Down to the Wire

Published
by
jeff
on September 5, 2008
in personal
. 2 Comments

Currently, it is 10:15AM on Friday, September 5th.  In 25 hours - tomorrow at 11:00 or so - my wedding ceremony will commence.  These are my final hours as a bachelor.  It’s been a wild ride planning and getting ready for a wedding - not to mention getting ready for a marriage.  But Alice, my bride, is so wonderful, and I am so excited to spend my life with her.  I can’t imagine anyone else for me.

It’s exciting, and scary, and fun, and every possible emotion rolled in to one.   But primarily it is exciting, and I am very much looking forward to being married to my beautiful bride.

Busy Year

Published
by
jeff
on June 3, 2008
in personal
. 0 Comments

Wow, this has been / will continue to be quite a year.

This year, 2008, I graduated with honors from Gordon College, was inducted in to the Phi Alpha Chi honors society, got engaged, will get married, will become officially moved out of my house in New Hampshire (although I haven’t really lived there in awhile, except over last Christmas break), was accepted into two PhD. graduate programs for mathematics, deferred for one of them, got a job as a software/database developer, and will eventually purchase my second car.

Not only that, but I have been out to Minnesota once already this year (where I proposed), am flying to Colorado tomorrow, will be taking a honeymoon somewhere in September, and then will be going back to Minnesota for a second wedding reception for all of Alice’s friends and family who could not make it out here.

I don’t think I’ve ever done so many things in any one year of my life before…or even any five years!

I’m so thankful for how blessed Alice and I have been this year - blessed by God and our families. Alice and I are even going to be working close to each other (just a town or two apart), which will make our living situation very manageable. And, since Mike is PhD’ing himself in Amherst, we’ll still be able to get together semi-regularly. And we’ll be living a whole 20ish minutes closer! w00t!

Higher Mathematics

Published
by
jeff
on April 19, 2008
in math and college
. 0 Comments

You know you’ve reached an upper level math class when statements like

lub_{p}L_{p}(f) \leq glb_{p}U_{p}(f)


make sense.

Engaged

Published
by
jeff
on April 10, 2008
in personal
. 4 Comments

This post is a little late, but on March 14th I proposed to Alice, and we are now engaged!  We went out to Minnesota for spring break to visit her family, and I popped the question while we were out there.  Her parents were in on the plot, which added to the fun.  We of course called quite a few people that afternoon to share the news, and it turns out that her grandparents got engaged 55 years and 1 day before we did.  Interestingly, we hope to get married in September, which would potentially mean we would also get married 55 years and 1 day after her grandparents did!

Now we are kind of scrambling to find a church to have the ceremony in, and a place to do the reception.  Most places are extremely expensive.  Google informs me that the average cost of a wedding these days is $15,000-$30,000 - ridiculous.  We are going to spend only a fraction of that, and it will still be nice.  If you have any ideas for venues to look in to, please tell us - we’d love to hear it.  We’re going for rustic but elegant, like a big lodge or something.

In other news, I was accepted with a full ride and stipend to Colorado State University for the PhD program in math; however, I am now planning on taking the year off so Alice and I can get married.  That means I’m now in the job market, something I despise - I hate applying for things.  Hopefully I’ll find a technical job though - something to do with math and programming would be great.

I’m not sure if anyone still checks this site, but if so - thanks. :)  I foresee myself keeping it more up to date in the near future, especially after graduation.  I’ll have to document all my photo trips with Alice, Mike, and Amy.

