September 28, 2006
this is *so* wrong
September 27, 2006
Piled higher and deeper
Last week a friend pointed me to a comic that accurately described my life for four and a half years. Piled Higher and Deeper is a PhD comic strip. After reading just a few, I couldn’t help but think, “how did I miss this for all these years?†It turns out that the comic started publishing just before I graduated and by the time it became (relatively) popular I was out of grad school. Anyway, a few of my favorite strips from the archives so far:
A spoof on Kurt Vonnegut’s graduation speech
A series on grad students as an anthropology reseach subject
Newton’s Three Laws of Graduation
Young Nicholas as a grad student
I’m only through mid-2002, so another four years to go!
September 25, 2006
Presentation
I survived giving my presentation today – in spite of the fact that I showed up to the wrong hotel, in the wrong part of the city. I blame my boss. I mentioned that the talk was at the Sheraton Imperial (although I hadn’t looked to see where that was yet) and he said, oh yeah, the one down on Campus Walk road. Get to the hotel on Campus Walk – oops, that’s the Millenium. Call my administrative assistant, she looks up the location and it’s 15 miles away.
I still made it on time. Had a room of 25 people or so. I asked, no one wanted to do the more interesting version of the talk (the one with volunteers, paper airplanes and silly hats). I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t have any silly hats on me.
There was a reception at the end of the day (about a half hour from when I finished). As usual, I didn’t stay. It’s funny – this is the real difference between introverts and extroverts. I am fairly introverted, but at the spur of the moment can still give a dynamic, well received talk to a room full of people. I’m not self conscious about being goofy or making jokes. What makes me introverted is that after that, I’m done. I’m just out. I want to go home, have a drink, relax. If I had gone to the reception, I would have sat in the corner with my drink ignoring everyone. Introversion and extroversion have nothing to do with presentation anxiety. The difference is that extroverts get energized and are ready for more. For introverts, not so much.
September 24, 2006
Oops…
Checking my schedule for tomorrow, I realized that I have to give a talk at a major “human studies†conference about security risks in web-based surveys. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually prepared anything. I’ve got my slides from the last time I did the talk, but I really wanted to do something more interesting and interactive this time – preferably with audience volunteers wearing silly hats. I may still try to put something together in the morning. I have an idea – but no sense of the feasibility.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the silly hats.
Stock spam
One of the disadvantages of having so many email accounts is the number of spam you get. Recently, I’ve been noticing an increase in stock spam making it through my spam filters. I’ve been wondering how effective the spam is and whether or not one could make money shorting these stocks.
Apparently, I’m not the only one. The local paper carried a NYT article titled “Many people fall for stock spam.†In the article, the author describes the work of Frieder and Zittrain. Frieder and Zittrain found that pink sheet stocks that were heavily touted in spam were significantly more likely to be traded than non-touted stocks. Purchasing these stocks would lead a 5.25% loss within two days. For the most heavily touted stocks, the average loss was almost 8% in two days.
To get a sense of what these look like, I read through the 700+ spam messages collected in my spam folder over the past week. I feel like I’ve been dumpster diving. However, amid the emails claiming that I can enlarge body parts, get cheap watches and drugs, improve my sex life and buy human growth hormone, I found a few dozen messages touting 10 different stocks.
Looking at the stocks online shows that, sure enough, in the day or two around the time I got the spam, there was a substantial increase in the trading volume and in several cases, there was noticable increase in the share price. Now if I really wanted to test this, I would start selling these stocks short any time I received stock spam. Figure maybe a thousand dollars per stock. A 5% drop on a shorted stock in two days is nothing to ignore 🙂
September 23, 2006
Rad cat
Just picked up our cat Whisper from the vet today. She’s been over at the Carrboro Animal Hospital in their RadCats facility for the past two weeks getting her thyroid treated. It seems that cats are prone to tumors on their thyroids. The tumors produce excess hormones which cause them problems.
The treatment is a dose of radioactive iodine (I-131) injected under the skin. She then had to stay in isolation for three days and at the vet’s facility for another week and a half. Technically, we brought her home early and we still need to take precautions, but it’s good to have her home.
September 19, 2006
:-(
just heard from K – the flying squirrel didn’t make it through the night. She’s guessing that the impact of the truck caused internal bleeding. unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do ðŸ™
September 18, 2006
Wildlife rehab notes
- I haven’t put up the baby squirrels’ seven week pictures yet – I’ll do that tomorrow. They’re getting huge (~150g each, up another 40g from last week)
- Just had a guy drop off a flying squirrel to K. Apparently, it swooped down on him at the intersection of 15-501 and Europa and he (not his fault) hit it with his truck. Fortunately, he wasn’t going that fast. Assuming the squirrel makes it through the night, I’ll post some pictures. Since s/he’s a full grown adult and still only about 4″ long – he’s adorable.
- Just registered a new site for K and a friend. They’re planning on posting box turtle rehabilitation information there as well as information about a box turtle re-establishment project for which they are seeking approval. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you www.boxturtleheadstart.org