do not seem to me to be ambiguous from any perspective.

I've mentioned this to some of the girls at our church, and they don't seem to be amused. :-) However, one of the older women in our church gave me a kiss...

p.s.
Apparently you can make a French person embarrassed by trying to give them a hug... There is, of course, quite a bit more personal contact there...

2008-07-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

My roommate, a friend of ours, and I went to Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks for the 4th of July. Sequoia is only a 4 hr drive from where we live, so we left at 6 am, and were back by 12:30 am. We drove straight to the Sherman parking lot and after seeing General Sherman, we hiked down to the museum for a couple hours. After conferring with a ranger, we decided that it was worth driving 2 hrs to King's Canyon. We then came back home. It was a lot of fun, and I'm sure my roommate will post pictures online. Part of what was so interesting were all the animals we saw:

1) Brown bear. As we were driving through Sequoia, along the highway, we noticed him licking something out of the dirt on the other side of the road. We pulled up right next to him, and so I was only 10 ft away. He stayed for a couple minutes, and then another car came and he ran away.
2) Deer. I don't know what kind, but we were able to sit in our car about 20 ft away for a couple minutes. He had medium sized, fuzzy antlers.
3) Chipmunks
4) A bobcat. This was as we were driving back along the 245, a housecat sized cat ran across the road. His tail was short, and he was dark orange colored. It was moving fast, so we didn't get a good look.
5) Farm animals: cows, horses, dogs.

The bear was the highlight.

The "low point" was taking the 245 back, for about 42 miles. That road was very twisty, and very long, and I think we were all feeling a bit sick by the time it straightened out. Although that highway was interesting because there was a lot to see, I will never take it again, if there's a choice. Looking at Google maps now, here's the route we took. The route the google recommends would have taken about the same amount of time if I remove the intermediate destinations, and it would have turned us off of the 245 much sooner. However, I don't know how the alternative route compares in curvature.

****

The Seqouia trees were pretty awesome. Supposedly, General Sherman is the biggest (i.e. diameter at base) in the world. The whole place is very pretty to walk through, but most of the older trees looked indicated there had been a major fire(s), but I can't find reference to this, so I don't know when. Some of the trees were still bleeding sap.

King's Canyon was also a nice place to visit. The there were a couple of places to stop and look out over the canyon, and they were some of the best views you'll ever see. Driving along the 180 next to the river is the nicest drive I've ever done. I think someone got lost in the river though because there were a lot of police and firefighters walking around looking at the river.

2008-06-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

Strangely, this has been a "good" week. Here's all the nice things that happened:

1) The Jaguar people informed me that their software couldn't handle the type of psuedopotential I wanted. This was after about 1/2 day of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. But within 10 minutes of their email, I figured out how to use Jaguar to make an initial guess wavefunction, and pass that guess along to GAMESS to converge the result. It works! Jaguar's strength (for me) is that it can make really good initial guesses.

2) I figured out a "glitch" in my code that had been bothering me for a while. Whenever it would crash in a particular way, the gdb debugging software couldn't tell me what line the crash had been on, and I figured out how to fix it.

3) I got psuedopotentials to work in my QMcBeaver code. This is a major advance, although it only took me 1-2 weeks so far, because now we can study almost the entire periodic table, and not just the first 2 rows.

4) I was playing around with basis function evaluation, and I figured out a way to speed it up a lot. A neon input file I have goes twice as fast. Other input files aren't going to benefit as much, but twice as fast is a *really* big deal!

5) I figured out a way to speed up psuedopotential evaluation *a lot*. I haven't implemented it yet (tomorrow) but I'm pretty sure it should work. I haven't spent a lot of time making my new pp code go faster, but right now it's a bit expensive. It should go from "slightly expensive" to "almost free" if my idea works as well as I think it should. :-) Actually, it's odd to think that my code is out in the open for anybody to read, so if I figure out any tricks, all our "competitors" can see it, but any tricks up their sleeves are unavailable to me. Oh well. If I quit science by December, it hardly matters, does it.

6) I finished the book "Fall of Hyperion", which I enjoyed immensely. It was as much fun reading it as reading any other sci-fi book I've read. It fits right up there in the list of my favorites along with the Dune series and Isaac Asimov's stuff.

7) The GPU business, described previously, is quite exciting. It's not an achievement, yet, but it is exciting.

8) I paid 50$ to fill up my tank for the first time. It's a Corolla. Hrm... Fortunately, this is not a problem since I'm making a ton of money as a grad student!

9) I discovered that some other people are actually interested in using QMcBeaver. :-) I wonder why there aren't more... maybe they're waiting for psuedopotentials. Or it's our lack of publications. Surely, they'd come in droves if I implemented the latest GPU techniques. Maybe they'd be more interested if we charged for it. Economics 101 says "free stuff can't be quality".

2008-06-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

I've got an interesting choice to make.

Earlier this month, the company NVIDIA released a graphics card that can do double precision. This is significant for me because it means that I can finish the project I started on when I arrived at Caltech. The question is that I don't know how long it would take for me to do it.

Here are the pros of starting the project again:
1) Their latest GPUs (released a couple weeks ago) can do double precision
2) They can package GPUs so that they fit into rack servers (e.g. like what we have in our computer room) especially for high performance computing, so it would be easy to install units. This GPU package is called "Tesla".
3) Their GPUs are obviously significantly faster than they were a couple years ago, so the performance advantages are even higher.
4) Their programming environment, called CUDA, appears to make the programming effort actually quite easy.
5) Now that our code is actually producing scientific quality results, we can conduct legitimate tests on whether single precision is sufficient, and either way, we can produce results.

On the other hand:
1) I don't know how much effort it would take to get my code up and running again, but it can't be more than a couple months of effort. I would probably want to rewrite most of it, since previously I used Cg and OpenGL. Both of those still work of course, but that code is not maintainable since the learning curve is so high. Perhaps it doesn't need to be maintainable, but it would probably require modification to get the double precision anyway.
2) They won't sell Tesla's for several more months, and the guy didn't tell me how much they'd cost. So we might need to apply for grants to get money.
3) I hope to graduate soon.

I don't know this, but my advisor would probably let me graduate, and then continue as a post doc or staff to finish the project. I might be able to finish before I leave; I don't know.

