Best of 2008

Well yes I know this is a little late but I don't care. I'm going to list the top 10 artist, albums, and songs I listened to in 2008 according to Last.fm Note that when I get to tracks I will only list each artist once. Thus if they actually appear more than once I will only list their top ranking track (just to add some variety) I will however say how many tracks they had in the top 10 and if they actually were in the "official" top 10.

Artist:
1- Lil' Wayne (1444 plays)
2- Linkin Park (902 plays)
3- Yngwie Malmsteen (838 plays)
4- Maroon 5 (817 plays)
5- Alter Bridge (768 plays)
6- AFI (700 plays)
7- Stratovarious (687 plays)
8- Nada Surf (681 plays)
9- Kanye West (680 plays)
10- Muse (471 plays)

Songs:
1- Far Beyond the Sun(95 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen] (also in real top 10: Black Star)
2- A Milli(91 plays) [Lil' Wayne] (also in real top 10: La La, Got Money, Phone Home, 3Peat, Lollipop, You Ain't Got Nuthin')
3- See These Bones(84 plays) [Nada Surf]
4- Blackbird(73 plays) [Alter Bridge] (actually at position 11)
5- Put On(70 plays) [Young Jezzy]
6- Prayer of the Refugee(62 plays) [Rise Against]
7- Papercut(61 plays) [Linkin Park]
8- Prelude 12/21(60 plays) [AFI]
9- A Beautiful Lie(58 plays) [30 Seconds to Mars]
10- Shiver(55 plays) [Maroon 5]

Albums:
1- The Carter 3 (804 plays) [Lil' Wayne] (was there really any doubt?)
2- Lucky (655 plays) [Nada Surf]
3- Songs About Jane (453 plays) [Maroon 5]
4- Hybrid Theory (401 plays) [Linkin Park]
5(t)- Absolution (364 plays) [Muse]
5(t)- Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (346 plays) [My Chemical Romance]
7- Late Registration (350) [Kanye West]
8- Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat (319 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen]
9- Rising Force (314 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen]
10- Like Vines (303 plays) [The Hush Sound]

*IMPORTANT: The numbers displayed might not (and most likely are not) be correct. This is due to the fact that I often have music playing and for some reason or another Last.fm is not keeping track of this. This is not Last.fm's fault, but mine since I either choose not to log in or am on a computer that doesn't have (or doesn't support) the software necessary to keep track of played music.

Another Semester Down

Finally this semester is over. Not that I didn't enjoy it but the classes didn't provide me with enough of a challenge. I don't see too much changing next semester but you never know. I don't see any reason for not making all As since I pretty much destroyed every test and project. Well here's the expected break down of each class.

CIS 3020: Quite uninteresting. All the object oriented stuff we learned in class I already knew, and that was because I spent about an hour reading the OO portion of a C++ tutorial. The lab sessions were quite useful since you actually learned concept, thank god for graduate students. The two things I got out of this were learning some Java and finally switching over to Linux (as far as my laptop, I still have to get around to putting it onto my desktop).

Fourier Analysis: Worst mistake ever. Easy class, but so uninteresting. I was expecting a theoretical approach to the topic, or at least an applied one where theorems were stated and then proofs sketched. However, what I got was "here is what a fourier series is, now here is what MATLAB can do". Needless to say I didn't really learn anything I would consider worthwhile.

Numerical Analysis: Seemed like a computational approach to linear algebra. Though the class did make us use MATLAB he would explain where the equations and algorithms came from before showing how to perform them in MATLAB. Overall could have been a better class but I guess I was expecting too much since I had already started reading a Numerical Analysis book a few years ago.

Modern Analysis: Good review of what I did all last year in Adv. Calc. The problems he assigned were pretty interesting and required some thought, but nothing to the point where you would be banging your head on a desk two hours before the assignment was due. He's a pretty cool guy and an amazing teacher. The phrases of the semester were "blindingly obvious" and "it's easy", so as you can imagine we had some fun with those. OH before I forget he has agreed to be my faculty adviser (or whatever it's called) for my honors thesis. So after the second semester of the course we will get together to discuss thesis topics; looking forward to it.

On a non academic side, today I found out that I was chosen to go through the selection process for an NSA internship. Hope everything goes well and I am chosen, this is honestly my dream internship.

Also if you have lots of time to waste here is a really good site, though I warn you there are a lot of graphs.
Procrastinate

Oh Java

Well I have been doing a project in Java (obviously not my choice, I would rather be using C++). I have started to get annoyed with how verbose Java can be at times. For instance say you have two string, string1 and string2, and you wanted to see if they were the same; instead of just typing string1 == string2 like you would be able to in C++ you have to type string1.equals(string2). I should note that string1 == string2 is allowed in Java but it checks to see if the two objects point to the same location in memory, and in most cases this is not what you want to check. But check this out, apparently if you want to compare two characters using the == operator is perfectly fine, gosh Java just make up your mind already. Well that's enough Java bashing for a while, I suppose that I just prefer C++ because it is what I learned first and have been using for much longer. I will admit though that Java does have its upsides (this will be left for another post).

The other day I got around to wondering why I never needed to defragment. the drive with Linux. I have just had people tell me this and have read it online but never actually got around to seeing why. So I got on Google did a quick search and found my answer, and was quite pleased with the result. Here is a link to probably the easiest explanation to follow. After reading that article I saw on the page a link to something about how to "properly delete files", something I have always wondered about and now was just as good a time as any to read about it. I won't go into it too much here, but when you just hit the delete button it is similar to just deleting the pointer that tells you where the information is stored and not the information itself. If you want a better explanation and information on how to "delete" the information just follow this link (you will see why I put delete in quotation marks once you read the article/post).

IMPORTANT NEWS

Well for unknown reasons (well not totally unknown) I can no longer use LaTex on this blog. I did look up ways to get this back but ran into a few problems. Most of the solutions only worked for Unix like systems, and I would like to be able to use LaTex on the blog even if I was on a Windows machine. Also most of these solutions would have required me to add another version of Tex to my linux system and I didn't really want to do that. There was however, one solution that would work with all systems (supposedly). All I had to do was edit the source code for a GreaseMonkey script, but after doing that I was still running into the same issues as before so I quickly gave up on that dead end.

I will still be using this blog but whenever I want to post anything mathematically related I shall post a link to my WordPress blog in the post. The reason I am using WordPress is becasuse it has LaTex built in and thus less work on my part.

Minor Incidents

Well I have decided to tag a Computer Science minor to go along with my Mathematics major. After this semester is over I will only have 4 more CS classes to take before I have completed the minor, this basically comes down to 1.3333... CS classes per semester. The classes I have to take are; Applications of Discrete Structures, Intro. to Computer Organization, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Operating Systems. Due to prerequisites I will be taking the fist two next semester, then Data Structures fall of next year, and finally OS my last semester (because this seems to be the most difficult of the 4 and I would rather not to have to worry about it while working on graduate school applications).

I came to this decision after realizing that there weren't any outside of major classes that interested me, other than Economics, Finance, or CS. Honestly, I find all these disciplines to be just as interesting and rewarding. However, what made me choose CS was the kinds of people that would be in the classes. In my experience most of the people in the Economics or Finance classes don't seem to have any interest in the subject and are only there because they have to take it for the major. In addition they constantly complain about the work and other consequential details about the class. While the CS majors are very adamant about their classes and willing to learn. Also there isn't as much complaining about the class (unless it is to say that they aren't learning enough or that it's not challenging enough).

In addition to the above issues there are some other personal "problems". Now that I think about it problems really isn't the most appropriate phrase to use. Here is the general overview: A little while ago (2-3months) stopped talking to one of my friends because I felt used. A few days ago I was pretty bored and lonely (most everyone I knew was out of town) and I considered giving them a call. After thinking about it I didn't mainly because I would feel that I was using them, and that's just something I refuse to do, even to someone I no longer care about. Well I care about them but it is basically at the same level I care about a complete stranger. The day after this happened I talked to one of my friends and basically what I remember from the conversation was this, "...you will constantly be filtering people in and out of your life. It sucks at time but it is just something you have to learn to accept."

