Technical Difficulties

I'm having issues posting. Let's see if this goes through.

The Good & The Bad ... Mostly Good

(Due to technical difficulties, this post was composed on Friday and only now being posted)

A day of up and downs, goods and bads, frustrations and elations.

The Good

We got over a hump of sorts in our research project. Nothing earth-shaking, and we're not real close to bringing it to a finish, but we cleared some things up. We've been finding bugs, which is good because that means those particular ones aren't lurking to laugh at us when we're in the middle of testing.

I think my Stats exam went pretty well. It was not without its struggles, but in the end I expect a good, if not great, score.

I didn't forget an early morning meeting like I did on Thursday. But then, I didn't have an early morning meeting.

I made some progress on a daunting Stochastic assignment. I love it when I figure stuff out. But I only figured out the first part. There's more where that came from, and besides, I still don't know how to code matrix algebra in C, matrix algebra that I'll need to complete the assignment.

The Bad

Well, mostly the bad was that I hadn't sent some transcripts in to one of the Universities I'm applying to. I thought I had, but I got an e-mail that threw me into a little bit of a tizzy. All the more so because I had to send transcripts in to another University and the first University wants two sets and I didn't have enough transcripts on me, and now I'm going to send some transcripts to both Universities that will probably end up late. Ah, but it shouldn't kill me, both in the literal sense and in the graduate application sense.

I'm off to the weekend.

Too Good To Be True

I got a parking citation yesterday.

Yep.

I guess my record's not completely clean any more. At first I couldn't figure out why, but the more I think about it and look at the place I parked, the more I realize that indeed, it was too good to be true.

You know that saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." I remember thinking that one morning after I had parked where I was parked when I got the ticket. But I looked and couldn't seem to find any reason I couldn't park there.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Take Small Bites

Man, Stochastic is the hardest class I've ever taken in my entire life! Or at least since Physics, but I think it's harder. Every class it seems, I am struck by how intimidating and huge it looks and feels.

I need time for this class. Time to soak it in, read about it, digest it. But I feel like I don't have much of that precious commodity. Thing is, it's interesting stuff, so it would be doubly painful if I reached the end of the term feeling as if I didn't spend enough time in it.

I have, however, made it through the first 2 homework sets, though the next two (especially the most recent) look daunting and feel even worse. But as Patch the Pirate says:

Little by little, inch by inch.
By the yard it's hard
By the inch, what a cinch.
Never stare up the stairs, just step up the steps
Little by little, inch by inch.

S.o.C.

How 'bout some stream of consciousness.

8:53. Computer lab. I have a class - Applied Stochastic Modeling - at 9:30. The way the class is set up, he gives us a homework assignment every week, due in two weeks. So you get overlapping homework assignments, which I like, because it allows you to get a head start on an assignment if you want.

Today a Computer Homework assignment is due. I coded it in C, which is the language I'm most comfortable with. But I wish I knew Matlab better because it's designed to deal with matrix computations and C isn't. Since this class involves a lot of matrix computation, it could be a pain to complete everything in C. I either need to download some matrix algebra routines for C from somewhere or learn Matlab.

I'm going to send of my application to Penn State today, if all goes well. It's due on February 1, so it was none too soon. And Chicago is also due the same day, and I'm a little way from completing that.

9:20 now, and I'm not making just a ton of progress on my Stochastic homework.

The Domino Effect

So Norman Mailer thinks that the modern institution of television is perhaps the reason American young people are struggling, in comparison to their peers in other countries, with education. It's an interesting hypothesis, and one that makes sense. Specifically, he asserts that commercials - which break concentration with their frequency and histrionics - have led to a decline in the attention span of children. This has resulted in a generation which eschews reading, which he claims is the most important factor in determining a society's capacity to learn.

Denying Yourself

Denying yourself means choosing the "best" thing when presented with a choice between something you know you should do and something you want to do.

It does not mean that you should avoid those things you enjoy.

Meeting on a Saturday Night

So I met with my Senior Project group tonight. Predictably, things aren't looking quite so rosy in the "we're going to save our farmer a gazillion dollars" category. There are several factors here, but mostly we're constrained by his current crop mix and the fact that there is a cost associated with transitioning from one crop to another. In other words, we can't just calculate an "optimal" crop mix and then figure out how he can get from what he currently has to what we say he should have. Anyway ...

Oh yeah, and I shot an e-mail to the group proclaiming that I had figured out an issue we were having. But I got it wrong, mixed up a 1 and a 0, causing confusion and wasting some time. But it's all good now.

The thing I like about this project, whether it turns out to be very bottom-line profitable or not (which it doesn't look like we'll be doubling his profit or anything, or even telling him much that he didn't know before), is that it has required a lot of technical, logical thought. I like that, it's good experience.