Time Wasting

Usually I don't mind review. Okay, that's a lie, but usually I can get over it without being too frustrated, but class last night really tested this.

One of the cool things about microeconomics is that while you have two sides of markets - producers and consumers - looking at how they consume and produce is remarkably similar. Utility and production have many of the same properties, and both are subject to budget constraints. What this means in terms of learning about it is that once you have consumer theory down, it's a very small leap to get to producer theory. Ideally, you shouldn't have to spend much time going over producer theory, except to point out where words are different, and to point out a few things with costs (you don't really look at the average cost of utility like you do the average cost of production).

Unfortunately, this didn't happen. Instead of quickly going over producer theory and moving on to something a little more interesting, we spent just as much time going over producer theory as we did consumer theory. I really can't figure out the need to do this. I mean, once you've talked about minimizing cost in one setting, you've talked about it in the other.

What's more, all of us have gone over it before in previous economic classes (it really doesn't change that much from one level of theory to another - you just get to go a little deeper). Oh well, I guess it just means that I won't have trouble keeping up with the material. At least the homework he gives us is interesting to do - I have that to look forward to.

Tempting

I'm very tempted to travel over to SF this weekend to check out WonderCon, but I don't think it'd be much fun by myself. Still, the idea is very tempting.

Huh

I now understand why there are drains all over campus.

Blerg

It's been raining for four straight days, and I want it to stop just long enough for me to get a good run in. But I know as soon as I get ready and walk outside, the wind and rain will start up again. Oh well, I suppose we need as much rain as we can get.

I have the house to myself until later this evening (and have since Sunday). It's been nice to be able to make a mess and not have to clean it up immediately like I usually do. It's also been nice to have the downstairs to myself. I've gotten through three movies in as many days, mostly due to the fact that there's nobody down here making noise. Wednesday and Thursday I'm housesitting for another family, so I'll have a place to escape to while this house is packed with people.

You know, there is one good thing about all the marketing for V Day - the cheap candy the day after. I'm stocked up for a month, at least!

Temptation

I know that if I go outside to run, it will be freezing. But if looks so nice and warm from here. You'd think I would have learned this lesson long ago during Spokane springs.

Stuck in class

I'm seriously about to hit a guy in one of my classes over the head with my book. He's got a serious breathing problem in that his normal breathing sounds like me after I've run a couple miles. Or it sounds like he's breathing through a tube, I can't quite decide.

Anyways, I noticed this the first week, and it's quite distracting to me. So the next week I moved, knowing that if I had a problem, I should be the one to change. But he decided to sit right in front of me. Now this was only a little better than him sitting next to me. But there are four rows of desks in the classroom, and I was in the third, so this week, I figured that if I sat in the very back row, he would stay in the second row (where he had sat the previous two weeks).

But no. He again sat directly in front of me. So now I'm going to do an experiment during break. I'll move a desk down and if, when he comes back, he sits in front of me, I'll know something's up.

The real difference between American and British

"For the American system of manufactures was, above all, a totally unsentimental approach to the productive process in industry, one in which purely commercial considerations prevailed. The British long consoled themselves with the belief that standardization and mass-production techniques inevitably resulted in an inferior product. Unhappily, from their point of view, they persisted in this belief long after it ceased to contain even an element of truth."

- Why in America? by Nathan Rosenberg, originally published in Yankee Enterprise, the Rise of the American System of Manufactures in 1981

I'm doing my happy dance

I feel that it's necessary to share this: Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible) is back in television, this time with a show starring Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy and Angel, also Tru from Tru Calling).



Show starts Friday, 9:00 pm, on Fox. Right after Sarah Conner which stars another actress that Joss found. You think they did that on purpose?

In celebration of this new show, I'm going to be doing some posts between now and Friday about why Joss Whedon is the man, and why I'm very worried that this show is on Fox.

Also, thank goodness that the scheduling people didn't screw up and put it during BSG. I would have had to make a tough decision if that was the case (BSG starts at 10 pm).

Lack of Sleepies

I don't really understand my lack of affinity with going to sleep lately. I find myself surfing the internet, going back to pages that I just looked at 10 minutes ago (with nothing new on them), just too put off going to bed. Usually sleep is one of my most tried and true methods of procrastination. I routinely had to get up at 6 am during college because I had put off doing homework for my 8 am class by going to bed.

Perhaps the first step to recovery is admitting I have a problem, and this post will be the first step. And to continue on my path of recover, I'm going to go to bed now.

That is unless I put in disk three of season six of Buffy. If there's anything that's procrastination fodder, it's rewatching old television seasons (especially if there are vampires/magic/butt-kicking involved).

Tweet

So since it's the beginning of the semester, it means I have to find some new procrastination tools until classes start being interesting. This semester, I've decided to take up Twitter. We'll see how long it lasts.

Breaking the Curse

Since Netflix has all of Seasons 1 and 2 of 30 Rock available on streaming, I've decided to see if I can break the curse. If there is any show on television that could break the curse, I think it might be 30 Rock, both because of all the good talk it's gotten lately, and because it looks to have staying power. Plus, perhaps my curse only applies to hour long shows (although AD puts the lie to that, but perhaps that was a fluke). So, if you watch 30 Rock, be aware that it could start sucking in the next month or so, and if it does, I apologize.

More classes

So the first week is over, and I can continue with my initial musings on my classes. Wednesday night I have Advanced Macro Theory. I used to think that I preferred macro to micro, but in recent years I've come to question that. Now I think I prefer both equally.

