Summer books

So I think I'll share what I'll be reading/watching this summer while I wait for the semester to start . I'm planning on hitting a bunch of economic books from history (like The Wealth of Nations and The General Theory), but also some other, quicker reads. First off is a book called Sophie's World.

This is a book about the history of philosophy. Sounds pretty dull to most of you, I bet. But it's actually a novel. I've only just started, but it does indeed appear that it is going to go through the entire history of philosophy, describing all the major players and what they thought. I've only just gotten to Socrates, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I should mention that it was recommended to me by a friend up in Sacramento who read it with his Jr. High age daughter, so it can't be too horrible or dense.

There appears to be a mystery of sorts in it, and I'm really looking forward to finishing it. Anybody interested in understanding how we think the way we do currently might think about reading it. I'll post more once I finish.

I've also been watching Dead Like Me, which was a short-lived Showtime television show. It's very sarcastic and a little dark, which suits me just fine. Unfortunately, it was only around for two seasons, although it looks like they did release a movie that should hopefully close up loose ends.

Basic plot: A 20ish year old dies rather abruptly and is put to work as a grim reaper. She releases the souls of people who are about to die rather gruesome deaths so they aren't stuck with their bodies in the aftermath of such brutality for all of eternity. Her main companions are other grim reapers, all of whom have issues as big as hers. Along the way, she struggles to figure out what the point of her (un)life is and help her family who can no longer recognize her.

The writing is good, the characters are interesting in a very screwed up way, and there's an overall purpose to the characters doing what they're doing. It's also pretty dry, which I enjoy greatly.

Next up after I finish these projects: The Lost Room (short-lived SciFi channel series), Professor Lambert and the Curious Village (a DS game) and either the Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver (both by Neil Stephenson).

Organization

Amazing how much time I can spend organizing things like my bookshelves, dvd shelves, and external hard drives, especially considering I'll spend no time organizing the rest of my room.

At least I know what my priorities are.

Evil friend

Robert is evil. Both times this semester that I've had a lengthy paper due, he's provided me with new a new project/information. The first time was a link to a code that I then had to solve the day before my paper was due. Luckily, about 10 minutes after being sent the link, the paper was given an extension, so I was able to decipher the code without guilt or time constraint.

Then tonight, as I'm trying to work on my take home final, he sends me information on the Netflix contest that has apparently been going on for years. The contest is to create an algorithm that does a better job at guessing user ratings based on previous ratings then their current method. Movies, econometrics, and computers? I suddenly wish I knew more about programing algorithms than I do, not because I want to try for the prize, but because I just want to play.

Oh well. Back to economic history.

Photoshopping

I've been having way too much playing with the hue and saturation in Photoshop lately. Of particular amusement has been finding pictures from when I was younger and wore very bright clothing and taking some of the colors out. This leaves me with an almost black and white photograph, but there are still bright colors showing through.

Can't wait to get home and find even more photos to scan and edit.

Stupid Networking

So a couple of us were discussing last night's final over Facebook when it was pointed out that the friend who's status we were commenting on is also friends with some of the professors at school, including the one who teaches the class we were talking about. Nothing bad was said, but it pointed out to me the problem of networking - if you make your network too big, there's nowhere to vent.

That's one of the reasons that I don't tell my school friends about my blog, so that I can feel safe venting if I have to. I also don't think I'd ever friend a professor on Facebook, even if I am no longer in their class. Perhaps once I graduate I will.

Also, apparently some of my professors have been discussing me. I'm not okay with that (although apparently it was good stuff, so I'm more okay with it than if it had been bad stuff).

Moral of the story: networking is evil.

A further note on Guitar Hero vs Rock Band. Anybody have an idea on which set stands up better to wear and tear? I've heard conflicting view on this. As to functionality, Rock Band has a set of add-on symbols that make it very similar to Guitar Hero.

Finals

The thing I don't like about finals (and final papers) is that you don't get them back. I always have this very strong desire (that I've never yet acted upon) to go back to professors the next semester and ask for my final, hopefully with what I did wrong marked on it (the same is true of final papers). I wonder what responses would be if I actually did that.

