Friday, September 14, 2007

argggggggh.

sometimes i hate computers. they are very useful, but they have this way of making me unproductive while, at the same time, making me appear productive. while on the keyboard, i even feel productive.

ah, the deception.

in hopes that it would make me more accountable mathematically and professionally, today i sought to work on writeups of my research, but in the end i only fiddled and tweaked existing text and formulae and whatnot.

i tried to write up proofs, but ended up in the land of frustrating technical details which should be done thoughtfully and by hand, and not quickly in hopes that one can return to typing.

"should" is the operative word: i should have. but i fumbled around and tried to be clever and think without writing anything down; in the end i achieved very little and pressed the <delete> button a lot.

argh.



i missed a friend's talk, because of a scheduling error. rushing out of east hall, i hurried to rackham graduate school, scaled four levels of staircases ..

.. only to find an empty 4th floor;
so much for mentoring training,
and it was too late to hurry back to east hall,
and hear about geometric group theory.

argggh.



earlier i found another error in reasoning in my argument of an implication, and i had previously sent it to the adviser (yesterday?). just now, i've fixed it, so now i have to warn him.

just once, i wish that i could write something up properly.
argggggggh.

then again, i suppose it's good news,
that the proof can be fixed with no trouble,

but i wonder if, one day,
i'll run into an(other) error which i cannot fix.

2 comments:

Saara said...

But still you are very wise to type. I never write anything down neatly and hence I'm always confused about what I've done and end up proving the same things over and over again.

janus said...

lately i've been taking the "ends justify the means" perspective.

if one types and finds errors, then perhaps it was worth typing because one mightn't have found those errors otherwise.

if one doesn't type and can still prove things (albeit the same things) then at least they are still rigorous and true.