"talk"

So I "talked" to Bill today. And the quotes are there cuz really I just texted him, but it was one of our marathon hours long text conversations where dozens of messages are sent. Last time I was in Iowa City I didn't bring up moving to Seattle. Mostly because we were at the Farley's and it would have become a huge "where is your life going" deal. Also because at the time I didn't have as much of a plan.

Of course it comes up today. And it's a lot to explain in text messaging format. So four long messages later the only response I get is "Who's Matt?" Well, one of my best friends from high school. "Oh ok. Sweet" Does that seem weird to anyone else? That's what you just chose to focus on? no other questions. just that. and then it occurs to me that I'm not so good at sharing the details. Amy and Kinsey know all about my friends from high school because they were there for 4 years of the stories and the ridiculousness. But does anyone else really? What does that sound like out of context?

I'm very all or nothing with friendships. If you want to know that you have to be willing to hear about all this other stuff, because if I'm gonna trust you I want you to know it all. It's amazing how alcohol has MADE some of these friendships just happen.

In high school I was told that people couldn't figure me out, I was too private. They felt like I knew everything and they knew nothing. So I tried to change. And I think I really did. As much as you can when you're 17. (like at 22 I'm so much better) And then, I had that huge fight with Abby. And all of a sudden trusting people didn't seem worth it anymore. Sophmore year wasn't the best year for me. I know that now. And I can see the reason behind what I did, and the good that has come out of the bad. So now I'm trying to get back to that place I was freshman year. It's slow, but I'm trying. So be patient. Ask me questions, and make me answer them. Deep down I really want to, but I think I'm still just a little bit afraid.

afraid of seeming weak, afraid that you'll get sick of listening to me, afraid that you'll use what you know against me somehow, afraid that I'm not the person you think I am and once you find out you'll like me less.

Nicknames are weird. Especially the ones that seem to stick long past all context being lost. In my life I've been expected to respond to:

Mel
Rachel
Sporty Spice
Terri
Junior
Blue

Those last few are from work. And nothing confuses a customer more than wearing a name tag that says alex and responding to the name Terri. One coworker actually thought that was my real name, but i went by alex. Terri Alexandra Thiel...like Brian Luke Pomranke. this girl seriously came up to me and said, "yea I wouldn't go by terri either." But then again this is the only person I've ever met who in one day had drama involving her boyfriend, her husband and her childrens dad. yea. she's great though, I love working with her.

Junior, because our new store Captain is named alex also. Blue, as in, "you're my boy Blue! 'all my life, nothing lasts forever..." Thank You old school. Spring Break 2000! Off Road adventure!

Anyway. Nicknames are weird.

work

I was right. I never actually was able to talk to my boss about that project. But on the up side we got Jimmy Johns for dinner. I'm so easy to placate. Blow off my important questions but feed me good subs and I'm content. Hopefully tonight I can pin him down and make my point clear.

Cheese is all pretty and re-merchandized. Basically we had to take everything apart, clean, re-organize, put it back together. It took longer than we expecter but we also spent a good hour or so slacking and goofing around. ah well.

go off on tangents

Lately I keep starting things but never finish. Like books. And mix cds. And projects at work. And cleaning my room. Oh yea and probably the biggest one... my website.... The worst part is I see this and yet i can't bring myself to change it.

I don't work until 6 pm tonight. So I had all day and could have gotten so many different things done. At the very least I could have cleaned my room, finished those cds and made some webpages. nope. None of the above. I woke up at 7 am. I read for a couple hours. (so I guess I kinda made some progress) I took a nap. I ate some lunch. I watched Empire Records. And now I'm back at the computer.

So I work today from 6 pm to 3 am. Why? you ask. To re-merchandise cheese. Yea I don't know what that means either. But I can tell you all about it tomorrow.

I realized the reason I haven't really posted anything lately is because all I do is work and sleep and spend time online. Which doesn't seem all that interesting to me. But I've decided to begin posting about it anyway. And maybe it will lead me to more interesting topics to talk about. For example this post has just gotten ridiculous with its miscellanity. yes that's right I like to make up words.

Tonight at work I'm supposed to talk to my boss about one of those projects and why I've seemingly stagnated and how we can fix that. Hopefully it will be a good meeting. I predict, however, that we'll talk about it, but nothing will be changed to help me get the job done.

