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.
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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).

"Low-Tech" But Creative I Must Admit

Just another thing you have to worry about in the world. When will people try not get ahead by screwing over others? Whoever it was that came up with the concept of money must be rolling over in their grave now thanks to all the problems it has caused through out history. I suppose if it wasn't money then it would be something else that would cause people to react in the same fashion.

Why can't we just go back to the bartering system? You know, when things were simple. I'll admit that this system has its flaws but personally I think that the advantages definitely outshine its pitfalls.

Well here is the article you have been waiting for.

Just Another Problem With America

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
- Bill Vaughan

As if I needed more of a reason to vote. This quote is just so depressing but then when it gets worse when you stop to think about it and realize just how true it actually is.

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.