The "Rant"

It had to happen - all blogs contain at least one rant (my rant against hipsters doesn't count - I did that to be funny, but I'm serious this time).

I'm going to rant about school because the University of Washington has put me in an especially tight spot. I'm a commuter student and a math major. Math classes at UW tend to fill up before your registration period begins (other students are so cool that they had a spot in that class before you could even register...). This would be ok if they allowed the professors to overfill the classes, but they don't. It might even be ok if they offered the class every quarter, but they don't. Lastly it might be ok if they offered as many sections in parts of series as they offered in previous parts, but they don't. So basically I'm in limbo right now, trying to get into a class that is essential for my graduation - several upper division series (which I need) require this class. If I don't get into this class, I won't be able to start many of the upper division series until the Autumn of the following year because many of the beginnings of these series are offered only in the Autumn (so Autumn 2012 is when I will BEGIN many of these series). So whether or not I spend another entire year letting my student loan accumulate interest while I sit around playing DotA and working part time is entirely dependent on whether or not some warm-bodied drunk finally gets around to dropping that math class he forgot he registered for. At this point I will have to pay a modest fee in order to change my registration status. And you can bet I'm going to contest it.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in an applied math class - which is a nightmare for someone who has an almost allergic reaction to all things computer not directly related to the internet or a game. Fortunately, it's all about linear algebra, which I love, so the material covered in class is simple for me. But then we are expected to code things in MATLAB, which makes me feel like an old, blind, deaf, dumb, toothless, two-legged, kink-tailed, de-clawed cat trying to rebuild an engine block. It's more fun than it sounds, but I'm also on the verge of not being able to afford school, which means I can't afford to purchase my own copy of MATLAB, which means I have to do all of my homework in one tiny portion of one building on campus... as a commuter student.

So, as rants usually do, this one is going to now go in a slightly different direction. At the UW, there are a ton of Asians. I don't mean to sound racists, but Asians are good at math - especially the ones who come from Asia rather than being born in America (no offense Asian-American friends, Asia just has better schools for math). Because of this, many foreign Asian students have a desire to become math majors. You (as the university) might think, "Wonderful! We can increase the number of seats available in math classes and then they will still fill and then we will make more money! Best of all, since they come from out of the nation they will pay us an enormous sum of cash for tuition!" But since universities are not people with brains, this doesn't happen. I'm inclined to think that this is because departments like math don't get a ton of attention because, as a whole, they aren't among the super popular majors such as business or communications. Pure math is also (stupidly) not considered a high-yield major such as chemistry or biological sciences or engineering. I'm also inclined to think that since the UW is a public university that receives funding, it is less inclined to react to market forces such as high demand for a particular major area - it is more profitable for the UW to focus on areas in which it is more likely to receive public funding (such as medicine - not that medicine isn't in high demand, mind you). This is almost enough to make me wish UW weren't a public school, but then I wouldn't be able to afford it.

Time to end the rant and talk about food. Friday is one of my commuting days, so it obviously involves a lot of walnuts. I also had ribs Friday :) and some really good cheese and salami.

Hmm, gonna go off topic just a bit here... I know health is not my reason for doing this diet (except as an experiment), but there are some things I know about food from my (limited) research that have me a bit... not worried, but thinking. Among other things, I know that cured meats are generally worse for you than fresh meats, and I am eating a lot of cured meats. If I really want to consider this diet as healthy as I can reasonably make it (I.e NOT buying exclusively grass fed organic yak imported from Tibet for $37 dollars/lb), then maybe I should reduce my intake of these foods. I've also been considering more low-temperature cooking, as high temperature cooking has a tendency to make all oils, even lard, less healthy for you. I'll be making some roasts soon, and I may try to skip the browning on them and see how they turn out. I'll try to get a health update soon as well ( at least BP). Might also wanna spread the alcohol out...

INPUT
Breakfast: 6 eggs scrambled with cheese, 4oz milk, Multivitamin, Vitamin D
Mid-morning: Handful of walnuts
Lunch: More walnuts
Afternoon snack: 16oz Breve latte (I burned my tongue), 4oz milk (this was quite a bit later)
Late dinner: Tons of delicious BBQed pork ribs, about a half block of English white cheddar, a fair amount of wine salami, a spicy sausage, and a couple bites of oil-drenched mozzarella. Oh and 2 glasses of Merlot
Dessert: About 2 glasses of Merlot, a little more white cheddar