Bounded in a Nutshell

Swiped from Clevermonkey:

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

• For the first time ever, all three of the final exams I'm giving are on the same day: 1-3, 4-6, and 8:30-10:30 on December 15th. I even get a bit of a dinner break in there.
• I realise that it's very old-school of me to complain about writing style in e-mail ("Full sentences, with clauses and everything? Proper punctuation? That's, like, so 19th-century epistolary, dude."), but I'm going to do it anyway. My first contact with a student this semester was an e-mail that consisted of one line, with no capitalisation at all and no punctuation except the question mark at the end. At the very least, is it unreasonable to expect people to introduce themselves when sending a message to someone they've never met?
• I've been distracting myself from course planning this afternoon by scheming and plotting. One of the objects of my scheming is a pair of diploma frames, that I might finally remove my degree-paper-things from the poster tube in which they've languished for lo these many years. I fail to see why it should be worth $200+ to me to put one of these into a frame, doctorate or not.
• Another plot concerns trip planning; it turns out that the Rochester/Toronto ferry has anticipated my desires and moved to thwart them far in advance of my own plans. At last, a worthy opponent...

Back in the States, back at work. Back in black. Back in the saddle again?

Not much to report, really. I've been spending my days throwing out a lot of papers (between the usual detritus that litters my office, and my discoery that I only have to keep old final exams something like six months, rather than the three years that I'd imagined... well, there's paper aplenty to be discarded) and putting the finishing touches on my job-review dossier. At some point I should finish up the course prep that's my main reason for being back here so early. (Well, that and the fact that my contract requires it. You know how that goes.)

On the Shiny New Laptop front, rumours are circulating concerning a new line of Powerbooks, apparently to be announced mere days before the end of the special back-to-school offer. This could be good, from either the "kewl newest thing" or the "discounted Apple hardware" perspectives. Stay tuned. And if anyone cares to suggest a name (I've had "Heloïse" in my head, but that's not necessarily a name with good symbolism behind it) then feel free.

OK, enough typing for now; I need to locate the mysteriously missing envelope of evaluations from one of my classes last fall. More later.

Just in case anyone was worried, it turns out that the result I was complaining about yesterday is, in fact, true. And there's a much nicer proof I've found, along completely different lines than the original, yucky one. So that's all right.

After multiple years of neglect, I'm rereading one of the main proofs from my dissertation. And boy, does it suck. Vertices changing names all over the place, overly torturous logic, the whole bit. Just awful. Wasn't I supposed to have a committee to stop me from submitting crap like this?

(Well, yes. But I know for a fact that two of my four committee members didn't read the dissertation at all, and a third read through to the end of Chapter 1; the Awful Proof in Question occurs in chapter 4.)

The reason I'm going back to it at all is that a bunch of this stuff is finally getting published soon -- well, almost certainly -- and the pre-referee report I've gotten back points out how very messy this bit is. The funny thing was that I remember being so very proud of working through the mess of cases and coming out the other side with the proof.

At least I'm sure the result's true.

Well, mostly sure.

Hm. Been a while since I've written one of these, between not having regular 'net access and my standing rule that despondence is not a good state from which to be blogging.

Anyhow. My laptop sucks.

Don't get me wrong: it's a fine machine, and was a time when it was the coolest thing on wheels, without actually being on wheels. It was just that cool. The problem is that this was some years ago, and while the technology is still current enough to run the most recent version of the OS (not that I have the most recent version of the OS...) I'm running into distinct issues regarding processor speed. And resolution. And battery life. And memory. Oh, memory, you'll be the death of me someday.

So: it's new computer time, since it's actually becoming difficult to get decent work done on la machine. Given my current predilections, I've essentially got two choices for a suitable notebook, and they begin with "i" and "Power". The first of these choices is probably the less satisfying, since I have every intention of using the machine for reasonably heavy computational stuff, and so I'm leaning toward a PowerBook.

But.

All the rumour sites agree: now is not the time to buy a PowerBook. Revisions are on the way; wait just a week or three more, voices whisper, and all will be revealed. On the other side of the time pressure is the Special Kewl Offer of a sort-of free iPod Mini that I, as a faculty member of good standing at an institute of higher education, am qualified to receive.

So: if I'm lucky, the new PB release comes in the next month, and my way is clear unless they also jack the prices on the things. But if I'm not lucky, then I can either get a Shiny New PowerBook, or else get a free MP3 player and be one of the chumps who orders from the Dregs of the Old PowerBooks.

There's got to be a mathematical model here that'll help...