Birthday Eve

Today is my birthday. This party is going to be epic, and I am probably going to get really drunk. Don't ever say I didn't do it huge, I been drinkin' on the green tea all week to get my fluids in check and my stomach on stretch. You know I'm a pro.

Wu Tang's new shit is the shit. I didn't think that they could get any better, but I am super excited about listening to this one. It's fucking awesome.

Contagion

I spent the last 45 minutes over dinner talking about why I'm going to quit my PhD and what I might be doing afterwards. I think I got some of the postdocs so excited that they might quit themselves. I'm only speaking tongue in cheek, I'm sure they won't, but it makes me feel more excited when others get excited, unlike my advisor. He is an impossibly singular person, it's really nuts.

Prithee, My Dear

Why are we here?

If you don't know already, I get obsessive over particular words and phrases. This happens a lot with technical terms. Here are some that I like right now:

1.) Totally antisymmetric Levi-Civita tensor

2.) Kernel

3.) Geodesic

4.) Characteristic Polynomial

5.) Pseudodifferential Operator

6.) Manifold

$$$

I spent a lot of it.

People

I'm always tempted to lift entire song lyrics here but I usually resist that temptation. Today I think I won't because David Berman is a poet.

Moments can be monuments to you
If your life is interesting and true.
It's just the same for a man or a girl,
The meaning of the world lies outside the world.

People love people and they understand
if you wanna renovate your background mind
(a federal woman needs a municipal man)
People gotta synchronize to animal time.

You can't change the feeling
but you can change your feeling about the feelings in a second or two
People always come around.

I'm studying the ceiling on a little afternoon
and when I paint my dining room
People gonna come around.

I love to see a rainbow from a garden hose
lit up like the blood of a centerfold
I love the city and the city rain,
suburban kids with biblical names.

People ask people to watch their scotch.
People send people up to the moon.
When they return, well there isn't much.
People be careful not to crest too soon.

The drums march along at the clip of an I.V. drip
like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip.
I really hope you'll come around.

It's sunny and seventy-five. It feels so good to be alive.
Come on baby don't stay inside.
Everybody's coming out tonight.

Oh Dear

Charles Bukowski was an idiot, how can you write anything interesting hung over this badly?

Man, I had some weird dream about the Kid A cd last night, talk about creepy! I kept seeing the cd cover in all sorts of weird renditions and such. Drunk brains are hilarious.

I'm Freezin' My Yams Off

It is cold as hell up here in D-Town. It's good to be around family though, it tends to recenter my thought patterns and whatnot. I hope everyone else has a super good Thanksgiving! I'm sure you will.

Yours Truly.

Turns Out

I'm the best at half-assing. I haven't been to quantum but for maybe 2 days out of the past 3 weeks, just took a test and definitely did mostly correctly 4/5 problems. If this is anything like the last test, 4/5 problems means an solid A. We'll see. I don't even give a shit about it though, this is all so later'd. Financial engineering world better prepare to be rocked.

Doodlez Pt. 2

You Were Right When You Said

Manic depression's a frustrating mess.

The Coffee Tastes Exceptionally Bitter This Morning

There is a difference. I just got a phone call from one of my students who stopped coming to lab in the middle of the semester. He was one of the students who was doing well on all the quizzes and definitely understood the material, he even did pretty well on the exams. But if you don't get at least 70% of the lab points you cannot pass this class.

I didn't really know why he was missing the labs, but I really should have investigated more thoroughly. From the conversation we just had it turns out his mother has some form of terminal cancer and is trying to go through chemotherapy but hospitals are denying their insurance claims. Since his father isn't able to handle the bureaucratic work of dealing with hospitals and insurance, K.A. has been going to Dallas every weekend to spend time with his mother and try and get everything sorted out. Lab is on Mondays at 8AM and he just started missing it. After missing about four of the labs, it's impossible for him to pass and impossible for him to move on without passing this physics course.


He emailed roughly 2 weeks ago about his lab grade at which point I directed him to the professor of the class to discuss anything we could do. 2 weeks ago was already much too late to do anything. If I had been a bit proactive with my students I could have contacted him the 2nd lab he missed and had him move to a section later in the week to do his labs. I know that I cannot be held responsible for making my students get to class and pass everything, but I don't care whether I can directly be held responsible for it. I know I should have done better. This whole situation makes me feel so self-centered, because here I am worrying about my near perfect life and here's a kid who's worrying about his Mom dying on the weekends. That was basically a phonecall from G-d, my conscience, or who knows what. It's divine intervention, surely.

Yours truly.

I forgot a title for this, how about "Suck It"?

