I don't have much to write about since my life is math and Buffy.
Buffy season 5 has been very good so far. Actually, I don't see any dip in the quality yet.

In math, I had an idea to solve this month's Problem of the Month, and I couldn't get the details to work out, it involved a long computation of a second derivative. Today, I worked it out and sent the solution. I was very pleased with the solution.

In other news, I didn't give any opinion on the Film Society today except "I didn't like 'The New York Stories'" that was it.

24 today was excellent. Good to see Jack in action.

-At nights I have been doing mathematics recently, it feels pretty good. Too much Buffy had me miss out on the fun of mathematics.

-Nevertheless, I am still watching Buffy consistently. Season 4 is pretty good, it is not as good as season 2 or 3, but it is picking up and I like Riley (although every Buffy fan seems to hate him, I like his character). I just saw the Faith episode of season 4 and it was excellent.
The series Angel was strong the first 8 episodes, but the last 8 it has had one good one and the rest are bad. Hopefully it bounces backk soon, the turnaround has been the moment Wesley arrived. Wesley is a character I like, but the stories have been awful since he arrived.

-I also attended the Dartmouth Film Society to discuss the movies of the week. I was very happy because this time I was able to get in some good comments and discuss some things I thought about the movies. The highlight this week was High Noon which was an excellent movie.

-The episode of 24 this week was weak. As Greg pointed out, "they didn't deal with the Chinese thing", a crucial thing in the plot wasn't dealt with at all. At least we got to see Jack do some terrorist thing. The only difference between Jack and a terrorist is that the audience thinks Jack's ideas are right.

-I attended a thesis defense today. The talk was very good. The results aren't super impressive, but that is more due to the fact that the problem is so intractable. Viggo Brun proved that the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes converges to a number B. Twin primes up to 10^16 have been computed and it B > 1.83 (since their sum 1.83). The expected number for B is about 1.902.
In the book Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective they show B < 2.34. The graduate student improved the technique to yield a tighter upper bound B < 2.22. He then went on to assume the Extended Riemann Hypothesis (ERH) and use techniques there to improve it to B < 2.17 (this bound is conditioned on ERH, whereas 2.22 is not conditional). It seems like there is still a long way for this. The talk was very well presented and it is fun number theory stuff, but at the same time it feels bad to see how far we are from proving stuff like twin-prime conjecture, Goldbach conjecture, abc conjecture, Riemann hypothesis, Brun's constant.

Recap of things done recently:
-Watched some Buffy and Angel. So far I am 6 episodes in Buffy season 4 and six episodes into Angel season 1 (parallel viewing). Besides episode 6 of Buffy, the season has not been good, Buffy thinks its seasons with long-term perspective, so I expect it to turn around soon and be awesome. Angel is building up to be pretty good, I like the female cop.

-24 had a good episode this week (although not as good as last week). Jack is arrested, let's see what happens, it seems like CTU needs him. Also, Bill Buchanon was fired, which is very sad.

-Algebra. Did my homework for the week, I was very proud of an idea to solve one of the homework problems, I hadn't used the Chinese Remainder Theorem in weird rings before. The class is shaping up really nicely, we are about to prove a big structure theorem using modules (every free abelian group is a sum of cyclic groups or something).

-Went out to celebrate the birthday of another grad student. We went to a bar. The bar had a weird grilled cheese sandwich made with bacon and peanut butter. It didn't taste very good, but I had to try it.

-The discussion on the Dartmouth Film Society meeting was very heated in terms of "Lives of Others". Two of the guys thought it was just solid but nothing special. Complained about how it portrays woman, simplifying Berlin after the wall fell down and technicalities about the ending. SPOILER ALERT: Complaint about ending it in a freeze frame and the fact that there were multiple endings. I disagree with most of the complaints, but one scene at the end I think should have been stripped away. The government doesn't give you the information of the officers, so the scene where he goes to see him (and then doesn't) seems irrelevant for three reasons: 1) It goes away from history (whereas they depict most things with historical accuracy) 2) It doesn't serve much purpose given that we don't see an interaction, we just see Weisler from far away and the writer thinking about it. 3)The writer dedicates the book to the codename of Weisler, not to Weisler, hence that scene would have been as powerful as it was without the previous one.
One reason to explain the existence of that scene is that the writer would have been curious and would try to find who saved him. Hence with that scene they showed us briefly that curiosity and how he realizes he doesn't need to greet the savior. END SPOILER.

