(warning: non-technical rambling post)
I was hoping for a good weekend. Starting last Friday at work, I was feeling a little sick, but didn't think much of it. Well, I have an upper respiratory infection. Consequently, other than a few emails and a slight bit of code, I've spent the weekend indoors (its raining). I'm watching TV because when I'm sick like this, I can't think clearly and just get frustrated when I try. Anyways, there are a few things that I have to share today.
The first is TV. Last night I watched "Fist of Legend" starring Jet Li. This martial arts flick is from 1994. Lots of kicking and head bashing. Nice. In the movie, Jet Li gets the advice that should he learn to "adapt" his fighting style to his opponent so that he would be "unstoppable". So my conclusion is that the mathematics that I practice in Emergent Computation is nothing more than some ancient Far Eastern study and I am totally behind the times. Dangit.
So during a commercial break, I see a commercial for some liquor. Disaronno Amaretto. Everyone is at an upscale bar and is ordering some drink with this stuff in it. This stuff must be really good because everyone is thin and good-looking and happy and drinking this stuff. Ok, I've actually had this stuff before, but after this commercial, I'm convinced that it must become part of my breakfast regimen. Two things about this commercial were funny. One, they show this woman ordering and making googly eyes (no not that google) at the bartender and he, of course, returns an equally inviting look. Then the commercial goes to its tagline "Pass the Pleasure Around." Ummmmmmmmmmmmm. Are we talking about drinking? The other thing that was funny was to enhance how cool this product is, the marketing people have to have some product shot of the bottle with some action. Unfortunately, the moron who chose this action shot decided that the spinning the cover of the bottle for a few seconds would be interesting. Only, if you notice the direction of the rotation, using the right-hand rule, clockwise, the cover of the bottle should spin for a rotation or two and then stop because it seals the top. It continues for more than four rotations. So, the moral of the story is, I'll have to buy a bottle of this stuff to do research. I guess the marketing guys achieved what they wanted from me . . .
I hate getting sick. One of my symptoms is problems sleeping. No matter how tired I am, I have problems falling asleep. To make matters worse, when I'm sick, my sleep is not consistent and is full of my nightmares. Last night, I was working in my sleep on a graph theory problem (how sick is that?) that included some difficulties in the information contained on the vertices. The goal was to reduce the problem to a more tenable state, then demonstrate the mathematics to solve the general case. Ummmmmmmmmmm. I'm sleeping and this is happening? To make matters worse, when I awake, I'm supposed to report in to some academic guy (I forgot who) with my results. So I spend my sleeping time working on this problem that I'm likely not capable of solving awake or asleep. No wonder I don't want to go to sleep. Give me monsters in my nightmares, but no math.
Obviously, I need to get better. I have better things to think about.