Then let’s say a few months down the line they’ve decided to change their strategy, having come up with a new idea about what will really get the best return, this time forecasting they’ll do even better based on the models they made before. So now they want more money to put into this new strategy.

Oh, but now they think they want to change strategies again, maybe even to something that’s actually opposite of what they were doing before in some ways. Let’s put more money into that!

All this while they’re so busy buying and selling and adjusting the models based on various hunches they have, they haven’t actually paid much attention to how much the portfolio is actually worth.

When you ask how the changes they’ve been making have impacted the portfolio, and whether anything they’ve done is actually getting to that 20% goal, they say they haven’t really paid much attention to it because they know the new models are going to be even better. Are you going to give them another million?

So, when we try to improve one of these programs, you can count on a lot of debugging before anything gets fixed. Often the things just won’t compile, or there’s a typo so it looks for the wrong input file. Recently one of these programs was rewritten, and was tested a little to see that it actually worked. On a small scale it worked fine, but when we started submitting jobs with it on our big computing cluster, 100 gigabytes of data would go in and exactly 0 bytes would come out. Segmentation fault.

It was not the size of the data we were putting through that caused the segmentation fault, but the number of processes we were running. It turned out the segmentation fault was not repeatable when running one copy fo the program at once, but when you run dozens of copies simultaneously, when one fails they all die.

The only way I could really deal with this was run the program in a debugger and just hope to catch the fault. For about a week I had a terminal window open with gdb running my program. Every few hours I would check to see that it succeeded in its job and then would run it again, hoping for that elusive seg fault. Days went by. Program exited successfully. Program exited successfully. Program exited successfully. My supervisor would ask if I had solved the program yet. I would look at him and say, “Program exited successfully.”

Until finally I decided to give up. I told my supervisor, “If this run doesn’t die, then I’m giving up and going back to the old code.” Within two minutes of that conversation…. segmentation fault! Like the rarest of pokemon in an Ultra Ball, my debugger had finally succeeded in capturing the bug in my program.

And that, children, is why playing video games will help you do well in school. All the time my boyfriend made me play pokemon with him back in senior year of undergrad was well spent after all.

I realised what the problem is. I still have ideas of things I want to write about, but I don’t have the same opportunity to procrastinate that I once did. For various reasons, I decided that I would not blog while at school. Or at least, not using my office computer. Unfortunately, between rowing and school, I’m only actually at home with my own computer for a couple hours a day. And those hours are typically spent eating, watching TV, and generally zoning out—not the kind of activities I need to procrastinate from (i.e., not the kind of hours I’d rather spend blogging). The same as been true even on weekends.

I wonder if that will change when the rowing season ends next week. The big finale actually coincides with two other major deadlines in my academic life as well, so I’m definitely looking forward to the weekend after, when I won’t have all this same sense of impending doom…

… which is of course the other reason why I’m writing this! With four (well, practically only three now that it’s well into the afternoon) working days left before going off to the national championships for five days, and three major projects to work on, I can’t really justify taking Sunday afternoon off. And so I spend it blogging instead!

At this rate, I wonder what the chances of me participating in NaNoWriMo this year are…

The fact that I’m moving didn’t settle in until I took all the art, posters, and calendars off the walls. While half the floor is two or three feet deep in junk, everything at about eye level is boring blank white. That was the trigger. This doesn’t feel like my home anymore.

The rest of the job has just been rearranging the junk on the floor into more manageable piles. It was funny how simply dumping out a full drawer and rearranging everything would suddenly free up half the space. Everything could be laid out nicely in its place, in roughly a single layer along the bottom no less. “Nice”, I thought, “now I’ll actually be able to find stuff in there”. But then it occurred to me that with all that extra space, I could just cram more stuff in. Which is exactly what I did. So now the drawer is just as full but twice as heavy, and solidly packed so you can’t actually move anything aside to get at something underneath.

I also put all my textbooks into the same box.

Now at the same time this doesn’t feel different from any other May. I’ve never spent the summer in Montreal, so packing up my stuff at the end of the winter semester is nothing new. I wonder if moving to grad school will feel any different from coming back to McGill. A new school, sure, but functionally I don’t know if much will change. More of the part I like, at least, and less of the stuff I don’t. That’s really all I can ask. That’s really all I’m aiming for.