Last Semester

Published
by
jeff
on October 30, 2007
in college
. 2 Comments

Tom Howard

Published
by
jeff
on September 24, 2007
in christianity and college
. 1 Comment

Tom Howard, a Catholic scholar, author, and teacher, spoke today in chapel.  Unsurprisingly, he was spot on about everything he said.  Also unsurprisingly, I think 75% of the people in attendance missed the whole thing because they weren’t paying attention.  More about that later.
One of the main points he made is that worship need not be (perhaps he went so far as to say “should not be”) an emotional event, but rather something more intellectual - an action performed, not an emotional response.  At this statement, my intellect (ironically) leaped with joy.  It’s something I’ve believed for quite some time, but unfortunately, when I’ve expressed my opinion to fellow Protestants, I’m usually given one of two reactions: 1)  I’m put down being told that I must feel my personal relationship with Christ for it to be authentic; or 2) I’m given looks of the utmost concern, as if my very soul is at stake on this point, and am told something vague like ‘don’t worry, it will come’.  A combination of these two reactions is also possible.  Unfortunately for me, articulating my thoughts on the spot is not my biggest strength, so the debate is usually not very long or fruitful for either party.  I think those same people would have had a problem with the liturgy we said in chapel today.  We said the phrase “Christ have mercy” or “Have mercy on us, O Jesus” dozens of times in response to small statements, usually of the form “Jesus, the Redeemer of sins” or “Jesus, lover of Chastity”, for example.  Now, I am not used to liturgical readings at all, but it occurred to me during the liturgy that the repetition served to really drive home our need of Christ’s mercy and a reminder of all the things Christ is.  As Howard said (paraphrased), “If someone asked you to describe Jesus in 25 lines, what would you say?  ‘Jesus is like, wow, awesome’?  The liturgy gives you the words you could not come up with yourself.”  It is not spontaneous or emotional, and it strikes me as a truer form of worship than jumping around waving your hands in the air.  Not that that is bad, necessarily.

He wasn’t able to touch on it much, but I think the Catholics have the right idea about Communion too.  We Protestants have much to often just an assembly line form of communion: We distribute the elements as efficiently as possible, and say “Here, take your saltine and your fruit punch, and think about Jesus!” Yes, this is an exaggeration, but if you have to rise from you seat, solemnly approach the Priest, and take real bread and wine, I think the experience will be much more humbling and genuine.

Unfortunately, as I said, I think a lot of people missed the whole thing, and it was probably those who needed to hear it the most.  I was surrounded by people reading (bad) or sending text messages (worse) or just chatting with their neighbors (awful).  There were two girls behind me who I think were much more concerned with how fashionable they looked than learning anything.  They even talked to each other during the hymn we sang.  Now, not even they would dare speak during a prayer.  I think anyone at Gordon would blush at the thought of talking or making noise while someone was praying in chapel.  What they don’t understand is that singing a hymn, reciting a liturgy, and paying attention when someone is teaching about God are all just as important, and are all in their own rights acts of worship.  I wanted to smack them in the head and tell them to grow up and listen up, but I’m afraid the results would not be positive.  Actually, the results could probably be the impetus for Tom Howard’s next book, Blunt Force Trauma to the Head is Not Enough.

Howard said a lot more, and I could not disagree with a single point he made.  I might write more on it later after it stews in my mind for a bit.  For now, these were my initial reactions.

Nerd Quiz

Published
by
jeff
on September 8, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

I don’t typically do the “What kind of <whatever> are you?” quizzes online, but this time I couldn’t help myself. Here are my Nerd Test results:


NerdTests.com says I'm an Uber Cool Nerd King. What are you? Click here!

August 17th

Published
by
jeff
on August 20, 2007
in personal
. 1 Comment

So much happened last Friday (August 17th) that I can’t come up with an appropriate title for this post.

First of all, it was the last day of my twelve weeks of summer research. It wrapped up pretty quietly. I had been working on a proof that ended up being incorrect, and a program that ended up not working as we hoped, but my professor tells me he thinks both will still be useful in the future, at least as a starting point for something else. Perhaps it is true, and perhaps he means to make me feel better. I’m not sure.  It was also Alice’s last day as a camp councilor. It was also our anniversary!

