...That woman could hardly stop giving us free, delicious brie...
I think this is going to be a long entry, at least by my relativistic standards.
ninja edit : if anyone is reading this I suggest you really only read the sections that sound interesting, because the majority of my writing at this point is getting things off my back.
charu72 has a children's book in her possession that, despite being a horrible story, does promise a lot - namely hidden treasure. The author took the liberty of going around the world and finding precious ore/gems/stones to create bejeweled copies of some of his stories characters. The catch is that the clues to where they are hidden are in his novel. Tom daemonllama and I (to be honest, it was 90% Tom and 10% my supporting his ideas based on whatever logic you use with your friends after a beer or two) looked into and were pretty sure we would find something in the area of Drake's Bay in Marin, out past Point Reyes Station. About three weeks ago the three of us and one of Tom's friend left Davis at 8am in search of treasure and we came back mostly sunburnt, caffeine and sleep deprived (me) and..
...with no treasure. However, the trip was hardly for naught; in addition to having a wonderful retreat at a beautiful beach, we saved a vole's life.
In the mean time, I will admit to spending a good amount of time playing World of Warcraft until my motherboard died. I've been meeting with Abhi Ahnad at the Experimental College and emailing a professor in the math department to coordinate teaching a Rubik's Cube class for university credit in the fall. sivart13 moved into my apartment and all sorts of Travis related things have happened - included but not limited to two different barbecues with Mike, Erik, Stacee and Japhy (with Travis' bbq grill). Attempts were made at understanding some Differential Equations in preparation for the next summer session and the upper division Ordinary Differential Equations class that I'm signed up for in the fall but that fell through, just like my plans to study Lie Algebras.
I may have been partially responsible for this (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
I am currently 'funemployed' (thanks to Jenn for introducing me to such a useful phrase).
I probably need a haircut like Davis could use a bit less midday heat.
I spent the last year in two different math series - real analysis (it's calculus but much more in depth and generalized) and modern algebra. Algebra was very pleasing because the motivations for studying the different topics in the field made complete sense, topically as well as historically. The different algebraic objects that are there for studying are so diverse and yet all have similar themes running through their many pages of theorems and properties. In short, I fell in love with algebraic structures and the way they 'live in' (to use a phrase of my professor) such perfect, idealized "space." My attempt to do some personal studies of Lie Algebras (think of a vector space except that the dot-product (or bilinear form) has the property that [x,y] = -[y,x] - anti-symmetry. The elementary results closely follow group, field and ring theories and I couldn't get excited about their unique properties (although I did spend a good afternoon wondering what sort of physical processes might be modeled by anti-symmetric structures).
To jump forward in time, as I feel I am allowed, I checked out a book on Galois Theory (another subject in Algebra that is actually more of a field of study of its own) and another that connects mathematics and quantum theories. I once read a book that wasn't by Douglas Hofstadter on artificial intelligence (it was by one of Stephen Hawking's colleagues, Roger Penrose) and was rather put-off when he introduced some of the mathematics behind interactions on a true quantum level. This book is different in that it builds the physics off math that I've seen before, which should make the experience of understanding physics on the level of equations much more reasonable. I've gone far too long understanding physics simply through the english language and whatever crude models I can conjure up in my mind.
Get my new motherboard and install it, get a working windows installation
Let my LinuxBox collect dust again
Read the math books I borrowed from Shields
Find a decent image of a road sign that says "share the road" and photoshop it to "Cheryl the road"
See if I have my 'thugology dept' image on my windows desktop, if not make it again
Post said 'thugology dept' image on my wiki page, for lack of any real content
Find someone in Davis that is interested in Algebras
Apply for an undergraduate research position
Apply to be a reader for the math department
Give Gordon Li his glasses back
Consider writing down one of the atrocious songs I occasionally think up
Get a CA ID
Make sure that I'm teaching the Rubik's Cube class in the fall, with faculty sponsorship
Realize that this post is larger than my e-penis
This Saturday, Tom, Cheryl, Martha and I went out to the Marin/Point Reyes area again with the idea of searching for treasure but it ended up being an excuse to go to the beach and enjoy ourselves. Nothing particularly exciting happened with the exception of us stumbling upon a cute shack hidden behind some dunes that people built - it included not only chairs/benches/cushions and a shaded area but also a notebook with some stoner poetry, some notes people had left describing their finding the place along with pens and pencils for people to leave their own messages. We also saw a lot more seals than we usually see in one place, and although we were under the impression that seals can move at 25 mph and can be very aggressive, when we approached the seals they all moved into the water at once and watched us until we were very far away.
