Assorted thoughts on the New Year

My resolutions will be my usual ones.

It seems my 401(k) went down 3.99%, which is not as bad as I expected based on the last half of the year. Given the limited options available, I think in the next year I might move toward a much more bond-heavy portfolio, as I am not optimistic about the market this year, either. If things were more flexible in the 401(k) and I had the time and skill, I would bet on high variance, but you can't really do that in a 401(k). Anyway, I can't retire yet this year, that's all I know.

I have some secret projects brewing for this year. They're secret, of course, and may not pan out.

I guess what I might also resolve to do this year is pack my lunches more often. Well, that's that, I suppose. Another year.

Church web sites suck.

One thing that has always annoyed me is that a lot of churches suck at the whole "web site" thing. Namely, it's really really easy to have a web page that says when your services are for Christmas, Theophany, or Easter at least, say, a month in advance. And makes it easy to see. Seriously, on Thanksgiving, if I go to your parish web site, I want to see, on the front page, your regular service times, your address, and your Christmas schedule. If you're on the Old Calendar, fine, by December 15th. At the beginning of Lent, I want to see your regular service times, your address, and your Holy Week schedule (or at least your Pascha schedule, I understand if you haven't nailed down how many presanctified liturgies you're doing that week). If your church web site does not make those three things quite obvious, you fail it. Those are the three things I would probably want to know about your church, so if you do not tell me that information immediately without additional mouseclicks, you are not doing the right thing on your web page. Also, if you send out weekly bulletins, you might want to mention the timing of Nativity services starting a month in advance.

My own parish's website gets at least a B+ here. They had an up-to-date monthly calendar available which listed all the services. However, it was not until this week that you could see immediately on the front page the times of services for the Nativity - there is a weekly calendar on the sidebar. If I recall correctly - perhaps they had an announcement up earlier. The parish I will be at for the Nativity gets a C. I found the information on the site eventually and, in retrospect, the schedule in PDF has apparently been there since 10/31. It takes a few clicks to get there, the information was not announced in their weekly bulletins, it seems to be in conflict with the google calendar, ugh.

What's in the news.

So I've kind of been thinking about returning to school to do research in statistics or operations research. There are a lot of possibilities. One that looks kind of cool is stochastic combinatorial optimization. Y'know. It's combinatorial optimization. Except stochastic. Think, like, Monte Carlo or Las Vegas algorithms. Or getting into other types of stochastic systems modeling or algorithms stuff. Generally, stochastic programming. Or something more along the lines of statistical computing, namely, researching new methods for getting meaningful knowledge out of data. I'm starting to fiddle around on Kaggle. There's a common thread through all of that, making decisions under uncertainty.

Anyway, so I'm applying to a handful of schools and seeing where that goes. If I don't get in anywhere, well, okay, too bad, I'll get on with my life.

It's official.

Monomakhos is the worst web-log in Blogoslavia. The stories of the last three weeks have conclusively proven it. They have surpassed OCA Truth, but perhaps only because OCA Truth does not publish frequently anymore. I'm not sure which article was the final straw, as both the Bishop Melchisedek and Fr Michael Oleksa stories were utter crap. Then again, perhaps referring to one of the Ecumenical Patriarch's positions really is secretly an explicit threat to the OCA's autocephaly (or a paean to Gaia-worship, hard to tell these days, but, either way, it somehow involves the panheresy of ecumenism (Monomakhos did not state that part, I did (ecumenism lurks everywhere))).

If you're confused by this post, please, don't bother looking up the web-log and seeing what all the hubbub is about.

Reading series of books

Right now I'm in the middle of reading several series of books.

• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. It's rather good. I'm on the fourth book already. Never worry, dear reader, I am not about to turn into one of those fantasy geeks. I highly recommend it if you have a high enough threshold for sex and violins and if you can stand reading multiple 1000-page books. I'm on the fourth book already.
  
• The Master of Hestviken by Sigrid Undset. She wrote this series of books after Kristin Lavransdatter. Again, requires a certain threshold for sax and violins. Reading this alongside ASoIaF is pretty cool, as both worlds have the rough feel of 13th century Norway, but one is realistic and one is fantastic. I have only finished the first book, which is a fairly painful story about a young couple who want to be married, but fornication, deaths of parents, property problems, murders, exile, infidelity, and abortion complicate things. It's a tetralogy, but has only approximately 1100 pages, so it's not much compared to the other series I'm reading.
  
• The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. I just started this. I'm about 400 pages into the first book. I assure you, I am not going to turn into a sci-fi geek, either. I am fairly sure I can keep up the momentum and finish the next 2400 pages of the series. I am, however, mildly disappointed by the naval scenes so far because I am used to a high standard of writing about 18th century English naval life. I realize he's hitting a slightly earlier era than I'm used to seeing, but boats are boats.

I recommend all three series, but the first is very much an R-rated series, which some people might not handle well. Others may lack the attention span necessary to complete one 900-page book, much less 5. I also hear that the series is trailing off toward the end. I recommend Hestviken if you liked Lavransdatter and I think everybody should like Lavransdatter. It is very well written and engaging. And who doesn't care about 13th century Norwegian social norms? I think a lot of people would hate the Stephenson series, especially if they don't care or know much about 17th century history and the history of science in particular.

Explanation of previous post

Some of my regular readers may be wondering why I took a break from my regularly scheduled programming to discuss how Reebok hates children.

The source of the image is CrossFit Apex. Apparently one of their trainers thought it was a cool thing to do and then crossfit.com, the owner of the brand name, posted a link to it, presumably because they thought it was cool. I don't think it's cool. CrossFit.com has recently entered into a partnership with Reebok (note the banner) and I don't think Reebok thinks it's cool. So I encourage people to write to Reebok (corporate@reebok.com) and let them know what they're supporting. Legitimate lulz involved.

CrossFit.com is, of course, a bit of a joke to thinking people because of their pompous rhetoric¹, general douchebaggery, cult-like followers, and inevitable results (injuries, burnout, subpar performance). Take, for instance, an amusing take-down of their pompous claims that "We got the science" and it will "dwarf anything ever conceived of in Framingham or Harvard Nurses". LOLWHAT.

Anyway, so I posted that for my own personal amusement. Perhaps it will ruin somebody's day. But it will make so many other people's days so much better because a reckless and dangerous corporation may lose some marketing dollars or be recognized as the purveyors of batty insanity that they are.

NOTE: CrossFit.com originally had a link to the guy's website on that page. They also said that they don't "unpublish", so they would keep the picture up. However, they've taken down the link, which is why I provided a link to http://www.crossfitapex.com.

1: This does not need a footnote, really, but here's a canonical quote demonstrating their self-delusion: "We can take you from a 200-pound max deadlift to a 500-750 pound max deadlift in two years while only pulling max singles four or five times a year." No, they can't.

EDIT: This is rather amusing, more amusing if you're familiar with the dysfunctional circus that is CrossFit (which I barely am, mostly out of a mild curiosity toward them not unlike my mild curiosity about anti-vaccine advocates, Mercola followers, 9/11 Truthers, etc): http://www.forgingelitesarcasm.com/2011/08/babies-need-to-harden-the-fuck-up-2.html