Alice called me at about 1:00 PM on Friday, which was unusual - she had never made a phone call from work before, that I was aware of. She said “Hey - how would you like to go to the Patriots game tonight? My boss can give me two free tickets, worth $90.00 each.” Well! I said of course I’d like to go, I’ve never been to a professional sporting event before, and a Patriots game would be my first choice of one to go to. Unfortunately, she hung up and as soon as she did I realized that we had no real way to get to Gilette stadium in Foxboro - neither one of us have cars, and the train doesn’t go out there. (Actually, it does - but only one train goes, and we couldn’t catch that one in time.) So I attempted calling back, but she had put her phone back on silent. I guessed (correctly) that she thought the stadium was right in Boston, which it isn’t - if it had been, we could have taken the train in no problem.

Anyway, we ended up finding a car to borrow. Actually, a massive, handicap-ramp equipped van is what we found, but it still got us there. We left for our supposed 1-hour journey at 6:45 (kickoff was at 8:00), knowing we’d be late but figuring we’d get in by 8:30ish. We were both very naive, having never done this before. We had about $17 between us when we got near the stadium (at 8:15), and soon discovered that traffic was crazy and horrible, and parking costs $40. Long story short: after much driving, and me running into the stadium to find an ATM, and Alice driving around to find one, Alice ended up getting cash first but getting to the lot so late in the game that they didn’t charge for parking (which was nice). We ended up getting to see all of the second half of the game. I saw the last bits of the first half while I wait for Alice to park too.

We had decent seats. Several people came down to get their pictures taken next to our seat since there was a good view of the stadium there; all who came said it was either their first game, their anniversary, or both. The guys behind us asked us “Say, it doesn’t happen to be your first game too, does it?” We said “Actually, it is, AND it’s our anniversary!” So he kindly took our picture for us, and we got a good laugh.

Field goal kick (notice ball at top of picture)

The Patriots ended up loosing to the Titans (my grandfather in Tennessee is happy, at least), and despite the headache of getting there and not getting to bed till really late (nearly 2:30 AM), it was a good experience and a lot of fun.

The next day I was up at about 7:50AM, preparing to move out. Dad came and helped me move out and move back to Gordon; Alice also came to help out, which was very nice. I finished unpacking and moving in by around 10:30 that night. So now I’m back at Gordon, and have one more day off before I start work again, and one week until classes resume. Here comes my senior year.

Quote of the Day

Published
by
jeff
on July 26, 2007
in tech
. 0 Comments

“Tech support is like trying to explain to someone that the reason they keep tripping is that their shoe laces are untied.   Unfortunately, despite the fact they have owned the same pair of shoes for the last ten years, they don’t know what  kind of shoes they have, or even what ’shoes’ or ‘laces’  are. ” - Me

Gordon Summer of Code

Published
by
jeff
on July 18, 2007
in personal and college
. 2 Comments

I post so infrequently that every time I log in to WordPress, there’s a new security release available. Sigh.

My summer is going well, more or less. I’m doing math research at Gordon - yes, there is such a thing, why do people keep looking at me like that? - with linear programs (LPs), trying to discover some deep relationships between a primal LP and its dual, and trying to write some software in C++, which is rather difficult seeing as 1) I’ve used only Python for the last several months and 2) I don’t know C++. But I’ll figure it out…the C++, that is - I’m still pretty stumped on the whole research bit.

I’m living in a fantastic Gordon-owned apartment this summer in Lynn. Gordon owns 7 apartments here, and there are about 20 of us living here. The kitchen is huge and the place is air conditioned - it doesn’t get much better than that. Plus, Alice lives right down the hall, so we get to see each other a lot, which is very nice.

None of my summer projects are coming to fruition. I had hoped to be a Python master by the end of the summer, and I’ve gotten closer, but not as much as I wanted. I haven’t learned Blender 3D at all. I haven’t read any books. I haven’t taken the GREs. Yikes - this is not a happy list! I need to get cracking - there’s not very much summer left.

To get things started, I’m going to go to bed. I think the light from my laptop is bugging my roommate. Perhaps I’ll write more soon…I don’t know if anyone reads my site anymore though!