Yesterday: Learning, NFL Violations, Konsumah Kultchah

Sorry no posting yesterday, I sort of forgot that I had an off-site seminar to attend. It was a training session in using the customized DOE (Design-of-Experiment) function in the latest version of JMP (a stats package). It looks fairly robust, but pretty useless to me for now because we pretty much only do observational experimentation. Unless someone knows a decent number of sentient life forms with no sensory biases they'd be willing to loan us for the week... Didn't think so.

Anyways, it was certainly something with the potential to be useful in the future, once I'm working on projects involving more active experimentation. It did totally pay for itself yesterday, though, what with it being free and all. And also what with a free breakfast (I ate my weight in fresh pineapple), a free lunch (make your own sandwich, garden vegetable soup, and COOKIES), and the free books: Applied Linear Statistical Models (current edition), JMP Start Statistics, and JMP for Basic Univariate and Multivariate Statistics. Yes, they gave us over $200 in free books, the biggest of which is a $130 college textbook not specific to their software. For attending a free seminar. I was quite impressed.

I got out earlier than expected, so friend Phil & I walked over to the Sam Goody that's closing in downtown to check out the out-of-business sale. I purchased Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger, The Wishing Stairs, and Pride Bushido vol. 1 for $20. All new, baby. And that was after I put down another $20 or so worth of DVDs & CDs (including this, this, and this) due to pangs of guilt from the number of DVDs I've purchased since graduation (which I shall perhaps go into... later.

Anyways: all in all, a good day for consumerism. Which is a good day for America.