almost graduating

I've been debating if I should walk for graduation or not.  My thoughts repeatedly go something like this:

Pros

I've never properly done it before.

Cons

I've never properly done it before.

It costs money.

And that's were my mind remembers I have homework to do and I never finish the list.

What's this about Windy never walking before?  Yeah.  I missed my High School and Seminary graduations in New Hampshire because I was already in Idaho starting college.  I thought it was lame to walk for only an Associates degree, so I didn't then.  We had a death in the family the week of my Institute graduation.  And then I decided, for sure, I would do this for my Bachelors.  And I almost did too.

My Bachelors turned out to be with about 3500+ others in Husky Stadium where it was impossible to organize people or even have the time to read out each individuals name.  I ended up standing next to people I didn't know, but we all quickly became friends.  As it turned out it poured rain on us.  I was cold and wet and miserable and still had another hour to wait before they'd get around to the Bachelors.  And at the point I would just be pushed across stage as quickly as possible and handed an empty diploma.  So I left.  Along with a ton of others who were cold and wet and miserable too.  All my friends had left before I did.  My family stayed, but I called them and we all headed out to have lunch together to celebrate.  So.  All in all, kinda lame.  There was only one picture ever taken of me that day and I took it with my cell phone while waiting around.

2005

I think it's time to celebrate properly.  I officially decided today I would attend my departments ceremony.  No more thousands of grads at Husky stadium for me.  Just a small group, all of us Masters or PhD grads in Applied Mathematics. That's more my style of celebrating.  And as soon as I decided and started telling people about it and ordering my cap, gown, and hood (did you know masters get a special hood??) I began to really feel excited about this!  I AM GRADUATING!!!!  Well in a month and a week I'm graduating.  But now I'm actually excited about it.  The kind of excited that makes you smile for no reason while you sit alone in your room doing homework.  Or that makes you walk a little faster.  Excited.

Raw Lightscapes

After visiting Iceland last November I began to follow a few Iceland blogs, I'm even a friend of Iceland itself.  There is something so stunning about this beautiful country that I am still drawn to learning about it and looking through pictures.  Today I found this video that I loved so much I thought I would share it with you.  It's a bit classier than the previous video I posted (Neil, you won't need to roll your eyes at me this time!).

Please enjoy.  Takk.

Raw Lightscapes from Enrique Pacheco on Vimeo.

nada enchilada

Believe it or not, I've taken quite a few math classes in my life.  I've even kept my textbook from every class and now have a healthy reference section in my 'library'.  Tonight I pulled an old Calculus book off the shelf to look up applications of hyperbolic functions (a potential topic for my Master's presentation in month) to find this phrase written in the margin of one page, in my own handwriting:

a little bit is better than nada, sometimes you want the whole enchilada

What in the world...?  I had no memory of writing this nor any idea what it meant.  Granted, I would have used this particular textbook somewhere around 1999, so I think it's ok to forget writing a few things from that long ago.  However an obvious guess sent me to youtube looking for a music video.  I found this gem.  I know you will love it.  

On a completely different topic a significant holiday has just passed.  I didn't do a whole lot to celebrate as most of the traditional festivities are much more fun with kids around.  However I did find this particular blog post fascinating.  It made me want to celebrate Easter in the Holy Land one of these years.

Background

I've always found it interesting to see what pictures friends and family place as their desktop background.  Do they leave the generic Window's logo, or some simple pattern?  Perhaps it's a picture of their family or a breathtaking scenic snapshot of a natural wonder.  I think it says something of an individuals personality as to what they choose to look at each day as their background.

I think my backgrounds suggest I'm a bit of a nerd.  Here is what I currently have on my desktops.

The background on my laptop is the Lorenz Attractor.  This is a plot of one particular trajectory of a chaotic dynamical system named after the mathematician Edward Lorenz.  I placed it as my background months ago as a reminder that I actually do love mathematics even when I'm taking a frustrating class in a topic of math I do not enjoy (which was last quarter).  It encourages me to finish grad school.

The background on my Android is of Gallifrey.  Beautiful, isn't it?  Did I ever mention I love the science fiction/ fantasy genre?  It's sort of an obsession of mine.  Gallifrey was the home planet of the Time Lords from the British television series Doctor Who. I say 'was' because the planet was destroyed in the great Time War.  Only one Time Lord remains and his name is The Doctor.

What do you have on your desktop?

Tommy and Carly

As most of you know my li'l brudder got married this weekend to a fabulous girl named Carly.  I've been calling Carly my little sister for a couple years, but now it's official.  I don't have very many pictures or much to share from my trip to UT and ID because I spent the entire time sick.

But here are a few pictures I snapped before it was so cold I had to duck inside to warm up.  Isn't Carly's dress beautiful?  And Tommy's silly grin.

My favorite part of the wedding was when they were to kiss just after the ceremony and Carly was a little too short to reach Tommy, and Tommy was not helping by leaning far enough (kinda looked like he was teasing her a bit).  So after a couple tries of Carly stretching as far as she could she gave up and grabbed his tie and yanked him over to her so she could kiss him.  It was hilarious.  And so them.  Perfect for their marriage.

Congrats Tommy and Carly!

Alex - Tommy - Jamo

3.14

Happy Pi Day!!

Have You Ever Seen Your Future Through A Comic Strip?

xkcd.com

What would you do with a Killer Zebra?? I'd eat it.

Today is Friday.  This morning I turned in my last homework assignment of the quarter and I'm done.  Well, done for the next 2 weeks until Spring quarter starts anyway. As you might have guessed, I didn't die.

Our last lecture was on the famous Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and it was quite fun. I've come across this problem a few times before and it seems there are some new recent developments for solving it.  Did you know they've now solved this problem for up to 85,900 cities?  Yikes!

Enough of math.  I'm sure you'd much rather be eating cookies right now, am I right?  Check out some of these cookies, aren't they amazing?  The detail on them is just crazy awesome.  Click the button and head on over to her blog to see some more.

a song to get you through the day

This morning when my alarm went off-- correction, after my alarm had gone off a couple times and my radio alarm was going off as well-- I woke up feeling absolutely terrible. It was as if I just had a pan galactic gargle blaster. If you don't know that reference, shame on you.

This quarter has been one of the worst of my life.  When I first signed up for this early morning class in addition to my late work schedule, plus taking 2 classes instead of my standard one, I thought to myself, 'I can handle anything for only 10 weeks'.  I was wrong.  Today begins that 10th week.  I've been sick for the last 4 weeks.  I went from someone who never naps to having a severe case of narcolepsy.  It all ends this week.  Either I will die or I will turn in my final homeworks this weekend.

In the meantime here is the song that got me through the morning and helped me to not collapse on the sidewalk and fall asleep on my way to class.  I really like this song and it was introduced to me by my friend Tiago.  I believe it was the promotional anthem for the 2010 World Cup.  Listen to it.  On repeat.

Lunch with Matthew

After my class today I stopped by my sisters house to borrow a few items.  While there my sister fed me breakfast in exchange for watching Matthew eat lunch while she quickly ran to the store.  Here's the video we made at lunch.  I showed it to Matthew afterward and he laughed and laughed at seeing himself laugh.

The song he sings is from a video we had watched earlier.  He sings, "A circle, and an oval, and a triangle, and a square.  A heart..."  So cute.  And I just love how he says my name.  My nephew rocks.

PS For those who may be concerned, my phone survived without a scratch.