In an hour we (S, my colleague T, and I) are leaving for Queenstown, NZ to hike the Routeburn Track. We are meeting a few of S's friends from the States. We were supposed to connect in Christchurch, but in case you hadn't heard, that's not happening, so we rerouted through Auckland.
It has turned out to be a bit of an ordeal and our flight now leaves Sydney tomorrow at 7:00am. Given that we should get to the airport 1.5 hours before our flight leaves, and we should give about 3.5 hours to get from Newcastle to Sydney, well, you can do the math. Not only that, no trains leave between 9:30pm this even and 2:45am tomorrow morning. We had to book at a backpackers (i.e., a hostel) just to get 5 hours of sleep. Oh well, at least we're (hopefully) on our way.
With any luck, I'll be back in a week and a half with lots of great photos to share with you all.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Entry 50: I'm Funny Too
My plan to put up twice-weekly posts on this thing hasn’t been going great. In fact, it hasn’t really been going at all. Oh well, once a week still isn’t bad.
Work is going pretty well. We had a big meeting on Monday with all the bosses – academic and industrial. I had to give a 20 minute presentation. It went fine, if uneventfully. My heart isn’t fully into my research right now, which is OK. It’s a job. I still feel like I’m doing well and working hard, but it’s not like I’m spending my spare time thinking about my research like I’ve done in the past. Having a dispassionate approach can actually be beneficial when giving presentations. I’m not going to get very nervous, and I’m not going to take it personally if somebody criticizes my work (which nobody did at this talk).
One thing that can really bury a meeting, especially a large informal, round-table type meeting, which this largely was, is the I’m-Funny-Too phenomenon. This is something I heard Patton Oswald and Adam Carolla discussing recently in the context of working with a large network. Basically, it’s when funny ideas get ruined because too many people have input, and things start being changed not because they need changing, but because everybody wants to put their stamp on it to prove “I’m funny too”.
I’ve seen this type of thing derail meetings before. Nobody is trying to be funny, but discussions go on endlessly, because everybody wants to show “I’m [appropriate adjective] too”. The worst is when a long discussion is just about to wrap up, and then somebody chimes in with something mostly irrelevant and instead of just saying “that’s not really relevant” or “let’s discuss it another time” or just nodding (my favorite move), everybody tries to address it in earnest. Thankfully, we actually didn’t have much of that at this meeting. Most of the comments were on topic and insightful. Other than my presentation I didn’t say much, if anything.
I do have one big gripe with the meeting, however. Lunch was provided (which is good), but it arrived a half-hour before the meeting began. In the email from the organizer, it was stated that we could arrive anytime after 12:30, but that it was perfectly acceptable to get there right at 1:00 and eat while others are talking. This was made explicit in the email.
With this in mind, I show up at 12:54 (I know this exactly because I looked at the clock upon entering) figuring that I’d have time to gather some food (I’m ridiculously hungry) and get situated before 1. But when I enter, I see that the organizer has already started the meeting! Not only that, but its super crowded, so I have to kind of climb over people and disrupt things to get a seat, and all the food is in the center of the table, and I’m on the very end.
So, I had to sit there for an hour and a half until the coffee break, super hungry and super annoyed. The thing is, I could have come much early and eaten and avoided being the guy who showed up “late”. I was just sitting in my office. Why would you make specific mention that it’s OK to arrive right at 1:00 in the email, and then start the meeting at 12:50? All the organizer had to do is say the meeting starts at 1:00 get there around 12:30 to get lunch beforehand. I would have been there at 12:30. Even if the organizer had said nothing I probably would have showed up earlier. The explicit mention really threw me for a loop. Anyway, it was irritating.
Speaking of irritating things, one (very) minor thing happened today that annoyed me. I was typing something with a lot of mathematical symbols, so I was using this scripting language called LaTeX. It’s very popular in the math world. Basically, you type a bunch of commands into a word processor, hit a button, and then a pdf document pops up with what you typed translated to math symbols.
It was very near the end of the day, and I realized the document I needed to create was quite similar to one a grad student had already created, so instead of typing out all the commands from scratch, which can be time consuming, I figured I would just use his code as a template and make the appropriate changes. So, I go to his office and we have a conversation approximately as follows.
Me: Hey, can you email me that (I point to an open window on his computer screen). I need the actual LaTeX code document, not the pdf.
