Out and About in Seattle

Last weekend was a four-day weekend, and of course I spent most of it diligently studying!!

But I did do a few fun things (in addition to eating lots of turkey which of course I did too).

On Friday, Sean and I went to see The Cook , a play about a Cuban family during and after the Cuban revolution. I'm not a huge play person but I'm glad I saw that post on Seattlest and decided to go see it. It was really mesmerizing. I literally forgot where I was while I was watching it. I think one time Sean touched my arm and I practically jumped out of my seat.

After the play, we stopped in at Dick's (luckily we got there just before the Sonics game got out) and then went to do some pre-Apple-Cup socializing at Porta.

Saturday, I skipped out on all the tailgaiting festivities for the Apple Cup . Instead, I went to pick up my race packet for the Seattle Marathon! (I ran the half). The packet pick-up was at the W Hotel downtown. It was crowded of course, but I got to sample some free stuff - granola, Snickers energy bars. MMMMM free food.

Sunday - race day!! I survived my longest run ever. Luckily the weather was great! No rain or wind. I'm glad that I hadn't looked too closely at the course before I went. Otherwise I would have been disheartened knowing about the massive hills I had to run up. But it's fun running in a race. There's so much energy in the air with all the other runners and cheering spectators. There was even a string quartet playing for us!

After all that excitement, running this week has been a bummer... no live band, not even a Duck to play Eye of the Tiger for me.

Sunday night Sean and I went to Duke's Chowder House for a celebratory dinner. We went there because we had a coupon, but it was so delicious that I'd go back even without a coupon!! It's an interesting place because the food is fairly expensive. At those prices I'm kind of expecting a certain 'fanciness' atmosphere, but this place was really laid-back and even had tvs going. But once I tasted that chowder, I understood the mis-match. Actually to be technical, I didn't understand anything while I was eating that chowder. I just floated above my body for a few minutes. I think they might put some crack in their chowder. So go try it... just think twice before you let your children eat it.

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

High School Math

Recently I was talking to my dad, and he was commenting that his kids (my younger siblings who are in middle school and high school) aren't very interested in their math classes. Now, I know that math isn't for everyone. But I also think that there is some better math out there than what they typically teach in high school.

I guess I can't say for sure what they're doing in high school now, but back in my day I took geometry, algebra, pre-calculus, and calculus. (I don't remember too much of what pre-calc was, I think maybe some trig?)

I've taken quite a bit of math over the years, and I think that calculus is one of my least favorite math classes. Yes it is useful for a lot of stuff, but honestly for most people who aren't going to go into something very technical, it's not that useful. Even for computer science I'd say you don't really need it.

I think it would be fantastic if high schools could offer a few math electives. I realize that there is a shortage of math teachers in the US, but I'm just saying, I think this would go a long way towards helping kids become/stay interested in math.

Here's my short list of math electives (which don't require calculus):

1. Linear algebra - WAY useful. I guess I wouldn't file it under the 'super fun' category, but compared to calculus it's pretty fun. And it's easier, so I think it'd be less of a turn-off to math for kids.

2. Discrete math - I took this in undergrad. It covers stuff like proofs by induction, and modular arithmetic. Maybe equivalence classes too? I don't remember all the details now, but I do remember thinking that it was really fun. I think it also covers some digital logic stuff. Perhaps digital logic could even be its own class, where you learn about binary, hex, 2's complement, logical operators, etc.

3. Probability - useful, and at least a little bit fun if you like to gamble. :) If nothing else, you could teach kids about why it's not a good idea to play the lottery.

I think just seeing that there's lots of different directions you can go with math would make it seem a lot more interesting. Of course, the wrong teacher can make any math class miserable, but I suppose that's a risk you take. (And if you have some probability under your belt, perhaps you could characterize teacher performance and stochastically model it).

Unix Gets a Peck on the Cheek

Ok, I ranted awhile back about how I don't like unix, but today I got something done with a few quick shell commands and it was really cool, so unix scores half a point. I'll only give it half a point, because I have recently been having a symlink problem (which of course is unix's fault). Apparently if you have a symlink that points to another symlink which finally points to your file, and that file happens to be an executable, you can't run it because there are too many layers of links? Who knew.

