Truth in

Some time ago I was flipping through the radio stations when I happened to hear about some sort of remedy to some sort of health problem that I thought I was having at the time. I don't remember what the problem was, but I didn't like it and wanted it to stop. If I'm still suffering the same disorder, I probably still don't like it. The remedy, in any case, involved magnets. I listened intently as they talked about the benefits of magnets, as I was eager to be cured of my ails. I listened until the end (which didn't take long since I tuned in half-way through), when I was informed that this was a paid advertisement. I was let down, although not too surprised. They spoke convincingly about their supposed solution, as if this solution had actually been tested, but their claims were unusual and sounded too good to be true. If I had known from the outset that I was listening to an ad, I would have changed the station immediately.

Although it takes more effort to read a paper than it does to listen to a radio station, one advantage is that when somebody publishes an advertisement that bears the appearance of an article, the newspapers have the courtesy to write a suggestive word such as "advertisement" at the top of the page. Any claims in the middle of the page that seem to be bunkum can be verified as such simply by directing one's gaze upward, thus saving a lot of time that might otherwise have been spent reading bunkum.

This being the age of free stuff on the Internet, newspapers have taken to publishing large portions of online offerings. In doing so, however, they seem to have dispensed with the courtesy of notifying their readers that what appears to be an article is in fact an advertisement.

Ice by any other name

For a good three to four years, I managed to hit the gym on average about three times per week. That stopped last summer when I decided to put everything I had into finishing my PhD. I also gave up eating food that I either couldn't pour milk on, couldn't put on bread, or didn't contain caffeine. I did get into the gym fairly regularly during the month of July, but dropped it again in early August because of the defence, vacation, and moving.

Somehow, despite my sloth and substandard eating habits, I managed not to appear less healthy. I entertained the thought that my efforts of the preceding years were permanent, though I knew this wouldn't be the case. So I had every intention of picking it up again in September, but instead I picked up a bug that immobilized me on a bad day and would certainly have interfered with a workout of any kind on a good day.

Once classes had started, it became rare that I would actually have enough time to go over to the gym and get myself signed up. Even when I did, I thought that time would be better spend on research that I was getting behind on. One morning, I decided to stop by the gym to sign up on my way to the office. But, while my old student card was a suitable stand-in for a staff card at the library, it seems that the gym has higher standards. Something without a picture on it for identification purposes is preferred, I suppose. I went to the office in the math department to get things sorted out, but they didn't have any of the appropriate forms left. Come back later. I never did.

In retrospect, I'm not sure I could have managed a consistent enough exercise regimen. I probably could have made it there now and then, once a week maybe. But that's not enough to make a difference (I don't think), and other things certainly would have suffered. The costs would have outweighed the benefits.

The month of May should have been a good enough time to try starting again, except for the fact that I wrecked my toe so badly after moving again at the end of April that walking slowly was a challenge in and of itself[1]. Real exercise would have been impossible. For the rest of the summer, I was never in Kingston long enough, it seemed, to get into a good routine.

It took some time to settle into a work routine at RMC. I was ready to do some exercise. I asked around about membership fees. Things are different at the RMC gym (actually, CFB Kingston gym). Queen's gym offers laundry service [2]. You can walk in and get gym clothes in the size that you need, exercise, and hand back the clothes when you're done. It's not free, but not outrageous either, and it's very handy. I probably wouldn't have kept up with the exercise as long as I did if they didn't have that service. When I walked in to the RMC gym a few weeks ago to ask about prices, I also asked about laundry service, if they had anything like Queen's laundry service. No, they don't. Then I had the excuse that I didn't have anything to work out in.

Earlier tonight, I decided to take care of that excuse. I was surprised at how much you have to pay for clothes that you are buying to sweat in. I shouldn't have been, since the store I went to specialized not in sporting equipment in general, but specifically in running equipment [2]. I didn't feel like driving across the city to the nearest store that sells clothes of sufficiently low quality to make me happy. I scanned my brain for other stores nearby that might sell what I was looking for. I couldn't think of anything. I've been putting it off until the next day for long enough now, and I wasn't going to give myself another excuse. So I sucked it up, and bought the cheapest product they had that was appropriate to my needs, even though the quality is greater than what I need.

[At this point, you're probably thinking that this is supposed to be something along the lines of a motivational story. Keep reading.]

One thing that was always lacking at my workouts at Queen's was a water bottle. I could usually make it through the twenty minutes I'd spend doing one exercise without rehydrating. When I was done, I would walk over to the water fountain, drink up, and go exercise some more. It worked okay. It would have been better, though, if I had water with me the whole time. So, even though I was making every effort not to spend money on shorts, I ended up spending the difference between cheap and expensive shorts on a water bottle.

The brand name of the water bottle is Subzero. Which is a great name for the bottle, because you are NOT (all-caps theirs) supposed to put it in the freezer, where you actually find the temperatures that the bottle is named after. The bottle does not have any insulating properties either. Thus you cannot bring the contents of the bottle to subzero temperatures, nor can you maintain a subzero temperatures of anything you put in it. Of course, I did not buy it with the intention of doing either of those. I just want to keep the water from falling on the floor before I can drink it. Furthermore, the name of a product isn't required by law to be able to do what its name might suggest. If you saw a product with that name, though, wouldn't you think that it would be able to do at least one of these things?

Curiously, though the bottle is made entirely of stainless steel (the caps are plastic, but not fixed to the bottle), you are NOT (all-caps also theirs) to use it for hot beverages. Thus, if the name Subzero had been taken, names involving high temperatures would also have been appropriate.