Homecoming Weekend

Well I was not on campus, as a matter of fact I wasn't even in Gainesville, for homecoming this year. Instead I was attending the ACM ICPC Southeast Regional (a programming competition for college students). We took four different teams this year. It was my first time going and I didn't do all that well on the placement test so as a result I ended up on the 4th team. At the competition we managed to answer 3 of the 10 questions and finished 21st out of abut 62 teams. Also we beat the 3rd team. Our school's first team answered 5 questions and got 2nd place (the fist place team also answered 5 questions), while our 2nd team answered 4 question and I am sure that they were in the top 10. Overall I believe that we did very well, considering we were with out the aid of the C++ STL and Java API refernce sites which we were promised.
Any case, it is time to prepare for next year's competition. My goal is to be on the fist team and get 1st place.

Comfortable in an Open World

Now when I use my laptop I mostly boot into Ubuntu Hardy (8.04). The only time I boot into Windows Vista (which I still think is a better OS than XP) is when I need to use MATLAB. However, this is becoming more of a rarity since I have started using Octave and have become quite comfortable with its interface. In addition I find that compiling and running programs is much easier under Ubuntu. I suppose I could set it so that it is just as easy under Vista but that would require some work. All of the applications I use on Ubuntu are Open Source, with the exception of Adobe, and this is only because I find that it is considerably better than any of the Open Source aternatives I have found thus far. I used to have WINE installed but removed it once I realized that I had no need for it sicne it could not install MATLAB and I'm not much of a gamer so really everything I need can be done with Linux compatable programs.

As far as programming goes I have started using Java. It isn't that difficult to pick up since I know C/C++ it just takes a little getting used to. I might go back and try to convert some of the solutions I did for SPOJ problems and convert them to solutions in Java (they are all in C++). Learning a new language really can't hurt since there are some problems I see and am like "I know how to do that but I can't fit the necessary data into as a long long (64 bits) is C++, if only I could use Java's BigInteger."

Next week is the South East Regional Programming Competiton for ACM. Wish me luck. I feel pretty prepared, I have a grasp of most of the basic algorithms we coverd. It is just coming up with the correct data structures to use that is giving me problems now, but that should soon be fixed.

Blinded

First I would like to mention that the generalized statement in my previous post is incorrect. I shall in the coming days post the correct version with proof. Now for the real post.
------------

Without you in my life, brightening the days
I might as well be blind, crawling in the dark
Searching for a light switch I'll never find

But there you are
And it's like God said, "Let there be light"
No, more like
"Let there be [her name]"

And now I'm obsessed
I might as well be blind
Because all I see is you
But that's alright by me
Since with you there what else is worth looking at?

I Have Wireless

So I have finally managed to get my wireless card working with Ubuntu 8.04. You have no idea how happy I am about this. I have been wanting to really give Ubuntu a try but have always been reluctant to because of the fact that it wouldn't work with my wireless card and I would need an ethernet cable in order to connect to the internet. Now I know this happiness will not be too long lived because once I update to the next version of Ubuntu (which in my case will probably be 9.04 and not 8.10) I will most likely have to go through the same process again and hope that it still works on the new version.

On a more "depressing" note; I managed to finish only half of one my my 5 analysis homework problems. They all seem to be about connected sets. One of the funny things is that in Rundin for a set to be connected it must not be able to be written as the union of two separated sets. However, on Wikipedia, Mathworl, and one of my other analysis text they also say that the separated sets must be open sets. Now I know that if two open sets are disjoint they are separated so I don't see the real need for this extra assumption. In any case the problem I managed to solve was as follows.

Let A and B be two connected subsets of a metric space X. Show that is A and B have nonempty intersection then their union is also connected.

The second half of the problem asked us to state and prove a generalized version of this for the union of arbitrary connected sets. I came up with:

Let {A} be collection of connected sets. If for each F in {A} there exist a G in {A} such that the intersection of F and G is nonempty then the union of all the members of {A} is a connected set.

Voting and Coding

Well as the title indicates, this post will be mainly about two thing; voting and coding.

