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Welcome to Our World
We have a few math games (and some not-so-math games) on our site, and the students spend a lot of time playing the games, cheating at the games, being mean to each other about the games, and complaining about the games.
In one of these games, the students can compete against each other to see who can solve fairly routine problems faster. These are problems along the lines of “I am 6 years older than my sister. What was my sister’s age when I was three times as old as she was?” We have a collection of over 10,000 problems, and the students devote a lot of time to finding strategies to answer the problems quickly. Since the rating system for this game is similar to an Elo system, so the students will also create a bunch of fake accounts to “compete” against and artificially inflate their ratings. There is also a chat feature in the game so that the students can coordinate matches against each other and discuss the problems. You can probably guess that not all 12-year-olds use the chat feature in an entirely wholesome way.
And I haven’t even started to get into the complaining. They complain when we enforce the rules. They complain about some of the problems. They complain (ok, this might be justifiable) that the networking infrastructure underlying the game hasn’t been updated in almost 10 years, so the way we hacked in persistent connections doesn’t work in most browsers on an iPad. There is a lot of complaining.
A small group of students decided that since we were not making it a priority to change the game (and the way we manage it) in the ways that they wanted to see it changed, they were going to write their own clone of the game.
Several days later, they made an excited post on one of our message boards: The clone of the game was ready for testing! Come play the new game that the students wrote.
Oh, the complaining that they are receiving in their thread on the message board! How are they storing the passwords, inquires a user. The programmers reply that the passwords are encrypted. My inner meme generator pulls out “Kermit drinking tea” and wonders if they are salting the hashes. There are not enough problems, complain the users testing this quickly-written very-new game. The programmers probably don’t realize that we have a lot of people who work full time doing little more than writing, editing, and testing cool problems for our various offerings.
The new game has no way to detect users creating multiple accounts. Nothing to stop students from harrassing each other. They can’t turn off the chat feature for users that are being disruptive. No system to deal with problems that are broken. None of the infrastructure to keep the actions on the front end from devolving into the Lord of the Flies.
Kermit drinking tea isn’t even going to think about what might or might not be going on on the back end. This is not the only group of h4ck3rz that frequent these games. Other students are going to try to break it. Kermit has other suspicions as well.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on our site there are an awful lot of students who are freaking out about the exact path that they need to take in order to be admitted to a conventionally prestigious college. Word has gotten out that they need to have a “passion” in order to be admitted to the college of their choice, and they are asking around on our message boards wondering what they should pick as their passion. What sort of passion will impress the committee? What if too many other students choose the same passion?
I could tell these college-glory-seeking students that instead they should be like the game-cloning students and find something in the world that is annoying them and try to do something to fix it and then deal with all of the unexpected issues and whatnot that comes with trying to actually do something. But then I worry that the follow-up question would be to ask me which other game on the site they should try to rewrite and which programming language would be most impressive. (COBOL on 12” vinyl.)
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Back at Home
I survived the conference. I survived traveling in Delta Discomfort Minus class. Mostly because I was offended that Delta would try to shake me down for a few extra dollars in exchange for things that I wasn’t convinced that they could actually provide. I’ve had my seat assignments ignored due to equipment changes, and I have endured rude and capricious treatment by gate agents (from any number of airlines) when traveling on upgrade-type tickets, so I wasn’t going to pay extra money and still run the risk of suffering at the whims of the airlines. I used to have status. I used to fly first class (well, the J pretending to be F that we have on domestic flights). So really anything in coach is going to be terrible by comparison.
In other personal aviation news, when my flight took off on Wednesday, April 11, it took off on Runway 9. That never happens. Like, you almost never see planes departing on Runway 9. Never, ever, ever. Even when the clouds come in so low that they need to have the arrivals come in on the ILS 9, much more often than not, the departures are going to be using 27. Departures on 9? CRAZY. And we took off on Runway 9. (I’ve still never been on a flight that has landed on 9.) I have no idea what sort of weather made that happen because there was not any weather that I could see. Magical winds? No idea.
The conference was jam-packed with all sorts of conferencing. Because the flight options for Sunday were all both terrible and expensive, I left on Saturday instead of staying until the end. So I felt obligated to go to a lot of talks. But also because I was supposed to be meeting new people, as one does at a conference, I sort of felt bad that I did go to so many talks because maybe there would have been interesting people to meet in various lounges and lobbies and such. Due to poor planning and indecisiveness, I did not give a talk. Had I given a good talk, that would have increased the number of people who might have come up and talked to me, unbidden. But that would have required me to write a good talk about things that people wanted to hear about, and that is really hard.
Spoke to three different people who seemed to each embody a particular subtype of neurodiversity. Being in mathematics, you meet a lot of people who are Not Like Most People. Also being a mathematician, I have this propensity to categorize.
There were assorted nifty problems left lying about on the tables. So I picked up some of them to bring back to the office and share with my colleagues. Someone who looked like he was about 10 years old gave a really good talk, and I shared the problem that he solved with one of my colleagues. (And I’m not doing the dismissive thing of claiming that a college graduate looks like he is 10. This person really did look to be about 10 and was accompanied by his parents. There was an even smaller child who gave a talk. The smaller child was young enough that he still had that “little kid accent.”)
