Saturday, March 31, 2012

Sunburnt

The trouble with a sunburn is that it is an unexpected change in appearance, hydration, and self-esteem.

I spent 80 minutes outside today and came home with the most substantial sunburn I've had in at least a year. It's not a bad sunburn by any means, but that doesn't stop me from catching my red face in the mirror and thinking "Doofus!" every time I wash my hands. My multi-colored and splotchy arms are a reminder that even though I think I'm tough I am entirely powerless to survive in the sun under my own power. For all the work I do to keep myself alive, three hours in the sun without protection would turn me into a grumpy old person who doesn't move very fast. A sunburn is a worthwhile reminder of my own mortality. I think my least favorite part is having such a visible reminder of my oversight. Most stupid mistakes go unnoticed. I classify not wearing sun-screen as a stupid mistake, and I therefore naturally expect to sweep it under the rug like most other stupid mistakes. Despite its categorization as "weak-sauce", this blunder insists on declaring itself in shiny red discoloration all over my forehead. It's a visible reminder that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. "Oh hey guys, guess how stupid I was this weekend..."

I realized something today. I've never been turned down by a girl for not being nerdy enough. I've never been passed up for a job or anything like that on those grounds either. It makes me wonder, then, why so much of my life is focused on becoming more nerdy. The good news? My secret plan is totally working. I am nerdier today than I have ever been before. If these trends continue I'll be incapable of normal social interaction by fall semester of 2014. Just think of how much homework I'll get done once I am universally shunned by all other human beings. My productivity will go through the roof.

You know what I love? I love the flavor of the week program. I love the idea of being able to try something new at a reduced price (for a limited time only!). Case in point: Subways sub of the month, or whatever they called it. For one month a new sub is a five-dollar footlong. That just makes me happy. I've never ever bought one, but the idea is appealing to me. When one is single, I think similar things happen. There are flavors of the day or week or month. Sometimes we know that the idea won't stick around for long, but for at least a day we have one target. If you're me, you'll never ever talk to her anyways, but it's nice to actually have a target for a day instead of moping in the realm of "I've got nothing". I appreciate the flavor of the week program. Maybe one day I should man up and purchase the sandwich and actually talk to a girl. One day, one day...

Today has a song of the day. Not because today has any particular connection to this song, but because this song is a very good song that I like very much. There is no reason that this couldn't be the song of yesterday or the day before that. Today's song of the day is Sweet and Low, by Augustana. Will I embed the youtube video? Of course I will embed the Youtube video. I can vouch for the video- it doesn't contain any objectionable content. It is, in fact, safe for work.




Well friends, I'm out. I hope y'all have a good weekend. Catch conference if you can, it'll be great. One day, in the distant future, I will not have math homework hanging over my head. I'll have a job where I work on solving compelling problems. I'll have health insurance and a wife. Give me those four things, and shoot, I'll be a happy camper.

I've got to make it known, though, that I'm a happy camper right now, too. Life is good. Things are going excellent. I've got something to work for. Word, y'all have a good night. Enjoy the music.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

A List of Things That I Would Like to Abolish

I have a really hard time with Tuesday and Thursday classes. The hour-and-a-half time limit just seems far too long for me. I have a Java class that is Tuesday/Thursday. I haven't been on time to that class more than a handful of times this semester. It's not that I'm not passionate about the material- because let's be honest, I love it. I recognize that being good at Java is directly tied to how much money I can expect to make in the next few years. I really like my instructor too- he's a total stallion and he's good at what he does. Sure, the lectures aren't the most exciting thing I've ever seen, but it's still good material. I just don't love Tuesday and Thursday classes. I know there's no real way to avoid them, but I'll try to minimize them in the future.

I also struggle with classes that are defined as the first class of the day. I am pretty good at being on time to classes that are after the first one, but shoot, I'm never on time to my first class. I would love to abolish the first class in general, but I realize that doing that isn't really mathematically possible. Curse you, well-ordering principle!

This gives me an idea. I'm going to start a list. I will probably update this list as time goes on. I am open to suggestions to the list. Here's what I've got so far.

A List of Things I'd Like to Abolish:

  • The first class of the day. To it I am always late. In it I am often asleep. If my first class were my second class, my transcript would look far better than it does.

