March Update

I haven't been keeping up with my blog! A lot of things going on since my last post.

- UNCC classes are going well. Tedious as it can possibly be, but on track to get As in my English and History classes.

- Work has been pretty challenging recently. It seems like the goals keep changing daily for the project I'm working on, but I've just focused on tackling one thing at a time.

- The family has been having a blast. We recently got back from Walt Disney World in Florida. We went with my sister and her son, my brother and his friend. The wife and kids had a great time, and I think everyone else did also. I'm in the process of making a DVD with all the pictures and videos. The biggest hit was the "La Nouba" circus show. I highly, highly, recommend that one if you go.

- OMG: For the I-don't-know-how-many'eth-time, on the Delta flight there, I was struck in the knee by the drink-cart by a stewardess. It hurt like all get out. I had on my todo list to call Delta and complain, but never got around to it, Disney put me in a better mood. But I sware, any flight I take from here on out, that I sit in an aisle seat, I am wearing a KNEE PAD!!!

- Pool has been going good. I took a good break recently not being on the line-up plan, but played on our 8-ball-express line up last night. I matched up against a 7 for an even 4-4 race for a change (I'm usually giving up games!). I ended up with a 4-1 victory but things could have went either way - I think I caught a break on some uncharacteristic misses by my opponent but I was able to run out when needed. It was a nice revenge match since he beat me by probably the same score not too long ago when he was a 6. :) Our team ended up 2-3 for the night though, not sure we'll make the play-offs - will see...

- On my number theory problem: I've had a few machines running for a while now without finding a solution to 13^n = 36 (mod n). I haven't given up on it yet, but have less focus on that problem now. I'm still putting together a paper with Max Alekseyev on methods of solving such congruences, but we've been taking our time on that - both of us have been busy with other things. Also, I wrote down some probablistic arguments that support infinite solutions to b^n = c (mod n) for c not equal to 1. Max reviewed it and provided some improvements. It's enough to feel confident about the result, but relies on conjecture still (assumes Artin's primitive root conjecture for one, and on certain randomness of discrete logarithms). We might be able to polish that up enough to include in the paper too, but if not I'll post on an HTML page for posterity.