I guess it was Tuesday of this week when I came home from work and was playing with Drake and Scout. Out of nowhere Drake said “Drake Happy” and gave me a big hug. Melinda and I were ecstatic. Later on that night, Scout decided to start crawling. It was a big day.

Leia has had to go the vet and stay overnight. She has a urinary tract infection again and they wanted to watch her over night to get a sample and make sure that crystals have not developed. That poor cat. She has such small pipes she’s forever getting infections. On a positive note, she has fattened up nicely. When she came back from her three week jaunt to who-knows-where she weighed in at a mighty six pounds. Yesterday she was a little over ten. Fatty. Yoda, on the other hand, weighs in at around twenty four pounds.

We had a little problem with the laptop cable at our house last night. It turns out, the folding mechanism in a recliner is not entirely dissimilar from scissors. The object that inspired this observation was the $80 power supply cable for our MacBook^TM. I contacted the fine folks at apple via chat and asked them if the $250 Apple care plan (read “insurance”) covered such a happenstance. Right after I typed the question I immediately typed “That’s what I thought. Thanks.” as I anticipated the answer to be negative. However, I was temporarily made hopeful when he said that he didn’t know whether or not that was covered and I needed to contact the Apple care people by phone. After a short conversation (in English sans accent even) I was told that the Apple care plan did cover the user cutting the cable with a chair! They are sending us a new one at no cost (provided we send the old one to them within ten days of getting the new one). Go apple! I figure I need to tear up about two more cables to make the Apple care package worthwhile. The plan still has another year and a half before it runs out, so, given the peace of mind aspect, I’m starting to think it was money well(ish) spent.

There was aband that played in Mobile last night (the Subhumans played at the Soul Kitchen where that student of mine works). The Subhumans are a british punk band from long ago that I like. I found out yesterday afternoon that Melinda and I were put on the guest list in the hopes that we could find a baby sitter and go. I didn’t even ask to be put on the guest list. How cool is that?! Alas, we couldn’t go (Scout is teething again we think), but I thought it was an incredibly nice gesture. I also found out that one of my students is compiling a list of Dr. Mullikin quotes. His favorite so far was “Well, a zombie can’t run at you in the night. They shamble at you.” I have a line (which I stole from Dr. Cain) I use in class something like “A person runs at you in the night and hands you an equation, puts a gun to your head, and demands a solution. What do you tell them?” or something similar. A student suggested in my claass that maybe it was a zambie that ran at you in the night since I like zombies so much. Hence my reply. I’m pleased someone is compiling a list.

I received an email a couple of days ago from a student I had over the summer. Great guy, but he made the mistake of taking precalculus as a first semester freshman and then taking calculus as a third semester senior. He tried incredibly hard, but didn’t quite get what he needed to graduate in the summer. I felt horrible. I know that I shouldn’t, after all the students earn their grades. But I’m still the guy that had to type the letter next to his name that would require him to come back again (and shell out a bunch of money) to take the class over again. What’s worse is he’s really my kind of guy. He works at a club in mobile where GWAR played recently. It seems like the club (the Soul Kitchen) is not unlike the Somber Reptile where Round Ear Spock played frequently. Never-the-less, he didn’t quite pass and had to come back. There are two sections of Calculus being offered now and he requested that he be put in my section. That makes me feel much better. Now I need to convince him that he still needs to study hard even though he has taken the class before. Sometimes it helps students to point out to them that while they did take the course before, they didn’t get much out of it and as a consequence will likely need to study more than most. Or as Dr. Cain once put it when a student told him that he had taken a class already, “The third time’s the charm.”

On an unrelated note, it is incredibly difficult to remain grumpy when there is a little baby laughing her head off and reaching for you to get a hug. Every morning I get up at 5:00(ish) because Scout woke up. Every morning I’m pissed off about it. Every morning I realize (again) that she’s just excited to start another day and see her father. Every morning for breakfast I eat crow and I love it.

Well, it happened. Drake was taking a bath with his mother and sister the other night while I was trying to get the other laptop working. There’s a small flurry of excitement and I’m informed my presence is needed. When I get in there, Drake is standing up looking very serious, holding his bottom, and telling me “Make poopie Daddy.” Without delay I hoist him out and sit him down on the throne at which point he falls in. I’ve still got a hold of him, but the poor kid looks like he’s been crammed in the crapper. After a little readjustment he’s able to do his business. That was a first. He was able to tell us he needed to go and was able to hold until he got to the toilet. I was really proud. I’ve got pictures. Three I think. Drake is getting really close to being potty trained. I’ll bet he won’t be wearing diapers anymore in a couple of months.

