It's very kind of you guys to offer to buy me certain things for my birthday if I'd only put them on my amazon wishlist, but the thing is, none of the stuff I really want can even go on my wishlist, and if it could it would be stuff from 3rd party vendors and for that stuff to be bought for me I'd have to turn on the option that allowed you guys to see my address. Not cool. Yes, I know I should get a PO box but I'm poor and lazy. In the mean time you'll have to settle for just wishing me a happy birthday.
Thank you to whoever it was who bought me Foucault's Pendulum. It's one of my favorite books.
Also, my rad rad brother bought me Children of the Revolution from my amazon wishlist, and the message with it was "Hey, I love you. You'd be my favorite sister even if I had other sisters." It made me smile. I love that guy. His birthday is coming up too, at the end of the month. I'd tell you to go check out his wishlist and get him something nice, but he doesn't have one listed. I think maybe he'd feel bad if anyone actually bought him anything from it if he had one. When the day comes, I'll remind you all to go give him birthday well-wishing.
In other news, I very easily talked my dad into getting me new tires for my birthday. "It rains a lot here and I'm not getting very good traction. I know I don't drive much but when I do it makes me nervous to be peeling out all the time." "Okay, how much are you thinking about spending?" Awesome! That's a way better answer than the one I would have gotten to, "can I have money for an IUD? Hormonal birth control makes me depressed and moody." which would have been, "don't have sex."
Okay. I'm going to use the money I'll get from my mom and grama to get an IUD and then if I have any left over as a present to myself I'll put it towards a professional dye job. I really want to get my hair cut, but I've spent so long growing it out (I'd already been growing it for 9 months when my first few sets were taken, if you want some reference) that I don't want to fuck it all up and have these recent years of waiting be for nothing. I guess I'm making a bigger deal out of my hair than it really is, I mean, it's just hair.
Whatever.
My studying for the GRE subject test has been going more slowly than it should be. I really have to start cracking down. See, the problem with the test is that they ask you all this retarded bullshit to see if you've memorized trig identities and remember stupid little tricks to simplifying things. There's rarely a problem where you're like, "shit, I have no idea how to do this." It's all problems where you're like, "I've seen this before. I know there's a trick to it. GODDAMMIT WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER SPHERICAL CHANGE OF COORDINATES?!" And it's timed. Doing math with a time limit is very hard. Sometimes when you're doing a math problem time is the only thing that can help you solve it. Being able to do integrals quickly is not really a good indicator of how good you are at math at all. It just means you're good at chugging through busywork that a computer should be doing for you. Okay, I shouldn't be talking about this anymore.
Speaking of math, though... you guys seen that show NUMB3RS? For those of you who don't know, it's about this cop who has a brother who's a math prof (I think he's a prof) and he uses his math skillz to help him solve murders and things. I watched it I think two weeks ago just to see what it was like. My god, it was so terrible. As an amateur mathematician I was horribly embarrassed for the people on the show, especially the people who supposedly knew stuff about math. Some of the stuff the math brother said about math was really nice, but like, talk about crap. Remember that part in Sneakers when the guy is giving the lecture and he's got those overheads up with gibberish on them and he's saying stuff that doesn't even make sense? Yeah, that's sorta how I felt about NUMB3RS. You don't have to know that much about math to know that the show is fucking lame. I feel bad for everyone associated with it.
That's about all I have for now.
Thank you to whoever it was who bought me Foucault's Pendulum. It's one of my favorite books.
Also, my rad rad brother bought me Children of the Revolution from my amazon wishlist, and the message with it was "Hey, I love you. You'd be my favorite sister even if I had other sisters." It made me smile. I love that guy. His birthday is coming up too, at the end of the month. I'd tell you to go check out his wishlist and get him something nice, but he doesn't have one listed. I think maybe he'd feel bad if anyone actually bought him anything from it if he had one. When the day comes, I'll remind you all to go give him birthday well-wishing.
In other news, I very easily talked my dad into getting me new tires for my birthday. "It rains a lot here and I'm not getting very good traction. I know I don't drive much but when I do it makes me nervous to be peeling out all the time." "Okay, how much are you thinking about spending?" Awesome! That's a way better answer than the one I would have gotten to, "can I have money for an IUD? Hormonal birth control makes me depressed and moody." which would have been, "don't have sex."
Okay. I'm going to use the money I'll get from my mom and grama to get an IUD and then if I have any left over as a present to myself I'll put it towards a professional dye job. I really want to get my hair cut, but I've spent so long growing it out (I'd already been growing it for 9 months when my first few sets were taken, if you want some reference) that I don't want to fuck it all up and have these recent years of waiting be for nothing. I guess I'm making a bigger deal out of my hair than it really is, I mean, it's just hair.
Whatever.
My studying for the GRE subject test has been going more slowly than it should be. I really have to start cracking down. See, the problem with the test is that they ask you all this retarded bullshit to see if you've memorized trig identities and remember stupid little tricks to simplifying things. There's rarely a problem where you're like, "shit, I have no idea how to do this." It's all problems where you're like, "I've seen this before. I know there's a trick to it. GODDAMMIT WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER SPHERICAL CHANGE OF COORDINATES?!" And it's timed. Doing math with a time limit is very hard. Sometimes when you're doing a math problem time is the only thing that can help you solve it. Being able to do integrals quickly is not really a good indicator of how good you are at math at all. It just means you're good at chugging through busywork that a computer should be doing for you. Okay, I shouldn't be talking about this anymore.
Speaking of math, though... you guys seen that show NUMB3RS? For those of you who don't know, it's about this cop who has a brother who's a math prof (I think he's a prof) and he uses his math skillz to help him solve murders and things. I watched it I think two weeks ago just to see what it was like. My god, it was so terrible. As an amateur mathematician I was horribly embarrassed for the people on the show, especially the people who supposedly knew stuff about math. Some of the stuff the math brother said about math was really nice, but like, talk about crap. Remember that part in Sneakers when the guy is giving the lecture and he's got those overheads up with gibberish on them and he's saying stuff that doesn't even make sense? Yeah, that's sorta how I felt about NUMB3RS. You don't have to know that much about math to know that the show is fucking lame. I feel bad for everyone associated with it.
That's about all I have for now.
VIEW 25 of 30 COMMENTS
God DAMN that sucked. What also sucked was taking the complex analysis prelim a second time since I failed it first time around.
Me and my roommate have been watching NUMB3RS for camp value. Did you see the one about the Riemann Hypothesis? Holy hell, almost makes me embarrassed to be a mathematician. I predict that show has a life expectancy of about 5 more episodes. Even Judd Hirsch won't be able to save it.