What I learned this week⌗

Software⌗

  • Mac: To quickly find text, select some text and press ⌘E followed by ⌘G.
  • After copying a file, press ⌥⌘V to move the file instead of pasting a copy of it.

Business/Finance⌗

Markov Chains

  • One use of Markov chains is to include real-world phenomena in computer simulations. For example, we might want to check how frequently a new dam will overflow, which depends on the number of rainy days in a row.

Math/Stats⌗

Travel⌗

Went camping this weekend at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, AZ. We drove through Prescott and up Mingus Mountain on Saturday and did a short hike to the fire tower. I was originally thinking of riding up Mingus Mountain from Cottonwood, but I’m glad I didn’t as there is no shoulder and very tight turns. We drove down to Cottonwood through Jerome, AZ which I’d like to go back and visit.

Fire Tower

After stopping for some sushi at Safeway, we made it to the park and met up with our friends. It was very windy during the day and the trees were all hibernating. We walked around the three lagoons and headed back to the site to to hang out and start dinner. We cooked up hotdogs and smash burgers, chatted for a while, and made s’mores. There were showers directly across from out site and we got everything ready to go to bed.

Ally and I set up our tent on top of a raised platform. Our camping site happened to be the handicapped site so while most sites had a small plot of dirt on the ground for a tent, ours was raised off the ground about 12 inches by this small platform. As everyone was going to bed, I had secured all the food in our car or left it in a secured bag that animals couldn’t get into. We had some dirty dishes which I put in a trash bag and put in the car as well. For some unknown reason I decided that leaving a cooler containing steaks with no lid on it outside would be fine even after putting everything else away… I was very wrong.

Around 1am, I believe some skunks got into the cooler and were able to tear open a package containing steaks. A little later on, we believe there was a skunk fight over said steaks… this fight occurred directly next to our tent on the platform. It was a quick but loud skirmish that woke up Ally and I, everyone else was sleeping in their cars completely unbothered. The skirmish smelled awful but with no further noise and the smell being subdued by the wind or our olfactory fatigue, we tried to go back to sleep.

This was short lived, as we were quickly awakened to more snarling noises right by our tent. I was fed up and it was 2am, so I put my shoes on to go face down whatever was outside. Opening the tent and pointing it at the noises a saw nothing… because the skunk was directly beneath the tent under the platform! I investigated the cooler and saw what happened to our meat. I cleaned up the mess packed this into the car. I pounded on the platform tried to through rocks underneath to get the skunk to leave; however, this seemed to result in more noises and smells. I couldn’t even get a good look at the thing as it was mostly dirt and rocks underneath the platform it was impossible to see clear under it.

We grabbed our sleeping bags and shifted to the car, unfortunately this also smelled like skunk (possibly it was just us or how the wind was blowing). I ended up driving us away from the site to a parking lot and getting a few hours of sleep there.

That was a wild night, but we still had fun although we are certainly a bit more tired than we need to be. I’m going to have to soak the tent to get the skunk smell off of it as it to the brunt of the skunk spray I believe.

Fun times!

Booked trip to Japan, I’ve got a 9 day streak on Duo Lingo now… Japanese is hard!

Other⌗

Beneficentrism

  • It’s just the claim that it’s really important to help others—however distant or different from us they may be.