We're on the road.
Heading south, sorry Andy and Eric.
Somebody left their TI-86 graphing calculator in the bathroom in the physics building. Actually, they left it in a stall in the bathroom.
Who takes their graphing calculator (and nothing else) into a bathroom stall??
Shucks. The paper will not be submitted before I leave for the road trip. Really, this should not suprise anyone. There were too many loose ends that I was trying to tie up at the last minute for things to work. However, I am happy that I am now much closer to the finish line than I was two weeks ago, so I don't regret at all the hard work that I have put in thus far. In fact, I'll still be working extra hours on this thing right up until I leave Berkeley on Sunday.
I am now about 50 hours away from my "sort of" self-imposed deadline for finishing the paper. Right now, I don't think I'm going to make it. However, I'd like to hear what you think. Let's say the odds are stacked 4:1 against me. Would you gamble on me?
If the Tampa Bay Devil Rays win their next game, they will be a .500 ball club more than a third of the way through the season. It's difficult for me to express how unnatural that is. I mean, the stars, planets, galaxies, and everything have to align for something like this to happen. Watch your step the next few days, because the forces of nature are being tested to the extreme.
Well, everything will have to fall in place perfectly from now on, if I'm to make my sort of self-imposed deadline for finishing the paper. One more screw-up and I don't think I can make it.
I worked approximately 12 hours yesterday (minus a 45 minute dinner break around 7:45pm) on data analysis for the paper I'm trying to finish. On the bright side, I can say that I made some progress and it now looks like I might be able to submit the paper I've been working on for publication. I don't know if I'll have enough time to be the person to submit it personally, but I think it'll be in close enough form that the professor I'm working with on this project can, after editing the text a bit.
The downside of working so late was that I missed out on some poker action with friends from the astronomy department. Instead, I played play money poker for an hour or so last night. As we all know, play money poker is basically a joke. One of the hands that typified the night for me came when I got pocket aces and raised big pre-flop. Naturally, I had three callers. Then the flop came A-2-4 or something to that effect. So I bet all-in right there and, of course, all three players call. Then the turn is a 5 and the river is a 3, making a straight on the board nullifying my set of Aces. Of course, the idiots in the pot with me had nothing to add to the board, so we all split the pot. Maybe given that sort of luck it's a good thing I didn't play poker for money last night.
Sometimes I think academia is really just a contest to see who can say the word 'so' as many times as possible.
I just finished a play money No Limit Texas holdem tournament online. What was most interesting about the tournament was that five of the ten total players went all in on the first hand. With no side pots whatsoever, this meant that four players were eliminated on the first hand. Another funny thing that happened was that the guy who won that pot as a result had five times as many chips as the rest of us, yet he was the next person to be eliminated. By the time I won a hand, there were only two other players left. One run of good luck and I won the tournament, not that that's anything to brag about, whatsoever.
I cancelled my contract with the USCA (University Students Co-operative Association) today. So, I have to move out of my apartment by June 27th. And that will be it. No more living in Berkeley for me. It will be very strange and sad, after spending the past five years of my life here. I will truly miss everything about Berkeley--even the dirty, stinky bums lying on the streets requesting my money.
I thought I'd seen it all. But no, not even close. Not when buy.com comes out with an astrology guide to shopping: Shop by your sign!
Holy shit. All bets are off, hell just froze over folks.
I find it interesting that people are more willing to do something if they have to pay for it. I had a much higher success rate last year when I was charging people to play softball than I've had this year. It seems odd to me, but there you go.
On an unrelated note, what kind of person do you have to be to take on the task of defense attorney for a drug lord? I mean, what sort of personality traits do you have to have to do something like that? Greed has to be one of the primary ones. Maybe you just like a challenge? I dunno. But whatever they are, Nathan Diamond has them, as he is the defense attorney for "The Godmother", a person who ran a ruthless cocaine operation in Columbia in the 1980s.
I've never yet gone a whole week without making a post, and I'm not about to start now.
The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup tonight. The game didn't get good until the last eight minutes or so, but those last eight minutes made up for it. I don't think there's anything like the final minutes of a one goal hockey game, especially when it's at the end of the playoffs.
Too bad all indications are that there will be a strike or lockout or whatever you want to call it for most of next year (if not longer).
If I bring two muffins to eat at work, it's because I wanted to eat two muffins at work, not because I wanted to eat one at work and give the other one to a colleague.
Does that make me a selfish jerk?
Or was I one already, and this is simply further evidence confirming that fact?