Icey Hockey

Chas and I have been itching to play hockey basically all semester. I had checked out the rink once or twice to see if the snow and ice had melted off of it yet, but was disappointed to find about two inches of slush each time. Yesterday Chas called me at about 3:30 when I was in the computer lab and said he checked the rink and it looked mostly clear, and asked if I wanted to go play. I said sure, and I got there a little bit after four.

We shot around for a little bit. He was working on his backhand and slapshot. On one of the first shots he took, I kept thinking, "the pucks are going to break. We really should try not to hit the post" and I was literally just about to say "Do everything you can to NOT hit the post" when he shot it, hit the post, and the puck flew over the fence and about a hundred feet away onto some ice in the middle of the field near the rink. We must have shot about six pucks out.

At one point we were playing one-on-one with an empty net. We would just start in the middle of the court, one on offense and one on defense, try to get a shot off. I played offense first and I don't think I did very well, so he took the puck out to go. He was coming down the board on his right side, and then turned around to try to guard the puck from me. Without either of us realizing, he was skating backward right into a huge left-over puddle of freezing water and some ice. I have no idea why it seemed so fast, but it felt sort of like I was in the middle of a super intense chase scene in a movie and then everything went wrong, the camera angle changed, and you realized, "Um, crap" and all the music stopped.

Anyhow, he was okay, he didn't hurt himself, but he didn't totally eat it. He landed on his elbow and scratched it just a tiny bit, but the worst injury was that he was very very wet, and the water was very very cold. It actually splashed as he hit it. I felt bad - there really was like a 50% chance that either of us would hit it, and it sucked that it turned out to be him. I also sort of felt bad that I didn't stop him, but I also had no idea it was coming.

Peace out.

Broken Computer

My computer came down with some malware recently (of the SWP2009 variety) so it's in the shop. I haven't been online, I haven't been up with the news, I haven't been reading SomethingAwful or HuffPo, I haven't been able to check my e-mail or my homework (since it's basically all online now), I haven't talked to people on AIM, and I haven't had time to write. I'm making time to update very quickly. For posterity.

On Monday I had dinner with Todd. He called me the night before extremely upset; his girlfriend sort of asked to go on a break with him and he had had some sort of strange problems over the weekend (found it impossible to speak, or control his legs). I had dinner with him at West and he told me he might transfer to Philadelphia. I hung out in his room for a little bit (a double, turned into a single when his roomie got kicked out for drinking) and we talked about math mostly, and some music. I decided I should listen to some Radiohead. I gave him all the music I had written (for the most part, lacking a few of the very latest songs).

As he walked me out of the building, we said goodbye, and I looked back at him. I could sort of tell that he was waiting for me to say something else, hanging on my words just a tiny but, but I couldn't think of anything. I think the correct answer was "take care of yourself" or "see you soon," but all I could come out with was "bye" or "later."

He Facebooked me later saying that he liked my music, in particular the song Philadelphia. Not because of what I wrote in the song, but because of how much he likes Philadelphia.

---

On Thursday morning, I wrote a song. This was in part because I had nothing better to do with my lack of having a computer. It's a very very good and catchy song. At least like four people have said it was good so far, including two random dudes in the lounge (a while after I had played it, they asked what "that first song" was), a girl named Louisa, and Steve from drumline. I'm not sure what it'll be called yet but it's going to be INTENSE.

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On Friday night after drumline ALL I wanted to do was play my song on piano again. But I checked starting at about 12:30 and there was some girl playing the piano. It was a really slow song, plodding, with a chord/double in the left hand and a melody in the right hand, in a mid/high register. I checked back up later, still playing, same girl, sounded like the same song. At one o'clock when I was ready for bed, I checked again, still same girl, same damn song. It wasn't even hard or interesting. It was sort of sad though.

At one point I walked by her to see what she looked like. She had an orange shirt, which made me wonder if she worked in the dining commons. She had blonde hair and she was looking downward with her said sort of tilted, and looked angry. I decided not to talk to her or ask her for the piano.

---

I really hope my computer gets fixed, without having to be reformatted.

---

I'm really mad that drumline might make me miss the last four hours of thon. I'm going to fight to see it.

Peace out.

