Lack of Memory Property

"For x, y > 0,

P [ X > x + y | X > x] = P [ X > y]

We can interpret this as follows.  Suppose that X represents the time, measured from now, in weeks until the next insurance claim is filed by a company, and suppose also that X has an exponential distribution with mean 1/t.  Suppose that 5 weeks have passed without an insurance claim, and we want to know the distribution of the time until the next insurance claim as measured from our new time origin, which is 5 weeks after the previous time origin.  According to the lack of memory property, the fact that there have been no claims in the past 5 weeks is irrelevant, and measuring time starting from our new time origin, the time until the next claim is exponential with the same mean 1/t.  In fact, no matter how many claims have occured in the past 5 weeks, as measured from now, the time until the next claim has an exponential distribution with mean 1/t; the distribution has "forgotten" what has happened prior to now and the "clock" measuring time until the next claim is restarted now."

Peace out.

Eating It

I ride my bike to and from classes to save time; I'm sure like everyone who reads this knows that.

Last Friday, after my Stat 415 class, I hopped on my bike in the bike "parking lot" that's right outside of Willard, on its east wall.  Typically I just stand beside my bike and walk it north a little bit until I'm on the main road until there are less people, but for some reason I decided to just hop on right away that day and hope for the best.

So I hop on, and start going toward the busy sidewalk.  There were a lot of people.  I remember there was a girl coming from my left, I think she was Asian, and some guys coming from the right.  I didn't want to thread right between them, so I tried to stop.  I put on the brakes, and I turned my wheel a sharp left, as if I might go behind the girl coming from my left somehow. 

I guess I turned my wheel too far, and I pedalled a tiny bit and then IMMEDIATELY just hit the deck.  And I totally ate concrete in front of everyone.  I'm sure there were hundreds of people in the area, but I don't know how many were watching.  I didn't know what to do, I felt really embarassed, so to try to dispel some of the awkwardness I used my loud Will Ferrel voice and said, "WOW THAT WAS RELLY EMBARASSING."  I got back up and just started walking, and realized the knee of my pants were all wet and sort of dirty.

The kid named Mark in the room next to me was walking by without my noticing, but then he said, "Good going," or something to that effect.  I told him I was going to walk with him because I'd feel less like a loser, and as we were walking he said, "So, uh... you might want to learn how to ride a bike a little better."  I agreed.  We got to the road at the north and I rode to my next class, where no one knew what happened.

Peace out.

KiSoek

There's a guy in my STAT 501 course named KiSoek.  He's really nice.  He sat next to me in lab one day and we just started talking, I'm not really sure about what, but it was probably something about the course.  We talked to each other every Friday when we'd sit near each other in lab, and then he started to sit in the front row of class (with me) so we'd talk then too.  He's super nice, you have to understand.  He's also very Asian, has a pretty thick accent, and somewhat frequently I have trouble understanding what he's saying.  Today I had trouble when he said "fifth" as in "fifth edition" of a textbook.

One day I asked him how he got to class and he said he'd ride his bike, unless it was too cold, in which case his wife would drive him.  Wife?!  I thought he was like 24 like any other grad student.  He then said he also had kids.  KIDS?!  Gosh, how far along are you man?  Then he laughed and said, "My age is uh, 38!"  I had absolutely no clue.  He definitely doesn't look it.  I dunno if he works out or just eats well but it doesn't show.

Anyway.  His kids are like seven and nine years old.

A day or two ago his backpack got stolen.  He was working in the library and got up for a minute, and when he came back it was gone.  He talked to the library staff, then the police, but they basically said it happens all the time and there's not much they could do.  They found his backpack in the bathroom, emptied out.  They took his stat book, which I've lent to him for the night, and his computer.   We were talking about it for a minute at the HUB today, and I thought it was very sad.  He said he didn't care so much about most things - he could buy a new computer - but he mentioned that he had the "entire history" (in his words) of his kids on there.  From day one up until age nine.  And now it's all gone, and he'll probably never see any of it again.

He didn't get very emotional when he said it, but I could tell he was pretty upset.  He breathed in and looked up and sort of sighed to himself.

Peace out.

