I Think I Prefer the OR

So today I met with my advisor to go over my research, i.e. what I've done, what I need to do.  I have so much left, and writing my paper scares me to death.  With this, my classes, the Arby's food poisoning (from which I still feel weak) and everything else going on right now, all I want to do is grab my ears, begin to panic, and scream.  Here is my first Blog Scream:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

h!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--> Read more...

Hello, My Name Is Shem

Word to one and all.  I'm feeling very sick today.  I went to Arby's for lunch and it left me feeling dizzy, light-headed and nauseous.  I've heard that medicinal marijuana is good for nausea.  Can anyone confirm this?

Today I've had a break from classes.  Yes folks, a break.  I'm super overwhelmed with my new school schedule.  I only have 3 classes, and one of them is going to be easy (and very time consuming); however, the other two are pure mathematical theory.  There is no curse in Entish, Elvish or in the tongues of men that would describe my fear for these classes.  I guess I just need to keep my mind on the prize!  As my good friend Buster always says, "Sometimes you have to...grab that brownish area by the points, and never let go...no matter what your mom says!" Mayhap I misquoted that, anyone can correct me if I'm wrong.  And that goes for anything--I feel that I'm constantly correcting everyone because my intelligence rests just a hair above the rest [shifty eyes]...

So back to my nauseating classes: Stat 6710 - Mathematical Statistics, Stat 6100 - Advanced Linear Regression, and Stat 6550 - Statistical Computing.  Like I said, nauseating.  I was pretty surprised when I didn't have any homework yesterday, but I'm sure the next few weeks of HECK [snicker] will make up for it.

OK, I'm done now.  Bye, bye.

--> Read more...

Dashboard and PPK's

Hello all.  Another school year has started which means this week there will be lots of free stuff on campus.  The one thing I'm really looking forward to: free-scotsman-dog day.  I hope that I don't miss it.  Last year I ate 3 scotsman dogs in one sitting, something that I don't encourage anyone try.  By the way, a scotsman dog, as I may have mentioned in an earlier post, is a quarter pound hamburger in the form of a hotdog, injected with liquid processed cheese, and cooked on a hotdog roller.  They are exclusive to the Quickstop on the 1st floor of the Taggart Student Center, but are known to have been sold at 711 under other aliases.  

You are probably thinking, "Can I buy a box of like 20 of these?"  I asked the same question a year ago, and as far as I can tell, the answer is no.  I performed a fairly thorough search on the web for such a, how can I say this, glorious box of goodness, and I had no luck.  I did, however, find a great recipe on how to construct a heart-attack-in-a-bun:

1. You take a hotdog.  This should be a Nathan's or another high quality dog of your preferred choice.
   
2. Cut the dog in half like a bun.  Be sure that you leave a small amount on one end of the cut so that it opens like a bun, and isn't completely in two pieces.
3. Line the inside with cheese.  The cheese you pick is entirely up to you; however, it should be something that you like, preferably not anything too mild, i.e. extra mild cheddar.
4. Get a hamburger patty.
5. Wrap the hotdog with cheese in the middle with the hamburger.  Squeeze the two ends of the burger so that it doesn't unfold during cooking.
6. Wrap the hamburger-wrapped, cheese-filled hotdog with bacon and stick a toothpick or some other device through the center to hold it all together.
7. Cook on a grill until bacon and hamburger are cooked.  Some people like to wrap the whole enchilada in tin foil, as this will ensure the thing doesn't come undone and will facilitate thorough cooking of the bacon.
8. Eat on a bun (and enjoy) at your own discretion. 

Well that's it folks, how to make your very own hotdog with cheese in the middle wrapped in a hamburger wrapped in bacon...dog.  :)  

Next time we will demonstrate how to successfully climb and fall off of a swivel chair.  

--> Read more...

