its, I just sent you an e-mail. Looks like there are flights to Roatan for $135.

you'd be alone and not in phone call of friends space for the travel time and possibly in lots of pain and I dunno, possibilities for major discomfort without proximity of a bed or a friend.

Your concern is very sweet. As far as I can tell, though, it's only pain. It can't kill me or last forever. I just wish, well, if it's not going to stop, that it could fuck less with the things that have to be done. Flying in pain is easier than working.

Do you know what sucks? Having sniffles etc. sufficient to wreck my singing voice at the time of year when the best sing-along stuff is playing, ie, Christmas carols. Especially the old-fashioned ones I learned when I was lead in the church choir.

We won't even speak of the debacle of the last time I tried a Messiah sing-along.

Feh.

Received, Stephanie! Thanks so much. Honduras (and Roatan) are firmly at the top of my choices now.

Allyson, you're already Jewish, so it even makes things easier.

I was trying to convince a coworker that I can have citizenship in Israel and he just didn't believe me.

Gah. He's just such a pretty boy. Maybe I'll steal a smoochie when i go home and be that home-wrecker.

Freakin' morals. Bleh.

Emily, I find it difficult to type a general case (I'm not good enough with HTML or anything), so let's look at a simple example, OK?

f(x)=x²-x-b and we want to divide it be x-a. So the first element in the result will be x, and x*(x-a)=x²-a*x. When we substract that from f(x) we get (-1+a)*x-b and that's what we should be dividing now. So the new element in the result of the division is (-1+a), and in multiplying it by (x-a) we get (-1+a)*x-(-1+a)*a. So the element that "builds" the original polynom, in the sense that it multiplies the x in order to continue with the division process, now multiplies the a as well, and instead of the polynom with an x times that coefficient, we get a times that coefficient. So now the result of the final substraction is a²-a-b=f(a).

Did it make any sense at all? Each coefficient which multiplies the x in the division algorithm, when we try to move from one step to the other, to the next in-between polynom we use now in the division, also multiplies the "a" in the (x-a). So after all the multiplications, we end up with the same coefficients multiplying the "x" in the "negotiating" polynoms, and in the "a" in the remainder. So all that's left for that remainder to be is the f(a), the shape of the original polynom.

I'm afraid I only confused you more. Grr, this ocean that preents me from scribbling this on a piece of paper in front of you.

[Edited because this post is too messy as it is and doesn't need typos in it]

I've marked your post and will try to read again when I get to work and have successfully edited my Turing paper. Gosh, I hope they don't expect me to do any actual work.

I was trying to convince a coworker that I can have citizenship in Israel and he just didn't believe me.

Why didn't he believe you? He didn't believe that each Jewish person can get an Israeli citizenship, or that you are Jewish, or what?

Oh, and you already have a nephew. Recently, my youngest sister gave me a talk, in which she declared she's very read to have nieces and/or nephews now, and I should really do something about it.

Allyson can you get on IM during work? If so can you hop on for a sec?

Why the fuck is my Blackberry a magnet? That doesn't seem sensible. Is it possessed?

Okay -- I've made two of the big phone calls (one grovelling, one escalatint-to-get-other-team-members-on-the-page) and hopefully we're back on track with nothing other than scheduling to worry about. We are running out of 2005, though.