The Biped's Burden

I was attempting to pull off my best "good student" facade in class yesterday and I catch something very disturbing in my left-side peripheral vision. A foot. A bare, naked, human foot. I found the foot to be distressing. Not necessarily because the foot was gross, although it appeared to be in desperate need of a pedicure, but because of the impropriety of the situation.

Evidently I have some built in crazy that decides when it is and is not acceptable for feet to be bare. It's the context of the bare foot that is important to me. Bare feet in a house, no problem. Bare foot in a car, problem. Rationally there should be no difference in the context of the two situations. I can't think of or express any good reasons why a bare foot in a car is wrong. They just are.

However, as bad as bare feet in a car are (let's put them at mortal sin level,) bare feet in a class room are worse. New levels of worse. A bare foot in the classroom is easily a cardinal sin. The way I see it, if you aren't responsible enough to look after and clothe your feet in public places, then they should just be taken away from you.

I don't ask for much, only the smallest nod towards footwear. Looking down and seeing a mostly bare foot in a flip-flop would have been perfectly acceptable.

[I would have included a picture of foot with the post, but in deference to Jamey, and not want to find fetish cites at work, I've refrained.]

I Got Your Fountain of Youth Right Here...

After my misstep with an automatic your mother joke I've been on good behavior. I've been careful and have successfully not spouted out anything nonsensical or insulting (at work). The nonsensical stuff is definitely harder to keep at bay. The spoonerisms are returning.

I did, however, say something that dated me. I can't remember what it was, but the youngest of the minions caught it and decided to ask how old I was. Normally I love this game. Actually the game I love is "guess how old my wife is." That game never gets old. It works best if Dawn is in the room. The victim struggles with being accurate and flattering. I assume they try and pick an age that errs on the side of flattering. They always overshoot Dawn's actual age. Dawn is insulted, Dawn in turns insults the victim, everyone wins. Well actually, only I win. I guess that why I like the game so much.

I go ahead and ask the minion to guess my age. He guesses 26-27. He might be attempting flattery. I tell him I'm actually 30. I think I see a mild look of surprise on his face....perhaps he wasn't trying to flatter me.....or perhaps he's really good at it.

More inane discussion passes. I point out that I'm probably a young 30. He replies "you really can't be that old if you're still making your mother jokes." So that must be it. I have discovered the fountain of youth! The fountain of youth is simply immaturity and irreverence. If that be the case, then I might live forever....with your mother.

Two-fer Tuesday

Everyone knows computer scientists are deft romantics. Well known fact.

Dawn and I were conversing on our way back from lunch. The subject meandered to romantic computer science luncheons (naturally). As a result the following "poem " was written.

My love for you is infinitely often false.
For one day we shall both be dead.

I doubt a liberal arts major could have constructed something so concise, beautiful, and verifiably true.

In Search of Useless Truth

I heard a new phrase in class yesterday. The situation reminded me of when I first heard the phrase "vacuously true." It was just casually dropped, only briefly defined before moving on.

"Infinitely often true." Roll the phrase around in your brain for a sec. It's nice, no? It was used in contrast to when something is always true.

A good example would be even numbers. It would not be correct to say that it is always true that numbers are even....because you can probably think of an odd number. However it is correct to say that it is infinitely often true that numbers are even.

The test for truth is simple, if as you head towards infinity there will always be another true instance, then it is infinitely often true. In the case of even numbers, since there will always be another even number it's infinitely often true that numbers are even. The same can be said of prime numbers....they just get very sparse as you head towards infinity.

I think I really enjoy these concepts because they're mostly useless. Harmless if you will. It's not an especially powerful concept. It's not paradigm shifting. It's just a splitting the hairs on a concept that people probably don't care about to start with. In short, you can find useless trivia no matter where you look.

I'm still missing software on my new machine. There is a cool symbol for infinitely often true, but you'll have to wait for it. Yeah, yeah, I know. You're crushed. In the mean time I included a picture of a bird with a penchant for infinity.

Too Much Art at Work

Sorry I missed a post on Friday. While, I am no way contractually obligated to post everyday, I like to try to post often. I just got a new computer at work, so I've been busy moving everything over and setting up shop. It's a Vista machine, so I anxiously await finding out what doesn't work on it. I'm still missing a few key software packages on it (where is my Microsoft Office and Photoshop?)

Overall getting settled into my new office has been going well. My minions are starting to hit their strides and produce some quality work. There is one danger I have to readjust to though. For a long time I've worked mostly by myself, which meant I didn't have to completely switch into my "work persona" everyday. Now I pretty much have to if I want to maintain the appearance of professionalism at work.

There was a crack in the persona on Friday. I was under a bit of stress trying to solve a critical problem in my project. Most of my mental power was focused on that....leaving whatever semi-conscious bit of my brain that there are to stray and cause trouble. One of the minions was evidently talking about some cookies that got brought into the office, he said something along the lines of "I've got dibs on that cookie." Automatically I responded "yeah? Well I've got dibs on your mother."

