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relocation to India. He works remote for us from India now. I think he made out pretty well on his decision.
    In four months’ time we implemented what I called Genesis at this online dating website. Our goal was to pretty much emulate the algorithms that YinYang was using to pair people together. I think we accomplished that and more. You know, I had some crazy ideas on how people should be connected.
    Punjab and I made out like heroes. Month after month, we saw that people were flocking back to this website ready to get some action on. Oh and to Michelle’s point, not a single Monte Carlo method was used in Genesis. Everything was modeled via machine learning and data mining. Nothing was hypothetical. I still can’t get past that statement from last month at the Museum of Fine Arts.
    I kept working with Punjab wherever I went and we did some work for some Wall Street banks automating many of their financial modeling procedures. Some of the bankers weren’t too happy as I was making their job obsolete. When I was in the elevator one day some junior banker looked at my shoes and said, “Doesn’t it suck that if your salary plus bonus doesn’t put you at the top tax bracket?”
    I thought to myself, “since when are Bruno Magli shoes considered thrifty? Maybe it was my Hugo Boss suit?”
    I really hope that banker’s best skill was the one I had just automated with Death Star. It was a little asset developed for mergers and acquisitions.
    A few months passed by and word eventually got out about Punjab and I with the dating sites. Soon all the major competitors were asking us to re-haul their dating algorithms. So we did. I spend the next year and a half bringing Genesis to other companies. Based on the demographics of the users the website had and the underlying technology of each website, I tweaked the algorithms here and there.
    So I guess now I’ve explained why I have such a distaste for online dating, I feel somewhat responsible for all of these people making bad decisions and finding their mate online. Whatever happened to looking someone in the eyes and just being stunned by their presence? Instead, now what we have is a system where your online actions determine your future. Doesn’t that take away from the magic and uncertainty of life? Online dating is too efficient. It’s emotionless.
    I also can’t use it because any attempt for me to use it will not work the way it’s intended. I could game the system every time I log on, as I’ve developed so many of the techniques that match people together. It’s like taking a personality test in which you wrote the tests and answers. You’d score however you wanted to score. Oh well, it’s not something I ever wanted to dabble in anyway.
    Too bad I signed all these non-disclosure agreements on my work. I would have loved to tell Michelle that I helped shape online dating as we know it right now. Well, even if I modeled a lot of the work off YinYang. That would work her up wouldn’t it?
    As much as I dislike the idea of online dating I did have fun mapping those relationships between people, their actions, and their potential mates. It reminded me of the days in which I mapped the relationships between words, languages, geography, and time with Eden. So what, I’ve always looked at numerical patterns to explain the world around me. There’s nothing wrong about that.

Kyla II – September 2006
    Whatever happened to the days that the world was full of excitement and possibility? When I was a junior in college it felt like every day was an opportunity to change your life. Maybe it would be that day when that side project you were working on got noticed by others. Maybe it would be the day that you found out about this awesome activity to do around campus. Maybe it would be the day you met the person who you would never forget. Every day was full of hope and excitement of what the future could and would bring. Sure some nights I would go home empty handed, but