What's the Difference, Anyway?

Well that explains why the song on I was listening to "on my computer" (so my head thought) wasn't changing when I pressed the advanced button --- it turns out that the song was coming from my iPod.

Similarly, my "debit card" that wasn't working properly for specific things a few days ago turned out to be a credit card instead. My head just wasn't screwed on straight.

I think I need sleep. :)

How Convenient!

Apparently, my brain is now automatically filtering out the parts of messages that indicate the only possibility for certain meetings is in the morning, thereby saving my conscious mind from needing to be aware of such horrible possibilities.

This is possibly very convenient! :P

Up All Night

PhD Comics has a panel about all-nighters.

I still pull an all-nighter every now and again, though it's certainly harder than it used to be (and I did a Hell of a lot of these in college). Two fundamental differences between my experiences and the description:

(1) I start my work early rather than at O(11pm).

(2) I want to kill everybody when they get up to start their day rather than to kiss them---especially if they wish me a good morning (and doubly so if they have been blasting country music, which was one of the rites of passage in grad school in applied math at Cornell... shudder).

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

Bimodal Sleeping

Apparently, bimodal sleeping (in which there is a 'first sleep', a waking but restful time of an hour or two, and a 'second sleep') harkens back to tradition. I do this a lot, except for the "restful" part.

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

What happens in the United States stays in the United States (again)

Last night I arrived in Los Angeles. I flew out of Heathrow (with no delays!), had a layover in Paris (my first time in France in any sense... I'll try to visit for real in the near future), and then made it to LA after a very long flight. I'll be in the LA area (both Pasadena and Beverly Hills) until at night on January 7th. Then I'll go to North Carolina for a few days because I co-organized this workshop, and then I'll fly back to the UK on January 13th of the new year.

I'm exhausted. I wish I could fall asleep.

Now I've seen everything

In my tutorial that finished about 30 minutes ago, a student actually fell asleep while presenting a problem on the white board. He slid gradually down the board, hit his head on and de-attached the part that holds the markers, and proceeded to slide down onto the floor, where it took a couple of minutes to wake him up. (He seems to be alright, by the way. He's currently resting and the plan is to get him a taxi or something to take him home after he's rested up.)

This actually beats the time that Aaron Kuzin fell asleep in Phys 1 and was snoring really loudly for the entire lecture. (The prof was giving him dirty looks the entire lecture and those of us who were sitting near him couldn't stop giggling.)