Voting:
Don't you just find it a little discouraging that when you turn 18 you are finally able to vote and be drafted into the military (assuming you are male). What really bothers me about this isn't so much the service aspect but rather the fact that when I turned 18 I was sent a card saying that I had registered for the selective service. Now I don't remember doing a damn thing for this, I'm not complaining, but still. On the other hand when I wanted to register to vote I had to go out of my way in order to do so. And you wonder why so few young people decide to vote. It's viewed as a burden, I mean if they can register for the service on their own they sure as hell can register you to vote, even if it's as an independent and then you have to go and change your party affiliation if you so desire.

Coding:
This year I think I am going to take programming team practices a little more seriously. I guess it is because now I know that in most competitions I will be able to solve about one or two problems "easily". However, I would like to be able to do more and in order to accomplish this goal I will have to learn more algorithms (or at least the thought process behind them). At the most recent practice I learned a pretty efficient algorithm for finding the longest common substring between two strings. Before seeing the algorithm I would have been able to do this problem but my method would have been very inefficient and complicated to code.
Also I have finally found a blank CD for me to make a Linux boot CD. I am going to install Ubuntu on my portable hard drive instead of partitioning the hard drive on my desktop or laptop. I really don't have a problem with having Ubuntu being the main OS on my laptop but I am not sure how to go about installing MatLab on that system so I am going to avoid the potential problems. Also one of my classes works primarally in a Linux environment so having Linux on my comptuer will make things easier (although I could still do most if not all of the work under Windows if I really wanted to).

Shopping Can Actually be Fun

Decided to do some last minute back to school shopping. Really all I needed was a new pair of shoes and a few other minor things. The only real thing I needed was shoes, everything else I could have bought once I got back to campus, but why not buy now instead of later.

Since I knew that I needed shoes, the first place we (Ann and I) went was to the shoe section of Sears since I had seen the shoes I wanted there before. The shoes I got were Adidas Samba's, I had actually been wanting a pair for the longest while but never got around to actually buying them. They only came out to be $42.99, and I just happened to have $40.00 cash in my wallet, so I ended up putting the other $2.99 on my credit card, I'm sure that I looked pretty weird.

After buying the shoes we just walked around the mall for a while before deciding that I could actually buy some more cloths. Really a fun experience, trying on everything and getting a good laugh at how ridiculous I looked or how amazing it was. The two things that stick out the most are the pink shirt that Ann wanted me to try on even though I told her that I would not buy it. I must admit though that it didn't look all that bad, however, I stand by my decision to not buy it. Then there was this set of brown shorts with white vertical lines, and another set of brown pants. Both were too big so I didn't have to put up much of a fight as to why I wasn't going to buy them. After all of this I just ended up buying a white button down shirts with grayish vertical stripes/lines.

This might not seem all that interesting to most of you but to the parties in attendance it was quite the memorable day.

Time Flies

Last night before going to bed I was talking to one of my friends on AIM. I hadn't spoken to them in a while so most of the conversation was about what we each had been up to for the summer. However, we managed to move to a totally unrelated topic and some of their comments left me just a little depressed. So I did what I normally do when this happens, I end the conversation, put up a witty away message and then go to bed.

Wham! I feel better in the morning and it's like the event never happened. Also when I woke up I was thinking about another math problem (similar to #2 in the previous post). After sitting in bed for a while reflecting on last night's conversation and trying to come up with a proof for this problem, I decided that it was time to go and eat breakfast. Then a few hours later I went over to Ann's.

Well I basically spent all day (well really 10.5 hours) with her. We played Guitar Hero 3, something I have so missed from my days in Holland. I convinced her to start playing on the hard difficulty setting. Things went a lot better for her once she got used to the added button, I think now all she has to work on is "reading" and getting used to the speed. Oh and she also needs to get comfortable with "pull ons and hammer ons". After the Guitar Hero session we went to get lunch at the same place we went for my birthday (Far East Cuisine I think). Then we basically messed around online until dinner.