So I'm caving in. I need an mp3 player, and have needed one, but I couldn't bring myself to buy an iPod. It seemed too cliched, too mainstream. And this isn't something I usually have a problem with, but this time it bothered me. Now I'm caving. But to be different I'm buying the black one. When was the last time you saw someone with the black iPod? I don't think I ever have. The question is, what to have engraved on the back. By purchasing online, I get free shipping and two lines of 27 characters to be engraved for free. It's actually more space than it sounds like. I've been trying to come up with something better than "alex's iPod" because if that's the best you can do, you really shouldn't be engraving anything at all. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Make Mix Tapes... cds? whatever...

So I noticed today that when I make a general mix cd there's a similar feel to all the songs. Sure the list includes two or three songs that are added on purely because they're new and I can't get them out of my head, but most fit together. I suppose this shouldnt' be a surprise. The interesting part, and of course the point I'm trying to make, it what the common theme seems to be. This most recent cd can be summed up as songs about missing the last stage of life you left. About wanting to go back and the memories of those people/places/events.

Huh. I didn't know I was feeling like that. The crazy (impressive?) thing is the variety of songs. It's not like I put together a list of tracks that are all slow and "woe is me! I miss..."

Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Toxic Toast?
Hot Hot Heat - Shame on You?
Monty Python - The Galaxy Song?!?!?!

How did I not realize the theme sooner? Of course there are songs that were obvious:

Remy Zero - Perfect Memory
Fountains of Wayne - Hackensack

But that's just a handful of songs. So apparently... I've been in a remembering kind of mood lately. Who knew.

websites

Hey, so I have a website now. part of a website? sure. www.gangstaninjasfrombrewcity.com I didn't pick the name. Blame Matt and Drew. Most likely it's entirely Matt's fault. There's nothing too interesting up there. Check it out anyway. Go on. DO IT you know you want to.

Live 8

So I watched most of the Live 8 concert this weekend and it made me start thinking about some things. Now I'm all for ending poverty and I know opening up markets and increasing trade will go a long way to helping out people in these countries, but no one ever really talked about these issues:

1) We get cheaper medicines to these countries and let's say it halves the number of people dying every day... How will these 10 000 people who no longer die each day get fed when there are already hundreds of thousands starving?

2) If there are farmers trying to get their crops sold and people starving, why isn't more of the food making it to local markets? Why focus on the international/intercontinental?

3) At least twice I heard statements saying "It's time we step up and help out. AIDS was introduced to Africa to keep them down just like the government put crack in the ghettos in the 70s. We need to stand up and say that's not right."

Do people believe that? That some secret coalition of western world leaders thought to themselves "hey I know how we can keep african farmers from competing with us, lets give them an incurable disease" Seriously? The whole crack in the ghettos thing is at least plausible, but AIDS? People really need to get their facts straight before going on national tv and blurting stuff out.


Just things I thought about.

follow up

Just in case any one was remotely curious... that professor I hated... yea still hate him, but he also gave me an a-.
don't really know why. I got a 90 on the final project that didn't work. And some how must have saved the exam. who knew?

...been staring at me all night... 

 

Explain

Crazy ranting complaining ahead... be warned....

(I just realized I start all my stories with the word so....hmmm oh well, don't care)

So I know I didn't get my Optimization homework done. I turn in incomplete homework for other courses all the time. I take my lowered grade and move on. Not this time. Stupid professor pulls me aside after class, brings out my homework and asks "I'd guess you're not happy with how this turned out, huh?" Well no shit... "No, but I worked on it for hours and couldn't get the second question into the 4th degree polynomial." "Well I have office hours today so why don't you come by and we'll get this fixed." What?! you mean I have to redo it? It's a beautiful day! I was going to go play some disc golf and then head to work at 3 pm! Noooooooo! "All right I'll stop in then."

Rage! So much Rage! Must swim out anger. Hour later: too tired to be angry... want to nap... want to eat...

I go to office hours, show him the work I've done so far and where I got stuck. He brings up Maple (If you do complicated math with any regularity Maple ought to be your new beast friend) and he starts plugging stuff in. Now I know Maple well enough, but umm wow, didn't know it could do that! That makes my life so much easier! So he gets to the gobbledygook 6th degree root crap I got stuck at and I mention this and he says "huh." Of course where I was stymied, he reaches into his nifty little bag of this is why I'm the professor tricks and gets an actual 6th degree polynomial that can't be factored.

