Last Wednesday while I was hunting for deals on the AMS Bookstore, the book “Automorphic Forms and Applications” caught my attention. It has some solid articles on areas of automorphic forms that I was keen to know more about (such as the Langlands-Shahidi method of constructing L-functions). The book was selling for $60 to members of the AMS, but only for $54 at Barnes and Noble. For me, however, a meager $6 in savings is not enough; so I searched for coupon codes to use at Barnes and Noble. Imagine how pleased I was when I found out there is a 20% discount coupon at B&N for signing up for a new user account! Without any hesitation, I ordered the book at the discounted cost of $42.

Yet there are is free lunch in this world. It has been two weeks now since I placed an order of two books through the SpringerLink MyCopy service, the shipment still has not arrived. I could not withstand the anxiety any longer and decided to check up on the order. Turns out the order did not register at Springer, despite the fact that a transaction of $49.90 did show up on my credit card statement. As of now, Springer is still looking into the problem.

Although I do not believe in fate, it did make me wonder whether this tit-for-tat is some cruel prank planned by a malefactor on my poor soul. Perhaps I did get too greedy and lost self-control on my book-buying spree, perhaps it is just karma. I abide.

In any case, I did not find out that I missed the first delivery attempt until I came to my office this morning. With things already planned for the day, I decided to stay in my office till noon. Fortunately, the good lady of fortune is smiling at me today, as I did not find one of those irksome UPS InfoNotice stuck to the door again.

I decided to stakeout here the window by the main entrance to the house where I can clearly monitor the UPS agent’s every move. To make the best of my time, I brought with me an expository paper (Gross’s “Heegner points and Representation Theory“) with me, as well as my usual blue and red Pilot Precise V5 pens to mark down my comments and questions.

Somewhat to my surprise, the man in the brown uniform came by shortly past 1PM, and I made it in time to get my precious packages. Does the arrival of such an unlikely phenomenon mean that my luck is about to turn for the better? With my renewed faith in humanity and UPS, I returned to my office.

On the other hand, spending too much time learning new ideas may not be a good thing. It is not just the time commitment, but learning everything that comes my way tends to dilute my focus and make me extremely scattered-brained. So much so that it breeds “mathematical greed”, something that I was seriously plagued by during the early years of my graduate career. I was literally spending every waking moment trying to do something math related, and it was an unsustainable lifestyle that I now learned to shy away from on most days.

For better or worse, I am pleased and grateful that I can still stay away from the internet for a good number of hours and focus on learning things. Even though my merits as a mathematician mostly depend on my ability to conduct new research, I still take great joy and comfort in learning things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.