Last Week of the Quarter

It is the last week of the Winter Quarter! I am grading the last of my finals and getting ready to listen to freshman project presentations tomorrow. This quarter has gone by pretty quickly. When you are younger they always tell you that the years start flying by, but you never believe it. I do now though. We are already nearly to Spring of 2006! It was just a few days ago that I was getting ready to go play some foosball at the BSU and see who all was hanging around, wasn’t it? Now here I am grading final exams and thinking about the best pedagogical strategy for next quarter’s senior design class, what the heck happened?

Anyway, it is still a lot of fun. I really don’t think I could go out into industry and work eight to five, five days a week with two weeks vacation a year. I have heard the old saying, “Those who can’t, teach” but I just am not made up for an industry type job (so maybe the old saying I right.) Besides, everyone is outsourcing to India and China anyway. Well, I just wanted to post a shortie so that my massive audience wouldn’t get discouraged and stop visiting my blog.

Oh I do have one item of interest stemming from the Pizza delivery incident. I sent in one of those customer response emails to PizzaHut.com and well what do you know, they actually read them. The manager of several of the Louisiana Pizza Huts called me. I explained to him my beef with the call center and the whole situation. He said he was going to send me some coupons for a couple of free pizzas and other loot. So for now, Pizza Hut is back in my good graces. So stayed tuned for the next episode when we, “Try to take over the world!” [I used to love that show. Actually, I probably still do.]

The World is Flat

Well, the math talk went ok. I am glad to have it done though. It pretty much went off without a hitch so I don't have any funny math conference stories to tell. So who knows where this post will end up. I will start by mentioning one of the books I am reading, "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. You may have heard of it, it has been on the best seller list for like 50 weeks or so. Anyway, this book is actually pretty interesting it talks about how the world-wide playing field is being leveled through technology like the internet and how many Western companies are downsizing and outsourcing to Eastern lands, particularly India.

"The World is Flat" is a pretty long book, but it is an easy read. I would recommend reading it if you are interested in taking a look at how the world works these days. There are some pretty astonishing things in the book. I will give you a for instance. You have probably noticed that if you call technical support for your cell phone you more than likely end up talking to someone with an Indian accent. Well, many of the big tech companies have moved their technical support centers over to India. That may not surprise you, but what surprised me is that they are actually teaching the Indians how to speak with a certain accent. So if you or I down here in Louisiana call them up we will get an Indian trained to speak with a Southern drawl. Anyway, lots of interesting info like that in the book.

On a side note (but still related to some of the topics in the book), have any of you ever been involved in your own home based business? I actually have been for a little while now. My family has always been into some sort of business: cars and art to name a few (I will have to tell you about my car and art background sometime.) Well, I have been involved in the wellness industry for about a year now. I have my own webpage and everything. It is actually pretty fun and I manage to make a few extra dollars. I am going to put a link to my webpage over on the side bar of this page so you can check it out if any of you are interested. I will have to devote an entire post or two just to my business in the future. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else has any home based businesses. So feel free to tell me about your ventures into the home based business world.

Well, I have noticed that my posts tend to ramble on, so I am shut this one down for now. Check out "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman and check out my business webpage. Tell me what you think.

Eye-Glazing 101

Well, I haven’t had any run-ins with the FBI or conflicts with my pizza delivery lately so I haven’t had much to write about. But something new must be posted, so I will have to astound you with my piercing insight, motivate you with my amazing discernment or of course just bore you with my senseless drivel. I will choose the latter, as it will most surely be the easiest and most natural for me. I do have plenty of real world practice in the art of inducing involuntary eye glazing. Speaking of such, I am due to give a fifteen minute presentation tomorrow at a math conference. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get along fine with mathematicians, but I am an engineer not a true, hardcore mathematics person. So I am a bit concerned about this speech.

Let me fill you in. Over here at Tech, all math, science and engineering are part of the same college so we are encouraged to work together on multidisciplinary projects. So I have been working with a math guy and some others on a project that encourages high school juniors and seniors to enroll in math, science or engineering in college. So this guy asks someone from out group to give a talk at an upcoming math conference. Of course, I am duly elected to give this talk (if by elected I mean told to be there at 3:30 with my presentation.) Why don’t I just list a few of the other topics at this conference so that you can get an idea of the audience I am going to speak to. Here are two of the other presentations:

• Solving for the zeros of the function F(q) = 1/1q + 1/ 2q +1/ 3q + …+1/(p-1)q in the finite field Zp = {0,1,2,…,p-1}


• A Structured Erythropoiesis Model with Nonlinear Cell Maturation Velocity and Hormone Decay Rate

I have no interest at all in anything remotely similar to whatever either of those talks is going to be about. But these are the things that these mathematicians enjoy. So I am feeling a bit out of place with my talk about high school students. But none the less, the show must go on. So I am just not even going to bother with talking about any sort of math and I am just going to focus on the fact that the kids are having fun building bridges and that they are genuinely more interested in math, science and engineering than they were before. We really do need to start sparking interest earlier, but that is a story for another day.

