Inaccurate Cargo

Well, at least from here I can access www.pseudoprime.com.

Unfortunately, when I go to pseudoprime.com, it takes me to accuratecargo.com. Hmm.

I think I'll wait until the new year to see if this clears up before bugging tech support about this one.

Doctored in mathematics...

...I could have been a don.

As part of the continuing push to revamp my web pages for 2001, I have cleaned up the math pages on my site. New and of note are PDF versions of all the papers -- this format should be accessible to a greater portion of web surfers, especially those outside the mathematics community.

Setup

I just got back from helping a friend of my parents set up his first computer. Well, attempting to, anyway. Everything seemed to be going well -- I removed all the extraneous plastic coverings, plugged everything where it needed to be plugged. I powered up the system and the monitor. As Windows ME started and I decided I would need to shut down the on-line setup so we could do it later, the monitor started flickering. I went to check that it was plugged in properly, and my assistant said, "It's stopped flickering." I looked up and said, "Yes, but there's smoke coming out of the speaker." I unplugged everything very quickly. It's back to the store, probably tonight, to exchange it for a less smoky one.

Look for the companies involved to be flogged in this spot if we don't obtain satisfaction.

D&D

I've re-vamped the D&D part of my web site, mainly by adding a new weblog for the campaign for which I'm the Dungeon Master.

RNI

Just a quick note to mention that I've moved hosting of my web site over to RNI. The exciting part of this for me is that starting later this week, my web site will be available permanently at pseudoprime.com, no matter which provider I'm using.

I'm planning to take advantage of the switch to improve a few things. If you find any broken links, please e-mail me.

Today, I've restored a lot of old links to the archive, so you can see what was on my mind early in the year.

Blondie's

I associate certain restaurants with particular places fairly strongly, so much so that going to eat somewhere becomes a major goal of a trip. When I got to Cincinnati, I want to eat at Skyline; when I'm in Athens (GA), The Grill or Taco Stand is an important stop; and Ann Arbor draws me toward Cottage Inn, Zingerman's or Blimpieburger. During my recent trip to Berkeley, I missed my chance to visit Blondie's, a pizza place that is one of my few positive memories of my year there.

Yesterday afternoon, we were given the afternoon off the conference to explore San Diego. I decided to skip the sights and TCOB. Steve, another guy from Back East, had business at the same location, so I gave him a ride.

We needed to find a place to grab a quick lunch. Searching my memories of my summer in San Diego, the UTC food court was a close, convenient place to get a bite. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to us that holiday shopping season would be in full swing, and the quest for a parking space would throw "quick" out the window. Eventually, however, my karma prevailed and we found a place.

Steve lost any concern with his delay when he discovered that the food court contained a Rubio's franchise. Rubio's is, he explained, San Diego's foremost purveyor of fish tacos. Fish tacos, I knew, were the characteristic food of San Diego. I remember being jarred by the sight of a "Fish Tacos" sign at a concession stand at a Padres game.

I admit I didn't find Rubio's fish tacos particularly exquisite compared to others I had tasted before. But I was glad to get a chance to go there, even if I never made it to Blondie's.

San Diego

When I got off the plane it was 81^o. Wow. I briefly regretted my decision to pack long-sleeved shirts. (The weather has since cooled off slightly.) I retrieved my luggage, which was at the most crowded baggage carousel I've seen. People were tripping over each other trying to get their suitcases out of there. I picked up my rental car in a remarkably hassle-free experience and hit the freeways of San Diego.

I hadn't been back since I lived here in the summer of '93. Blue skies, warm weather, ocean views...why did I leave? Ah, well. I'm happy in Maryland, but this wouldn't be too bad either. I found my way to my hotel, which turned out to be in Old Town San Diego. It's fairly touristy, but as a traveler, having restaurants and shops nearby is pretty cool.

I could hardly wait to head for one of the many nearby Mexican restaurants. Sigh. But I had the opening conference banquet in a few hours. I wandered down the street, browsed through a gallery containing a number of Chuck Jones prints and contented myself with a couple of margaritas and some chips and salsa.

After a quick nap, I headed for the banquet. When I arrived, I realized that the conference featured many nodding acquaintances, but nobody I knew really well -- none of my old Georgia buddies. I picked out a table, nodded at a few people and sand down. One, an elderly mathematician, seemed to recognize me more than I expected, given that I had not seen him since '93. I chatted with a Canuck about the different voting systems in use in the US & Canada and tried to enjoy my non-Mexican meal. Then, at one point, the aforementioned elderly gentleman referred to me as "Jeff" and asked me a question about another mathematician. I realized that he had mistaken me for someone else, perhaps 20 years my senior. I felt really awkward -- how do you point out to someone that they not only don't remember you, but they've just mistaken you for someone who comes closer to doubling your age than equaling it? I ducked and said I didn't know anything about the guy he had asked me about, which puzzled the man I was talking to, since he thought we worked together.

I spent most of the rest of the evening trying not to make eye contact before ducking out early due to jetlag.

