The other day I saw a man walking his dog down the street very early in the morning. He was wearing a bathrobe and literally was walking with his eyes closed. I realized that I knew exactly what he felt like, and I further guessed that there are many common experiences that dog owners share which are special and unique. Here are some of my favorites; please add your own!

1. The morning sleepy walk. (Most) dogs have no problem waking up super early, if it only means they get fed. Mine is particularly accurate with respect to her internal breakfast alarm; she is rude enough to even start scratching on doors if she's not walked and fed by 8:30am. What a nerve.
   
   You know the morning sleepy walk I'm talking about: Throw on a robe or go out in your PJs; be blinded by the sunlight as you walk out first thing in the morning; check your email while stumbling down the street after your dog; bend over to scoop up any goodies she leaves.
   
   
2. Begging for food. Some dogs can be polite, and some can be very forward with their food requests. Some will dance, some will do tricks, and some will literally push you to move towards the cabinet where you keep their food. Talk about confidence!
   
   
3. Salivating on guests. You're hosting a nice, dressy party or just have some guests over randomly. Yeah, great timing for your dog to get worked up and start sweating and salivating all over the place (but that's when it always happens). Saliva on guests, on your nice pants, on the couch, on the floor. Maybe dogs think we like it?
   
   
4. Being lazy on a rug or sofa and not coming when called. You're running 5 minutes late and need to leave the house ASAP. You realize the dog needs a walk and so you call it down. That's exactly when it's least likely to come; it's snoozing softly somewhere, and it feigns poor hearing until you literally come up and give it the look. Attitude!
   
   
5. Shaking their whole body after a bath or rain and getting you all wet. Dogs have special muscles in their back meant just for shaking their entire body in rapid succession to maximize the amount they can soak you.
   
   
6. Smelling another dog's genitals and putting you in an uncomfortable position with respect to the other dog walker. You're walking Fido down the street and some strange-looking (or maybe attractive?) person is walking their dog towards you. After the initial awkward is-this-other-dog-going-to-kill-me check, the dogs start smelling each other's rear ends. Then your eyes meet the other person's, and it's always uncomfortable. Do you make your dog stop? Do you try to smell the other person? Do you apologize? Do you run away as fast as possible?
   
   
7. Washing and refilling dog bowls. The food bowl, the water bowl, the travel bowl, the dog bed, the dog towel, the dog tag necklace, the dog toys -- all this paraphernalia that requires constant maintenance for one simple creature. How about it take care of itself once in a while?
   
   
8. Going "shopping" at Petco and thinking about all the toys you would want as a dog and realizing your dog may have different preferences. Petco for me is like a toy store; so much new-smelling, colorful stuff, even snacks that look like human food. I love how they make it pleasant for dogs and humans alike.
   
   
9. Sneezing when smelling second-hand smoke. While humans have to just put up with it or move away respectfully, dogs can just sneeze loudly and proudly of their hate of cigarette smoke.
   
   
10. Jumping up on your shoulders to greet you. This is always fun, unless you're carrying something fragile. In any case, it's nice to feel loved and wanted, even by a four-legged creature.
    
    
11. Rolling onto their back to help facilitate belly scratching. Dogs are so smart; they can calculate and optimize the perfect angle to keep their body to maximize scratching and petting sensation.
    
    
12. Picking up dog poo and carefully negotiating with the swinging bag surface, keeping track mentally of every surface and bag fold between what's clean and what's dirty. No one wants brown fingers, especially before having to eat breakfast, so figuring out how to do the most delicate maneuvers with a bag of poo is one of the first things we learn as dog owners. The other awkwardness comes when you run into others you know on your way to the trash and have to somehow greet them carrying a bag of poo. Wonderful.
    
    
13. Playing tricks on you to get you to finish a walk faster and give them food. If I'm trying to get my dog to walk more or poo, I just keep walking farther and farther, and at some point, my dog just gives me this dramatic chipmunk look like, "are you crazy?" Once that fails, it starts to dig its nails into the ground and pull back on its leash. Once that fails, it finally decides to take a few steps onto some grass before immediately swerving backwards and trying to walk home (in basketball, this is a pump fake). This is all in order to come home and get fed faster.
    
    
14. Understanding situations and coming to comfort you or give you space when you're packing. Dogs can sense very early if their owner is leaving or sad or hurt. It's amazing when they're able to show this level of compassion and how they express it.
    
