Ugh, thirteen hours of work today and no real lunch break. Including a meeting where I got the death glaze for daring to have a differing opinion/opinion of my own. Excuse me, I thought I got paid to think for myself and have my own opinion about our clients and what direction we're focusing in as a group. Everyone automatically agreeing is not actually best for a processes...healthy dissension and discussion is vital, in my opinion, but apparently, I am wrong. Obviously, I should just keep doing all the shit no one else wants to do, notice, or deal with and keep my mouth shut. Silly me.

So, work is all I've really done today, oh and a trip to the store for bread, English muffins, and Cheetos so that I can make my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch at work. (The English muffins are for breakfast. :) ) I've been spending too much money I don't really have on eating out, so I'm attempting to be more frugal. Plus, I think I lost some weight on my last pb&j for lunch run, so that could be an added perk.

Assuming I get out of the office on time tomorrow, I'm going to take the guy out for dinner. My illnesses, general neuroses, and other factors combined into us not seeing each other since last Sunday. I miss my guy hugs.

So, work was a zoo and a mess today. I had planned to begin my quest to not eat out during the work week, but I had failed to shop or prepare for lunch properly. So, a burger from Phil's Deli in the Farmer's Market it was.

In the other news, finally admitted to the boy that I loved him and luckily, he loves me back. Positive tiny steps, but heartwarming they were.

my livejournal is now defunct, but I wanted to post this info somewhere where a google search would find it, which is why I am posting one more time.

the glicko is the new chess rating which allows you to carry forward errors with a rating (someone who hasn't played in 20 years has a less reliable rating than someone who plays all the time). (see http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/glicko/glicko.doc/glicko.html)



I was playing Chess on FICS today and I got into a terrible argument about your rating system. Everyone there kept on repeating the fact that it is impossible to use a formula to transfer a rating from glicko to elo (or elo to glicko).

My feeling after reading your explanation of the glicko rating system (I have read Arpad's book long ago), is that it is not only possible to create a formula (at the very least for a single point in time) to transfer ratings from elo and glicko and vice versa, but that you could also calculate the possible errors involved in such a translation.

At FICS everyone said it is "impossible" because the "errors are too large."

What is your opinion on this?

--- Eric


Hi Eric,

I don't see a huge problem determining an empirically-based formula that translates a Glicko rating to a mean Elo rating using standard statistical methods on a set of players that have both Glicko and Elo ratings. I fairly regularly carry out a similar translation from FIDE ratings to USCF ratings using such methods. While it's true that it's impossible to translate a Glicko rating uniquely to an Elo rating, the task that is fairly straightforward is to translate a Glicko rating to a *mean* Elo rating, that is, among all players with a particular Glicko rating (or near that rating) one can determine the approximate mean Elo rating. The mean Elo rating can be used as an approximation for the translation. One could also always report the standard deviation around that mean Elo rating, which would give information about how inexact the translation is.

- Mark


Mark Glickman is like Arpard Elo reincarnated. It feels weird to be able to e-mail him and ask him questions.

Today was the last day of my holiday vacation/time off and I spent it sleeping in. Then I watched some Antiques Roadshow before heading off to the movies to watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which I enjoyed a fair amount. It was very much like a fairy tale and now, having seen it, I can understand why they chose to go with three actors to replace Heath Ledger, because it makes a lot of sense that his character would become someone else every time he's stepped through the mirror. The surprise of the movie for me was a Mr. Andrew Garfield, who was very good as Anton.

My stomach has been unhappy with me since last night...and today, other than two pop tarts this morning, I've been trying to trick it into accepting water as food. Still no relief, but maybe tomorrow will be a better day.


I slept ridiculously late this morning, and yet here I am finding myself very tired at 7:30 PM. I'm definitely getting old.

I've done absolutely nothing today...lounged about watching top whatever countdowns on VH1 Classic and then left the house only long enough to grab a burger and move the car for street sweeping tomorrow.

I've been highly emotional of late, and I'm not sure why.

Am wondering if it's every January I feel like an abject failure, or is this year just special?

Who knows...

["Treasury".]
Exorcisms? Masters?
You would need to learn to swim before you were to wade into deep water.
Or as exorcising masters would have it, to wade in is to begin to learn.
I don't see people standing on the shores waiting to sell lessons.
I can understand concerns over the water being polluted;
You want clean water to drink, you want clean water to swim in.
You expect to clean out the vessel before you use it for something clean.
Ultimately we consider the ultimate vessel the water its ultimate self.
It will carry everything away.
["Transformation".]
Yet when you touch the water, you make it dirtier than it was before.
I do see ancient masters dying of corrupted elixers, seeking immortality.
Or is it such a 'disgraceful error' to become such a sterling example?
'The Tao that can be written is not the eternal Tao'.
["Precepts".]
Why would you hold precepts of any kind?
Suppose you're seeking to be a sage;
Well, you can't stand in the same river twice (it's always flowing).
Are you the river or is everybody else?
Is that the sage, then, 'waiting by the river'? 'Sitting on the fence'?
What's a fence to the river? What does it care if you're waiting, sitting?
Or suppose you're seeking to be a lawyer.
In that case you'd prefer everybody to follow precepts of some kind.
We might arrive at the conclusion that the lawyer mentality is this:
'You should seek to be still water, placid water, flat and featureless'.
How is still, placid, featureless water carrying anything?
It's one thing to seek the plain, middle, empty ground for moderation.
It's one thing to enforce doing as little as possible for conflicts.
The external reality is that there is nothing still about the conflict.
If everything was still there wouldn't be any need for moderation.
The lawyer lives internal to a calm and serene bubble, for sure,
But it's one among billions at the bottom of a waterfall.
["Meditation".]
What's the deal with trying to present the appearance of not existing?
Why all this emphasis on getting populations to not expend energy?
Some person goes on an inward journey seeking knowledge of their self.
Well, what happened to the person who was there before?
They're just gone, because they can curl their fingers and shut up?
So they can quiet the mind; they did so beforehand, but didn't even know!
That's how damn quiet they were before they started paying attention!
Wrap their brains around that!

Running.  Hiding.  Running.  Hiding.  Running.  Hiding.



I DON"T WANNA GO!

It's been an odd week for me...very emotionally down, but physically somewhat productive. The productive streak might have ended today. I spent New Year's Eve at home, watching DVD's and reading, even though the guy did ask if he was going to see me that evening at 6 PM on New Year's Eve....such great planning.

I decided I'd rather be at home instead the day before actually and I wasn't feeling so hot anyway.

I did manage to watch both season 3 of Dexter and season 1 of True Blood this week.

Now I'm out to find some food.

I hope all of you have an absolutely lovely 2010!

Wow...I hadn't realized it'd been so long since I last updated. I spent Thanksgiving in Texas with my family. My sister and her husband brought their baby down and everyone loved seeing him. So it was nice to watch all of that going on. I drove from LA, which gave me the added bonus of stopping in Phoenix to see friends and having my own vehicle with me while I was there.

Then there was the normal rush of holiday activity, including getting my office decorated and making sure our holiday party for our clients went off well. It did, thankfully, and now I'm through the quiet weeks between the holidays and the new year. I have this entire week off, so that'll be a good opportunity to hopefully get some long-needed cleaning and organizing done.

Still kind of dating that guy. He's nice and the company is good, so we'll see what goes along there.

All in all, things are swimming along similarly and I hope for things to stay the same in the new year.