Paul's Journal

03/20/2009 13:54 #48138

Good at Math
Category: school

In 1988 I was in fifth grade. For some reason we had to take the california Acheivement Test. I scored higher than 99% of all 5th grade students in the nation in total math. This led to me skipping some math by being in an advanced math class in 6th grade which resulted in no math in 8th grade which led to the end of me as a mathelete ;(

I was kind of surprised because I never think of myself as a math person anymore.

I also was 97% for vocab, 96% for comprehension and reading but only
76% for spelling. Luckily, spelling has not been very important in my life since the computer corrects almost everything.

tinypliny - 03/22/09 13:42
I was never good at Maths. I am still not good at it. :D

metalpeter - 03/21/09 10:01
I was ok in Math better then some (and on the Math team). This is going to sound weird but my higher level stuff was better then my lower level stuff. Devide decimals and percentages, what I'm sorry I don't get it. But yet give me one of those crazy things with () and [] and I was ok. But then yet in chemistry I could never balance those equations, I'm sorry that never made sense, it seemed like the numbers got taken out of thin air or something. It seemed to me the trick to math unlike science is that he didn't want or need to understand how it works. If you tried to you would be lost. What you needed to know was what formula to use when, you had to remember how to do stuff. Know why or how in math wasn't the way to go, or at least not for me.

theli - 03/20/09 19:15
Did reagents in the HS. On SATs I had one math question wrong, 3 verbal questions wrong, and that's with everything answered iirc. And I'm also a college dropout.

Go figure.

drew - 03/20/09 16:03
I was a super nerd all through school, so I had pride about being in the 99 percentile, and even knew what percentile meant.

I haven't used my math skills in some time though, so I've likely lost them.

zobar - 03/20/09 15:43
Hell yeah I was a math geek too. Except instead of getting to skip a year of math, I got to take Course 1 at a girls' high school, but of course in 8th grade I was waay too awkward for that to actually mean anything. And how's this for dorky: I did better on the Regents than all the freshmen, so they had to send my achievement certificate to my elementary school for awards day.

When I got to a larger high school it turned out I wasn't really all that, so although they had to put me in with the older students I ended up in the remedial section. Alls I'm saying is: Anthony Michael Hall in the Breakfast Club.

- Z

03/20/2009 13:32 #48136

Party weekend

I hope this weekend is as fun as last weekend. Someday we are going
to need one of those stair lifts.

tinypliny - 03/22/09 13:43
@James: Was this a re-enactment? :)

james - 03/20/09 14:29
I can't help but to think of this painting.
:::link:::

metalpeter - 03/20/09 14:22
With the smiles on everyone's face I'm not sure who liked this the most, HA. Hopefully this weekend will be a blast.

03/20/2009 13:25 #48135

Bike hair

This bike was parked outside of India gate. It is disgusting. I
can't help but think some girl was hit by the bike and it took a chunk
out of her head.

mike - 03/20/09 17:29
wow thats real gross!

jim - 03/20/09 15:07
Theft deterrent!

james - 03/20/09 14:30
some people collect bottles off the street
this person collects weaves.

03/20/2009 11:53 #48134

My first Impressions of IE 8
Category: programming

I was testing surebert against IE 8 last night and it wasn't working. Debugging in IE 8 sucks even with the script debugger. The script debugger open in a new window for every error.

Sothe problems which were kind of tricky to identify were:

1. The async argument to an xmlHTTP instances open method cannot be a 0 for false. In all previous versions of IE and in every other browser 0 was acceptable for false. They must be type checking now. This occurs even in comparibiltu mode which makes me wonder what else is not truly compatible.

One of the major feature additions was the inclusion of querySelectorAll. Annoyingly, it return an instance of StaticNodeList instead of just NodeList like Safari and Firefox 3.1 beta. That through me for a loop for a bit.

The inclusion of Element prototypes is pretty sweet. In general it is a huge improvement over IE 6 and 7.

What frustrated me the most is lack of support for the native javascript 1.5 array prototypes forEach, every, some, filter, map. I just don't understand how they left that out. Same thing with standards compliant eventListeners.

03/20/2009 03:30 #48132

Buffalo CarShare

Buffalo CarShare is open. I saw this on the way to lunch at cafe 59
with (e:jon).

I would like to stop by and find out more but I really don't have much
use for a car. I pretty much just walk back and forth between roswell
and the 24. Still I think the idea is awesome.

While at cafe 59 a scruffy looking French young man begged us for a
ride somewhere. If I had a car and some time I would have taken him
just to find out his story.

james - 03/20/09 08:52
I am so excited about the carshare. It makes so much sense. Everyone doesn't need a car. If you can get to work via train, bus, bike, or foot then carshare works for you. Instead of making monthly car payments and dealing with a nightmare parking situation, you drop $20 a month plus millage fees. If I lived in Allentown I would save $200 a month on car payments alone.

oh, plus you don't pay for gas, oil changes, any of that crap.