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Some shameful facts about myself
- In 2003, I predicted that it would take decades before videoconferencing became cheap enough for home users.
- I do not know my own telephone number or postal code, though I have lived for many years in the same house (and we own it). I do not know my office number. I do not know my social insurance number.- For the longest time, I thought that getting a Ph.D. was sufficient to get decent jobs, if not within academia, at least in industry. (That’s wrong.)
- Once I file anything in a folder or inside a desk, I am certain never to find it again. Anything not directly on my desk is lost forever. I am not kidding. That is why I run a paperless office.
- I once thought that computing the Hamming distance took quadratic time.
- I can no longer understand my older research papers such as “Fourier analysis of 2-point Hermite interpolatory subdivision schemes” and “A family of 4-point dyadic multistep subdivison schemes”. I cannot even understand the abstract of these papers. I could not prove I wrote them.
- I lost all the electronic copies of my Ph.D. thesis the same day I sent the second revised version to the printer. Though I had backups, I overwrote all the backups with an empty file, by accident. Had they requested a second round of revisions, I would have had to retype my thesis.
- My wife is much smarter than I am. If she did not manage our money, I would probably put all my savings in a checking account or I might forget where the money is.
- I am somewhat of a diva: I guard my schedule against intrusions as if time spent on my research was very important. I am convinced that my research matters.