1. Words I’ve never head before
2. Words I will use in sentence but can’t actually define
3. Words whose meaning is actually the exact opposite of what I thought it was

While they tell you to watch out for secondary meanings—I knew the verb “flag” means to mark or signal, but it also means to sag or decline—there are a surprising number of words that fall in category 3. These aren’t just cases of a word being used in a different or new way, but actually complete misunderstandings on my part. Apparently “equivocate” doesn’t mean to get the point across by being very precise (cf. “explicit”), but to use ambiguous language to deceive. And “urbane” doesn’t mean run-of-the-mill or low class (cf. “pedestrian”), but sophisticated and refined. I’m going to have to replay entire conversations in my head to make sure I haven’t completely made an idiot of myself.

What really brought this up again, though, was listening to the song “First Day of my Life” by Bright Eyes. It comes across as a really nice and cute love song with a nice and cute video. (I especially love the clips where one person looks at the other without the other seeing. Psychoanalyse that.) So, as I do with all such songs, I played it through a few times and wrote out the lyrics so that I might sing along. As it turns out, it seems not to be a simple profession of love, but an apology.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They were spreading blankets on the beach
Your’s is the first face that I saw
Think I was blind before I met you

The singer describes a times when he and the other were together, happy, and utterly in love. At the sight of the other’s face, “everything changed”, as if they had never seen another person before and had not lived until that moment. But, something has been lost.

I don’t know where I am I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realise that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

The two are not together anymore. What happened, we don’t know. All we have to go on is that the singer still loves the other, and wants to be together again. He continues, reminding the other that they felt the same way once.

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up
And you said this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

How sincere can this be? Is this really a love that was meant to be?

But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy
So if you wanna be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see

Something more was lost than just being together. Maybe something happened that can’t be forgiven, maybe they’ve just grown apart. The singer clearly wants to believe that that love is still there, but on some level it sounds like he knows something will always be missing.

But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time it’s different
I mean I really think you liked me

This love is like a steady job, but it’s no lottery. He’s hopeful that they can work on whatever they have, that it might grow into something it’s not. It makes me sad, in a similar sort of way, that what I thought was a great love song is actually flawed and hurt and hopeful and yearning for something more. In a sense this is a secondary meaning that most people will probably miss.

I’m conscious that I’m going to be applying to grad school in the next few weeks. I’ve already taken an extra year here and I don’t want the admissions committees thinking that I’m just screwing around with the extra time. “The Art of Listening” was thus the first cut from the list of possible electives. And frankly, I’m more interested in taking a harder but more interesting course than a bird course like that anyway. Still, interesting courses that would have been fine in my first or second years in Anthropology, Sociology, and Religion, among others, stick out a fair bit after so much solid physics, math, and philosophy.

I sat in on a philosophy class that certainly looks like a perfect elective—it fits well with my minor and compliments the study of physics very well. Plus the description talked about all those sorts of questions that come up while sitting around waiting for code to compile or atoms to decay but never get properly answered. Unfortunately, twenty minutes in I was wishing for it to be over. I had this intense feeling that it must be July, and I realised it must have been because the only other time I’ve wanted to leave a classroom so badly has been because it was a warm, bright, sunny afternoon outside. So despite how nicely it would fit in on my trasncript, this particular class had to be cut.

The second philosophy class was one chosen because it seemed the least terrible of the required options given. The History and Philosophy of Ancient Science. I guess that sounds like it compliments physics as well. Little did I know how perfect it would be—this year the class focuses on Ancient Greek Mechanics, which, though completely different from its modern cousins, would have sounded great coming in the semesters after Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics. Even better, the professor was one of these rare characters who speaks like she’s telling a story, not merely regurgitating information. She would run her hands through her hair, making it point in all directions, and sounded almost giddy at the prospect that someone might build little mechanical toys for their final project. I could have been Marshall with a man-crush on Gael. This class could stay.

Right or not (probably not), I’ve also realised that I’m beginning to consider how nicely the required textbook for a class will fit on my bookshelf. This is largely an after affect of clearing the thing out, trying to keep only one text in each main area. I found myself reluctant to give up my Schaum’s Outlines not because I ever used them but because they make a nice matching set. In my particle physics class, I’m tempted to skip the required text (a graphic blue paperback monster) in favour of the one by Griffiths, first because it is by Griffiths and also because it’s nicely bound. If only it wasn’t twenty years old. Dare I buy the new edition coming out in a few months, just for the aesthetics of it sitting on me shelf? Though clearly I’d have to buy a real copy of the EM text as well to match. Meanwhile, I’m highly motivated to stick with Optics not because I want to take the class (I do) but because the textbook is of the same series as my Relativity text from last year. I was even secretly considering buying the particles book in the same series because they’re just so damn sexy. Through in the cosmology text, for no class in particular, as well while I’m at it. Or maybe I should just get a grip and worry more about doing the readings instead of what the readings look like.