So what should I do? Is it worth staying longer to finish? Something to think about.

2008-06-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

I just got all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled. I went to Lytle, Tate & Stamper, as recommended by my local dentist, and I must say I was really impressed with the procedure. I showed up at 8:30 am, and I was out by 10:10. Of course the main concern was the pain, but it was no issue at all. They gave me 2 Valium to take at 7:30, and then once they'd strapped me to their equipment, I enjoyed some N2O (nitrous oxide) for a couple minutes. They had an intravenous iv for some other kind of anesthetic as well, so it was some combination of local and general anesthesia. Once they removed the nitrous oxide mask, then I felt like I woke up. I felt like I was nearly completely awake, but there was absolutely zero pain or discomfort the entire procedure. Well, there is now, since my cheeks are swollen and my lips, tongue, and presumably my jaw are numb, and there's a bad taste in my mouth. But I was surprised how quickly things went. It felt like the actual surgical procedure took 10 minutes on each of my lower teeth (which were further embedded) and about 5 minutes each on my upper teeth. They billed me for 45 minutes of general anesthesia, so I suppose that's how long it took, even though it seemed to me to be faster.

The N2O felt a little strange. It felt on one hand like the most normal thing in the world, but it felt like I was loosing control. I could understand instructions, but it felt like I was on some kind of autopilot mindset. I had to pump my fist like so for the blood to flow and help them find my vein for the IV. I think it felt a little like deja vu, that this was just like all the other times I'd given blood before.

Perhaps I should just be really happy I didn't have to do local anesthesia, although I've done that frequently before. The after affects are the same though (the numbness), and typing this 1 hr after the procedure, I don't feel any sedation effects at all, although they told me to wait for 24 hrs to drive again.

Hmmm... that bad taste is not going away (it's not the blood taste) even though I'm drinking juice. Maybe it's time for a nap.

*****
notes added 32 hrs after surgery:

The numbness for about half my face was gone when I woke up from my nap about 7 hours later. The bad taste has persisted for longer, but there is significantly less of it now. I had some nice soup for lunch, after putting ice cubes in it. I'm sure the waiter thought I was crazy.

I should point out that there seem to be a couple different ways of removing wisdom teeth. Both my sister and roommate described some kind of procedure where a tool was used to place a lot of pressure on their lower wisdom teeth, so much that they were afraid a slip would be really painful. In my case however, they used 2 techniques. On my upper teeth, they said that used a tool similar to a screwdriver to I guess nudge the tooth out of its "moorings", and then they just plucked it out. I don't know what they did for my lower teeth, except that I didn't feel (or notice) any pressure, but I do know they were broken before they were removed. Upon request, they gave me my two upper wisdom teeth, which are actually kind of cool; they're bigger than what I would have guessed... They were my show-and-tell at church this morning.

Anyway, I've only taken 2 percocets so far, and I probably didn't need to take the second one. What I'm saying is that both the pain and the swelling have been quite minimal so far, in contrast to what other people have told me they experienced. Some have said that the following days were some of the worst of their lives, that they basically just lay in bed unable to do anything. I suppose it really depends on several factors as to how bad it would be. For me, I wasn't actually infected when I went in, although the pain was getting worse week by week. I had taken an antibiotic the week before the procedure, which seemed to have helped. For the last several months, I have been brushing the gums above my wisdom teeth hard, since they seem to "smell and taste" worse if I didn't. I suppose part of the reason people might have difficult times after surgery would be if there is residual bacteria in there, which is not healthy for open wounds like these. However, the antibiotics, the injection for swelling they gave me, and the "therapeutic parenteral drugs" they gave me (that insurance didn't cover) I'm sure all have contributed so far to my quick recovery. Although, I probably have a couple more days to watch out for.

They said it will take a couple days for my gums to heal over, and then the sutures will resorb into my gums. At that point, I can enjoy hot, spicy, salty, acidic food again. It takes about a month to fill in the holes where the teeth were.

Anyway, for me at least, none of the horror stories people told me have come to pass.

*******
Update 96 hrs later:

The swelling has been slowly going down, but I still can't open my mouth all the way. I think the cuts in my gum are healing now, since I've been able to manage a bit of chewing. I never felt any pain or swelling associated with the removal of my upper teeth, but I suppose your reaction will depend on how deep those teeth are. The only inconvenience now is that I've been getting very hungry since it's difficult to fill up on cottage cheese and slim fast shakes, so I'm excited for real food.

I was talking with a friend who said that she had a wisdom tooth removed at one point which was so bad they had to replace the adjacent molar in a 6 hr, 2000$ copay experience. No wonder people are so afraid of dentists. The only people I've heard describe their experience as "not too bad" are my sister and I, but perhaps this is because we got it done mostly on a preemptive basis, when risk of infection was significantly lower. Perhaps if someone *knows* that they're going to have to get them removed, then it's better not to wait for problems to develop. Of course, you wouldn't know if you don't get an xray.

2008-06-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

It turns out you can spend a lot of time figuring out your genealogy. :-)

Of my 8 great-grandparents, 3 were swedish, 2 were finnish, 1 was german, and 2 were "american". By American, I mean they had been in the US for a long time, but they were originally (e.g. 17th century) mostly from England. The beautiful thing about some of the software available, is that it can search family trees that other people have put together, so if you discover that you're connected, you can add their data to yours. So for example, using this data, I can trace my great-great-grandma (maiden name) Pike back to John Peck, born 1126 in East Riding, Yorkshire, England. For perspective, the King was Henry 1 at this time, son of the Norman William the Conqueror, who conquered in 1066.

I can trace some other branches to the 18th century, but I would have to become an expert in Scandinavian genealogy to figure out stuff on my own. But it's fun; it's like opening presents you never knew you had! Part of what got me interested in this was seeing the Finnish passports that my great-grandmother and her parents used when they came over in 1920. It makes me realize that if I want to see some of the original documents, or access other people's research, I need to do so before we loose connections with distant parts of family.

In other news, insurance agreed to cover my wisdom teeth extraction, excluding copay. I'm happy to finally be getting this taken care of.

