Enjablog

What. Was. That?

So many new questions, but they didn’t answer any of the old ones!!

That’s all I’ll say though. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t watched yet. I should’ve just waited until this season came out on DVD so I could watch it all at once. But I couldn’t resist.

When I was getting ready this morning, my contact didn’t adhere like I expected and as I pulled my finger away, I dropped it. I started looking around, couldn’t find it on the counter, the floor, the cabinet door… Without that contact in, my vision was little help anyway, so I gave up. Whatever, I had been wearing that pair for a few weeks anyway. It was time to put in a new pair.

With my new contacts in, I thought I might have better luck finding that lost contact. At the very least, I didn’t want it drying out and having contact shards in my foot tonight. Still no sign of the contact.

Oh well. It’ll turn up. It can’t just disappear, right?

So, I go to throw out the other contact, which is still in the L compartment… And what do you know. There are two contacts in there. I dropped my contact into the case. Sigh.

Went to the food bank on Saturday morning. So many people showed up. We were all getting in each other’s way and wandering about aimlessly, but a lot of food got sorted and packaged to send out. There was also the excitement of finding rats in a couple of the boxes… It was an experience.

Got back, cleaned up, and was ready to hang with NewGirl & BoyToy. We took an impromptu trip to the ice arena before picking up some groceries for dinner, 1950s style. That is to say, with The Boss. He was on his own this weekend and wanted to catch up with NewGirl, so I invited him over for dinner before The Classy Party.

After using as many dishes as we could possibly manage for dinner, NewGirl shared most of her work inappropriate stories that she couldn’t tell before she quit, and then we were off for a night out. Surprisingly, not too many stories from the Classy Party. There were a lot of work people there and I managed not to meet anyone new the entire night, I think…

Sunday, did brunch with TLD for his 30th birthday. We concocted this whole scheme whereby I would get dropped off at the restaurant with the cake to coordinate with the host while NG&BT picked up TLD. It worked out flawlessly. This year: chocolate cake with orange frosting (flavor, not color). And we had picked up a set of baseball cake decorations with birthday candles. It was fit for a 5-year-old. ;)

Hung out at TLD’s for a while after that and tested out his new birthday present from NG. Then went over to visit OtherManager before NG&BT were off to catch their flight.

I fell asleep around 7:30 that night.

I’m finally catching up on the studying that I rescheduled from last week.

Hour and a half bus ride to work this morning. For some reason the driver took a detour through Landmark Mall. I have no idea why, but she made a busload of people at least half an hour late this morning.

Sleep.

Oh, Thomas/Finney. How I’ve missed you.

:)

My other book arrived yesterday too. So I’m all set to get studying!

NewGirl and BoyToy arrived bright and early this morning and are out catching up with other friends. So, tonight’s my chance to get some studying in before our non-stop weekend o’ fun.

I will leave you with this:

A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Suddenly, the constant function sees a differential operator approaching, turns around, and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry.

“Well, you see, there’s this differential operator coming this way, and when we meet, he’ll differentiate me and nothing will be left of me…!”

“Ah,” says e^x, “he won’t bother ME, I’m e-to-the-x!” and he walks on. Of course he meets the differential operator after a short distance.

e^x : “Hi, I’m e^x”

diff.op. : “Hi, I’m d/dy”

*tehee*

I’ve been getting calls from insurance companies for the past 2 weeks because someone has my work number listed for their insurance contact info. I don’t know how many more times I can tell Allstate that I am not Norman.

Geico didn’t really like it, but seemed to get the idea after one phone call. No, I’m not Norman. No, I don’t have an account number. No, I don’t have an accident ID. Let me reiterate the part where I’m not Norman.

So, I have spoken with 3 humans at Allstate explaining to each that they have the wrong number and that they will never find Norman at this number. I arrived to work this morning to find yet another message from Allstate very urgently needing my VIN and info on my car. I might have to just give them a car so they’ll stop calling. Anyone need new windows?

