If I believed in karma, I’d be looking for the thief to get T-boned by a dump truck. But that’s just me.

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”.

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.

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

1. I passed. Scores come out Monday.

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.

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

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.

The new version allows one to add one’s Gravatar to the site, so that if you regularly use that service, your Gravatar will appear here in the comments as well.

Feel free to request features that you’d like to have or think would be good for pushing this site along. Also, feel free to note features that suck and that should be terminated with extreme prejudice.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Internet dweebs at places like 4chan and YTMND, and the users of Playlist for shoring up my traffic recently. It appears there has been an Internet phenomenon called “rickrolling” that started at the sites I just mentioned. This phenomenon was similar to the goatse.cx (FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK OR LOOK THIS UP AT WORK) phenomenon of about thirteen years ago, except instead of… that… the gag link goes to a YouTube posting of the MTV video for Rick Astley’s 80s hit Never Gonna Give You Up. I used it earlier in a bit of tasteless commentary.¹

So, thanks, Internet.

1. Is there any other kind here?

My primary e-mail for this site got spoofed, and as a result, I got over 10,000 bounce-back messages from the various servers and spam filters my spoofer sent messages to. Accordingly, I had to shut it off.

Using the site’s e-mail form goes to the right place and will reach me. I will most likely reply, and then you will have my official public-relations e-mail. Those of you that have my super-secret personal e-mail should not fear — it is unchanged, so that you can continue to receive your usual dose of j.d..

I also took out the calendar, because I don’t think anyone uses them except for me, and the sight of it was annoying me.