Life is a little hectic after last week, since I have to catch up on outside-of-work stuff. I have a test on Thursday in my "data mining" class and I'm behind in the machine learning Stanford thing - good thing I was on the basic rather than advanced track, as I was too busy last week to get the neural network coding to work. I also think I might have mucked up the homework submission for the real class I'm in, as I didn't get grades for the last two assignments? Oh well. Getting over 100% on the first test means I'm probably going to do okay.

Right now I'm swinging toward the idea of not applying to PhD programs in statistics this year, which probably means never doing so. Still unsure, but I really have to decide rather soon in order to get recommendations in time for the 1/1 deadline many schools have. Eh, I might as well reach out to profs and see what they think about writing recommendations, couldn't hurt. The two from last semester's classes would probably be all right, one had me for a year and I was the definitely best student in the other's class (stochastic processes, though the guy seems to be a researcher in "vanilla" analysis, something about gaussian stuff and lipschitz stuff). I'll figure out a third, I guess. There's another person I would consider asking, but I don't know whether she's familiar enough with my work. Maybe it would be worth it to at least check on one of my profs from undergrad...

Finances look mildly rough this month because of foregone income and uncertainty about how much the medical stuff will end up costing. We have good insurance, but nothing in life is free. Considering not renting a car while in Tejas for Thanksgiving - we can probably get picked up and aren't really going anywhere. The rental prices were jacked up and absurd. They weren't this bad last year. The mother-in-law suggested that she might be willing to pay for our rental car if necessary, but I don't think it would come to that.

I saw a jorb I might apply for. I had a class on some of the stuff it's related to back in college, my current work is in a vaguely related sphere, it requires some sort of statistician, and the pay scale indicates I have about the right amount of experience. It has to do with educational policy, evaluating performance of schools and teachers using data, etc. Probably a long shot since I don't have the exact background they're after, but, hey, worth a shot. They have a handful of almost identical positions open, so I'm not quite sure which to apply for.

Apparently the ISS is one arcminute. With a camera, you can actually kind of make out details. That is awesome. This is great: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/04/insanely-awesome-solar-eclipse-picture/ Man, I think I was reading Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy page back in high school. I definitely remember reading this page before the event in 2000: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planets.html

Head is still not quite right. Friggin' sinuses.

I need to play more chess. I don't play on the train anymore because I have a shorter train ride and the train I'm on now is less conducive to it - I pretty much require a seat and I can never get a seat these days.