I should say, I also bought myself a big furry toque with big floppy ear flaps. I was feeling really quite fantastic on this day of courses, textbooks, and winter headgear. The only downside to the day was that when I arrived home Ponyboy was no longer asleep on my couch to experience what an awesome boyfriend I was, having left to go meet a friend visiting from out of town. Oh well. Twice as much food for me.

Me: We have libraries that are 24 hours at this time of year. McGillers are a bunch of studious nerds.

Sister: 24 hour libraries?! That’s ridiculous. Nobody should be at a library past like 10pm, that’s what I think. Are McGill students actually called McGillers or did you just make that up? What’s your mascot anyway?

Me: Well, McGillers is a common term. We’re technically “red birds” now. Though, it used to be “red men” for the men’s athletic teams and “martlets” for the women. Our mascot is really a martlet.

Sister: I’ve never even heard of a martlet. It doesn’t sound very threatening. Is it at least some sort of vulture or other big scary bird? Because it sounds like a song bird to me.

Me: Martlets are definitely closer to songbirds than vultures… they’re from some kind of greek myth, which is why nobody has heard of them. They’re birds with no legs, so they can only fly higher and higher (like… higher education… or something inspiringly metaphorical like that… though I don’t see why the little guys can’t just stop flapping their wings, fall to the ground a bit, then start flapping again.)

Sister: What kind of bird doesn’t have legs? This is all very interesting. I think if such a bird actually existed, it would do exactly what you said it would. It wouldn’t be able to just keep flying forever, it would die of exhaustion.

Me: Let’s see. We have 24 hour libraries that people actually use for 24 hours during exam period, and our school mascot, if it actually existed, would die of exhaustion before just sitting down for a bit. Coincidence? I think not.

In the interests of making sure this post is actually about something somebody might want to read, I give you this tidbit: If you buy twelve cookies at Subway restaurants, it counts as groceries and you don’t have to pay taxes.

Also, I’ve developed a mild obsession with Mario games, so if anybody wants to buy me a Wii or a DS, that’d be awesome. But then again, maybe it’s just this strong desire to procrastinate that’s movitating me with that one.

Ok, ok, back to the grindstone…

Three o’clock. Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An off moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable.

– from Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre

How true it is. This afternoon at three o’clock I was definitely not doing anything I wanted to do—that was about the time I hit the 30 minute mark in the Hour of Power, which from that point forward became the worst erg piece I’ve ever pulled. Though that’s not quite the same feeling of Nausea that Sartre was talking about.

I think my Existentialism professor would be, not disappointed, but slightly uncomfortable, with how I’ve taken to the class. No, I haven’t latched on to everything said by Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Fanon, or Camus, but a lot of what existentialism talks about is very seductive. I’ve written that already. The evidence is that, when having conversations that start to draw on philosophy, I start to draw on arguments made by those philosophers. It happened the other day standing in line at Tim Hortons, when the topic turned to racism, and I found myself referencing Fanon. When discussing sexual identity, I tend to think of bad faith. I’ve even used the term “bad faith” in a conversation by accident, and ended up accomplishing nothing but confusing the other person. Oh dear.

Though I must admit, it’s been happening with my other philosophy class as well. Logic and mathematics. Alarm bells still go on whenever someone says “concept”, and I’m getting very particular about defining what exactly the assumptions going into a problem are.

We’re now four days into the exam period. My first and only exam isn’t until the 19th, though in the meantime I have one take home exam (which is much like a 10 page paper) and an astrophysics paper to write. One of these days I’ll start working on them. With proper time management, there’s no reason for me to be in any stress at all this month. Yet, I still always find myself at three o’clock, too late to still be sitting around in pajamas. Too early for the evening workout. Too little time in between to do any work. Hopefully monday, when 7 AM workouts become part of the schedule again, I’ll be able to handle that particular form of nausea a little better.

The empirical image which may best symbolize Heidegger’s intuition is not that of a conflict but rather a crew… It is the mute existence in common of one member of the crew with his fellows, that existence which the rhythm of the oars or the regular movements of the coxswain will render sensible to the rowers and which will be made manifest to them by the common goal to be attained, the boat or yacht to be overtaken, and the entire world (spectators, performance, etc.) which is profiled on the horizon.

I swear, when I read this paragraph from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I actually thought I was hallucinating.