Anyways, macro is taught by a guy from Turkey who likes soccer. Yay! The class shouldn't be too bad, although the classroom itself is horrible. It's twice as large as it needs to be for the class size, which means that his voice echos horribly bad. This makes the slight accent a bit harder to understand, but it shouldn't be too bad.

The problem with both theories is that it seems like a lot of time is going to be spent on not a lot of topics. I don't know if this is because they're planning on going incredibly slow, or if the material is really that hard or complex. I guess only time will tell.

Thursday is American Economic History. The only bad thing about this class is also the room its in. Although it doesn't echo, the rows of desks are all connected, which means that if somebody on the other end of the row leans back, the entire row shifts. Super annoying. Plus, the desks are from that 1980's (okay, I'm possibly exaggerating). In general, I don't like desks, and wish that all classrooms had tables.

But the class is going to be awesome (I hope!). I thought it would only be recent history, but am plesantly surprised by the syllabus. We're covering a lot of topics, and there's going to be a lot of work involved, but I think the class will be great. Unfortunately, it's a bit on the applied side, but I guess that's what has to happen if you want to get most economic students interested in history.

All in all, I think it's going to be a good semester for classes.

Initial Thoughs on Advanced Microecnomic Analysis

After running back and forth between two different buildings multiple times, my prof finally figured out where he wants to hold class. And apparently he uses transparencies, meaning that I'm required to buy a book full of the ones he's going to use. This also means that my chosen seat (back left side) is in just the wrong position to be able to see what's being written. Lame!

It seems like we're going to get through the review section really quickly, although the review is really review. I'm going to guess that the topics will be review in general, while the math won't be. So that will be both good and bad.

More initial thoughts on my later classes as they happen, although I already know that if Thursday is held in the classroom that it's supposed to be, it's going to suck. I got much too spoiled in undergrad with really nice classrooms.

Beginning Again

Time to start a new semester! I must say, the beginning of the semester brings both pain and pleasure to me. I hate the first week of classes, mostly because they're completely worthless. But I love the fact that I have a whole semester of new knowledge (hopefully) to look forward to (of course this is usually lost on me by the 11th week).

Also, I'm amazingly looking forward to all my classes this semester. That was sort of true last semester, and I was disappointed with two of them, but I'm hoping that won't happen this time. Two advanced theory classes and a history class will be just what the doctor ordered for this semester, I think. Enough reading and writing in the one class coupled with enough math in the others should be just the thing. I've decided not to continue my Arabic class, but that's only because the class itself was worthless. I did buy the answers to my textbook from Amazon, so hopefully I'll continue with the language outside of the class (I also have Rosetta Stone).

More to look forward this semester:

• Only night classes, which opens up my days for working (money!) and snowboarding (spending money!).
• Running along the river in spring
• Kayaking along the river in late spring
• Soccer

So I'm excited.

Loving it

Christmas vacation is always rough on me, mostly because it means that pretty much the whole family is all home, occupying the same space for far too large a percentage of waking hours. This translates to me needing to be gone as much as possible during said Christmas vacation (I'm talking about the traditional two weeks off). However, I love my January vacation.

I get to sit home alone, getting stuff done as I choose. It also means that I can have either the television to myself (watching old movies that nobody else in the house really appreciates) or the stereo all to myself (listening to really loud, eclectic music that nobody else in the house really appreciates). I don't have to hide in my room due to the loudness that is my family when I'm trying to watch or do something.

In other words, I love the month of January.

I can't help it

I'm going to kill another show. I just can't help it. Maybe this one will break my curse, but since its already in its fourth season, and most shows don't last much longer than 5, probably not. But a girl can hope, can't she?

And no, I'm not sharing what show it is, but I don't think anybody I know watches it, so there's no need to worry.

New Year

I don't really do resolutions, mostly because New Years always seems to sneak up on me, and because I think they're pretty silly. So my non-resolution this year is to catch up with all the friends that I haven't talked to in a while. A lot of these I saw in October, but that was such a whirlwind weekend that while I saw people, there wasn't a whole lot of catching up.

So hopefully I'll use my free month to both visit and email people who I don't hear from very often. And hopefully in there I'll also find time to watch some movies, which have been piling up over the last couple of months (first on the list is a little bit of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton).

Short Update

For those of you who might be wondering why I'm not around for the next week or so, it's because I'm up enjoying the snow of Mammoth.  Obviously there is some internet, but I don't anticipate using it a lot.

That's the spirit!

So yesterday my dad and I decided that it would be fun to go shopping. It was about 11 am on a Monday (which I'd like to point out is a working day). We safely got in and out of Costco, with only one forgotten thing, but got completely derailed on the way to Best Buy. We were going to go look at car speakers and external hard drives, not to mention wine racks (although not at Best Buy), but when the traffic was backed up behind the stoplight before Rosedale, we used the Lowe's parking lot to turn around.

Don't people have to work? Or if they're unemployed, don't they have to save money? I mean, they can't all be teachers.

Plus, all the idiots were out yesterday! We decided to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond instead of Best Buy. Of course, neither of us realized that it is next In and Out, and that they put crack in their french fries (why else would it be so popular?). The fact that people will sit in line for all of their entire lunch hour just for stupid hamburgers.

In much more fun news, I've decided that watching Gilmore Girls is a very bad influence on me.

DONE

So I had three boring finals and one interesting one. Of course, by interesting I mean impossible during the time limit. But it was still really fun. I'm a bit disappointed that I won't get it back in order to play with actually finishing the problems, but maybe he'll hold onto them until next semester.

I'm definitely ready for a break and am looking forward to six weeks of relaxing, traveling, snowboarding, soccering, and general wandering around the house.