2008-05-27T01:23:00.001-07:00

I can't wait for insurance to decide to cooperate and pay for removing my wisdom teeth. It seems like the pain grows every week, and according to the dentist I talked to last week, the bill would be 2100$ if insurance doesn't cover anything. Part of the problem is that 1 of my teeth is classified as "difficult", and a 2nd is "challenging", so they cost extra. Further, the dentist said there was no negotiating; general anesthesia is required for cases this difficult. So... basically, they told me that they'll send all this info to the insurance company, and I get to wait around until they decide what to do, a process which could take a month. So they gave me a prescription for some extra special pain relievers, and told me to wait.

Sometimes I feel like a part of the Flowers for Algernon story, and I'm slowly loosing pieces of me.

2008-05-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

President GMA of the Philippines, discussing corruption and some of the problems in the country. She talks about how battling the corruption is really helping the country achieve economic growth, and she even claimed that recent growth the RP was better than in any of the other SE Asian country recently. I really wonder whether she or people in her family are guilty of corruption, themselves though. On one hand, it appears that she's done a good job as President in terms of benefit to the country. But what secrets is she hiding? A lot of Filipinos don't like her.

2008-05-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting. According to this graph, Americans smoke more than the French and the British do. Well, the chart doesn't give much by way of detail, so perhaps the US just has a lot of chain smokers.

But in light of my previous comments about European smokers, it can only be concluded that I don't get out much.

2008-05-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

I've returned, safe and sound. well, safe at least; having a cold really puts the damper on things. landing in an airplane with a cold is very painful.

Looking at a previous post, I noticed that I had been spelling rillette wrong. The description makes me thing it can't be too healthy... but then again, how is it that French people can be surrounded by so much good food and not be overweight, compared with Americans? The only answer I can think of is that food is more expensive there, so they can't afford to buy as much as someone will buy on vacation. :-)

I left off last time mentioning that I did not get to go to Versailles because it was too rainy. There are things to see there inside, but the visit would have been difficult. It will still be there the next time I visit Paris. The rest of my visit in Paris was uneventful, and was ended with a trip by train to Evreux. Did I mention that I had not been on a train before this? The next day, we packed our bags and drove south to Nimes, which took us about 10 hrs. There was nothing particularly interesting about this trip, except for noticing all the castles along the way.

Nimes is a very nice city, and still has many Roman buildings today. There were two Roman temples (see Maison_Carree), a colosseum, aqueducts, and a canal. In addition, there there the "typical" medieval churches, so it had several nice places to walk around.

The center of the city, only 5 minutes where where I stayed, was full of all kinds of shops and restaurants and cafes. The closest thing I can associate with this here in the US are shopping malls, the difference being that there is no "roof", and only one floor. The small streets and open air cafes had a very nice atmosphere, and now I understand what people had been trying to describe to me before. I also know why it works -- there is such a high density of buildings, that it is not too much effort to just walk around and see everything. Lake Avenue, a street here in Pasadena, has open air cafes, but everything is so spread out.

The whole reason for driving down to Nimes was that my friend's brother was getting married nearby. My friend also has a lot of relatives and childhood friends in the area, who we visited. One of them is renting part of a house out in the countryside that is *very* nice. As you approach the house, it is "old style", but then the inside is all modern. Looking out the window are vineyards, and more of these "Mediterranean" houses.

Several days were spent exploring the region. You can tell that southern France is different from northern France. In the North, you're surrounded by bright green forests, fields of colza, and colombage. In the South, you're surrounded by more vineyards (more than the north, at least), the sort of "spanish tiled" roofs, and the plants are a little less green.

After this, I took a Ryanair back to London, where I stayed for one night at the Picadilly Hotel. This hostel was actually quite nice, because it was so close to everything. After arriving, it was a short walk to the St James park and Buckingham palace. The area was full of monuments to different people over the last hundred years, so it was a bit odd to see so many statues of people I'd never heard of. Well, I know about Lord Nelson, so Trafalgar square made sense to me.

The next morning I went to the British Museum, before heading to the airport. The museum was quite interesting, and I would have liked to stay longer. As it was, I had to rush through the galleries.

2008-04-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

since my last post, i spent a couple days touring paris, and then a little bit of ireland, near kinvara.

i spent a day at the louvre, which was a really nice place. i especially apprecated the historical things from babylon, persia, assyria, and other parts of the ancient world. the mona lisa painting was much smaller than i expected, so it was really strange to see a big wall with a crowd around it and then a tiny painting there. the annoying thing about the louvre were all the cameras. you couldn't go anywhere without stepping into somebody's shot, and i certainly don't understand why people want pictures of themselves in front of every painting.

i also enjoyed my trip to the eiffel tower more than i thought i would. first of all, there were too many people, so i didn't even try to stand in line to go to the top. however, i noticed something that the majority of tourists probably don't know. there is a ring of names around the tower of french scientists and mathematicians: coulomb, legendre, laguerre, cauchy, etc. mr laplace donated his name to a symbol i write all the time, and when i graduate, i can claim Becquerel in my "scientific pedigree". i didn't know the eiffel tower was a monument to intellectual acheivement, so this was a pleasant discovery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_72_names_on_the_Eiffel_Tower

i also saw notre dame, l'arc de triomph, champs elysees, senat, etc. actually, the senat (= senate) was interesting because around the perimeter, they had giant pictures of natural and man made disasters over the last 15 years, including mt pinatubo. i found it quite moving, since i suppose the suggestion is that this is what the french senators care about.

we left for ireland on friday by taking a ryanair from beauvais to shannon. this was a really fun trip, although there were several strange observations. we stayed at 3 hostels (totally redeeming the idea of a hostel in my mind), and none of them were operated by irish. the first was a guy from the chzech republic, the second was an american, and the third was a mexican. one waitress was probably chinese-irish, and the other waitress was polish. so we never really talked with any irish people the whole time.

each night we went to a nearby pub to listen to the live, traditional irish music, which was different each time. the first night, the pub was obviously full of tourists, mostly american, and we talked to some french people the whole time. this french couple are going to be studying naval engineering in chicago starting in the fall, so they wanted to know what to see. unfortunately, i only knew to recommend a trip to minnesota, although the american tourists standing nearby agreed.

during the day, we traveled as far north as maam cross, visiting the cliffs of moher, some castles, and some beaches. i can tell you, the caves of allwee were not worth it: 12 euro to see a pile of bear bones in a cave. many of the other places we went felt a little "gimmicky" to me. you pay ~4-7 euro to see something unspectacular. perhaps it's because most of these places are privately owned. however, it was sort of humorous to take the tour of the caves behind some, i'm guessing, "newly rich eastern europeans" who must have taken a hundred pictures of themselves. no folks, the camera flash is not a flashlight... but perhaps i was just as excited about my first camera. i think the main reason they annoyed me was that a flash in a dark cave is painful.