  • Girls who wear rings but aren't married. Confession: I have no idea on which hand the wedding ring actually goes. I have texted my roommates twice since I've been back at school to double check. I see cute girls all the time with a ring on their ring finger, but since I'm incapable of remembering which hand counts as married, I have no idea whether I should talk to her or not. Is she single and she just likes rings? Is she married and would I be a dirtbag for talking to her? She has a ring on, but it's on her left hand. What if it were on her right hand? I have no idea. So, with these problems in mind, it makes more sense for me to abolish the wearing of any rings unless someone is married than for me to actually learn which hand is the marriage one. You know what we call this? This is ambiguity. It could mean one thing, but it might also mean another thing entirely. A program won't even compile if it's got ambiguity in it! Since I can't tell if a girl is married or not, I have no idea how I should operate around her. My life would be much less ambiguous if that ring finger were kept open on both hands until a wedding ring is there.

  • Speaking of relationship ambiguity- can we abolish those that do not have their relationship status posted on facebook? I've been guilty of this one in the past, yeah, my bad. In my defense, this is not a rational list- this is just me being ridiculous. Hypocrisy is allowed in a ridiculous list, right? So here's my beef with the no relationship status on facebook: I'm a researcher. Before I ask someone out or go indicate that I have any degree of interest in someone, I want to do my research. This preliminary research usually takes the form of a facebook stalk. Call me crazy, but you wouldn't buy a car without checking online first, right? Same story, I'm not about to go invest time/energy without some initial facebook stalking. The biggest thing I want to know is whether or not a girl is dating someone. A normal human being would just go talk to her and find out. I'm not even close to a normal human being, so I'm going to ignore the suggestion that I ditch my anti-social tendencies. Anywhom, this lack of relationship disclosure on facebook leaves me in the dark. How am I supposed to know if I can ask her out? It's just like the ring thing, except I can be confused without even being in the same room as a girl this way. To solve this problem, we should make relationship status a mandatory disclosure on facebook. Those that are found to be falsifying information will be drawn and quartered-- it's only fair. Since the "it's complicated" status can be potentially confusing, I think we should just make it a radio button that says "Chris Thatcher can ask me out" or "Chris Thatcher shouldn't ask me out". Two options-- clear as day. That way we don't even have to know about your relationship status. Those that want to remain dating someone anonymously can do so. All we just need to know how you feel about me. This is a great idea. I'll email Mark Zuckerberg right now.

Alright, so if you're new to the blog I should probably include this warning: I'm not really a dirtbag, I promise. But hey, every once in a while you need to throw out a ridiculous list, so here I am. I invite anybody with something they want abolished to leave a comment and to let me know. The revolution starts here, apparently.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Over Achiever

You know what I love about being a Computer Science student? I love the fact that I can go above and beyond on assignments. I love being able to put in an extra hour or two to make my program that much better than it would have been otherwise.

I just finished up an assignment for 1410. I had a great time doing it and I feel like I did a good job. The truth is, the last two hours I spent on it were pretty superfluous. I'm a grader for CS 1400- I know that we don't spend more than three minutes on each assignment if we can help it. If it functions like it is supposed to and doesn't have the glaring errors we check for, it gets credit and is passed on. I just spent an extra two hours making my program awesome, and there's a good chance that nobody will ever really notice it. I'm okay with that. I'm pretty proud of me.

Now, I think I should make it clear that my program isn't really all that awesome. It fulfills the requirements of the assignment in a little bit cooler way than it could have. I love it because it is mine. It's not revolutionary, but it's something I did and I therefore feel some pride in my work.

I feel like this is a good sign. I'm enjoying the work that I'm doing. Even though my math homework is a mean mean mistress, I do enjoy solving the problems. I love my CS homework even more. Grading is tedious, but it's still fun for me. I've got the best majors in the world.

I get worried pretty often that I'm not good enough yet. I'm certainly not at the level that I'd like to be. It's good to remind myself that I'm still but a wee lad when it comes to this schooling stuff. As far as computer science goes, I might as well be a freshman. I have a few years ahead of me where I'll be taking classes full-time so I can learn this stuff. I hope to one day be excellent. I'm not there yet, but I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.

So, this is me. Certainly without enough sleep, but satisfied and happy to be working on my education right now. There are good days and bad days when it comes to school, but I feel like today was a good day. I hope that things are going well for y'all as well.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Survival from Dave's Place

It's Friday night, and I survived the first week back from Spring break. You remember that time that I posted every night for a week? Yeah, that was because I had no school and no homework. This week has been awesome- I've had tons of work and haven't had a ton of time to relax. I really do value my time writing here, I just wish that I had more of it.