Him: Ah… yes… I make many changes (his English isn’t great)… I show you (he starts showing me stuff on his computer)… But it’s not finished.
Me: That’s OK. I just need the LaTeX code. I’m writing something similar and I don’t want to start from scratch. If you could just give me what you have up to this point, that would be great.
Him: Eh… ah… eh… I… am not … eh… done.
Me: I know, just send me that (I point again to the code). Right there. Exactly. I don’t care if it’s done. I just need it as a template. I’m not even going to read it. It doesn’t matter what shape it’s in.
Him: Ah… I see... I will email to you later.
Me: When?
Him: Eh... I will be done on tomorrow.
Me: OK, thanks (giving up).
What the hell? I literally just needed him to hit save and email me a file that was open on his screen. It would have taken 30 seconds. I don’t know if it was a language barrier thing or if he didn’t want me to see his work in an unfinished state or what, but I didn’t get what I wanted.
It put me in that work no-man’s-land where I had about 45 minutes until my bus arrived, and I could either spend the entire time doing something and get it done today, or I could wait until tomorrow (Monday in this case) and do it in about 20 minutes then. I opted for the latter and started working on something else – the Friday New York Times crossword puzzle.
I’ve been solving and making quite a few puzzles lately. I bought a Gold Membership to the Cruciverb website because it gives you access to their database which basically details every entry in every crossword in every major publication over the last 15 years. For instance, you can think, “I wonder if anybody has ever used INDIANAJONES in a puzzle”, type it in, and sure enough it’s been used twice – in 2005 in a New York Times puzzle, and 2000 in an LA Times puzzle. Also, you can use question marks, so you can type in ROU?, and it gives you back ROUE (133 times), ROUT (114 times), and ROUX (18 times).* It’s pretty sweet.
So, last thing I wanted to mention. We won our ultimate Frisbee game this week. We got some new guy, who’s quite good, on our team somehow, and he was probably the difference between winning handily and getting crushed. These games are just for fun, but it’s more fun when you win, so yay us.
*That the seldom-used word roue (a lecherous man) appears more times than the very familiar word rout, is a classic example of crosswordese. The letter combination in roue, with the three consecutive vowels is more valuable (to constructors, not to solvers, who usually find crosswordese boring) than that of rout. Roux (a sauce thickener) is not very common, and the x makes it klutzy for constructors, which is why it appears so much less frequently than the other two.
Work is going pretty well. We had a big meeting on Monday with all the bosses – academic and industrial. I had to give a 20 minute presentation. It went fine, if uneventfully. My heart isn’t fully into my research right now, which is OK. It’s a job. I still feel like I’m doing well and working hard, but it’s not like I’m spending my spare time thinking about my research like I’ve done in the past. Having a dispassionate approach can actually be beneficial when giving presentations. I’m not going to get very nervous, and I’m not going to take it personally if somebody criticizes my work (which nobody did at this talk).
One thing that can really bury a meeting, especially a large informal, round-table type meeting, which this largely was, is the I’m-Funny-Too phenomenon. This is something I heard Patton Oswald and Adam Carolla discussing recently in the context of working with a large network. Basically, it’s when funny ideas get ruined because too many people have input, and things start being changed not because they need changing, but because everybody wants to put their stamp on it to prove “I’m funny too”.
I’ve seen this type of thing derail meetings before. Nobody is trying to be funny, but discussions go on endlessly, because everybody wants to show “I’m [appropriate adjective] too”. The worst is when a long discussion is just about to wrap up, and then somebody chimes in with something mostly irrelevant and instead of just saying “that’s not really relevant” or “let’s discuss it another time” or just nodding (my favorite move), everybody tries to address it in earnest. Thankfully, we actually didn’t have much of that at this meeting. Most of the comments were on topic and insightful. Other than my presentation I didn’t say much, if anything.
I do have one big gripe with the meeting, however. Lunch was provided (which is good), but it arrived a half-hour before the meeting began. In the email from the organizer, it was stated that we could arrive anytime after 12:30, but that it was perfectly acceptable to get there right at 1:00 and eat while others are talking. This was made explicit in the email.
With this in mind, I show up at 12:54 (I know this exactly because I looked at the clock upon entering) figuring that I’d have time to gather some food (I’m ridiculously hungry) and get situated before 1. But when I enter, I see that the organizer has already started the meeting! Not only that, but its super crowded, so I have to kind of climb over people and disrupt things to get a seat, and all the food is in the center of the table, and I’m on the very end.