Rant (v.) 1598, "talk foolishly, rave"

So I realized yesterday that I like to rant. I'm not sure if anyone has ever noticed this before, but I did yesterday, as I just said. (Geez, keep up!) I went to Best Buy with a friend (we're still on yesterday) just to browse and dream of the cool things we are going to have when we're rich. Our first stop was the cellphone section. Best Buy is pretty cool, because you can go with pretty much any provider, and they have an OK selection of phones for each provider. As we were browsing, a nice female employee came up to us and asked if we had any questions. This is where the rant began. It ended 10 minutes later. I'm not even sure what I ranted about, except that mayhap it dealt with the suckiness of Verizon and how much I hate them and how sucky they are. I'm also sure that it was chalk-full of sarcasm (turned up to 10!) and I'm not so sure she got that. She thanked me for my opinion and said that she appreciates feedback about the different wireless services. Aaron, my friend, pointed out the rant session, and the sarcasm, and said that I'm always doing this with employees wherever we are. He's just jealous! 

Instead of another rant, I thought today I would list a few of my favorite places on the web, and all y'alls can see how I like to spend my time. These are not in any particular order.

• Homestar Runner - my favorite cartoon on the web!
  
• Coxisms - my hero!
• Facebook - one of my many vices.
• Angry Alien - another funny cartoon.
• Apple - where I go to dream.
• Mazda3 - another place I go to dream.
• Untitled Statements - funniest person I know.
• Speed Runs - a big waste of time, but super cool.
• Clark and Michael - a very funny web series.

Well that's all that I can think of right now. I may or may not add more. So click on a few, waste some time, and you too can be as dorky as me!!! Peace, I'm out.

Coming soon: another rant (provided something makes me t.o.'d or one of you can give me something to rant about).

--> Read more...

Nerds, Geeks, and Dweebs

I learned the difference between hotels and motels this week. Now you may not think that this is very impressive; alas, it is very probable that you (and yes, I do mean you and not the proverbial you we all know and love so well) are ignorant to the true difference between the two. Upon learning the truth, I began to reminisce about a similar event. I went out with a girl one time...a long time ago. I was extremely annoyed with the dumb girl from the very start. We went to a haunted house, and it wasn't too bad...until she brought up that she had just learned the difference between jam and jelly, a fact that she was indeed proud of. Keep in mind, we had just graduated from high school, and she is just learning (redundancy alert: she was proud of this!) that jam has seeds in it... I honestly get so frustrated just thinking about this girl. She earned herself the nickname jam and jelly girl (very imaginative, I know), and I refer to her as such every time I tell the story.

Now that I think about it, this has nothing to do with my eye-opener of the week--you know, the difference between hotels and motels. In fact, I'm not even sure why I brought it up. Moving right along, I got back from Denver and JSM today. I'm not going to be dishonest here and say that I loved it, for I have no reason to lie. I didn't love it. The lectures I went to were interesting enough, but I would be lying if I said I got something out of it. I didn't.

I did, however, get something out of sitting, waiting for my uncle to pick me up for dinner. As I was sitting, waiting for my uncle to pick me up for dinner, and I was sitting there on this bench, a [nice] man came and sat down next to me. I was sitting. He asked if I was there for the science-fiction convention. I chuckled and said no (yet secretly in my heart I yearned to be a part of such a cool gathering). I said I was there for JSM. He proceeded to tell me his story about whatever his story was that he proceeded to tell--I must not have been paying attention. Somewhere along the line he asked me something about his convention. I must have understood because I told him that I knew of two conventions: a John Deere convention (that I also yearned to be a part of) and the statistical one that I had been attending. He said, "I don't mean to be prejudice, but is that why all of these Asians are here?" I wasn't exactly sure how to respond, so I just said, "Yeah, we're all a bit nerdy I guess." He then went on to tell me the difference between nerds, geeks and dweebs. I think he was calling me all three, which I have to agree with.

Notes (what would this post be without me complaining about something):

• If you just learned the difference between jam and jelly, don't try to impress your date with this new found knowledge.
  
• Hang up the phone and drive!
• Seriously, on the drive home, at least 1 our of 3 people were talking on their cell phones, and about half of which shouldn't even be driving in the first place.
  
