The Weekly Wrap-Up

So it is Saturday night, 11:42pm.  What are you doing?  I am blogging because I have nothing better to do than this or play video games at this point.

My girlfriend, Alicia, had people come up to stay with her so I am sitting in my apartment listening to the music I usually listen to.  The temperature is slightly warm and I have a glass of water in hand.

I would have preferred to do something more entertaining than spending the night alone but this seems to be working just fine.  Imagine, all of the friends I wanted to hang out with were busy.  How dare they?!

So anyways, I do not remember the last time I posted but let me just imagine that it was about two weeks ago.  We had a career fair at the College of Engineering.  I got a few interviews which was quite neat, I also got to hand out my resume with the wrong phone number on it.  My bad.  The week slowly melted into the next because the entire week I was working on two different class assignments.  Bioinformatics was slightly difficult but manageable but Neural Networks kicked my butt.  I ended up getting an 86/100 on it, which was fine with me, a solid B never threatens anyone when you are an undergraduate taking a graduate level class doing math you have never done before…

My part time job has been interesting and I have come to appreciate office politics, in a not at appreciative way.  The bosses and full-time employees are at odds with each other, communication breakdowns have surfaced and there is nothing for me to do but twiddle my thumbs while I wait for them to get their minds wrapped around the problems and MY solution.   MY is capitalized because I was the one who figured out the  solution to the problem concerning  emails not being sent correctly.  But anyways, enough egoism.  Time to switch my music to something a little less harsh for the midnight hour.

Alright, back from that momentary break.

I have been reading a number of good articles recently, I usually find very few that I am willing to propagate however, here are the two best ones.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oreilly10-2008oct10,0,3371018.story
http://zenhabits.net/2008/10/the-only-two-secrets-to-motivating-yourself-youll-ever-need/

So my reposting of those links makes me a sort of better person.

My goals for the next week are to control my stress better, get my homework done, and work on the freelance programming project I have.  Whoo!!  But enough about me, it is midnight and I should jet.

Chicken Kiev for Dummies

It has been a while, due to the mass of homework placed onto my shoulders by the classes I feel most near and dear to.  The homework I have had has changed over the past few years, in the beginning, there was easy homework.  It had an an easily accessible answer that you could figure out without any problem.  Then there was the kind where you thought about it, did some research in your textbook or online, and got it done quickly.  Lately, mine has been of the sort that is confusing, gut-wrenching, no possible solution kind of homework.  I have learned some basic properties of Vector Calculus that was on my homework, something not in our prerequisities for the class.  Why they gotta be like that?

Most of my days still consist of getting up early, going to school or work, then coming home and working on homework the rest of the night, only to rinse and repeat in the next day.  My weekend has gotten somewhat exciting, a visit to Whitewater, and homework.  I am glad that I actually get to enjoy some aspect of the two blessed days off.  Last weekend, was also blessed, however, full of activity.  I am excited for this weekend because I can finally get some of these homework projects done with and out the door. 

This week has been a rush of activity.  Monday through Wednesday were spent searching for internships or full time jobs for next year.  After considering many options, not sleeping Wednesday night, and not having the best of weeks, I have settled on working at my current job.  However, that is just the tip of the iceberg.  That could change in a second.  I enjoyed two interviews this week, and I felt pretty good, but all the companies want me to move, I am not ready to do that, not with a potential career/family in Wisconsin.  So there was much soul-searching and this is the conclusion I have arrived yet. 

I should probably get back to work so as to save myself the stress of waiting to get it done.  I love school!

-Automation 24352534534534324123

The Exciting World of Dairy Farming

Recent research has shown that taking a small town back to a farm and prancing it around like it is a magical place does not make him understand a farm any better.

The first two weeks of college have been blissfully fast and unending.  Days of old have returned with the added caveat of waking up at 7:45am to work or go to class from 9am until 5pm each day.  After that, a quick dinner to help satisfy “the hunger” as I call it and then it is off to the library or respective corner of the room to study from about 7pm to 11:30pm.  Yes, the life of a college student is a blast.  It has taken a bit of getting used to the lack of sleep and fun, for instance, what did you do last weekend?  I bet it did not include going to the Milwaukee Art Museum, staying in the middle of the woods, and going to a dairy farm, of course, mine did.

Seriously, who does not do those three things every weekend?