Oh the work week, how I love it. I saw someone ghost riding the whip the other day on campus, that was pretty awesome. He was definitely was sort of embarassed when I called him out on it. If you're gonna do it you gotta own it, that's my tip for pulling anything off. A heroin addiction looks real bad if you're acting like a pussy who's concerned about a few rotten teeth and track marks, but if you're that guy that does it and everyone knows does it but still shows up to parties and acts like he's fine then you're probably just genetically better than everyone else around you. Just quit before you're 25*, it'll be fine.

I need to sell my truck ASAP, so I can update on my b-boy status with a Benzo. Maybe I'll do that with all my free time**.

Yours truly, <3.


* If you're 25 and still on smack just promise me you'll quit by 30.
** Do some work you asshole!

Epicly Later'd

Last night was a fun one. There was the annual Town Hall Old vs. New party where I saw some friends getting mad sauced. I wasn't drinking because I was driving the 'burban party bus. That party was a pretty okay time but I knew that the other dance party was going to be way more rad. I thought it would be tight and then it was tight. We went over there and it was basically everyone we didn't know, which is good. The whole apartment had been turned into a splatter painted dance fest, and it turned out to be a pretty epic time with Hunter djing. Much dancing and much walking it out.

The title of this post is how I feel about physics.

Take It Easy

This new skateboard is so nice! This is such a fun thing to do.

I want to apologize if I have been unloading on people excessively as of late, I need to chill out and quit overthinking things so much. I think I'm just worried about quitting grad school and what that means for the rest of my life, and worries like that tend to worm their way into other things.

In other news, I was remembering this crazy idea I had when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I remember being so convinced (either I convinced myself or someone older than me did) that the next Teenage Mutant Turtle Movie was going to feature the turtles "evolving" and getting rid of their shells. I remember hyping it up so much! I hope noone remembered my hype by the time the next movie came out, else I probably lost a whole lot of elementary school cred. STORY OF MY LIFE.

I've also been thinking more about why I don't feel good doing physics anymore. No matter what anyone says, doing research in theoretical physics requires a significant amount of ego. You have to be confident and ready to disrespect the old guard and you need to believe that you are the one who's going to figure something new out. More importantly, you have to enjoy that sort of interaction. As I've grown older I think I've lost more and more of an "ego" . That is, I don't care about being the one to figure something new out. It's still nice to understand a new idea or have a fresh one, but it doesn't really drive me like it used to. It's fun when everyone tells you you're a smart guy, but that doesn't last. Nor does it really add up to a totally healthy way to go about things. There's a lot of talk about a scientific community, but I've been to conventions -- it's scientific, that's for sure, but a community can't really be based upon a bunch of people bragging to eachother about their latest result. It can also get really old talking about physics ALL the time! I'd rather use these technical skills I've gained to deal with something less tangentially related to the world. Money moves people and people move money. Electrons seem to do whatever the fuck they want. So, I have some ideas. People ideas.

Physics Fan For Life

So I finally got the tattoo, as I mentioned previously. Here is a picture:


I'm pretty pleased and it is healing up rather nicely. Even if I don't continue with physics forever I don't think I'll ever be bored with the idea of Feynman diagrams and the processes they represent. Even if they are made obsolete by a superior technique or -- G-d forbid -- an exact solution, they are still a neat representation of the major intellectual advances made in the latter 100 years of this past millenium.

Life is fun, it's nice to enjoy it for the simple day-to-day things. I don't feel like compartmentalizing or making any predictions about the future, because the present is here to take advantage of each second. How much fun is that!?

<3

Ehhhh, Ya Got Any Gum?

Sometimes I can be the most awkward human. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

Done Did It

Done got a silly picture on my arm. Pictures forthwith.

Built to Spill

My over-analysis engine is always turned on. Please someone stop it. I'm going to try and really get some work-related responsibility going on this week, for real though. Of course, Tattoo Tuesday isn't exactly the most responsible thing I've done in my life but damn it's going to be the sitch. Here goes nerd tattoo #1.

Also, I started feeding this cat that hangs out around our house and now it follows me all the way to the edge of George Bush when I'm walking to school. I think I just adopted a friend. <3

Oh Man Oh Man Oh Man Let Me Tell You Somethin'

I had fun last night. The awkward favorite kind. Went to an art show in Bryan and ran into the most bizarre subsets of people I know, all of whom I have some reason or another to be awkward with. Jesus. It was a super good time overall though.

I'm going to ATX tonight tonight, M.O.S. going to be so much fun my favorite people are going. Will see you all soon. Byee.

The Plight of the Flightless Bird

Went to the Ptarmigan last night with Ryan Brown. They kept giving me all these free beers but now I'm paying for them. It's hard to think of anything interesting at all when you're hungover. Maybe I won't drink this weekend and just have fuuuun?