So I’ve worked for New York Fries for just over 100 hours now. I’ve gotten used to most of the routines there, except I still’ve not learned how to do an oil change and a ‘boil out’, a process where water is pumped into the deep-fryers and boiled, which cleans the insides.

I feel somewhat nervous and scared, primarily because I fear that I may not get into graduate school. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I’ve had a few academic follies. I think I have enough of a record to compensate, but who knows?

Also I’ve had a headache for the past few days. I accidentally took 150mg instead of 75mg of Seroquel one night, and that night I had a terrifying nightmare and I still feel not quite right. The next time I visited the gym I felt my muscles give up much sooner than usual and cycling to 2.5 distance units (who knows what they are, probably miles) in ten minutes was much harder than usual.

I guess I’m in an unusual state then. I am also doing an experiment on myself, taking a low dose of approximately 5g of creatine monohydrate daily to see if it improves my performance in anaerobic activities. I don’t know if I like this supplement, because it may interfere with natural creatine production in ways I don’t understand. But then again, I’m taking such a low amount that I don’t think I will harm myself. So far every study has shown it to be pretty safe in much higher doses than I’m taking it. I shall report back on any results or lack thereof.

I’ve been at New York Fries for a couple of weeks now. The job is fine although being around so much oil is a bit icky and somewhat gross. Otherwise working there is fine, except…

We can’t accept tips.

It’s a company policy. I was told that it’s because we already make more than waiters/waitresses who make less and are expected to make the rest in tips, but this explanation does not make sense to me. So what if we make minimum wage? Why should the company give a damn whether a customer decides to give us a tip? What could be the logic behind this decision? It doesn’t benefit NY Fries in any way. To me it sounds like twisted logic or else a torture device of some kind.

Essentially tips is the only incentive to be just a bit better than normal and be especially energetic. Receiving a tip is an energy boost and I’m surprised any company would forbid their employees receiving tips. Could there be another reason that I wasn’t told? Could it be that they feel receiving tips is unprofessional? I think that’s probably the reason. Maybe it’s some odd humour of an executive. I don’t know. I did email the New York Fries email on their website and I’m anxiously waiting for the response. They better not give me that “you make enough” reason. Lots of other fast food places allow employees to receive tips.

Anyways, this little detail to me seems absurd and I’m offended at the explanation that “we make enough”, which makes no sense. Blah, whatever.

I ordered the official Indiana Jones fur felt fedora not long ago. I expect to get it tomorrow or the day after and I’m really excited. Not only do I love getting packages in the mail, I can’t wait for this hat. So I’ll let you guys know how that goes. I’ve been tracking the package status on the UPS website and I’m dying to get it.

I will make this short but I got a (slightly more than) part-time job at New York Fries. Basically I make fries, serve customers, and do administrative tasks such as closing the store. It’s not great pay but it’s a decent job and there’s money, so that’s good.

Summer for me has been so-so. I like having a job but I’m also worried about graduate school. I have to start an application and make it a damn good one so I can get some scholarships. I also have my two courses in the fall. This is the short version of the story for those who don’t know: I’m a math student and I have two courses left to take, and I want to go to graduate school. Then I save the world.

Enough of that story. Some other interesting stuff: I decided to try online dating (still haven’t located a partner yet), and I ordered an Indiana Jones hat (I like the hat _and_ I’m a fan of the movies).

A short while ago, my computer suffered from a damaged power system. I don’t know what was wrong precisely, but it shut down on its own at certain times. So I brought it in and luckily the warranty was still in effect. I thus was given a fully repaired laptop, with a sticker on the outside saying “Will Not Boot Into Windows”. I liked that one.

Some will remember that I blogged about this before, but that’s besides the point. During that time I had no computer. None. A few times I dropped by the computer lab at the university and used their Windows boxes to check my email and visit my favorite forum but otherwise I was computer-less. I spent my day doing other things, not centering myself around technology.

What Happened

And you know what? Despite some “withdrawal” symptoms, I had a great time. I might argue that it was better than my current state. Now I don’t mean to say that computers are evil (unlike television) and that we should ditch them and go back to slide rules. My point of my post today is to say that there is a healthy balance between technology and life without technology that I fear many of us ignore.