****

the food i've had so far has been excellent.

there was a restaurant in galway where we went for lunch to get out of the rain, were i had a large lamb meal for ~12€. the irish are not known for their food... :-)

the french food though has been quite tasty... last night we went to a grocery store, where they had more cheese than anything i've seen in my life. my idea of "french cheese" was brie and camembert. wow. that barely counts as the tip of the iceburg. my roommate picked one out, and we got some more rillet, and baguette, and that was dinner. seriously, if they ever started selling rillet in the US, spam would go out of business. so then today i was planning on going to versailles, but i decided not to because of the rain. instead, we walked around the paris observatory a bit where they have a cheese shop, which had even more, and is now the most cheese i've ever seen in one place. across the walkway, they had a wine shop. and then down the street there were all kinds of speciality shops selling pate, fois gras, fruits, bread, boulangerie (pastries), etc. this is not a good place to go on a diet.

(actually, my google searches of "rillet" are not turning up anything helpful. so it's just some kind of pate.)

hmm... what else... the metro is quite easy, once you get used to it. 1 euro will get you anywhere in the city. i think i was overwhelmed when i first arrived, but i'm much more comfortable here now. there are some things to get used to (like how small and crowded everything feels), but it's not so bad. i'm really happy i had someone to show me around first though, since this is after all, paris.

2008-04-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in l’Observatoire de Paris, reflecting on my trip so far. I'll write more later, of course, but for now this is just some comments on my trip so far. Thankfully, I have an English keyboard; the French ones are tough.

There was nothing remarkable about the trip from LAX to Brighton. Everything worked perfectly. I decided not to spend the night in a hostel there, loosing the 40 pounds I had paid. I chickened out -- it would have been like spending the night with frat boys, English ones, and I was the odd one out since they all knew each other. Being jetlagged, it was more than I wanted to deal with. I ended up staying in a gay-themed hotel nearby, which had a nice sea view, and I'm glad I made the change.

brighton was nice. the best part is the royal palace there; no visit to brighton is complete without a stop there. it was built by george iv ?? (the king before victoria), and has an india theme outside, and a chinese theme inside. we would expect oppulence from monarchies, and this had all the trappings.

one thing that i noticed in brighton were several muslims. well, i assume that only muslim women would wear headscarves. it might be true that muslims in brighton (or england) are simply more likely to be dressed up like this. i even saw one mother, with her family, who had a kind of headscarf where every part of her face was covered except a narrow slit for her eyes. the rest of her clothes, and the rest of her family's clothes, were entirely western. anyway, it caught my attention.

another thing i noticed are all the smokers. it's a much higher percent than in the US, both in brighton and in france. my friend thinks it's because people don't care about their health as much because of the free health care. i don't know if he's right, but if he is, it makes me less excited about billary clinton's universal health plan for the US.

The ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe was a really good idea, and I'm glad I did it. It took 3:30, and because there were only like 50 passengers on this large ferry, I had my choice of seats. It was a good thing I brought my own food though, since what they had was expensive. i was kicking myself for not bringing a voltage converter for my old firewire ipod, which has run out of juice.

I hooked up with my friend's family immediately upon arrival. I have met his whole family except for his brother, since they have all come to visit us in Pasadena, and now it's my chance to visit them in evreux. First, we went to the ??? beach, within view of the port, where there had been an attack by Canadians in 1942, who all died. I had not heard about this, but I'm told that part of the point was to test the German defenses, in preparation for D-day 2 years later.

We then went to a castle in Gisors built in the 11th or 12th century by the son of William the Conqueror. It was an important military installation occupied alternaively by the English and the French up until the 16th century, when it was delisted. It was not suitable for artilliary defense.

We then tried to go to ??? castle nearby built by henry the ???. it had a nice river defense on one side, and a valley defense on the other, but the french conquered it by building a bridge over the valley.

the next day, we went to point du hoc, a location attacked in 1944 by us marines in preparation for d-day. they had to scale cliffs to get up to the top, but they had to disarm all the guns there, so that the landings at utah and omaha beach could proceed then we went to omaha beach and then the american cemetary (which looks a lot like the cemetary in manila). the cemetary was a fantastic reminder of the friendship between the USA and France.

the croissants and bagguettes are of course better than i've ever had, and i've discovered rillette (??) and rossette. these are 2 meat produits special to normandie. rillette is some kind of pate, and rossette was similiar to salami. i had the chance to try normandie cidre, which was interesting, and not at all like "apple cider".

the normandie countryside is really pretty, and "homely". i love the colombrage (made of cement+wood,; use google) houses. i thought that design was german, but i was wrong. they grow a lot of culza (phonetic) which is called rapeseed. i guess it's surprising that they grow so much of something i had barely heard of before.

i have been really happy to discover that my roommate's family speak much better english than when they visited. it's really unfortunate that i know zero french, and must force everybody to speak english, but everybody's english is far better than my french. i feel really bad about this, but there's nothing i can do about it right now. but it helps me to appreciate the importance of learning other languages. europeans already understand this, but we americans don't.

this morning, i took the train into paris. it's really strange for me to be in a city full of white people who don't speak english. i'm sure europeans would find this feeling strange... this might sound racist, but it's not -- it's also strange for me to see so many asian and african etc descended people who speak french. even though i've only been here in paris a couple of hours, i'm feeling a little bit of culture shock. this place is *so* different from anything in the US. everything is so small, people live so close together, the streets are chaotic, etc. french people (europeans in general?) but be culture shocked when they come to the US. must be i liked the countryside a lot, but i'm not confident my final opinion on paris will be positive.

anyway, we'll be here for a couple of days and then go to shannon. we'll return then, and i'll be in paris a couple more days before returning to evreux and going to the wedding in nimes.

