Happy Halloween

I'm not sure whether the macabre headlines all over the front page of the Tech were correlated or caused by the upcoming holiday.

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Disaster

I recently became acquainted with an avid promoter of Procter and Gamble products. My financial inhibitions keep me from following all of her advice, but when I was perusing the consumer products section of my local Star Market, I noticed that large bottles of Crest Pro Health Plus mouthwash were on sale for 50% off.

So I picked a bottle up with my purchases.

After arriving home following shopping adventures, I decided to try out my newest adoption from the Procter and Gamble family.

I took a little swig, and did a little swish.

When I was a little kid, I was taught to gargle mouthwash to cleanse the back of the mouth.

So I tried a little gargle.

Unfortunately, I was putting the rest of my groceries away in the kitchen, and was caught off guard when my gargling caused a massive bubbly explosion in my mouth. As I ran to the sink, the frothy fluid cascaded down my face, onto my shirt. Embarrassed, I tried to clean up the excess mouthwash before I headed down to a car of friends.

When I got to the car, one of my friends remarked that I smelled really fresh.

"Like mouthwash?"

"Yeah."

Although I have mixed feelings about the gargleability of Crest Pro Health Plus, at least it smells minty fresh. Either in your mouth, or on you shirt.

And I was lucky. The large bottles for 50% off held enough mouthwash to thoroughly wash every mouth of a 10-mouth family twice a day for at least 10 years... I wasn't in danger of running out of minty fresh odor anytime soon.

A visit to Santarpios removed any minty fresh residue from my mouth, but filled my tummy with amazing pizza and home-made sausage. It was amazing.

After Pizza, we drove out to Walden Pond for a night swim.

I think in the last couple of weeks, I have received at least ten invitations from my Mormon friends to go swimming. I began to think that it was an activity that especially loved by Mormons. And it made sense.. While others may find temporary relief from the humid Boston Summer with a quick drink, Mormons are forced to be more creative. So we do stuff like.. go swimming in Walden Pond.

I think some of my favorite memories this summer have been floating on my back in the middle of Walden Pond, watching falling stars in complete silence. The woods are thick and wrap all the way around the pond, shielding the water from any artificial light source except for the hourly commuter rail train which quickly passes by on the opposite shore. As it rushes along through the trees, the lighted windows look like the Polar Express train. The water is the perfect temperature, and the night air is warm. It is a great place to float and think.

Mormons like that kind of stuff.

Walden Pond is mostly empty at night. However, during our swim that night, a small party of night swimmers passed by on the shore, presumably making their way back to their car.

On the car trip over, I had shared my suspicion that night swimming at Walden was a uniquely Mormon activity.

So as the nightswimmers passed, one of our group called out,

"Hey, are you guys Mormon?"

"Uh... no. Are you guys?"

It would have been the perfect missionary opportunity, but we were all laughing too hard to respond with any degree of spirituality. It was a potentially embarrassing encounter, but the darkness that separated us hid our identities. We could only hope that they would be encouraged to go home and look up more about the church.

Eventually, the night swimming came to an end.

We swam back to shore.

The midnight air was refreshing.

I put on my shirt.

I still smelled like mint.

Sailing

I think it's even a goal in the back of my journal. I'm not positive, though.

I've wanted to learn how to sail for a long time. At least since last fall, when I missed my opportunity to learn because of a sailing-prohibitory condition they call "Frozen Charles River" which is a side-effect of the happiness-prohibitory time of the year known as "Boston Winter".



MIT has this great sailing pavilion that is open to students and affiliated members. I've heard they built the sailing program in 1967 under the direction of MIT President Julius Stratton who was convinced that the academic rigor of the Institution could be increased by the addition of the boat dock on the Charles River and several small dinghies. Legend has it that Stratton predicted that the tightened budget due to the boat dock construction would result in denying allocation of repair funds for the boats the following year. This denial of funds would produce holey dinghies, which, when used by students who were unwilling to hit the books 24/7, would lead to a gradual increase in the intellectual standard over time. According to Stratton, the introductory required math course 18.001 (which, like all MIT courses is known only by a number, concealing the real class content from all but the most creative of cryptographers) and the holey dinghies should weed out most of the less-intelligent and less-motivated students by the sophomore year. The motivation behind Stratton's quest for scholastic excellence may have stemmed from his growing impatience at the inability of inventors to create that put-your-pants-on-for-you-in-the-morning-when-you-get-out-of-bed apparatus he had been dreaming of ever since he was a child.

Unfortunately, Stratton passed away three months after completion of the boat dock, and funds for repairing the dinghies the next year were inadvertently allocated by the university treasurer who felt justified in budget increases to any category with "dinghy" in the name.

18.001 still continues to be a life-threatening challenge.

At least I think the above is correct.

At any rate, the boat dock is still alive and well.

And offering sailing lessons to students.

I called up a friend last Wednesday, and we met for the sailing class. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. A breeze was blowing, which is why they decided to let us take the boats out on our first day. When only a breeze is blowing, it's hard to do bad things in a sailboat... it's like letting someone learn to drive on your riding lawnmower. (Before you think that's a bad analogy, you should ask the sailing staff about what happens if you leave your centerboard and you run over a cat or a small child...)

So today, my friend texted me, asking whether I was planning on going sailing. It was raining at the time, but I replied that I would definitely be there, hoping that the rain would stop in the next 5 hours.

When the class time rolled around, it was still pouring. I headed down to the boat dock, intending only to pick up my sailing card. I was surprised to see that the dock was well-staffed, and the lady at the front desk asked if I was here for classes. I told her that I was, but that I assumed they were cancelled.

"They're never cancelled."

I probably should have gone home.

I had luckily brought my gym bag, so I put on some shorts and a stinky tshirt, and went out to practice tacking. After every few tacks, we had to pause and bail out the boat. Except that it's hard to pause in a sailboat...

Needless to say, I was drenched by the end of the lesson. Not just a little.

But I guess there are worse things than being completely soaked to the bone. Like not having one of those put-your-pants-on-for-you-in-the-morning-when-you-get-out-of-bed apparatus..

Roomie Background Check

So, I'm moving starting now.. I am paying two rental contracts for the month of April, which wouldn't be so bad, except that the government wants to tax my graduate student stipend and is collecting on that this month too...

But I'm getting a new roommate. For privacy purposes, I won't mention his full name.

Because that could be awkward.

And lead to further potential embarrassment.

Which might compound the existing potential sympathetic embarrassment one might feel after a quick google of his name in association with BYU.

I felt that if I was going to be roommates with this guy, I was at least allowed to do a quick background check with some assistance from google.

There are no results for his name and "serial rapist".

And although a search for his name and "serial killer boston" did return a recent post in HFTM (Help Find the Missing), I don't think that my future roommate is the 74-year-old man with dementia who went missing on December 30, 2009. Although I guess anything is possible.

However, with regards to his undergraduate alma mater, the first few links were respectable links to articles acknowledging his winning of "the premier undergraduate award of its type" - the Goldwater scholarship.

The next links were interesting.

One was to a page with his name and this video:



And another was a link to this video:



My future roommate and I are both on the heterosexual marriage track, which predispositions our roommateship to be one of brevity. However, when the time come for us to part ways, I hope I will be able to agree with the male person who was caught on video wearing a red tshirt sitting in a hot tub full of otherwise unclothed boys and soda.

"It was life-changing."

Lack

For lack of funny things to say, here are some pictures that have been accumulating on my phone.

This lack of communication ability was found in a stairwell at MIT.. I would describe this as "Nonconfrontational aggressive" tagging. I guess the funny thing was that the light switch was down, but the light was on. And there seemed to be a lot of discussion about whether it should be left on or off. Also note the reference to "Jack Florey".. a fictional MIT legend.