So I’ve decided to cut back in my use of technology and spend about 3-4 hours at maximum on my computer and then turn it off for the day. Computers are useful but I find they can become a timesink and moreover, they can become almost an addiction, where you have the constant urge to check Facebook or your email (I don’t use Facebook but I do use email).

Concentration

I am a fan of Buddhism, and particular point-meditation. To keep it simple, you’re supposed to sit down, back upright, and with your eyes closed or open depending on the style, and breath. Then you focus your attention on a point, perhaps your a spot somewhere or a part of your nose, and just realize the breathing and the surroundings. You will of course start to think of other things. If this happens, gently bring your mind back to your breathing. It goes something like that anyway.

By extension you can use this practice in your daily life by being mindful and focusing on the task at hand, and be aware of your actions. This type of behaviour will allow you to fully focus on your task at hand, and allow you to complete whatever you want to do with maximum precision and the minimum amount of energy.

Extensive online use, and extensive use of anything can dull the mind and prevent you from achieving inner peace. If you use something too much, then you think of it too much and it rules your thoughts. If you have constant thoughts about a particular activity, then you may miss important cues in your life that are telling you to change something in your life. I have experienced this phenomenon.

Sometimes if I spend too much time on the computer I eat less because I am so involved that I delay eating for half an hour or so to finish up some work or check the news. This negatively impacts me but yet I don’t notice it because I am so involved in the online world. The brain creates its own conceptualization of the online world so it seems very real and this takes some concentration, and after a while it may take over your senses, so you lose the sense of just sitting in a room. You may be sitting in a room, but your mind is far away in a different world.

Conclusion

I don’t think it’s bad to fantasize or lose yourself, but sometimes we take it too far, and it starts to impact our daily lives. I found a fairly easy way to explore how involved you are with something like technology. Just reduce your usage, do something else, or give it up for a while and see how your life is different. It’s just something you can do for yourself that involves such little risk.

Anyways I’m so tired, so if the above sounds totally crazy, it’s because I didn’t get very much sleep last night because of a bad dream.

Posting around here has become quite infrequent, but that’s because I’m trying to find a job and working on a few projects for the summer. Soon I will have to buy my own food and pay some rent so I’m under the pressure now. I tried to get a tech job but I just don’t have much experience there. Anyways, the reason why I’m frantically looking for a job is somewhat of a long story.

See, in a _perfect_ world, I would be getting the perfect job in September, because in a perfect world I would be going to graduate school then. However, instead I still have to take two courses because I failed two courses. Now I was suffering then from (hypo)mania then so that’s why I failed. I failed linear algebra and dynamical systems. I don’t have to take the latter again (I can take anything) but I have to take linear algebra, a subject I detest. But sadly it’s the truth.

I also want to go to McGill, but I’ll have to wait until next September (going in the Winter is not recommended). So now I’ll have to find any old job until that time. I suppose it’s good experience but damn, sometimes it’s a little frustrating.

So back to linear algebra. I failed it. I was a A+ student until my hypomania. About a year and half (something like that anyway) earlier I starting taking lamotrigine for my mood swings. It helped _much_, but more so with the depressive episodes. A little later I started to feel very irritated frequently. In class I could barely sit still and it actually felt painful to sit there. My sex drive was also through the roof and I had immense difficulty studying.

For some reason, however, I didn’t notice that anything was “wrong” or that I was acting somewhat unusually. Then one day I realize that I’m failing and I lost a lot and my life was totally falling apart, so I talked to my doctor and he gave me Seroquel, and everything got better. I felt more calm.

However, because of those incidents now I have to take two classes to finish my degree. Sometimes I think it’s so ridiculous but I guess the time isn’t wasted if I at least do other things that are worthwhile, like go watch a sunset or learn Perl or something.

Then after I go to grad school, and onto reforming psychology. Then, I change the world. :)

On April 22, 2008, R 2.7.0 was released. The R Project for Statistical Computing is a statistical software package similar to SPSS, SAS, and S-Plus, but there is one difference: it is free (libre) and open source software. You can get it for free off the internet and you can do what you want with it, modify the source code, and redistribute it under the same license. Now it comes with antialiasing for X11 displays.