But here's the 'good' news. Today I had a huge list of files, and I wanted to strip off part of the names, and then remove duplicates of my stripped down names. Six months ago, the unix-hating Amy would have wrote some big ugly perl script to save the ls output to a file, then open that file, read each line, do the regex substitution, and then figure out some way to remove the duplicates. But here's how I did it with unix (thanks to the help of a few examples I found on the internet):

>> ls | sed -rn "s/_[0-9a-z]+\.gz$// p" > file
>> sort file > file2
>> uniq file2 > out_file

Laptopping

I have been using the word 'laptopping' alot lately, so I looked it up on urban dictionary. Here's what they have to say about it:

Laptopping

It's OK, but I think a little too narrow. I think laptopping just means "using your laptop". Here's me, Sean, and Alex lapptopping like it's going out of style...




Tonight Sean and I are lying in bed with our laptops. His roommate said that we look like a modern-day version of "that painting with the farmer holding the pitchfork", a.k.a. American Gothic. That would be a hilarious painting... or perhaps more appropriately, digital photo.

Heal the World

Yeah, remember that song? It's stuck in your head now huh? :)

Well, here's an awesome website where you can play a fun game AND donate rice to poor countries! Now, if you are a really serious environmentalist, you might wonder if feeding everyone is the best solution to our problems. But I just don't want to go there cause it's too mean. I think in the long term we can solve the world's over-population problems through education and providing opportunities to people (especially women).

So that being said, I love this website and it's super addictive. Free Rice

Average Dance of the Queue

Today in class, my professor said something about the "average length of the queue", but due to a combination of his accent and my inability to pay attention, I thought he said "average dance of the queue." That got me thinking....

We all spend a good chunk of time waiting in line. I went to the post office the other day. Long line. Dick's Hamburgers? Usually a line. Starbucks? Line. Women's bathroom in engineering buildings? Ha, trick question! No line for that one. But you get the idea.

So, wouldn't it be great if we lived in a society where people danced in line? You know how in society there are certain things that people just do? Like when you see someone with a clipboard, you cross the street to avoid them. (Oh, maybe that's just in Seattle...) Or when someone sings the national anthem, you put your hand on your heart? Or when Kris Kross comes on, you jump!? Ha ha, ok not everyone does that one.

Anyway, if there was a dance that people did while they were "queuing", it would be fantastic!! We would all get a little more exercise, maybe share a few laughs with people, and feel good. I think it could be sort of similar to the Macarena. Not too hard to do, and doesn't take up much space. (You might risk losing your spot in line if you move around too much). If we could only get someone to do this on MTV, I think it would take off!

Sexy Beijing

Ever wonder what it would be like to be a single female in Beijing? Or what the dating scene in China is like? Check out the documentary version of "Sex and the City" - Chinese style.

I Feel at Home

In some ways I settled into Seattle pretty quickly. I immediately stepped up my coffee consumption, and within a few months I had ditched all my umbrellas in favor of the North Face. But after some of the novelties wore off, I would get the occasional bout of homesickness. It's a strange feeling when you realize that all of your friends have only known you for a few months. Sometimes I felt like my previous life never happened, because no one else had those shared memories with me.

The other thing is that Seattle is so overwhelming. It's a huge city, with tons of cute little neighborhoods, independent restaurants, bookstores, coffee places, etc. I'll never get my head around all of it!! In Tucson, if there was a new club opening, or a band in town, I pretty much knew about it. Here there's no way.

But last night, I had a great time bumming around town with my friends, and I realized that Seattle is as much my home as anywhere I've ever been. Four of us went to dinner at 7 Stars Peppers , a Szechuan place in the I-district. We had a hot-pot, it was awesome! I highly recommend it. They bring huge piles of meat, cabbage, and tofu, and a big cooking bowl, with two sides - spicy and non-spicy. It's basically Chinese fondue. It was SO GOOD. I'm making myself hungry. :)

After dinner, we wandered around trying to find this theatre (we wanted to see a performance by the Unicycle Collective because our co-worker's wife was directing the show). We couldn't find it, so we hopped on a bus and saw one of Alex's friends. He was on his way to 7 Stars Peppers for dinner.

Then, we tried to meet up with our friend Cameron because he was going salsa dancing. We thought it was at Century Ballroom, but it turned out it was tango night there. We watched the tango lesson for a bit, and we saw one of our TAs from last year there! I kind of wanted to stay and watch the tango, because Michelle Badion would have probably shown up, and it would have been awesome. (She teaches lots of dance classes at the Experimental College and is an amazing dancer). But, we instead went on to HaLo , where the salsa was happening. Later our TA came over there too, so there were 6 EEs at the salsa dance.

