The power won’t be back for many hours, so an announcement came booming over the speakers telling everybody to go work from home. So that is that. I’m at lunch now. After that I will work from home for the afternoon.
Woo.
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There is no electricity here at work. So everybody is having a little bit of trouble doing normal activities. Actually, there is not “no” electricity. Looks like there is an emergency generator going or something. There are some emergency lights. One elevator is working. And the network is working. And people are using up their laptop batteries. It does not stop certain types of meetings though, so I gotta go… Several places are now reporting that the deal is done, and Hillary Clinton’s name WILL be placed into nomination at the convention. Good. I do not like Hillary, but I like the idea of the vote at the convention actually somewhat resembling the numbers that came out of the primary process rather than being artificially unanimous. Of course, this will give all the superdelegates (and the rest of the delegates for that matter) one last chance to change their minds and go for Clinton after all… Nah… won’t happen. :-)
For the first time since July 1st a state actually flips from one side to the other. All other recent changes have just been in the level of strength one candidate or another had in a state. The change on July 1st was Virginia flipping from Leaning McCain to Leaning Obama. Virginia now flips back to Leaning McCain. Either way, Virginia is a swing state. It is essentially too close to call. At the moment my five poll average actually has McCain ahead by 0.2%. That is close. That is a tossup. But it does move into McCain’s column at this point for the “if everybody gets their leans” count. And this continues a string of good news for McCain. McCain has indeed “shown up” and is in the process of making this a real contest again. Ohio is also very close right now, with Obama with a very slim lead. If McCain manages to flip Ohio as well then we will once again essentially have a tie game. Current Summary: McCain Best Case – McCain 298, Obama 240 If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 293, McCain 245 Recent trends have all been in McCain’s direction. Perhaps it is time for Obama to come back from vacation and start participating again. Just picked up my car from a major repair. Fixed lots of things that had been not quite right for quite a few months. It now no longer shakes violently when I slow down, which is probably a very good thing. The driver’s side window now opens and closes normally. The noises it makes when it runs are less than they were. It no longer has a flat tire. Etc, etc, etc. MUCH better. This time around the dealership basically said they wouldn’t fix it because there was too much wrong and it was too old. So we took it somewhere else and they happily made my car feel a lot better. But in between I was actually starting to think seriously about what I would get if I had to get a new car NOW. Now, it is a Saturn with 190K+ miles on it. It isn’t going to last all that much longer. Sooner or later (probably sooner), the engine will just die and then I’ll probably have to get a new car. But in the meantime, hopefully this will give this old car another 6 months to a year… if I’m lucky. But even if it doesn’t, it will keep me happy for the moment. And it is MUCH better than it was before we took it in initially at the end of last week. Good. Here is a hint, if you call me, and you get my voice mail, and you leave me a voice mail… there is then no need to call every hour all day long to leave more basically identical messages with no new information. That is annoying. When you also alternate the calls to me with calls to Brandy doing exactly the same thing, and leaving the same message on her voice mail time after time, that is also not helpful. When I get around to checking my voice mail, I’ll get all of the messages all at once. Calling over and over again and leaving the same message over and over again will not get me to call you back any sooner. In fact, it will probably make me pissed off and not want to call you at all, even if I was actually expecting your call and did have business to conduct with you. Also, if you leave me a voice mail, please leave an actual message giving information I can use to know the relevant information when I call you back. Don’t just say “This is Joe Bob from Company Q, please call me back right away.” Especially if you leave that message 16 times on two voice mail boxes in an 8 hour period. Thank you.
Mixed results today. Good news for each candidate in different places. The good news for Obama: McCain’s lead in Alaska drops to less than 5% in my last five poll average. This moves Alaska from “Weak McCain” to “Lean McCain”. And it means Alaska is a swing state and really is up for grabs. Now, Alaska has apparently voted Republican in all but one election since it became a state. So tipping Alaska over might be a big deal. Except for the fact that it is only three electoral votes. But it looks like Obama might actually be competitive here, and this improves Obama’s best case slightly. The good news for McCain: Obama’s lead in New Jersey slips to less than 10% in my last five poll average. New Jersey moves from “Strong Obama” to “Weak Obama”. The state is still a long way from being a swing state, but this weakening continues a trend over the last few of weeks, where Obama’s positions in Michigan, Wisconsin, South Carolina and New Hampshire have all deteriorated somewhat. But while Obama’s lead is diminished in New Jersey, it is still substantial enough to keep it blue on the overall map. Current Summary: McCain Best Case – McCain 298, Obama 240 If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 306, McCain 232
As of about 19:30 UTC on Sunday, the Abulsme Function is represented as A105272 in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. That sequence in particular traverses the array produced by looking at Abulsme(L,S) for all valid combinations of L and S starting with Abulsme(1,1); Abulsme(2,1); Abulsme(2,2); Abulsme(3,1); Abulsme(3,2); Abulsme(3,3); Abulsme(4,1); Abulsme(4,2); Abulsme(4,3); Abulsme(4,4); Abulsme(5,1); etc… In this way you get one infinite sequence with all values of the function. Some other infinite sequences generated from the function by fixing S and increasing L (starting with L=S) have also been included. The cases for S=1 and S=2 matched sequences already in the OEIS:
Higher values of S yielded sequences new to the OEIS though: Only these have been added, although of course sequences can be generated with any positive integer S. These sequences do reach a limit with increasing S though, and the limit of the sequence has been added to the OEIS as well.
Woo! My mathematical masterpiece first documented when I was in 8th grade, and further expounded on from then until around my Freshman year of college, and basically untouched since then… which would be about 17 or 18 years now… is finally recognized. :-) A certain person with the initials JPS once suggested that the Abulsme Function, when combined with 12 dimensional contour integration, could be used to go back and time and prevent the Space Shuttle Challenger from exploding. Um… no. But it is in the OEIS now. Which is great. Oh, and I should add, you can even listen to the sequence. I particularly like it when played by a marimba. It has now been added to my iTunes library. :-)
This is definitely now a trend in McCain’s direction. Obama’s lead in Michigan (in my last five poll average) now falls below 5%. This makes Michigan into a “Lean Obama” state rather than a “Weak Obama” state. This makes it a swing state, and one that could really easily go either way. Michigan has 17 electoral votes. More than any swing states other than Florida and Ohio. So this is very important. Michigan is a big deal. Without Michigan, McCain had a whole raft of states that he HAD to win in order to get to the 270 mark. With Michigan in play, we now have only Florida as a MUST WIN for McCain. The others McCain can potentially lose and still win… if he can pull of Michigan. Obama is still in a strong position, but without Michigan categorized as a “safe” state, it is looking a bit less strong than it was. In the summary, McCain’s best case improves. Current Summary: McCain Best Case – McCain 298, Obama 240 If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 306, McCain 232 We’ve been talking on Curmudgeon’s Corner for quite awhile now about how McCain needed to start actually showing up to play the game. Although he is still behind, I think McCain has now showed up and is starting to play. Mainly through negative ads that looked desperate to start with… but look like they might actually be having an effect in McCain’s favor in some critical states. Of course we have both conventions coming up pretty soon. And there is more news of all sorts every day. This can still be very volatile. It will be interesting to see if McCain can build these handful of reversals into any real momentum, and if that momentum will be able to persist through the conventions. |
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Sam and Ivan talk about:
