Graded New Year's Resolutions 2008

1. Read two books a month. ("Who do you think you are, Einstein?!")

Nope.  But I've read some very good ones this year, including "American Fascists" (Chris Hedges) and "Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics" (Martinus Veltman).

2. Smell better. ("No way, really?", spark of hope lingering in Dina's eye)

"Yeah, on average--you're definitely cleaner."

3. Beat my time up Old La Honda (21:50) and olympic triathlon (2:30:31)

I got somewhat close to my OLH record (under 24:00), but didn't break it.

4. Grade this years resolutions w/ Dina ("um... Is there any resolution about me? um...")

Check!  Dina, don't you have anything to do now?  "Every year you're getting meaner; you take me for granted :'("

Overall: 2/4, plus maybe some partial credit, but not really.

Selected 2007 Resolutions

2. Get more done at work, and spend less time there.

Yes!  This year has been a very good one at work.  I definitely spent less time at work in 2008 than in 2006, but probably about the same as 2007 (can't keep going down forever)

5. Keep in touch with friends and colleagues better

I call my parents and brother more, so let's count this as a success.

Liars dice poker

Okay, here's a game I made up. You use dice, and bet with chips, like poker.

Two players: player 1 and player 2.

Player 1 puts in 1 chip, player 2 puts in 2 chips.

Player 1 rolls 10 dice and then declares a number of pips, from 1 to 6, say "4".

Player 2 rolls 10 dice and then declares either "higher" or "lower", say"lower".

At this point, we have a betting round, as in no-limit poker. Both players have an opportunity to raise, starting with player 1 (who has only put in 1 chip). If there is a showdown, the player with, in the example, the lower number of 4's wins and takes the pot. If they have the same number of 4's, they chop the pot.

What does everyone think?

New Years Resolutions, 2008

In keeping with tradition, I'm writing new year's resolutions on Jan 1, 2008.

1. Read two books a month. ("Who do you think you are, Einstein?!")

2. Smell better. ("No way, really?", spark of hope lingering in Dina's eye)

3. Beat my time up Old La Honda (21:50) and olympic triathlon (2:30:31)

4. Grade this years resolutions w/ Dina ("um... Is there any resolution about me? um...")


In addition to this year's resolutions, I'm also trying to keep my 2007 resolutions.

Well, this year's resolutions are a bit silly, but I think I'm sticking with them. I'm serious about them all. Okay... it's 10:24 p.m., and time to hit the sack.

To be updated :-)

Last year's resolutions graded!

1. Blog more. I used to have a ton of fun with this blog.

Well, admittedly 362/365 of the days this year have passed without a peep, but there are still 3 days left, so I won't jump the gun in grading this one yet. Besides, I'm writing now, aren't I?

2. Get more done at work, and spend less time there.

Yeah! This is a big success for this year. After changing groups, I'm infinitely more productive, and I've been keeping reasonable hours much of the time.

3. Start dating a girl I can see as my equal in the ways that matter, and is a good match for me.

Can't complain! However, I'm not going to write it all up here.

4. Revise my thesis.

See #1. Actually, after studiously ignoring this for most of this year, I've started working on this again. I'm taking my officemate Bob's approach, which is this: learn the minimum set of tools necessary to get the job done, and get the job done.

5. Keep in touch with friends and colleagues better.

Bad. Actually, a huge failure this year was missing the retirement party of my graduate advisor. The timing couldn't have been worse, with a major external product demo and several of us (including me) working 12+ hour days then.

-------------------

So, I guess that makes it 2/5 resolutions kept, which is at least par for the course. Probably more like an eagle.

Anyway, I'm really happy with the resolutions that I did keep this year. In a few days, I'll write a new set of resolutions for the coming year (that's 2008!). I'll renew the resolutions I didn't keep, and write a few new ones, which I've already been thinking about.

New Year's Resolutions

This year, I have some big resolutions to keep. I'm writing 'em down while it's still Jan. 1 and still counts.


1. Blog more. I used to have a ton of fun with this blog.

2. Get more done at work, and spend less time there.

3. Start dating a girl I can see as my equal in the ways that matter, and is a good match for me.

4. Revise my thesis.

5. Keep in touch with friends and colleagues better.


So, the most interesting one is #3, so why not talk about that for a while. What are the ways that matter?

I dated a girl for a long time who had everything any guy wants in terms of attractiveness and attentiveness. The thing that ultimately made the relationship end was that I could never talk with her about things I care about a lot about. Things I blog about. Partly, that's because we grew up speaking different languages (and neither of us became fluent enough in the other's language). Partly, that's because the things we care about are so different.

Anyway, what I want to find is someone who's discriminating, caring, physically attractive, likes the person that I am, is liberal in the sense of "people should be free to make their own choices".

Who knows what the new year will bring. 2006 was interesting--not the best year on record for me. The best year on record for me might have been 1998, when I started working on what became my graduate work. I hope 2007 can find itself looking more like 1998 than 2006.

Brain started to work

me: it's like my brain just started working for the first time in months

Andy: what do you mean?

me: well, i was trying to figure something out last night
then, on the way home, i figured something out

Andy: yeah

me: then i came into work this morning, made like 10 changes to some code i was working on
then ran it, and it just worked

Andy: nice man
glad to hear it

me: that hasn't happened in such a long time

Andy: totally cool
good work [smile]

me: thanks man

Fundamental observation of science

I had a post a way back about fundamental theorems of certain branches of mathematics. This post is about what I think is the fundamental observation of science. Ready? The fundamental observation of science is:

Repeated observations are more reliable than unrepeated ones.

Why is that? Basically, that is because people are unreliable. I have memories of things I can prove to myself never happened, or happened quite differently from what I remember. How do I know? Well, the time I am thinking of involves me doing something rather unthinkable that could have potentially killed my brother. I firmly remember it as being on accident, but I also know that this memory has been reconstructed at least once in my head. I actually have two different memories of the event. I know that a particular one of them is wrong, because nobody could run as fast as I remember my brother running in that one.

Other times, I've made stuff up out of thin air. Why? Because it seemed advantageous at the time. Like that I only had "one" piece of candy for desert. That I had done my homework, but forgot it at home (might have said that more than once, and I'll bet it was a lie at least 99% of the time).

It stands to reason that this kind of thing happens to other people too sometimes. Maybe some people are more reliable than me. Maybe some people never lie. Maybe some people are never deceived by their senses or their memories. Maybe some people have perfect intuition or never make a logical mistake. Unfortunately, it's hard to reliably tell who those people are.

So, if we can't trust any single person, can we ever gain a reliable picture of the world? The laws of nature? The gross history of the universe? I think our best bet is to get rid of single points of failure in the system.

A certain codification of this philosophy is called science. An experiment is a procedure you can repeat any number of times to give an observation that either rejects or is consistent with a hypothesis. You can be as sure as you like which is the case by repeating the experiment enough times. A hypothesis is scientific if you can show that if it's false then there is some experiment that rejects it.

That isn't, by far, enough to define science. In fact, it's just one aspect. Science is fundamentally a creative endeveor. When does a hypothesis become accepted as being a probable fact? At least it needs to go through a reasonable period of scrutiny in which people try to show that it's false based on some experiment, or that it's somehow infeasible to do the experiments.

But serious scientists insist on not allowing single mistakes from forever corrupting the conclusions. This is related to the value of skepticism, which says that it's better to be unsure than to be sure and wrong.