I’m in search of a treatment for my swollen gums. Starting Tuesday evening, part of my gums have started swelling. Specifically, it’s the area behind the last tooth on the bottom left of my mouth, where a wisdom tooth used to be. The wisdom tooth was removed years ago, so that couldn’t be causing a problem now. Possibly it’s caused by some bacteria or irritation by food particles stuck there, since I haven’t flossed in weeks. Reason being that flossing with braces is virtually impossible. That’s my experience, anyway. If you’re able to floss with braces, please share how you do it. 
Archive for the 'Life' Category
At the end of every semester, the University of Southern California has students complete course evaluations. These include reviews of our professors and teaching assistants (TAs). Typically, professors don’t take these seriously at all. They’re passed out in the middle of one of the lectures towards the end of the semester, and then the professor leaves for 15 minutes while we complete them. One student is designated to complete them and turn them in to the department. In other words, we don’t get much time to complete them, and students who don’t come to class don’t get to do them at all. Sometimes classes have fewer than 50% evaluate the professor and course.
I learned from Professor Zuckerman (Core 101) that they actually take course evaluations very seriously. According to him, every single one of them is read… and the scores have a direct effect on salary and promotions. This is a very good thing because students definitely have a better idea than anyone else of what the class is actually like. He advocates taking your course evalations home and turning them in later… this is something a vast majority of students aren’t aware they can do. In fact, Zuckerman requires it: he takes our evaluations upon submission of our final exam– and the evaluation is mandatory, good or bad. It’s anonymous and not grade-impacting, so it’s important for us to really tell the professors and the school what we think.
Tonight I went to a midnight showing of Disney’s latest computer animated movie, Meet the Robinsons (G). It was a 3-D showing– with 3-D glasses, dual projectors, etc. I was very impressed, and not just because of the superb presentation. It’s also a compelling storyline, and it’s told in a very entertaining way. Academic types are likely to find the storyline too trite, simple, and predictable, but I believe that if you watch it with an open mind, you’ll find that the way the story is told is quite excellent. [Spoiler alert. If you read the rest of this post, something may be spoiled for you. Personally, it wouldn't bother me, but I'm warning you in case you felt differently.]
I found a link to the original rules for the game Mafia. It’s really a fascinating game, and amazing to see how it’s a worldwide phenomenon. I’ve seen it played in middle school, high school, church, youth groups, colleges, companies, internship programs, and so on. There’ s literally no place that Mafia hasn’t been. Here’s the Game Schedule according to the original rules (warning: may have popup ads) written by the inventor of the game, created in 1986 in Moscow. Continue reading ‘The Original Mafia Rules’
Yesterday I posted about how great Firefox’s upgrade procedure is. Today, I want to contrast that with an “Update Manager” that’s really terrible.
Today I realized I’m a fanatic. I have an “irrational enthusiasm” for things I love. At the current stage in my life, that means (1) Google, (2) Firefox, (3) InterVarsity, pretty much in that order. Google is one of the most exciting things in my mind. I actively seek to learn more about Google and I’m trying to get a position there myself. I love using Google products and regardless of whether they make me an offer, I’ll continue using and promoting Google. I became the Google Ambassador for USC, a volunteer gig where Google gives me money to buy food for computer science students to take study breaks, that’s how crazy I am about Google. I love getting to know Googlers and to imagine what kind of resources they have and what ideas I would have for improving their products. Quite honestly, I love thinking about Google and using their products. I can try to avoid it, but I’m sure I’ll come back to it. Google is just a great company.
OK, I’ve figured it out. I looked through a lot of trash and ended up with two really simple programs: Juice for downloading podcasts to your computer, and Shuffler for transferring from computer to MP3 player, assuming your MP3 player works like mine does (that is, it creates a drive letter, which is pretty typical). PodcatcherMatrix looks like a good site too, and includes all of the podcatchers I evaluated, plus more.
This is really interesting and a little scary. I’ll link to some stories since I don’t have any firsthand new info on this. I do think it important to learn Chinese, though, but I don’t think I’ll actually get the motivation and opportunity to actually do it.
I’d been running 2.0.1 since it was released, and I skipped over all the intermediate releases until today’s release: WordPress 2.1. This seems to be quite a major upgrade. It seemed to go smoothly, but it’s hard to tell with these things.
Unfortunately, USC gives each email account only 75 MB storage space. I feel like I’m living in the dark ages of the Internet, when hard disks were expensive and bandwidth even more so. I quickly maxed out the space limit, but it’s not a problem thanks to Google Gmail. For my own curiosity, I shall record here that 75 MB of emails came out to 5441 messages. I’ve now transferred the emails to my local machine using Mozilla Thunderbird and IMAP. At least they offer POP and IMAP access– a big plus.
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