Last Friday evening I received an email from the IAS. In spite of the the excitement, I was a bit reluctant to open the attached letter concerning the position that I have applied, knowing it is just likely to delight me as it is to disappoint. At the time I was too comfortably lying in bed to want to face its implications on my career and my life in the short future. So I left it be, and went to bed. I slept especially well that night.
To my dismay, the next day did not begin smoothly. After getting to the office, I found my MacBook Pro frozen yet once again. These system meltdowns have been quite routine after I got the Time Capsule, and I knew better than to let it ruin my day again. You see, I have my mind set on something else.
After restarting my laptop, I began eagerly working on my thesis. My advisor’s lecture series last week and the letter from IAS gave a much-wanted boost to my desire to work, and I am just doing my part to convert this desire into action. Several times I wanted to actually open the letter, yet the uncertainty stopped me short of actually doing it.
Finally I did, turns out I am “the first on the waitlist.” I guess a cynic may see it as just a rejection letter; but I believe it is a good new to say the least, and I am keeping my hopes up. Considering the state of our economy, I have to be grateful for this glass half-full.
Lately I have been a bit scatter-brained. The numerous technical tools I acquired over the past three weeks have consumed much of my time and energy. Besides the Apple Time Capsule that frustrated me so much to warrant a short blog post, I also bought a pair of Bose QuietComfort 15 Noise Cancelling headphones. Surely after investing in such a pricey pair of sound gadgetry, it would only make sense to purchase some good music to go along with it? Consumerism is indeed a bottom-less pit.
In any event, I am not feeling guilty for making these purchases as I believe they are productivity tools that will (at least I hope) improve my performance and my quality of life in the long run. What I am going through now is just the growing pains from getting used to these new additions to my life. Since I get adapted to the new demands and complications arising from the yet untamed technological enhancements, the benefits will outweigh cost of the initial investment and maintenance.
I will not shy away from worthwhile investments, even if it means enduring some initial growing pains.
Recently I have been going back to my seven-day-a-week work schedule. It is difficult to gauge your work effort when you don’t have the usual 9-to-5 job. Being mostly in control of my own time, the boundary between my personal life and my work life is extremely blurry. In fact, it is virtually non-existence until recently, when I stopped taking all my math work back home (but soon enough I know I am going to do that again, say, this evening.)
What bothers me, however, is not the amount of time I spent on research work and the lack of a perhaps more “normal” life; instead, it is the unproductive time spent in the office that makes me squinch. For some reason (probably the recent addition of tech-toys to my everyday life), my mind is not as apt at controlling my actions as it used to be. Trifle things like checking Amazon.com’s Goldbox are being quite the hurdle to jump over and continue my research work.
I think it’s time for a good look at the mirror. I need my disciplined self back.
The Time Capsule I bought a week ago on eBay has taken over control of a large part of my life.
I tend to get a little overly enthused after a break from mathematics. The contemplative and pensive persona that I take on when conducting research is now in hibernation, and I am back to being the life-hacker who has difficulty putting out any self-claimed spark of genius and ended up complicated matters.
Nonetheless, my seemingly impulsive acquisition of this expensive equipment had its reasons, even good reasons. Everything began when I experienced problems with backing up using Time Machine to the portable USB hard drive. For some reason, this troublesome yet deceivingly convenient program kept on saying that there is not enough space to continue the backup. After an hour or so of googling for solutions, I somehow ended up looking for information on the Apple Time Capsule.
Before I know it, I already placed a bid on eBay for this $250 plus network storage. Five days later, I became a proud owner of a 1TB MC343LL/A Time Capsule.
Opening up the USPS priority one-rate shipping box was a piece of cake compared to the headache I had while trying to configure this toy to work with the University network.
Initially I tried to have the Time Capsule join the existing encrypted WiFi network, but did not succeed in doing so. According to the tech support, it is probably better to connect the Capsule to the ethernet instead, then broadcast its own WiFi for my laptop to access.
This gave me a good reason to go back to eBay and do some more shopping. Such extravagance!