2008-04-17T15:58:00.001-07:00

Time to get ready for my trip to England, France, and Ireland, and possibly more. I'm leaving tomorrow, and I'm quite excited for my first visit to Europe. My roommate is in Paris for job interviews, and I figure it's a good time to visit.

I'll land in London, and then take a ferry to Dieppe. With my roommate's parents, I'll possibly get a little tour of Normandie before going to Paris. We'll then fly to Shannon, Ireland for a short road trip tour of the west coast of Ireland. The next week has little planned so far, so perhaps I'll get some work done. :-) To end the trip, we'll take a road trip through France to Nimes for a wedding. I'll fly back to London, and back to LA.

It should be a good time.

2008-04-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

Along with other Caltech students, I visited Yahoo! today. They had a program for people to check out the company and ask questions, talk to Caltech alumni who work there, etc. Overall it was a good time, and very interesting. Would I enjoy working at Yahoo? I don't know. Some of the advantages include getting to stay in Pasadena, nice facilities, interesting problems to work on, etc. Some of the disadvantages include having to work in a cubical, I don't think I would enjoy working on advertising aspects, etc. So I don't know. There are some things to think about.

But I'm starting to think about companies. Disregarding my quarter life crisis, I think there are a number of interesting possibilities. I'm interested in recommendations, too. I like traveling, solving problems, programming, quantum mechanics, money, non-cubical environments, important sounding jobs, etc. :-P Since I already have plenty of programming skill and interest, that seems a logical direction to look, which is why I participated in the Yahoo visit. But I do not intend to program (for a living) for the rest of my life.

2008-03-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

Do you know what's wrong with this scene from "The Big Bang Theory"? Caltech postdocs living in Pasadena don't make enough money to buy all that stuff.

2008-03-24T01:24:00.001-07:00

Now that I know that graduation is on the measurable horizon, I have to figure out what I actually want to do when I grow up. There's no obvious answer. On one hand, I would like the opportunity to live in a couple different places, but on the other I want to get my career started. So for example, a postdoc would be a good idea for traveling (that's what my roommate does), but I'm not sure I want to stay in Chemistry, so I might be wasting my time in some sense.

I have never claimed to know all the answers. But identifying the questions is helpful.

Maybe what I'm most afraid of is the possibility that 10 or 20 years down the road, I'll begin to wonder "is this all there is?" There's a strong willed part of me that doesn't want to grow up because it looks boring. I'm afraid of loosing interest in a life where I can't make any important choices because it would involve uprooting a family, or selling a house, or abandoning career progress, or whatever. I value my independence. It's my "parable of the favorite song". You're free to pick any song you like, but then that's the only song you can ever listen to. You'll enjoy it the first 100 times if it's a good song, but after that it will actually become painful to listen to. It's happened to me -- I'll listen to a song and tell myself that I'll never get tired of it, but now I don't like it at all. Why is it that I'm so attuned to novelty, and I have distain for stability? If it is a disease, what's the cure? My American culture is entertainment driven, but most of the entertainment it generates is incredibly loud and boring. I have an insatiable appetite.

I'm concerned about whether the "parable of the favorite song" can be applied to marriage, which is perhaps why infidelity is so pervasive in well-to-do societies. What would I do if I ever got tired of a wife? What might I tell myself to fight the temptation for more novelty? What what kind of logic or reasoning can be used to bolster flagging emotions?

My Christian friends tell me that this is an inappropriate attitude. Independent of whatever you think about the validity of religion or a religion, you can see the problem that I'm describing. On Sunday, you sing a couple songs, listen to a sermon, shake hands and chat a bit, and walk out the door. On Sunday evening, you go back, sing some more songs, listen to another sermon, shake hands and chat, and go home. The problem is that at some point, you've heard it all already, and you're tired of the songs, and if you're a bit socially awkward like me, the chatting and shaking hands is a bit painful. I personally think that much of Christian theology is quite beautiful, similar to what I think about quantum mechanics. But after you've solved the equations, and chewed on the delectable desserts in quantum entanglement for a while, it's not as exciting as the first time. Facts and logic and correct theology are so over rated when you're struggling with sustaining basic levels of interest. Under this regimen, sermons and hymns become old news.

One typical answer is teaching. But that line of reasoning is a non-starter, because it's just passing the same problems down the line. Another answer is "helping people". But if happiness is negatively correlated with wealth, then what's the point? Some might say hedonism, but my "parable of the favorite song" dispenses with Epicurean ambitions.

I am not married, but what people tell me is that a correctly functioning marriage is sustainable in that you're always learning new things about yourself and your spouse, that it is the relationship itself that generates sustainable interest. Others tell me that the relationships and friendships are what makes a life interesting, in the social as well as work realms. Christianity is (I am told) unique among religions in that an individual is encouraged to develop a relationship with Jesus, and have conversations, and treat their religion as a friendship with God. From what people tell me, then, there are some parallels across different categories. But... for a socially awkward individual such as myself, I don't think I have any workable examples to draw from in order to understand what "relationships" in the other categories are really supposed to *feel* like.

I know I'm not the only one worried about this, and people usually have figured out answers for themselves. And they might even be satisfied with their solutions. But most of the answers people share with me are similar to the "relationships" discussion above, which is a type of reasoning I generally find incomprehensible. Perhaps I'm too much of a left-brained individualist, but most answers end up being either unthoughtful, or non transferable. Solomon didn't have much to say that was helpful -- he just said "work hard" in Ecclesiastes.

What would I want with a career that gives me a fistful of money that I don't know how to spend? What if there is no answer that would satisfy me? What do I tell the Career Center when I ask them for advice?

I do enjoy sleeping, so I'm going to go do that now, and not worry about failing to correctly qualify my comments.
Thank God people don't get tired of sleeping.
Thank God for entropy; we can never get completely bored.
Thank God for bad memories because it means it means the "parable of the favorite song" has a flaw.