High G

When I started singing, I had to strain my voice to hit the F below middle C, and I could pretty easily sing a full two octaves below middle C. For a long time I thought my range would top out at about middle C, but I got there a little bit ago, and it's still been going up. Sometimes it makes me feel like less of a man; sometimes I wish I had extended my range downward rather than upward; sometimes I worry that my talking voice is higher now that I've been upping my range rather than lowering it.

Last night at drumline, we couldn't get into the mirrored room in which we normally practice, so we just got our instruments, found a corner anywhere in the Blue Band Building, and practice on our own, individually. I played some warm-ups and played through the show a few times, but got bored of it after a while. You can only play the same thing so many times in a row without someone yelling at you to play it more other than yourself.

After a while I played some songs I felt like playing. "Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen is a favorite recently, and I also discovered how to play "Black Balloon" by Goo Goo Dolls on piano yesterday (Friday). So I played that. I had been struggling with the range - I felt like I couldn't do it the way the lead singer did in the song, and that my range wouldn't go high enough. But I figured I'd give it a try and just see how it went.

I was in the corner, facing a glass wall, right near the mirrored room, on its west side, facing South I think. I think Sean was over my right shoulder, and maybe Rich was too, and they were both practicing. At some point in the song, the lyrics go something along the lines of "and scattered like lights from the sun; where was your mind, ye-e-ah" before "coming down, the world's turned over; ..." and the "was" is the syllable on the G, which I thought I couldn't reach.

Somehow, I'm pretty sure that while I was belting it on with the vibraphone, I actually hit that G. I had to scream pretty hard, but I think I got the pitch. It didn't squeak or seem to cause dissonance. It was the highest I'd ever gone. I tried to do it with some other songs, or with longer notes, just a little bit later, but it didn't seem to work. I think I tried that when Alex and Sean were near me, and I think they might have heard me. Or maybe it was actually Matt, the director. It might have been embarassing, but I don't think they know that I'm really a singer at all, and I guess technically I'm not really.

Anyhow, I just thought that was exciting.

Peace out.

tQx

In actuarial science, the symbol tqx is the notation for the probability of somebody dying anytime from the year denoted x and the t years following x. Typically it's given as a function, and typically it turns out that the area underneath the function between 0 and about 110 is 1, which implies that there is a 100% chance that you've died at age 110. So the function might be something like (t)Q(x) = (1/10) * e (-1/10)*x, where x is your age. You have to work with it a lot, and you use it to construct mortality tables, probabilities of dying, and from there you'd calculate how much premiums the group should pay based on their expected lifespan, etc., etc.

Typically the whole concept seems pretty distance, but sometimes our teacher Ron brings it back home. In class, he often gives examples of tQx for something like, "If you have an equal chance of dying every year before 100, and you're all 20 now, when will most of you be dead?" Sixty, of course. And some kids look around the room, like "Holy crap, we're actually dealing with dying people here." Recently he was doing an example, which requires some math to understand, but in case you're unfamiliar I'll explain a little bit. We were working with an operation, and the point is that if you input a number of about 115, the operation will tell you that everyone has died. The question in class was what number to put in to assure everyone had died, and someone responded "infinity." Technically, it's correct, but you don't need to go that high.

Our teacher responded, "Hmm, well, that's certainly safe." He has a way of making everything seem mundane even when it's not, in a good way - he smiles a lot and often stands akimbo and nods just a tad. "Yeah, well... I suppose no one's getting out of here alive," he finished.

Just in case you're interested, your chance of dying can be predicted almost exactly using a really simple equation, with a simple principle. The principle is that as you get older, you get worse and worse at warding off the effects of aging and mortality. The guess was that you get worse exponentially as time goes on. It requires math again, but to explain, the "force of mortality" for you at any moment is e^[.0004 + .00002x^1.103] or so. It seem like low numbers, I know, but if you add it up, it guarantees you're dead by about 111.

It's strange how with all the complexities of life and nature biology, we can figure it all out with five numbers.

Peace out.

T9 Switch

My T9 is one of the ones that learns/remembers the new words that you put in. For a long time when I hit 1-1 and then hit Next twice, it would bring up =), but recently it's switched so that the same button combination brings up =(, and I have to hit next again for it to bring up =). I'm not sure why that is. I don't know if it's because I actually use =( more often than =) recently, or if it just means that one time when it reset its memory, I used =( before =) thus putting it first in the new memory cache. In either case, it's pretty annoying, and if I send you a text with an inappropriate emoticon, this is probably why.