It feels a little bad to say "Fun Day" after the tragic events in Virginia Tech, but I actually did have a great day personally. Saying that, I wish the world wouldn't have people like that idiot that destroyed more than 30 lives yesterday and who also ruined the lives of many others who were connected to the victims or will be traumatized for witnessing such an event.

I watched a lot of short movies (as my previous post attests to) which was fun. I also had some nice classes and I went to the film society meetings to discuss the movies we saw this day. The discussion was very fun with many laughs. This time I got some good comments in, being the dissenting opinion in "For Your Consideration" which everyone seemed to dislike (I liked it).

At night, I went to the gym to run and after running I went to shoot some hoops. This time instead of 2 on 2 it was 3 on 3. Instead of one game, it was 6 games. We lost 4 of them, but it was pretty fun, specially considering they were a much better team than us. Their three were a guy named Can who was the best by far, a kid (probably 15) who was much better than the kid on our team and another guy which was better than me (although not by too much).
Then, 4 other guys joined in and we played full court 5 on 5. I made a key three pointer (actually 2 pointer since, 3's count as 2's and 2's count as 1's) in the end to pull ahead 13-9. We ended up winning 15-13, so it was pretty close, although I think we had won before when Arvin made a 2 pointer that the opposition counted as a 1 claiming he touched the line.
It was awesome playing basketball. The basketball shooting practice on Sunday really helped me have good shots yesterday. I had a blast.

It was so fun, I was late for 24. Although, I didn't get to see it. Greg is out of town (skiing of course) and we usually watch it in his computer. I brought my computer to the apartment as a solution, but I couldn't make the ethernet cable work out. Instead I realized why I don't have my computer at home, it means countless hours of chatting instead of reading or sleeping.

This morning I came in and immediately tried to find the 24 episode of last night. I managed to see 3/5 of the episode, since the links for parts 4 and 5 were dead by the time I got to them. Fox has the whole episode on myspace but it freezes my firefox everytime I try to see it.

Yesterday was a day full of classes, all of them had excellent lectures.

I went to eat indian food and it was delicious. I had the "Lamb Vindaloo" and since Paige didn't eat all of her Chicken Tikka Masala, I ate some of it with Naan (I love Naan).

In the evening, I went to the Dartmouth Film Society to discuss the movies the school showed this week. I'll have to go more often to actually get comments in because it seems like most of the comments come from the same 3 or 4 people. Also the meetings only last 45 minutes, I think it is too short a time to discuss five films. It is a little ridiculous.

At night I went to the gym and did cardio stuff. I like running or biking, but I don't like the other stuff, it is boring. I got bored and went to the basketball courts to shoot balls. I was there for about 45 minutes, surprising how fun it can be to shoot the basketball even without anyone to play with. I took some statistics in free throws, I went 37 out of 100, although 22 out of 50 on the latter part of it, so at least there was considerable improvement. I can remember the day when I would score about 70 out of 100. I'll work on my shooting ability, my ego needs it.

After exercise, it was time to watch "24". It was one of the best episodes so far. The scene where Doyle looks around the room and sees everyone dead was priceless. Jack destroying everyone saving the day. I also liked how I expected the tension to go on six more episodes, because usually the crisis goes all the way till the 24th hour, but no, it stopped yesterday. The next 6 episodes will be of rescuing Audrey from the Chinese government. Props to the show for being a bit unpredictable. Also, I like how the president has acted, having some balls.

Did my laundry, finished reading a book and graded exams for multivariable calculus.

The book I read was "Fig Eater", a very good book that deals with a crime in 1910 Vienna. You follow the inspector, a really interesting character, on how he tries to solve the murder. Yet, his superstitious, strong attractive wife is compelled by the mystery and tries to solve the crime herself with other tactics. A fun book to read.

Grading this class was not as easy as grading as grading calculus. Much more time consuming, but I felt fine when we finished.

On Monday all I did was relax, play some music with Greg (he played, I tried singing) and watch 24. The episode of 24 wasn't so good, although the alst 10 minutes were excellent. I can't believe Martha attacked Charles. Amazing.

Today, I have an oral exam in an hour. Then I will watch a movie (either "Cronos" or "Stranger than Fiction"), then play racquetball, then go to sleep early to wakke up at 2am to drive Greg to Burlington for his flight. I will drive back, take the bus to Boston. Meet a friend for lunch, then take a bus to the airport and then fly away home. I am very excited.

