Ok--I'm predicting that the 'home-ec' market is going to have a softer 'recession' than other facets of the economy, as well as a quicker comeback. 1950's, here we come!

Are any of you guys on any social networking platforms? I know that a few of you do Facebook, but my students have forbid me from creating an account--a value that I tend to agree with, actually. I love my girls, but every now and then, one is bound to get a nut or two and some boundaries are better left untouched. (I'm beginning to see the utility of it now, as Court set up an account about a month ago. I might create an account and just set all the privacy settings to paranoia-levels. It wouldn't be an issue if it were not for the nuts that one gets every other year or so. One such nut I will have this upcoming spring semester; lessons have been learned and clear boundaries will be delineated from day 1.)

In any event, I'm currently on Pandora, Twitter, Boxee, and Audible. Pandora is a great music resource; Twitter is... Twitter. Microblogging, I guess. Boxee is absolutely amazing; I continue to use it--even though I have access to fully pimped-out cable at the beach condo. And it would be great to share recommendations on books, which is what makes Audible great.

Anyone else take a peek at their retirement funds? It's breathtaking.

*sigh*

What everyone needs for Christmas.

Jim Cramer's advice is worse than flipping a coin!
(Sorry Scott; and for the record, I thought he was bogus all along.)

No that I have a little more spare time, I would like to make two social commentaries:

1. Since being at the beach, I've been able to watch more TV. (Mainly--because there's cable here at the condo.) The little that I've watched has only further bolstered my view that pop-culture-TV is the biggest waste of time and brain matter out there. Not only is it insulting relative to one's intelligence and values, but it's not even remotely satisfying. I want those 3 minutes back.

2. I discovered a neat little app called WriteRoom. And it's quite genius, actually. It blacks out everything on your screen--all the background blips and beeps--and only provides you with a pure and feature-less text editor. My productivity must be up by 10% due to this app alone. But what makes me laugh is that I paid some 25 bucks for an app that will dumb-down my computer. To bring computers back to where they were in the 70s. And I paid for this "feature" for this 17" MacBook Pro. For those of you still bearing with the PC side of things, someone copied the idea for you guys too.

P.S. A really interesting retro-site, although I think it re-sizes your web browser--which is about a rude as a coder can be in my book.

My fake-Wii came tonight, and it's actually pretty fun. Make fun of me (or it) all you want, but for 1/10th the cost, I'll take it. As if I've got time for a real gaming system anyway... It's a pretty neat Christmas toy!

Hey--if any of you guys want to start using Boxee, let me know. I'm an Alpha member, and (apparently) I can invite people.

Boxee is essentially a really cool IPTV porthole. I've goofed off w/ it for a few minutes, and it appears to be pretty dope. Perfect for one who has a MacMini for their home-theater media center. (Oh how I wish I had a MacMini as my home theater media center...)

So I've been wondering lately, if I were to make a podcast, what would it be like? I realized pretty quickly that the only topic I am qualified to blab on and on about is math. Then I realized... I really don't think an audio podcast about math would be all that engaging.

Just today I came across The Math Factor. These guys make a valiant attempt, but... I just couldn't get into it. I need to see diagrams. I need to see equations. I need to see illustrations.

I'm realizing that this may not necessarily be a "math thing", but more of a "me thing". I am much more of a visual processor than an auditory processor. One way this manifests itself is that I would MUCH rather write e-mails--either to family/friends or to businesses with whom I must deal--than talk on the phone. (But don't let that keep anyone from placing a surprise phone call when the mood strikes!)

ANYWAY... I just shoveled our driveway, and I expect to have to do it again this evening. In the meantime, I am going to try to write a program in Mathematica that will solve a generalized peg-jumping problem. (Specific instances of such are here and here.)

Can you all hear me laughing?

How much do you think God cares (or divinely designs) our place (i.e., location) of employment? I remember having a conversation w/ Scott a while back (and this may be 100% out of context), but the feeling that I got from him was that we're given a lot of rope in that regard.

The reason why I ask... I like the area, I love the university, I like my students well enough. But there's one (tenured) person--one cancer--that just makes life difficult. She's abusive to students, she's incompetent (both professionally and academically), and it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to do my job (i.e., student recruitment) knowing the needless abuse that these students are about to get. In a sense, I feel like the nazi herding the Jews toward the showers. I sure as heck wouldn't want my kids under her. There was a situation just last night in which I was about to go mushroom cloud. Fortunately, and perhaps divinely, it was resolved (thereby avoiding my gooey-mushroom-cloud-goodness.)

I'm being courted by another university, in a region of the country that I also love, which is much closer to the family. (Not that my familial relations are all that active at this point, but still. For the kids, I guess.) It feels like I'm getting the no-go signal from He who's name cannot be uttered, yet the (lateral) move looks like a viable option (on paper).

I had a surreal father experience this morning... My little camel (my eldest who never seems to need to pee) had yet "to go" by around 10:45 am. Still in her pj's, I thought that getting her dressed would be an easy excuse to take a little detour to the bathroom. And the idea as a success--as she's into wearing dresses.

So in her excitement, I let her pick her dress--and she did. We put it on, and I thought all was well. She then looked at me, looked at her dress, back and forth, and began to cry. (?)

Baby, baby, baby... what's wrong? No Dress! This shirt! No sweatie, that's a dress. That's your blue dress; Ella looks very beautiful in her blue dress. No blue dress! Blue shirt! *I then looked at my shirt. A long-sleaved XXL-sized around-the-house-comfort shirt. The length of our two garments 'hit' at about the same spot of our thighs* No baby--daddy's wearing a shirt. See? Let daddy tuck in his shirt. Daddy has a shirt on; Ella has a dress on. Ella looks beautiful in her dress... Let's go look in the mirror and see how pretty Ella looks...

It's as if she re-organized or redefined her semantic concept of a dress. Our two garments are similar in shape. Daddy's don't wear dresses; ipso-facto, I am not wearing a dress. I am wearing a shirt. But I want to be wearing a dress, so that makes me sad.

Never, ever, in my life, would I have dreamt that I would have to deal with such a situation. (I also called Court to make a big deal of her beautiful dress when she got home...)

I. am. so. burned. out. right. now.

Anyone else out there feelin' me? Or is this current reduction in personal joy (pertaining to one's profession and professional satisfaction) idiosyncratic in only my direction?

Have you guys been keeping up with the Crusaders Thunder? (When did they change their names to "the Thunder" anyway? I greatly dislike conceptual sport-team names; if it can't have a mascot, it's not a good name.) Anyway, they're in the NCAA semi-finals--farther than they've ever gone before. They even got a quick nod on CBS last night.

Real Quick Drive-By Posting.

No need to try and change yourself to reach some kind of moral standard. Just go ahead and re-write the standard.

This made me think of you, Greg.

In other news, we have moved in to our new house. There was already an incident with a leaky pipe, but it's been taken care of. Ah, homeownership.