Frequent Flier

I have achieved my goal -- I am now a frequent flier. The results won't be official, I suppose, until the United Airlines version of the Electoral College convenes at year's end. But with the flight to San Diego, I will have accumulated in excess of 21,000 flying miles for the year 2000. I actually have flown more than that -- the real total probably exceeds 35K. But some of those miles were on other airlines or went uncredited due to various incompetences.

After a flying lifetime of spreading my flights across many different airlines -- I currently maintain memberships in four different frequent flier programs, I decided it was time to settle down with one airline. When I found myself flying to Belgium this past May on United, I had my airline.

My original goal was to hit 25K -- the level needed for Premier status. Unfortunately, even with the return flight from San Diego, I will only find myself with 24,551 credited flight miles. Fortunately, United has had much labor strife this year. Fortunately, because the strife has caused UAL to kiss some serious passenger behind in order to keep its customers. For example, by lowering the Premier thershhold to 21K. Victory!

So to what can I look forward as a certified member of the jet set next year? I get to skip the long check-in lines and use the Premier check-in. I get to "pre-board" the aircraft and put all my stuff in the overhead compartment before the rest of you unfortunates get on. I get to sit in "Economy Plus" with its 5 extra inches of legroom. (This alone makes all my struggles worthwhile.) And I get upgrade coupons, which will work out to an upgrade to Business or First Class on roughly every fifth flight.

I can't complain too much about my penultimate flight as a non-privileged traveler. The flight was less than 2/3 full (pre-Christmas doldrums?), and I got a row of three seats to myself. (Talk about legroom.)

Still, I can't help but think it would have been just a teensy bit better as a Premier member. I'll let you know next year.

Master Maze

George bought a few sets of MasterMaze from Dwarven Forge. Since they don't deliver to a PO Box, and since we play D&D here, he had them delivered here.

I have come to one conclusion: Polaroids are terrible for taking pictures of minatures. These look really cool, and it'll be great to play D&D with a realistic looking dungeon to put the minatures in, but you wouldn't really know it from the picture.

Trust me.

Where's Jonboy?

I know a lot of people wander in and read my weblog, but this note is directed at people I actually do know. I've made a Yahoo! calendar so it's easy to figure out what I'm up to. I need to give you permission (via a Yahoo! ID) to view the calendar. (I don't want the rest of you weirdos to be able to find me.) If anyone wants to look at it, and I haven't given you permission, e-mail me. Then click here to view the calendar, once I've added your ID to the list.

It's pretty cool. It's nice for me, because I can see what's going on from home, work or while I'm traveling. And it allows me to share calendars with others who have Yahoo! calendars.

Dumb Ass, Don't Tell

"And it was only then that I worked out with Colin Powell this dumb-ass 'don't ask, don't tell' thing."

David Brooks calls this quote from Bill Clinton's recent Rolling Stone interview, "a classic act of Clintonism" showing how he adapts his tone and language to the audience. The only problem...

"Due to a transcription error, the words 'don't ask' were printed as 'dumb-ass' in our interview with President Clinton. We regret the error."

Never mind.

Squablack?

The other day at work my boss was preparing a talk for an important muckety-muck. He wanted to use a graph that had been prepared by somebody who has since left our organization. Unfortunately, the graph needed to be updated, so my boss was trying to do it by hand. This, as one might imagine, was causing a number of problems. I volunteered that I had the program that our now departed colleague had used to generate the graph, and I could update the program to produce a new graph.

Since no good deed goes unpunished, I was asked to make a number of other changes. "Can you make this line thicker?" Then, my boss complained that since the graph was color, it was coming out as gray on the black-and-white printer. "Fine," I said, "I'll change 'blue' and 'red' to 'black' everywhere." So I did a search-and-replace. (Fans of vi will recognize the %s/red/black/g command.)

I sent off the new version of the graph to him, and he finally seemed satisified. About an hour later, I got a call from him asking why the work "squablack" was on the graph.

Beware search-and-replace.

High Standards

A Washingtonpost.com article about standardized testing in Maryland schools contained this gem:

Despite the slight gains, almost half of the state's elementary and middle schools performed below average, a cause for concern among education officials...

Viewer Mail

Happy Thanksgiving.

I don't get as many e-mails about the weblog as I had expected, but I got a couple earlier this week.

A Trevor Bryan wrote to inform me that, "lisa bangerts from mansfeild nottingam not manchester". Good to know. Who's Lisa Bangert again? Oh, yeah, she's the Page 3 girl I mentioned in my '93 Britain diary. Glad to know she's acquiring a fan base.

I also got a note from someone at Tharsis Books in response to my review of Martian Race. They plugged As It Is On Mars, which they appear to publish, and Mars Crossing.

Finally, words of praise from a fan:

Pal, I had a read through your Android's dungeon today. That's
hilarious.