2008-03-22T13:03:00.001-07:00

After listening to atheists wax eloquent, arguing that religion is silly or evil or wrong and people shouldn't waste their time, it's nice to see that some scientists realize that the rhetoric is somehow missing the point. If religion is so bad, why do so many people participate? It's an important question, and I'm glad some people are having the courage to find out. Just remember that correlation is not causation. Much of the article is about dubious game theoretic experiments, but I especially like the last paragraph. There are a couple studies I've seen recently saying that revenge is not profitable, so it's interesting to see that game theory doesn't necessarily condemn morality as a weakness. Of course, the article has nothing to do with whether God actually exists or not, so skeptics can rest easy.

2008-03-07T02:06:00.000-08:00

My thesis committee meeting is coming up next week. This meeting is not a requirement, but it is highly recommended. Basically, I'm supposed to meet with everybody on my committee, and get their advice on graduation, check up on how things are going, and I'm not sure what all else.

There are a couple things that I need to do before I leave. A brief description is available here, and I've completed my coursework and candidacy. A pep talk is in order.

1) Yes, I know the meeting was supposed to happen before the start of my 5th year, but it doesn't help when I talk to older grad students who tell me that they didn't do it at all. Anyway, it will be done soon.

2) Propositions Defense is the next thing to worry about. I will have to present 3 research proposals to my committee. It's actually really good practice because it forces you to recognize where your next funding will come from. My postdoc roommate is worried about this stuff all the time -- submitting proposals is a regular affair for him. Two of my props can be directly related to my research, but the 3rd needs to be something "out of my field", whatever that means. I intend to find out what the expectations next week, so that I can get this props defense out of the way asap. Before summer would be excellent. I figure that once I have it done, I'm in a much better position to plan graduation, since I'll have fewer hoops.

3) The next stage is obviously writing my thesis. I don't know how long this would take, but looking at the collection of theses I've collected from other people in my field, it might not be so hard. It looks like most people spent 75% of their thesis writing background material, and basically explain everything they've learned. This is perhaps evidence of how difficult it is for people to make progress in this topic. I don't think I would have any trouble filling out the remaining "page quota" with things I've learned. Well, that certainly an easy claim to make.

4) The final day will involve 2 steps. First, a thesis seminar, which will be open to the public. This is supposed to go for 1 hour, but I don't think I would have too much difficulty talking for that long. Thanks to our regular group seminars, I feel quite comfortable filling up 30 minutes, and my last talk went about 40 (which was a mistake), so an hour isn't too long. The issue is not filling the time, the issue is whether I can fill the time with interesting material. That remains to be seen.

5) Then lastly, there will be the thesis defense, a closed door session to determine whether I can leave. I have no idea on how to prepare for this, but I suspect that if you ever get to the point where you're having the meeting -- you're already guaranteed to pass. The worst thing that could happen, I suspect, is they make you rewrite some part of your thesis.

So ok, 5 bite size chunks. The average graduation time is 5.5 years, and I've been here 4.5 years. Am I on track? We'll find out next week. I guess in my mind, even if I take a year longer than average, that's not a problem because I finished undergrad a year early. My reasoning was that I had nothing to loose by jumping straight into a PhD program because I could learn "on the job" whatever I might have missed. On the other hand, my roommate might move away by August, and I don't want to try to rent this apt by myself. If I can't pull someone in, then I'll have to move. It would be a convenient time to graduate...

2008-03-04T23:33:00.000-08:00

I figured out what the problem with good literature is.

I'm looking for ways to get rid of the mockingbird who sings outside my window at night. He's very loud, and he doesn't quit all night long. He switches his pattern on what to sing every 5 seconds, so he's very difficult to ignore because you're always wondering what he'll come up with next.

Unfortunately, internet searching is difficult because of the famous book "To Kill a Mockingbird", so my signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad. By mentioning both in this post, I've added to the noise. I don't understand why any state would pick this annoying bird to be their state bird, so shame on Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. How could anybody appreciate a monster who causes so much loss of sleep?

Anyway, he was gone all winter, but is back now. He came back last week, or the week before. So now I need to figure out something to do.

Why is it that all my complaints about California have to do with noise pollution? I must be strange, because I never get a lot of sympathy from native Californians when I complain to them. But here's my list of things that are so loud they regularly annoy me:

helicopters
leaf-blowing machines
All the other yard care machines. honestly, does every house need its lawn cut 5 times a week? It must be a California thing, where hiring lawn care services are affordable.
garbage trucks
my neighbor across the street who pumps bass lines at me all night long
my other neighbors, the caltech frat boys, who have parties that go all night (they were particularly bad during the summer)
the mockingbirds that sit in the trees

Maybe I'm just particularly sensitive, but I don't ever remember having trouble with noise at night when I was in Manila or in Minneapolis, so it must just be Pasadena. Sigh. I'd move, but other than the noise I like my location...

2008-02-22T21:43:00.000-08:00

Today was a bit strange. I agreed to help a friend buy a car since the one he wanted is a manual, and he doesn't know how to drive it yet. So my day today just involved driving to and from Glendale, the DMV, the mechanic, etc. That was not the strange part.

The mechanic wanted about an hour to look at the car, so we decided to go to the nearby In-n-Out for lunch. We were sitting there talking about auto related issues, when someone from the parking lot starts trying to talk to me about Minnesota. I guess I was wearing a U of Minnesota sweatshirt, and a Twins hat, so perhaps I was identifiable... But the guy wanted to talk about the Twins, and whether I had been to Northfield, and he told me that he had gone to Bethel (a Christian school) etc. So I decided that yelling across the parking lot was getting annoying, so I walk over. Anyway, the guy looks slightly familiar. He said his name was "Ben", and his expression was priceless when I told him his last name. Turns out that I know this guy from way back -- we both went to Faith Academy in the Philippines. So talk about "coincidence". He graduated 2 years before I did, so it has been a decade since I would have seen him last, and he doesn't even live in Pasadena; he's in Dallas now. But he reminded me that we played on the same little league baseball team in Manila back when I was in elementary. We had a nice conversation about what's it's been like to transition to the US, talk about some Faith people, and reminisce in general. Wow. The whole day was worth it just for that.

My advisor might not agree... :-) Oh well. The computer continued to run my calculations all day!

