IT'S BEEN A WHOLE WEEK!

Last night, Wendy told me it had been too long since I had submitted a new post! So, like the dutiful husband that I am, I'll put something up today.

This week has been busy; I really wanted to put up some pictures from the retreat last weekend, and I still may do that. (They'd actually have to be Wendy's pictures, since I didn't take any.) We really had a great time Friday night, and got a lot of work done on Saturday as well. (Oh, and the food was tremendous!) Many hands truly do make light(er) work - I only wish we weren't all so busy, and could spend time together more regularly. I think it's healthy, but I don't have any degree to back up that hypothesis! Tomorrow the members of our adult Sunday School class are going leaf-peeping in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake - yet another September outing to keep us busy in the autumn of 2007!

We have a break at Clarkson Monday and Tuesday. In some ways, that's too bad, because Wendy's school break isn't until the Columbus Day weekend. But, I should be able to get more work done (which is what needs to happen over the "break") by myself. For today's PowerPoint that accompanies my lectures, I used a picture of a pencil snapped in two pieces for the background - "break" - get it? Yeah, they groaned too...

Now Wendy will be happy, I've passed a few minutes of time to write this, and the weekend is slightly closer than it was when I started. It's payday too, for an added bonus (I wore my smiley-face tie to celebrate). So long...

GEOMETRIC SERIES and RETREATS

I just noticed that the numbers of comments on my first three posts are (right now) a decreasing geometric sequence: 8, 4, 2. The real problem with a decreasing geometric sequence is that it tends to zero.... I guess the success of my 'blog was short-lived!

Wendy and I are eagerly anticipating going to Vermontville Camp this afternoon for a Northern Zone weekend retreat. In some contexts, a "retreat" is a bad thing; we don't like it when our troops are forced to retreat. However, in this context, it should be a very good thing. I'll reflect on it when we come back tomorrow afternoon, and perhaps share some pictures as well.

Weekends, in general, are great anyway. Retreat weekends add a new level to that greatness.

TOOTH RECONSTRUCTION...

Today I experienced another application of mathematics. I had a dentist appointment, as a follow-up to my wisdom tooth extractions in August. Although they also pulled one of the teeth in front of a wisdom tooth (on the left side), they left the one in on the right side, despite it having a HUGE cavity on the back. The dentist had said they would have to do CEREC, which meant nothing to me. (It's actually an acronym, check out http://www.cereconline.com/ for more information.)

After injecting me with "numb-stuff", and drilling for quite a while (isn't that sound tremendous, even when you can't feel it?), the dentist then took a digital picture of what was left of my tooth. His computer then calculated (from a template based on that particular tooth) what was missing, and designed (in 3-D) an implant on the screen - all done using mathematics, of course. Then a block of ceramic material was put in the mill, and the image was sent to the mill (kind of like sending a print job from your computer to your printer), and the mill poceeded to grind down the piece of ceramic until the chunk that was left would fit in perfectly to fill out my tooth!

Once they glued it in, they did a little grinding and buffing of the edges, and then I left. The whole thing took about an hour and a half, and cost me less than $300. Now that my tongue is not numb anymore, I can feel a couple of sharp spots, so I may have to go back for some more finishing work, but I now have a whole tooth again, or kind of....

IT CAN BE FIXED...

I got a bit of good news today. Two weeks ago tomorrow, on Tuesday, September 4, 2007, I had an accident in Potsdam. The other driver went through a stop sign and pulled out in front of me; I had the right-of-way. It was a low-speed collision, and no one was hurt, thank God, but since she was still moving when I hit her, she basically ripped all the "stuff" off the front of my old car. (I'm really thankful I wasn't driving the new one!!) As you can see from the picture, the old clunker is in pretty rough shape. It's a 1998 with about 160,000 miles, so I just figured it was totaled. It's the car I pile all of my miles on, so that was rather unfortunate.

So today, Allstate calls and says they're going to fix it! $2509 and change, and they're getting started as soon as the parts come in. I get my junker back, and my new car can go back where it belongs, IN THE GARAGE!! :)

Anyway, I thought you'd be interested in this tidbit. I actually thought about taking the money and just doing minimal work on the car, kind of driving around with an "I don't care!" attitude, but I guess I'll just let them make it look as presentable as it did before (which isn't very). I forgot to mention to the agent that before the accident, there was NO rust on it, NO squeaks or rattles, and the cassette player (that's right, CASSETTE player) didn't keep rejecting the adaptor I try to use in it. Oh, well...

So I can't promise regular posts, and I have no idea why, at 10:39 am on Friday, September 14, 2007, I have chosen to create my first one. I've recently started a new job at Clarkson University, so I certainly don't have the time...

Maybe it's this whole "being jolted" thing that's getting to me. I've been working here for three weeks, and there have been three of my quotes from class posted on the Daily Jolt. I guess I'm beginning to realize that no matter how busy people are (since I'm SURE my students are very busy working diligently on their assignments), they always find time to use the internet to communicate. Sometimes that communication is anonymous, sometimes personal, sometimes even intimate, but always there! Shouldn't I be a part of that??

Oh, right - what does it mean to "be jolted"? Well, there's this site called the Daily Jolt; since I work at Clarkson, our own version of it can be found at clarkson.dailyjolt.com. They have this option through which you can submit a professor quote that is added to the archived collection. Near the top of the page is a link to Prof Quotes. Since I teach MA232, Elementary Differential Equations, you can search for "232" (for some reason the name search doesn't seem to work properly). You'll find the quotes that have caught the attention of my students most poignantly somewhere on that list. Sadly (so far), none of them pertains to math.

Now that I've been jolted, others in my department have noticed. Some have said my students must like me to be on the Jolt. This is good. But if they like me, shouldn't there be LOTS of stuff on the Jolt? Now I'm confused. Since this is just a temporary job for me while I'm on leave, does it really matter if they like me? Should I be spending some of my preparation time now trying to think of creative things to say so I can end up on the Jolt?

So many questions are floating in my mind right now. I guess this post really pertains to the larger issue of how we communicate. Cell phones, online chatting, emails - even while I was on vacation at the lake this year, I had to make sure my cell phone was sitting in a place where I had service - WHY??

Well, I'm sure you have all of the answers! Can you share some with me, please? :)

And by the way, WELCOME TO HUBMUBLOG!

Oh, now it's 11:06 instead of 10:39, should I change it above? Oh, now it's 11:07... This is becoming a whole "thing" with my OCD...