I actually didn't even know I said it until after the fact. Dawn and I make a lot of "your mother" jokes at home. We aspire toward art in our crafting of fine your mother jokes. I was not aware that the "your mother joke parser" was now so deeply ingrained in my head. I guess there is just a tenuous conscious filter that prevents me from sharing my art with the world.

Must remember not to share art at work....

She Dominant To Atkins

There’s an on going joke in our house about the Riblet Weight Loss Plan™. Apparently her motto is “Be dominate to your hunger.” This is not surprising being that Riblet has dominance issues. For a declawed cat missing a canine tooth she has a very high opinion of herself. We think she believes herself to be dominant to just about everything in the house with the exception of me (most of the time), Dawn (about 50% of the time) and Dyson (100% of the time). Dyson, our vacuum cleaner, holds a special place in the pantheon of Riblet’s fears.

The best part of the Riblet Weight Loss Plan is I’m able to accurately visualize what it would be like if her plan was a success; this is how I amuse myself in otherwise quiet moments. I imagine when you are first confronted with an item of food that you don’t want to eat you should show your dominance to it. The food does not control you, you control it. The best way to display your dominance is a low, but audible, growl. Continue growling for at least three or four minutes so everyone knows you’re serious. Imagine the scene in a nice restaurant, the dessert tray comes around, you hear a course of people offer up a firm but low growl. How awesome would that be?

Everyone knows that growling is a warning. The message is simply: I’m dominant, you better keep your distance. If the dessert tray does not heed the growls and continues to close on the patron following the Riblet Weight Loss Plan™ they are of course allowed to resort to violence. I imagine them just slapping the tray to the floor. Take that. If they exhibit true Riblet behavioral traits there might be a momentarily look of surprise that the foray into violence worked, quickly followed with a smug look of “I told you so.”

Perhaps I have a low opinion of weight loss books, but I’ve started to wonder if Riblet could sell her method. It seems like there might be a market. The basic message is self control via empowerment, which seems to be a pretty bankable message. It would be fun to follow the plan, you get to make strange noises and hit things. Her book would probably be full of LOLCAT images; people will buy books in the bargain sections for that reason alone.

It’s probably best that Riblet’s book does not get published though. I can’t imagine what Riblet would spend her royalties on. I don’t expect she give any to Dawn and I as rent. I expect she’d probably pay to have the carpets replaced by a couple of inches of memory foam, a room completely filled with stinky fish, and of course, a ninja assassinate Dyson.

On the rain slick precipice of research

I’m getting close to a crossroads in my grad school education. Before too long I will have to decide if I want to opt for a thesis or a non-thesis masters. I can keep coasting on my current path until the spring, but come May I should probably know if I’m going to hang a left or a right at the intersection.

If I opt for a non-thesis masters I need to take a comprehensive test over four core subject areas and continue to take another three courses (after the ones I will have completed come May). If I opt for a thesis masters then I’m done with courses in May and I need to start working on my thesis.

Realistically the thesis option will take at least a semester longer than the non-thesis option, however a thesis is an open ended proposition, so there is the risk that it might take even longer than that.

What’s the attraction for the thesis option then? Well, everyone I’ve talked to says if I have aspirations of getting a PhD (and I admit I harbor such dark desires) then in the long run it’s faster to do a thesis masters if the thesis is on a related topic to my eventual PhD dissertation topic. So again, there is a bit of risk involved, but it should be faster if everything goes my way.

Of course the scary part of the equation is that I should probably have some idea of what my dissertation topic will be in order to ensure I’m choosing a useful thesis topic. So that’s where I am now, starting to look around and decide what area of research I would be interested in. I don’t need to answer that question for at least 6 months, but I should probably be thinking about it. I confess, I find the question to be daunting. Whatever I choose I will be spending a lot of time thinking about. How would you elect to murder a considerable amount of your free time for the next seven years? [yeah, yeah, besides becoming a baby dispenser……]

I’ve already had an hour and a half meeting with a professor that would make a likely advisor, so I guess I already know which direction I'm leaning. I just have to decide if I truly want to jump. The sub-topic within computer science that I seem to find most stimulating is knowledge representation. I guess I need to start reading more about it to see if I can call it home.

On a completely unrelated note…..Figs appear to be in season. Publix had two varieties of figs with a buy one get one free special. So we bought one of each and decided to have us a good ol’ fashioned fig-off. We got Kadota figs which are green and smaller than the Brown Turkey figs which are larger and purple. We’ve been eating them in a variety of culinary situations: breakfasts, appetizers, both sweet and savory. Thus far I think the Brown Turkey figs are winning, but not by much. Here’s a photo from a figgy breakfast we had over the weekend. In this instance the figs were simple quartered and drizzled with honey. Très artistique, no?