The video depicts what should be a GLOBAL CATASTROPHE the likes of which have never been seen before. Continents moving at hundreds of kilometres per second and slamming together. Good things the ocean water has no need to obey fluid dynamics, for one thing. (Notice how water materializes out of the Pacific coasts and just disappears from the Atlantic?) And there’s no way the two groups of partiers would happily end up on the same beach. There’d be a lot more than a couple cracked streets and some bouncing sand. That’s all I’m saying.

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?

What to do, what to do…

First one had to be sent in for repair because wifi didn’t work and it started spontaneously rebooting about once per hour, among other issues.

Motorola sent it back with software issues fixed but physically damaged, so I sent it back for the hardware to be fixed. I was warned that the type of damage it had was not covered under warranty, but since it the damaged was caused by Motorola themselves I sent it back anyway.

They returned it without anything fixed and without comment. They didn’t even offer to fix it for a price. I had several heated calls with both Motorola and Telus about it at this point, and eventually sent it back again. (Telus had also been charging me handset replacement fees for using a loaner phone while my regular one was away from repair, even though it was under warranty.)

Received a new phone back. Probably refurbished? Worked fine for about 24 hours, then spontaneously shut down and would get stuck on the Motorola logo while booting up for as long as it had power. Sent away for repair for a fourth time. This is now a several months from when I originally went in.

Received phone back. Worked again for about a day. Went to a movie and turned off the phone. It wouldn’t turn back on again, even when plugged in, and would not charge. Sent away for a fifth time.

They returned another new phone back. Again, probably refurbished. This one seems to be working ok, but in the last few weeks (after having it less than two months) it has spontaneously rebooted about half a dozen times. One or two of those times I was using it pretty heavily so, fine, things crash. But most of the time I wasn’t doing much at all, and it’s always been different apps.

So I know this phone is a piece of crap. But I wonder how much of it is because of Android itself being unreliable and how much of it is the fault of Motorola. Have other people had similar issues with Android in general?

Regardless, my experience with this phone has been bad enough that I am not going to buy a Motorola product again. I will stick with Android, though, because I prefer the open model and as slick as iOS seems, Apple refuses to make a version of iTunes for Linux, so I couldn’t use it if I wanted to. I’m thinking Samsung next time. Both for phone and tablet.

I am in my office, looking at my to-do list. Things I’ve done today: went to a meeting, went to a lecture, taught for 3 hours, got my bike repaired, met with my undergraduate student, and submitted a tech support request when he and I couldn’t get something to work. Yet somehow I haven’t done anything today. I have an arbitrary deadline tomorrow and I’m not even sure what would constitute meeting it. This is the nature of my work. There is always something to do and nothing ever gets done. Even worse, things that were working last month will never work again when you need them.

I just went on a little internet detour to look up the meaning of the Coleman-Liau index that is being displayed underneath this textbox. It is currently at 6.5. I still haven’t crossed anything off my to-do list.

I really wonder how other career paths will compare to this one. Flexibility is one of the great advantages of being a graduate student, but also a big opportunity for failure. I love that I can budget my time as I please, but sometimes the lack of structure, like this deadline that is so ill defined it will never be met, creates this feeling that no progress ever gets made.

If I publish another article in the spring, as is the plan, that will be great, and will make it that much more likely that I will actually finish this program. Meanwhile I fantasize about other careers, without actually knowing what careers I might enjoy. A friend mentioned that this is one of the big red flags that indicates you might not be suited for the job you have. It doesn’t say what you’d actually should be doing in its stead, but it does say you shouldn’t be doing this.

Well it’s not. Science as a whole and viewed from afar has a lot of exciting stuff in it, but the nitty gritties of doing research is not exciting. Deal with it.

One in particular has caught my attention a couple times now. It features rather simple looking puzzles on the screen and large cash prizes of several hundred dollars. It is hosted by a blond British woman (or at least someone with a non-North American English accent) encouraging viewers to call in and try solving the puzzle of the moment. It is rather amusing watching her trying to come up with new things to say after 20 solid minutes without a single caller. How many new ways can she describe the puzzle? How many new ways can she ask me to call in? How many times can she say that time is running out?

The absolutely maddening thing is that these puzzles are always so easy. At least, they seem easy enough that it is absolutely mind bogglging that someone hasn’t called in yet. Last night’s game: name a car brand with 5 letters starting with M-A-Z and win $2500. And nobody is calling in to answer! All the while the background music gets more and more pressing, alarms start going off, and countdowns start appearing on screen, all designed to make me think that I only have a few seconds to call in and be handed this bounty just for not being a complete idiot.

But last night I finally found the complete rules online and found out how this ruse works. Though they work hard to give the impression that nobody is calling, that the puzzle really is that easy, and that there really are no tricks associated with the cash prize, it’s all BS. When you enter by calling in (all calls cost $2) or sending in a text message (again, at the cost of $2) you’re only registering your name as a contestant. It is then at the producer’s discretion when to actually call people, how many people to call, and how long to run the game. So they could run the entire thing with people furiously texting and calling thinking that it is a sure thing and why the hell aren’t I getting through because nobody else is calling and it’s almost over so I have to try again and again and again and….. and then only at the end let someone on the air with a guess they know is wrong and not have anybody win the prize. The rules basically say that they can put up this ruse of easy money as much as they want, collecting their $2 fees with each registration sent in, while having no obligation to actually let anybody even try to win.

In any case, the answer to last night’s puzzle was MAZEL, the Spanish concept car design studio. I doubt anybody would have won even if they had given them a chance.