    
15. Nuzzling up against you and petting themselves against your legs or hands. Face it: your dog is using you like an object, and you're just its walking, feeding massage chair.
    
    
16. Snoozing next to you while you're working. This is perhaps the most peaceful and gentle expression of love from a dog, and it's a wonderful moment to appreciate.

I had a lot of fun helping to plan my wedding, and through the experience, I learned a ton about event coordination, business negotiation, and dealing with difficult personalities. It was all worth it, but I just wish it didn't have to be so tough.

As I see it there are three general problem areas with the wedding industry right now:

1. Insane prices. The moment you mention "wedding," the tone immediately changes. All of a sudden, the other person is so extremely "nice" and warm, sprinkling congratulations and feigning curiosity into the details of the proposal. They aren't faking their delight, though; they are so extremely happy to have another person they can totally overcharge. Because saying "wedding" is basically the same as saying, "please charge me 50-100% above normal."

I may sound a bit cynical, but it's just from being shocked so many times in hearing prices for various everyday things that are out-of-this-world high and which one would never pay on a regular day. For example, with venues, flowers, and invitations, I had numerous experiences of realizing that prices are sort of in their own "wedding universe" rather than based on cost or value add. This price bubble is further heightened and sustained through all the various media that cover the industry and that speak of $100K budgets like they're the new normal.

The unfortunate thing is that in this industry, just like almost everywhere else, you get what you pay for, and if you pay top dollar, you likely will get better service than if you choose something cheaper. However, the general magnitude of prices in question is what is so frustrating.

I wish vendors were more honest in the sense of not taking advantage of the joy of a wedding and the guilt of not paying for the "best" for one's "most important day" and simply provided great service at a reasonable price. That's obviously too much to ask (though I was lucky to find a select few vendors who did in fact do that with grace).

2. Sub-par quality. You'd think that with high prices comes amazing performance. Sometimes that occurs, but from my limited experience, it's less often than not. Unfortunately, wedding vendors are amazing salespeople who will show you their "best of the best" portfolio instead of their average wedding (like from a recent weekend), and so consumers are making their decisions on the wrong basis. Consumers do have a burden to do proper due diligence, but it would be nice if the industry didn't make their job more diffcult.

It's frustrating to have to constantly fight for every "concession," where concession often means simply getting what was originally promised or discussed and which now turns out to be something premium or extra. Sometimes sub-par quality can be even worse, such as when your bride's wedding dress is destroyed by a dry cleaners that decides not to take responsibility for it (yes, true story). It's really unbelievable.

3. Poor ethical standards. This last point can be summed up simply with, "Be a man. Do the right thing." Or more elaborately, be a professional. This means being honest, not needing a contract to spell out every detail of behavior, and doing what you say you're going to do (something I realize most people can't accomplish).

In the height of vendor negotiations, I had a long checklist of all the various contract sections that would always need to get added or removed and things to explicitly check in every contract or estimate. Nothing would ever be preset in the "form agreement" that was in your favor or as discussed or "sold" to you; it would all have to get argued to get included explicitly. It's frustrating when someone promises something and yet can't commit in writing.

Besides contracts, which few will ever really enforce, actual ethical behavior is what's sorely needed. I remember visiting one cake vendor who rudely scoffed at our requests and said that she didn't want our business but if we forced her she would charge us $x (where x is an order of magnitude more than the next most expensive vendor). We also had one cake vendor who promised to do our cake but then bailed when we wanted to sign a contract ("sorry, got a celebrity wedding"). We even had our DJ bail on us the day before he was supposed to play ("sorry, stuck in Europe [partying]") -- it was a lot of fun hiring a new DJ on my wedding day.

I realize this post has somewhat of a ranting nature, but I know I'm not the only one who's felt this pain. It'd be one thing if the prices were low and I were dealing with shady vendors; it's unbelievable when it's with ostensibly high-quality vendors charging ridiculous prices. That really needs to change. People need to step up, and prices need to step down. 'nuff said.

I recently listened to the audio version of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman. It was a wonderfully personal, detailed, and amusing account of many of Feynman's famous stories. The book reminded me of several people I know in my own life that bear remarkable resemblances to him; it's curious how certain scientists and nerds can be similar.

The book covered some of the stories around the major parts of Feynman's life, starting with his childhood, through his time in working on the atomic bomb, through his winning of the Nobel prize, and on to include his many adventures and misadventures with music, women, Brazil, and lock-picking. His stories were all written in a direct, matter-of-fact tone, the content of which was quite funny. Through the book, I ended up learning a decent amount of history, physics, philosophy, psychology, and about women, strippers, lock-picking, and Brazil. Not bad for one book....

