spacekadet blog

Courtesy of my former roommate and fellow trouble maker, Dave:

applied mathematician seeks applied technology company for fun and companionship. young companies preferred, but older, more stable corporations also welcome. If you can entice me to work, then i am ready to oblige in any position. I’m quite versatile.

❦ I am aware that my Simon Cowell stories do not count as the “quality posts” I’ve promised.

And my thoughts seem to scatter but I think it’s about:

forgiveness.

The time goes so many places…

Chopping vegetables.
Getting blinded by blue at the gym.
Ripping my CD collection.
Writing resumes.
Having sex for money.

…dwelling on all the things I wish I had been able to say.

And lately: Java. My undergrad class is really picking up steam, as is the learning curve. This week I spent a great deal of time on a program to compute Carmichael Numbers, numbers that pass the Fermat test but are not prime.

“What is the Fermat test,” you ask? Check it:

Let a be a random number between 2 and n - 1 (being n the number whose primality we are testing). Then, n is probably prime if (a^n)mod(n) = a holds. If a number passes the Fermat test several times then it is prime with a high probability.

But some numbers that are not prime still pass the Fermat test with every number smaller than themselves. These are the aformentioned ♥Carmichael numbers♥.

Someone who has mad leet Java skillz could probably do this quite quickly but for me, it required a big chunk of my week. The upshot: I got to learn about and program neat math things like Eratosthenes Sieve, an algorithm for making a table of prime numbers.

More interesting was dealing with the issue of computing (a^n)mod(n) as (a^n) can get very large very fast and cause catastrophic overflow!! But it turns out you can deal with the mod inside the exponent. Check out this article if you’re interested. The site also has some info on how the RSA cipher works, in case you are curious.

The whole thing got me thinking that number theory might be the shizzle, and I should probably take a closer look at the number theory book John Hambone lent to me.

Reunion with Pam tomorrow!

And I always thought that I’d see you baby
One more time again.

For the lj-types:

☂Current Music: Ready for the World, “Oh Sheila”
I just had to mention that because this song is fucking rad. It comes off the freshly ripped “Billboard Hits 1985″ which also features the most excellent song “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” by John Parr, which absolutely must join the ranks in my “Beats for the Gym” playlist. Talk about an uplifting song, “St. Elmo’s Fire” has it all. I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky. I’m tearing up… truth.

Just once in his life
A man has his time
And my time is now
I’m coming alive

many people who have quit smoking say they experience dreams about smoking for weeks, months, years after quitting…

…last night I dreamt I was at a pub, drinking a beer and casually lit up a smoke. Just then I realized that I had quit. I woke up feeling guilty that I had smoked. Link.

In the dreams I’m smoking “just one” - at least that’s what I seem to be telling the people in my dreams that see me smoking. I wake up thinking that I really have smoked and it takes a while to realize that it was just a dream. Frustrating! I wish the dreams would go away. Link

When I quit smoking a few months ago using nicotine patches, I had very vivid, long unpleasant or nightmarish dreams every night for about 10 days. Link

Lately I feel that if I can’t smoke in real life, maybe it would be nice to smoke in my dreams! Unfortuantely, even my smoking cecessation induced rem sleep won’t give me my fix. My dreams either involve seeing cigarettes or holding cigarettes but never smoking them. And if my dream is not about smoking, then it’s akin to other nightmarish episodes that other quitters have described. The other night I had this sci-fi-esque dream where I was trapped inside this giant robot that had these tentacles whipping around all over the place. Eventually it killed me.

So last night I went to bed thinking, “alright, no bad dreams, I need a good night’s sleep.” So I left the door open for some fresh air and turned off all the lights (I usually sleep with a light on because — and this isn’t supposed to make sense — I’m always worried that I won’t wake up to my alarm, and I naivly think that if I leave a light on, then I will not sleep as deeply and thus have some hope of responding the my 7:30am wake-up call). And then sleep.

First I woke up to the crazy thunder storm. I must have been dreaming because I usually like the thunder but I woke up totally freaked and talking to my cat like some kind of psycho cat-lady.

I woke again a couple hours later, when Ivy engaged in his nightly pawing-at-the-blinds to wake me up so I could let him outside. I was so pissed! And I knew it was raining. So I got up and opened the door and Ivy went outside all confused and I’m standing there in the doorway telling Ivy, “See, you don’t want to be outside.” Then I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt and that I should probably go back inside. Ivy followed.

Finally, sleep. It was then that I had a dream that I have yet to shake from the core of my being. It started off normal enough. I was at some kind of social gathering. Sheri was there with her Knubbable ex, who for some reason was rolling cigarettes even though he does not smoke in real life. He offers me one and I say “sure” and the cigarette is about half the size of a normal cancer stick. Then something happens and I lose it! So I’m going all over the place trying to find this cigarette. And when I would find it, I’d get interrupted by something and have to put off smoking it. And when I was free again, suddenly the cigarette went missing.

One of these interruptions was a tryst with Simon Cowell of “American Idol” fame.

It was one of those drunken moments that a girl dreams of: drama, self-loathing, and the comfort of a strong man. And because it was Simon Cowell, notorious B-I-T-C-H, I was touched by his sudden display of tenderness. I don’t recall any meat and two veg, but something happened between us that was special. The dream followed into the next day, and Simon had to go back to Hollywood, and back to the asshole I loathe to love.

When I woke up this morning, I was not mournful or relieved about the cigarette I did not smoke. Instead I was filled with the kind of anticipation and confusion that often fills and torments the soul on the “morning after”. What did this mean and where was this going? Who is Simon Cowell? Is he the Lillith to my James or just the subconscious representation of my Austin? WHY SIMON COWELL?

I’m so confused.

And so in love.

Some books on dreams:

The Dream Book
Betty Bethards

Zolar’s Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Dreams

a couple people have commented here and on lj about where the hell i’m actually going.

funny i didn’t bother mentioning that.

not funny ha ha.

just funny duh.

the current dream/hope/plan is to move to London asap. all of my time and energy are going into making this dream a reality. there is a big to-do list somewhere out there, and slowly i’m checking things off. … sadly, i haven’t yet check off item “get a job”.

moving overseas is going to be very expensive, so you should float me some money-cash and help fulfill my destiny. present me with the money, i promise the postcard.

not sure what mdthomas’s site is all about, but he’s exploiting some of my images for pure eeeevil.

good work, md. it was only a matter of time.

shout out to deez for the link. may john ritter rest in peace yo.

that’s all i’ve got. touched some of my own bang bang fruit last night: that’s right, tito’s on ice with a bit of lemon juice. so marks the end of a very very long week.

learned how cool the comparable class in java is.

learned how much memorization is required to succeed in biology.

learned how not to present big “O” notation to biologists.

learned that green leaf lettuce vs. romaine is much more flavorful and pleasant in a traditional greek salad.

(brings me back to last week’s lesson: who knew greek salad dressing was merely olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, and pepper?)

had a crazy dream last night. i was in a computer lab… one of the small ones in the math building. for some reason i was pruning my boosh and having a chat with someone sitting behind me. i said something like, “i wonder how you do [this]”. then the person next to whoever i was talking chimes in very slyly and says, “oh but have you considered….” and it was James! so i got all excited and jumped out of my chair, pants around my ankles, shouting, “oh my god james it’s you that’s so weird because i was just trimming my BOOSH!!”

i mean…. why?