• I know how to count...I am a statistician...
• Nerd: one who is focused on one subject, normally in academics.
• Geek: one who is obsessed with something...geeky, i.e. Star Trek, X-Files, etc.
• Dweeb: I actually couldn't make out his definition for this one. He mumbled.
• Hotel: Picture your favorite hotel.
• Motel: Doors on outside, facing parking lot. Literally means motor hotel.

The end.

--> Read more...

Two Things

Hi again, friends (and enemies, if you dare show your IP around here...). If you're anything like me, you're impressed right now. First that I know what an IP is, and second because this is the 3rd day in a row that I've blogged. Don't expect this everyday. Next week is going to be pretty busy for me because I'm going to a conference (Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)) the majority of next week (starting Sunday) in Denver (Colorado). The conference is sure going to be exciting. I'm sure I'll write about it, or certain aspects of it (and if I can get some good candids of the nerds, like myself--but not as cool-- that will be attending this astronomical event, I'll be sure to post them) later, either during the conference or after. Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Concerning blogging: somehow, some fuel was added to my blogging fire, and it is burning brighter than ever. We'll see if I can keep it up.

I mentioned over there ---------------------------------------------> (in the section of the sidebar entitled me) that I am a statistician. I am. If you really want to know exactly what it is that I do, ask me (comments...hint hint...) If not, you can go on pretending that all a statistician does is count and worry about probabilities. If you hadn't already guessed, we're not really concerned about who can count the highest, who can recite e backwards, or anything to do with math, really. We don't care (well, some might) about baseball statistics, or that 93% of statistics are made up on the spot, or even calculating the probability that you will attain 4 holes-in-one at the Fun Park mini golf course. If you want any of that stuff, go bother a probabilist (or an accountant, for all I care).

Also over there, I said I'm getting into photography (and mayhap I mentioned this in a previous blog post....see below). The reason I say this--not to redundantly be redundant-- is to give my buddy Seth some more traffic. He is one of the best, folks, and I'm not making this up. So, anyone needing some pics taken for whatever, give him a call (or blog post, I guess)!! You can go to his business website here or find it over there (-------------------->). It's called White Star Photography. And if you ever need a pianist for some event, I know a good guy!

Speaking of all these neat things makes me think of another great addition to our lives that people didn't have 100 years ago: Facebook (FB). I've recently discovered that people can now upgrade to the new version of FB; but to my dismay, I cannot, and it angers me deeply. Due to this, I'm sick of FB, the stupid so and so is not online chat bull crap, and the aleph-not hours I waste on it every day! Thus, I think I'm going to focus more of my time blogging than FBing....starting.....NOW!

--> Read more...

Musica Mas Bonita que la Tuya!

I felt the need to play some nice, peaceful music for your enjoyment as you're sitting here reading my blog. I have this automatically start, and there are a few nice songs that will play in a pseudo random1 order. I'm dying to know what other peeps think of Goldfrapp, and Daft Punk2 simply rocks. If you are dying because of the music, simply scroll down and press pause. If you hate it that much, let me know and I'll take it off autoplay. If you would like me to add to the playlist, let me know that as well.

Footnotes:

1. Examples of truly random events are a coin flip, unless the person flipping has attained a greater brilliance than I, and is therefore able to control the flip; drawing names out of a hat; drawing a ball out of an urn; etc. One can change the probabilities of these events by having a weighted coin or ball. You may think it preposterous to say that a music player, such as iTunes, on shuffle does not play songs at a random order. My answer: even a computer needs a starting spot, and that starting spot or seed is, in fact, not random. It could be the date, time, a letter of the alphabet. I hope you enjoyed this useless bit of information as much as I enjoyed typing it!!!
2. I am having fun linking words to pages that are related. Back off!

Update 8/14/08
Took it off autostart. Hated it. Also, it's at the top now, not the bottom.

--> Read more...

