Leap Day, 1992

My e-mail alert from Timehop arrived today noting that a year ago today...did not exist. I don't, however, need an e-mail to tell me what I was doing twenty years ago today. I was in a hotel in Athens, Georgia...just hanging out.

I always want to do something interesting with Leap Day, but I never do. This year, I have toddlers whose care is more important than any goofy plans. In 1992, I visited the University of Georgia to see about going to graduate school there. Actually, my visit was earlier in the week, but I stayed until Sunday to get the cheaper air fare. So Saturday the 29th I just hung out in my hotel room.

The previous day, Carl Pomerance (who would later be my advisor) invited me to go out to dinner with John Selfridge, who I think was visiting before going to a conference. I figured they couldn't possibly want an undergraduate at dinner, and he was just being polite, so I didn't go.

I ended up enrolling at Berkeley for graduate school, where I was fairly unhappy. After a year, I transferred to Georgia, only to find out that people there were in fact nice enough to want an undergraduate at dinner with them.

Skipping Georgia for Berkeley is probably one of the bigger mistakes of my life. On the other hand, I still got to go to graduate school at Georgia, and even got to hang out with Selfridge a bunch of times. I guess that goes to show that even when I've made mistakes in my life, things have turned out pretty well.

Postcards from 2011

I find myself thinking wistfully of that place in time, say, not three years ago, when teenage bedrooms again sprouted daisy stickers and when Grunge ruled the catwalks. On another level, I think of when the imperative to become "wired" hadn't yet so much filled the world's workforce with dark dreams of low-tech paranoia and security-free obsolescence. It's been a busy half-decade.

--Douglas Coupland, Polaroids from the Dead, 1996

These words -- or at least the ideas they contain  --  have stuck with me for more than fifteen years. Coupland's first and most well-known work, Generation X, is subtitled Tales for an Accelerated Culture, so it makes sense that he would be among the first to notice that life had sped up to the point that a person in 1996 could experience nostalgia for 1993. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wow, he's right."

Now, in 2012, I get an e-mail every day from a service called Timehop. It was originally called "Foursquare and 7 Years Ago" and would tell me what places I had checked into a year previously. Now, it includes updates from Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.

Given the service's previous name, I had hoped that when my Foursquare account turned two, I would start to get updates going back more than one year. Alas, that's not the case. Today, for example, I found out that last year I took a picture of the boys in their Star Trek onesies and picked up dinner from Noodles & Company. I was not, however, informed that on February 3, 2010, I was at Safeway stocking up before another massive snowstorm, nor that I picked up dinner at Boston Market due to our ongoing kitchen renovation.

I did not learn that 3 years ago today, the odometer on my CR-V hit 100,000 miles. Nobody told me that in 2008 I ordered two calzones from Rastie's. I had to dig through my e-mail to learn that five years ago today, I posted a session report from a game of "Up Front". And it saddens me to report that I have absolutely no idea what I was up to on February 3, 2006. Oh, wait. I posted something about how my go rating had just reached 23 kyu. (It's at 14 kyu now.)  Also, Christina and I appear to have been in California.

But, still!  What about 2005? I was staying at the Doubletree in Del Mar, so there's that. 2004? I had an appointment with my allergist, who said I could stay with one allergy shot per month. (I'm now back at one every three weeks.) In 2003, Christina e-mailed me to ask what I wanted for dinner. I requested chicken tacos, but I don't know if we actually had them. OK, once I get to 2002, I have no immediately available information about that day. (On February 3, 1992, I was up at 6 am from the night before because I was playing the Civilization computer game, and I still had a homework problem to finish. And the previous evening's dinner to eat.)

My point (if I still have one), is that while I enjoy reveling in the past (and would love to have a record of February 3, 1982), that's not the way the world works these days. The three-year nostalgia Coupland identified in 1996 has become quaint. (Remember when we had three-year-nostalgia? That was awesome.) Now, a year ago constitutes the good old days, and beyond that -- it's best not to think about.

Department of e-mails you're slightly happier to get from a TA...

Jon: Good news.  I found your name on a fax from Frithjof.  (It was not with the other names, which is why I didn't get it when I was recording grades--sorry about that.)  In any case, I'll have the "I" removed.  Your paper grade was "A" so that should figure toward an "A" or A minus for the course.  Sorry for the confusion. --Jeff

This e-mail (received 20 years ago today) is a follow up to the one from four days ago. I figured it was better off not asking why anyone would fax a list of names with one of them in a different place than all the others.

The paper? I think this is a draft of it. Intriguingly, it seems to only contain the first part, "Law and Punishments"; the intriguing second part, "Existentialism and Mathematics" appears to be lost to history except for this first page.

A nice memory...

OK, the picture is closer to forty years ago than twenty years ago, but here is an e-mail from May 18, 1991:

I played Spite 'n' Malice w/ Oma today...she seemed tickled to death when I suggested it, although she said "You're only doing this to be nice".  There are worse reasons to do things, and besides it was fun.
I won $0.05, too.

(Not posted: various grumpy e-mails about how she always managed to wake me up a few minutes before my alarm went off, even when I tried to anticipate her and set my alarm for a few minutes earlier.)

Department of e-mails you don't want to receive from a TA...

Twenty years ago today, I got this note:

Jon: When Frithjof faxed the grades for the final papers, yours was not on the list.  I'm going to double check everything just to be sure, but I'm quite certain your grade isn't there.  Assuming that there was nothing unusual about the way you turned the paper in (putting it in a box, sliding it under a door, etc.--if any of that happened, let me know because it may still be sitting somewhere), the best thing to do,if possible, is to get another copy to me via the Dept. office (i.e. give it to the secretary).  If there's a problem with this, let me know. Sorry about the confusion.  --Jeff

I find two things remarkably modern about this: that the bad news was delivered via e-mail, and that I was just able to grab another copy off my hard drive. Not bad for 1991! On the other hand, two things seem quite ancient -- that copy was to be printed off and mailed, and the grades were faxed in.

Because I didn't have a blog in 1991...

20 years ago today,

The donut sale that we were supposed to have today got cancelled because the student government told us the wrong day & the Korean Christian Fellowship was actually the group scheduled for today. For a while, we were stuck with 360 donuts, but the marching band, which is having a sale elsewhere today, bought most of them & the student government bought the rest since they messed up & we don't have any money.

 I believe the "we" is the Undergraduate Math Club.