Driving back to Davis at 5pm we realized we were very hungry so we stopped at the Cheese Factory so we could use the bathrooms and get directions to a restaurant or see if the restaurant there was open for business. This is where the story gets a bit surreal.
We're all very tired at this point. The ladies are in the restrooms and I'm standing around, waiting to get back on the road to find a pizza place or whatever - at this point it does not matter. We're enjoying the sound of a hired band playing Beatles covers in a barn nearby and Tom is sticking his head inside a window. Suddenly a middle-aged woman comes out and asks if we're tourists, but in a friendly way. We explain that we're students on our way back from the beach, looking for an open restaurant. The woman says, very non-chalantly, that she has to check on the Russians but that she thinks she can bake us a pizza (for free). I'm a bit lost at what just happened at this point, but Tom and I smile while she walks to go talk to some russian people (ah, I can still hear the band playing "Get Back"). When she comes back all four of us are lead into the kitchen that she works in.
It's a very nice kitchen with plenty of instruments and a large brick oven. We're all impressed and manage to overlook the fact that there is no sink in there. She has some dough rising nearby and rolls it out and tells us about the cheese they make at the factory. Two hours go by; she tells us her name is Mary Parker and her life story. Apparently she studied cello for a long time, broke her hand, lived in china for some time, had an orthopedic surgeon offer to fix her broken hand, at which time she spent nearly a decade learning how to play the chinese harp from some of the best musicians in China. She's married, has a son that is successful in some business. But she works at this Cheese Factory developing new and (mildly) unconventional means of presenting the cheeses.
In short, she made us the most delicious camembert/sun dried tomato/red bean brioche that I had ever tasted. She also let us have some of a brie/blueberry brioche that she had baked for some russian coworkers of hers that was equally amazing. It's really a waste of time to try to describe what she baked for us. Right now, I still think that I'm asleep in the car, waiting for Tom to pullover to get some food.
If that wasn't enough, she also wanted to give us some wheels of the cheese from the factory and a copy of a cd she self-produced.
Phew, I just wrote a lot more things than I probably should have.
ninja edit : if anyone is reading this I suggest you really only read the sections that sound interesting, because the majority of my writing at this point is getting things off my back.
charu72 has a children's book in her possession that, despite being a horrible story, does promise a lot - namely hidden treasure. The author took the liberty of going around the world and finding precious ore/gems/stones to create bejeweled copies of some of his stories characters. The catch is that the clues to where they are hidden are in his novel. Tom daemonllama and I (to be honest, it was 90% Tom and 10% my supporting his ideas based on whatever logic you use with your friends after a beer or two) looked into and were pretty sure we would find something in the area of Drake's Bay in Marin, out past Point Reyes Station. About three weeks ago the three of us and one of Tom's friend left Davis at 8am in search of treasure and we came back mostly sunburnt, caffeine and sleep deprived (me) and..
...with no treasure. However, the trip was hardly for naught; in addition to having a wonderful retreat at a beautiful beach, we saved a vole's life.
In the mean time, I will admit to spending a good amount of time playing World of Warcraft until my motherboard died. I've been meeting with Abhi Ahnad at the Experimental College and emailing a professor in the math department to coordinate teaching a Rubik's Cube class for university credit in the fall. sivart13 moved into my apartment and all sorts of Travis related things have happened - included but not limited to two different barbecues with Mike, Erik, Stacee and Japhy (with Travis' bbq grill). Attempts were made at understanding some Differential Equations in preparation for the next summer session and the upper division Ordinary Differential Equations class that I'm signed up for in the fall but that fell through, just like my plans to study Lie Algebras.
I may have been partially responsible for this (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
I am currently 'funemployed' (thanks to Jenn for introducing me to such a useful phrase).
I probably need a haircut like Davis could use a bit less midday heat.
I spent the last year in two different math series - real analysis (it's calculus but much more in depth and generalized) and modern algebra. Algebra was very pleasing because the motivations for studying the different topics in the field made complete sense, topically as well as historically. The different algebraic objects that are there for studying are so diverse and yet all have similar themes running through their many pages of theorems and properties. In short, I fell in love with algebraic structures and the way they 'live in' (to use a phrase of my professor) such perfect, idealized "space." My attempt to do some personal studies of Lie Algebras (think of a vector space except that the dot-product (or bilinear form) has the property that [x,y] = -[y,x] - anti-symmetry. The elementary results closely follow group, field and ring theories and I couldn't get excited about their unique properties (although I did spend a good afternoon wondering what sort of physical processes might be modeled by anti-symmetric structures).
