Secants and Tangents

Those few readers that remember that way back when I used to have a section “Lyrics of the Week.” For now I am going to include them in my blog.

[cpg_image:41,6,t] Last Thursday night I actually went to a party…and even better, a Sunset Rec party. I got pretty drunk and I had a great time. It was a going away party for Irving, one of the lifeguards. SCRC is a much better place because of him. People like Irving are so hard to find and seem to come into our lives when we least expect them. Quite a few people were emotional because he is that good of a guy. Thank goodness I was drunk, I’ve been enough of a basketcase this week. A shoutout to my roommate Marc who had to put up with my stupor when I returned really late. Sunset is going through a tough transition right now. We lost 4 of the original building supervisors from when I started: Cesar, Jason, Johanna, and now Irving. And that was after it lost 3 or 4 other supervisors right before I jumped on board. The clerks lost Ting-Ting, and even some of the lifeguards are leaving. The good news is that Edgar came back. He and I sit around and bitch about all of the patrons, and about other shit. He’s an entertaining guy. Going to work there always makes me feel better, even if just temporarily. I hope we can all gel together like the last group did, but I don’t know. Anyway, this is how we “roll” at Sunset. Edgar can verify this: Next week I will be starting my position as a software analyst. It looks like I will be working two five-hour shifts per week unless I can figure out another way to do it. Classes are boring, but I am not complaining. I told one of my roommates, Julian that I plan on drinking a lot more this quarter. I need to have a good time. I will also resume my position as a Stats grader this coming week. ——- In retrospect, this past week a lot of cool things happened, but it was rough on me for some reason. I just feel like such a little kid. I am 22 years old, and I should know how to play with the cards that I am dealt, but there are still so many things I have yet to learn, many of which my peers seem to have already learned. Like I mentioned in an entry from May, my brain doesn’t shut up. I am a chronic thinker to the point that it is almost self-destructive. This feeling just caught up with me is all. I guess that is the reason I have been writing so much lately. It is my outlet. Living with 5 other guys, it is my only outlet. I am experiencing my own “Mad Season.” ——- So I got the Stats project that I requested for that consulting class so I am happy. I spent the rest of my time trying to learn Java the hard way. I tried reading a book and got bored, so now I am just playing around with NetBeans. I am stuck at home for the weekend, not really by choice. But it doesn’t matter where I am, I will be bored since nothing is going on. I am hoping to put up the pics from Irving’s party this weekend, …including the video of Michael giving Irving a lapdance… [cpg_image:41,79,n]

This has to be my #2 song. It has so much meaning to me, I feel like I could have written it. Apparently the entire album is about a relationship that has ended, but to me, it has a completely different meaning. The first person is this melancholic character that at times plagues me. Sometimes the “you,” “we” in this song is some arbitrary person, and sometimes it refers to my usual self. And the happy music is the perfect contradiction to the lyrics. If you connect with music, you know what I mean. Mad Season Matchbox Twenty, 2001 I feel stupid, But I know it won’t last for long. And I’ve been guessing, And I could’ve been guessing wrong You don’t know me now. I kind of thought that you should somehow. Does that whole mad season got you down? I feel stupid, But it’s something that comes and goes. And I’ve been changing, I think it’s funny how no one knows. We don’t talk about, The little things that we do without When that whole mad season comes around. So why you got to stand there looking like the answer now? It seems to me, you’d come around - I need you now, Do you think you can cope? You figured me out, That I’m lost and I’m hopeless, I’m bleeding and broken, Though I’ve never spoken, And I come undone, In this mad season. I feel stupid, But I think I’ve been catching on. I feel ugly, But I know I still turn you on. You’ve grown colder now, Torn apart, angry, turned around, Will that whole mad season knock you down? So are you going to stand there? Are you gonna help me out? We need to be together now - I need you now, Do you think you can cope? You figured me out, That I’m lost and I’m hopeless, I’m bleeding and broken, Though I’ve never spoken, I come undone… In this mad season… And now I’m crying, Isn’t that what you want? And I’m trying to live my life on my own, But I won’t, no, At times, I do believe I am strong, So someone tell me why? why? why?… …do I, I, I…feel stupid?? And I come undone, Oh I come undone. I need you now. Do you think you can cope? You figured me out, That I’m lost and I’m hopeless, I’m bleeding and broken, Though I’ve never spoken… Well, I need you now Do you think you can cope? You figured me out, I’m a child, and I’m hopeless, I’m bleeding and broken, Though I’ve never spoken, I come, ohhhh, I come undone, …in this mad season. In this mad season, It’s been a mad season. ‘Been a mad season.

