Adventures in Freshman Calculus Class
Well, FragileKitty, my loving wife, thought that it might be entertaining if I shared with you something from my early college years…I went to what was at the time a top-10 school for Astrophysics, and usually one of the ways that they break in the new freshmen and make them pay their dues is the first semester calculus class. Which is *intentionally* scheduled at 6:15am, I believe. So, this is in the North, ok? So I am getting up a 5:15-5:30am in the morning and walking the better part of a mile to class with these –45 degree wind-chill to a *calculus* class, ok? It's not like I'm going through all this and there's sex on the other end, it's calculus. It’s already hell, and I haven’t even walked in the door yet! Well, I may or may not tell more stories about having lived in that city, but that’s for another time. So, what happens? I get in there, and there is this very young guy, whose name is Zhang, who I quickly find out is a *grad student*. The PhD percentage on campus is 99%, and I am being taught one of the most important courses in the curriculum by a grad student. Whose name is *Zhang*, ok? Percentage chance that this fucker is going to be able to speak good English? 1%. After 2 or 3 days of trying to figure out what this fucker was saying, I’m like, “This is not good. I need to see if I can transfer to another section.” So, I do, yes, there is one section left that’s open. So, I get in there, and the first thing this guy says is, *in a heavy Russian accent*, “Hello. My name is Leonid TOLMUTZCH (pronounced: Toll-much and he says this part a bit louder and sharper) and zis is ze study de ze calculus (except he pronounces it: cow-ku-lus). I was like, “Shit, I’m doomed”. So, I went back over to Zhang’s section, and there I rotted for the entire fucking semester. I don’t understand how you are supposed to learn calculus like this. My father went to Lehigh, and he told me about various means that they had of weeding out the people who were not meant to be engineers in the first couple of years at the school, and maybe this is one of the ways that my university did it. Basically, you are reduced to learning it on your own from the book, and this is not the first course that this happened to me in my first couple of years, and if you are not smart enough to be able to get at least a B in the class learning it that way, well then, your future career in science doesn’t look good. Later on, I came to find out who the good professors were, and tried to register for their classes as soon as I could, but the registration system was arranged by letter groups assigned according to the first initial of your last name and by the time they got to me, the good sections were always filled. Many of us felt this was not fair and raised an outcry and sometime during my sophomore year they decided to try be fair by starting at “Z” first. But my last name is in the middle of the fucking alphabet!!! I don’t think I *ever* got a class with the person that I wanted until my junior year, when every class was being taught by a full prof, but by then the damage was already done.
Ok, so here’s the funny part: Someone I was to meet later when I joined Theta Chi fraternity was in the same class with me. One night a couple years later we are talking and he finds out that I took calculus with Zhang and he’s like, “Oh, you too hunh? I couldn’t fucking understand a word!! Pawabowa!” and I am like, “Pawabowa?? What is pawabowa?” and he’s like, “Exactly! It took me 2/3 of the semester to figure out that he was trying to say, *parabola*!!”.
Hmm. So, if it took him that long to figure out one of the more common words that the professor was using, how much do you think he learned?
Pawabowa.
Encounter With A '67 Shelby
So, the other day I was coming home from work, and as I was turning onto the on-ramp for the highway, I passed a ’67 Shelby GT500 “Eleanor” Mustang who was waiting for me to go by since I had the right-of-way. Now, most of you may not know this model by name, but remember that movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” with Nick Cage? This thing is the same car as that mythical Mustang that he had never been able to steal. Yeah, *that* car. I sure noticed him almost immediately, and I was wondering whether he would notice that I had one of the new breed. He must have noticed, because I had moved it along pretty smartly onto the highway and was going about 70 and accelerating nicely, and then the next thing I saw when I looked in my rearview mirror were those distinctive round headlights slamming by me. At *70*, I notice them slam by me like a shot out of a bow. BAM!! I was like, “Holy Christ!!” So I put the hammer down a bit and caught up with him at 105mph…it appears he had got gummed up by some asshole in a black Mustang GT that was driving about 70mph in the fast lane!! Why do people buy fast Mustangs and then proceed to drive like old ladies?? Well, when he saw me roar up behind him, I guess he didn’t like it that I had caught up to him so fast because he gunned it and started cutting through traffic and shifting from lane to lane at about 90-95mph. I let him go. I figured, at that rate of speed and driving like that, if there is *any* cop that sees this, he’ll pick him right up and there is going to be a high-speed pursuit, which I did not want any part of. But you had to see this thing to believe it *salivate* this thing was the original silver color, with the original wheels, and it was *shining*. I mean, just *mint* condition, like he had drove it off the lot *that* day!! I wish I could have caught up to him and asked him, “How did you manage to keep this car so goddamn *nice*???”