Peace out.

Frustration with Example

Homework in college can get pretty frustrating. Unlike high school, we typically only have homework once per week, but it also typically counts for a lot more of your grade, like 10% or 20%. Also, it's graded a lot more harshly, and it's typically more difficult. Instead of just spending maybe 30 minutes reviewing what you did in class, it's often the main instrument of learning the material (yes, you teach yourself, and it's just through the homework, fun!). Kids usually spend a lot of time on each assignment, and usually there are only about four or five questions, but that can still take many hours. If there are more questions, the grader (who is typically not the teacher) selects a few and grades those and nothing else. For instance, in Math 220H (linear algebra, honors) we would have about 30 problems/week, but only six would be graded. So if you got 29/30 correct and one of those was graded, you got an 83%. Hooray!

Anyhow, I was doing my Math 465 (Number Theory) homework today because it's due tomorrow. One of the problems caused me a great deal of frustration, largely because I spent a lot of time on it, and I learned nothing from it. I wouldn't have minded if I had learned. Let me explain the problem. It'll be fun, I promise, and you'll get to see what super cool math majors do!

So we're working with Greatest Common Divisors (GCDs), which is probably a familiar example. Pick two numbers A and B, and the GCD is the biggest number that divides both of them. If A = 12 and B = 8, the GCD is 4, because no bigger number divides both 8 and 12.

There's a fun fact about this though. If you were to just look at the equation 12*X + 8*Y = E, and pick any X and Y that you wanted as long as they were both whole numbers, you could never make E any smaller than 4. So, the smallest number that you can make E using that set-up is the GCD of those two numbers.

The problem was this: If A*D - B*C = 1, show that the GCD of (A+B) and (C+D) is 1.

So I started on that problem, and thought about it for days, just to let it sit and simmer and see what came up. Basically, nothing did. So tonight when I worked on it, I just tried everything I could. I noticed that it's a linear combination if you write it correctly: A*D + (-C)*B = 1, and thus the GCD of A and B is 1. Hooray? I tried to go further from there but it didn't help me.

Then I ran out of options and looked in one of my old math books to see if there was any help there. There was nothing pertaining to this particular problem, but it DID spark an idea somehow. I figured I'd look at a linear combination of the second part and see if that helped: (A+B)*K + (D-C)*N = M. What I thought I could do is as follows. Assume that M is greater than 1. Thus, the GCD of A+B and D-C is greater than one, and M divides both of them since it's a divisor of both. Since it devides A+B, it divides A and B, and since M>1, the GCD of A and B isn't one - contradiction! But the last step doesn't make any sense, so I gave up on that.

I thought about doing prime decomposition, and I thought I had it there for a while. Then I tried expanding my linear combination, but still nothing.

It ended up that the answer was a trick you learn in high school called "Adding zero." Basically, it goes like this: If you add and subtract the same quantity from the same side of the equation, everything is still the same. Thus, you can say X = Y or you can say X + A - A = Y, because the +A and -A equal zero together. What you had to do was this:

A*D - B*C = 1

A*D - B*C + A*C - A*C = 1

A*D +A*C - B*C - A*C = 1

A(D+C) - C(B+A) = 1

A(C+D) + (-C)(A+B) = 1

Since you have a linear combination of C+D and A+B, their GCD is one.

Okay, fine. It's true, I get it, the GCD is one. The thing is, I didn't learn anything from it - the answer to the problem was a stupid trick you laern in high school that doesn't teach you anything about the methods or insights of number theory. Perhaps there is a tiny bit of somethign to be learned - sometimes you add zero! - but the goal would have been much better served if the instructor had added to the question (Hint: Add and subtract a certain quantity) so that you didn't spend two hours on it.

Anyway, it's late.

Goodnight.

Sodium Pentathol

I realized recently that sodium pentathol's two uses are somewhat interesting to consider:

1) Makes it impossible to feel pain
2) Makes you much more likely to tell the truth

Peace out.

