evolution

1. I think my upstairs neighbors smoked a 37-pound brick of hash with a blowtorch and a fume hood that vents into my apartment. That is the only thing that could explain the current smell therein.

2. We had my former co-author’s bachelor party last night. I somehow managed to spend less than $200, although the group spent probably close to three times that much. No strippers, bartenders, or wait staff were harmed in the making of this post, although a few Cuban cigars and (today) some clay pigeons “took one for the team”.

Remember that I was on a weight-loss program last year at this time. I had lost twenty pounds to get down in the low 260s, but those pounds came back after an accident at my old job in which I nearly broke my toe and it didn’t heal for a month, and they brought ten of their friends, and this morning I tipped the scale at 291 pounds.

I remembered then not only how much more energetic I felt, but mentally sharper as well. For some reason all of a sudden I felt that the sluggishness was catching up with me.

Time to get back to work.

“Mathematician” is the top-ranked career in terms of median income and growth potential, according to a study by Careercast.com and printed in the Wall Street Journal.

Guess who’s number 2?

I might qualify that by saying that “mathematician” in this context probably means “private-sector research mathematician”, as “academic mathematician” has a relatively short shelf life (most work is done by the age of 40) and it can be difficult to find a job.

mailbox:

mailbox:

mailbox:

mailbox:

mailbox:

mailbox: “I wonder where that one guy went…”¹

1. I passed. Scores come out Monday. [↩]

Those of you who have been with me for a long time might remember that there used to be a co-contributor, my buddy Michael. Because of the nature of his work (which I can’t really tell you about), he doesn’t post here anymore except in the comments — I just thought I’d pass this along for those of you who know us both.

Well, apparently he spent his long weekend abusing high-grade industrial inhalants, because he proposed to his girlfriend. As far as I know, there is no date set.

You know, I sometimes wonder what this blog might have become if it had a little bit better marketing. Or, perhaps, a better writer. Maybe if its alcohol and strippers budget were a little smaller.

Seriously, people: I don’t know how much longer I’m going to stay with this, but thanks for coming this far with me.

You know, I never really explained what happened to make me come back to Kansas from Purdue, where I had been accepted into the Ph.D. program.

Why would I do such a thing, really? I’ve long told people that being a graduate student is at the same time hard and easy. School is hard, but the rest is really easy. So why come back?

Simple — I wasn’t left with much choice. Turns out I was good at math, but not that good — I got a C in Real Analysis my first semester, which pretty much puts the target on your back; I was pretty miserable and lonely on top of all that. I wasn’t a TA that year, so I was really disconnected from everything and everyone.

Toward the end of March I told the program director I was out. If I hadn’t, the way things were going I doubt I would have lasted much past that, but at that point I didn’t need pushing. I also doubt that I broke his heart too much.

I finished the semester out of some twisted sense of pride, and then as soon as I could I packed up and came back to look for employment.

Don’t know what caused me to post that; I was just going back through the archives hunting down bugs and stopped to read some posts from those days.