This week had a ton of grading for CS 1400. It's getting much easier and it really is a satisfying job for me. It's fun for me to try to help the kids in the class. I leave gigantic comments and try to teach stuff as I'm forced to take off points. I feel like it has helped me understand the basic concepts. I guess that it's a little unusual for an undergraduate student to have a grader position in the department. It's also unusual for someone who speaks English as their first language. We're working on a really cool research project where we document all the bugs that beginning undergraduate students have troubles with. It's tedious, but the end goal is that we understand better how to teach and help students. Computer Science has a huge attrition rate- somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of kids that start in the major drop out by the time they're through with CS3 (and yes, that 50% was just made up on the spot. It's still pretty high). Our goal in this project is to work on reducing that. I'm trying as a grader to help kids come along. I do love teaching and helping.

I'm attending a math conference this weekend. Yeah, you read that right, a math conference. Last week was the state math competition, and this week is the MAA conference. There was an awesome talk tonight on the pancake flipping problem. Tomorrow morning I'm giving a 15 minute talk on the Frobenius number problem, particularly comparing the lower-bound for sets of size 3 with their actual Frobenius numbers. I'm enjoying the conference a lot more than I thought that I would. It has been a busy week, and preparing for the conference added a lot of stress. Since it isn't directly related to my GPA it has been hard for me to justify delaying other things in order to get ready. It has been worth it so far. I've learned a lot and had a good experience.

I feel like things are going well academically. At the same time, I occasionally get this feeling that I've skipped a million steps and don't really belong here. I once felt like I knew calculus very well. That was years ago, and now I consider myself a complete n00b when it comes to calc. There was an integration bee at the math conference today. None of us from Utah State entered, but I would have got owned had I tried. I'm but a small lad in a big world. Like a little kid trying to wear big-boy pants. Same story for CS. I'm working hard and learning a ton, but I tend to surround myself with people that are way better at all this than I am.

Fitting Example: Last semester I had three math classes. Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, and Intro to Probability. So, there were three undergraduate-teaching-fellows that taught those classes- Scott, Dave, and Sarah. These people are awesome. So, there are four of us undergraduates that drove down to the math conference together today. I drove the tempo with Dave, Sarah, and Scott. It was way fun. In math we don't tend to separate ourselves too much. Last semester they were very clearly my superiors. They helped teach my classes, let's be honest. But today we're all just colleagues or contemporaries. I respect them a ton and they respect me as well. Given that I took a probability class, I'll just point out now that the probability of me driving a car from Logan to Salt Lake to attend a conference with the three undergrad-teaching-fellows I had last semester is pretty low. I wouldn't have seen this coming last semester. I'm grateful for the opportunity, definitely.

I've felt stressed this week, and I am way less friendly when I am stressed. My goal for this next week is to fall asleep thinking about something that is not math. I can't tell you how many times this week I've woken up in the middle of the night and can tell, despite not being more than 30% conscious, that I was working on math. Not that I'm capable of working on math when I'm asleep, but just that my brain was running all sorts of circles around the ideas. Yeah, this doesn't normally happen, and I'm taking it as a bad sign. Well, not the healthiest sign. But definitely nerdy, and generally that's a good thing for me.

Because of the stress level this week I don't feel like I've been making great decisions. I've needed to go grocery shopping since Monday. It is now Friday, and I never went. I've been out of milk since I left for Spring break. This has led to me not eating breakfast. I'll be honest- I don't love eating breakfast. I do believe it's important. I can survive without it, but I'm a firm believer that my days go better when I eat breakfast. Today I woke up, got ready, and threw down some oatmeal. Today was awesome. I need to take care of myself. In an effort to work uber hard this week I didn't take great care of myself, and that has led to me being unable to work uber hard. It's better for me to take care of myself.

I have found social life to be more difficult than I was hoping it would be. I am convinced that finding a girlfriend is NP-Hard. Maybe the fact that I have classified the computational complexity of finding a girlfriend is a good indication that maybe I should try a less nerdy approach to socializing.

Westminster has a pretty cool campus, by the way. We were there today and its pretty posh. I wouldn't attend, clearly, but I liked the old and classy feel that it had to it.