After showing off our mad dancing skills, we walked over to another bar. (Ok I mostly got carried - I really wore the wrong shoes last night). I was running out of steam, after my rowdy 5pm beer pong game. Sean and I grabbed a cab home, and the cab we got was this crazy bio-diesel Austin car, with the driver sitting on the right side of the car!! Being drunk and tired, it was kind of a surreal experience. Check it out!
Biodiesel taxi

My main point here was that it was really fun to go out and run into random people that I know. That hasn't happened to me in a long time.

Cool Parents

I love traveling, so these people are my heroes.

NY Times travel story

Of course, my (hypothetical) kids would already know a lot about the world since we'll be spending part of each year in our house in Costa Rica. No, I've never been to Costa Rica, but I know that I'm going to love living there. There is surfing, rain forest, zip lines, volcanic hot springs, white water rafting, Spanish... what's not to love!? Not to mention that my house will be a great investment! It'll probably be right on the beach. :)

5 more things I love about Seattle

1. Dick's - In undergrad, we had Los Betos. There are several Los Betos locations throughout Tucson, and at 2am on a weekend, the one near campus is always crowded. I have sworn many times that a quesadilla with extra hot sauce will cure a hang-over before it starts. As we all know, the Mexican food situation in Seattle is just not good. (It's somewhere above abysmal but below OK). But, thankfully, Seattle does have an answer to Los Betos. Dick's! They give you your burger(s) before you can finish pulling bills out of your wallet. (Or counting change, if you're Sean). And I'm not too proud to admit that I love making Dick jokes. They never get old!! (Of course, this is coming from a girl who has been making your mom jokes for over a decade.)

2. P-patch - Yep, the concept of the p-patch has its own wikipedia entry. When I moved here, my cousin Vickie showed me her garden, which she grows in the Ravenna p-patch. It was just down the street from my apartment, so I'd usually cut through it it I was walking to the Ave. It's so urban, people in condos having little gardens! But now I'm going to admit the real reason why I love the p-patch so much. When I was a kid, I had a care bears book where the care bears go to an inner city somewhere and clean up this abandoned dirt lot and turn it into a communal garden. I freaking loved that story. I think that Seattle was actually created out of all my childhood fantasies. (Am I in the matrix...???)

3. Ravenna Park OK my list is a little skewed towards Ravenna stuff, because I lived right there. But Ravenna park is seriously awesome. You go down into this ravine, and it's like being in an enchanted forest. I'd never seen so many shades of green in one place in my life. If I had to write a wikipedia entry explaining what the 4 seasons are, I'd take a picture of Ravenna park during each season.

4. The weather This follows from the last one. I love Ravenna park because I love the idea of having 4 seasons. Leaves change color here, and in the winter you can see your breath! And sometimes it even snows! In the spring, flowers start popping up out of nowhere. It's like magic. And of course it rains a lot. I remember last year when I moved to Seattle, my friends Kevin and Lillie took me to the zoo. The whole day they were going on and on about how nice it was. I was like, "what the F is wrong with you people? It's 80 and sunny, big deal." Living in Arizona, I not only took the sun for granted, I actually learned to hate it. I not only lost dozens of pairs of sunglasses, I will probably end up getting skin cancer. But now, when it is sunny out, I feel motivated to go outside and do something!

5. The radio Tucson will always have a special place in my heart, but their radio sucks. I think that's the nicest thing I can say about it. OK they had one decent station which only started a couple years ago. When I moved to Seattle I instantly noticed two things. One, they have a station that plays lots of awesome 90's music - 92.5. They were playing stuff like Bobby Brown, En Vogue, etc. that reminded me of the (good??) old days of being a teenager. Plus, they played new stuff too. The top 40 stations in Tucson literally just play the top 40. Or maybe top 10. Two, the techno station. (89.5). I loved it so much that I started streaming it on my myspace profile, and even donated money to them. It's run by high school students!! Tucson doesn't even have a techno station, and Phoenix has one but it's super crappy. Ok, if you're a Seattlite you're probably thinking - what about KEXP? Well..... I have been trying to listen to it lately. I want to like it, cause that seems to be the main way that people learn about new bands here. But it seems like so many of the songs they play are so un-energetic, I kind of can't get into it. Sorry.