Here is an example that is very close to the way the culprit looked:
Stupidity
It is my firm belief that 95% of the people on this planet are fucking stupid. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that most of my encounters with humanity are when I am in Atlanta traffic. It seems like there’s almost always some nimrod who decides that they are going to slam over 5 lanes to get off on the exit that is only 100 feet away by then, and almost cause multiple pileups as a result of the maneuver. You’ve got people who are driving 60mph in the fast lane and people roar up behind them very fast and then proceed to tailgate them and they don’t even notice. SUVs are everywhere and it seems like everyone is on a cell phone. Now, you may not have heard, but a couple years ago recall that this was the state where we had a 125 car pileup. Things are bad even on a normal day, but with all this insanity going on every now and then you get a truly spectacular accident. My personal favorite is the time that a tanker truck carrying something highly flammable decided to roll over on I-85, take out multiple cars and then slam into a bridge abutment, meanwhile spilling this aforementioned flammable fluid everywhere while it is doing all this, *which then decides to burst into flames*. I think they were fixing the highway for about a year and a half after that one. Trust me folks, you drive in this town long enough, you’ll see it all….
But that’s only the beginning. The other day I was in one of our local Borders stores buying one of the physics books that I mention in my quiz, a Brian Greene book actually. Now the cashier behind the counter was a pretty attractive young lady, and she asks me is the first one [of his books] any good, she had heard about him as an author and was thinking about picking up one of his books. She actually says to me, “Oh, yeah, I’m kind of interested in this stuff even tho I try not to let many of my friends know that I like to read”. Let me repeat that again in case any of you missed that: it isn’t that she doesn’t want to let any of her friends know that she likes to read physics, she doesn’t want to let any of her friends know that she *reads*. So, as a nation today that puts us where? Because I am quite certain that she is not an isolated case of what I will call the Cult of Stupidity. Understand that this Cult is the large and quite probably growing group of people who believe that it is fashionable to be stupid. This is where such epithets as “dork”, “nerd”, “geek” and so on come from. Basically, the sub-text on this message is: if you want to be cool, don’t think. That’s for dorks. Just crack open that six-pack and watch football. Now I imagine that young people who are attractive and popular get hit with this the worst (and it also likely that the more attractive you are, the better the chances that you will be popular) and I suspect that *girls* get hit with a double-helping of this. Not only that, but then you have the young people that are not popular, *but wish they were*, and so they are trying to *act like the people that are*, *lack of thought and all*. That’s why you don’t find girls generally who are interested in doing things like playing chess or studying physics; it isn’t that women are not as smart as men, it’s that they are *taught socially not to be interested in doing things that require deep thought*. If you think about it, this is pretty scary.
The rest of my encounters with society-at-large usually occur when I am having lunch, usually at the mall. Now, I’ll admit it, I am a people watcher, and sometimes I have a tendency to stare a little too long now and again, especially if the person I am watching is rather freakish. Man, there’s nothing like a large food court at a mall to reveal the incredibly varied melting pot of losers, freaks and mutants that is America. Every now and then I will see a normal person or a person who looks like they have got some good things going on, but most of the time it’s either the dumb-as-a-rock 400 lb. hillbilly housewife with the 3 screaming kids or the burnt-out construction worker that looks like he hasn’t bathed recently and is two-steps from freaking out and pulling a 9mm out of his lunchbox. The other day I was sitting at my table, trying to enjoy a Wendy’s hamburger (which I fear I tend to enjoy on too regular of a basis) when some fucko actually walks over and leans against a post that is right next to me and starts talking loudly on his cell phone. I mean, *right* next to me, this dude is less than 2 feet away from me and talking like this on his cell phone. It had to restrain myself with all my might not to say, “Umm, excuse me, but if you don’t get the hell away from my table I’m going to report you to security” (which was about 30 feet away by the way). So yeah, every now and then someone might catch me staring at them and they look at me with this look like, “What are you looking at, psycho??” and I almost always look away quickly, but every now and then if the person looks especially fucked up, I’ll give them the flat-glare that says, “I’m looking at *you* you fucking *retard*.” I’ve have not met the person yet that can continue to look me in the eye when I do that.
Cobra
All right, sports fans, dig this: my Cobra has a 4.6L 32-valve, DOHC supercharged V-8. A supercharger is essentially as powerful as 2 normal turbos, so just think of it as putting a twin turbo on a 300hp V8. It also has a 6-disc CD changer in the dash and the sound system is 280W RMS, 460W peak. That is almost 3 times as powerful as the most powerful stereo that most people have in their homes. I have the option of changing that stereo out for a system that has 1000W peak and dual 500W subwoofers in the trunk in addition to the other 8 speakers for about a grand, but frankly, I'm already making my ears ring on a regular basis with the system I have now. I figure I'll wait until I fry it and then upgrade. It has all leather, but also with suede inserts. This thing will *pound* a mustang GT, even the '05 model, and needless to say it has many features that the GT does not. Finally, I had the luck of choosing a model that had the optional 17" chrome wheels. Chrome is good. Here are some more pics:
This is probably my favorite pic of the series.
Now, notice the gauge over to the right that is labeled "Boost PSI". That measures how many PSI my supercharger is pounding into the air flow system. I refer to this as the "happy gauge".
The supercharger is the oval grey metal thing in the front of the engine with the thin horizontal holes scoring it. Kinda reminds me of the grill marks on a steak actually. Anyway, also notice that intercooling system which is the supernatural lime-green liquid over to the left of the engine. Now in racing, there are 2 types of coolants, a green and an orange. If you put orange in an engine designed for the green, or vice versa, I've heard that the coolant turns to acid and melts down all of your seals. Amusingly, there is actually a picture on the intercooler with a green container with a "thumbs up" and an orange container with a big red "X" through it. I think I will avoid ever putting the wrong one in :P
Note the stylized stitched Cobras on the seat backs. Too cool.
And finally a lovely shot from the side, which also shows the cute little metal cobra emblem on the front quarter, and provides a full view of the chrome wheels.
For additional details on this awesome car, go here.
Atlanta Traffic
I'd have to say that I like almost everything about living in Atlanta, but one thing that I don't like about living here is the fucking traffic. Here is an example of the shit that I have to go through every morning and evening on my way to and from work...
This is not some pic from an Atlanta travel guide or something, this is a pic of the actual road I have to drive on, namely I-285. These roads are 10-12 lane highways, mind you (as you can see 5-6 lanes a side), and it can get bad, especially since I drive a stick, which means that when there are the bad days where I have been driving in this shit for over an hour my clutch leg pretty much goes numb. But I guess I wouldn't trade it, because this is what I am driving through that traffic in:
This is my new 2004 Mustang Cobra which I got last May!! It has 390hp, which translates to: a top speed of around 190mph and goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Basically, if I press the gas more than half way down in the first 3 gears, I'm spinning the back wheels. It's hard to describe what the difference between driving something like this is as compared to a normal car, maybe something like going from a single engine prop to an F-16. I have managed not to kill myself in the first 6 months of driving the thing which is probably the critical period as I am getting used to it now...
Now, as a friend of mine once said in a driving course they forced me to take at work (even tho I don't drive for the company), "In Atlanta, we like to get where we're going." What he meant was, if you're in the fast lane, you need to be going at least 80, or you are posing a traffic hazard. I have paced cops driving at 75mph on I285, so the law is not a factor. And believe me, I set the pace when I am out on the road. So, be sure to come and visit our nice little town, but if you are in Atlanta and you are driving in the fast lane and happen to see a car that look like the one above come up behind you and you are driving less than 75mph, pull over to the right, because believe me, I'm coming through. One way or another, trust me, I'm coming through.
The Infamous Quiz
I stole this from FragileKitty who stole it from SunGrooveTheory who stole it from James who stole it from Pretentious Moose.
Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says: "...this visibility cone shows you in which direction you are looking into the landscape..."
Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first? one of my notebooks.
What is the last thing you watched on TV? the last episode of "24" season 3.
Without looking at the clock, guess what time it is: 6:20pm
Now look at the clock, what is the actual time? 6:31pm
With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? my wife typing away on her computer.
When did you last step outside? What were you doing? went to dinner at a Thai restaurant.
Before you came to this website what were you looking at? my cup of coffee.
What are you wearing? black unicorn t-shirt, black jeans and a flannel.
Did you dream last night? Not that I am aware of.
When did you last laugh? really laugh? Last night.
What is on the walls of the room you are in? Our computer room walls are bare except for a Mystique calendar that I have.
Seen anything weird lately? Watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" last night. That was *very* strange.
What do you think of this quiz? Not bad. Think it's more interesting to read other people's responses than to put down your own...
What is the last film you saw? "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first? a Lamborghini.
Tell me something about you that I do not know: I have a degree in Astrophysics.
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do? I would make cell phone use while driving illegal.
Do you like to dance? Yes.
George Bush: needs to think really hard about that exit strategery from Iraq.
Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? Jessica.
Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him? Gary.
Would you ever consider living abroad? Yes.
What are you Listening To Right Now? Dead silence.
Name Four Bad Habits You Have: 1) swearing 2) let things get too messy 3) forgetting things 4) am on the computer too much lol
Name Four Things That You Wish You Had: 1) infinite power 2) Enlightenment 3) a lot more money 4) a better body
Name Four Scents You Love: 1) jasmine 2) roses 3) patchouli 4) Apple Pucker
Name Four Things You'd Never Wear: 1) spandex 2) anything pink 3) flip flops 4) a bow tie
Name Four Things You Are Thinking About Now: 1) how long it is taking to complete this survey 2) what I will do for the rest of the night 3) about how hard it is to think of some of these answers 4) absolute blankness of mind.
Name Four Things That You Have Done Today: 1) gamed 2) drank coffee 3) ate 4) drank more coffee
Name the Last Four Things You Have Bought: all physics books
Name Four Bands/Groups Most People Don't Know You Like: 1) Olivia Newton-John 2) Air Supply 3) Madonna 4) Lorena Mckennett
Name Four Drinks You Regularly Drink: 1) coffee 2) Mountain Dew 3) water 4) coffee