From the Integers to Infinite Series

In the upcoming fall semester I will be taking the first year graduate analysis class. Hopefully, this class will be more "rewarding" than the undergraduate analysis sequence I completed last year. The undergraduate sequence was not a total waste of time since I actually did learn some new things, but the class moved so slowly and the test were not all that difficult. I never really had to exert myself in order to obtain my A. As a result in the second semester I tried to get a 100% on every assignment and test. I almost achieved this goal, however, I did not make a small clarification on one of my proof thus resulting in me losing 1 or 2 point for the problem.

The graduate class will be using the same book as the undergraduate sequence. However, we will hopefully cover all of the sections. Last year the professor would pick and choose which topics he though were necessary and possible for the majority of the class to understand. As a result some of our proofs were longer than needed but I suppose knowing multiple ways to prove something isn't all that bad.

Right now I am reading through as many chapters as I can and working all the exercises. My only requirement is that I can only be working on problems from at most two different chapters and that I can only be reading one chapter ahead of the problems I am solving. So basically right now I am working problems from chapter 2 and 3, and reading chapter 4. I am almost done with the problems from chapter 3, but the ones from chapter 2 are going to take a little more time. I suppose that it has to do with the fact that dealing with topology is still a little "new" to me.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be able to do the following problems:

1) Suppose is a Cauchy sequence in a metric space , and some subsequence converges to a point . Prove that the full sequence converges to .
2) Let be a sequence of closed, nonempty, bounded sets in a complete metric space . Also and . Prove that contains exactly one point.

I will eventually get around to making a post about my REU in Michigan. Sorry to disappoint, but I just need some more time to better collect my thought on this topic so that I will have a post worth reading.

GIMP

Well in my free time I have decided to learn how to use GIMP. For those of you that don't know, GIMP stands for GUI Image Manipulation Program. Basically it is an open source version of Photoshop.
Yesterday I started reading the online manual (which I should probably download to my computer sometime soon) and was somewhat insulted by the simplicity of the first few sections. However, I can see why they are needed. As of now most of what I know to do was discovered by playing around with the program and reading random portions of the manual.
Right now my goal is to be able to create a cool banner for the portion of this blog with the title. I already have a few done but none of them are "amazing" so they are not going to be used. I think the first thing I should find out is the necessary dimensions for the banner.
The program seems pretty straight forward so far, however, I would like to learn how to make manipulations to text.

Short Computer Post

I don't really feel like making a complete post at this point in time so I will post a a few pictures of the new desktop.


This is a shot of it in use. Running programs include: Windows Media Player, Firefox, GoogleTalk, Google Desktop, Trillian, and ObjectDock.



This is a screen shot with all windows minimized or closed.



Finally, in case you were wondering I am running Windows Vista Home Premium. There is no way in hell I would EVER get a Mac or have their OS running on my computer. As a matter of fact I try to avoid all apple products, but sadly I have to use Quicktime Player every no and again. Anyway, I don't know when but I will be trying to dual boot Windows and Luinux sometime in the future.

REU 2008 - Week 1

Don't expect an entry for every week of the REU but I figured that the first week was important enough to have its own.

When I first moved into my apartment I was pleasantly surprised by the size. My first impression was that it was way too small for four people to live comfortably. However, after spending some time here I quickly realized that I was mistaken. The roommates are pretty cool, well actually I have only met 2 of them, the last one will be arriving on Monday. The first one I met had just recently returned from Africa where he was helping install water filtration systems in a village. I don't remember the name of the country but it was a French speaking one. The other roommate is a year younger than me and it kind of shows in ways, mainly when we are working in groups (he is a member of my group in addition to being my roommate). The three of us that live here so far are all math majors and the one remaining roommate is an engineering major.

The research is going extremely well. At the beginning we would "play around" with the problems and find a solution. Then our mentors (I can't think of a better term for them, I guess advisers works but that makes it seem like we are PhD students) would present us with a paper which contained the result we had just discovered. You would think that this was disheartening but it actually was not. Having actually come to the conclusion ourselves made reading some of the proofs much easier since we had a better understanding of what they were doing and could relate some of their ideas to our own. However, we have so far have come across a result which we have not been able to find stated in any paper. I guess you could say we have our first theorem, and it's quite a wonderful feeling. We were surprised by the theorem actually. This is because based on the question we were answering one would expect the result to be complicated. However, it is quite the opposite. When we first saw it we were all skeptical and furiously searched for a counterexample but could not find one. After going through it again we were certain that it was correct. All that is left to do for this finding is to actually write up the proof of the theorem and the necessary lemmas.