I'm probably going to return it. Not because of the misleading name (though I never bought a Nalgene in part because the name reminds me of algae. I thought it was something you were supposed to use with your fish tank) but because when I looked around to find out why I can't put hot water in it, I found very little of use. There are many places selling them. Those sites just copied the information off of the tag. I found the distributors' site, which looks like it was designed by the kid who flunked his high school web-design project, contains no information about the product, and no link to the company that makes them. I don't ask for much in a water bottle, but I would like to buy one from a company that exists.

[Okay. So what was this post supposed to be? I'm not sure anymore. Not this long. That's one thing it was supposed to be.]

[1] I think the toe problem could have fixed itself sooner had the ER doctor I waited 3-4 hours to see spent more than 10 seconds looking at it, and realized that in order for it to heal, I needed to do more than keep my feet clean and change my socks. Oh well. Five and a half months later, and I'm still not dead. So I guess I can't complain too much.

[2] Actually, they offered "locker service". You paid for a locker or a basket. The laundry service was included. I opted for the basket, because it was cheaper, though it was entirely useless to me. They were too small to fit my shoes in, but I couldn't justify paying that extra few dollars a month, which seemed to matter more then than it does now, just so that I didn't have to carry my shoes around.

dude, it's been over a _month_!

I haven't written to the blog for a while.

If you're a regular visitor to the blog, I don't even need to tell you that.

If you're a regular visitor to the blog, I'm grateful that you are such despite my not writing.

While I do not feel I owe my readers an explanation for not writing, I'm going to give you one anyway.

When I started actually writing to this blog, it was because I had a fair bit of free time on my hands. I had been given a few compliments on my writing before then, and at least one person suggested that I do some writing outside that which I absolutely must do for school and whatnot. I thought a blog might be a good way to use up that free time, and to put to good use those apparent writing skills.

When I think about it, the free time hasn't been that much since December 2006. Up to and including then, I think I was able to get at least one post a week, if not more, for most weeks. After that, I wasn't so regular. In January, I started teaching at RMC, along with trying to find time to work on my thesis and doing other academic activities, not to mention trying to maintain some semblance of a social life (It's no wonder mathematicians have a reputation for a lack of social skills. The opportunities are rare to develop them. Even maintaining them at their current levels can be a challenge). From the end of the winter term in April pretty much until the end of August, almost all of my efforts were spent on finishing my thesis. The recent fall term was much like the winter term of last year, except that now the time that would have been spent on the thesis is being spent on research.

All this time spent on teaching or research means that my brain doesn't have a whole lot of idle time to think of things to write about. It also means that I spend a lot of time at the keyboard, since my lectures are usually type-written, and I like to type up my research as soon as possible after I have a new idea or get a new result. So at the end of the day, I usually don't feel like thinking about something to write on, and even when I do, I don't have much drive to type it up. Whatever "recreational" typing I do is better spent on things like email or IM, and I haven't even spent as much time on those lately as in the past.

These are the big distractions from blogging. There are other things that get in the way too, though. For example, holidays would be a nice time to catch up, but at those times, I usually return home, where there is no internet. Blogging is pretty low on my list of priorities too. At the moment, I can't think of anything that I'd pass up so that I can blog. Even as a procrastination tool, it's pretty low on the list.

I have started a number of posts, but wasn't able to finish them in the same night that I started them. They got saved as drafts, and I haven't got back to them to finish them. Some of them will likely get deleted, since they were relevant only at the time that they were written. Who knows what will happen to the rest? There are some new recipes that I tried out over the past year that I've intended to post about, I can't remember what most of them are.

I was going to write something about how it feels to be graduated from my PhD. I don't really have much to say about this, though. I probably don't feel any different from how you would after you did one thing for five years in a row and then switched to something else. Well, at the end of it, I got to wear some funky red robes and walk around in front of a whole bunch of people who I mostly don't know, which is something nobody else does after switching occupations. But other than that, I feel mostly the same as I did before. Being an instructor for a class makes me feel somewhat different, though I think this has more to do with the role itself than the hoops I had to jump through to be considered qualified to do fulfil that role [1]. As an instructor, I feel like I have to be a model citizen who pays his bills on time and stuff like that, and that I shouldn't be doing things like drinking beer with my neighbours at 2:00 in the morning the night before I give a lecture [2]. As a person with a PhD, however, I mostly just feel like a person who spent far too much time in school avoiding real life.

There were a few other posts on a random assortment of topics. Perhaps I'll get to these. Perhaps not. I've got a few other things on my mind that might be considered blog worthy. No guarantees whether I'll get to those or not, though. Time will tell.

Anyway. Thanks for dropping by.

[1] Why having a PhD qualifies us to teach in a university, I'm not sure. The primary objective of a PhD is to train researchers. There is no required component devoted to teaching (which is no different from bachelor's degrees or master's degrees, unless those degrees happen to be in education). In math at least, much of our time in the PhD program is spent in solitude, talking little with anyone. Yes, we know the material that we teach quite well. But that doesn't mean that we're qualified to tell other people about it effectively. In fact, as I've learned from various talks given by myself and others, knowing the material well can often make teaching it to others worse.

[2] If any of my students happen to be reading this, that particular scenario only happened once, and is not the reason why my lectures usually leave something to be desired. In fact, while I know it wasn't perfect, I feel like the lecture I gave after that night was better than average.