I was walking to school this morning in balmy 32 degree weather, and felt sorry for the people who own this yard. Day after day, they avoided having to go out and walk the dog during the many Boston blizzards, but with spring approaching, their laziness is beginning to catch up to them. I postulate that the exposed dung represents the careless period between January 17 and February 23. As the snow continues to melt, the fruits of the rest of January and December will be exposed. There will be no lack of manure to get this lawn green.


A lack of tactfulness resulted in this very effective advertisement for the new Fedora 14 Linux system at the Washington DC airport.


And lastly, this startling anonymous poll left in lobby 10 during MLK week revealed several startling hotspots for discrimination across the MIT campus. Green thumbtacks represent places where people have experienced equality, and red ones represent places where people have experienced discrimination. Although buildings W1, W2, and W4 appear to have been the site of many discriminatory incidents, there appears to be a lack of consensus of the levels of tolerance or discrimination in the Charles River.

Excise Tax

Boston has a long history of freedom and revolt against unfair taxation.

So I was very saddened when I received mail from the City of Somerville today with an excise tax for having a car.

What? I would have expected that after the success resulting from the stamp tax revolts, Bostonians to have gotten rid of the motor vehicle and trailer excise tax next.

I guess the thing that really riles me up is that Boston is definitely the worst place I have ever driven in my life. And it's not just the traffic. There are potholes all over the place. I practically need a 4-wheel drive car to navigate the roads here.

So the way that excise tax here in Massachusetts works is that every year, you have to pay a certain percentage of the original value as determined by the manufacturer. Any cars over four years old are charged a tax equal to .25% of the original cost. Every year. At least I don't have to pay the 2.25% tax for new cars.

So if I get a new Porsche 911 GT2 RS for $245,000 (I'm saving up for it...) this year, I pay $5512 in taxes that first year, and then 20 years later, I am still paying $612 every year to drive on terrible roads with awful traffic.

Basically, after 23 years of having a car, I have paid 10% of the original price as excise tax.

That makes me sick.

I think it's time to throw some excise tax collectors into the harbor.

Who's with me?

Little Fish II

So I was sitting down to lunch today with some friends at the Whitehead Institute cafeteria (reviewed here).

Initially, a friend had mentioned the cafeteria as a good spot to get a cheap hamburger.

Indeed, the $6.50 Chang burger (Bacon, BBQ sauce, cheese, onion ring) combo meal was well worth the money.

A friend from my grad program came with us, and somehow during the course of our conversation he mentioned that while he was doing his undergrad at Harvard, his dorm had a personal chef who would cook eggs to order for them.

"You went to Harvard?" My other friend asked.

"Of course, you didn't notice his veritas ring he was trying to flaunt to you as he sampled your fry sauce?" I asked.

"Yeah, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and insecure about myself after the first few classes and am not looking forward to doing homework all weekend, so I put this ring on to give me confidence," said my Harvard-grad friend.

This, of course, turned into an in-depth intellectual inquisition into the theory of stuff we don't know that we know that we don't know. But that's material for another blog that isn't about small fishes.

But it was somehow comforting to know that I wasn't the only small fish in the pond. And incentive for me to try to come up with a material reminder for me to wear or carry around when I need a little confidence boost. I'm not sure a CTR ring would do it...

And then my friend made an insightful observation. In undergraduate, the smart kids were the ones who were either

• talented and naturally smart,
or
• extra hard-working

Somehow, they about evened out. The smart kids in the class were the ones who were born smart, or the ones who were of average intelligence and worked extra hard.

The problem with living in the big pond is that in order to be smart, you have to be naturally talented, and work extra hard. Shoot.

And then I went back to my Randomized Algorithms class just for fun. Because even though the homework will kill me, I still think the topic is interesting. And I am secretly hoping to try to swim with the big fish until after the first homework assignment, at which point I will disappears suddenly.

In his research, the instructor, David Karger, is working on an application to increase accessibility and usability of class notes called "nb" where the class notes are posted online and students can annotate the notes and receive feedback from other users or the teacher or whoever reads the notes next. This sounds like an interesting idea. Of course because it is his research project, Dr. Karger lauded it highly. Then he mentioned why it was seeing so much success: Because when students saw that other people weren't understanding the course material, they weren't afraid to ask questions, so everyone in the class had a better learning experience.

