CHAOTIC NOT RANDOM UPDATES!

• Those of you who read this blog with slavish devotion will remember my "Backwards K" post from a while back, in which I detailed assorted misadventures in which I squandered, through incompetence and sloth, opportunities to talk to attractive women. (Automatic entry into the CNR Hall of Fame guaranteed to anyone who can explain why I titled that post "Backwards K." Morocco Man, I'm looking at you.)
  
  One of those stories concerned a cute, very cute lady runner, complete with freckles and flat chest, who struck up a conversation with me at a stoplight near Wash Park -- a conversation in which I came off like the sort of tongue-tangled loser generally played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. That happened three months ago, and I swore if I saw her again I would avenge my defeat at the hands of cowardice.
  
  I saw her at Wash Park last Sunday. I was running clockwise, she was running counter-clockwise (I don't usually date CCW runners, but for those freckles I'd make an exception). I glanced sideways as she passed to make sure it was her, then pulled to a stop and stared after her. I had two blocks left in my scheduled 14-mile run -- further than I'd run in several months, and I was tired, and my quads were asking if we could please go sit in the car now. Besides, what was I going to say? "You probably don't remember me, but..." Weak. Better to finish the run and head home for some Snacky Cakes and a hot shower and some self-abuse. Yeah.
  
  Yeah.
  
  I turned and ran after her. "Hello!" I said when I caught up. "You probably don't remember me, but..."
  
  Pleasant chatter commenced. And then:

  Me: So, did you move here for your job?
  
  She: Well, for my husband's job.

  Well, shit. That's okay, though. Sometimes you have to feel good about striking out swinging.
  
  
• A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a mathematics calendar given to me as a birthday present by a very kind and thoughtful friend. I had been doing pretty well working out the daily problems, but then came this question:

  This surface area of this tetrahedron is 16√(3) square units. What is its volume?

  A tetrahedron is a four-sided polygon where all the sides are equilateral triangles. (For those of you who sat at my lunch table at John Adams Middle School, the tetrahedron was the die we threw to determine the hit points of a Level 1 Magic-User.) The problem was on January 16, so the answer had to be 16. But I came up with 16√(2)/3. I frowned and checked my solution (see it here). I couldn't find any mistakes. I threw away my paper, waited until I got home that evening to allow my mind to clear, and reworked the problem from scratch. Same answer. I checked my solution against this website and found that I was right and the calendar was wrong.
  
  Yippee! Yummy! Hip-hop hooray! I found a mistake! I love it when I'm right and someone else is wrong and I can prove it! Sure, that makes me a small, hateful man unworthy of even the briefest affections from the fairer sex, but holy smokes -- what a rush!

+posted by Lawrence @ 1/25/2005 10:53:00 PM