Melinda and the kids went to the Exploreum again today with the Mom’s club. Drake evidently behaved very well, as did Scout.

I was contacted by an old friend of mine recently (Doug Wyatt) through the magic of facebook.com, a social networking site. Each of us contends that we were contacted by the other. Regardless of who drew first blood (Doug) it’s good to hear from him. It’s a little surreal to receive an email from someone you only remember as 12 years old who is now an adult. As I mentioned in an email to him, the last vivid memory I have of him was when he was inflating a cow’s lung in our 5th grade class. He did this using a tube and his own breath. Now he has a M.S. degree from MIT in computer science and is beginning law school in New York. I guess he couldn’t get in to Georgia Tech. If he becomes a politician, he may be able to filibuster without having to inhale.

If anyone out there has a spare battery for a compaq presario 700 series, I’d love to get my hands on it. I found them at eBay for about 30-40 dollars, but that’s a bit much to spend on something that may not fix the problem. My old laptop simply won’t start, even when plugged in. I have done some looking online and I have found that this problem has happened to other folks as well. My best guess is that either the switch is bad (which I don’t think is the case) or that the battery is so dead that it can’t even hold enough of a charge to start the laptop. It would be neat to get it running again since I’ve got linux installed on it. Mac’s version of linux (Darwin) is great, but it doesn’t have some of the tools that I like to use (like Valgrind) when debugging code. I have a linux box out above the garage, but I seldom get the chance to go out there. Maybe I’ll buy myself a battery for Christmas. I probably need to take the machine to a diagnostic center (Best Buy maybe?) to see if they can tell me whether or not that will solve the problem before I go out and buy a battery. I just don’t think it likely that they will have a battery on site that will work in a six year old machine.

Melinda, Drake, Scout and I planned on doing something for labor day yesterday. After a little thought, we decided that the beach was probably not a good idea. Too many people. Drake had said the night before that he wanted to see airplanes (he’s been watching a video series on busses, trains, and planes) and so we decided to go check out the battleship Alabama which I pass every day on my way to work. It cost $24 to get in to see the ships. If anyone asks, Drake isn’t quite 2 yet. I think that it was money well spent. Drake really seemed to have a great time running around on the ships. The battleship is older than I had originally thought. In fact, the deck was wooden instead of some other (more durable) material. It has help up suprisingly well though. I think I may have missed my calling. After leaving the battleship I kept thinking how neat it must be to be able to live on a boat like that. Everything you need is there. You just have to worry about getting sunk, or (worse) having to sink other ships. I wouldn’t have liked that. Maybe I should quit the rat race and get a job on a fishing boat. Who needs fingers?

Scout was able to see most of the park, but we didn’t think it wise to try to cram her into the submarine. So, Melinda and Drake went on that tour by themselves and I stayed behind while Scout took a nap. It was an incredibly fun day. In fact, Drake was so well behaved that he got a new toy. It’s an aircraft carrier complete with two F-18’s. I’m not really sure why that was for sale in the gift shop since they had no aircraft carriers on site. Maybe it was for the F-18’s.

Today Melinda took Drake and Scout to the pool in Fairhope with Kelly and her daughter Georgia. It gets kind of confusing telling Drake that we can’t quickly drive to see his grandparents since they live in Georgia while Georgia lives in Alabama. But I digress. Kelly and Georgia are really neat folks. Melinda didn’t have very much for Scout to play with at the pool and so Georgia came over (without being asked) and gave Scout one of her toys. Georgia is 2. Remarkably sweet kid. Her mother is a great lady too. Melinda has gotten to know Kelly pretty well and I am really pleased that she has actually met someone here that she is really enthusiastic about spending time with.

In academic news, I’m now trying to find an algorithmic way to make a closed polyline equilateral. I’ve about got it, but I haven’t yet figured out a good way to do it that doesn’t risk changing knot type. Further bulletins as events warrant on that front. Dr. Cheney (the department chair) told me what classes I will be teaching next semester. It’s a lighter load than usual. So far I’m only teaching ten hours instead of the usual 11. The calculus classes here run 4 hours a week and usually folks teach two of those in the fall along with two 3 hour classes, then in spring teach two calculus classes and a 3 hour course. In the fall this works out to 13 hours and in spring 11 so that the average is 12. This year there is a faculty member who is in grad-school but is now ABD and she wanted to teach one of the calculus classes. Have at it. One less hour for me. I get to teach vector-calculus as my upper division course in the spring. Dr. Cheney showed me the book that he was using and asked what I thought. I mentioned it would be great to use Spivak’s book and he chuckled. Evidently he thought I was joking. *sigh* Oh well.