So what's the news? I'm glad to have made it through this week. I'm not quite through yet- I have several more hours that I need to dedicate to my optimization homework before Monday morning. Once I give this talk tomorrow morning, those hours of homework are the last things that stand between me and rest. I'm looking forward to that rest.

Well friends, I'm alive. Surviving. Here crashing at Dave's folk's house on the East side for the night before we all go back to the conference tomorrow. This should be a cool weekend. It's amazing we've made it this far. I hope y'all are doing great. This cat is going to get ready for bed. w00t.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Strong Force

Levi and I worked on registering our intramural team for ultimate tonight. We settled on the name "The Strong Force" as a play on a sweet physics principle and a great defensive mantra. The online system allows your team to have a logo, so I spent a little bit tonight whipping this up in Gimp. 'Hope you like it. Intramural championship here we come.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Layout

We played Ultimate tonight. Despite the fears of high winds and fairly low turnout things ended up spectacular. The wind died down and we had a blast playing 5 on 5 on a shortened field.

Before game time me and my brother were both brushing our teeth, getting ready to go play. I told him that tonight I was going to lay-out for a touchdown. Laying-out, or "going-ho" as Kyle likes to call it (the ho stands for "horizontal", by the way), is ultimate terminology for diving to catch a disc. It's pretty much the height of awesomeness within the sport. There are few things that are more manly than throwing yourself through the air to catch an object that you shouldn't possibly be able to reach.

The thing about setting a goal like that is that the situation is not entirely within your control. Sure, you can play your heart out and make an attempt, but in order to succeed at all this a moment must exist when you are the exact distance away from a disc traveling at exactly the right speed at exactly the right direction to make it impossible to reach on foot and yet possible to reach by air. It's sort of tricky business, and tends to spawn run-on sentences as you can clearly see.

About 20 minutes or so into playing tonight I got my golden momente. Somebody threw a toss to one of my teammates in the end-zone, but the throw was too high and the other player had no chance at it. I was further back, towards the middle of the zone, and saw the disc coming. I ran at it like crazy. As I got closer I got the feeling that this was actually going to work. It was far enough away, but not too far. There was no way I'd get it without the dive. The disc was in that magical zone right between possibility and impossibility. It's rare that you get those sweet opportunities. Those chances to stretch yourself, as I commented a few nights ago, are few and far between. They are worth seeking after. It wasn't an easy catch; it wasn't an impossible catch. It was right where I wanted it.

I dove and made it. I flew at it belly-down, right arm extended for the catch. I made the connection then rotated to land and slide on my back and shoulder- all the while holding the disc straight up in the air to signify that I had made the completion. I had met my goal.

The thing to know about all of this: that catch felt great. I'm used to feeling good about things. The feeling you get when the test gets handed back and you find out that you got a killer score- the feeling you get when you get the email saying you got the position you applied for- all that jazz. I'm even used to that feeling in basketball and video games. You know, the feeling you get when you get a triple-kill in Halo or Dota? Yeah, that's the one.There's a good feeling that comes with triumph. Something about chemicals in the brain. What I've got to say is that the pure sense of victory and win that rushed through my brain when I made that catch trumps all of them. I haven't felt that awesome in a long time. I was surprised at how great it felt, really. Ultimate, as much as I love it, is entirely inconsequential. I'm not sure why a game that is so unimportant could stir such a physiological response from me. What I do know is that it did, and it felt great. I felt like a total all-star.

In hindsight, the combination of great weather, endorphins, and the presence of an exceedingly cute girl 10 feet away when I made the catch all probably have something to do with it. The girl is dating someone (tragedy, really), but that in no way interfered with my primordial manly desire to show off what a total stallion I think I am. There's something deep within us that wants to be the greatest on the field. That part of us wants to outperform everyone, including our own expectations and limitations. It felt like that part of me was dancing, on fire, in the middle of the Large Hadron Collider after I made that catch.

Most things I do make sense in my brain. The huge rush or satisfaction I got when I made that catch? Yeah, totally not expecting that. I was expecting to feel good, but not that good. I guess I cared about it a lot more than I thought I did.

That's my triumphant story of the night. Not so much that I made the catch (even though it was pretty sweet), but moreso that I felt so good about it. It's good to be human and to feel passionate about things sometimes. Even if they are inconsequential and not "mission-critical", it is awesome to care. Our ability to feel is something to be treasured. Tonight I felt like a stud-muffin, and that means the world to me. Tomorrow I'll feel something different. Chances are I won't like it as much, but I know that it will be valuable and will change me into the person that I am the day after tomorrow.