So, I had to sit there for an hour and a half until the coffee break, super hungry and super annoyed. The thing is, I could have come much early and eaten and avoided being the guy who showed up “late”. I was just sitting in my office. Why would you make specific mention that it’s OK to arrive right at 1:00 in the email, and then start the meeting at 12:50? All the organizer had to do is say the meeting starts at 1:00 get there around 12:30 to get lunch beforehand. I would have been there at 12:30. Even if the organizer had said nothing I probably would have showed up earlier. The explicit mention really threw me for a loop. Anyway, it was irritating.
Speaking of irritating things, one (very) minor thing happened today that annoyed me. I was typing something with a lot of mathematical symbols, so I was using this scripting language called LaTeX. It’s very popular in the math world. Basically, you type a bunch of commands into a word processor, hit a button, and then a pdf document pops up with what you typed translated to math symbols.
It was very near the end of the day, and I realized the document I needed to create was quite similar to one a grad student had already created, so instead of typing out all the commands from scratch, which can be time consuming, I figured I would just use his code as a template and make the appropriate changes. So, I go to his office and we have a conversation approximately as follows.
Me: Hey, can you email me that (I point to an open window on his computer screen). I need the actual LaTeX code document, not the pdf.
Him: Ah… yes… I make many changes (his English isn’t great)… I show you (he starts showing me stuff on his computer)… But it’s not finished.
Me: That’s OK. I just need the LaTeX code. I’m writing something similar and I don’t want to start from scratch. If you could just give me what you have up to this point, that would be great.
Him: Eh… ah… eh… I… am not … eh… done.
Me: I know, just send me that (I point again to the code). Right there. Exactly. I don’t care if it’s done. I just need it as a template. I’m not even going to read it. It doesn’t matter what shape it’s in.
Him: Ah… I see... I will email to you later.
Me: When?
Him: Eh... I will be done on tomorrow.
Me: OK, thanks (giving up).
What the hell? I literally just needed him to hit save and email me a file that was open on his screen. It would have taken 30 seconds. I don’t know if it was a language barrier thing or if he didn’t want me to see his work in an unfinished state or what, but I didn’t get what I wanted.
It put me in that work no-man’s-land where I had about 45 minutes until my bus arrived, and I could either spend the entire time doing something and get it done today, or I could wait until tomorrow (Monday in this case) and do it in about 20 minutes then. I opted for the latter and started working on something else – the Friday New York Times crossword puzzle.
I’ve been solving and making quite a few puzzles lately. I bought a Gold Membership to the Cruciverb website because it gives you access to their database which basically details every entry in every crossword in every major publication over the last 15 years. For instance, you can think, “I wonder if anybody has ever used INDIANAJONES in a puzzle”, type it in, and sure enough it’s been used twice – in 2005 in a New York Times puzzle, and 2000 in an LA Times puzzle. Also, you can use question marks, so you can type in ROU?, and it gives you back ROUE (133 times), ROUT (114 times), and ROUX (18 times).* It’s pretty sweet.
So, last thing I wanted to mention. We won our ultimate Frisbee game this week. We got some new guy, who’s quite good, on our team somehow, and he was probably the difference between winning handily and getting crushed. These games are just for fun, but it’s more fun when you win, so yay us.
*That the seldom-used word roue (a lecherous man) appears more times than the very familiar word rout, is a classic example of crosswordese. The letter combination in roue, with the three consecutive vowels is more valuable (to constructors, not to solvers, who usually find crosswordese boring) than that of rout. Roux (a sauce thickener) is not very common, and the x makes it klutzy for constructors, which is why it appears so much less frequently than the other two.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Entry 49: Plans, Jobs, Inter-species Coitus, and Ultimate Frisbee
S and I are planning on moving back to the US in August. My contract is up here in mid-July (but my visa ends in June, so I’m not sure exactly how that will play out), then we’re off to India for a nuptial ceremony, and then somewhere. We aren’t exactly sure where yet. Probably DC, at least initially, because we have a place we can live there, and, you know, having a place to live is important for us (we’re snooty that way). Then it depends on where we can find jobs.
S seems relatively confident that she can find something in DC. I’m not very optimistic about my own prospects in DC or anywhere else for that matter. The well is dry for wannabe professors right now. There are jobs being advertised, but they are being bombarded with applicants (last year I was getting “thanks-but-no-thanks” letters quoting 150 applicants, now it’s 600). I suspect only the 10s and 9s are being considered. There’s just nothing out there for the solid 7s like myself. Here’s an excerpt from a state-of-the-union email from a bigwig in the math department at my graduate school (I suspect it might as well be any public US college).