I thought that was interesting. I guess it's a common problem for people to remain silent if they don't understand something, and eventually they end up feeling like a little fish.

So I guess I'm still a little fish. But at least there are other little fish here with me.

Little Fish

I had a really bad case of "little fish in a big pond" today.

I could feel it coming on yesterday in my "Information and Inference" class when I spent 5 hours in the library teaching myself about sums of discrete random variables and convolution for the part a of subproblem i of problem 1.1 of the homework.

I'm not joking. It was a huge assignment, and the first two problems (1.1i has 6 parts, and 1.1ii also has 6 parts... I didn't even look at problem 1.2..) were supposed to be review. While everyone else got out their pencils and started scribbling figures and humming happily in class, I stared at the problem, and felt like a small fish.

And then this morning I got up after a minor arctic "event" that had covered the ground with snow and stopped all but the most necessary pedestrian traffic, and walked to my lab at Harvard where I needed to go to a lab meeting. After the meeting, I talked with my advisor, and headed to class at MIT.. And it was somehow raining, although the temperature was below freezing. I'm not sure how that works, but it was doing it. So the ice was slick, and it was covered by a pool of water.

The sidewalks were pretty well plowed, as were the streets, but the curbs and the transitions from curb to sidewalk were large puddles of water/slush..

As I stepped into one of these puddles, after my foot sunk in about 6 inches, I realized that the puddle was deeper than I had anticipated, and found myself unable to retract my foot from the watery monster that was eagerly slurping my foot up like a raw oyster.

Even my brand new waterproof boots couldn't keep out all of the water, and once again, I found myself feeling like a small fish in a large pond.

Of freezing water.

The same feeling happened today as I went to my randomized algorithms class, in which we were informed that the professor hears that his class is extraordinarily hard for entering graduate students, and recommended not wasting our time with it...

I guess this is a big change from undergraduate where I felt like I could basically take any class and do well in it. So upon selecting classes here at MIT, I chose classes that sounded interesting, reasoning that I had taken similar classes at BYU so I didn't need to satisfy the pre-reqs.

So, now I am trying to schedule an appointment with my advisor, so I can crawl back with my tail between my legs, and change all my classes to the simple entry-level classes...

I'm still looking for cures to Little-Fish Syndrome, and I hope it isn't contagious.

But I've heard that a warm climate can alleviate some of the symptoms...

Lessons

Some lessons you have to learn the hard way.

Like the way that you shouldn't cook cookies on a non-microwavable plate in the microwave.

So I arrived at home, looking for something sweet, and to my delight I remembered that I had made cookie dough the day before and still had some leftover in the fridge. I needed to get going, so I decided to try my luck with the microwave..

I got out a little plate from the cupboard, and stuck some dough on the plate and stuck the plate in the microwave. I set the timer for 2 minutes, and then took off to the bathroom to take care of some business.

Unfortunately, although I heard popping, I wasn't too alarmed.

Until I smelled smoke. I ran into the kitchen and discovered that even though the timer hadn't gone off, the kitchen was filled with smoke.

Normally this wouldn't have been a bad thing, but in an effort to keep the heating bill down, our apartment has sealed all the windows.

So I opened the front and back doors, and for once in Boston the wind wasn't blowing. I tried to turn the heater fan on, but it always takes so long to kick in...

I learned two lessons from this experience:

1) don't cook cookies in the microwave in non-microwavable plates.

2) our smoke detectors don't work.

To remind myself to avoid cooking the rest of the cookie dough in the microwave, I have taken these pictures:


Note the excessive smoke and combustion reaction that took place in the cookie.


I told my brother about it, and noted that my little sister had tried to cook cookies in the microwave, too.

Unfortunately, she had put them in for 12 minutes, as the recipe directed.

In my defense, in the decade that I have been on the earth longer than my sister, I had developed the intuition to only put them in for 2 minutes.