December 2007 Archives
The other night I went to Sam's Club with Heather -- a place that I despise visiting, despite enjoying all the things that we buy there. Anyway, on top of that we were in a bit of a hurry -- or I was, since I had to complete the removal of a software bug that had been bothering us, before the meeting the next morning.
So I tossed the item that we had come to buy -- a gag gift for my family's Christmas celebration -- and then moved to the registers at a fairly brisk pace. But not offensively brisk. Or so I thought.
So I guess a little girl had darted in front of my cart. I remember being aware of the presence of little children in the periphery. I mean, I knew that I was in control of the cart the full time. Or so I thought.
I didn't slam the cart into any little children, by the way, so don't worry. Even if I had come close to it I would have remembered. So I must have successfully maneuvered around the kid, and was on my way. No harm, no foul.
But anyway, I guess some woman apologized to me for letting her kid get into my path. When I failed to respond, she grabbed her kid and said, "move out of the mean man's way, honey." Or something to that effect.
Now, I wasn't aware of any of this. Heather told me while we were standing, waiting in the checkout line a couple minutes later. I felt as though I should have felt guilty, but I didn't feel any actual guilt. I thought the whole situation pretty funny. I did feel bad that someone mistook my lack of general awareness for meanness... but that's life.
Anyway, if I've been that mean man to anyone lately, I apologize.
Heather just walked by and hovered over my shoulder to read what I was writing in my blog. As usual, I pushed her away, since I can't stand people reading what I'm typing while I'm typing it. It's only after I'm done writing that I feel semi-comfortable having people read what I have written. Stupid, I know, but I feel like, that letting someone read while I am writing provides too deep and revealing a look into my psyche than I want anyone to ever see. "Oh, he backspaced over that word... and oh, he added a different one!" I wouldn't even want myself to replay what I am writing, for example if I were to videotape the process. "Ahh, that's what I was thinking," my future self might say to myself, decoding my former self's thought processes, judging, smiling, and not without a dollup of self-satisfaction. "How shallow I was." Hell, I don't read any of my old blog entries because of this reason.
Anyway, that's beside the main point of this postscript.
So I told Heather the main topic about which I was writing, to which she replied:
"Don't write that..."
"Why not?"
"Because I may have exaggerated the story a little bit," she said with a coy smile.
Anyway, I don't know what to believe anymore. But if I manage to offend you or have managed to do so recently, I'm sorry. I was probably so busy thinking about something stupid to even notice that I had done so. My bad.
The semester is over, and my team (Sam, Dave, Sean and I) has delivered its presentation and paper for EECS 574: Computational Complexity. The subject matter is arbitrage and its potential in prediction/information markets such as InklingMarkets, Tradesports, and Intrade. I think we were able to come up with some pretty interesting results.
There is an error in the presentation on slide 16 that I haven't bothered to correct yet, but by and large the presentation is correct (thanks to Nate for pointing this out). I and my teammates would really be interested in hearing comments from my readers on this topic.