Victory is mine! Professor 0 - Alex 1 I'm not just retarded! He doesn't know what to do with this either! Shit! What did he just do? He just got 6 sets of points, 2 complex that get thrown out and I'm left with 4 roots... like he originally said I would. Professor 1 - Alex 1. Yes I can go to the lab and redo the problem and turn it in tomorrow....

Problem 2: "What's this error you got here?" I ran HIS code like HE told me to and got a weird error output. Not my fault, not gonna change the code, just gonna turn it in as is. "Well that's what I got when I ran it with (0,0) as my starting point." "Here in the lab? let's try again and see what's going on." Oh please let it spit out the error again. Don't make me look like a fool... BAM there it is. Exact same result! Vindicated again! A few minutes of narration and code testing later he turns to me and says "Congratulations you just disovered a flaw in my code!" Woohoo! So that can be left as is. Professor 1 - Alex 2

Problem 3: "Umm these are KKT conditions, and the question asks about Lagrange conditions..." Um, I know, but I skipped the day you covered Lagrange so I had to consult that massive textbook we don't even use and these are the only relevant conditions I could find. Professor 2 - Alex 2 "Oops." "Ok well lets start at the beginning... What is the objective function?" "x^2 + y^2 = r^2? no that's the constraint, so just x?" long pause "Right...and..." and what? it's just x. isn't it? we're minimizing x. So 10 minutes of me feeling small and stupid later, I'm now on my way to the lab to fix 2 problems. Professor 3 - Alex 2 Dang it.

So much for disc golf, so much for going into work. Now I'm just cranky and pissed.

Dream

So I've been having some weird dreams the last couple nights..... tuesday night was about scuba diving in a pool and searching for something on the floor, but it wasn't a normal pool floor... and my Bio I TA was there, and she was pretty crazy so I guess it just kinda fit in with whatever was going on. Last night I dreamed I was in England riding a train past Old Trafford (where Man Utd play) and saw that a game was starting and climbed out the train window, jumped down, hopped a fence and took a seat. Random. Then I get to work today and read Aaron's livejournal which always has weekly horoscope things and when I'm sitting here bored at work I'll check mine.....


So begins the Potent Dreaming phase of the year for you, Taurus. In the coming weeks, the adventures you have while you sleep will be far more interesting than any movie you could see in a theater. Some of your dreams may be the nighttime equivalent of wild goose chases and shaggy dog stories, with no discernible plots or meaning. But the revelations you receive in others could change your life forever with useful lessons and brilliant insights. To help you remember these spiritual gifts from your subconscious mind, please keep a pen and notebook near your bed.

What? What does this mean? More crazy dreams to come? I don't know if I like that. I normally don't dream at all... or at least don't remember them.

not...

One day my high school band director came to class looking pretty horrible, like he was upset about something. We assumed it was a family member or a friend but instead he told us this:

That day the paper had yet another story of a high school shooting and he couldn't help it, he just started crying. His wife told him it was all right, no one they knew, not even this state, he didn't have to let it destroy him like that. But he did. These were innocent kids, someone elses students. He said 'It should make me cry. These kids matter. This is tragic.'

I remember thinking I wish I felt the same way. That I was that empathetic. I'm not. I can't afford to be. There's so much wrong in the world, so much pain and injustice that if every thing cut right through my heart I couldn't read the papers any more, I couldn't hear any news.

There's a song by Kurt Bestor - The Prayer of the Children. Men's Choir sang it at a concert that same semester. My friend Liz, her dad's a photographer for the Milwaukee Journal, supplied pictures of children living in poverty from around the world and they were displayed throughout the song. My heart breaks all over again when I hear it. It was one of those surreal moments both for what it was and what happened as soon as it started. A cell phone rang. (This alone would get you shunned from all further choir concerts, but interrupting this song?) The reality of the world we live in stood up and said 'Remember me? Your job, house, kids, whatever?' The woman felt horrible and apoligized profusely. The song was stopped, the concert puased and then it started over. What timing.

Moments of vulnerability are all I can afford. 20 minutes to cry and ask 'what can I do?' 'where do we go from here?' It's not right. But it's life. The lives we lead. The world we live in. I want to believe my heart isn't hardened to tragedy, I want to believe it's absorbant. The knowledge always present, the feelings, the pain always there. Give it a little sqeeze and it all comes flowing out. I just can't live thinking about tragedy all the time. There's a lot of good. Life should be enjoyed. It's ok to watch star wars and read about our generation. If that sounds callow it's not meant that way. It's about balance. The 10 other good things you did yesterday shouldn't become meaningless because you did 5 stupid things and didn't do that one thing.