I re-discovered a neat website recently. It is a part of the “music genome” which, I think, is an attempt to classify music based on user likes and dislikes. The site is pandora.com and it has had me pleased whenever I have used it. The idea is that you seed it with a song or artist that you like and will play songs at you that are in some way similar to the ones you like. As it plays the songs it gives you the option of saying you like or dislike and it modifies its selections based on your input. You don’t need to provide any input, but it really does hone in on music that is more to your tastes. It’s quite an interesting project. I wonder what their scheme entails. It’s a great way to find new artists that you have not heard of before. The core of songs that they have available is evidently pretty large and I find a new band that I like every time I listen.

Well, I got called into the boss’s (math dept. chair) office yesterday. Evidently sneakers, shorts (cut off cargo pants), and a T-shirt displaying the musical theory of E( it’s equal to F flat instead of mc²) isn’t up to the department’s standard. Not that there is an official standard of course. Oh well, it probably had something to do with the fact that we had to take pictures for the yearbook that day. Oops.

Scout is upstairs cooing right now. I think she might be waking up soon. She still has a fairly regular routine at night. She gets up at midnight(ish) for a bottle, then again at 5:00(ish). With some convincing I’m usually able to get her back to sleep at 5:00 unless she wakes up Drake. Drake will go back to sleep, not Scout at that point. Melinda and Drake went to do some shopping and I got to stay home with Scout. We listened to music and danced a little. She likes to spin.

Drake has really taken to an old toy of mine recently. It’s a three wheel thing without pedals. I reckon it’s supposed to be an ATV. Drake calls it his motorcycle and like to ride it around in circles through the living room, kitchen, and hall announcing “motorcycle coming!” He’s a hoot. We watched a video with him tonight that we borrowed from a friend about trains. I found out something I didn’t know. If a train is trying to go up a steep incline and it loses traction, there is a pipe right behind the wheels on the engine that spits out sand to provide more friction. Neat. I think we’re going to watch another one tomorrow. The deal was that if Drake didn’t get upset when we turned off the video, we would watch another tomorrow night. He was a little fussy, but I think he did pretty well.

I think that there is a Renaissance Fair on Dauphin Island this weekend. We may try to go to that, but I’m afraid that it would be too crowded because of the holiday weekend. We’ll see. We had also talked aboout going on a camping trip next weekend. We’re waiting to see what the weather will be like. There is a state park (Blakely Park) less than 5 miles from our house that we were planning on going to. That way, if it’s a disaster we can always punt and go home.

My Tau Kappa Epsilon letter shirt came in today. I think it looks pretty nice. I think the students will get a kick out of me wearing it at school. Those folks are really a bunch of great guys. Turns out that Tau Kappa Epsilon is the largest frat in the country and the Spring Hill chapter (which is less than 10 years old I think) was voted the nations best chapter three or four times. I gotta admit, it’s kinda neat to know a secret handshake.

Wow, I heard about this on the radio this morning. Evidently in U.K. cigarette packaging is going to be a little different. Instead of just the warning written on the side they will now print pictures on the front, including a diseased lung, a dead body and a picture of someone with their chest opened for heart surgery. Wow.

On a personal and sort of bizarre note, I had a student in my precalculus class this morning ask if I would be the faculty advisor for the archery club. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll have time, but that could have been really neat. She (the lady starting the club) evidently placed third in a national archery competition. She uses a recurve bow; I’m too much of a wimp for that.

After a few mishaps which “will only take me a minute” to fix, my code is now up and running (again) and I hope to collect some decent data over the next few months. I reckon I can go ahead and write the majority of the paper and just leave the appropriate holes for the data and graphics. There are a couple of technical issues I will need to work out and so this might be fun to try to do with some unsuspecting undergrad. I’ll just have to see. I also contacted a fella that proved a particular case of a conjecture I had in my dissertation. With his ideas I think we can push through and prove the conjecture outright! That would be really neat. I sent him my thoughts yesterday, so I just have to wait and see if he responds.

Melinda, Drake, and Scout have headed off to the Explorium (the local science museum) this morning. Drake really likes playing there. They have a large area dedicated to kids under five years (the wharf of wonder) which is a boat sitting in a sea of those plastic balls you find at places like Chuck E Cheese. There’s also a light house (including light and a foghorn, which Drake loves) and a dock including a shop. It’s really a marvelous place for kids. It’s gated too, so you don’t need to worry much about your kid escaping. The Mom’s club frequently makes trips there. I can’t wait to hear about it.

The other night, I guess it was two nights ago, we were all marching upstairs to put Drake to bed. I can’t remember exactly what Drake and I were talking about as we walked upstairs, but I do remember that he asked my “why?” That’s a first. I expect I’ll be hearing a lot of that soon.

