This one goes out to Jim Miller...

I dedicate this post to the memory of Jim Miller, though I never knew him in life; he left me all of his math books. Were it not for his passing just before I joined the IT dept at Hood, I may never have acquired his books and saved them for this day when I would need a text on matrices and linear algebra. If it weren't for him I may not have solved the final problem and finished , beyond reasonable doubt, the homework for this semester. So here's to you Jim Miller, wherever you are :)

I'm DONE! Now I can amuse myself with other things like painting my kitchen and dining room and laying bamboo flooring and assembling and installing cabinets and appliances!

Wooo hooo!

I got an A!

I just got back my first math homework set and I got an A. Yay!

Polar Coordinates

It's been about 10 years since the last time I thought about polar coordinates, so it's not a surprize that I missed it on the homework yesterday. The good news is that I was not the only one stumped by the problem, and the professor even admitted that he had a little trouble working through the problem trying to prepare for class, so he decided to give us an extra week to hand that problem in. Whew!

I'm definitely going to give the next homework a better effort earlier, so that I'm not finishing up the day it's due! I was so tired and my hand hurt from writing out the homework that I could barely take notes. And I was so glad to get home. I also need to find a better route to campus, because a 20 minute drive should not take an hour with traffic.

So my neighbors won't hate me...

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that all the stuff we've been ripping out of the house or purging over the past year or so has all been hanging out in my yard. Now, it started off innocently enough as just some scrap wood and paneling and random bits stowed into my woodshed. But then the woodshed was full and it spilled out into the yard. And eventually I was accumulating appliances and furniture out there and the weeds were growing up around everything. I finally decided that it was time to clean up the yard and put an end to the embarassment.

In my defense, if my yard were actually visible from the street, I probably wouldn't have let it go this far. Probably.

In other news, I'm 90% done with my first homework assignment for the grad math class. It's due tonight. I'm feeling good about it, except for this one last problem that I just can't seem to figure out. If you know how to use the chain rule for second partial derivatives of multiple independent parameters, let me know before 5pm. If you have no idea what that means, don't feel bad :)

Connect the Dots

So it's been a while, and I don't have new pictures of the renovation to share. There has been progress. We've done the joint compound and smoothed it over with a damp mop. It's actually pretty amazing how much the sponge mop acts like an eraser or a sanding block to remove the excess joint compound. It's almost finished, but there are still a few places around light fixtures and heating vents that need attention.

I've already bought the paint for the kitchen. It's Rapture by Glidden. Yes, it's really that red. The chosen color for the diningroom is Magic Spell by Behr, but when I looked at the paint chip it looked far more gray than I remembered so I didn't buy it yet. I thought I'd give the paint chip one more viewing in the room first.

So why haven't I been blogging?

1. I sprained/strained my wrist doing the joint compound and wanted to rest it for reason number 2.


2. My first Grad class in Applied Math, which lead to reason number 3.


3. An unplanned calculus review, because I couldn't seem to get the derivatives right. I forgot all about the product rule and quotient rule.


4. I celebrated turning 3-cubed years old (after a shock to find out that I've been thinking I was already 27, and then realizing that I was only 26!)


5. My sister is getting married and I spent 2 days trying on bridesmaid dresses to find a style that I could live with in a color that I could live with, and then trying on shoes to go with the dress.

Do I really need more reasons?

I'm a grad student!

I registered for my first class at UML today! I was so giddy, going to the registrar, going to check out the building and the math department. I'm taking Real Analysis.
I had forgotten how nice downtown Lowell can be. Paul and I had a little picnic lunch beside the Canal at St. Anne's. It makes me wonder how our lives would be different if we had bought one of the Mill loft condos instead of this little cottage.

In other news, I'm hating insulation. I have all this lovely drywall in my diningroom, and I'm stuck putting in itchy, scratchy, pink fiber glass into wall cavities that are either too wide or too narrow. I have visions of kneeling on the floor cutting this stuff until September.