Well I'll keep this one relatively short and end by saying that it seems like I will be going to the beach quite often (even though we have to climb over a "mountain" to get there). So far this week I have gone three different times.

From Big to Bigger

I would like to start this post off by saying congratulations to all the 2008 graduates; high school, college, graduate school, medical school, etc. it doesn't matter. The road has been long and hard (some harder than others) but you have finally made it. Looking back on the last four or five (or more in some cases) years, wonderful memories rush to the forefront of you mind at incomprehensible speeds. Times spent with friends doing "stupid" things, things you regret ever happening but because they did you are a better person. (We all have things we regret it's just a matter of how we deal with it, so I don't want to hear any "I don't have any regrets about my life" bull s**t) So of you will be continuing your education or looking to work in academia, while others will be starting "life". Which ever category you fall into I wish you the best of luck.


A few days ago (May 22nd) I attended my siblings' high school convocation, well actually many of my friends were there but it would take too much time to list them, so I'll just list a few: Ann, Clara, Roland, and Jeremy. Now that the event is over I am glad that I decided to attend. Ever time someone I was close to won an award it made me proud since I would be able to say "I know them and we are great friends" in addition they deserved the award for all of the hard work they put forward both in and out of school. I can only imagine how their parents must have felt.

Today was my sibling's graduation. It's not until you have to sit through one of those as a nonparticipant that you see how fast they move. For some reason I remember my graduation taking forever, but then again I was anxious for it to all finally be over. The speeches given by the saluditorian and valedictorian were both quite good. The saluditorian is a good friend of mine and a funny guy so naturally there were some (well really many) hidden comments in his speech. The only part I regret is that my parents decided to show up only five minutes before graduation started so parking was hell and it was near impossible to find seating. We ended up sitting above the tunnel where all the graduates entered and left, so as my siblings were leaving they were able to see us. Also there was no way to get any good pictures of what was happening on stage because we were so far away. Oh well, being there is what really counts, and I managed to get a few good pictures.

Sales Tax and Apples

A few days ago I was standing in line at a Subway looking at the prices of the menu items; $4.99, $5.89, $0.99, etc. This just got me thinking, why don't they just give you the price after tax? Just imagine being an immigrant and going to the store and buying two products both listed at $5.99. You go to the register and expect to pay $11.98, but you have to pay $12.82 after 7% sales tax. The first thing that you think is "What is going on here? Why do I have to give you more money than the listed price?" The truth of the matter is that most other countries the price that is shown is the one after tax, so you can imagine how this would cause confusion. Honestly, how difficult would it be for stores to just calculate the tax and add it on to the already listed price? Not very I hope.

I know that no matter how much I, or anyone else for that matter, rants about this, this stupid policy is not likely to change.

Just browsing around the internet I came upon an all too familiar forum discussion topic: "Why are Macs better than PCs". Of course as expected I saw the typical "viruses" claim. What made this thread interesting however, was that there were other claims that were made, some of them irrational but at least they tried to be original. After the virus statements, I would have to say that the next most popular claim was that Macs had better graphics. Now I don't know how true this is since I have never sat the two down side by side and compared so I have no real opinion on this. Some other listed reasons included, easier to use, being faster, and just look better. Now Macs looking better is obviously not a reason that they are better than PCs so I will just disregard this one. Whoever made the being faster claim obviously knows nothing about computers. It's not the computer, but the processor, RAM, and amount of programs running that determine speed. Finally, as far as being easier to use this is really just a matter of getting acclimated. Every time I have to use a Mac I have the hardest time navigating, not because I don't know how to find what I am looking for, but because the keyboard shortcuts are different. This and the way you interact with open windows is a little different when it comes to maximizing/minimizing and other such task.