The PE exam only permits test-takers to choose from 5 different calculators. I finally broke down and looked into the different options yesterday because I didn’t want to study anymore. And I figured it was a good investment of time, since I want to familiarize myself with the calculator while I’m doing practice problems to be most efficient in my studies.

The decision was a difficult one.

The HP-35 was the world’s first scientific pocket calculator. It was discontinued well before I was born and require battery packs, which are also no longer sold. *Awesome.*

The HP-33 was a little better, but at twice the price of the other calculators, didn’t seem worth it. Reviews included complaints about battery life and difficulty seeing the decimal point. Pros were comparable to the other options.

The TI-36X had reviews from people saying they thought it was great, but with minor complaints about calculation speed and durability.

The Casio FX-115 had a few versions that I couldn’t distinguish between. It fared well in durability, battery life, and even had a review from someone who was pleased with its performance on the PE. Only real complaint was that the cursor was slow and you have to type slowly or it will miss keystrokes. Fake complaints: instructions were printed with a small font and operator error (couldn’t get the answer in decimal form instead of fraction).

Finally, the TI-30X got some mixed reviews. There were plenty of people raving about its awesomeness and told stories of how it got them through all of middle- and high school math. It’s durable and withstood coffee spills, etc. Complaints included one person who used it for the PE didn’t like the buttons, and 2 others who thought it was confusing and not user-friendly.

It was kind of a toss-up between the last two. But then there was the tie-breaker:

…except for the part where they don’t actually sell it. Office Depot doesn’t carry it anymore and Target said that the closest one was at their Forestville location. Too far.

I can’t explain it… but I keep going back to read the post I wrote about that Calculus book. It makes me happy just thinking about it. I can’t wait for it to get here! :)

And this is why I joined the TJ Class of ‘98 Facebook group:

e to the x, dx, dy, e to the x dx dy
cosine, secant, tangent sine, 3 point 14159
square root, cube root, log of pi
kick their axis TJ High!

Ah, the memories…

Issue 1: Units

Input was in meters, output was in feet. So, when I went through, I converted the input to feet and then compared values.

The coworker I’m QAing this file for, let’s call him 2D… spends 5 minutes explaining to me that the input is in different units from the output, so the values I used weren’t right. That’s why there were discrepancies between the files I compared.

No, that’s not why. I’m not wrong. Thanks. Next.

Issue 2: Summary vs. Detailed data

“You only highlighted the errors in the detailed breakdown. Was the summary ok?”

No, you moron. Fix the detailed breakdown, then recalculate the summary. If all your values are wrong, what’s the likelihood that they still add up to the same value? I’m going to assume you’d calculate the probability of that wrong too. Just do it over. All of it.

Issue 3: Opening files

“Did you use the same process for each of these reports?”

Hm, one way to figure that out is by using your eyes. I explained the process in the email that I attached the files to 2 weeks ago. You can also try opening the files that I sent because each output sheet looks identical in format. No thanks to your input, which had 6 files in different units with different headings. But yes, yes I did.

Issue 4: Text in a spreadsheet

“We need to convert numbers stored as text to numbers before we input the spreadsheet. The way to tell if it is a text number stored cell is in the upper left hand corner there will be a green triangle.”

I don’t care how you can tell. Just highlight the cells that you want to be numbers and format them as numbers. Why are you doing this on a case by case basis??

All this from a 20-minute phone conversation. I hate interacting with this guy.

Back when I was a freshman in college, I let a boy buy my books for me. He had extra money through his scholarship and wasn’t going to be able to use it all, so he offered to buy my books. At the end of the year, I gave them back to him so he could sell them. Among other things, one of my biggest regrets from that relationship was giving up my calculus book.

I went back to the university bookstore a couple years later to pick up a used copy, but they didn’t carry it anymore. The math department had switched to a different book, so old editions of this one were worthless. The new one didn’t seem as good, or at least with my unfamiliarity with it, wasn’t as useful to me. Heartbroken, I carried on with my life.