Titty Bar Lock-out

The Saturday that just passed, the drumline had a performance in Mifflinburg.  We also taught a clinic there.  We practiced on Saturday until something a little bit after 11pm, and then we were free to do what we wanted.  All the instructors went out to drink like they usually do, so Sean was in charge of turning the lights on and off.

I was totally not ready to go to bed.  I talked to Kyle, who was laying on his sweet memory foam bed for the night, and then a few other people, and ended up driving Gina, Isaac (our new bass drummer) and Kyle to Sheetz.  Kyle really really wanted a milkshake, but my car was almost so cold it made him not want one.   I kept the car warm so he would still want it.  I got a pack of purple and pink nerds, but I left them in the gym that night and forgot to get them the next day.

Anyway, after we got out of Sheetz, we had no idea what to do because it was still too early to go to sleep.  One of the other guys suggested, "Let's look for a titty bar!" and so I thought, hell, why not?  What's the worst that could possibly happen?  So I drove a couple miles down the main road in town (Rt 45) looking for anything that might be a strip club.  We eagerly read every sign we came across, particularly neon ones.  We were let down in every circumstance.  We turned around in a creepy used car lot, parked in the Mifflinburg lot, and went to the door.

We had gone to Sheetz with another car of people, and we thought they would leave the door propped open for us.  However, we were wrong.  It was pretty cold that night, and also pitch black in the parking lot because they turn all the lights out there at that school after a certain time at night to save energy.  So I was dressed alright, in a light jacket.  Gina had a bunch of layers on.  Kyle and Isaac were both wearing gym shorts if I remember correctly, but had on jackets and sweatshirts.  When we found the door was locked we just thought, "God, you must be kidding me."

So the first thing we did of course was knock loudly.  However, the gym we were staying it was three sets of doors away, so there was no way they would ever hear us.  I considered honking my car forever until they came, but never brought it up.  Isaac tried to force up a window, but that didn't work.  Kyle and Isaac had both left their phones inside, so we couldn't get to any of the numbers they had gotten because no one memorizes numbers anymore.  So we were stuck with my phone and Gina's phone.  I called the few people I knew that were inside - Cass and Sean - but neither of them answered.  Then we decided to call Laura to get some other people's numbers, so Gina called her.  She kept hanging up to give us numbers, which made Kyle really frustrated.  She gave us the number for Kate and Steve W, but neither of them answered.

Well actually, she gave us the number for SOME Steve, but not the one in drumline.  Kyle called "Steve" from Gina's phone and the guy was just like, "Dude, what?  What are you talking about?  No, this is the wrong person, sorry."  Which was great.

So it had probably been like ten minutes at this point and we were still locked out and not sure what to do.  I told Gina to go back to the car because her teeth were chattering, but she didn't want to.

Eventually, I gave in and called Tollie.  I told her we were stuck outside and someone needed to let us in, and I figured she'd have a number of a bunch of people inside to try.

A few minutes later, Alix came to let us in.  The wallet and paper we'd been using to prop the door open was nowhere to be seen.  What the hell happened?  Oh well.  Alix asked us why we were out so late and I told her, because I knew it would make her angry.

Peace out.

Ah

I don't usually make posts like this, but I just want to record that this is the most tired I remember being in just about as long as I can remember.

Probably since the time I stayed up all night talking to Cat, or the time I tried to stay up all night at the end of PGSS, or the time I stayed up all night at Brown.  

It is too early.

Peace out.

(Note that this was originally posted by accident on thethingswesaid, Wednesday after midnight, and I slept well into Thursday morning)

Cai

I went to Late Night (a cafeteria that's open late) recently with a couple friends to just hang out and hopefully eat some Mozz sticks as we say.  At one point I went up to get some cereal and decided on Frosted Flakes, and just as I put the bowl under the dispenser, a girl with black hair, pale skin, but maybe an Italian face who worked came up beside me to fix something nearby and said, "Yeah man, go for those Frosted Flakes, they're great."  Something about the way she said it was interesting, so I said, "Yeah, definitely - " and then I realized that "They're Great" was referring to the tagline for the cereal, - "oh, hahaha, clever.  Yeah, they are great."  I wanted to make some witty reference to another cereal slogan, but none came to mind.  Kid tested, mother approved?  Eh.

