Fe Eral Vernment

I made a mistake this week by responding to an email that I should have ignored. But, it was Monday morning and I didn't quite feel like working yet. The last line in this email read, "This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it, if you don't, delete it. By me forwarding it, you know how I feel." I am not a big fan of politics that encourage mindless adherence to a party line especially when it encourages reactionary responses to trivial issues that reasonable people can discuss.

My mistake was responding without fully appreciating the depth of the debate. (and vitriol!) I had never considered this issue before and my opinion was formed in the twenty seconds that it took me to read the email. I feel that my opinion came from a sense of fairness and mutual respect. However, this debate has some established arguments and I apparently stepped too close to the opposing side.

I sent my response and was floored when my brother was the one that responded to me. It appears that he is well versed in one side of this argument and we ended up going back and forth several times via email. The arguments that I framed were not the greatest but at this point I knew that this was a debate that would not be won by either of us. So, instead I decided that it would be more fun to pick at his arguements one by one just to get a rise out of him.

I dislike these "issues" that are a distraction from the real problems that we face as a nation. I do believe that we have more in common than not and that civil discourse is possible.

Next time I will just delete the email.

Dancing Robots are Cool

Thanks to my sister for sharing this with me.

2 x 2 = -3

My data analysis came to a grinding halt last week when I discovered a bug in the latest version of Origin. Appartenly, the program doesn't know that when you multiply two positive numbers together that you should get a positive result. I am guessing that this is a two's complement problem. The first column of data was general numbers (i.e. 0.1234) and the second column was in scientific notation (i.e. 5.67e-8). The program must handle these two data types differently. Regardless, the answer is wrong and I need to figure out a work around. I am bummed about this because I want to finish this analysis for the paper that I am working on.

In general, Origin 8.0 is relatively buggy compared to Origin 7.5. The network license manager (software) is a lot crabbier too.

Post_0

Welcome to my blog! I plan to use this space to share my thoughts on current projects, milestones in finishing my thesis, and other general thoughts that I have about the world and my family. My intent is to be prolific in posts pertaining to my thesis and bring that section to a close rapidly. However, the inclusion of entries in the first topic will give you a clue as to progress on the second.

Please bear with me as I settle into this new routine.

All the Best,

D-