The Aztek

I was in Minnesota earlier this week. My rental car was a Pontiac Sunfire -- an adequate compact car. A co-worker of mine, however, belonged to Avis Preferred. Apparently, in addition to allowing you to skip the rental counter, this program will give you a free one-size upgrade on your rental. So my Sunfire would have been upgraded to a mid-sized car, a mid-sized car would be upgraded to a full-sized sedan, and my co-worker's full-sized reservation was upgraded to...an SUV.

Pretty cool, right? I mean, better than the dorky rental cars we get most of the time. Wrong. Avis provided him with a Pontiac Aztek...truly the Pontiac of SUVs. I don't know if the pictures there truly capture the awfulness of the design. (Although the misspelled name certainly does.) Imagine a circa 1990 Honda Civic hatchback on steroids. Imagine an armored personnel carrier with less of a sense of style.

He complained that as he was driving it around, he could see people in other vehicles pointing and laughing at his car. The worst, he said, was when a woman driving a UPS truck laughed at his mode of transportation.

You know, I like the idea of skipping the rental counter, so I'm going to try to sing up for Avis Preferred. But I think I'll try to make sure I never have a full-sized car reserved for me.

Remove Fork, Insert Foot in Mouth

In an earlier weblog entry, I predicted a Gore victory in this month's elections and refered to a William Saletan article in Slate. Well, he's written another article explaining his errors. I was still holding out hope that I could say "told you so" if Gore still pulls it out, but even then I'd have egg on my face.

OK, so why was I wrong? Well, you can look at Saletan's article for some of the explanation. As for my additional insight -- Bush's a jerk -- I neglected another factor. Gore's a jerk. But he's my kind of jerk.

When I was 14, I was on a TV quiz show called "It's Academic". One of my teammates buzzed in without knowing the answer. I glared at him to make sure everybody knew he was the bozo who had rung in. This is exactly the kind of pompous behavior the nation came to expect from Al Gore. (I, on the other hand, have matured since then.) I guess I had a blind spot because I thought Bush deserved to be shown up. I didn't realize that -- compared to frat boys -- American can't stand "smarty-pants".

So can Gore still win? My thought is that he has a decent chance in the hand recounts. He's only down by about 300 votes in Florida. Given how much that dropped from the initial count, and given how prone to error these ballots seem, I think it's very plausible he could pick those up if things were counted more carefully. Bush, on the other hand, wants to stop the hand recounts. I mean I guess I understand that -- it's like a football team running out the clock when they're ahead. But how is he going to sell this to the public? "I don't want a more accurate count 'cause it'll take longer." Maybe he'll wake up and realize he looks bad -- just like he stopped demanding Gore concede before the recount.

Speaking of looking bad, I'm afraid that Gore will have to drop the Palm Beach bad ballot challenge. Yes, it stinks. Yes, it probably cost Gore the election. But there's no realistic way to turn the clock back. And if they somehow manage to do that, it could open up all sorts of unpleasant challenges in other states. What's going on now is reasonable -- but I don't want to see this tied up in court for months. Hopefully this will at least throw the spotlight onto usability issues related to ballots. Yes, it's obvious to me how to fill out that ballot. No, it wasn't obvious to enough people. Let's make it more obvious.

Search Engine Madness

Inspired by West Coast Girl, I present my "Search Engine Outtakes". (All searches on Google unless otherwise mentioned):

• Android's Dungeon -- #1 !
  
• Southwark colleage -- #1 (oops)
  
• boy-in-the-bubble disease -- #4
  
• android sketches -- #12
  
• Paul Simon's Graceland -- #50
  
• dancing chicken carcass -- #16
  
• Gibbs Lisa -- #16
  
• android -- #14
  
• Jaye P. Morgan gong show -- #17 (Northern Light)
  

Haircut

I got my hair cut today.

While I was trying to decipher what the guy cutting my hair was saying about the Redskins (he mumbles, and speaks with a Cuban accent), I heard the woman cutting hair next to me say something to her client like, "And that converts it back to decimal." After more discussion of the merits of Brad Johnson vs. Daunte Culpepper, I decided to listen in on the conversation taking place to my left. I heard the guy getting his hair cut say, "So 127 is localhost?" His sylist said, "Yeah," and then proceeded to go into a discourse on routers that went over my head. It was completely surreal. It was like I had been transported into some sort of .com commercial. I'm not sure what the tag line would be -- "Feel like everyone's getting in on the Internet economy but you?" or "Where do you go for your technical information?"

I briefly considered getting her to cut my hair instead because -- I mean, how cool is she? But then I realized that I was confusing two totally different skill sets, and I was really there to get a good haircut. Which I did.

I Feel Your Pain, Al...

"And the awful truth is that America doesn't like knowledgeable, well-educated white guys who preen visibly over their grasp of detail. If it did, Al Gore wouldn't be fighting for his political life."
--Marjorie Williams, The Breakfast Club, Slate

Why Me?

On my recent flight to Chicago, the woman in the adjacent seat woke me up to ask me to hand her my copy of the in-flight magazine. I was so stunned, all I managed was to be as surly as possible while handing it to her.