Later I went to get some milk, but it was empty, so one of the workers needed to change it.  They called someone, but no one came, and the same girl ended up doing it.  My friend Jaffe (his last name) was with me.  I think that her name tag said Cai but I'm not really sure.  She talked to Matt and I as she opened up the silver dispenser, took out the huge empty crates, and then loaded another one.  I realized that she had a bit of trouble loading the full one, and I made fun of Jaffe and myself for letting the woman do all the hard work.  She said that she was a disgruntled worker, but at least she got paid.  She also made a reference to Napoleon Dynamite - "You could drink whole milk if you wanted to" - as she walked away at the beginning of the episode.  She seemed like a cool cat.

I think she was in Simmons today.  I was playing piano, and I think I saw her sit down on a couch beyond the piano, where I couldn't see very well.  There was a friend there, too.  They both seemed like they wanted to sleep - and, I'm pretty sure they fell asleep.  I played quiet and calming songs so I wouldn't bug them.  In a way it was nice - I think they may have actually liked it, since they came in while I was playing - but also, I like to play what I want to play, not waht sleepy passerbys want me to play.  I didn't get to check if it was her or not afterward.

Peace out.

Strangers at Simmons

Sometime over the weekend, after drumline, I was hanging around Simmons.  I was walking up the stairs right near the lobby (the main stairwell, with black "granite" flooring) when I saw someone knock at the window that's to your left if you're walking up from the lobby's floor.  I just looked for a second and stepped on - you're not supposed to let strangers in - but they knocked again frantically and I said, "I DON'T KNOW YOU" and then they said something which I couldn't really understand, but I sort of realized it was an old Asian man, and I went to let him in.

When he came in, he was sort of loud, and the person at the help desk definitely noticed the disturbance.  I was afraid he would be mad at me for letting him in, but he was a delivery man (at least, we hoped.  He had food and stuff).  He called someone on his cell phone and said that he was in the lobby after asking me where he was, but apparently the person couldn't understand him.  He seemed a little bit angry and fairly frustrated.  He hung up his phone, and then asked me to call them back and explain the situation (white person = English!).  I called the person and they said they were at the Simmons loading dock, and I said that he was in the lobby.  The person said they would come up to get it, but he insisted on going down - I knew this was a bad idea because we might somehow miss each other on the way by.

I started walking him down the stairs and insisting, "The loading dock is down this way.  This is the way she would come if she were coming from there."  At each door and each turn, I think he grew a little bit more suspicious, like I was leading him on a wild goose chase or some sort of stunt.  Eventually we got to the basement, and I looked around, knowing the girl would probably be headed up.  He followed out the door behind me, and I noticed a girl at the elevator just as we got to the floor.  He asked if it was for her, and she said yes, it was.  They had a quick exchange that was somewhat angry - you said you'd be here!  No, I said I'd be here! - but the deal was done, I suppose.  I can't remember where he went or where I went, but he thanked me before he left.

---

There was a black guy sitting and waiting at the door to Simmons's loading dock a few days ago when I went out for some reason - dinner?  He said thank you and went inside, but I felt like there was something weird about him.  He was approximately my age, but I had never seen him before ever, and he was just sitting, waiting, as if he didn't know anyone and he didn't have a card.  He had a big blue jacket on, and a blue knit hat.

I've heard rumors of someone getting into the dorm recently and apparently giving people a rough time.  It's suspected that whoever it is isn't a student.  My friend Vicki apparently glanced at him once, and he came over and cursed her out and kicked her computer.  I was wondering if it was this guy.

I did feel bad about letting him in, but then again, what can I do?  If he's a nice guy, there's no harm in letting him in.  If he's a murderer, then he'd probably murder me for kicking him out onto the cold streets at night.  And if I don't let him in, someone else will (while I'm laying outside, murdered).

Anyhow.  I came back later - maybe I went to the computer lab? - and I saw someone approaching the door from the other direction (we were both outside, he from the west and I from the east) and I thought, shit, is it that guy again?  It was that guy.  I don't know if he was waiting for someone to approach the building or not but there was like no way I could avoid letting him in.  I felt bad about it again.

However, no one's been murdered.  I saw him in the study lounge tonight, with a laptop, on Facebook.

Peace out.

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.

---

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.