prog | (no subject)

My work project, ill-defined as it may be, has advanced to the point where I can send a URL to my boss & orkers: here, explore, tell me what you think. I choose to mark this as Significant.

Having done that, I'd like to make good on an earlier promise to mix up my workday a bit by reading some online bio-chem-comp journals, and, uhhh... and I'm again reminded how dumb I am with math. Many of the articles require knowledge of linear algebra to grok. There's really no reason for me to not know this... I wonder if I can teach myself, or if taking a course is my only recourse.

Update: An MIT OpenCourseWare Linear Algebra course has everything but the textbook. Well... it has all the reading assignments and homework from a 2002 semester, and RealMedia video of all the lectures from a 1999 semester. I'm watching the first of these now.

The Diesel access point crapped on me for the third time this month, and I had its suckiness confirmed by a conveniently nearby

temvald and his Linux/Dell laptop, so I know it's not just me and my lame Mac. (The past two times, its SSID simply and abruptly vanished from my Mac's list of available networks; today, my signal-strength meter visually flickered from zero to full, back and forth, several times per second. Quite a sight.)

Called up Salicom, the access provider, and talked to a an extremely chipper dude who sounded appropriately mortified and astounded to hear of my problems. By the time I got to the office I saw that he followed up with an email asking me to collect some more information about the immediate wireless land-lay next time I'm in the cafe. This isn't optimal (what, they can't do this themselves?) but it's something, and their request at least makes sense and shows that someone there may have clue, even if they're too lazy (or far away or understaffed) to investigate the matter without deputizing their own customers.

(Realizing that I'm probably abnormally nice in this regard; I think the correct action here is to remind the provider that I'm paying them, and why can't they send someone down to check it out? But I didn't realize this until now, and I doubt I'll bother, for so do I dislike any sort of confrontational attitude. If they become truly lame I'll just drop the service.)