Friday night was spent hanging with the gal, we enjoyed a dinner consisting of home-made soup, a round or ten of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and the creation of a photo album containing everyone’s favorite puppet: Mausenstein.  After all that fun, I went to sleep and woke up bright and early to start my Undergraduate Research Scholars Fellows Wisconsin Trip weekend…

Our tour included a stop at the art museum, which was pretty neat.  They had a lot of different “art” and my personal favorite was a beer mug made of procelain that had two guys beating each other and throwing up all over it.  After that fantastic voyage through ART, my friend and I went to an authetic ethopian restarunt and we got to eat with our hands.  Very cool, I might add the possibly the highlight of the trip.

We drove up to the middle of Wisconsin to stay at a research facility in the middle of the woods.  Basically it is like a camp on a lake.  Saturday night included Applebee’s and getting drunk with everyone (quite different from the anti-drinking policies of last year).  Sunday morning included eating breakfast and driving to the dairy farm.

The dairy farm was very anticlimatic, basically it was a farm.  There were alot of cows and it smelled. 

The rest of the trip involved driving back to Madison.  Sweet, and thus ended the greatest weekend of my life, one where I got miss out on hanging with friends, doing homework, and enjoying myself.  But more seriously, the URS trip was not that bad. 

Time for another whirlwind week!

The Grind

College has finally started, whether that is a good or a bad thing is up to the user.  I see it as a time to reflect on what I want to learn about and that is neural networks, bioinformatics, race, and the research process.  At least those are what classes I am taking.  They all seem like decent classes and it is hard to gauge whether I am going to do well or not.

So far, I am beyond what we have covered in our classes, in fact, I am living near two weeks in the future in my classes.  I am excited to get homework for some odd reason.  I am in idle mode and have nothing to do except read and not really absorb the material.

I am a little fragmented today, I have not gotten more than 7 hours of sleep the past few nights.  It is mostly because I am trying to get used to “college life” again.

If one was to ask me whether anything significant has happened this week, I would say, “No, nothing has really happened, I have only had one day of classes.  Everything that we have covered I have already known about.”  I really hope that tomorrow they give me something to do.  I want homework!

Hopefully next week will be better and I will be more content…and not tired.

The Eureka Hunt

This is a summary from an article from the New Yorker.  It was published on July 28th, 2008.

The focus of the article was the research on what is called insight.  Insight is what we call the “AHA moment.”  The point where we figure out a problem and in some cases wonder why it was such an easy answer to the problem.

The authors give many examples of insight and talk about the research by Jung-Beeman who has published articles on this subject.  The thing I found most interesting was the way that insight occurred or in particular, where it occurred. 

In the past, I have found that I make the most mental progress in the shower.  It never made sense to me, but the way that they explained it gives me evidence for my own discovery.  They say that most insight occurs in the morning and when you are relaxed, both were elements of my shower.  The morning is an excellent time for insight to occur because the brain is completely disorganized and just starting to become reconfigured for the day. 

When you first go to sleep, your brain starts to distangle neural connections.  Some say that this helps the brain keep its plasticity or that the brain always works best on the edge of chaos, so it basically shuts itself down every night (usually) and restarts every day.  The authors also said that relaxation was key to the insight and a fresh brain gives a person a good deal of both keys to insight.  So how do you relax, usually in the morning (unless you are rushed), your brain has time to think unconsciously and perhaps lead to an insight.  Insight also occurs when you take a warm shower.  Again, relaxation is key, a warm shower gives a person time to think and the brain can wander perhaps providing insight or an answer to a problem. 

After a long focus, it may be best to just go for a walk, give yourself sometime to think because your brain can give you the answer without you even actively searching for it.

That’s a Space Peanut

Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URS) Fellows Training started today.  That is a mouthful.  URS is one of the organizations I work for on campus.  I have been in it for the past 3 years and thoroughly enjoy it.  The first two years, I attended URS as a student who learned about research and the entire research process.  These next two years have been focused on passing on that knowledge and I believe it is much more rewarding for the teacher than the student in this situation. 

Our training gets us ready to deal with all the trials and tribulations involved with teaching about 20 Freshman or Sophomores the process of research.  They get a chance to get involved with some research on campus and this can be a disaster, so-so, or awesome.  My research has been so-so but only recently (meaning 3 years later) has finally gotten very interesting.  Last year, our class was great, a very energetic group that really came together in the end.  As for this year, we have yet to find out who will be following us.  Also, we get a co-fellow.  This makes the whole class dynamic much more interesting because you work with this person (usually the opposite gender) every week and almost daily to get the class plans prepared.  Tomorrow I find out who mine is.  I am kind of scared but in the end I am sure it will be a good fit, the directors do a good job of pairing us.  In the end, the 20 fellows all attend this training for the next 4 days and get to know URS more in depth.