I just hope I don’t get nervous and start using the old public speaking strategy of picturing your audience with no clothes on. That would definitely NOT be the best image to have. You try picturing a room full of Albert Einstein’s in their skivvies and see if you don’t bust out laughing.

Pizza Time!

I really like Pizza Hut pizza, but after last night's dealings with them I am not sure how soon I will be partaking of said pizza. I was getting hungry and decided, you know I could go for some hamburger, pork sausage and extra cheese deep-dish Pizza Hut pizza. Plus they will bring it to me! So I call them up and order my pizza. Of course you don't actually talk to some one at Pizza Hut in Ruston anymore, you are talking to some central call station somewhere (I think it is in Shreveport.) But I have gotten used to that by now. I get my pizza ordered, with extra marina sauce (for which they have the audacity to charge fifty cents.) Now it is just a matter of time right? Wrong, it is a matter of a lot of time.

Skip ahead one hour. By now I am getting really hungry and there is no pizza in sight. So I decide to call them up and see what is going on. I get to talk to Call Center Guy and he tells me that the driver has left the store and that I should be getting my pizza any minute. Well the guy was nice about it so I decide to cut them some slack and wait it out.

Skip ahead another half-hour. No Pizza. By now, hunger has gotten the better of my senses and I decide to call them back and see what is going on. I live about five minutes from Pizza Hut and it should not take the guy THAT long to get here. Hush, of course I know I could have gone and gotten four pizzas myself if I would have just gotten up and done it, that is not the point. So for the second call I get to talk to Call Center Girl. Well, by know I my not be lucid due to my hunger-weakened state and this girl decided that it would be nice to provoke me. So I inform her of my plight and that is has been an hour and a half since I ordered my pizza . . . silence . . .silence . . . silence. Finally, I get tired of the silence and just ask her if my pizza is still on the way. She tells me (in a really rude voice) that the delivery guy just left and that it should be there any minute (ok, apparently she doesn't know who she is dealing with, I have heard that story before.) So I tell her that I was told he left half an hour ago. So she informs me that I should just be patient (again with the rude voice) and it will be there soon. So I tell her that I have been patient, but it has been an hour and a half. I didn't want to have to ask for the discount, but it seemed like I was going to have to do it myself. What ever happened to being nice to the customers, I am not paying them to be mean to me.

Remember the good old days when the pizza was free if it was over thirty minutes late? Well, those days are long gone my friend. No longer are there delivery guys driving like mad men to get to your house on time. No more free pizzas either. The girl finally relented enough to tell me that when the delivery guy got to my house I should call them back and and they will give him some type of code or something. So I continue my pizza waiting vigil.

Skip ahead ten more minutes. Pizza time! The guy shows up and he is just a little college kid so I feel sorry for him. I know it isn't his fault that the pizza is late, it is Call Center Girl's fault! I don't know how, but somehow I am sure my late pizza is her doing. So I call them up to get the code (which is ridiculous by the way, why should I have to call them? they are the late ones? couldn't they have just told me the code?) Anyway, they give him the code and so I am thinking I have in my hands a free pizza, but nooooo. It is only half off. Plus they make me do the math to figure out how much half off equals. What do I look like some kind of math guy? Ok, so don't answer that, that is not the point either. Finally I just give the guy $10 and tell him to keep the rest of it, I think half off came to $6.50 or so.

I finally get to eat my pizza, and you know what? It was still pretty darn good. But that is soooo not the point.

The plot thickens.

Well, still no internet. I spent all evening yesterday on the phone with various Cox representatives. They were pretty nice, but just couldn’t seem to get things fixed. I did find out that they didn’t suspend my account just for downloading some movie. Here is what apparently happened. I have a wireless internet router, because I don’t like being tethered by wires. So I guess I have to revise my statement from yesterday; I like to be wired, just with no wires. Anyway, it appears that someone was using my unsecured wireless connection to download all sorts of software and movies and they must have picked one that caught the attention of “The Powers That Be.” The tech support girl on the phone actually told me that she was surprised that someone hadn’t come knocking on my door (meaning the FBI or some government authority or something.) That would have been headlines for sure, “Louisiana Tech Professor Arrested, Stolen Software!”

So you say, “Why did you have it unsecured in the first place, are you just stupid?” Well, yes and no. I didn’t want to have to remember some 10 digit passkey just to log onto my own connection. Plus I didn’t figure it was broadcasting far enough for someone else to use it. Oh well, hopefully all is well now and I can go on with life. So the moral of the story is: don’t leave your wireless internet unsecured.

