The summer til now...

I don't feel I'm much of the blogging type, but after seeing our blank page, I got really sad, and decided something had to go up. So, I'll just outline a little about what's been going on with my summer... since I think that's what you're supposed to do.

I'm working at Rockefeller University in a small group with two other people, writing a package for the statistical programming environment R that will let people fit mathematical models to biological data. And as boring as this may seem, it's actually been really fun. I think I'm adding to the project too, since they're such a small group, and neither are really programmers, so I can hammer out quite a lot of code for them in a much shorter time than they would spend, while they can focus on more of the math and biology. It's kind of imposing, since the one I'm working closely with went to Harvard undergrad and U Chicago grad for math, and the other guy is a very well published former Harvard Professor who does a mix of math and biology. One moment in particular that got to me was when we had a meeting about a new type of model, and they started out by basically giving me a lecture about the Poisson, binomial, and negative binomial distributions, and how they all have different definitions but turn out to belong to a general class of random distributions. I've never even taken statistics, so they basically started from the very beginning. I've never been lectured from two sides before, and it was kinda scary.

Besides that, there's been my lame attempts at learning how to drive. I'm a native New Yorker, so I walk everywhere and take pride in that. If walking isn't fast enough, take public transportation or a taxi. And the one rule about driving in NYC is: you should have walked.

So now, having been a pedestrian all my life, I now have to get in a 2000lb vehicle and see things from the other side, and realize that people actually have NO control over these things. I'm a very calm person, usually, but I'm a rather nervous driver. And learning how to drive has given me a strange form of road rage: I get mad at the cars when I'm walking.

I also started karate again, which is why (I think) the skin on my knuckles is peeling away. Having taken a long break from it, coming back is really difficult. The muscles we use are slightly different than I remember, but more disturbingly, my recall on techniques has been destroyed. And as a black belt I'm expected to be able to remember all the foundations perfectly. So yesterday, I got put in charge of some blue belts, and I had to fake teaching them a kata. I think we got it right in the end, but it was really embarrassing to realize how much I'd forgotten. And then one on one with a green belt, it became clear how much I'd forgotten when I couldn't even begin to do one of their katas. I have no idea how I'm going to get all of it back, besides going early with one of my friends just to go over it all.

And that's basically all from my front. No crazy stories yet, and living with my parents and my brother, I'm trying to keep it that way for the summer.

Other PKT blogs

Why's there nothing up here?

And do we have links to the other blogs?