Attached is a dismal summary of math jobs available over the past couple of years -- from the Amer. Math. Soc. (AMS). The figures are pretty grim and probably should not have been called "highlights".
In particular the attached document from the AMS says: "The total tenure-track positions filled during the 2009-2010 academic cycle by all mathematics departments combined was 479, down 33% from the 2008-2009 total of 710. This total is down 51% from the 2007-2008 fi gure of 978, the highest total over the past ten years."
State budgets (and so state funded universities and colleges) are cutting compare with last year due to the end of President Obama's federal stimulus. Estimate that the math budget (which is practically all salaries) will be down about 7% next year compared with the 2007-8 academic year. We have done and continue to do lots of cutting.
This email didn’t really brighten my day, but what did brighten my day was the gmail status of a guy I went to grad school with who must be graduating soon and applying for professorships himself: “Dear Applicant: We are pleased to inform you, we fucked your mom. There were many qualified applicants and we fucked all their moms.”
Now that is hilarious. One possible saving grace for me is that I haven’t really scratched the surface of industry jobs yet. Things probably ain’t great there either, but they can’t be as bad as academia.
Anyway… speaking of, um, eff-ing things I got duped by a troll on an MMA site. I was checking out some UFC highlights online, and there was a live chat going on. I wasn’t taking part in it, but people were putting up links to cool videos, so I was clicking through them. After a few legitimate ones, I clicked one and the heads of a horse and a woman popped up and a headline read BEST IN BESTIA--. I immediately closed the window. I can guess how that second word ends. Luckily for me the page was a tiny bit slow in loading, so I didn’t see anything traumatizing. God bless my quick-closing skills.
Two things on this. First, to whoever put that link up, what the hell? You don’t even know if anybody is clicking it. You don't get to watch people’s responses. Where’s the enjoyment? It’s just asshole-ism for the pure sake of asshole-ism. It's like putting a nail in the street and then walking away. Eventually somebody will probably pop their tire, but you'll be long gone.
Second, I was thinking about the parents of the woman whose face I briefly saw, and it got me thinking. As long as bestiality porn is around, gun control laws should be very lax. If I ever found out my daughter was participating in something like that, I would like to be able to purchase a gun, so that I could shoot myself in the head. There’s just no coming back from that.
OK, on to a less disturbing topic. Ultimate Frisbee is going pretty good. It’s quite fun, but I could do without the love circle. At the end of a match, both teams get together and embrace, arms-around-shoulders, in a circle while the captains each give a talk about the spirit of the game, and friendly competition, and all this other nonsense. We can’t just give each other high fives and hit the bar?
Our team is not good, by the way. We lost our first match to a team who didn’t win at all last season. That does not bode well for us. I’m actually decent. My throwing skills aren’t amazing, but they aren’t bad, and I can run and catch pretty well. (I probably need to keep in mind the non-contact nature of the sport as well. I committed the only two fouls during match.) I doubt I’ll ever be particularly good, but I can play without looking like a complete train wreck. Nobody on our team is terrible, actually. It’s just that nobody is really good either. Nobody is a handler (the equivalent of a point guard in basketball). If we had just one decent handler, we probably wouldn’t be half bad.
Oh well, even if we don’t ever win, it’s fun and good exercise. It beats running on the treadmill next to the dude with too much cologne on (which is what I did today), that’s for sure.
S seems relatively confident that she can find something in DC. I’m not very optimistic about my own prospects in DC or anywhere else for that matter. The well is dry for wannabe professors right now. There are jobs being advertised, but they are being bombarded with applicants (last year I was getting “thanks-but-no-thanks” letters quoting 150 applicants, now it’s 600). I suspect only the 10s and 9s are being considered. There’s just nothing out there for the solid 7s like myself. Here’s an excerpt from a state-of-the-union email from a bigwig in the math department at my graduate school (I suspect it might as well be any public US college).
Attached is a dismal summary of math jobs available over the past couple of years -- from the Amer. Math. Soc. (AMS). The figures are pretty grim and probably should not have been called "highlights".
