Derelict of the Year 1998
Winner
Congratulations to Greg Eyink.
Pictures from the Party
Nominations
- Greg Eyink: The King of Freaks
- Angel Pineda: The Vegan Strikes Back!
- Andre Lehovich, Selfless Servant
- Craig Savage and Dmitry Kondrashov: The School Girl and the Sex Slave
- Juan (Dr. August) Restrepo
- Karl Bauer, The True Nature of Dereliction
- The T-Man: Greg Eyink
- John Friese - Quake Addict
- Titus F. Dorstenstein - Derelict (almost) In Absentia
Greg Eyink: The King of Freaks
Every spring, this department has a little game they play to ease the tension of the end of the semester. Students and faculty nominate someone for doing something silly or being a little eccentric. There is, however, no reason to think about who should be nominated, because there is only one person who truly lives up to the word derelict. There is a man amongst us who would be exalted amongst the freaks of the world as a king! Yet, in our own academic world, we wear blinders and fail to take notice of this marvelous oddity of nature.
If you can't guess his name by now, you can fondly ask any member of the entire first year applied core, and anyone of them will begin dancing and singing "Vanilla, Eyink, Eyink Baby!"
A man who could pull a knife on a student in office hours, a man who would throw up his arms and scream "I never turn my back on my students, never!" before running away in the halls of the math building. A man who considers an intimate evening to be a night in a dark room alone with only the soft glow of a sun monitor. A man who computes algorithms with his eyebrows.
The finest the state of Ohio has to offer, and proof that only the best comes from the American Heartland. I've even heard rumors that if you gaze long enough into his eyebrows, that you too can perform the FFT butterfly on a 2^n by 2^n matrix completely in your head. This, however, is not to be advised, because you may just end up wearing the same jeans everyday for the rest of your life!
Vanilla Eyink Eyink Baby,
boom boom boom boom ba ba boom boom,
boom boom boom boom ba ba boom boom.
Angel Pineda: The Vegan Strikes Back!
One of the Star Wars outtakes that George Lucas didn't want you to see...
SCENE: The planet Hoth; desolate and bitterly cold. Our hero, Luke Skywalker, stumbles awkwardly through the raging blizzard. At last he is overcome by the freezing blast, and collapses face forward into a snow drift. Some time passes... Luke suddenly looks up, a hazy vision forming unsteadily before his eyes...
LUKE: Ben?
{Ben does not appear to be his usual self, bald on top and rather less grey in his beard, he also happens to be lounging in a deckchair, wearing Raybans and an excruciatingly loud Hawaiian shirt, calmly sipping a Banana Daiquiri. The icy storm continues unabated}
OBI-TWO: Err, yeah, sort of. In fact you could say I'm Obi-Two. Ben's gone to an African Dance lesson.
{Luke blinks, a vague inkling that something is not quite right coalescing somewhere in the back of his mind}
OBI-TWO: {Clears his throat loudly} Luke, you will go to the Los Alamos system, there to learn from Mac Hyman, the Jedi Mathematician who trained me.
{Luke frowns, something is definitely not right. The apparition shimmers as if it is about to wink out, but abruptly refocuses - Obi-Two takes another sip of his drink}
LUKE: Ben??
OBI-TWO: And remember Luke, whatever you do, do NOT let Angel Pineda put your bike back together after shipping it to Los Alamos. Remember well the three victims whose handlebars came loose from their forks while careening down a New Mexico hillside. Could've caused a nasty accident that.
LUKE: Ben???
OBI-TWO: Mac will teach you the ways of the hub spanner and the alum keys Luke. Save you they can, especially if Angel appears offering to fix YOUR bike. Beware the Vegan side Luke. Consume you it would. Eventually you too would be pestering people to accompany you to 80's nights, and own a CD of the GoGo's greatest hits.
{He pauses to shiver fearfully, and downs the remainder of his drink in one go}
Mind what you have learned — but carry a large T-Bone steak around with you at all times — just in case...
{The vision finally fades, and Luke — convinced his delirium has at last got the better of him — lapses abruptly into unconsciousness...}
Andre Lehovich, Selfless Servant
Our department often tries to engender a sense of community. This is particularly true in the grad student computer room, where there may be as many as a dozen students working at one time. Andre Lehovich in particular is eager to share with others in this environment. To anyone within earshot (which extends to Marana), Andre will give the latest New York Times headlines, Dilbert cartoons, NASA announcements, or progress reports on his image processing homework. He eagerly joins in other conversations and generously gives his expert advice. Recently he was trying to arrange betting pools for the pig races at the county fair. Please, do not let this selfless servant of our community go unrewarded.
Craig Savage and Dmitry Kondrashov: The School Girl and the Sex Slave
Two unnamed students would like to nominate Craig Savage and Dmitry Kondrashov for the Derelict of the Year Award. We feel that they deserve this award because: for Halloween, Craig and Dmitry flaunted their S&M side to the whole world, including 30 freshmen in Craig's algebra class; they dance their hearts out every Thursday night, even when they have a test on Friday; and they spend more time playing ultimate than they do working on their numerical assignments!!
Juan (Dr. August) Restrepo
Because a picture is worth 1000 words, check out: Dr. August.
Karl Bauer, The True Nature of Dereliction
For far too long, there have been derelicts that do not truly qualify for the award in the true nature of the word. When you look at this year's nominees, you will see those who are funny, have peculiar personal habits or a just plain geeky. Now, is that what true dereliction is all about? I think not.