Internet Nazi says, "No movie for joo!"

So yeah, I like the internet, and I like it fast. I like being connected, plugged-in, wired, . . . [insert you own euphemism here.] But last night the unthinkable happened. My internet was not working! Now, I am an engineer so I should be able to fix such things so I calmly begin searching for the problem. Hmm, all the wires are connected, no obvious signs of damage. I take it to the next step, unplug the modem and reset all of the electronics . . . still nothing. Ok, don’t panic, this has happened before; you just have to call Cox Communications and have the modem reset from their end, no problem. After a few minutes of awful hold music and pointless button pushing to get to the right person I am getting the modem reset. But, what is this? Still no internet for me. So we (the tech girl and I) decide that the modem must have taken its final packet of data and headed to that great Radio Shack in the sky. They will send a technician out in the morning. I ask if they can do the evening seeing as how I am supposed to be at work in the morning, but that is a no go.

After an internetless evening I awaken to a new day filled with the hopes of my internet being restored and working better than ever. The cable guy finally gets to the house. They gave me a time frame between eight and ten. Guess when the guy shows up? I am sure I don’t have to tell you that he shows up about 9:50. So he tinkers with the modem for a while, doing all the things I did the night before. Finally, he measures the signal from the cable company and discovers it is too hot (they are sending me too much juice.) So we get that under control, but still no internet. So he connects a new modem and all looks well. But then, and this is where it starts getting interesting (and by interesting, I mean makes my blood start to boil.)
Cable Guy calls the company to tell them that he has switched out my modem and he is just reporting it in. Here is a transcript of what I hear from his end of the conversation:

“Yeah, this is . . . I am with Cox Communications in Ruston . . . blah blah blah . . . something about switching out modems . . . blah blah. . . IT’S BEEN WHAT? Are you sure? Well do you want to talk to him?”

So I nervously take the phone from Cable Guy and they proceed to tell me that my internet account has been suspended for inappropriate activity. I am like, can you be more specific? They tell me that apparently I have been downloading movies and that Cox Communications does not allow that. Now my first thought is that they think I have downloaded some sort of girly movie. So I dig deeper for more information. Apparently, Cox does not allow you to download ANY movie of any type. No funny short from IFilm, no XMen III trailer, no commercial for LOST, nothing, nada, zilch. So I ask them when they put this into place and they tell me that it has always been that way. So I ask them to point me to where I can find this in writing; they will have to get back to me on that. So I ask for more details of my suspension, but I get nothing.

So there you have it, I am a convicted movie downloader. I have been tried and proven guilty before I even knew it was so wrong. Now, I do think that there is a problem in our country with some of the content of the internet. But if I want to download a video of a guy cutting a tree down and watching it fall on his car, there shouldn’t be someone out there telling me that I can’t. So I am still trying to get to the bottom of this, surely there is some misunderstanding. Don’t worry, I will keep you informed. But if it is true that Cox will not let me download any sort of movie at all then I am going to have to find a new service. Oh, well, I always wanted Direct TV anyway. But I am NOT giving up my DVR!

Insanity I tell you, insanity.

Well, I just got back from the Tech-Nevada basketball game and I am pretty disappointed. I was so hopeful that Tech was going to win this game, but needless to say they didn't pull it out. Watching your team loose makes you just want to go out there and play the game for them, it seems so obvious what they need to do in order to win, but they just don't do it. Anyway, they are still at the top of the WAC; I just never want to see my team loose. Don't get me wrong though, it was an exciting game and I will be there watching the next one just the same.

Earlier today, I had an idea of something that I wanted to post about and this basketball game reminded of it again. It is a quote from Albert Einstein, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I am a fan of quotes, expecially from Al, he really has some good ones that are thought provoking and a little funny at the same time. Maybe I will post some of my other favorites from time to time; you can never have too many good quotes.

Anyway, back to why the game reminded me of this quote. Throughout the entire basketball game it seemed like Tech was doing the same thing over and over on defense and expecting that some how this next time it would turn out differently. It never did, Nevada just kept on scoring. It sounds so simple, but it is so true. People just get stuck in a rut and don't know what to do other than the same old thing and hope things come out differently. I don't want to ever get stuck in a rut like that and I don't want any of you to either, whoever (or is it whomever?) you may be.

Well, I have some more thoughts to post, but they are going to have to wait until the morning. I am afraid this was not a very funny blog post, but I never promised funny. So to make up for the absence of funny I will leave you with this: if you find yourself in a rut, don't do the same old thing; try something new and expect some new results! You might be surprised at what happens.