140 sounds like it is going to be pretty cool. My class was combined with Stats 88. We are going to be assigned to teams where the 140 students will basically lead the 88 students through statistical research. We are going to be assigned one of five projects which were provided to us by real clients!

1. Tuna Project…again Hell no am I gonna work on the tuna project again! When I took Stats 88 I had to work on this project and it was more boring than watching the grass grow. I did not put it as one of my three choices, but I am thinking Rob and Vivian might assign me to it since I know the most about it. :-/
2. Alcohol Effects Study for the Ashe Center. This is basically survey data analysis which can be interesting. It is my second choice.
3. Sony Pictures Non-Box Office Revenue Projection. The goal is to do some data mining (my proposed specialization) to determine how grossing certain plot lines are compared to other types of plot lines. Requires a film buff, which I definitely am not. Next…
4. Jewish Family Counseling Survey. Goal is to analyze data taken from three surveys conducted before, during, and after couples therapy treatment. Another survey data problem, but kind of boring because the sample is only n=100. It is my third choice.
5. LAUSD “LA’s Best” Program Evaluation. This is my NUMBER ONE choice with stars and big letters! LA’s Best is an afterschool tutoring and development program for disadvantaged students that live in high crime, low income areas. The program’s attendance has been dropping over the past few years and LAUSD wants to know why.
   • First, the data is all messed up and scattered, so we must use our friend Perl to write a robot or web scraper to get the data for us.
   • Also this project requires heavy knowledge of statistics because the errors in the study are correlated! So the project requires a multilevel regression analysis. Vivian said she feels sorry for whoever gets stuck with this one…STICK IT WITH ME!

120A is, well, boring. I guess that comes as no surprise since I already took 120B and got an A. But I like Rob’s teaching style. It is also pretty funny that I already know Chris, the TA for my class. The two of them are going to make for an interesting quarter. Today we talked about hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. It’s like 11th grade all over again. And here I am, chillin’ with the toddlers.

Stats 130B is also boring. Vivian is an entertaining lecturer, but the class is 3 hours long, and being lectured about how to use computer software is neither challenging to my digestion, nor fun. I wish I could have taken it independent study or something. Oh well. It shouldn’t be too difficult.

It shouldn’t be too hard of a quarter, and I have deserved this break. Unfortunately, the way my classes work out, leaves me with a lot of free time. I guess I won’t be quitting Sunset for a while…

I had a rough morning for whatever reason. I could tell something was wrong due to the way I reacted over a conversation I had with a friend the other day. We talked again about it and it just made me feel even worse about myself because we both overanalyze everything to death. I just had to be like, “stop, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” But this is for me to sort out; it’s my problem.

It is very important that I say that he is a really good guy and I don’t fault him at all for how I feel, but like I said, having a “heavy heart” sucks. And being a pessimist makes it no easier! I like this quote, and it seems to jive with my 1/10 and 1/9 entries:

Other stuff is on my mind, but it is all a question mark to me, and not worth mentioning right now. Whenever I get into these melancholic ruts everything makes me feel all weird and I end up kicking myself over and over again.

I think 140 has snapped me out of it at least temporarily. I was so messed up this morning I showed up to that class an hour early - the wrong class. I have never done since I’ve been in college. Of course I ran into some more friends that wanted to talk about grad school applications and they started asking me all of these stupid questions…which just made me more upset. It is as if some energy is telling me to “knock it off.” So then I had to go home to take care of something, and then returned to class again.

