Htam::Diary

This Monday, I woke up at 7, after sleeping for about 11 hours.  The last time I woke up later than this was nine days ago when I couldn't fall asleep until past 2am.  The last time I slept this much might have been when I was sick for a good two weeks.  I got ready and then drove to Citrus College.  I have been meaning to visit June for several months (if not years) now, and given that I am done with my dissertation, I finally have the time to do so.  I got to her lecture a bit late, thanks to a very bad freeway accident at 5am, closing 4 lanes until past 2pm.  I then left her general biology lecture early to sit in on a math class taught by her colleague.  Besides wanting to see June in her element, getting a sense of the level of (math) students here was of course the main purpose.  Then I stopped by June's microbiology lab for a bit before taking off.  The traffic was still quite bad, so I went to eat lunch at Chick-fil-A, and worked there for a few hours.

The road condition still hasn't cleared by 2pm, so I decided to go south and take the 10 instead.  Indeed, Google Maps estimates one hour to go home via 210-605-10-710-60-10-405 (the pileup on 210 starts right after the 605), whereas getting to Arcadia on the 210 (a mere 5 miles past the 605) would already take one hour!  Despite my original plan of going home via 210-134-101-405 (my preferred route), stopping by 99 Ranch in Arcadia, I decided it would be prudent for me to be flexible, and stop by 99 Ranch in San Gabriel (right off the 10) on this alternate way back instead.  Indeed, it took me about 16 minutes to get to the exit of 99 Ranch, and about 40 minutes to get back from there.  I talked to Caleb on the way back, and also a bit more after getting home.

[Non Sequitur: Christian Testimony Ministry]

This Sunday, I drove Diana to and from ACF, as usual.  We continued having pretty good time fellowshipping.  Today I translated and recorded, since Ernest was gone.  I ate lunch with the Hans—this is the first Sunday I didn't have anything to do during lunch since March!  It was nice to relax, eat, and chat with Hou-En and June, whom I have not talked to in quite some time.  I walked with Diana a bit and introduced people to her.  Then I went around telling people about my good news.  We had a short (and almost painless) WCCC update meeting, and then I came home.  I went to buy some groceries after I dropped Diana off.  In the evening, after dinner, I wasn't feeling well, so I went to sleep early at 8pm.

[Non Sequitur: [Game] AFK RPG]

This Saturday, I ate some leftovers from last night as breakfast, and then went to ACF for Bible study.  Today we started studying Zephaniah, which I am very excited about, for I have read Zephaniah at least ten times, but still doesn't quite know what's going on.  I am hoping that studying with brothers and sisters will shed some light into this matter.

For lunch, I bought a Taiwanese lunchbox and came back to the church building to eat.  After being filled, I went to get a haircut—my hair has been getting way too long being neglected while finishing my dissertation.  I then came back and went to the gym to exercise a bit.  In general, I took it easy today since I am not feeling too well.  I finished the leftovers from yesterday for dinner.

[Non Sequitur: [arXiv] Jed Yang's arXiv papers]

This Friday, I spent the morning reading about Aztec diamonds and preparing my GSO talk.  In the afternoon, Steph called me (scheduled) and we chatted for an hour or so, debriefing the events that happened this week.  I know we just spent time together this past week, but so many things happened since.  She told me about her interviews, and I told her "you may call me Dr. Yang."  I never get tired of saying that phrase.  Then I went to school to print some things, and use the blackboard to prepare more of my talk.  In the evening, I picked up Diana and she treated me to dinner at Yamadaya to celebrate.  I had a good time, she talked quite a bit, though as usual, she asked a lot of questions.  We ordered two dishes and shared, but essentially finished less than one in sum.  Oh well, I have lots of leftover now.

[Non Sequitur: [Art] Dorothy and Alice]

This Thursday, I received confirmation that my dissertation is formally approved by the Graduate Division.  This process took a few days, since my committee members had all approved my dissertation by Tuesday.  However, this is an improvement point, since now I can 100% say that I will get a PhD without taking any further action.  Indeed, as of this morning, the Grad Division could request (minor) formatting changes (and I hear they are quite strict about formatting) that would not be difficult to perform, but would require (re)action on my part.  Now that it has been approved, I need not do anything any more.  Praise the Lord!

So for the rest of the day, I spent time... doing research, of course!  I read a paper on domino tiling of the plane figures known as the Aztec diamond.  The number of such tilings is $2^{n(n+1)/2}$ for the Aztec diamond of order $n$.  I plan to give $10$ proofs of this in the GSO seminar in two weeks.

[Non Sequitur: [Game] Candy box]

This Wednesday, I woke up at 5am again, though I stayed in bed and prayed until 6, given that I have no need of getting up early any more.  I then went to school and met with Igor.  The only two things he said about my dissertation were that my acknowledgements section is really long, and that (at the end of the meeting after I made a joke) he disagrees with one line of my thesis: I said we shared the same sense of humour, but he thinks his is better.  For the rest of the meeting, we talked about research, moving forward.  We talked about it so matter-of-factly as if we wouldn't talk about anything else (e.g., finishing thesis).  Oh well, I guess he only cares to push me harder and do more work.