Christine

The summer that I went away to Governor's School, a girl in my grade named Christine L died. She was new to the district and I actually didn't know her when I heard of the accident, but people kept saying someone named Christine in our grade had died, and I was sure I would know who it was. Eventually I found a yearbook with her picture in it, and it turned out I actually hadn't known who she was. I found a MySpace as well, and there were a couple more pictures there. Some of her best friends were some of my acquaintences, and they would write on her wall from time to time even after that day to say they were thinking of her and they missed her. Visiting that page really is heart-breaking. I probably would have liked her a ton from what was on there - she was liberal, talked about how much she loved her friends all the time, into politics, etc...

Today I was in Pollock on the North side, the regular cafeteria, and I went to get some desert or milk or something like that. On the way back, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a face that looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. For just a split second, I thought it was Christine. She looked the same - short blond hair, round cheeks, thin, pretty eyes, smiling. For a split second, I had no idea what it was going on. I was convinced for a moment that she was alive again. A moment later, I realized it was a girl who was in my Stat 200 class last semester, and nothing about the situation seemed so special anymore.

Peace out.

Nose Hairs

It's been so cold recently that, when biking from one class to another for hardly three minutes at a time, the hairs inside my nose freeze. It's very noticeable, unfamiliar, and fairly uncomfortable.

Peace out.

Obama Breakfast

After we watched the inauguration, I drove Hannah, Abby, and Joey to drumline so they could practice folding the floor or something, and Matt took Chloe and Molly to Megan's, where I drove after dropping my passengers off. Chloe drew the Obama symbol on her hand and jumped around with it and her Obama shirt on Smithbridge, and apparently someone honked and one bus-driver turned their head, according to Molly. When I stepped in, a man said to us, "Yeah, how about that Hawaiian president?"

We joked about putting Obama symbols on our food. I tried to put syrup on my waffle in the shape of the Obama symbol, but it didn't really work, although I took pictures of it. Matt put some butter on his pancake's top edge, and then took the syrup as I was about to use it, saying, "I have to put it on before the butter melts," and quickly made an Obama symbol with the syrup as the bottom half, the bottom of the circle and a couple stripes. I took a picture of it, because you could actually tell what it was. He told Molly she should make the word "HOPE" out of her fries, and she did, and I took a picture of that also.

When we were done, Chloe brought $25 up on our $24.49 check or something like that and didn't get change. I asked if she got the change for the tip, and Matt said, "The change we can believe in? Hah, you should have said that." At one point, the waitress noticed that we had overpaid and came to Chloe to give her the change, but Chloe pounded out the correct line, "No it's okay, you can keep the Change We Can Believe In."

Peace out.

N

I watched a video on YouTube recently called "Read a Book (dirty version)" which you can find if you want, which I first found because someone mentioned it in Paul's room, and they showed it to me when I was playing Four Square on their carpet. Gina and I thought it was really funny, and I would sometimes speak in the language in the video because it was funny. They said the word "nigga" a lot, for example. We were walking outside and I said that to Gina at the end of a sentence, and a fraction of a second later a black girl walked around the corner just in front of us, and I felt like a d-bag, even though I'm not racist and didn't mean anything by it.

Peace out.

Trucks

I think I realized this weekend that truck radios and possibly radar detectors can mess up your car radio, which I never noticed before. Some sort of flat bed truck, I think, had something going on that really messed up my radio for about one second when I drove past its cabin. I realized it, and figured it was probably the truck. I was on my way home from Penn State, and passed a truck stop shortly after that, and the radio blipped again. It sounded like something was popping a metallic bubble in the car, if you can imagine that, and it happened far more strongly outside the truck stop than just beside one truck. It happened once more as I passed another truck, but not others. I don't know if something is actually causing it, or if I'm imagining it.

Peace out.

Thief

Yesterday I went to the student bookstore. I bought the full version of my textbook for my Linear Regression class on Sunday; it was enormous and cost $200. The next day I went to class and my teacher told us that we could buy a smaller version that was cheaper and cut out a lot of the information that we didn't need for the course. So I went to the store and bought it.