On my way from the conference to the airport to fly home, there was a fight on the train! A possibly-intoxicated passenger on the train allegedly disrepected another passenger on the train. A third passenger, unbidden, took it upon himself to defend the honor of the woman who had been disrepected. The fight was fighty enough that there was blood on the seats and floor after all parties had disembarked. I minded my own business and looked the other way for the duration of this altercation.
Returning to San Diego, we landed on 27 (of course, we always do). The cats survived under the able care of the catsitter. Even without a catsitter, the cats probably would have survived 60 hours without supervision, but it’s always good to have someone come by and make sure that nothing too stupid had happened with the water.
Today I almost caught up on all the emails from when I was gone and emailing all the people from the conference that I exchanged cards with. Tomorrow I’ll do the rest of the keep-in-touch emailing with people whose cards I don’t have. Also tomorrow I may finally do all of the stupid scrapbooking that I need to do in order to have work pay for my travel and conference registration. The hotel receipt is super-weird because the hotel’s computer system can not deal with special cases, but I suppose that handing a stack of paper over to the accounting department and hoping for the best is better than just paying $1500 worth of conference expenses.
If I can remember to bring in an old photo and scan it at work tomorrow, I may have more to say about some of the people who I talked to at the conference.
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Found in my Laptop Bag
I just emptied out my laptop bag so that I don’t accidentally try to bring something both beloved and forbidden though security. To pack, you must fist unpack.
- Two single-serve bags of almonds.
- An unopened envelope with a check in it, postmarked from February. From a medical practice that alternately sends me checks for $15 and then bills for $15.
- Loose check, also uncashed (but opened) (from my parents) ($25).
- Five tablets of generic Maxalt.
- Two fountain pens (both out of ink).
- A millionty bazillion business cards (mine).
- Ten 8-digit codes that most likely let me back in to some account that talked me into some sort of security scheme that relies on me not losing this list of codes.
- Postage stamps (28).
- Still more business cards (mine).
- Bus pass that expired several months ago.
- SD card to USB adapter.
- Clip-on blinky red light.
- Splenda (two packets).
- Stickers with the company logo on them (not hex shaped).
- Phone charger.
- Two pairs of reading glasses.
- iPhone earbuds.
- Corporate credit card.
- Hair ties.
- Band-aids.
- 64 GB SD card.
- 4 GB flash drive.
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Pledge Drive
My local public radio station is trying to manipulate its listeners this week.
I spent all the money on programming for you! I know you enjoy these programs, so I’m airing them for you. I care about you so much. Can I have $60? That’s less than you spend on coffee, bitch!
*** If you had just given me $360 the last time I asked, I wouldn’t have to do this. We could have gone to the theater and seen Ira Glass. We could have had such a nice time. It’s all your fault that this is happening.
*** You’ve been listening for years, but you’ve never given me anything. I provide in-depth investigative journalism, and I get nothing from you! Those other radio stations just can’t compare. Do you really think that you’re going to listen to another radio station? What would our friends think? Can I have $1200? I do all this for you, and after all this time together you can’t give me $1200? Why is it always about the money with you? Don’t you care about our relationship? You’re going to listen to another radio station? YOU’LL COME BACK! YOU ALWAYS DO! And when I’m gone, it’s going to be all your fault.
*** You thought you could just take me for granted? How does it feel now, now that I’ve taken away the news? I knew that you’d miss the news. You didn’t think that I’d take it away. BACK UP. STAY AWAY. DON’T COME CLOSER. DON’T MAKE ME HURT THE NEWS. If you give me $180, you can have the news back. I promise. I mean it this time.
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Packing Woes
All my suitcases are terrible. Well, that is not true. I have one suitcase that is very good for spending several weeks in Europe. Unfortunately, I am now in a phase of my life where I do not have the opportunity to summer in the Rheinland anymore.
Later this week I am going to Atlanta for a conference. Packing issues, summarized:
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I do not own a roller suitcase that is official carry-on sized. My smallest roller suitcase is just big enough that it needs to be checked. None of my carry-on bags have wheels.
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I AM FLYING TO HARTSFLIED-JACKSON ATLANTA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, AND THERE ARE GOING TO BE AIRPLANES THERE. Do I bring the good camera to get photographs of the good airplanes that will certainly be at the airport? Can one get from the “at the airport” parts of the airport to the “watch the planes” parts of the airport without too much trouble? I do not know.
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Also, there might be things in Atlanta that are not airplanes that I might want to take pictures of. Bring the good camera? Or the small camera? Which lens(es)? I’m terrible at anticipating which lens(es) to bring with me to places. Probably the safe bet is the small camera with the 50mm? I could fill an entire carry-on bag with cameras and lenses. Yes, I am entire capable of being That Guy.
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You never know when you need to use your infrared camera. Well, that is not true. I have grown fond of using it for cutting through the smog for landscape shots (when using a filter that blocks all visible and UV light) and for strangely faux-colored night scenes with #nofilter.