Word.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Spring Break Successes

It's 4:17 AM and I'm writing a blog post. Must be Spring Break. I feel like I'm in high school again-- living at home, playing dota (2), and writing posts while staying up uber late. It's nice to be back in this world, at least for a little bit.

Today had three great successes. They are mostly inconsequential, but that's what Spring break is all about, right? Without further ado, the three coolest things that happened today.

  1. I just played an awesome game of dota 2. I random'ed whatever they call the old harbinger. Outworldly something-or-other. He's the intel hero whose ulti computes the difference between your intelligence and the bad guys' intelligence and then does 10x that much damage to them. I ended up going 12-10 or something like that. My record wasn't incredible, but the last two pushes that won the game were both fueled by me getting ultra kills on their whole time. I had an orchid, shiva's, and was in the middle of building a scythe. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 230 intel. I was an insane DPS machine with the meanest ulti in the game. So, yeah, we played like a team and I feel awesome about the contribution I made. Not bad for still being a noob.

  2. I jogged between four and five miles today. I decided I wanted to do our old Monday morning distance run, except a little shorter. Had I gone full distance it would have been closer to nine miles, but since I didn't have a team with me and had all the time in the world, I jogged the first half and then intermittently walked and jogged back. I took a few minutes to sit down and watch the river go past, it was pretty nice to just take it easy. I feel good about hitting my goal to run it today. The best part about it was that it totally regulated my blood sugar all day long. I'm not quite sure what's up, but my body is a ton more responsive to insulin today than normal. I suppose it's the increased activity level (it's been years since I've run this far). I guess I should make this a more regular occurrence, I'm sure my kidneys will thank me for it.

  3. Today was a good hair day.

Word up friends. I hope y'all are doing well. Keep up the good work, I'll catch y'all on the flip side.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Happy 8th Anniversary to The Other Dentist


In ninth grade I got an assignment from Mr. Brough to find out which blogging service would best fit the needs of our Journalism class. I did some research and suggested that Brough have the students use blogger. He assigned us all to create a blog and write at least two posts. That was eight years ago. Most of the blogs that were created back in that day have since died, but I know a few that are still kicking. Ha, we don't go down too easily.

Happy pi day to everybody out there. That's really the only way that I know the anniversary- my first post was about pi day. I'm glad to see that I was a nerd back in ninth grade. That was eight years ago, apparently. Can you believe it? I feel like it was longer, honestly. I was a much different person in 9th grade. Same basic makeup, I suppose, but with much less experience. I'm confident that I'll look back in another 8 years and say the same thing about me right now. Same basic person, but can you imagine the experience that I'll have in 8 years? I should have a family and career by then. That's pretty insane. I might be driving a car that is not from 1993. Now that'd be pretty hardcore.

I spent the day up in Logan, proctoring the state math competition for high school and junior high kids. I loved attending the competition while I was in school, and I jumped at the opportunity to proctor this year. The whole concept is pretty simple: A few professors at the host university (it rotates every year) write two exceedingly difficult math tests, one for high school kids and another for junior high kids. Kids from every school in the state

(Err, surrounding region? Not sure) are bussed up to come take this radical test. We anticipated 2,200 kids on campus today. I didn't hear the final count, but it looked pretty realistic. The test is designed to be at least partially way over the head of most kids. There are some problems that are fairly easy, some that are difficult, but most that are just a little obscure and that never get treated by a high school math course. It's more of an exercise in problem solving than in hardcore mathematics. I haven't taken this years test (although I happen to have three copies of it in my backpack for a future time when Me, Levi, and Kyle want to nerd out together).

The thing that I love so much about the state math competition is that it really doesn't matter. I mean sure, we get to gather some information on how one school compares to another school in math, and we get to compare male vs. female scores for all grades and all that. But aside from the data collection, the scores don't really matter. I suppose that if you did incredibly well you would be offered a scholarship or something, but I haven't really seen it happen. It's just a chance to take a day off of school, visit a college campus, and try your hardest to solve some pretty difficult problems.

I was very impressed with the students in my room today. They are required to spend at least 1.5 hours on the test, but can take as much as 2.5 hours if they want. Once the first 1.5 hours were over we had a little more than half of the kids leave- they had clearly done as much as they knew how. The other half stuck around and just kept on trying. They were working uber hard to solve problems they'd never looked at before. These problems had exactly no bearing on their grade or chances at university acceptance. There existed something within the students that urged them to solve as many problems as they could, despite the fact that they were difficult and largely useless.

