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Order
There is a lot to say about adjective order in English.
But this morning when listening to the news, I was wondering about the ordering of titles and honorifics. We all know that “Reverand” comes before “Doctor” in the context of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
But what is the order of “Admiral” and “Doctor” when talking about Ronny Jackson?
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Hiring Updates
So often I tell you that we are hiring. Did I tell you that we’ve hired some people?
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I was part of the interview process for our new administrative assistant. We have hired someone, and she started a few weeks ago!
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Also was part of the interview process for someone who will be answering parents’ questions about our school (among other things). She’ll start this summer.
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I don’t remember what I told you about the interviews that I participated in for our new marketing expert, but she started last week.
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We’ve also made a senior-level hire (I was part of the interview process), and she’ll be starting this summer.
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Oh, we hired a dude to do something important. No idea when he’s starting or exactly what he’ll do. Was not involved in the interview.
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Hired a whole bunch of part-time/remote people. I think we need a bunch more. Not directly involved in the details. One of them is legit famous in his own right, and I was sure to send a link to his Wikipedia page to the head of the hiring committee.
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Closely related project has also hired a bunch of people, but they still have ads up for two more positions (one here and one on the east coast).
We have hired so many people that I have lost count of how many people work in the office. We have hired so many people that a few weeks ago construction workers came and built a wall to turn what had been an awkward storage area into office space. We have hired so many people that HR sent around some form that we all had to fill out because companies with more than some specified number of employees need to send out certain forms to be filled out.
And we are still hiring.
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In Praise of Nordstrom
So much of computer security is designed by boys, so I don’t need to worry that I’m giving away the answer of one of my account recovery questions by telling you that my favorite department store is Nordstrom. The security question people expect that I have a favorite sports team, that I had pets growing up, and that my relatives have well-defined names. The two-factor authentication people assume that I have pockets in which to carry around the second factor. Meanwhile, the cat has no idea how lucky she is that she can authenticate to her food dish via the microchip in her neck.
The closest Nordstrom to my home is at the Fashion Valley Mall. I always feel so out of place at the Fashion Valley Mall. This is the sort of mall where there are a lot of very wealthy tourists all the time. When Mitt Romney was living in his La Jolla house (the one with the car elevator), you would not be surprised to hear that the Romneys were going out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory at the Fashion Valley Mall. There is a sign up apologizing that the Carolina Herrera shop is being renovated, so CH is in a temporary location next to Prada. I feel like everyone else at the Fashion Valley Mall is so much richer and more fashionable than I am.
Now that I work at online school, in an office building whose door is guarded by an office manager who is also a former marine, I hardly need to deal with non-mathematicians ever. Strangers rarely visit our building, and I don’t get out much. I haven’t been to the gym in months because of my headaches (which – no matter what Barnard’s exact test might tell me – are not any better on this new medication that I was so hopeful about). I’ve basically reverted to the feral condition, much like the state that is rather commonly seen among math graduate students.
(More that one of my colleagues has shown up to work wearing pajamas. It is common for mathematicians to walk around barefoot in the office. We are all dressed fairly similarly when someone uncovers a box of free t-shirts sent by one of the projects that we collaborate with. I am not the only feral member of the technical staff.)
Due to a combination of KonMari, clothes wearing out, and me gaining enough weight that some of my favorite clothes don’t fit any more, I had to buy some new clothes. So I went to the Fashion Valley Mall on Saturday. Specifically, I went to Nordstrom. You can go to Nordstrom, and when someone asks, “May I help you?” (and they will, fairly quickly even) if you say “Yes!” and know what you want, the person will try really hard to help you. And if they are judging you for being a poorly-socialized mathematician, they keep it to themselves. So I succeeded in getting what I needed in a very short amount of time.
Yesterday I decided that the sizes and colors were not actually what I wanted, so today during lunch I went back to Nordstrom. And someone very quickly, ably, and friendlyly helped me with all of my returning and exchanging. She went into the stockroom to find other sizes and colors; I didn’t need to do any of the re-shopping myself. I probably spent more time looking for a parking space than I spent in the store.
At one point I had signed up for one of those internet services where they do all the thinking for you and send you a box of clothes. And it was terrible. I don’t have a lot of fussy requirements about my clothes, but the rules that I have are very rigid. I know a lot about fabrics and garment construction, and I know what I like and what I don’t like. I do not care if everyone else is wearing leggings with oversized tops; I am not going to dress like that. The internet algorithm big-data random box of clothes people don’t listen to me. The sales staff at Nordstrom helps me find exactly what I want.
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Engineering Projects on Hold
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Figure out what to do with expired transit cards. Can I use the RFID chips in my expired transit cards to do anything neat? Probably not. I’ve been wondering if I can use them to open the cat’s food dish, but I’m worried that if I press the “add pet” button on the back but the dish doesn’t recognize the bus pass, then either the hungry cat will somehow add her microchip to the whitelist or else the anorexic cat will have her access removed.
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Bypass the meaningless gate at the front of my building. I don’t have a good photo of the meaningless gate handy, but due to the slope of the lot, anyone with decent upper body strength could use the wooden fence (topped with a 2x4, flat side up) to assist in getting over the gate. The building next door has a similar gate; I’ve seen neighbors climb over it more than once. Outside the gate is a panel of buttons. If you press the button for my apartment, then a box by my front door makes a loud noise. If I press a button on the box, then I can “buzz” you in. I want to take the box off the wall and attach the “ring” wires to the “buzz” wires so that you can just buzz yourself in.
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I want to get an antenna mast and put my 1090 MHz antenna on the roof of the building (well, probably screwed to the fascia) and then run some LMR-400 cabling into my apartment, having it come in through a tidy-looking face plate. Putting antennas on your roof is a family tradition.
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Friday Omens
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It looks like new neighbors have moved in directly downstairs. The unit had been vacant for almost four months. Apartments in this building have gotten so expensive that I would not live here if I didn’t already live here.
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The tupperware filled with an ancient leftover (whose creation and storage I played no part in) is now sitting, still leftover-filled and closed – in the sink.
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Saw a new migraine aura this morning. A gray circle, about the size of a dime, with a black border. Flashed in and out of existence a few times over the scope about just a couple seconds and now seems to be gone. Over the past few months, the new visual auras have been circular and not jagged or crystalline.
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Today would have been Michelle’s 45th birthday.
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Pros and Cons of Having a Migraine
This morning I had a headache so bad that it woke me up at 3am, and I knew that the only reasonable thing to do was to go and take a bunch of medicine and then go back to sleep.
Con: Terrible headache, slept in much later than expected, going to get to work much later than expected.
Pro: Based on expected arrival time at work, my expected departure time from work will almost perfectly align with the optimal time to head over to the Thursday knitting group that I have missed for the past several months because I couldn’t figure out how to fill in the time between the end of work and the start of knitting group.
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You Can Only Be a Promising Young Mathematician For So Long
There were just shy of 300 people attending the conference that I was at last week.
During the summer of 1994, I was part of an undergraduate math research program that had 20 students.
Three of the students were at the conference. Me, the hedge fund guy, and the Fields Medalist. Not at the conference but probably should have been: the guy who does really amazing machine vision stuff for Google and who has given a very well-received TED talk.
(I’m near the center. The Fields Medalist is in the lower left.)
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