Introduction

• Stories about his life and work
  
• Mischief big part of his personality
  
• Hated pretention
  
• Urge to solve puzzles from young age
• Born in 1918
• Went to MIT
• Then to Princeton
• Worked on Manhattan Project
• Married several times
  
• Finally went to Caltech
• Built science lab for radios when was 11
• Lots of mischief at home
  
• Built burglar alarm to catch parents
  
• Repaired radios by thinking
  
• Has persistence
  
• Can't ever leave a puzzle unsolved
  
• "Puzzle drive"
  
• Learned all puzzles in existence
  
• Joined algebra team in high school
  
• Has to see answer in a flash
  
• Invented problems and theorems
  
• Made up own trigonometry before learned in school (also Taylor series)
  
• Made up own symbols for math
  
• Fixed typewriters for fun
  
• Had odd jobs during Depression
  
• Several inventions in kitchen when worked as cook (but got in trouble for them as they didn't work as planned)
• Innovation is a difficult thing in the real world
  

Part 1: MIT

• Joined Jewish fraternity
  
• Not religious at all
  
• Didn't know how to be social
  
• Hazing rituals
  
• Study-ers and socializers taught each others
  
• Never good at sports
  
• Doesn't judge people by look (enjoyed dancing with deaf girl)
  
• People's knowledge can be very fragile
  
• Some people "learn," but can't apply what they know
  
• Learn out of rote memorization (Brazilian physics education)
  
• Liked to play jokes on waitresses
  
• He's usually very honest, even when joking
  
• Loved to listen to Italian radio for melodic language
  
• Had to go through humanities classes
  
• Wrote on topics of interest to him in humanities papers
  
• Astronomy and philosophy
  
• Analyzed own dreams and perceptions
  
• Studied self while falling asleep
  
• Could somewhat control dreams
  
• Dreamt in color
  
• Did chemistry magic shows
  

Part 2: The Princeton Years

• Very formal social conventions and dress
  
• Cyclotron experiments
  
• Got hypnotized, and it worked
  
• Sense of knowing he can not go along with hypnosis but going along anyways; isn't that hypnosis?
  
• Sat around various tables at dining hall to learn from philosophy and biology groups
  
• Learned biology and phages
  
• Gave talk to Einstein
  
• Wanted to be practical, not cultured
  
• Understands theorems by making up examples in his head
  
• Interest in mind readers
  
• Experiments with ants
  
• Carried magnifying glass around
  

Part 3: Feynman, the Bomb, and the Military

• Wanted to make contribution to country
  
• Loved to tour Bell Labs
  
• Got job but left to join military
  
• Worked on mechanical computer using gears
  
• Worked on radar
  
• Smelled bottles and books and realized that human smell can be about as good as a bloodhound's
• Los Alamos from below
• Manhattan project
  
• Wasn't famous
  
• Fright over Hitler building bomb before us
  
• Started to work immediately on bomb calculations (separating uranium isotopes)
  
• He was theoretical; others experimental
  
• Had different box of tools than others from the textbooks he read as a kid; differentiating under the integral
  
• Started building Los Alamos laboratories
  
• Wife had TB
  
• Had to go to Albequerque
  
• Beautiful scenery
  
• Studied and debated with others
  
• Letters got censored
  
• Liked to expose security flaws in system around him
  
• Repaired mechanical hand calculators
  
• Used IBM card machines
  
• Wife died from TB
  
• Was prepared for the death
  
• Cared more for work and solving problems and was able to cope
  
• Von Neumann: don't have to be responsible for world around you; went on walks with him
  
• Saw Bohr
  
• Worried more about physics ideas, not about pleasing others
  
• Saw bomb explosion test
  
• Had made plutonium
  
• Went to Cornell to teach
  
• Learned to pick locks
  
• Bad paper document security at Los Alamos
  
• Kept breaking locks to show that they were no good
  
• Took his new combo lock apart to understand how to break it
  
• Learned to brute force combo locks in 4-8 hours
  
• Had to amuse himself somehow
  
• Picked last 2 numbers from people's safes all the time when visited people's offices
  
• Must close safe doors immediately after open and take something out (don't leave open)
  
• Broke all 9 safes containing all secrets of atomic bomb (for fun)
  
• All safes had one combo: math constant e
  
• Only way to solve a safe is with patience
  
• Brute force reduction methods
  
• Opened 2 safes cold with psychological methods (meaningful dates, etc.)
  