2008-02-20T01:07:00.000-08:00

I went to the Third Day concert at the House of Blues in Hollywood tonight. It was a lot of fun! I managed to get the very best parking spot! Seriously, the spot was *right* by the door. Anyway. I enjoyed the time, but the venue was not very good for a rock concert. The place where we were standing had horrible acoustics -- I think I was getting "constructive interference" for the bass frequencies, so I had to move because my internal organs were sloshing around too much. I ended up standing right by the sound booth, where the sound was probably the best, but it still wasn't balanced very well. I could hear the bass, voice, and drums fine, and sometimes the electric guitar, but I never managed to hear the piano or rhythm guitars when everybody was playing. It's probably the best you might expect for a rock concert, but still...

The opening bands were Revive and The Myriad. I had heard of neither of them before. I had the chance to talk with the singer for Revive for about 5 seconds as I was wondering around trying to find the best place to stand. It was too loud to attempt an actual conversation, and honestly, what do you talk about when you don't know their music? All I said was something about how I was searching for a better place to stand, that all I could hear was the bass. Hmm... I would have enjoyed a better conversation. Actually, I wish I knew more musicians. I'd love the chance to talk to them about their lyrics, and what I think works well, and provide them with general artistic oversight. :-)

I've never been in as small of a room with as popular a group as Third Day -- it was beautiful. I see everything perfectly. The best part was that half their set were their oldies. It was odd because I've sung many of their songs as played by the U of M Campus Crusade band, played in several churches, etc, but this time I heard it by the authors. For those who don't know, Third Day is one of the best known Christian bands around today, and many of their songs are so popular already that many churches use them on Sunday mornings. My church has a rule against any songs that are more recent than 100 years (joke), so it's nice to get out and enjoy some of the worship that makes you want to jump around, even though it makes your ears ring afterwards.

This has been my 4th concert in the last couple of weeks. First I heard the Royal Dutch Orchestra at the Walt Disney concert hall, then Leahy and Paco Pena at Caltech, and now Third Day. All four were very different from each other. I'm on a role! What's next?

2008-02-18T00:08:00.000-08:00

At first I was excited to hear about Kosovo declaring independence, but now that I've been doing a bit more reading, I'm realizing that the issue is far more complicated than it looks on the surface. And I'm disappointed that the BBC is not, in my opinion, been presenting both sides fairly.

On one hand, Kosovo people are not Serb, their Albanian. Their population was treated very badly by Serbian government in the 90s, and it would seem that the answer is to let the Kosovo people rule themselves. I certainly don't understand the Balkans, but it looks like some borders were drawn in very bad places. Correcting them sounds reasonable, but Yugoslavia has not seen the last of it's problems.

On the other hand, Kosovo has been the Serbian heartland for hundreds of years. The reason there are Albanians there today is because of (relatively) recent immigration and high birthrates. This isn't the first time Kosovo has declared independence, and it's not unreasonable to expect that random declarations of independence would be met with fighting, so Serbian military action in Kosovo was not unprovoked. And it's not like the Kosovo hands aren't also bloody, too. Lastly, it sounds like Russia and Serbia might be correct in claiming that this declaration is illegal.

The problems with democracy are highlighted here -- democracy means that majorities can "tyrannize" minorities through biased votes. Malaysia is a good example of this. The majority Malay people voted themselves all kinds of special privileges, and now the Indian minority wants equality that they're unlikely to get through voting. But does every ethnicity deserve it's own country? This certainly seems to be the trend as democracy advances. Democracy requires a population with a sufficient degree of homogeneity.

There are problem cases all over the world. There are minorities everywhere, and many who want to break free. To those who will want to break off, and how will the US and the EU say "We let Kosovo be independent, but not you". Western actions in the Balkans are setting a precedent that could be bad. What are the operating principles?

But there are other issues at stake. How do a people group justify immigrating to some region, over time becoming the majority demographic, and then seceding? Why should a host country tolerate this?

There are too many things to worry about. Good thing I don't have make any decisions.

2008-02-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

I discovered that I have ancestral links to Kuopio, Finland. Actually, it looks a lot like Northern Minnesota, so I think I understand why so many Finns ended up going there. It occurred to me (again) the other day that I might actually want to do a post-doc somewhere, just so I could live somewhere interesting for a while...

Anyway, I realized (again) today one of my favorite things about LA. I can drive 10 minutes in one direction, and go to a Punjabi grocery store and stock up on interesting curry sauces (just add meat!). Then I can go 10 minutes in a different direction and go to Ranch 99. My bank account has a little bit less, but I'm much happier. :-)

2008-02-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

I'm probably going to have my first chance to visit Europe in April, purely for vacation purposes. If I go, I'll for sure be in France and Ireland (I'm going to France, but it looks like I'll fly to Dublin first), but I'm trying to figure out where else ryanair can take me. I'm assured that my lack of skill in any language other than English is not a problem, unless I go to far outside of the major cities. I think Germany would be a good option, and possibly Scandinavia. Part of the problem is that I don't know exactly what I want to see.

I'm not sure that I would like to just walk around some city looking at old buildings, unless they're medieval or older. Maybe Greece would be fun. I think I'm interested in country side... or natural wonders.

Too many options means it's harder to choose.

2008-02-05T14:50:00.000-08:00

This website is quite amusing. Basically, it studies the correlations available from Facebook data between the intelligence of a school and the books students at those schools like to read. It's interesting to note that more people say they like Harry Potter on their Facebook profiles than those who like the Bible (which is #2). The author (Virgil Griffith, a Caltech grad student) also showed that the type of people who would put "The Holy Bible" are different from the type of people who would put "The Bible".

The "smartest" Christian book is Mere Christianity, and from the same genre, the "dumbest" book is "The Holy Bible". The second most "dumb" book in the religious genre is "The Purpose Driven Life". No kidding -- Rick Warren puts me to sleep every time I hear him talk.

It's interesting to think about this. First, it's important to point out, as Griffith does, that all we have is a correlation, and nothing to indicate causality. That is, maybe certain books "make" people smart, or maybe smart people like certain books. The other thing to point out is often people will select their favorite books on some environmental criteria like peer pressure. Perhaps individuals feel that they'll draw poor first impressions if they select a book that they fear is unpopular or uncool. Perhaps the reason "Blue Like Jazz" got a high rating in the religious category is because it signals to Christians that they might be a Christian, whereas that signal might be completely missed by somebody else. My point is, selection of "favorites" is often simply a "social indicator" of some kind.