Scout is still winning the award for sweetest baby around. Unless she’s really hungry or really tired, she is always smiling and laughing. Especially at Drake. She absolutely cackles when Drake plays with her. She now has two teeth in the bottom of her mouth and we think that she may be getting another one in too. I think she’s also getting close to puling up.

Good news and bad news. A while back Melinda had an allergic reaction to something while we were staying with her parents. One of Melinda’s fears was that it was chocolate. Turns out it might have been ants. She was bitten several times today while outside and the individual bites swelled about as much as mosquito bites do for me. Then later on, it looked like a rash was starting to form. She took some Benadryl^TM and that seemed to nip it in the bud. She’s currently sleeping like a stone, as are the kids. So, she’s having a potential allergic reaction, but it’s not because of the chocolate.

I meant to show you all one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen. As you may know, another fella in the math dept. is not at all pleased with the new rooms we have. He evidently asked several times that the rooms be soundproof so that he would not be disturbed while waxing mathematic. Well, long story short, the rooms are (of course) not sound proof and he made quite a stink about it. The real drag for me is that the room opposite his is mine and so he has been dragging me into the mess insinuating that I too am not able to do any work because of the lack of absolute silence. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one side, I have to work in the same department with this guy, so I don’t want to tell him to leave me out of it. On the other hand, I don’t want to buck the administration either. *sigh* At any rate, during the last meeting which included the science division chair, the head of the builiding and operations department, and the provost of the school (second, third, and fourth in the school’s hierarchy only leaving out the president) it was made quite clear that they were not willing to spend any more money trying to soundproof the walls. They had evidently already double insulated the dividing wall and done some extra duct work in the ceiling. In a last ditch effort a white noise generator was suggested. These things are supposed to supply ambient background noise that would lessen the effect of sharp spikes in noise. Whatever. Well, they came in the other day. I didn’t know it, but I got one too. Check it out.

It sounds like a fan, but according to the directions it’s better. There are two ways to adjust the sound. They each change the level of air that is allowed to escape. The change is not unlike someone having a fan in a room and slowly opening and closing the door. I’m not real sure why this is better. A fan has the added benefit of circulating air.

In more academic related news, I think the math club is now official. So, I’ll get to start helping out with that. I had thought that the math club might be a good forum to excite students about some research. In a grant writting committee I mentioned that I had a project that I was wanting to work on with some students. (Remember all that stuff I mentioned in a previous post dealing with FORTRAN libraries? That’s it.) The real hard part about getting a group of students together is finding some way to advertise. The project won’t need much more than Calc III and some programming skills, so I think that this would be doable by more than just math majors. If the math club thing happens, at least I’ll be able to pitch it to some students and hopefully they can get the word around.

Sorry I missed the post last night. It was my hope that I could spend some time writing blogs while Melinda puts Drake to sleep. We have somehow fallen into the habit of Daddy/Scout Mommy/Drake pairings when it is time for the kids to go to bed. Every now and again we attempt a switch but Drake and Scout are quick to let us know that we’ve screwed up. That’s what happened last night.

Today I have almost three full hours to work on some research. I have two projects that I would like to work on. One of them is essentially done, I just need to run a program for a couple of months (it’s already written), collect the data, and write up a small report. The other involves writing code for a project that was started as a research experience for undergraduates at UGA. It’s potentially very neat. I’ll need to write a gradient descent algorithm with a bit of a twist. The twist involves performing a computation that is numerically unstable in its simplest form. There is code already developed, which I can port directly, that does what I need in a numerically stable and hopefully fast way. Interestingly, the libraries are written in FORTRAN 77. They have been ported to C, but I am toying with the idea of trying to write code in FORTRAN, just to refresh my mad programming skills. I am somewhat reluctant to do that though because there is a piece of the algorithm that is fairly nasty to code, and has already been done in C (by someone who is not me). We shall see.

Classes went well(ish) yesterday. I got to teach my upper division class (Abstract Algebra), and I think that the class went well. I was a little dissapointed that none of them seemed to remember anything from linear algebra (the course I taught them last spring). It makes me a little nervous that nobody objected to the statement that every nxn matrix has an inverse. When I reminded them that this was not the case and asked how you check, no one remembered what a determinant was or how you use it. *sigh* Oh well.

I plan on grading a little harder this year. I’m afraid I was too soft on my students last year. That was not to their advantage. I wish that several of my professors at West Georgia had been a little more demanding of me. Perhaps then I would not have had so much of a hard first year at Georgia Tech.

I finally have my office looking roughly how I want it to. I had to take many (most) of my books home, but I still have enough here so I can get some work done (right). Here it is in all of its glory.