On another note:  I will be posting another entry very shortly.  I do not wish to take away from the coolness factor of that entry by explaining how I came to read the article involved with it.  So have fun with that one.

Procrastination!

In my quest for Procrastination, I am writing here.  What in the world am I procrastinating myself from if I do not have any class or anything better to do?  Well, let me, let you in on a little secret. 

I have three major things to do everynight this week.
1)  Xercise so I can continue to be my slim trim self.  Well more like, there is a training exercise that us URS Fellows have do next week that incorporates us climbing a gigantic ladder and other physical activities.  Last year, on the gigantic ladder, I pulled off the greatest feats of physical-ness.  The ladder is supposed to be a partner exercise.  You help your partner up to the next rung (because they are too high to grab by without help).  Instead of that, I risked life and limb and jumped from the rung my partner and I were on to the next rung.  Made myself stable, then went upside down, my legs wrapped around my current rung, to grab the feet of my partner and lift him up to the rung I was on.  If you want me to diagram it, I would rather not.  That is the reason why I am working on exercising.

2)  Research Research Research.  In an attempt to better myself and humanity, I am going to try to do more research this week and work on a paper entitled “Determing the sensitivity of time delays using artificial neural networks“  Once I figure out what that means, I will let you know.  Plus I have been a bad boy and have made no progress in the past few weeks and I have to meet with my Professor tomorrow.  Hopefully he does not kill me.

3)  Shopping Cart. Baby.  Given that college is approaching quickly and the amount of free time that I currently do not already have dwindles to negative numbers, I want to make a good start on this shopping cart for my boss’s freelancing website.  So far so good.  I am making ample progress each day but on days like this when I have no ambition, I would rather not do anything.

What have we learned?  Adam is exercising for a competition in which there will be no competition because nobody cares enough.  Adam researchs neural networks and is trying to fake out the world by pretending that he knows everything about them.  And lastly, Adam loves to work and get ahead of schedule.  Yay!

I never expected to be filling this out daily, hopefully I update real soon.

A Whole New Beginning or Just another Beginning

Good Morning.

To date: I am ~691,375,943 seconds old.  That is almost 3/4 of a billion seconds.

I suppose you could say I have been around for a time or two.  I have been here and I have been there.  I have some wisdom but never enough.  I strive to better myself and the people around me.

Yesterday I moved into my new apartment after a year of getting to know what it is like to be angry.  My living situation was far from superior, in fact, it was probably my worst decision in my life, yes, mom you were right.  Stress from college visited almost too frequently and I have lost touch with the person who I used to be.

Instead of going into the details, I wish to start a fresh.  A new.  Nuevo!

Since I started living in my current apartment, I have enjoyed the benefits of an efficiency and have gotten to know the facility.  The way things work (by myself).  Who is boss and why…  I just finished my laundry that was a dreadful mess.  I am not sure if I have done that in month.  Now my bed is strewn with damp underwear and small niches and corners are hanging with wet shorts.  A pocket of resistance in the form of socks are trying to keep me from seeing the very center of my room.  My bad, shouldn’t have picked the broken dryer.  Bad Upper Right Dryer, you fail to work.

Tonight, I work on my web programming skills.  PHP, god bless you, will be my companion as I try to produce a shopping cart for intelluctual entertainment and monetary gain.  Perhaps I will play god as I try to decipher how artificial neural networks model timeseries.  And tomorrow, I look for a new pack of rechargable batteries because these die too frequently, had to change them during this blog.

My hope is that Alicia will call me later tonight to save me from myself.  Lord knows what I would do without a girlfriend.  I think she is probably the one that keeps me from overworking myself. 

My goal in the near future is to get back to my roots, weblog more.  John Tesh says that these thing-a-ma-jigs keep you sane.  I can see that it helps you remember what you have done and yes people can comment, and you can critique your life and you can become a better writer, and you can feel accomplished, and everyone else is doing it so why not you, and why the h not, I mean it is there, so go get ‘em tiger, etc.

So in the end, let me say:  Today is just the beginning of something greater.