R is stable and mature, and can replace any of the above proprietary products that cost much money and have licenses that can impede useful work and scientific progress. I’ve seen this happen over and over for instance as a university student, where students must go to often crowded labs to use the software or bother with license keys that often expire after a set time. R on the other hand can be used anywhere for any purpose.

What’s New In 2.7.0?

This blog article was created solely for the purpose of explaining a new and exciting feature for Linux users. For displaying graphs in X (default), the display is now antialiased. In a nontechnical summary, this means the graphs look much better than they did before because they’re smooth. To see what I mean, view the two images in full size:

First, an R 2.6.2 graph:

Then, an R 2.7.0 graph:

The first graph looks jagged and old fashioned, but still readable and perfectly adequate. The new graph is nice and smooth and beautiful. Of course, in earlier versions, R was able to output smooth-looking graphs if you outputted to PDF, but now if you’re running Linux the graphs are smooth if you want to display them on screen immediately, which was not the case before.

Other improvements can be found in the release notes.

Conclusion

The R Project has been for a while an awesome project that could easily replace proprietary products like S-Plus, and now it’s gotten just a bit better for Linux users. A big thank you to the developers of R for making such a wonderful package that allows mathematicians, scientists, and everyone else who needs a first-class statistical package, to use one that is free software.

Surprisingly it snowed today, but only for about ten minutes. Actually, it was cold enough to wear a winter jacket today. That’s my news for the month!

Since the summer has started I’ve been doing mostly programming and going to the gym. I’m working on a fairly large project but it’s going to be a secret from my Icosahedron audience, sorry. I also finally found out who won the prize…wait, let me tell you about that.

I may have mentioned that earlier this month I had to give a presentation on my final project for a class in mathematical modeling. I prepared for it well in advance and I think I did pretty well with it. Aside from me, there were three other people presenting. The professor had announced prizes were to be given out for the top two presentations.

Long story short: I didn’t win. Ah, I think you were expecting me to announce that I won. Sadly I got second prize, which I suppose is still a win in a sense. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. Better luck next time right?

Gee, I’m really straining for something interesting to say to you guys. I just had a snack. There. I’ll write soon.

Flubox is the best window manager ever. For ages I was searching for some way to make a window shade (hide all the window but the titlebar) but I just didn’t think it was possible. But it is. I don’t know how I missed it, but it’s possible. Edit the .fluxbox/init file and find the line that says:

session.screen0.windowScrollAction:

And change it to:

session.screen0.windowScrollAction: shade

Now if you scroll up on a titlebar it will unshade and scrolling down will shade. I like it the other way and to change it go to:

session.screen0.windowScrollReverse:	false

And change it to:

session.screen0.windowScrollReverse:	true

Then go to the Fluxbox Menu>Reload Config. That’s all there is to it. Go Fluxbox!

Holy crap, I’m finished all my exams. I wrote the last one today, and it was at 7pm. Unprintable blasphemy I know. I mean, who scheduled that one? It wasn’t that great but acceptable I think. But there were lots of problems. First of all some individual left their cellphone on and it was either dying or reconnecting and disconnecting repeatedly to a network, or something like that, because it kept on making the most annoying sound ever, at regular intervals. ???. Geez I miss the old days when no one had a cellphone.

Next 41 questions (yeah I know, it’s a prime, crazy) were multiple choice and most of them were of the following form:

9. xyz was written by pqr. Which of the following musical feature did it have?
a) something that sounds right
b) something that sounds really right
c) something that could be right
d) ehh, this answer might do in a pinch, maybe
e) just a,b,d
f) all of the above

I was thinking something along the lines of “what the hell”, because that’s the meanest multiple choice question ever: to have “all of the above” or “some of the above” with a bunch of reasonable sounding responses. Most of them were like that. Oh well. As I said it didn’t go very well but I did ok. The essay questions I did were (paraphrased) “explain the influence of Wagner” and “explain how Mozart uses music to illustrate the important and type of character”.

Anyhow, I’m all finished so now I have lots of free time. Isn’t that splendid. That means lots of time for going to the gym and working, and for my beloved software project. And piano. And going to bed early. Yay! And maybe blogging about something.