Highlights
December 2006
- Participated in the Adopt-a-Physicist Fall 2006 session.
- Received an iPod shuffle from Xiaoli.
- Chatted with several Caltech students at a Caltech-Y-sponsored brunch.
November 2006
- Passed the NASD Series 7 exam.
- Came down with the chickenpox.
- Vacationed in Florida and the Caribbean
- Visited Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park.
- Sailed on the Carnival Liberty to Key West and Cozumel.
October 2006
- Bought a Haier HLP21E washing machine.
- Visited the Whitney Museum of American Art
to see the Picasso exhibition.
- Prepared for the NASD Series 7 exam.
- Visited the Brooklyn Museum
to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibition.
September 2006
- Helped Xiaoli move to Manhattan.
- Dined with Zun Tang and Yi-Hui Lee.
- Finished the retaining wall with the help of several day laborers.
- Was burned by a nonresponsive half.ebay.com seller.
Of course, eBay has no marginal financial interest
in eliminating problems: it's inefficient, and you
earn no money on it.
- Started using R more and more.
- Sold the Honda CR-V.
- Enrolled in Zipcar.
- Attended Kim and Daniel Johnson's
wedding celebration service in Ithaca, NY.
August 2006
- Went to Opera in the Park: La Traviata.
- Read Jeffrey Sachs: The End of Poverty.
July 2006
- Moved to Manhattan.
- Visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Started working at
Bank of America.
- Visited Boston to attend the SIAM Financial
Mathematics & Engineering conference.
June 2006
- Sold the Toyota Camry.
- Finished Drucker's Age of Discontinuity.
- Dined at Rancho de Chimayo with Aric and Wendi.
- Replaced dead battery in my Camry.
May 2006
- Dined at the Santa Fe Grill and
watched Thank You for Smoking with Aric, Wendi, and Emily.
- Skimmed Michael Masterson's Automatic Wealth.
- Started Peter F. Drucker's Age of Discontinuity (audiobook).
- Opened an E-Z Pass account. Skipping the toll-booth lines is nice.
- Visited New York City and found an apartment.
Saw Tom and Janis, Maurizio and Connie, Tim and Emily, Arun and Pr.
- Read Emanuel Derman:
My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance.
- Visited Chaco Canyon, the Tent Rocks National Monument, and Bandelier.
- Watched Napoleon Dynamite.
April 2006
- Read Sandra Day O'Connor's Majesty of the Law (audiobook).
- Filed DC, MD, NM, and Federal taxes online. MD has, by far, the best site.
- Continued with the retaining wall
- With Zhang Min and his apartment-mate Yun Wang, moved gravel into the landscape-fabric-lined retaining wall trench.
- Laid cinderblocks on gravel to form a footer.
- Placed a drainage-sock-encased white PVC perforated drain pipe in the trench, on the slope side of the cinderblocks.
- Hosted Aric and Wendi in Washington, DC.
- Dined at Phillips Seafood
- Continued building the retaining wall. Looks like we're going to need 30 bags of cement.
March 2006
- Tried, but failed to read Mortimer J. Adler's Six Great Ideas (audiobook).
- Cancelled my Qwest DSL service.
- Attended the APS March Meeting in Baltimore.
- Started building a retaining wall in the backyard
- Ordered 9 tons of gravel from Patuxent Materials, Inc.
- Ordered a pallet of cinder blocks, a pallet of Carderock drywall stones, and a pallet of Carderock gardenwall stones from Tri-State Stone, Inc.
- Hired two day laborers to dig a trench for the retaining wall and also a trench for a drainage alongside the driveway.
- Placed landscape fabric, gravel, and a drainage-sock-encased white PVC perforated drain pipe in the trench drain.
- Moved tulips to the earth over the trench drain.
- Moved bushes and the purple-seed tree upward on the slope.
- Read Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring (audiobook).
February 2006
- Finished Isabel Allende's Portrait in Sepia (audiobook).
- Read the Federalist Papers (audiobook).
- Visited the Bay Area with Xiaoli.
- Saw Wei-Hwa, Arthur, Tommy, Marijke, Elaine, and Don.
- Rented a Chrysler Sebring. Decided that I will never buy a convertible.
- At Cynthia Crossen's recommendation, read Roger Daniels's Guarding the Golden Door.
- Read John McCain: Why Courage Matters (audiobook).
January 2006
- Watched Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.
- Read Buckingham & Coffman (1999): First, break all the rules: what the world's greatest managers do differently.
Previous years: