Life As I See It

Usually i get into treasure hunting mode on Ebay, but I am now hooked on selling my crap there. I have almost two days to go on my auctions and I’m at 445 bucks for six things. I’m looking for at least 500, but we’ll see, tis the season after all!
I realized that I had London Calling, The Police, The Best of Blondie, and The Best of Bowie in my car changer. Apearently I’m on a real late 70’s kick. I’m thinking about taking the compliation disc I have in the other slot and putting in Marqee moon by Television or maybe a Patti Smith album. I got to thinking what I remember listening to at the time and what I owned. I have a strong rememberance of the Cars, the Knack, and Blondie on the airwaves. Along with my Beach Boys albums I also owned a handful of Kiss albums (Dynasty, Alive II, and the Ace Freahley picture album), and I think I had (have?) at least one Bee Gees album (Tragedy perhaps?). I’m talking 1979 folks, I know there’s at least a couple of you that read this that were around then, what do you remember music-wise? One of my favorite memories is skating at the roller rink (no kidding) listening to the Disco Duck and Rapper’s Delight. Yeah, I’m old school…
Another confession, I always enjoyed disco music. I was too young to really understand the backlash, later in life I laughed about the whole scene (bell bottoms, leisure suits, lots o’ hair, etc) but still enjoyed the music. It was always a thrill to hear Ring my Bell, anything by Donna Summer, or even Don’t Leave Me This way. Part of it was just the rarity of hearing it on the radio, the stuff just disapeared for 15 years. We’d laugh about it in college (1990-94), but we’d call it a guilty pleasure… It’s really too bad that crap like the You Light Up My Life got more airplay in the 80’s than Donna Summer, my guess that the people that were actually in the disco scene wanted it to go away for some reason. There’s got to be a good book in that story…

I had to run some errands at school, and I was struck at how backwards some people are. I had to get some immunizations and I had no clue which ones I needed. Dad scanned my records and emailed them to me. I show up at the clinic and the lady asks for my records. I tell her they are on my computer and she rolls her eyes and says in a not so nice voice “Well, I’ll need to SEE the records to know what to give you.” I whip out my laptop and show her. “I didn’t expect you to have a computer with you..” she says. I then have to show her how to scroll down the email etc. She becomes enamored with my little iBook and starts asking questions. “Is that compatible with an IBM?”
“Well, you can run the same programs on them if you buy the right software, like Office”
“You mean I could type something up, put it on a floppy, and put it in this machine?”
“Err, Macs don’t have floppy drives…”
“Then how do you move files?”
This went on for several minutes. Luckily she got bored rather quickly and let me go. I then had to drop off a dual well cassette deck at a professor’s office. He had paid me for it a while back, but I was just getting around to delivering it today. He wasn’t there, so I asked the secretary if she could let me into his office. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Oh it’s a cassette deck.”
“Is he borrowing it?”
“Actually, he bought it, I’m just bri…”
“Wow, that has two places for cassettes? So you can play two at the same time?”
“Err, no, it’s so…”
“Oh, you mean you can record from one to the other? That’s SO neat!”
I’m not making this up, where have these people been? Right, I’m supposed to be finishing a paper…

Isaac

Ok, my math paper is done and my macro paper will be done tomorrow (dammit!). I just realized that my first final is next monday! GAHHH! I’m really going to put most of my efforts into the math course, it’s the only one I’m in jepordy of failing. I should put some time into the macro one too, I’m still pretty fuzzy on the Austrian and real business cycle theorists…
OK, as if I needed another thing on top of grad school, work, photography, and music to take up my time, I’m getting interested in aikido again. Talking to my cousin Beth has got me chomping at the bit to give it another try. I last went 4 or 5 years ago and I hadn’t gotten very far but I’ve always loved the techniques. I figure i could probably go twice a week if I organized my time better. like not staying up till 2AM and getting up at noon… I’ll have to think about it. I’ll also have to think about which dojo to go to. There are two within driving distance. The lovey dovey, softer style of ki-aikido over in fairfax, or the more traditional AAA (Akido association of America) sanctioned style over in Arlington. i went to the Ki-aikido dojo for a couple of months, but maybe I could go to both and at least try both styles…

Isaac

OK, Geoffrey sent back his thoughts on my math paper. I was afraid that it wouldn’t make any sense mathematically, it turns out that it almost makes sense, but not quite. I’ll take that… With any luck I’ll be finished with that today and can devote the majority of my time trying to learn to mysteries of game theory to get ready for the final.
I had a sudden, interesting thought about my macro paper, but I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to put it in there. I’m looking at the macro economy as a scale free network. In a nut shell, a scale free network is one in which the nodes of the network are not randomly connected, but some are more connected than others. Nodes with more connectivity can assume greater importance than the ones with less. Well, in the US, the Treasury department (and more specifically the IRS) has, by far, the highest number of connections in the economy. Every citizen and every (leagal) business is connected to it, so it’s potential for impacting the economy is enormous. Usually the most attention is given to the Federal Reserve, there’s an entire school of macro economic theory predicated on how the central bank controls the economy, it’s called moneterism. To suggest that the IRS is potentially more powerful than the Fed to another economist is roughly akin to arguing that George Wallce was a good governor, or perhaps that Saddam Hussain was an effective leader of Iraq. There may be some truth to the statement, but there will be a predictable, and understandable reaction to it. I’m not sure I want to be that provocative in my very first semester….

OK I put some of my photo junk up on ebay. I’ve got a half frame camera (with a spring wound motor drive!), a grip for a Leica M6, an old Japanese rangefinder, and an old funky brass barreled lens up for auction. NO? I didn’t think so… I’m taking in my new/old 5×7 camera and a handful of lenses in tomorrow for Yamaguchi-san to do his magic. With any luck, I’ll be able to shoot with this camera by winter break… I hope to get some decent pictures of my cousin (and you will sit for me Beth!) and it would be nice to have these lenses available. I won’t actually be using this particular 5×7 camera, have a different one in mind for that, Oi! I hope to use some lenses from around 1913-1920 to bring some of that old fashioned charm into the pictures, we’ll see how it goes.

Isaac

I just looked at the review sheet for the upcoming math econ final. I could very well be fucked. I failed the midterm (missed a “C” by 3 points) and this next one looks even more difficult. I’ve never been so worried about failing a class before. Of course I’ve never had so much riding on classes before. Well, don’t plan on seeing or hearing much from me in the next several weeks. Hmm, if I can crank out the macro paper this weekend and I don’t have many revisions to do on the math paper (HA!) I’ll have several weeks to study. Maybe a “C” isn’t out of reach….

Isaac

OK, just try to tell me that this isn’t the best thing ever. If you’re not using iTunes for listening to music, you need to switch! It’s far better than any radio station, better variety, and I supposedly like everything in the list! I say supposedly since there’s a lot of stuff in my library that I haven’t listened to yet. I get a nasty surprise every now and then. The other day I was listening while on the exercise bike. A Godawful shrieking came over my headphones and I had no idea what the hell it was. Turns out it was a Yoko Ono piece from Double Fantasy… So what’re the next 10 songs on your party list? Here’s mine:
Miserable Lie by the Smiths
Kerosene hat (Outtake) by Cracker
At the End of the World by Frank Black
Your Fear by Prong
University by Throwing Muses
You can See Them From Here by the Coal Porters
Lolly Lolly Lolly Get your Adverbs Here from Schoolhouse Rock!
I am the True Vine by the Rev. Gary Davis
Moonlight Mile by the Rolling Stones
One Too Many Mornings by Bob Dylan

I’d like to see your list!

Isaac

OK, I finally figured out my math paper. Turns out I was doing things properly but I didn’t understand the results. Basically it’s like this… People can give gifts any time they’d like to, and they’d feel good about it. But because they have a limited budget, they have to choose when to give. It turns out that people will enjoy giving more when they know that person will be giving them a gift too. Kinda weird, but it makes sense if you think about it… I’ll post it to my website when its done just in case any of you want to look under the hood… I better get back to work.

Isaac

   Well, what should have been a rather interesting class
about the coase thereom instead became a libertarian forum on the role
of govrnment in determining property rights. SIGH. I was hoping to
learn more about it, but it seems as though every topic the professor
talks about is actually just an oprutunity to espouse his political
viewpoint. I’m a little frustrated…

Isaac

Well I came home and found Rick’s target from his hand gun class taped onto the fridge. Damn. I wouldn’t recommend anyone trying to break in, he’s quite a shot… He invited me to go skeet shoting with him sometime. I haven’t had to deal with this in quite a while, I’ve always felt pretty weird about guns. The last time this came up it was at one of Margret’s friends’ house. He brought out his Sig Saur to show it off. He passed it around and gave it to some idiot there. The firing pin was removed, so I knew it couldn’t go off, but it was still pretty unerving to have the thing pointed at me. I was always taught that you should NEVER point a gun at someone unless you were going to shoot them… The last time I actually shot anything was at boy scout camp around 1983 or so. We were using 22 caliber bolt action rifles. They took great lengths to teach saftey, but little on marksmanship. I didn’t hit a damn thing from 50 or 60 feet. I had plenty of friends that did target shooting or hunted, but I never could get into that whole culture. Maybe it would be a good idea to get over whatever it is I have by learning how to shoot. I don’t think that skeet shooting would be the best reintroduction, it would only amount to me firing a shotgun in the air randomly…:-) Anyway, the invatation was unexpected, I’ll have to think about it.

Isaac