Aside: I am convinced to improve my vocabulary because doing math for all of these years has really deteriorated it. For some reason I thought “rut” may be spelled “wrut” so I looked it up to be sure, and found this: In colloquial English, “to be in a rut” means to have a monotonous routine of activities or thoughts. But an alternative definition appears to be a “sexual desire or oestrus of…mammals.”

I guess I should find better words.

——————

If it is one person that knows days like this, it is Billy Joel:

Of course, I cannot forget to mention my all-time favorite song by him, You’re Only Human (Second Wind): Lyrics, Story (I was surprised)

I was wrong. Now is the time where I usually start kicking myself for being an ass and come up with some improvement that I know won’t be productive. So as I always say (and never seem to follow thru with), I need to relax.

I don’t know why, but friendship has always been such a difficult thing for me, especially at this school. It seems like everything revolves around it at this place. Why do I surround myself with people whose definitions of friendship are just saying “hi” and “bye” with a smile on their faces? And their empty words: “we’ll hang out [really soon].” They make me want to vomit. And then there are those people that shallowly ask me for my phone number. I so just want to look at them and ask “why? Are you going to call me?” That is a legitimate question because so many people just do it to raise the number of people in their digital phonebook.

I must clarify that there are two types of friends to me. There are the friends that I have made within my major. That is different. In this entry I am writing about friendship independent of school. I will probably remain friends with those people for a very long time, perhaps even professionally, but I will not be at a university forever.

Now that I feel like I might have [a chance at having at least] a couple of genuine friends, we are all graduating. And despite what we all say, we are never going to see each other again, and we are never going to even attempt to stay in touch. We talk about our plans after graduation and mine of course include grad school. Then the question of “what if you don’t get in?” comes up. And it just strikes such a chord within myself to be asked that. As if people, or this particular person, is just waiting for me to fail. I am even being asked what my plans for the summer are! Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Why don’t I just get a lawyer to help me write my Last Will and Testament while we are at it? There was a some type of melancholic song from the early 90s called “How Can We See That Far?” I swear that is my mantra. And what does this person plan to do after graduation? Of course these peoples’ plans rely on their high school friends. It is fucking amazing to me. Had I known that Thousand Oaks High School was going to dictate the rest of my life, perhaps I would have paid more attention…perhaps I would have not been truant all the time. But I have part of it figured out. These people, as pathetic as it may sound for me to say, have something/someone to fall back on. I don’t. I know it is pathetic that I occupy myself with such a stupid thought, but perhaps this is just the sad state of my generation.

That is not to say that I have my own set of best friends from back home. But we are all in different places. And it is doubtful that we are all going to return to Thousand Oaks. Additionally, my life doesn’t revolve around Thousand Oaks High School. And our friendships do not rely on everything being “just like old times” and they do not rely on ALL of us being together at every waking moment. It isn’t the same as with these other people. It is like Saved by the Bell…graduate from college and resume life right where high school left off. I guess my High School Diploma means more than my B.S. in Mathematics. How is that for irony?

Since these friendships of course won’t last they are meaningless and not worth my time. So I must now find a way to sabotage them. I must turn on these people, or I must find some quality about these people that I hate and just go with it and never look back. That way, I will want to never see them again. If I do not sabotage these friendships, I will spend the rest of my time here feeling like shit, or listening to lies upon lies. I can hardly wait for May to roll around.

I know it is not a good way of looking at it, but I do not want to have to say goodbye, especially because I know my bittersweet melancholy will get in the way of the billions of things that I have to do on a daily basis.

But WHY am I not excited at the fact that I am leaving behind such a shallow undergraduate world? Simple. Because I wish I could do it all over again. Pathetically enough, I wish I could go back to 9th grade and start all over again. There is no getting away from high school. Right now I feel like I’ve had a shitty undergraduate experience - both socially and academically and I so wish I could have that back, but most likely somewhere else.

I don’t know why I was given such a heavy heart, but I am stuck with it.