I've kept on playing racquetball at nights.
Last night I also played Aggresive Alpine Skiing, an online videogame that has an addictive song. It was very fun, we played while waiting for students to come to tutorial. Only one student showed up (for about 10 minutes) because there was no homework.

On Monday night, I went to hear the Dartmouth Chamber Orchestra. It was pretty fun.
Before that, I had gone to the Dartmouth Film society to discuss some films (Volver, Lady Vengeance, All About Eve, Mean Girls and a few more) that had been showed in the school the previous week, it was pretty fun.

The tv show 24 is getting better and better. The next week looks like it is going to be extremely entertaining.

I have the number theory bug again, a professor sent me some notes and I have been reading them. I also took a book on the Frobenius problem from the library to see more about the problem that I was working on back on Trinity (summer 2005).

Today is the last day of classes, after russian class (starts in an hour), all I'll have to do is prepare for a couple of finals and submit the last homework for analysis.
It's been a tough quarter, but it's been fun. Saying that, I am happy I'll be home soon (I miss Mexican food so much), although it will be very briefly since I am going to Spain for Spring Break.

I watched David play poker. My roommate was making some dessert so I had to take my laptop home if I wanted to keep watching the poker. I get home and wireless wasn't working. After feeling powerless for 20 minutes, I decide to restart the computer. It works.

David made a final table and it was pretty fun watching.

At 11:30 pm I started my take home exam. I finished a bit before 2am, really easy stuff.

Today I watched 24.
It is over the top with the unbelievable things that happen, it is crazy, but for some reason I like it. I was extremely excited when the girl tells Jack "it was your father". Awesome.

Went to Murphy's for Sara's birthday, I stayed a bit over an hour since I got late I got a sit at the corner far from everyone. I had a peanut butter pie.

Working on the analysis homework I didn't sleep. Classes the next day were almost like a dream, fighting to keep myself awake, finding stuff to keep me busy, since I didn't want to sleep till it was 10pm. So, I lasted 34 hours without sleeping.
I had the meeting for the elementary school thing and I had fun.
I watched 24, which was pretty fun, although it is getting very irrational.
Went to sleep at 10pm, woke up at 10am.

Next day, I attended classes, did my TA job and then watched "28 Days Later". The movie was pretty good, although when it comes to zombie horror, it is hard to beat "Dawn of the Dead". I was laughing throughout most of the movie, but I guess I was the only one laughing (I find extreme violence to be funny when it is fake).
After that I saw the Martina Hingis-Kim Clijsters match. Kim is clearly the better player, but Martina was very close of winning. Great match.

Today I did the elementary school thing. It was very fun, I really get very happy when I see all the effort the kids put into their projects.

-I am reading several books, I have the procrastinating in the office book, the waiting for food book, the bedtime book and the going to the bathroom book. I keep advancing on several books, it is kind of funny that I don't have a book settled on which I will finish first.

-I start the elementary school teaching tomorrow, looking forward to it. The only downside is that the activities are pretty manual and I suck at it. We where building a little machine to convert rotating motion into reciprocating motion (up/down motion) and my machine was the ugliest. It worked barely and it took me longer than everyone else. Some of the stuff the other guys did was awesome. I bet the students tomorrow will make machines that look much better than mine. Hope it goes well.

-I am happy with my improvement in russian. I can understand much more than before. It feels great.

-Algebra homework was very mechanical and boring.

-As a TA today I performed very poorly. I couldn't solve the last problem of the session. The thing that made me feel good is that other people couldn't solve it either, so at least it wasn't something super simple. When Greg and I solved it at last, we found out it wasn't hard, but at least it wasn't obvious. First thing next session, I'll show the solution.

-24 kicks ass. Although I am a little skeptical how they can make too much sense of the next episodes. Yes, they have four more nukes, but the guy that programs it died. And they did a hell of a lot to get him out of jail (special detention camp for terrorists) and to find a qualified person that would be willing to program a nuke that would kill hundreds of thousands. I don't see how a real terrorist organization could replace such a man in less than 24 hours. Yes, they have a lot of money, yes they have contacts, but why wouldn't they use it before? Why would they do all that elaborate stuff to get Namar out of jail if they had another possible approach? You could claim "money", but that's absurd, money doesn't stop fervent believers.
I guess, I will have to turn off a bit of my rationality for a while and just enjoy Jack Bauer kicking some serious ass. I love it how his word is more important than his friend. At least you know you can rely on him at all times.

-I love bread (just felt like adding one more line).