I'm impressed with the tenacity that I saw today. It takes a special kind of individual to throw themselves wholeheartedly at a problem whose solution is largely insignificant. Having participated in this event multiple times I can tell you that it truly doesn't matter. But here they were, students, in droves, fighting like crazy to do just a little bit better than the other guy. Or maybe not even better than the other guy, maybe they just wanted to prove to themselves that they were that good. Or perhaps it wasn't about proof at all, maybe it was just about discovering their true limits as a math nerd. It's not every day that you get a test that is so difficult that you can't possibly get 100 percent on it (note: it is not impossible to get 100 percent on this test. It is just highly unlikely).

Opportunities to push ourselves this hard don't come along too often. We don't normally get to push as hard as we can. We most often just push super hard and the car either moves or it doesn't. It is rare that we can push as hard as we can, see some small movement, and then keep pushing as hard as we can and keep moving forward. It's like this sweet mushy spot of progress that makes me happy. I think the state math test does that. You get to push your brain as hard as you can against it. It's not like doing that will give you 100 percent, and its' not like doing that will give you 0 percent. You end up splattered somewhere in the middle, and that is where you lie. I love standardized testing.

Scoring on the test is worth mentioning. Leaving a question blank is worth 1 point. Marking an incorrect answer on a question is worth minus 2 points. Getting a question correct is worth 5 points. Some students were advocating the "If you don't know, don't guess" strategy. I think that's totally bogus. Assuming that we have 5 options, a blind guess will result in +5 points one-out-of-five times. If it weren't for the minus penalty, you'd be striking even with not putting anything at all. So, if probability holds, we could guess on five questions. Four of them would be wrong, for minus 8 points, and one of them would be right, for plus 5. We're at a -3 right now.

The cool thing about multiple choice tests is that you can eliminate answers that you know are not correct. If you can eliminate one answer, all the sudden you are gaining +1.25 points on every guess instead of just +1. If you eliminate two, or three, you are dominating. The elimination game in standardized testing is way too valuable to ignore. I wish somebody would teach this in high school. When it comes to scoring high on exams, you are going to need to be able to guess. Knowing how to guess is definitely going to come in handy.

In the past 24 hours I've only had about 70 minutes of sleep, so I'm going to head to bed. Merry pi day to everybody out there. I hope life is going well. Here's to continued postage.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Becoming Prolific

I was once a prolific blogger. I feel like I added value to myself as I wrote. I learned more about who I am and what I care about. I appreciated all the comments and encouragement that I received from readers. It really is what kept me going.

I'm at a point where I want to become a prolific blogger once again. I've almost always had this desire. I think that my audience, in large part, has refreshed. There will be a few old familiar faces, but more or less I will be writing to a completely new group of people. I'm convinced that most of those people don't exist yet.

I feel strange writing this. I'm still trying to write to the old audience. There are certain things that I have typed and then erased- this is not the fearless writing style that I espouses throughout my high school blogging career. The things that I'm thinking about writing about (ha, that's an about sandwich with writing in the middle of it) are not necessarily innocuous things. My current plan is to write about the way that I think and feel about things. If someone were attempting to stalk me this would be the new place to do it. I'm planning to write how I feel about school, politics, social issues, etc. etc. I want to do this because I'm feeling increasingly insulated socially. I have discovered that I require a fairly large amount of social interaction. If I don't get this interaction I get a little cranky.

Now, typing blindly to an audience that may or may not exist doesn't really seem like suitable social interaction, but I am confident that it will produce the results that I am looking for.

So I'm not sure what this will all turn into. But I want to start writing often again. Doing so will require me to be more vulnerable than I have recently been. Vulnerability is an interesting topic- it means that I share more than usual and am therefore more apt to get pwned for it. I feel like this is a good change for me to make, so I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot.

Just a quick shout-out to a few of my blogging heroes- particularly Jaron and Nate. They are good fellows that add value to the spaces they inhabit.

So, here's to more content. I can't guarantee quality content, but I can certainly guarantee some increased quantity of it. I have found a direct correlation to the number of naps that I take and the number of posts that I write. Since this is Spring Break I took a massive nap today. Hmm.

Well, here's to a new kind of Dentist. I hope this goes well.