What is everybody’s obsession with high school at this university??? It was 4 years of your life…GET OVER IT. I am so sick of hearing about it. If I hear one more time “I’m hanging out with my high school buddies [even though I am at college and shouldn’t be such a loser to not make any college friends]” I am going to strangle something. If this truly isn’t the case, then please let me know so I can find a new social circle…

One of these days I am going to have to post my spin on the “UCLA Laws of Socialization for Undergraduates”…

First off, thanks to the LA Observer for quoting me in their blog entry about poor Stephanie Edwards getting the boot from the Rose Parade coverage. And a shoutout to BruinWalk.com. Your pseudorandom number generator has good taste!!!

Too funny…here I am trying to help my roommate Marc try to set up both an admin password as well as a WEP key for his “router.” I get it set up and all, and I think to myself “wow, this is a really tiny router you have.” Um…it turns out he didn’t have a router. So…we just locked some innocent person out of their own access point. We are now hackers lol j/k.

So another Winter Break passes by. This quarter I have a bitchin’ schedule. I don’t know what I am gonna do with all of my free time. Get a girlfriend perhaps? Nah. Do more programming? After Winter Break I am pretty much burned out from programming. Although I am still trying to learn Java which has turned out to NOT be one of my favorite languages. I still prefer good ol’ C++ for desktop applications, and PHP for web applications, with Perl floating somewhere in the middle.

It is nice to be back though. I feel vindicated from the hell and horror of Fall quarter. At least I wasn’t the only one that had a rough quarter. This quarter I start my new job as a software analyst with a statistician that has written a psychometrics/Item Response Theory software package. I have left my job with the Math Department after almost two and a half years. It just wasn’t any fun anymore, and the classes were way too big.

My classes seem like they will be pretty cool this quarter. Regression Analysis uses this cool project called Moodle which is an academic equivalent of a combination blog, wiki, and forum that has additional functions like grade reporting. The pre-lecture is even a Podcast!!! The Stats Department is so 2006 .

I shall end with a quote from one of my theoretical math impaired friends:
Dunc: yeah, you made a total 360 between jr high and hs.
Me:…that puts me back exactly where I started…unless I started on a branch cut of course…
Dunc:and u wonder why u r single.
Me:*expletive*

Next time: Class update, and my Statement of Purpose…FINALLY!

If it’s one song that I hate it is Auld Lang Syne. How shallow is this? “May all acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.” So I guess I am supposed to forget everything from 2005 just because it is a new year. Well, according to Sylvia Browne, 2006 is supposed to be a great year for Scorpio! Well, I hope it is true, lol.

If New Year’s Eve is any indication of what is in store for 2006, there’s no doubt that this is going to be a “weird” year, whatever that entails. Perhaps I am just being superstitious but here are some reasons why:

• Dick Clark, the voice of New Year’s Eve in Times Square, can hardly speak since suffering a massive stroke.
• Regis Philbin was no better as none of their microphones worked.
• The first live performance in Times Square in years was MARIAH CAREY. Yuck!
• Stephanie Edwards, the queen of Rose Parade hosting, was ousted by some ugly boring drone on KTLA. Stephanie had to sit down in the pouring rain and do absolutely nothing during the parade since her parade program containing all of the trivia was destroyed by the rain.
• “Rockin’” New Years Eve was boring as hell.
• Rose Parade was held on January 2nd because January 1st fell on a Sunday.
• It POURED on the parade for the first time in 50 years.

So if we assume there is a 1/50 probability of rain on the Rose Parade and the Rose Parade lands on a Sunday with probability 1/7, we won’t have to deal with such a shitty parade until 2356.

As for resolutions? I have none. Resolutions are overrated, and so is New Year. But as always I am working on not being so hard on myself or others…just not today.

I spent New Year’s Eve day at Sunset Rec where of course the building sup didn’t show up to open the facility, so I sat in my truck until somebody showed up. I could not believe how many people came to swim on a cold and rainy holiday. I had a furry friend with me too - a squirrel. He sat on the ledge outside of the window during my entire shift.

At one point he got brave enough to run through the window into the office and snatched one of my cookies and ran outside to eat it. After that he snuck into the office a couple more times and got stuck on the floor of the office once until I returned. He got so scared he jumped from the floor to the desk and out the window.

Anyway, I am off of my bitch bag now.