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Does Atlanta have weather? I am so bad at going places because I have forgotten that there is such a thing as weather and that sometimes one needs to plan one’s clothing around the weather.
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Also from the That Guy department: I’m going to bring a bunch of books to give away to people who might be interested in spreading the good news about our new and amazing books. So I probably should go with the checked bag because carrying a bunch of books in a bag without wheels sounds like a bad idea. Also, I think I heard that the TSA has some sort of crazy rule about how many books you can carry on to a plane? Is that even real or was that fake news? What can you bring on an airplane these days? It’s possible that I haven not been on an airplane since I came back from Denmark. (Aside: If you can read both English and German, you can read most signs in Danish. The Danish word for airport is lufthavn. If you can speak English, you can talk to over 90% of the people in Denmark.)
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I should go to Target and buy a small bottle of contact lens solution, independent of which bag(s) I end up bringing. Likewise, the hair detangler situation has not yet fixed itself despite my disappointing but ultimately successful trip to Walgreens today. (They did not auto-refill my prescription, so I almost ran out. So I called the automated phone system, which promised that it would be ready by 10am. I went at around 10am, and they were actually open, and they did not have my prescription nor any record that I had called today. They also scolded me for not picking it up when it auto-refilled – when they did not call or text about it being refilled. But they were able to fill it while I waited, and it only cost me $10.41 because our system of paying for health care in this country makes absolutely no sense at all.)
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Jim is visiting his mother on the east coast this week, which means that I need to prevent him from taking my small roller suitcase in case I do end up using it. This apartment is too small for me to successfully hide a suitcase. I may have to feign packing and set it on the sewing machine cabinet and half-fill it with clothes. Downside: Cats love nothing more than sleeping on clothes in suitcases.
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School Supplies
Allow me to start this by saying that I totally believe that the teachers in West Virginia and Oklahoma and wherever else the teachers are standing up against the government have legitimate concerns that need to be addressed.
But a lot of the rhetoric that is being tossed around is putting the teaching profession in a really bad place in terms of public relations.
First off, all the data that I’ve seen lately (which might be wrong because it’s all friend-of-a-friend on Facebook stuff from sources that I haven’t heard of) says that teachers in New York, California, and Massachusetts are averaging salaries of over $70,000 a year. That’s not investment-banking numbers of dollars, but that is certainly edging in on some of the “learn to code” professions. Especially since teachers get way more time off than a lot of jobs.
The people on the internet make claims about the amount of time off that teachers get, but both my parents were teachers, and I taught at several universities. Teachers get way more time off than other jobs do. WAY MORE. And a lot of them have summer jobs. My dad had a job every summer. A bunch of teachers that my mom worked with ran a contracting company, and they worked construction in the summers. They renovated our kitchen in the summer of 1987. The current principal of the high school that I attended has a second full time job as a sports agent. This is in addition to making (as the Wikipedia reports) $141,444 a year as the principal of Niskayuna High School. Teaching is hella flexible. School districts should be pushing this: Want a job that lets you run a business in your spare time? Try teaching!
Oh, what about all the prep time? Don’t know about the rest of the teachers, but I learned from my parents: Save your notes from the first time you prep a lesson, and it is way faster to prep the next time. Likewise with grading: There are a lot of valuable assignments that are easy to grade. Rely on those as much as possible. This I learned early: When I was in elementary school, I was grading exams for high school biology and chemistry classes.
The thing I really don’t get is all the money that teachers are spending on their classes. I don’t even know what they are spending money on. The only thing that I ever spent money on was dry erase markers, and a $30 box of markers was more than enough for an entire school year. You can buy a box of 5000 sheets of paper for $25. A box of 500 pencils runs about $35. I could easily teach a year of math to hundreds of students for less than $125 worth of supplies.
So instead of having all of this negative news out there about the teaching profession, there should be more good news to get more good people into teaching. In states that care about education, teaching pays at least as much as some jobs in tech (I can say this because I know how much some of my friends with entry-level tech jobs are being paid and how that compares to entry-level teacher salaries in California). Teaching is really flexible. You don’t need to sit in a chair at a desk all day. Almost everyone at work who is acting like a child is an actual child and can sort of be excused for being that way.
If word gets out that these are actual good jobs (in the states that care), then the states that don’t care will have a much bigger reason to worry about losing their teachers to other states.
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Friday Omens
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Woke up at first at 3am but managed to go back to sleep until almost 6:30am, giving me over 10 hours of sleep. Yesterday was pretty useless because I had a two-star migraine most of the day which morphed into a four-star (maybe five-star) migraine by 8pm, at which point I went to bed. My rating system goes from 0-10. Anything less than a seven is going to have no barfing.
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At first I was excited that I had a full year worth of the daily star ratings of my headaches, but then I checked the records, and the detailed ones didn’t start until May 5 of last year, not April 5.
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My hair is super-gross today. I ran out of the detangler that I usually use, so my comb was tearing my hair to shreds this morning. I found a leave-in conditioner that I had received as a free sample from Sephora at some point in the past. Clearly it is not meant for hair like mine because just a small amount of this product has made my hair even more limp, stringy, and greasy than usual.
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I tried to order more contact lenses. They are back-ordered.
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