Amidst all this PC bashing there was the occasional "voice of reason". One of the reasons for the "lack of Mac viruses" is obviously the small portion of market power they have but also because of how the OS and software are closely integrated. One of my favorite statements in the whole thread went something like this, "I don't have anything against Macs, however, what I do have an issue with is the air of superiority that seems to surround almost all Mac users. They seem to think that just because they own a Mac that they are so much better than all PC users. Really, from the looks of things it seems that the extra money you pay for a Mac is not for a better computer but rather for this false sense of superiority." I would have to agree with this statement. Almost all the Mac users I know seem to always try to mention how much better their computer is than mine. Even though it is true it's not because I am using a PC but because I have less RAM, a slower processor (which is about to change), and the amount of programs I run simultaneously. When I was looking for laptops I originally though about getting an iBook or Powerbook. However, as it turns out they were selling for about $2,000 and if I wanted to get the same thing on a PC I would only have to pay about $600-700. So it's no surprise I went with my HP Pavilion dv6700.

Finally Time For Finals

Just finished what I hope was my last Abstract Algebra test. The take home portion of this exam was hell. Even though there were only 3 questions it took a little under a week for us to complete. The first two questions were pretty simple and we finished in about an hour (most likely less). They day before the exam was due my team and I spent around 12 hours working on the sole remaining problem, and we didn't feel too confident about any of our proofs. What frustrated us the most was that the material covered in the final question did not have any major connection to algebra. This combined with the professor's poor wording of the problem left us wanting to kill people. Today was the in class portion of the exam which surprisingly was not all that bad. I did however, make a few mistakes. One problem I got the right answer but used the completely wrong method, luckily this was a short answer and not proof bases test. Another problems I used the same incorrect method but this time I am sure I go the wrong answer. Other than those two questions I think that I got everything else correct.

In addition to the abstract test I had an Advanced Calculus test the following period. Luckily the theorem he wanted us to prove was not all that difficult, since I did not bother studying for it due to the abstract test.

Before you get the wrong idea, today was not a horrible day. In fact it was and most likely will be the best day of this week. I woke up this morning thinking that I would have to go to French. However, during my shower I remembered that we didn't have class today because we had the oral portion of our final the previous day. During this new found free time I studied a little for abstract and watched some television. This got old after a while so I resorted to doing a few SPOJ problems, which is something I haven't done in about a month. During the period of about one hour I finished a previously started problem relating to Fibonacci numbers, started and completed a problem on finding the centroid of a region, and finally started a problem on strings. This last problem I have though of a method but am not sure exactly how to program it just yet.

One final bit of good news, I ordered my laptop a few days ago. Here are its "stats":

- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 (2.0 GHz, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache )
- 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS!!
- HP Imprint Finish (Radiance) + Webcam + Microphone
- 802.11b/g WLAN and Bluetooth from 802.11b/g WLAN!!
- 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (3hr 30min)

This only came out to $847.09 and $59.10 of that is tax (shipping was free).

Finals and Work

Well the semester is winding down, I only have a few more test and then I'm "free". Now that I think about it I have quite a few test to take actually. Two in Abstract Algebra, either one or two in Advanced Calculus 2, two in Managerial Economics, and one in French. None of these should be particularly difficult, but some count more than others so I will actually have to study.

Right now I am really looking forward to my REU. I still have to book a flight but that shouldn't be a bit issue. Earlier today I received an email from the coordinator informing us about who was going to be in our groups as well as how we were to sign up for housing (which is provided free of charge). Interestingly there will also be other undergraduates participating in research in other natural science areas. If I am correct I believe that the email said that there would be somewhere around 200 undergraduates, and only 15 of us will be working directly with the mathematics department. Apparently we will be getting pain $800 minus taxes every fortnight.
While on the topic of money I think it is appropriate to mention that I might be teaching the discussion section for a Precalculus class next fall. I found this out on Friday after my Advanced Calculus 2 class. The professor talked to me and another sophomore, he wanted to know if we would be around next fall since the department was looking for more TAs to help teach discussion sections. He said that he would refer us to the person in charge in order to set up our interviews, which are just a formality according to him. It was mentioned that we would be getting paid but nothing much was said about this topic, and I'm fine with that.

It's been a while since I've done this, but here is a video to accompany this post.