• Befriended locksmith slowly
  
• People don't bother to change from default safe combo
  
• Got medical exam from psychiatry before working at GE; failed psychiatry screening
  
• Liked to play tricks on people

Part 4: From Cornell to Caltech

• Likes teaching in order to feel like he's contributing
  
• Likes thinking of answers to student questions, improving how to teach
  
• Taught at Cornell mathematical methods for physics
  
• Tried to be more dignified
  
• Went to social dances
  
• Put a lot of thought into lectures
  
• Felt burnt out, no ideas
  
• You have no responsibility to live up to what others expect
  
• Liked playing with physics, inventing things for own entertainment
  
• Play with physics whenever want to
  
• Worked out equations of dishes wobbling
  
• Effortless playing with things that were interesting
  
• Diagrams that he won Nobel Prize came from this playing
  
• Learned to entertain himself in Chicago bar
  
• Learned to stay in bars without getting drunk
  
• Accidentally got patents for obvious ideas on nuclear ideas (assigned to government for $1)
  
• Used his $1 to buy cookies
  
• Likes to imitate being drunk even when not
  
• Realized useless to buy girl drinks; don't get anything from it
  
• Got lessons from MC
  
• Under no circumstances be a gentleman; don't buy anything until ask if girl will sleep with you
  
• Must disrespect
  
• Never buy drink
  
• Must ask explicitly
  
• Did mental math by tricks but got lucky
  
• Memorized logs and e tables
  
• Abacus allows you to not know basic arithmetic
  
• He knew lots of approximation methods
  
• Decided to take immersion class to learn Spanish and go to South America
  
• Taught physics classes in Rio and went to beach in afternoon
  
• Learned new customs
  
• Got married again and divorced because of lots of arguments
  
• Learned samba drum, joined samba school
  
• Succeeded in learning frigideira instrument well
  
• In Brazil, students memorized rather than actually learned concepts
  
• Visited Las Vegas
  
• Loved beautiful girls
  
• Spent a lot of time talking to showgirls
  
• Visited Sunset Strip
  
• Hated snow in Ithaca
  
• Loved Caltech and the weather
  

Part 5: The World of One Physicist

• Would you solve the dirac equation?
  
• Lots of physicists in Japan came for conference
  
• Wanted to stay at Japanese style hotel
  
• Slept on floor, no chairs
  
• Japanese bath
  
• Analyzed physics by constantly applying examples in his head
  
• Different words in Japanese for same concept, varying by politeness
  
• Felt like always was behind in physics and struggled in understanding new concepts
  
• Studied beta decay, parity law violations
  
• Didn't want to give public city college talk if had to give more than 13 signatures
  
• Learned to draw and studied art
  
• Feeling of awe in science and glories of universe
  
• Drew nudes
  
• Every woman worried about her looks no matter how beautiful
  
• Sold some of his drawings
  
• Did physics and drawings at strip clubs
  
• Sold art and commissioned portraits
  
• Is electricity fire? (Jewish Sabbath rules debate)
  
• Didn't like interdisciplinary conferences
  
• Joked about Sabbath goys with rabbis
  
• Judging books by their covers
  
• Joined curriculum commission to rate math books
  
• He was the only one who actually read all the books
  
• Books were written horribly with tons of mistakes
  
• Averaging length of emperor's nose when no one has seen him (bad crowdsourcing)
  
• Publishers bribed book reviews all the time
  
• Didn't want publicity and attention from getting Nobel Prize
  
• Didn't want reception to celebrate
  
• Brought up to not like royalty
  
• Thought Prize was pain in neck; wanted to be taken straightforward
  
• Learned about Mayan math in Mexican honeymoon
  
• Cracked Dresden Codex himself for fun
  
• Liked beating drums for fun
  
• Played music for SF ballet
  
• Couldn't read music though
  
• Studied altered mental states
  
• Loved to think and didn't want to ruin the machine (brain)
  
• Went into sense deprivation tank to experience hallucinations
  
• Learned that memories stored according to location of where experienced memory
  
• "Cargo cult science" = bad science
  
• From Caltech commencement address
  
• Esalen baths to study mysticism
  
• Must have scientific honesty
  
• Must disclose all facts even those that invalidate your cause
  
• Complete opposite of advertising
  
• Must not fool yourself
  
• Must publish results and advice no matter what result was