In particular the attached document from the AMS says: "The total tenure-track positions filled during the 2009-2010 academic cycle by all mathematics departments combined was 479, down 33% from the 2008-2009 total of 710. This total is down 51% from the 2007-2008 fi gure of 978, the highest total over the past ten years."
State budgets (and so state funded universities and colleges) are cutting compare with last year due to the end of President Obama's federal stimulus. Estimate that the math budget (which is practically all salaries) will be down about 7% next year compared with the 2007-8 academic year. We have done and continue to do lots of cutting.
This email didn’t really brighten my day, but what did brighten my day was the gmail status of a guy I went to grad school with who must be graduating soon and applying for professorships himself: “Dear Applicant: We are pleased to inform you, we fucked your mom. There were many qualified applicants and we fucked all their moms.”
Now that is hilarious. One possible saving grace for me is that I haven’t really scratched the surface of industry jobs yet. Things probably ain’t great there either, but they can’t be as bad as academia.
Anyway… speaking of, um, eff-ing things I got duped by a troll on an MMA site. I was checking out some UFC highlights online, and there was a live chat going on. I wasn’t taking part in it, but people were putting up links to cool videos, so I was clicking through them. After a few legitimate ones, I clicked one and the heads of a horse and a woman popped up and a headline read BEST IN BESTIA--. I immediately closed the window. I can guess how that second word ends. Luckily for me the page was a tiny bit slow in loading, so I didn’t see anything traumatizing. God bless my quick-closing skills.
Two things on this. First, to whoever put that link up, what the hell? You don’t even know if anybody is clicking it. You don't get to watch people’s responses. Where’s the enjoyment? It’s just asshole-ism for the pure sake of asshole-ism. It's like putting a nail in the street and then walking away. Eventually somebody will probably pop their tire, but you'll be long gone.
Second, I was thinking about the parents of the woman whose face I briefly saw, and it got me thinking. As long as bestiality porn is around, gun control laws should be very lax. If I ever found out my daughter was participating in something like that, I would like to be able to purchase a gun, so that I could shoot myself in the head. There’s just no coming back from that.
OK, on to a less disturbing topic. Ultimate Frisbee is going pretty good. It’s quite fun, but I could do without the love circle. At the end of a match, both teams get together and embrace, arms-around-shoulders, in a circle while the captains each give a talk about the spirit of the game, and friendly competition, and all this other nonsense. We can’t just give each other high fives and hit the bar?
Our team is not good, by the way. We lost our first match to a team who didn’t win at all last season. That does not bode well for us. I’m actually decent. My throwing skills aren’t amazing, but they aren’t bad, and I can run and catch pretty well. (I probably need to keep in mind the non-contact nature of the sport as well. I committed the only two fouls during match.) I doubt I’ll ever be particularly good, but I can play without looking like a complete train wreck. Nobody on our team is terrible, actually. It’s just that nobody is really good either. Nobody is a handler (the equivalent of a point guard in basketball). If we had just one decent handler, we probably wouldn’t be half bad.
Oh well, even if we don’t ever win, it’s fun and good exercise. It beats running on the treadmill next to the dude with too much cologne on (which is what I did today), that’s for sure.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Entry 48: Ticking Away the Moments that Make Up a Dull Day
In writing the title of this entry I was a little unsure as to what to capitalize and what not to capitalize. (Does “up” get capitalized? Is it different if I’m quoting something?) It made me realize that the convention of not capitalizing certain words in titles is a weird one. Why not just capitalize everything? What’s the worry? (We can’t live in a society where people write “The” instead of “the” in titles!) I’m guessing there was a practical reason for this back in the day, like capital letters cost more to print, so you had to save them for important words. You couldn’t waste the extra needle-points of ink on such banal words as “the”s and “that”s – something along those lines. Now, who cares, right? I guess, that’s the beauty of having a blog you can write it how you want it. I try to be consistent and follow conventions, only in so far as, it will be distracting and/or irritating to the reader if I don’t. Also, I would prefer to not look like a dumbass by miss using words. Beyond that, I just use my best judgment, and don’t get too caught up in grammar rules.
I came up with the title because I spent the last few hours poring over this essay I found online explaining in a “definitive” manner how Tony Soprano was murdered in the series ending scene of The Sopranos. It was quite interesting at first, but went on way too long (I hardly put a dent in it), and started repeating itself too frequently, so I abandoned ship. I began reading at about 10am, then next thing I knew it was noon. “The time just ticked by,” I thought, which brought to mind the lyrics from Pink Floyd’s Time that I’ve co-opted for the title of this entry.