I'm not looking to argue; to be right, to be wrong. Just to be honest.

Explore the universe

Just some cool images from the Hubble Telescope, which is soon to be deorbited... bah who needs science and exploration beyond our system when we can go to the moon again.

Quote

"Who ya calling a nerfherder, princess?" Leader of the nerd herd, I know. I own it.

Why is it tv shows and movies always include FTL travel? (faster than light for you non nerds) Everyone assumes someday we'll be able to go that fast. And not to knock all those future scientist out there, but I just don't think it will ever happen. It's just beyond my comprehension. Like the Flatlanders. Read Flatland by Edwin Abbott. Or ask me for a summary sometime. I don't really feel like explaining right now. Really you should just read it.

Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, Battlestar all of them...... FTL travel.

Minorly distracted mid post by talk of crazy internet stalker girl. It makes me think about the internet. And what it's become. This tool. This convenience. This crazy anonymous world of anything goes. Anyone else remember bulletin boards? Where you had to type in the phone number of the server you wanted to connect to. Anyone else remember playing LORD? Legend of Red Dragon. Wow. Email was such a big deal back then. I can't stop smiling thinking about it. I kinda miss it.

Find something to celebrate

February
Imbolc
Candlemas
Spring
White rabbit
Reading an entire book in less than 24 hours just because
Manchester United spanking Arsenal at Highbury (or so I can hope)
Learning for the fun of it
Jim's birthday... or maybe that's tomorrow...

What will you celebrate today?

Make more lists

Speaking of graduate schools... What do you think about the University of Vermont? I know that I want to go somewhere with mountains and snow, so I'd been leaning towards moving west. Maybe Oregon, Washington or Northern California, because yes I love rain. Jason wants to live anywhere with an airline hub. Matt wants to live in Southern California... but I like having all 4 seasons... and I don't surf. Not that I couldn't learn. In fact I'd love to learn, but I'm just not a hot weather person nor am I a "big city" person. I don't want to deal with traffic jams.

Appealing things about Vermont:
1) 4 seasons... Mild summer, colorful fall, freezing snowy winter, muddy spring.
2) Mountains.
3) Both kinds of skiing.
4) On Lake Champlain
5) The country's smallest big city... Burlington is only 40,000 with a metro area of 150,000 or so.
6) Graduate schools for both math and public health.
7) Progressive, liberal.... blue state america... these people elected Dean for pete's sake.

Cons:
1) No baseball stadiums... or any other pro sports teams for that matter.
2) Far away from family in the midwest and friends headed west.
3) Being the one with an accent.
4) No tornados... yes this is a con. I love summer storm systems, storm chasing.
5) Too liberal? Do I really want to be at the right end of the spectrum?

Do you have an opinion about Vermont? Feedback is appreciated.

Change classes two weeks into semester

WOOHOO! So I got waitlisted last november for a class I wanted to take and they called yesterday saying there was an opening. Now the class itself isn't all that exciting, but it's far better then the class I had chosen to replace it. Just a few reasons:

1) New class is web based... so now I just have class MWF 8:30-11:30
2) I sit at a computer 15+ hours a week and get paid. So I'd like to think that at some point in there I could get some web based learning done.
3) No more Professor Han. The crazy man who drones on for 40 minutes about obscure theory and proofs and then only has 10 minutes to do an example problem, leaving the entire class confused and angry.
4) New class is Epidiemiology. It really is time I decide whether or not I want to go to Public Health Graduate School. After Biostatistics I felt fairly blah about it, so maybe I'll like Epidiemiology. If I don't, that's one more option crossed off the list.

Hopefully it all goes well.

Fold shirts in a really cool way

http://albinoblacksheep.com/flash/fold.php

Uh huh. Watch it. Learn to do it. It will rock your world

Make New Year's resolutions

I always make resolutions. Everyone does, right? Not this year. They just get broken in the first week anyway. If something needs to change it's not going to happen because I became 2005 and I "resolved" to change it.

Hooray 2005. Hooray 2 more weeks of break. Hooray only showering once so far in the new year. (Don't worryI'll shower tomorrow before going out in public)