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# The most depressing day of the year, or not

A graduate student I've started to work with told me today was considered the "most depressing day of the year", for a variety of factors that he couldn't remember most of.

The model is:
       [W + (D-d)] x TQ            M x NA
where W denotes a weather term; D, debt; d, monthly salary; T, time since Christmas (probably some unimodal curve representing post-holiday blahs?); Q, time since failed quit attempt; M, low motivational levels; and NA, the "need to take action".</i>

ETA, 12:00 CST Tue 25 Jan 2004 - A few questions:

• 1. What's a quit attempt?

• 2. Does anyone know how to do the equivalent of LaTeX \frac{numerator}{denominator} in HTML?

• 3. What's with "x TQ"? Either write TQ (W + (D-d)) or T * Q * (W + (D-d)). The above, if I read it aright, is just reinforcing 's meatbag theory.

Well, it didn't feel like the most depressing day of the year, to be honest, but that's for several reasons:

• 1. Research is starting to kick into a higher gear. W00t!

• 2. A student came in today with a computational geometry, vision, and pattern recognition problem, then asked me to be on his M.S. thesis committee. It's not every day you get such a project just dropped in your lap!

• 3. After a few... tangents (heh), the Ubergrafix project of and is off to a rollicking start! (Guys, remember to get me that technical writeup to read this weekend.)

• 4. The spring classes, while small (6 and 3 students), are looking good. I'm really excited about the courses (computer graphics and advanced AI) and student projects this spring!

• 5. I got the house cleaned in record time. The hour from 19:45 to 20:45 was a tour de teunce if I do say so myself! I think I went positively supersonic. My gran, who had watched me slide into admittedly severe "bachelor mode" over the last month while visiting with her son, was amazzled. She looked at my dad with this "wow, and I thought he was hyper before" expression. :-D

• 6. I have more food from Taiwan than I know what to do with. My mother just flew in from Taipei and is bestowing goodies left and right.

• mo ji - desserts of glutinous rice filled with sweet red bean paste or peanut butter

• Crisped rice treats

• The best egg custard pastries on the face of the earth, I kid you not. Works of art to behold, prize foods to eat, tragedies to remember!

• Hot and sour soup mix

• Little dried tofu snack squares

• Melon seeds

And once again, there are three generations under my humble roof. W00t!

In other news:
Happy birthday, !

ETA, 11:50 CST Tue 25 Jan 2005: Wasn't Jay Leno's Tonight Show tribute to the late Johnny Carson magnificent? On such a short deadline, too.
( asked me what ETA meant, and I finally looked it up: "edited to add")

--
Banazir
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