So the Super Bowl is coming up. It’s nice living Down Under. I’ll still be able to watch the game and I’m not hit over the head with the hype. As a sports fan, you have to work to separate the wheat from the chaff in the media these days. It’s not always easy, because although the wheat is becoming more abundant with new forums like blogs and podcasts, so is the chaff, and it seems to be growing at a faster rate than the wheat. 98% of Super Bowl Week coverage is chaff, so it’s mostly easier to just avoid the coverage altogether than to dig through it for the 2% of wheat.
Speaking of good sports coverage, I think some of my friends and I will be starting a sports website here very soon. One of my friends is good at building websites, another one is good at online search optimization, and I’m a talented writer and sports commentator, so it seems like a nice fit. I’m mostly joking about the last comment. I don’t know if I’m good or not, and if the site will be good or not, but we might as well give it a shot. (Actually, it’s technically already up, but the only thing on it is an unfinished article my friend wrote.)
I love doing stuff like this – being creative. At almost no point during my life have I not had some sort of project going on to occupy my free time. Most of the time nobody ever sees it (I have boxes and boxes and disks and disks full of things I’ve put significant time and effort into that nobody other than me will ever care about), sometimes a handful of people see it (this blog and others I’ve had in the past), and occasionally lots of people see it (my published crossword puzzles). The latter is the best result by far, obviously. It’s the most rewarding, but the process isn’t always the most enjoyable. And it’s the process that’s the main driver. Don’t get me wrong, I want an audience and I want to be appreciated, but it’s not the be all end all. If, at the end of the day, I enjoyed working on something and created a product that I like then that at least provides some consolation.
My favorite teacher as an undergrad was this crazy Serbian guy who taught math like a preacher speaking in tongues. He used to give these insane (but awesome) problem sets that would take weeks to finish and a quire of paper to write up. One time after he graded one, he came up to me in the hallway and said, “I really enjoyed reading the solutions zat you wrote.” I probably said thanks or something, and then he pointed his finger about a centimeter from my face, widened his eyes, and said, “But zee real question is… DID YOU ENJOY WRITING ZEM?!” It was a great question and one that I’ve always taken to heart.
So, in other news, my sleep pattern has been all messed up. For one, S is out of town which throws me off. For two, it’s insanely hot out here right now. I’m not sure how hot because the only reading I can get online is the one from Nobbys Head which I’ve been told is significantly cooler than anywhere inland (if only I had a friend who frequently blogged about the weather and complained about its coverage, I might be able to get to the bottom of this). I have an air conditioner, but that sometimes makes me too cold, so I go back and forth between open windows and a fan and closed windows and the air con (that’s what they call it here instead of AC). The bottom line is – I’m just a bit of a finicky sleeper. I’m not an insomniac or anything like that, but I can’t just put my head down and be out. Things like temperature, lighting, and background noise seem to affect me more than the average person.
In other other news, at the urging of a coworker, I’ve joined an Ultimate Frisbee team. I’d rather play something like flag football or softball or soccer, but Frisbee is OK. It’s a great cardio workout and not super competitive, so it’s not a huge deal that I’m a pretty mediocre player. In fact, it’s a little too un-competitive. It’s kind of the hippie-ish, don’t-be-so-aggro-man sport. I always thought it was the wuss sport (Frisbee : Football :: Yoga : Weightlifting), but as I get older, sadly, the wuss sports are more appealing. The first session was this week, but we didn’t play any organized games, just some pickup. I think organized games start next week, but I’m not sure. I’ll keep you all posted.
Last, I’ll leave you all with the latest thing that bothers me that shouldn’t bother me: people not wearing shoes. You see that here all the time. I’m not talking about at the beach or on your lawn or anything like that. I’m talking about people getting on the bus and going to uni without shoes or people barefoot in the supermarket or at the pub. What the hell? Is a pair of sneakers such a cramp to your style? You can’t be encumbered by some flip-flops? It’s just weird, and it seems uncomfortable both physically (walking on rocks and bark) and mentally (using a public bathroom). Is it a style thing? A money thing? A statement thing? I mean, it’s nothing to me, but what’s the attraction?
