Jeff’s Blog

About 3 or 4 years ago, I was really into entering contests. A lot. I subscribed to about 10 different email/rss lists to get updates about all the latest contests. It ended up being really time consuming, so I don’t enter as much anymore. But, I’m still subscribed to a few of the better rss feeds since they usually also post about free offers available to Canadians. One of the sites was smartcanucks.ca.

Recently, someone posts (either as a comment on a blog entry or on the forum) that the company “Beaners” employs hairdressers who aren’t qualified (or something to that effect). I’ve never heard of Beaners, but from what I read, they are a hairdressing place targeted towards children. Ok. It turns out, that the statement was false - all workers are qualified (or registered, or something). So, a lawyer emailed the website asking the comment to be removed. So far, that’s fine. But then they threatened to sue. That seems a little overboard, but some companies are really sue-happy.

The comment was eventually deleted. But, the letter from the lawyer was also posted to the blog in the meantime - where the lawyer threatened to sue and asked for the comment to be deleted.

Then the lawyer sent another email to the site indicating that they weren’t allowed to post the letter from the lawyer. That’s way over the line! The letter wasn’t illegal to post and the site wasn’t breaking any laws by posting it.

Anyways, the site eventually took down the letter along with the original post about how the hairdressers weren’t qualified. I hate that the site backed down when the company obviously didn’t really have an argument about the letter being taken down.

I’d never heard of Beaners before now, but I’m sure going to avoid them in the future…if I ever have kids..who need haircuts.

I run a website - www.mathbyemail.com - where people send me math questions and I send the solutions to them by email. They pay me through Paypal. I did most of this kind of business when I was an undergrad. As I tutor more, it’s not worth it as much to do it by email since the payoff isn’t as high. But, the site is still up. Every so often, I get an email from a company in India or Pakistan or around there, asking me to outsource my math to them. The idea being that I’d send my customers to them and they’d give me a cut of the money. I really don’t have customers anymore, but the emails are funny.:

From: Nidhin Aravind
Sent: Thu, 28 January, 2010 1:04:23 PM
Subject: RE: Math content services

Hello Mr.Jeff,
We guess your busy schedule might have kept you from
noticing our previous e-mail. After checking your website, we really felt a
synergy to work together, as we provide services in the same domain. In case
you aim at higher volume and shorter solution turnover time, we could be the
right people for you.
We
are a team of content authors and editors with years of experience in homework
help, content creation and editing. Please see our company URL: www.contenco.net.

We
currently work content for the leading homework help websites of US & EU.
We focus mainly on High School, Intermediate and College level Mathematics, Physics
and Chemistry.

Our
authors/editors can work individually or as a team as per your requirements.

The
parent company of Contenco is PIT Solutions: www.pitsolutions.com.

We
can have a detailed discussion at your convenience.

Sincerely,
Nidhin Aravind
Business Development Executive

PIT Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
L7 & L8, Floor (-1), Tejaswini, Technopark
Trivandrum, Kerala, India, PIN 695 581
Tel: +91- 471- 27 00 915
Web: www.contenco.net

________________________________
From: Nidhin Aravind
Sent: Thu, 28 January, 2010 1:04:23 PM
Subject: Math content services

Hello Mr. Jeff,

We came across your website http://www.mathbyemail.com while looking for potential
partners for whom we could provide content services and homework help. We guess you
don’t partner with companies in your current operation model, but just in case you
aim for higher volume and shorter solution turnover time, we are the right ones to
partner with.

We are a team of content authors and content editors with experience in homework
problem solving, content creation and editing. Please see our company URL:
www.contenco.net.

Our authors/editors can work individually or as a team as per requirements.

We currently work content for the leading homework help websites of the US, and
focus mainly on High School, Intermediate, and College level Mathematics, Physics
and Chemistry.

The parent company of Contenco is PIT Solutions: www.pitsolutions.com. We can
provide more credentials if required.

Sincerely,
Nidhin Aravind
Business Development Executive

PIT Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
L7 & L8, Floor (-1), Tejaswini, Technopark
Trivandrum, Kerala, India, PIN 695 581
Tel: +91- 471- 27 00 915
Web: www.contenco.net

One topic that I go over with students is that of an equiprobable sample space. Basically, it means that each event listed is equally likely to occur. When you roll a dice, you’re equally likely to get a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 - so, that consistutes an equiprobable sample space. Usually I contrast this by saying that if we were playing chess, then the sample space consisting of {you win, I win} is not equiprobable because I’m good at chess and I’d probably win. Most people I tutor aren’t into chess, so this works out ok, and I’m pretty safe just assuming they’ve never played. Anyways, I’m browsing one of my student’s Facebook profiles (to find his email address since I’m too lazy to just search my inbox and because I’m already on Facebook) and it turns out he’s won a ton of prizes in chess at the national level. Luckily, he wasn’t in the class that learns about equiprobable sample spaces, but I can imagine it would have been funny if I’d tried that on him.

Words that my Firefox spellchecker says are not real words: Facebook, constitutes, inbox, equiprobable.

