Roseyland

When writing a blog, it’s important to choose timely topics. Nobody wants to read about yesterday’s news. Today, I bring you a story from the recent summer of 2008. One day in June 2008, I came home and noticed that my condo smelled like a wet dog. To the best of my knowledge, I did not own a wet dog. I looked all over the condo and determined that the smell appeared to be coming from the hallway. I looked in the hall utility/laundry closet. Everything looked normal. I looked in the washing machine. Nothing there. I opened the dryer, and the smell almost knocked me over, but still, I didn’t see anything. Here is the cat investigating the situation. You can’t tell from the picture, but he really wanted to find the source of that smell.

The smell was definitely coming from the dryer, but it wasn’t in the dryer. So I went outside to look at the dryer vent. This is what I saw.

I had a closer shot of the dryer vent, but trust me, you don’t want to see it. That’s my dryer vent covered in bird poop. Did you know that bird poop isn’t just white? It also has a reddish component. At first I thought there had been some sort of bird slaughter inside my dryer vent. Then I noticed that a bird would fly into my dryer vent every couple of minutes. Here is a picture of the bird.

The bird kept carrying things into my dryer vent. It appeared that he was feeding something. Great. I had a bird nest in my dryer vent. I called the condo maintenance people to see what they could do. You are probably wondering why I didn’t just take care of this myself. One, I don’t deal with wild animals. They are wild and will peck an eye out without a second thought. Two, it would have required me to spend a decent amount of time on a ladder right in front of my female neighbor’s bedroom window. Nothing good can come from that.

The maintenance guy came out and said that he could remove the nest, but there was a live baby bird in it, and we would have to leave it on the ground to die. He didn’t want to do that, and well, neither did I. Sometimes I think I’m too empathetic for my own good. I mean don’t most baby birds die anyways? Still, I didn’t need that on my conscience. So, I lived with the wet dog smell for 6 more weeks and then had the vent cleaned and covered with wire mesh. I have no idea if the bird lived, but he wasn’t in the nest anymore, so let’s say he lived. I didn’t live in a swampy smelling condo for nothing.

I bought groceries tonight. Here they are:

Let’s see, we have soy milk. I got the Omega-3 enriched soy milk, so it would be extra healthy. The bowls things are quick frozen meals. They are actually vegetarian. I’m not a vegetarian, but they are good anyways. The TLC granola bars are what I have for breakfast every morning. Then there are tortilla chips, cheese, and bread. The wine is a Whole Foods 365 brand Bordeaux. It was the cheapest Bordeaux they had ($7.99). I’m interested to see how it compares to the other two Bordeauxs I have had. Did I like them because they were Bordeauxs, or were they just nicer wines in general? I got the berries and black beans because I love berries and black beans (not together of course). The spicy thai Kettle chips were a spontaneous purchase. I have to know what spicy thai taste like.

I didn’t just buy groceries for myself. I also agreed to fill up this bag as part of a canned food drive. I had already filled the bag half way with stuff from my kitchen that I knew I was never going to eat. I bought some extra stuff tonight to top off the bag. Part of me thinks Whole Foods wasn’t the right place to shop for a canned food drive, but that’s where I was. I ended up overfilling the bag a little. I’m a saint.

This was my dinner. Whole Foods has the best pizza, and it’s only $5.00 for two slices. Seriously, you should try it. Whole Foods also has good Sushi. It cost more than $5.00 though. Okay, I’m tired. Tomorrow is my 100th blog post. I have nothing planned as of yet, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something fantastic. Good night.

I worked out tonight. Please… Please.. hold your applause. I want to be the type of person that works out regularly, and I manage to do so for months at a time, but I also manage to go months without working out. Let’s take a trip back in time. When I was in high school, I was on the swim team. I used to swim fairly intensely for 2 hours a day 5 days a week for 10 months of the year. I was in great shape. When I think of how many calories a day I must have burned then versus what I burn now, I cry a little.

In college, I didn’t work out much, but I was still fairly active. For one, I walked all over campus every day, and I rode my bike a little. I gained a little weight in college, but honestly, I probably needed to gain that weight. After college, things got a little worse. In grad school, I spent more and more time in front of a computer, and when I had to start cooking for myself, I ate less and less healthy. At one point, I weighed myself and found out that I had gained 40 pounds since high school. This was a little alarming, so I started going to the rec center on campus, and after a couple months I got myself back to a healthy weight.

Then I entered the working world. My job requires virtually no physical activity whatsoever. Unless you count typing. The most exercise I am forced to get is the two and a half minute walk from my car to my desk. Yes, I have timed it. When I first moved to St. Louis, I joined the Edward Jones YMCA, which is awesome. Seriously, if you live in Maryland Heights, you should check it out. When I moved to Brentwood, I joined the YMCA just down the street, but it wasn’t as nice, and I stopped going. This led to a long period of no exercise. Then a couple years ago, they opened a fitness center at work. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s very convenient. I got into a good habit of working out regularly for nearly a year, but then I got distracted, and I quit.

The problem is, the gym just isn’t fun. You end up doing the same thing every day, and day after day it gets old. I have a new plan though, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to stick with this plan a little longer. Here it is:

• 10 minutes on the elliptical machine doing some form of interval training. This means you go fast, then slow, then fast, then slow.
• Around 15 minutes on the weight machines. I’ll do 1 set of 12 reps on 7 different machines. I’ll alternate which machines i use on different days.
• 10 more minutes of interval training on the elliptical machine.

This is different from my old workout, where I would spend 30 minutes on weight machines, and then 30 minutes on the elliptical at a constant speed. I’m hoping the new plan will be faster paced, and thus less boring. I’ve heard that it’s better to split up your cardio, so that your pulse is elevated during your entire workout. I’ve also heard that doing some form of interval training for your cardio burns more calories than going at a constant speed.

I tried this new plan tonight, and it definitely went faster. It was nice not having to drudge through 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, and I have to admit, the interval training felt more intense. Plus, it was a lot more fun. The biggest benefit to this new plan is that I’m in and out of the gym in less than an hour. This makes it much more likely that I’ll stick with it, and more likely that I’ll start up again if I miss a few weeks. Wish me luck. And, um, you should probably get back to working out too. You can’t fool me, I know how many hours a day you sit there reading blogs. Go for a walk.

Flickr : John-Morgan

Do you see this picture of a cute animal known as a squirrel? They are evil. There is this tree that towers over my bedroom, and currently the tree is producing massive amounts of acorns. The squirrels are delighting in running through the tree and knocking the acorns onto the roof above my bedroom. The other night it was so loud the cat and I had to search the condo at 3am to ensure no one had broken in. The next day, I was watching the squirrels in the tree, and I swear one of them threw an acorn at me. I used to like squirrels. I used to think they were cute. Now I know the truth, they are evil, and they are out to torment me.

This is weird, I’m blogging from a coffee shop. Kayak’s Coffee house at Skinker & Forest Park Parkway to be exact. There are people all around me. I’m not used to having people around me when I write. I’m pretty sure they are all watching me and judging me. Somebody just laughed. I think it’s because she read that sentence I just wrote about people watching me. How can she tell what I’m writing from the other side of the coffee shop? She must have super powers. I should probably only write nice things about her.

I have a problem with coffee houses on warm days. I always want an iced tea when it’s warm, but you can’t order an iced tea at a coffee house. I mean you can, but they don’t just have tea, they have like 10 different kinds of speciality teas. I don’t want any of that crap, I want plain old black iced tea in at least a 32 ounce container. I ordered an iced tea today and I got 16 ounces of some type of green tea citrus something. It sucks. I don’t think it has any caffeine in it. What’s the point of iced tea without caffeine?

Hey, this blogging in public thing is going okay. I don’t think the other coffee house patrons are judging me as much anymore. It must be because my writing is so awesome. Thanks guys. I wish I could take a picture, but there are these three college girls right in my line of view. I don’t want them to think that I’m taking their picture. It would suck to be that guy. You should really come by Kayak’s sometime and see it though. It’s very cool, it has a mountain log cabin feeling to it, and they have Tibetan prayer flags hanging from the ceiling. I love me some Tibetan prayer flags. They also used to serve s’mores. I don’t know if they still do though, I can’t see them on the menu. I wish Kayak’s had existed when I was at WashU, I probably would have spent a lot of time here doing homework with a couple other guys.

Last night was a good night. Nebraska beat Oklahoma in college football and health care reform passed in the house. I’m kind of embarrassed, because I though Oklahoma had only lost to Texas and was ranked in the top 10. Apparently they had lost three times and were actually ranked like 20th. So while it was nice to see Nebraska beat a ranked team and their only true rival (sorry Missouri & Colorado), it isn’t as big of a deal as I thought it was. Health care passing in the house was nice too. No, the bill isn’t perfect, and there is still a long ways to go before this whole ordeal is over, but this is the most progress we’ve ever made, so that’s good. I spent a lot of time switching between college football and C-SPAN last night. Never done that before.

Okay, I’m out of food and drink. I’m not sure what the unwritten coffee house rules are, but doesn’t some bouncer come and throw you out when you are done with your food and/or drink? No? Hmm… Well I’m tired of sitting here anyways. Only 22 post left. I’m over half way through being half way through. Hurray!

I got things I want to say. Here they are:

• Look! It’s a picture of a cat being all cute! This will probably be your favorite part of this post.

Do you know what one of my favorite things in the world is? No you don’t, let me tell you. Probability. Once upon a time, I was a math major, and probability was my favorite class. I even tutored this Japanese guy in probability. Come to think of it, I think he failed. Oh well, can’t win ‘em all. For a while, I considered being an actuary. These are the people who spend all day analyzing risk for insurance companies. It would have been hours and hours of endless fun, but I figured I would get more chicks as an engineer. My current job involves a lot of thinking. It’s hard to describe, but there are lots of algorithms to develop, test, and have meetings about. I love my job, but sometimes I worry that all the thinking will make my head explode, so I take short breaks every now and then. What do I do to refresh on these short breaks? Sample problems from the actuarial exam! I am not making this up.

You can learn how to become an actuary at the be an actuary website, and you can find the sample test here and solutions here. Let’s do a sample problem together. It will be fun, I promise. Here is a question from the test:

A tour operator has a bus that can accommodate 20 tourists. The operator knows that tourists may not show up, so he sells 21 tickets. The probability that an individual tourist will not show up is 0.02, independent of all other tourists. Each ticket costs $50, and is non-refundable if a tourist fails to show up. If a tourist shows up and a seat is not available, the tour operator has to pay $100 (ticket cost + $50 penalty) to the tourist. What is the expected revenue of the tour operator?

Break into small groups and discuss this problem. Be prepared to present your solution at the end of this blog post. If you know anything about probability, this is a pretty easy problem to solve. If not, it isn’t so easy. That’s the great thing about probability. It seems hard, but is actually not hard. This is useful for looking smarter than you are.

Let’s solve the problem. I know that the expected value of any situation is the sum of each value multiplied by the probability of that value occurring. First I would like to know the probability of all 21 tourist showing up. This is easy, it’s 0.98²¹, which is about 0.65. This is because you can find the probability of multiple independent events occurring by multiplying the probability of those events together. So there is a 98% chance of any random tourist showing up, and a 65% chance of all 21 tourist who bought tickets showing up. This first time I did this, I calculated the probability as 0.02²¹, which would be the probability of all tourist not showing up. It took me like 2 minutes to figure out what I had done wrong. I’m so dumb.

Now we need to know the probability of 20 or less tourist showing up. We could calculate the probability of every combination of less than 20 tourist showing up and then sum all the probabilities, but that is a lot of work. We know that the sum of the probabilities of all possibilities is 1, and if 21 tourist don’t show up, then 20 or less must have shown up. So the probability of 20 or less tourist showing up is 1-.65, which is .35. So there is a 35% chance that 20 or less tourist will show up.

If 21 tourist show up, the tour operator takes in $950 (21 x $50 is $1050 minus a $100 penalty is $950). If 20 or less tourist show up, the tour operator will take in $1050, because nobody gets a refund. So the expected revenue of the tour operator is 0.65 x $950 + 0.35 x $1050, which is $985. So on average, the tour operator will take in $985 per tour. Do you see a problem here? You should. If the tour operator only sold 20 tickets, he would never have to pay a penalty, and would take in $1000 per tour, which is an average of $15 more per tour. Not only that, he wouldn’t have to ruin some poor tourist’s vacation. What a dumb ass.

Now for a couple editorial comments. There are no such thing as independent events. When somebody says, “assuming independent events”, 90% of the time it is a bad assumption. Think about the problem we just discussed. What are the odds that just one tourist won’t show up? Not likely, because most people don’t go on vacation by themselves, so it is significantly more likely that a group of tourist won’t show. Not only that, if all the tourist show up, one tourist is going to have to miss the tour while the rest of his or her group goes on the tour. I can’t stress this enough, tour operator = jerk. The assumption of independence only works for trivial problems, and real life problems are rarely trivial. Unfortunately, you often have to pretend that events are independent, because doing otherwise is too hard and beyond the scope of this blog.

Another complaint, this whole problem assumes that the tour always sells out. (It must be awesome!) This assumption should really be stated in the problem. Do you hear me actuarial exam problem making people? Also, I assume that this is another bad assumption. As fun as probability is, it is often one bad assumption after another. Probability = life.

Okay, if you are still reading, you must leave a comment. There is something seriously wrong with you, and I will find you help.

The image in this post is Einstein Was Wrong by _mpd_ and is licensed under Creative Commons.

I’m a GPS nerd. I love knowing my exact location and the exact time. You know, cause it’s really important… for stuff. This is the main reason that I just had to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. Now I have a GPS device with me at all times, Woo Hoo! This will be useful if I ever get lost in the wilderness of St. Louis, or if I ever need to target a cruise missile. Of course targeting a cruise missile to the exact location of my iPhone may not be the brightest idea, but it would be damn cool.

I found an iPhone application called GPS Tracker by InstaMapper. This application lets you make GPS tracks with your iPhone. It uploads your GPS tracks to the InstaMapper service, which will then create a map of your current and past locations as well as your speed and heading if you are moving. Then you can provide someone a link to the map so that they can track you, or you can even embed the map on your blog. You can also create a KML file, which I used to make the picture below.

This is everywhere I went today. I had lunch at San Sai, then I went to MetroTarget, then Ted Drew’s, and then I just drove around so that the track would be more interesting. Click on the image below for a larger version. You can also download the KMZ file (to view in Google Earth) of my track here.

The only complaint I have with the GPS tracker application is that it seems to stop working if you turn off the iPhone’s screen. This is annoying, because the LCD eats up the battery and you don’t really need to see the screen if you are just making a track. Also, the application doesn’t run in the background, so if you are making a track, you can’t do anything else on your iPhone. This of course is Apple’s fault, and it doesn’t really bother me that much. I’m thinking about driving back to Nebraska in a few weeks, and I think I’ll set up a map so that my friends and family can see my current speed, heading, and location as I drive across Missouri. You have no idea how much this excites me

I have been having trouble thinking of things to blog about lately. I guess I have bloggers block. So I took my camera with me today and decided that I would blog everything I did. This is going to be pretty exciting, you should probably sit down while reading this post.

I got out of bed at 11:00AM. I do like to sleep in, but this is pretty late for me. I was out playing Texas Hold’em the night before (came in third!), so I have an excuse. I had a lot of things to buy today. Here is the list:

• Razor Cleaning Fluid Cartridges
• Toothbrushes
• Rubbing Alcohol
• Tea
• Bread
• Cheese
• Pop (Yeah that’s right, “pop”, don’t even get me started on the whole “pop” versus “soda” thing)
• Soymilk
• Pomegranate Juice
• Berries
• Banana Peppers
• Pickles
• Granola Bars
• Nuts
• Yogurt
• Tabasco Sauce
• Lean Cuisine Dinners
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Corkscrew Like Device
• Stain Removal Pen

I showered, got dressed, and headed out for lunch at about 12:45. Here is a picture of me leaving my neighborhood in Brentwood.

The neighborhood looks better in the summer when there are leaves on the trees. Anyways, I made a short trip to one of my most common lunch spots, San Sai.

I had the salmon bowl with brown rice and the oriental salad. I always think it should be called the asian salad. Isn’t “oriental” politically incorrect? Then again, who cares? It was tasty and then I moved on to Target.

Now you might be wondering why I didn’t go to the Target that is two minutes from condo in Brentwood. Two reasons. One, I wanted to go for a little drive and go somewhere different. Two, this is the coolest Target ever. I call it metro Target because it is close to downtown St. Louis and feels so urban. There is always a good mix of people inside, and they have an escalator for shopping carts. Did you hear me? I said, “an escalator for shopping carts”. I had no idea such technology existed. I am amazed. After Target, I went to the grocery store.

Nothing too exciting here. This is the Dierbergs near my condo. I do about half of my shopping here and half at Whole Foods. I would do all of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods, but there are some things you can only get at the normal grocery store. I was able to find everything on my list except bread and fruit. Well, okay I could have found fruit, but the bread I wanted wasn’t there, so I’ll have to go to Whole Foods tomorrow. Since I’m going to Whole Foods, I’ll get my fruit there. Below is a picture of everything I purchased at Target and Dierbergs. For the record, I don’t put the cat in the pictures, he just likes to be where the action is.

Amazingly, this is almost $200 worth of stuff. How did life get so expensive? I blame gay illegal aliens who are hell bent on destroying marriage and instituting a socialized health care system. Kidding… Kidding… Please don’t throw things. Here is a picture of the cat doing what he does best.

After I got everything put away, I went to dinner with a friend at Rearn Thai in Clayton. Does anybody out there know what “Rearn” means? I’ve always wanted to know. I had the red curry, here is a picture of it.

Rearn Thai makes their curries mild, medium, hot, Thai hot, or extra Thai hot. I chose hot. I don’t know who the people are that choose Thai hot or extra Thai hot, but we must find them, capture them, and study them. They obviously have superhuman abilities. After dinner I came home, made iced tea, and started to write this post. After this, I’ll probably watch TV or a movie and go to bed. Thanks for joining me on my day. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

I loathe shopping for underwear. Mostly because it requires me to spend a lot of time looking at pictures of men in their underwear. The worst part is, you are forced really examine the pictures because you have to make sure you get the right kind. The only thing that could be worse than shopping for underwear is returning underwear.

Beyond the looking at nearly naked men part, there are a lot of other things that bother me about underwear shopping. First, I am convinced that I am the only guy alive who buys his own underwear. Every time I’m in the men’s underwear section, it’s me and 3-5 women shopping for men’s underwear. I almost feel like I’m not supposed to be there or something. Traditional gender roles are not a big deal to me, but if I ever get married, it will be my wife’s duty to buy me my underwear. That way I don’t have to feel like the weird guy buying his own underwear.

Another thing, size. My waist size fluctuates from 34 to 36 inches depending on how often I’m working out. Medium underwear is for men who’s waist size is 32 to 34 inches, and large underwear is for men who’s waist size is 36 to 38 inches. Did I miss something here? Is there a Medium/Large size hidden somewhere? I go with the large, because seriously what self respecting guy would wear medium underwear. I’m surprised underwear companies even label men’s underwear small, medium, and large. They should do it like Starbucks and call the sizes tall, grande, and venti. Maybe I should start telling people I wear grande underwear and see if it catches on.