I came up with the title because I spent the last few hours poring over this essay I found online explaining in a “definitive” manner how Tony Soprano was murdered in the series ending scene of The Sopranos. It was quite interesting at first, but went on way too long (I hardly put a dent in it), and started repeating itself too frequently, so I abandoned ship. I began reading at about 10am, then next thing I knew it was noon. “The time just ticked by,” I thought, which brought to mind the lyrics from Pink Floyd’s Time that I’ve co-opted for the title of this entry.
So the Super Bowl is coming up. It’s nice living Down Under. I’ll still be able to watch the game and I’m not hit over the head with the hype. As a sports fan, you have to work to separate the wheat from the chaff in the media these days. It’s not always easy, because although the wheat is becoming more abundant with new forums like blogs and podcasts, so is the chaff, and it seems to be growing at a faster rate than the wheat. 98% of Super Bowl Week coverage is chaff, so it’s mostly easier to just avoid the coverage altogether than to dig through it for the 2% of wheat.
Speaking of good sports coverage, I think some of my friends and I will be starting a sports website here very soon. One of my friends is good at building websites, another one is good at online search optimization, and I’m a talented writer and sports commentator, so it seems like a nice fit. I’m mostly joking about the last comment. I don’t know if I’m good or not, and if the site will be good or not, but we might as well give it a shot. (Actually, it’s technically already up, but the only thing on it is an unfinished article my friend wrote.)
I love doing stuff like this – being creative. At almost no point during my life have I not had some sort of project going on to occupy my free time. Most of the time nobody ever sees it (I have boxes and boxes and disks and disks full of things I’ve put significant time and effort into that nobody other than me will ever care about), sometimes a handful of people see it (this blog and others I’ve had in the past), and occasionally lots of people see it (my published crossword puzzles). The latter is the best result by far, obviously. It’s the most rewarding, but the process isn’t always the most enjoyable. And it’s the process that’s the main driver. Don’t get me wrong, I want an audience and I want to be appreciated, but it’s not the be all end all. If, at the end of the day, I enjoyed working on something and created a product that I like then that at least provides some consolation.
My favorite teacher as an undergrad was this crazy Serbian guy who taught math like a preacher speaking in tongues. He used to give these insane (but awesome) problem sets that would take weeks to finish and a quire of paper to write up. One time after he graded one, he came up to me in the hallway and said, “I really enjoyed reading the solutions zat you wrote.” I probably said thanks or something, and then he pointed his finger about a centimeter from my face, widened his eyes, and said, “But zee real question is… DID YOU ENJOY WRITING ZEM?!” It was a great question and one that I’ve always taken to heart.
So, in other news, my sleep pattern has been all messed up. For one, S is out of town which throws me off. For two, it’s insanely hot out here right now. I’m not sure how hot because the only reading I can get online is the one from Nobbys Head which I’ve been told is significantly cooler than anywhere inland (if only I had a friend who frequently blogged about the weather and complained about its coverage, I might be able to get to the bottom of this). I have an air conditioner, but that sometimes makes me too cold, so I go back and forth between open windows and a fan and closed windows and the air con (that’s what they call it here instead of AC). The bottom line is – I’m just a bit of a finicky sleeper. I’m not an insomniac or anything like that, but I can’t just put my head down and be out. Things like temperature, lighting, and background noise seem to affect me more than the average person.
In other other news, at the urging of a coworker, I’ve joined an Ultimate Frisbee team. I’d rather play something like flag football or softball or soccer, but Frisbee is OK. It’s a great cardio workout and not super competitive, so it’s not a huge deal that I’m a pretty mediocre player. In fact, it’s a little too un-competitive. It’s kind of the hippie-ish, don’t-be-so-aggro-man sport. I always thought it was the wuss sport (Frisbee : Football :: Yoga : Weightlifting), but as I get older, sadly, the wuss sports are more appealing. The first session was this week, but we didn’t play any organized games, just some pickup. I think organized games start next week, but I’m not sure. I’ll keep you all posted.
Last, I’ll leave you all with the latest thing that bothers me that shouldn’t bother me: people not wearing shoes. You see that here all the time. I’m not talking about at the beach or on your lawn or anything like that. I’m talking about people getting on the bus and going to uni without shoes or people barefoot in the supermarket or at the pub. What the hell? Is a pair of sneakers such a cramp to your style? You can’t be encumbered by some flip-flops? It’s just weird, and it seems uncomfortable both physically (walking on rocks and bark) and mentally (using a public bathroom). Is it a style thing? A money thing? A statement thing? I mean, it’s nothing to me, but what’s the attraction?
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