I’ve been sitting here tutoring since 9am. It’s 1pm right now. At about 11am, a man sat down at the table beside me with two students. He was from College Painters and I guess the two students were prospective workers. College Painters allows students to run their own painting business during the summer. He’s been talking about how to calculate costs, budget, etc. One thing I’ve learned from overhearing him is that “customers are idiots” and that, since no one can tell the difference between different shades of white, the students should buy a ton of one shade (he suggested “cloud white” or another shade that I forget) if a customer insists on a particular shade, to just take the paint he had and mix it with the bulk stuff that the students had bought. And to not tell the person who’s home was being painted. Because (according to the College Painter guy), there’s no way a person can tell the difference, no matter what they say. Other than that, it’s been on and on about how to gouge more money out of customers.

Also - Weldon’s open 24 hours now? That’s crazy.

Long time, no talk. I’d planned to spend the summer getting some work done. I wrote study guides for three courses last year. I was hoping to get solutions manuals to them written up. I was doing pretty well for the first 2 weeks of summer until I lost all motivation. The good news is that I did manage to get caught up on a lot of reality tv. Some other stuff happened this summer, too.

• My tire exploded while I was driving.
  We (me and Carla) heard a flapping sound. We assumed it was just a rough patch on the road, but when it persisted for about a kilometer, we pulled over and saw the damage. Not fun. Also, the catalytic converter broke, too. Apparently those things are pretty expensive.
• The cat fell off the balcony.
  My girlfriend moved in with me this summer. She has a cat. We live on the 10th floor of an apartment building. She’d take the cat on the balcony (only when she was out there, too). But, the cat (Nina) managed to crawl to the adjacent balcony. As she was trying to get back, she fell. Surprisingly, she was only a little bruised - no major injuries. When cats fall, they’re bodies flatten and it sort of acts like a parachute. So, they actually have a better chance of surviving a fall from the 10th floor than from, say, the 4th floor.

That’s about it. Oh yeah, the libraries at Western banned tutoring. Which is really frustrating for me and for the students I tutor.

Sometime after the 13th of December, I went to my bank to deposit the money I’d made from tutoring and from my prep sessions. Things get incredibly busy around the end of the semester, so I hadn’t been in for a while. This meant that I had accumulated quite a lot to deposit. A few people at the bank know me and recognize me. They know I work as a tutor at the university. Some of the tellers don’t know me. I think that when I go to the ones that don’t know me, they think I’m some kind of drug dealer or something. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t list my occupation on their computer and when I deposit my wad of money and they ask where it’s from, I just smile and say “work”. I’m purposely evasive with their questions because I think it’s funny.

One of the tellers asked me if I tutored high school mathematics. I told her that I didn’t, but she was insistent that I could. Her daughter was struggling with grade 11 mathematics. So, I gave her my friend’s name.

I’m playing a trivia game now. The latest question was in the category called Acryonym Soup. The game gives an common acronym (something like brb or lmao) and players are to enter what the acronym stands for. This particular acronym was IUTHALORFH. Apparently it means “I used to have a lot of respect for him.” I’ve never heard of this in my life, but I thought it was possible that I had been out of the loop and some new acronyms had become popular without my knowledge. So, I did a Google search. There were 300 results and the links were all to different websites giving the definition of this acronym. If it’s in such popular usage, why is no one using it on their blog or their message boards without the need to define it? I think this trivia game has some wonky questions. Or else I have too much time on my hands. Or both.

The world’s most mysterious number is…pi?!?

No. Pi can’t be all that mysterious. So, I did a Google search for “most mysterious number” and the results were:

pi
7
666
9
8
?? (I think you had to pay to find out or something)
3
8
0
Phi (this is not a typo)
7
137
137
4
13
13
7

So, I guess it’s 7. Or either 8, 137 or 13. Either way, I’m disappointed - I was hoping it’d be 196.

Plank’s Paradox: By the time I’m less busy and I actually have some time off work, all of the blogs and podcasts that I’ve been meaning to read (or listen to) are also taking breaks for Christmas, too.

At least I can read/listen to older posts/podcasts.

When I set up my web domains last year, I decided to get two - one for my prep sessions and one for my tutoring. The domains were londonmathtutor.com and londonmathprep.com (you can figure out which domain went with which service). When I designed the layouts, I set them up almost identically except for the colors. My thinking was that if I did the prep sessions under my own name, people would be reluctant to sign up - in case I was just some random guy on the street trying to pass himself off as a math instructor. I thought that having a business-type name would give me credibility. Later on, I realized the opposite would probably be true. Running the prep sessions under my own name would give me credibility. Many people in the courses knew me - or at least knew a friend who knew of me. And companies who run prep sessions come across as money-hungry and apathetic towards students. So, sometime in the summer I decided that instead of using two domains, I would just use one - londonmathtutor.com. I made the switch and replaced londonmathprep.com with a generic forwarding page. There was one problem. I had set up my email to work backwards. For my email, I set up londonmathprep.com to have an email address. And any emails directed to londonmathtutor.com would be forwarded to londonmathprep.com. When I discontinued the londonmathprep.com domain, I kept this setup. I could still send outgoing emails as if they were from the londonmathtutor.com domain. So, to recap, here’s what would happen:

1. A student sends an email to jeff@londonmathtutor.com
2. The email is forwarded to jeff@londonmathprep.com
3. I read the email
4. I reply to it, changing the “from” field to jeff@londonmathtutor.com