Vladimir Arnold on Russian Versus American Mathematicians

Not only are these comments about Russian versus American mathematicians vintage Arnold, but there is also a very fundamental truth in his comment: spending time working to produce new results versus spending time talking about prior stuff that you did.

"Bloody Fire Alarm Interrupted Me Mid-Sentence!"

The bloody fire alarm in my building just interrupted me mid-sentence!

(Does anybody else have a knee-jerk reaction of indignation to such things or do most people start by wondering what's going on? I'm just wondering...)

Oink.

It looks like I was oinking.

I started having severe muscle aches on Thursday night while I was playing Okami, and I went to bed not long after that. (I stayed up just long enough to turn on the Dodger game so I could listen to it while I tried to go to sleep.) I woke up Friday morning and felt like total crap---easily the worst I've felt in over 3 years, but actually nowhere near as bad as that day that Lemming might remember. That was the one in which I slept 18 hours and bowed out of going to a play with him. That day, I somehow had walked to campus and had to be driven home by the condensed matter physics secretary after she saw me lying prostrate on the floor of my office. Then I slept for most of the next 3/4 of a day, went to campus the next day feeling not too horrible, and had the guy at the Red Door Cafe tell me that I looked horrible. (My response: "You should have seen me yesterday.")

Anyway, having learned my lesson, I cancelled all my meetings on Friday and I stayed home except for a brief walk to get fresh air and coffee + pastry. On the way, I also dropped off a form I absolutely had to submit on Friday, and I tried to avoid everybody as much as I could and just slide the form under the right door. (I probably shouldn't have stepped out of the apartment at all, but being cooped up was driving me nuts, even though I was lying down most of the time and occasionally drifting in and out of sleep.) At first, I couldn't even sit up for 5 minutes without feeling extremely nauseous, but things were already getting better by mid to late afternoon. Then I looked up the symptoms of both flu and swine flu, and it looks like I had just about every one of them. I went to bed at 9pm on Friday (and I was exhausted by that point) and except for getting up briefly a couple of times in the middle of the night, I slept until 9am. I dealt with e-mails on Friday, but that was the only work I could handle. So much for the page proof corrections I was supposed to finish by then. By the way, just to give you an idea of how cushy my job is, one of my colleagues brought me fruit and tea to my flat.

I already felt much better yesterday. In particular, I felt well enough to type up my page proof corrections (that I had finished scribbling on paper on Thursday), but that and some e-mails are about all of the work I did. I again got coffee and otherwise stayed in my flat (aside from a brief venture to the SCR to return the stuff from Friday and take a couple of apples). For the second day in a row, I ate only fruit, nuts, coffee, and pastry (finishing the one I started the day before). I also started a new game of Civ IV, because I think that getting swine flu is the FSM's way of saying that I should be playing Civ IV.

I'm pretty much recovered now, except that I am pretty heavily weakened from this and have eaten very little during the past couple of days. I am going to have to continue taking it easy for several days---I just don't think I'll have the strength to go back to my normal work schedule (which I suppose most people would consider an insane schedule) for a few days. Naturally, I haven't done the work this weekend that I initially intended to do, though perhaps I'll do a small bit of it today. Everything else will be delayed in turn, but my collaborators and I will just have to deal with it. It's better to get this over with and have this happen after classes start when it would be much harder for me to slow my pace this drastically. (It still annoys me to need to do this, but I don't have the strength to go at my normal pace right now. I guess there are a few things that are capable of slowing me down. :) )

I guess I get all of the hip diseases.

Name of my New Computer

Unless somebody changes my mind quickly, I have just decided to name my new computer "Trefoil" (well, technically for the current hard drive). The use in both mathematics and for the biohazard symbol is just too good to resist. I was thinking of using a "sweeter" name (like the name "Duende" I used for one of my old hard drives), but this was the first name that came to mind that I really like.

Now I just have to finish setting up the new computer. I am copying older stuff in a piecemeal fashion that was necessitated by the issues with the old computer. Sadly, this takes a lot longer than a simple user transfer. I also need to register the Mac address with Somerville's IT people to get online directly without at least some monkeying (or going to a different location), so I won't be finished with the setup until at least tomorrow. I'm sure it will take me a while after that to reinstall software, so I'll probably stick with immediate needs. I already have stuff to do that needs LaTeX, and I expect to need things like Matlab, MS Office, etc. soon. I also have the urge to start a new game of Civ IV, but given all of the urgent work I have right now, that really ought to wait for a long while. (Let's see how well I do with that.) I also plan on downloading a bunch of music via the iTunes store. I have taken advantage of not having my playlist on the old computer by listening to a flashback alternative station that I really like (that I hadn't listened to in a while but which I enjoyed during iPod gaps in the past). Every time I listen to this station, I hear songs I forgot about or that I otherwise really like (and that I hence want to acquire), so one thing I really need to remember to do this time is to occasionally listen to that station rather than my own playlist. Some of the songs will likely be very hard to acquire, as this station plays lots of deep cuts, many of which I suspect are from sources that unavailable via iTunes and often just no longer available without scouring for used material. Once I get my new computer online, this is on the docket. Then I can enjoy some of these songs while I get some of my urgent work done.

I'm now online with the new machine using internet sharing (Thanks, Lemming!), though admittedly faking my old computer's Mac address would have been a cooler way to solve the problem. :)

Today's fortunes (and a bit of ranting)

Today has been one of those really hectic days that just stress me out. I have sent more than forty e-mails today, and nearly all of them have been work-related (with nary a pleasure e-mail to be found...). When this happens, it typically means that (1) I've been working very hard that day and (2) it probably didn't involve much time spent on the stuff I had been planning to do. Hence, at the end of such days, I typically either have progressed very little, not progressed at all, or fallen farther behind --- all while working the entire time rather than goofing off. Add to that the fact that I had over two hours' worth of meetings today and would have had more had I not gotten stood up for another meeting (which has now been rescheduled for tomorrow, so that I now have five meetings scheduled for this oh-so-wonderful of weekdays...) and it's made for a very stressful day. I also have more work I'm going to do tonight in order to keep afloat. I also worked for several hours last night. Work spikes are fun.

Oh, and there is a rant based on one of today's things that I will give in a forthcoming blog entry. I won't write that one tonight, however, because it might take a little while and I hope to spend some time either playing games or reading for pleasure.

Long preamble aside, here are (in order) the fortunes I got today:

"Draw up a budget and figure out how to cut down your debt." (Hell yeah! I'm goin' pimpin'!)

"Today is an ideal time to water your personal garden." (OK, that's just gross.)

"Soothing your body is the name of the game today." (How? By turning Japanese? Or perhaps dancing with myself?)