IHOP VS Gertie's

The other day, and what a good day it was, I went to my once favorite restaurant in the entire world: the International House of Pancakes. I was with my aunts (pronounced "aunt" not "ant"), my uncle Gordon, and a few cousins. Because we were driving to Twin Falls, ID (where I now call home) and wanted to get there early[ish] we arrived at IHOP around 7:14:39 a.m. where we were greeted with a smile, and other than us, a completely barren restaurant. I thought to myself, I said, "Self, it's going to be a good day. No one here means quick service." I thought wrong. I'll say this: if you don't have a brain, don't be a waitress. I mean, she was nice enough, but I knew we were in trouble when it took her 20 minutes to get our drinks (probably because of all the other tables she was waiting on), and she brought Gordon a glass of salsa thinking it was tomato juice (this is not a joke: his "tomato juice" had big chunks in it, it was spicy, and...yeah, it was salsa). She finally came out and took our orders. It was about 8:15 when we got our food and started eating. I know that this was not her fault, but it really annoyed us that we got there early so that we could get to Twin Falls, but our purpose was completely negated by such shoddy service (and hence the "once" in the first sentence).

The next part of my day was much better. Mike and I went to a restaurant in Twin called Gertie's Brick Oven Cookery. If you're wondering who this Mike fellow is, I don't really care. Suffice it to say that he enjoys lounging back, sucking down a Diet Coke with Lime, watching Family Guy on Blu-Ray, and is dating my sister. Back to Gertie's, this is a restaurant that is, well, there's really no other word except amazing! They have sandwiches, pasta, etc. but Gertie's is really famous for their all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. Picture this: you're sitting at Rodizio Grill, where they bring around different types of meat, and you sit there until you are utterly useless from gorging for 3 hours on meat. Now that you have that idea in you're head, change the meat to at least 30 kinds of pizza, and change Rodizio Grill to Gertie's Brick Oven Cookery. I can think of nothing better, except maybe if they had a Microsoft Surface as your table (suck it, Microsoft!). We sat there for 2 hours talking about very deep subject matter [The Dark Knight] drinking diet sodas and eating pizza.

Personally, I had 11 [distinct] pieces, not to mention the sick BBQ chicken of which I only ate half. I think my favorite part of the experience was when they offered us plain ol' pepperoni, and Mike said to the waitress, "Look Sugar, you wouldn't go to Baskin Robbins to get vanilla ice cream. Why would I come to Gertie's and eat pepperoni?".....OK, maybe he didn't say that, but I know he was thinking it. Anydangway, after stuffing my face for 2 hours, I was full (at last!). I'm not sure why, but it might have something do with stuffing my face for 2 hours.


Later that day (3 hours later), it was time to eat again. This time we went to my brother's new house (where he now calls home), where 50 people (all related in one form or another) were, again, stuffing their faces for 2 hours. We had rice, beans, tacos (carne asada or pollo), watered-down-home-made rootbeer, and diet sodas. I only had room for 4 tacos; my aunt had 5. This goes to show that Gertie's Brick Oven Cookery has the capacity to fill you up, and it will last for at least 3 hours.

After eating for another 2 hours, and being stuffed (not in the Australian way, mind) twice, it was time to go to the Twin Falls temple open house.


This was a really great experience. I walked around with my niece, Jaycie, and she was so reverent. The Spirit was very strong, and I'm sure she felt it and knew that she had to be reverent in such a special, holy place. Afterwards they led us back into the Stake Center where there were refreshments. Alas! It's about time I got to eat again. I did, but only a cookie...

This is Amber and Mike

Well that about wraps up my Idaho trip, which I'm sure you wanted to read about. Had you known what this post was about, you never would have read it, I'm certain of it. However, if you paid attention, you will have learned some new things about me:

1) My mom and brother's family now live in Twin Falls, ID.
b) I like to eat food. Food is good. Really good. Especially really good food!
iii) I hate Microsoft.
4) I love Homestar Runner
E) I know how to ramble on about, well, nothing.
VI) I like taking pictures! :)

Have a nice day.

--> Read more...