Either way...

2008-02-01T12:17:00.001-08:00

I'm looking for a good place to get my wisdom teeth removed, and Tijuana is in my acceptable radius. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised that so many of the local Pasadena places refused to quote me a price over the phone, since getting it done is relatively expensive. So far the best price I've found for "full boney, impacted" removal is 180$/tooth from a place in Tijuana, although they said it would require 2 trips (the 2nd is for a checkup).

Before going further, it's worth explaining that my current insurance plan only covers wisdom teeth extraction if there's an infection, whereas I was told to get them removed to avoid ruining my orthodontic work. So it will all be out of pocket for me, and I've never been to Mexico.

On the other hand, the place closest to where I live (2 minute walk) quoted me 250$/tooth when I was there before, and the next cheapest in the LA area was 350 to 400 /tooth, and the only other place who gave me a quote said 1600-2000. Am I missing something? How can there be such a drastic price difference? I'm guessing the last one included general anesthesia, but are there procedures that are not included in the 250 cost?

Also, I"m not sure I believe the story that my upper wisdom teeth are causing crowding. I do agree that both my lowers need to be removed because they're already causing some problems. But this is a fair amount of money for a student to think about spending! And if I'm going to do all four, I should probably do all at once, and absorb the cost now.

2008-01-29T14:03:00.000-08:00

My possible trip to Spain has been canceled. Oh well.
Now I'm considering visiting Paris instead while my roommate is there in April.

2008-01-23T14:10:00.001-08:00

Going to the Caltech career fair always makes me edgy. There are so many good opportunities out there, and when I talk to the people, I really want to move on because the things they're doing sound so much more exciting than what I'm doing right now. Do I really want greener grass?

Would I like the opportunity to buy a house and not feel like I'm living out of a suitcase? Of course. The problem is that I'm pretty comfortable right now.

2008-01-16T22:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered some Tuareg bands yesterday. There was an article in the NY Times yesterday about some kind of global music festival, and they mentioned a band named Toumast. The picture of them is quite striking -- people dressed like desert nomads playing electric guitars. The article describes how they were soldiers fighting the governments of Niger, Mali, Lybia, and Algeria (the countries where the Tuareg people are) but now they play music instead. They certainly have a bit of a unique sound, but I think I like it. Well, I think they could use some voice training, or their voices need to be mixed in better. Maybe I'm just biased.

But the music as a whole is a very fresh sound to me. There are similiar bands, like Terakaft and Tinariwen, both of whom have music for sale at the iTunes Music Store.

Actually, I would like to listen to more "world" music. I've been going to several folk music concerts at Caltech, and I'm developing a taste for small scale music since it tends to be a bit more original and interesting. I think I'm particularly interested in African and Middle Eastern music since it tends to have a bit more of a focus on rhythm. I like African singing because they tend to do a really good job at harmony.

So if anybody has any recommendations on particular albums or songs I should buy (from iTunes) I would like to hear.
Note: I'm not currently particularly interested in hearing about latino/spanish, Asian, american, or european folk/cultural music since I'm looking to find things that I don't already know about. So please recommend, I'm just unlikely to get as excited about my discovery of the Tuareg bands.

2008-01-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm excited about MacBook Air. I want one, although I never want to pay the "early adopter" price. So I'll wait.

I'd gratefully receive one as a gift...

2008-01-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

I think the most common question I'm asked these days is what I'm going to do when I graduate. I always answer 'yes'... but it would be better if I had a more substantial effort. I'm nervous about starting up a discussion on this topic with my advisor, but I really do want a list of criteria.

2008-01-08T20:46:00.000-08:00

I purchased a used Takamine acoustic bass guitar yesterday, and I'm excited about it. It looks very similar to this one, but the model numbers don't quite match. Now I just need to figure out how to play it. I always liked the sound of chords, but I've discovered that chords don't work as well on a bass, I'm not sure why.

I also got my renewed passport in the mail! It took only about 2 weeks for them to get it for me, which is obviously much better than what people had been telling me. The only down side to renewing your passport is that you loose all the visa stamps, and I had a nice collection going! I had stamps from the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and Colombia. Well, I guess that means I need to go to more places. Oh advisor! Can I go to some conferences?

I'm not excited about the fact that it has a microchip in it, since that's obviously the mark of the beast. I'm nervous. I don't like the idea that with a scanner someone could walk around and take all my information. I know it's secure, but eventually "terrorists" will figure out how to hack it, I'm sure. What information is it broadcasting anyway? How far away can the signal be read?

I thought the old passports were working just fine. Why this upgrade? Since I'm a US citizen, I already had the fast track in lines at American airports, so I'm sure this doesn't speed anything up. I'm pretty sure that all this means is that my government wants to spy on me. But I'm a good citizen!

Fortunately, I know what a Faraday cage is. A well placed hammer blow could resolve the issue too. But then they'll know... muahahaha!!!1!

2008-01-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

I just watched the Simpsons movie, I had not seen it before. There were a couple of laughs, but I guess my overwhelming impression is that it is quality writers who make it funny. I felt like too many of the jokes from the movie were just permutations of old jokes, and there was relatively little originality. Also, there is a subtle difference between a joke and something that looks like a joke, and it takes a genius to figure out how to do it. Many have said that the best days were when Conan O'Brien was a writer; why didn't they get him to contribute?

Maybe I would have thought the movie was funnier if I hadn't been watching some of seasons 5 through 7 recently.

2008-01-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

All the Rose Parade hooligans have gone home. I never realized how the people camping on the street became so mob like! At some point in the afternoon, while I was parked near Colorado, they painted on my window. Fortunately, it came off relatively quickly. They threw stuff at my car as I drove down Colorado Blvd. They walked across the road in front of me even though they had a red. No wonder Pasadena and all the neighboring cities send so many police, sheriffs, and CHP over to patrol the area. It reminds me that I live in LA.

Every once in a while I consider buying a gun.