For this reason, I am proud to nominate Karl Bauer, the laziest graduate student who is likely to get a Ph.D. It takes talent to spend more time climbing than studying, to spend more time in California than in Arizona and still have time to nap in the afternoons. This does not even include that he is hanging out with a certain graduate student with particularly nice abs, but who has censored any details concerning their relationship, or lack there of. Well, except for the fact that just recently after our own Karl got his truck stuck in mud, he asked her to get out and push in her bra and panties. Well, if that was one of the uncensored anecdotes, you can imagine.
Sure, I could tell you about his snowboard, which has a well-endowed woman in a bikini licking a popsicle. I could also tell you about how he was sued this year and when asked to attend court in California, he responded that if the plaintiff wanted him in court, he would need to fly to Arizona and serve the subpoena himself. The true nature of Karl's dereliction lies much deeper. It lies in the fact that he will have the honor of making it through this program doing the least amount of work. If anything deserves a prize, I believe that would be it.
The T-Man: Greg Eyink
Up on the highest floor of our building, a great hero of the American people works diligently, vigorously developing and developing theories of turbulence. His given name is Greg Eyink, but we often refer to him as T-Man.
The T-Man bravely stands up for truth and honesty. At one seminar the speaker was so incompetent and his talk so boring that he was unable to stick to social graces...or perhaps he wanted to spare future audiences of the same fate. Thus, our hero suggested that the audience spank the speaker.
T-Man is a very fit man. This is not only good for his health but also enables him to always fit in the only shirt and jeans he owns. To stay fit requires that he swim distances, only possible by swimming in circles hundreds of times around his housing complex pool. In order to not arouse too much attention to himself, he often performs this feat at 3-4 am. He has, however, switched to swimming in the pool at the rec center. But he has difficulties swimming in a straight line and in daylight. This practice, however, combined with the fact that since he joined the Rec Center, the pool remains unheated Big-T almost caught pneumonia, the worst of which was to actually miss a talk on turbulence.
Greg has also contributed greatly to the well being of the Circle K employees, by being their best customer. He has also unselfishly donated his body to experimental biochemistry: his body offers a wealth of information on the consequences of massive corrosive chemical consumption on the physical and mental health of human beings.
Ever zealous of the Truth, even if his life is at stake, he has spared civilization of falsities by taking head on questionable fundamental tenets of the work on turbulence of The Greatest Applied Mathematician Alive(tm) and of similar high priests of modern science. This level of unselfishness to his fellow researchers is hardly appreciated.
Greg is an artist: his published drawings depict the very human side of great scientists. His Theory on Sculpture puts him squarely as one of high priests of Modern Art, Pop Art figures of the fifties. Together with Jeff Koons, he has advanced the genre to dizzying heights. The poignancy and expressiveness found in his "Three Circle-K Styrofoam Towers" surpasses Warhols' Campbell Soup Cans in emotion and depth. This playful piece synthesizes the modern deconstructivist psyche of todays society.
Finally, the T-Man stops at no obstacle. On one Sunday morning at the Math building he wanted to use the restroom but found the stall door stuck. Assuming nobody else would be in the building at this hour, he pushed on the door, but it still stuck. He pushed a bit harder, and still it stayed shut. Finally, Greg threw his whole weight at the door and it flew open, revealing that he was in fact not the only person in the building.
John Friese - Quake Addict
<BLAM><BLAM><BLAM> <grunt> <oof> <PRRRRRRT>
"Oh crap..." "DIE!" <BLAM!> "DIE!" <BLAM!> "DIE!" <BLAM!>
<SWOOOSH!> <BOOOOOM!>
_PLAYER TRIED TO PUT THE PIN BACK IN_
_PRESS RETURN TO RESTART_
It's all in a day's work for this lone soldier. Never mind that other people might want to use pisgah.math.arizona.edu ("But you can run Netscape on the Sun terminals!", he probably thinks). Never mind that you need to shut down linux and boot Win95 to run it, sometimes destroying processes running in the background ("Don't worry, John, that 13-hour-long compile was running under make(1)", said Bob). Never mind that he hasn't even finished his written and oral prelims -- it's _only_ his fourth year as a graduate student! There are more important things to do! Like saving Earth from Shub-Niggurath ("Ia! Ia! The Black Goat, Mother of a Thousand Young!") and her unearthly spawn! Onward!
_LOADING_
"All right, _now_ where are you...THERE YOU ARE!"
<BLAM!><BLAM!><BLAM!>...
Titus F. Dorstenstein - Derelict (almost) In Absentia
Even though Titus (pronounced TEE-tus) left for Stanford last year, where he probably felt sure he would be more appreciated, his presence could still be felt last fall.
Not wishing to tell everyone he knew that he was now at Stanford, he simply had mail that arrived Here forwarded to his new account Over There. However, his name had not been struck from the 'applied' mailing list, so that he still received announcements of applied math colloquia from Here.
Now, most people would just send e-mail directly to the list maintainer, asking that their name be removed from the mailing list.
But Titus was not most people.
So instead he replied to each announcement from 'applied'. Not to the list maintainer, but to the list itself. The result was that everybody who had received an announcement from 'applied' also received a copy of Titus' reply.
Now, this wouldn't have been all that much, except that each reply from Titus basically contained the statement "These replies will not stop until my name is removed from the list".
To make the rest of this story short (actually, I can't find the relevant people to do the background research), Bob, Our SysAdmin, took notice of the threatening tone of Titus' e-mail missives.
Bob had a little talk with Titus.
Now Titus is Bob's 'friend'.
Moral of the Story? Never piss off Bob.