I mean, if the purpose is to learn and not just get a grade, shouldn't be we interested in what we got wrong, and shouldn't professors want to tell us that? It's not like the grade was the purpose of the class and once I find out what my final grade is I shouldn't care about the tests and problem sets.

In fact, professors should hand out the answer key to finals as soon as they're turned in so that students can know what they should have put. That would solve half the problem (but not the part about papers). And if they did that, I would haven't this dilemma.

Rock Band vs Guitar Hero

I'm contemplating buying a music game for the 360, but can't decide which one I'd get (if I do). We already have Guitar Hero Aerosmith, which means that we already have one guitar. I'm going to have to see if that guitar is compatible with Rock Band I and II. It really depends on whether Guitar Hero includes singing, because if it doesn't, that'd be a deal breaker.

Guess I'm doing some more research on the internet.

Mornings

Lately in the morning, I've frequently woken up with a song in my head. It's usually a different song every morning, and I haven't been listening to it the night before. There hasn't been any singing in the dreams that I can remember, so I can't figure out why I should have songs in my head in the morning.

Any ideas?

Growing up?

I'm not really sure what has happened to me. I used to be a slacker and proud of it when it came to school work. I would do the work assigned to me, but I would usually just go so far that it was good enough, and not care. I was not very academically virtuous, according to the Aristotelian use of the word.

But now I find myself not only doing homework assignments multiple times (to make sure it's as close to perfect as I can manage), but I enjoy doing it. Granted, when the questions asked are boring or straightforward I don't enjoy it so much. But I look forward to the difficult questions that will hopefully show up at least once in every assignment and test.

I'd like to say this is part of growing up, but I don't think so. I think it comes down to two things. One, I'm determined to have the highest grade, which isn't so much academic virtue as plain old competition (and I have a rather large competitive streak in me). Two, I take the more difficult questions as a personal challenge. I know they're thrown in to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I'm determined to be wheat. So I guess that's also the competitive motivation.

And it's probably safe to say that a good amount of my actions spring from that motivation. So maybe not so much of the growing up.

Maybe it's broken

So it's possible that I've broken my curse, or perhaps it's just decreasing in strength. While SCC got canceled this year, both of the freshman shows that I watched (Castle and Dollhouse) got renewed. Of course, Dollhouse only got renewed for another 13 episodes, but I have to be grateful for at least baby steps. Now I'm just awaiting word on Bones and Chuck and all will be well.

And if anybody's interested, I'll have the Dollhouse season on dvd in July and I'm more than willing to let people watch it.

Summer fun

So this week is the last of the season finale weeks of shows I watch, with possibly one exception. That means soon will start the long months of what previously was a new-episode-less time. Luckily, cable television has stepped up to fill the gap with good stuff, but still, there are traditionally less things on television to watch during the summer than the rest of the year.

So what that leaves time for is watching more movies and discovering older television shows that you can watch on dvd. I'm going to have to start doing my research so I know what I'm going to watch this summer. Setting up a game plan of classics and niche television shows is going to be a great way to take a break from preparing for finals. And by 'preparing for finals' I mean playing video games, playing soccer, and reading non-school books.

I love finals week!

Scary

I set my backpack (with Totle (laptop)) inside on a chair. To my horror, it was unbalanced and Totle toppled (heh) to the ground. As I saw this happen, I had a horrible vision of Totle being broken and me being unable to access either my presentation or my paper for class later today. Luckily he was prefectly fine. But still, it was scary.

Note to self: buy a flash drive to go on your keys to save very impotant documents like papers and presentations that you've spent way too much time on relative to other things.

Apparently knowledge does equal power (and therefore money)

So I do pretty well in my classes. This probably isn't a surprise to most of you. But doing well in my classes is finally starting to pay off monetarily (well, technically I got college scholarships for my good grades, but I don't count that). For the past month I've been tutoring one of my classmates for both of our theory classes. Now that finals are coming around, another classmate has asked me to do the same for the macro final. And on top of that, I have an opportunity to TA next semester and get paid for it which will hopefully work out.

I don't know what to do with all this unexpected income. Intertemporal utility maximization through consumption says that I will try to make my consumption over multiple periods as uniform as possible through saving and borrowing (if I can know my future income), but when there are exogenous and unexpected increases in income, consumption patterns change.

All this to say I think I'm either going to buy a new desktop or Rock Band II.

The other great thing about this tutoring is that I'm forced to study as I go along. This increases the amount of time I'll actually spend studying a great deal (since otherwise it's pretty close to not-studying), which will hopefully mean I'll do even better on the finals, reinforcing my power, and therefore hopefully my money in the time period t + 1.

New Toy

So yesterday I decided that it was about time I bought a cable to hook up my laptop to the HDTV. It so happened that I have a Best Buy Rewards certificate that expired yesterday, so I headed over to buy it. The timing of the purchase coincided with the fact that we don't have Fox on Dish Network and I wanted to watch the finale of Dollhouse on a big screen, and it worked like a charm (luckily I also had a cable to transfer the sound to the TV, too).

Now I really want to purchase as wireless keyboard so I can sit on the couch with my mouse and keyboard and play games/write papers with a huge monitor. Of course, I could also do this if I bought an extension for the cable, so I may do that instead. I do know that the first moment I possibly can I'm creating a desktop with an appropriate video card to use an HDTV as my only monitor. And yes, I know that will be in many years, but it's still good to have long-term goals, right?

You've got to be effing kidding me

So I parked a quarter of an inch over the white line today on campus. Normally, I would fix this, but since I was parking after 5:00 pm and the lot isn't full then plus I was parking far away from any stairway (and therefor not in prime space) I figured I'd let it slide this time.

But then I get back from class and see that I have a $40 ticket for parking over the line. In fact, I wasn't over the line, I was on the line. And there were no other cars near mine.

What. The. Eff.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the car (because I didn't see the ticket until I had already moved) but I'm thinking about appealing because the ticket says "over" when in fact I was "on." Not that I think it'll make a difference in a bureaucracy, considering that campus transportation has to pay for all its operations through the sale of permits and tickets.

Pandora

So I used Pandora when it first came out (when I was at Bolthouse). But since I got Soren I had pretty much stopped using it. Recently, however, I wanted to listen to a specific genre of music that Soren doesn't have. Rob thankfully reminded me of Pandora, and I've been listening to it since. It seems to me like they've gotten better algorithims for picking songs, although that could also be because I've better defined my stations.

Anyways, I recently identified a quandry that Pandora leaves me in. I can't take Pandora with me everywhere. While it's great for doing homework while I'm at home or at school, I can't take it with me in the car, or on the trail. So thanks to Pandora I'm going to be finding all sorts of new songs I like, but I'm still going to have to buy them if I want to take them with me. And facing a 10 hour train ride soon (round trip), I need some new music.

Star Trek

Who wants to go see Star Trek this weekend?

I learned something today

Today I got a great example of how to not present a paper.

Some specific points learned:

• Do not put up a powerpoint side and then say, "I'll just let you read this for a second."
• Do not face the screen for your entire presentation.
• Do not put so much information on your slide that you end up using size 8 font.

This one time in band class...

I went to my cousin's spring concert for band today, and realized that I miss making music with a group of other people. Granted, when I get really desperate for some music, I can go into my room and play my guitar, but there's something about being in band and playing with other people that is much cooler. Part of that comes from the fact that I'm not a soloist (in anything I'd rather do something with a group - projects, sports, and the like), but I think it's just part of the nature of music that it's a social thing.

Anyways, it made me realize that I miss high school wind ensemble, both because I miss that sort of music and because I miss playing with other people. The music that I heard today was more 'band' music than 'wind ensemble' music. I think I shall go on iTunes and download some of the songs we played in high school. That is, if I can remember more than like three of them.

Wa?

Not sure how I feel about the fact that it's May 1st and it's raining outside. I was going to go on a run today, but that looks unlikely (not because of the rain, but because of the cold).

My dreams last night involved doing my micro homework - not really sure what that means, except that I've been doing too much work lately. I'm not used to mundane dreams and I want my fun adventure ones back!