UW Update Wednesday 4/29/15

1.     UW Update Wednesday 4/29/15

a.     Woke bright and early for physics. Did more stuff with Schroedinger equation.

b.     Linear. Got the updated version of “The Big Theorem”, a long listing of equivalent statements about any nxn matrix familiar to anyone who has ever taken a linear class. Quiz was a bit of a time crunch, but I finished.

c.      Physics lab. Played around with mirrors J. Asked my TA if he’d be interested in leading the SPS Science Café this quarter.

d.     CSE 311. Crazy, high-speed lecture—will have to review later.

e.     Lunch in Hub!

f.      Returned to Haggett, did CSE hw.

g.     Went to soccer. Got trapped in the elevator on the way there, so I was late J We played fairly well, but still lost.

h.     Back to Haggett, did more CSE. Ate dinner with Brandon, then played an hour of Smash Bros.  with Xin in the HUB games area. We were nearly even, which was great after getting my butt kicked by my cousins for so many years.

i.       More CSE.

j.       Grabbed Rick’s, caught up on Monica’s blog and encountered her new daily journal blog! My log is feeling some kinship...

k.     Wrote email to my TA, wrote this log, and went to bed.

UW Update Tuesday 4/28/15

1.     UW Update Tuesday 4/28/15

a.     Woke, headed to machine shop. Learned how to use the drill press with normal drills and taps for drilling screw threads into material.

b.     Talked a bit with Danielle from machine shop, went to lunch at Hub. Ran into Xin, Demi, and another Asian girl whose name I can’t spell (something like Shiitsu).

c.      Returned to dorm, did physics homework.

d.     Went on run with Johan to Ravenna Park. That park is awesome! About the closest thing I have to Whatcom Falls in Seattle.

e.     Glee Club.

f.      Saw the quadruple in the 2104 House with Xin. Not an ideal option. The natural light stingily falling through the basement windows sucks, and the room is not well partitioned—if we have bad roommates, the entire room will be permeated with their uncleaned goo/etc (as it was in this case J). Hopefully we can convince the other guy I’m negotiating with to swap into the quadruple, or just get another room entirely.

g.     Ate hasty dinner with Xin and ran to Salsa Club. Regressed a bit—or maybe salsa is just harder than bachata—but it was still fun.

h.     Returned to dorm with groceries from District Market, ate an apple and read Diaspora. Did physics homework for remainder of night. Applied to be a tutor for Ayush’s insta-tutor app J. Wrote this log and attempted to realize my 9-hour aspirations.

UW Update Monday 4/27/15

1.     UW Update Monday 4/27/15

a.     Alright, short and sweet this evening as it’s 1:10 am.

b.     Physics. Really neat stuff on qualitatively sketching eigenfunctions.

c.      Linear.

d.     Return to Haggett, check email, finish annoying physics problem.

e.     Lunchbox. The speaker does research into educational physics and references the work of Daniel Kahneman J Good work is being done, but I still like my unschooling model better. Viral tweet possibility: educators trying to cater to all possible students is like procedural programming, writing the procedure teach(aStudent) that has lots of complex, hairy logic for dealing with all different types of students, vs. the object-oriented unschooling approach, where you give all different types of students resources and guidance, then call aStudent.learn() for each student (letting that student choose how to learn, because learn() is implemented differently in each student based on that student’s internal state and structure.

f.      CSE 311 lecture. More neat, neat stuff on primes and modular arithmetic.

g.     Talked with Johan for a bit, headed to ask questions of HFS folks in Lander. Passed through the SPS to order a t-shirt, but ended up staying for the whole meeting. It was fun—I knew almost all the people there, and was actually able to provide useful input to their decisions in several cases. Maybe I’ll apply to be an officer next year.

h.     Returned to Haggett. A guy I’ve been emailing about room swapping in 2104 offered the possibility of a basement quadruple, so Xin and I went to go check it out. Unfortunately, none of the residents in the quadruple were there when we showed up!

i.       Took a long walk parallel to frat row, through Ravenna Park, which was actually really pretty, and back through frat row, which was interesting.

j.       Grabbed quick dinner and went to volunteer at Ricks. Rick’s was busy the full 3.5 hour shift. It was fun—got some good scooping in and simultaneously some good socialization.

k.     Returned to room, read Diaspora while eating ice cream, talked to Xin for a bit, took shower, brushed teeth, folded laundry, wrote this log, and went to bed (too late J).

UW Update Sunday 4/26/15

1.     UW Update Sunday 4/26/15

a.     Woke around 1:30 J

b.     Grabbed brunch with Xin and Donovan at the 8.

c.      Returned to dorm, did physics hw.

d.     Played Frisbee with Xin and Donovan for about an hour and a half. Posed the “Happiness Chair” dilemma: if you could sit in a chair that guaranteed you would be happy for the rest of your life, would you do it? Donovan was in for the 90-day trial J, but Xin adamantly rejected it. Donovan and I got into a longer discussion about the best way to model utility functions (he at first thought that the “hedonic treadmill” would make it so Utility(t) ~ constant for any world conditions that stayed stable long enough for people to adapt to winning the lottery/becoming a paraplegic, etc.). Then Donovan brought up the Singularity and simulated reality. Xin eventually agreed with us that simulated reality involving other people is not fundamentally “fake”, despite initial protestations.

e.     Returned to Haggett, did a bit more physics, video chatted with family.

f.      Ate dinner with the homeschool Macbeth-filmer turned RA Alexis. We caught up for a bit, then talked about housing. Alex agreed with my housing choices, concurring that the upper floors of Haggett where 1 floor -> 1 lounge vs. 2 floors -> 1 lounge, generally have stronger communities. She also affirmed my observations about the friendliness of the 2104 House. When I asked her if our floor’s relatively distant RAs and few floor events were normal, she replied that her floor had many more events, as did many of the other floors, but that the variance across RAs is enormous. RAs in Haggett all have to plan 5 floor events, but some blow it off.

g.     Halfway through our dinner, Raymond from chess club showed up. In a strange flashback to last quarter, I called him Anthony and he called me Patrick before we both corrected each other. (This used to happen almost every time we would meet J).

h.     Chatted a bit more about RAing. Alex took me up to her awesome room on the south tower 5^th floor with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the lake, and showed me her “End-of-Year” video for Haggett (apparently every building makes one).

i.       Returned to Haggett, spent way too long trying to solve a physics problem that was basically a pure math problem. Kept forgetting my trig identities, but learned some new Mathematica trying to check my work and made good use of the whiteboard. Ended up basically solving it (need to write up my solution). Took periodic breaks to read Diaspora.

j.       Headed out to Denny Field, got into a game of 5-on-5 (I’m realizing there are people at Denny almost every weekend night!).

k.     Returned to dorm, showered, wrote this log, and went to bed.