Let’s hope all the dust that I kicked up will settle next week, and I can peacefully return to my pensive and meditative demeanor fitting of a mathematician.
Filed under: Mathematics, Moderation and Balance, Self Improvement | Tags: Mathematics, mind-body connection, observations, physical effects, vitamin, work
You probably know that taking too much vitamin B2 turns your urine bright yellow. It turns out that there is one additional side effect on me.
After returning from the holiday break, I felt lethargic and unmotivated. So I fooled around with my diet a bit, and decided to resume taking Twin Lab’s Daily One Caps multivitamin to boost my energy and stamina. I bought these a year ago when the vitamin B content in these pills was still extraordinarily high. Although these are just multivitamin supplements, the physical effects were much more acute compared to the Centrum brand.
As unbelievable as it may sound, taking these riboflavin-loaded vitamin pills made me unusually moody about things that have no emotional bearing. Just several minutes, I was trying to write up some mathematical computations, but slowly sad memories begin to drift through my mind. I remembered the years of hardship laboring over the tons of mathematical texts that I have to digest, and my eyes begin to swell up. It was not distracting; quite the opposite, remembering these bitter sweet moments made me more focused and resolute on the work at hand, and bestowed me with a sense of purpose and a desire to give all my being to mathematics. Please tell me that I am not crazy.
What did the Twin Lab guys put in their pills anyway?
Filed under: Mathematics, Random Thoughts | Tags: focus, Mathematics, productivity, research
Although I brought several research papers and a book on ergodic theory back home over the holiday break, the only bit of mathematics I did was reading some parts of Yuri Manin‘s delightful book, “Mathematics as Metaphor“.
All this means that shifting back into research mode is going to be a bit of a challenge. Indeed, the five some hours spent by my desk did not yield any fruit. Of course, solid effort does not always lead to real progress, but it is still disappointing when you spent the day giving a counter-example.
I need to regain my focus again. When research is going well, my writing improves too, and let us hope this will happen soon.
I always thought cussing is something alien to my tongue. Although it defies belief, I hardly cursed throughout high school and college. Although I was no Ned Flanders, but the worst things I recall spilling out of my mouth were “damn” and “hell”.
Since I rarely talked about things unrelated to mathematics during the first three and a half years of graduate school, there was no need for cursing either.
Then things got more than I could bear shortly after I began working on my thesis problem a little over two years ago. Who would have thought that my life would suddenly spin out of control and drag my poor mouth along with it. On the surface I was still did not let it show, but back at home I was swearing like a sailor at times.
So here goes another resolution for this year: ditch this foul mouth.
Filed under: Tricks | Tags: Mac, restart, Snow Leopard, system freeze, USB Hub, what to do
My MacBook Pro froze again today. As far as I can tell, the source of the problem is my Griffiin Simplifi iPhone dock. I have attached a Western Digital Passport Elite to it and it was low on power. Meanwhile Time Machine is running, so the power-shortage caused serious data corruption and confused the poor Snow Leopard to the point that even Command-Option-Escape no longer works.
Of course I was frustrated, especially considering this is not the first time this has happened. Should I manually restart it by holding down the power button? It could mess up the system further.
Instead, I decided to worry about the problem later and simply closed the lid of my MacBook. Who would have thought that after I opened it up again, things more or less to normal!
Apparently this Snow Leopard is smarter than I have thought.
The Margaret S. Huntington Scholarship is accepting applications right now. On the advertisement fliers seen all over the Math Department here at the University of Michigan, instead of Freshman, someone in his or her first year at the U is referred to as Freshperson.
I think it is rather thoughtful.
I’m back after a year-long hiatus! To kick off the return of this blog, I like to make some New Year’s resolutions, just for the record:
1. Do one math exercise a day for my 365 project.
2. Be able to compute special vlaues of L-functions on SAGE (an open source software for advances mathematical computations.)
3. Set a new personal best during this year’s triathlon races.
4. Finish my thesis and work on another problem.
5. Be more sympathetic to others. Be less self-centered.
Jan 6, 2010