Refuse to Choose

I finally finished reading Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose. It's interesting. I really wanted to finish reading it before I said anything about it in "print" so that I didn't say a bunch of glowing words about something that ended up being a bunch of bull. It's not even that I'm that skeptical about this book specifically, I guess I'm just skeptical about any kind of "magic pill" sort of thing. I guess living in a society that preys on the naive will do that to you. So even though there're no promises made in the book it has a lot of feel good, be happy vibe to it, which is one of those things that the dual puritan/liberal culture of Massachusetts struggles with, as though being happy in itself is a sin, but oh what a good sin ;-)

Life shouldn't be all serious, or what's the point in living. And she does point out that you don't have to try to make a career out of things that you love. She talks about the "Good Enough" job that basically pays the bills. But the "Good Enough" job can't be too taxing or it takes away valuable time and energy from the things you really do love and want to do. There are different tips in each chapter about how to get the most out of your "scanner" personality (is it my hatred for pigeon-holing people that makes me resistant to this?) by using various techniques to keep track of them, feel a sense of accomplishment, and generally get the most doing for your time so you aren't wasting too much in wheel-spinning mode. Those are all probably useful things for most people, not just scanners, but especially scanners.

But why should I (or anyone else) limit myself to the good enough job? Why should I keep doing what I'm doing, just because it's the only thing I've ever done? I've been very sensible with my life up to this point, and I'm not feeling very sensible anymore. I'm feeling kind of bent out of shape. It's like being on a diet for too long and then bingeing on every chocolate confection you can get your hands on (not that I would know anything about that!). If I don't follow my dreams now, when will I ever? And why do I have to set aside all other pursuits for a career that is slowly killing me, maybe not physically, but psychologically by sucking all of the joy out of my life until I no longer have the will to live. If I convince myself that is the only life there is then what's the point in living? Why should I go into work everyday surrounded by unhappy people, who don't believe in what they are doing outside of the necessity for paying the mortgage. Or for buying new toys. He who dies with the most toys is still dead, and whether or not you believe in an afterlife, there's still no way around the dead thing. If there is Judeo-Christian-Muslim god, then I'm sure the afterlife will have everything you desire. And does all that crap really make you happy? Or does it just put you further into debt so you're stressing out about paying your bills and thus stressing about working?

Here's what I want out of life:

• financial stability


• a sense of adventure


• lots of opportunities to learn new things (but not necessarily have to use them!)


• lots of travel and exploration


• following my conscience


• supporting and promoting the arts


• math :)


• good food and cooking


• working with my hands to create things


• ... and more that I'm probably just not thinking of right now...

A friend of mine who loves the Franklin-Covey system suggested that I use the things that I want (like being able to spend time with my String Bean) as a source of motivation for doing my current job, but I'm so far beyond that now. My current plan is to enroll in a math class at one of the local colleges or universities each semester until I can decide if and where I want to do my PhD. I figure that the professors at Hood didn't seem to care for me that much because I did my foundation courses at WPI, so I started with 300 and 400 level classes rather than getting vetted through their curricula. I guess maybe I had attitude? Being at Massacademy with all those competitive boys did not exactly prepare me for life at a liberal arts women's college. But at the same time I'm glad I went there for the sake of my social development. I think it taught me a lot about being kind, being a bitch, and knowing how to tell the difference ;-) Anyway I don't think that I want to rely on the Math Department at Hood to give me recommendations. The CS profs, maybe, but then, that's not exactly what I want to be doing... So by taking classes at various local universities I'll get to meet some of the faculty, perhaps cultivate some networking connections and get some references. That way I'll have something when it comes time to fill out the applications. And if I decide that the academic community is not for me, I've only wasted several hundred dollars and a few semesters rather than several thousand over several years. And I know I'll never starve, because I am the budget queen. My frugality is known across the lands! (sometimes as miserliness by certain of my family members ;-)