To jump forward in time, as I feel I am allowed, I checked out a book on Galois Theory (another subject in Algebra that is actually more of a field of study of its own) and another that connects mathematics and quantum theories. I once read a book that wasn't by Douglas Hofstadter on artificial intelligence (it was by one of Stephen Hawking's colleagues, Roger Penrose) and was rather put-off when he introduced some of the mathematics behind interactions on a true quantum level. This book is different in that it builds the physics off math that I've seen before, which should make the experience of understanding physics on the level of equations much more reasonable. I've gone far too long understanding physics simply through the english language and whatever crude models I can conjure up in my mind.
Get my new motherboard and install it, get a working windows installation
Let my LinuxBox collect dust again
Read the math books I borrowed from Shields
Find a decent image of a road sign that says "share the road" and photoshop it to "Cheryl the road"
See if I have my 'thugology dept' image on my windows desktop, if not make it again
Post said 'thugology dept' image on my wiki page, for lack of any real content
Find someone in Davis that is interested in Algebras
Apply for an undergraduate research position
Apply to be a reader for the math department
Give Gordon Li his glasses back
Consider writing down one of the atrocious songs I occasionally think up
Get a CA ID
Make sure that I'm teaching the Rubik's Cube class in the fall, with faculty sponsorship
Realize that this post is larger than my e-penis
This Saturday, Tom, Cheryl, Martha and I went out to the Marin/Point Reyes area again with the idea of searching for treasure but it ended up being an excuse to go to the beach and enjoy ourselves. Nothing particularly exciting happened with the exception of us stumbling upon a cute shack hidden behind some dunes that people built - it included not only chairs/benches/cushions and a shaded area but also a notebook with some stoner poetry, some notes people had left describing their finding the place along with pens and pencils for people to leave their own messages. We also saw a lot more seals than we usually see in one place, and although we were under the impression that seals can move at 25 mph and can be very aggressive, when we approached the seals they all moved into the water at once and watched us until we were very far away.
Driving back to Davis at 5pm we realized we were very hungry so we stopped at the Cheese Factory so we could use the bathrooms and get directions to a restaurant or see if the restaurant there was open for business. This is where the story gets a bit surreal.
We're all very tired at this point. The ladies are in the restrooms and I'm standing around, waiting to get back on the road to find a pizza place or whatever - at this point it does not matter. We're enjoying the sound of a hired band playing Beatles covers in a barn nearby and Tom is sticking his head inside a window. Suddenly a middle-aged woman comes out and asks if we're tourists, but in a friendly way. We explain that we're students on our way back from the beach, looking for an open restaurant. The woman says, very non-chalantly, that she has to check on the Russians but that she thinks she can bake us a pizza (for free). I'm a bit lost at what just happened at this point, but Tom and I smile while she walks to go talk to some russian people (ah, I can still hear the band playing "Get Back"). When she comes back all four of us are lead into the kitchen that she works in.
It's a very nice kitchen with plenty of instruments and a large brick oven. We're all impressed and manage to overlook the fact that there is no sink in there. She has some dough rising nearby and rolls it out and tells us about the cheese they make at the factory. Two hours go by; she tells us her name is Mary Parker and her life story. Apparently she studied cello for a long time, broke her hand, lived in china for some time, had an orthopedic surgeon offer to fix her broken hand, at which time she spent nearly a decade learning how to play the chinese harp from some of the best musicians in China. She's married, has a son that is successful in some business. But she works at this Cheese Factory developing new and (mildly) unconventional means of presenting the cheeses.
In short, she made us the most delicious camembert/sun dried tomato/red bean brioche that I had ever tasted. She also let us have some of a brie/blueberry brioche that she had baked for some russian coworkers of hers that was equally amazing. It's really a waste of time to try to describe what she baked for us. Right now, I still think that I'm asleep in the car, waiting for Tom to pullover to get some food.
If that wasn't enough, she also wanted to give us some wheels of the cheese from the factory and a copy of a cd she self-produced.
Phew, I just wrote a lot more things than I probably should have.