Numbers

Numbers is coming I promise, it's been a hectic couple of weeks, but I'm in the process of writing up part 1 right now. It should be published by Sunday and if I get a burst of energy it might even be out the gate by tomorrow. It should also be worth the wait, Numbers has caused me to laugh out loud a few times already, but unfortunately the beginning was pretty slow, which helped with my procrastination for sure. The second half though, oh the second half is just pure gold, you'll see, oh you'll see.

Riddle Me This Class

Well, guess who's back? Yes, it's me, your favorite genius, and I finally have time to sit down and do this again. So what's new? I passed my oral exam, it was brutal to say the least, basically the longest hour and a half of my life, but now it's over and I wont ever have to take another test for as long as I live; and that, gentle reader, is the best feeling in the world. After the oral I basically had the weekend and I was off to TN for thanksgiving with the family, which was oh so wonderful as usual. Then it was back to the grindstone on Monday, so yeah I've been busy. But I'm back, and I have some fun problems and rants stewing in the ole brain box to share with you, though they'll have to wait for another time. I'm basically just here to let you know I'm not dead, or crushed under the stress of grad school, or any other scenario you might have been concerned about. I'm alive and well and will soon be back with a vengeance.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Hi all, not much to report really. My days are spent wistfully preparing for my oral exam and putting off the corrections of my second paper. One thing of note though, my good friend R defended his dissertation yesterday and it was wonderful. I love final defenses, they're so exciting, especially when you're friends with the person defending. For those of you not in the know, to get your PhD you spend years writing your dissertation, then when it's all over you get up in front of your committee and whoever else wants to come and show off your work. It's not really a hurdle, unless of course your adviser did all your research for you. Most defenses I haven't understood one bit, R's however was really easy to follow, at the least the motivation. He works in biomath (with applications to amphibian populations), which is a very hot area in mathematics right now. I'm not very interested in it, but what they're trying to do is really easy to follow. They have the advantage of being able to explain their research to the layman, which is a luxury I don't have (unless you've taken calculus or, even better, DE). Anyway, congratulations R, or should I say Dr. R.

P.S. The above picture was actually on one of R's slides, for the section on Dispersion and Migration, get it? What a day.

Sometimes I Feel Like ...

My wonderful girlfriend has some very sweet things to say about me and this little blog over at her own blog-a-majig. These words wouldn't even be here without her constant prodding, which I mean in the nicest way possible of course, so go on and give her stuff a read and see what kind of crazy person falls for a mathematician. Spoiler alert: it's not another mathematician, surprise! In fact, she might just be inspiration for anyone out there that wanted to bag a mathematician but thought you had to be good at math first. Turns out it's not a necessary condition (nor a sufficient one har har). Anyway I better quit before I say anything else that I'll regret.