When I got to the register, it came up as $109, and I paid. I thought that it had said it was $89 for a used book, so I decided to go back and check the price tag hanging near the book to make sure it was right. I knew that I would be walking out without paying for the book again, so I assumed people would assume I was a thief. So, I walked around with the book open and the receipt clearly displayed on its first page. Suddenly I was acutely aware of all the people that were able to watch me - a man on the stairs, just standing there, I realized was a manager - whcih I had never been aware of before. I walked past him and one other older staff member on my way out, and then through the registers, where a young Asian girl said she could take me, but I told her I had already paid. I don't know if she believed me or not but I guess she had no choice. I went to the side to get my backpack back - they take them so you can't stuff books in them - and I realized the girl turned around twice looking at me. I don't know if she was suspicious or if she was just looking around.

The next day I returned the full version to the other bookstore, and bought a calculator, then proceeded to look for the HUB's computer store. I couldn't find it, and I made a big circle around the HUB and walked back in through a different place than I had exited, and the alarm went off. There were sensors lining the entrance, and they made loud beeps and red lights lit up at the top of them. I had the receipt for the calculator with me, and again displayed it clearly. I didn't know what to do, but I felt like I was about to be accused of theft by a manager, so I sort of just waited to be accused. No one came up to me. The only person I saw walking anywhere in my direction was the girl who worked the register when I bought the calculator, so I just walked away.

Peace out.

All-Male Dorm Floors

God's punishment for the non-believers.

Peace out.

Song

You won't know what I'll be feeling, 'cuz you've always asked for a needle and Novacaine
Someday you'll let down your guard; it comes from behind and it hits like a hurricane
I had said I'd wait but I realized that I don't have time for this heart made of cellophane
You said I can't know what you're feeling, but I looked in your eyes and they read like a weathervane

Possibly a chorus of a new song. Just felt like writing it.

Peace out.

Women and Children

It occured to me sometime last night that I'm leaving the group of "Women and Children" that get to jump ship first and don't get shot in hostage situations and am entering the group of "Fighting-Aged Men" that have to go down with the ship and get shot when no one wants to.

Peace out.

Blanket

This morning I woke up sometime before I actually wanted to get out of bed, which happens all the time to everyone I'm sure. I adjusted position, but I didn't realize where I was moving from - my elbow was putting weight on one part of my blanket that I've had since I was born, and my body was putting weight on the closer part of it. So when I moved my body back, my elbow held part of it in place, but my body took the other part with it, giving it a somewhat serious rip. I heard it and I was extremely sad. I don't know how much longer it'll make it. All the corners are looking pretty bad now. Some are worse than others, and I actually couldn't tell which one I ripped today when I look later, but I am afraid it'll all be apart soon.

Peace out.

Just Noticed

That I wrote as many blog entries in the short time between leaving home for Brown and the end of 2007 as I did in all of 2008.

Peace out.

Piano

Playing piano is a lot harder at college than it is at home where I basically have a "private" piano. At school there's one in my dorm room, but the walls are thin so writing a song is embarrassing still. There's one in a study lounge, so it's clear why I don't write there. The other is five minutes' walk away in a basement sound-proof room, which is sort of creepy and frequently occupied, making it usually not worth going. Thus I haven't been able to write songs nearly as much as I used to.

The February of my senior year I think I wrote about 4 songs in four weeks. I haven't written one is five weeks or so at this point (since right before Thanksgiving). I think I still can't write at home because I've lost the "habit" of constant piano playing because of terrible pianoing conditions at Penn State.

It makes me really frustrated, and I would do just about anything in the world to change it. I would kill a man to be able to write songs more frequently. I guess it's something I'll have to work on.

Peace out.

Windows

I've always been sort of afraid of the dark. Not really just darkness, but more like what you can't see because of the lack of light... which I suppose is really a more accurate labelling of being "afraid of the dark." When I was younger - and sometimes even now - I would run up my basement stairs when I turned the lights off at night, fearing something would grab my ankles and drag me down and torture/kill me if I didn't move quickly enough.

Currently my main fear is windows. I'm often afraid something sinister is beyond them. Sometimes when I'm in the basement, I fear a criminal peering into the windows above the pool table. When I put my cereal bowl away at night, I'm afraid that someone with a rifle is positioned in the woods, waiting for someone to stand at the sink to shoot. Right at this moment at this computer, there are two huge windows just to the right of me, and I had to completely cover the one I can see in my peripheral out of fear of something or someone jumping up to it and scaring me to death.

Peace out.