Over the past year, I’ve been taking classes where I could have used a good calculus reference, just as a refresher. I had to resort to searching for websites with integral tables and the like. I really missed that book, but what could I do?

I was going around to my coworkers’ offices today in search of reference/text books that I might borrow to study or use on the PE exam. And one of my coworkers had the book! Well, not the exact one. An older edition with a different cover (I actually have no idea how/why I recognized it). And all my memories of that erstwhile book came flooding back.

I explained to him my love for that long-lost textbook. And he asked me a profound question:

Why don’t you just buy it online?

Because I didn’t think of it.

So I did. The internets allowed me to search by images of the cover, so I didn’t have to know which edition I had, who the publisher was, or what year it was published. And, with shipping, it was $5.50.

In just 8-10 short days, my math shelf will again be complete. Life as I know it will be, um, well, pretty much the same. But I will have my beloved book!

Just got back from dinner with Ian at The Melting Pot. I think I ate something like 3000 calories tonight. So much good food, and I absolutely could not resist the brownies in the cookies ‘n’ cream chocolate fondue. Mmmmm!

The onset of food coma is coming quickly. I just wanted to say that I finally made it out for Restaurant Week. I’ve meant to go the past few years and kept missing it for one reason or another. Definitely marking my calendar to check out some new places next year. One of my coworkers had reservations at 4 different restaurants. That’s way too much for me.

Off to dream about chocolate…

QOTD: “That joke was scientifically based and therefore not insulting.”

At long last, Squidgey has posted her pictures from Friendmas! :)

We had a big move at work at the end of December. I moved from the 3rd floor to the 10th floor. Awesomeness since moving to my new office:

- Dry erase board
- Corkboard
- L-desk
- New widescreen monitor
- New chair
- New nameplate
- Hung up posters that had been piling up on my filing cabinets (bigger office, more wall space)
- Better view — I can see the water now!
- Filed all the loose papers that I had lying around on my desk and bookshelf
- Hung announcements on my new bulletin board instead of piling them on the corner of my desk where people only look when they’re being nosy.

Last night I dreamt about mung beans and hybrid vegetables. What’s wrong with me?

I had a mondo bizzaro dream last night. I woke up from it gradually and then just realized that I was lying in bed and not actually doing anything. So, I lay there for a few minutes trying to decide if I should get up or wait for my alarm to go off. After I had waited what I thought was an appropriate amount of time replaying the dream in my head to figure out where I could have done things better and complimenting myself on being awesome, I decided it was imperative that I write this dream down.

I rolled over to grab my journal and felt around for the pen that I knew was there. Finally, I peeked one eye open before turning on the light. It was in that instant that I looked at my clock. Which said 2:35. Which is to say, it was 2:15 AM. That’s not morning. That’s not time to get up. I’m not waiting for my alarm to go off!

But I was past the point of no return. I had to write this dream down.

Five pages and an hour later, I had detailed out enough to satisfactorily go back to sleep.

To summarize: I was a little boy sharing cake with a homeless man until I turned into regular me. I was later tasered, abducted, and assaulted. My friends were replaced with impostors. My attacker’s friend attempted to “save” me by slipping me a roofie. The would-be rapist finally gave up when he realized that he couldn’t take his pants off without putting the taser gun down and he couldn’t trust me not to beat him senseless once he did. (My subconscious truly believes that I am a badass.) Special appearances by Stella (TLD’s car), House’s Corvette from the mobster, and the El Camino from My Name is Earl. It all made sense at the time…

Then, this morning on the bus… Remember how I don’t like kids? 7AM and this 4-year-old is sitting behind me testing out his vocal chords and impressing himself with all the new noises he’s making. Not just cool, weird sounds, but also trying out different volumes. Yes, so fun. Oh! And then legs! They’re so cool. You can kick things with them. Like my seat. I was so close to asking the mother if she wanted help disciplining her child. Because it was clear to me that she needed help. The little girl in front of me had no problems keeping quiet. She was sitting there playing and talking to her mother, but not being obnoxious about it. She was being a normal human being, just smaller.