Before coming home, I stopped by the gym.  Since it was so crowded, I used one of the Step Master machines (for the first time).  Once a treadmill opened up, I switched over and ran a mile (I was a bit tired from the Step Master).  Then I lifted some weights and came home.

[Non Sequitur: [arXiv] Tiling simply connected regions with rectangles]

This Tuesday, I woke up at 5am and did some more work.  Then I drove to Gardena and picked Steph up from her parents' new home.  I got a brief tour—it looks quite nice.  After dragging her with me to 99 Ranch Market, we went to get a car wash for me.  We chatted for quite some time while waiting, and then went to King's Hawaiian for lunch.  As usual, we requested to be seated in PJ's section, and got a warm welcome when he saw us.  Even though we haven't been here for a long time, he remembered our drink orders and our usual food choices.  I didn't even have to tell him what I wanted, and Steph got to choose from her two usual dishes (that he mentioned).  This was quite impressive, and he even threw in some extra things for us for free.  This obviously worked well since we gave him a big tip.  Then I drove Steph to the airport, which is on the way home.  In the end, I spent a very enjoyable 3.5 hours with her.

I then came home and did some more work, submitted a revision to the rectangles journal paper, did some planning for next month, read a paper that may help with our current project, and then went to prayer meeting.

[Non Sequitur: Why mathematicians now care about their hat color]

This Monday, I woke up at 4am (naturally) but didn't want to get up yet (too early, will disrupt sleep schedule) and also didn't want to go back to sleep (I dislike going back to sleep after waking, makes me feel more tired when I wake up a second time).  Therefore I decided to pray in bed until 5am.  Then I got up, read some Bible, got ready, and went to school by 6am.  What a great way to start the morning of the day I intend to file my dissertation!  I thank my Lord for His guidance through all these years.

I spent the next 5+ hours finishing the arXiv version of our rectangles paper, submitting it to arXiv, propagating the changes to my thesis, to the journal version, and to my "ideal" version.  Yes, I have four versions of my paper.  The journal version is especially short, on the insistence of the referee to omit half of the paper.  The arXiv paper is almost the same as my ideal version, but has some things changed to fit with arXiv's LaTeX setup.  The version in my thesis is slightly re-worded to fit with the language and notation of my other papers.  I also printed out my dissertation, proof-read the abstract and acknowledgements once more, and visually inspect all the pages (after making it double-spaced).  I fixed some widows and clubs (orphans), and also the footnote typesetting (I edited the uclathes.cls document class style file!) to have the correct font shape even when being invoked from a theorem environment, where the text is typeset in italics.

After all is done, I bought lunch from Rubio's and came home to eat.  I ate 2/3 of it and saved the rest for dinner by adding some more things (aka Caltech Mongolian bowl strategy).  After my arXiv paper came out (submissions before 1PM become available at 5PM), I cited it from my dissertation, and went ahead and filed it!  The filing process took about an hour in total, as there is a lot of (electronic) paperwork to be done.  Afterwards, I talked to Caleb for 1+ hour while I cleaned my kitchen.

[Non Sequitur: [arXiv] The complexity of generalized domino tilings]

This Sunday, I did a little bit of work in the morning and went to school to print some items that I intend to look over at church.  However, there was a paper jam, which foiled my perfectly timed detour.  I then picked up Diana and we had a nice chat on the way.  I did some more work during the message, collected offering with Caleb for the first time (even though we have been assigned as partners for many months now—I had meetings the first three months of this year during second weeks, and he wasn't here last month), had a WCCC meeting with registration team, and then chat around a bit, and drove Diana home.  I was feeling sluggish, and having done enough work lately, decided it is time to revisit the gym.  This is the first time in a month that I had gone to the gym.  It feels great!  I did some more work in the evening, and have essentially finished everything that can be done without printing.  I will continue this tomorrow.

[Non Sequitur: Snooze button time traveler sets coordinates for 5 minutes into the future]

This Saturday, I woke up close to 8am, after only 5+ hours of sleep (I couldn't fall asleep until after 2am last night).  I hastily got ready and then went to ACF for Bible study.  Today we finished reading 2 Kings, and decided to read Zephaniah followed by Habakkuk.

Steph stopped by and we to Diner on Main for lunch, which we have done on several occasions when she was coming to Bible study back in 2009.  After a nice lunch, we came back to the church building and I helped her with math.

I also finally got a reply from Igor, after nine months of waiting, for the revision on our first joint paper.  This means I can now proceed to finishing the arXiv version of the rectangles paper.  Once uploaded, it will give me an identifier, allowing me to cite this unpublished paper in my dissertation.  I hope to finish all this by Tuesday.

In the evening, Steph's parents came to the church building, and upon hearing about my good news (that my outside member of the doctoral committee approved my dissertation today) offered to treat me to dinner.  They suggested some mysterious place and we followed them there (Steph was in my car).  We then suddenly realized they meant Mama Lu's.  Haha.  It was a nice dinner (they ordered seven dishes for the four of us—the Chius sure know how to eat), and I was glad to spend the evening with them.

I came home and worked a couple of hours on the rectangles paper, editing three different versions concurrently, propagating changes to each one.  I am fairly happy with the state of things now.  I will submit this by 1PM on Monday in order to have it available by Tuesday.

[Non Sequitur: 11 totally redundant place names]