9/29/15

1.     9/29/15

a.     Woke up at 10:00, and tried to go back to sleep. But Xin, full of energy, woke me up with annoying music. So I got up and did some room cleaning while trying to negotiate where Xin and I should go. I took a shower. Then Xin and I headed to Henry Art Gallery to take a look. But it was closed. We went over to the Physics planetarium, that was closed.

b.     So we went over to Savery Hall because I had spotted a “fiddle class intro” dawg daze event. Xin actually joined me. The instructor Betsy was super enthusiastic. We all got to hold and try the fiddle, and play the rhythm while others sang/clapped along to a simple song. Hopefully Betsy actually runs a class with the Experimental College—I’d totally take it. @Claire, I think Betsy mentioned the Port Townsend fiddle convention you’ve been to in the past.

c.      Then we ate lunch at the HUB. We popped into Haggett, started our laundry going, and headed over to the UW surplus store, open Tuesdays. Ran into John on the way. Poked around the surplus store for half an hour. Crazy good deals on a ton of stuff, (monitors, desks, etc.) but most couldn’t find immediate use in my room. They had UW shirts for $5—I really should have gotten some of those.

d.     Instead, I got a VGA-VGA cable for $1 and two sweet steak knives for $0.25 each. They actually gave me a car-to-phone charger for free after I’d paid my $1.67 J

e.     Hustled back to the Hag, tossed my laundry in the dryer, and hurried up to the lounge for global trivia! Our hallway against the other 3. We only got 3^rd place, but it was fun.

f.      Went to Denny Field. No basketball, but I got in a short game of volleyball. Not satisfied, I ran straight down to the IMA and played 2 hours of basketball. I played well, the games were intense, I had a blast. Basketball is bipolar—if you play poorly, it’s ok, but you feel kind of crummy and winded, but if you play well, you feel boss.

g.     Walked back to Hag, took a shower, and headed out to meet Jasdeep for dinner. He had texted me, but hadn’t responded to my reply because he was asleep (my call woke him up). On the way out, I loaned my Thunderbolt-VGA adapter and new $1 VGA-VGA cable to some grateful floormates. Jasdeep and I went to a new Vietnamese place which was awesome and generally had a great time. We had the most relaxing conversation. Agreed to meet at 3:30 tomorrow for basketball, since Jasdeep has been honing his skillz over the summer.

h.     Returned again to the Hag, did some dishwashing, lots of email stuff, folded laundry, wrote this log.

i.       Expect the summer summary soon, plus the backlog for the last couple of days :) Hit the hay excited about first day of classes tomorrow!

9/25/15

1.     9/25/15

a.     Woke bright and early at 7:30. Tried to print the last form I needed for Next at Ode, but Ode was closed. Headed to Fluke and signed in—turns out they had extra copies of the form. About 60 students there, plus mentors and speakers. I almost sat down with Joey in the back, but after a push to get people to the front, I took the plunge and moved up there—a good call. The keynote speaker was the almost-billionare VC Nick Hanauer. Turns out he was one of the big advocates for the $15 minimum wage—he had a reasonable argument for it, but I think it ignored automation replacing labor, and when I got to ask that question, he gave an answer which suggested all people would be able to fill increasingly complex and interesting jobs, which I’m not sure is true. But his speech was interesting, and he linked to some cool math, haven’t gotten a chance to check it out, relating innovation / capita theoretically (fits with empirical data measured in patents, etc.) to city population in a logarithmically increasing way. Then came a panel of people already involved in solving urban problems, which was interesting.

b.     I’m gonna keep this short now cuz I’m getting tired. I found out Ayush was doing the program as well, and met some of his friends. We got assigned to teams, and our team got along really well. We were assigned the “encourage healthy habits” challenge, and debated the problem for a while. We went out and checked out some underutilized spaces (alleys, big medians, grassy areas around parking lots) in the UDistrict vicinity. Then we came back, met our mentors, debated some more, listened to a presentation on design thinking. Finally, we had some pizza for dinner. I hustled over to the floor meeting, which went well—I made a plug for wifi in the lounge and added Don’t Forget to Be Awesome to our list of community guidelines. I set up Slack for our Next team. Then we went to Quad Flicks and watched Pitch Perfect 2 (I got better acquainted with two girls Sierra and Chloey, who looked as if they’d come from Bellingham or Seattle but who had lived abroad in Thailand and Indonesia for the past several years.)

c.      Hung out in the Quad for a bit and watched the marching band perform, then headed back to the dorm, answered more email, wrote this and the preceding logs, and hit the hay.

9/24/15

1.     9/24/15

a.     Woke up at 6:20 (it was still dark), showered, ate a banana with some dry granola, and headed down for my first Dawgs Crew move-in shift. Found my group, hung out for a bit, then got a quick primer on my role as a cart pusher. It was actually a lot of fun and quite social, and I quickly shook off my early-morning malaise. Many times I manhandled my unwieldy 5.5’ cart out to the street in front of Haggett, where I waited and conversed with my fellow pushers, or grabbed the first available car. I would help load, finding the correct loadin puzzle solution while making reassuring small talk with parents and students. Then I’d haul the car over to the correct (North vs. South tower) elevator and wait for the elevator guyl (my new gender-neutral informal pronoun), who was in complete control of the elevator so it didn’t do inefficient things like try to pick up a cart before dropping off the one it was moving.

b.     Once picked up, we hustled to the room, unloaded (I got to see everyone’s stuff up close and personal), I (in)formally welcomed the student to Haggett, and then headed back to pick up more stuff. During this first shift, I moved in two people on my floor, 8 North.

c.      My shift ended at 10:30 when I was replaced by my old acquaintance Rudy. I headed back to the room, checked and dealt with email. Xin and I decided to head to the IMA pool. We swam some laps, hung out in the outside courtyard, then ate some lunch at the HUB. I eschewed Motosurf for pasta, which was great.

d.     I had no time to order Dawg Pack tickets, which this year counted for both football and basketball games, before my next shift started.

e.     The next shift was also great. Same deal, but we got to eat donuts. Things ended at 5, whereupon I went up to my room and finished email, FB messages, a ton of amazon purchases, and textbooks. By the time I was done with all that I went down to the IMA to play basketball, and got into one game of 3-on-3 (fun, but out of form). Returned, hung out a bit with a girl named Amanda while working on my journal in the lounge.

f.      Did stuff for NextSeattle (readings and stuff, on “design thinking”) which I hadn’t realized I’d need to do until today, but managed it in a decently relaxed manner. Crashed hard.

9/23/15

1.     9/23/15

a.     Brief Dawgs Crew orientation.

b.     Welcome Barbeque! Great food, and a bouncy castle. I met up with some old buddies from the Honors floor and my friend John from the SPS, and raced this friendly RA called Frederick through the bouncy castle. He won the best 2 out of 3 in a tightly contested battle.

c.      Got a haircut.

d.     Went to CSE for a robot collaboration study. Actually not super interesting, but seeing the different robot assistant modes under consideration was neat, and I got an $10 amazon gift card.

e.     Johan spotted me from the 3^rd floor CSE breakout, and we hung out for the rest of the day. We chatted, ran into one of his friends and talked about CSE, headed down to the IMA where I taught him some badminton (I crushed him at some games and then we tried to rally to 30, counting in Spanish, multiples of 3, binary (hard), Fibonacci (impossible)). Then we walked back to Haggett and showered. I loaned him a fresh change of clothes. He biked slowly and I ran to his house, whereupon we took the car (part of the plan from the CSE building) to get groceries. Returned to his house, I met his friendly housemate Becci, a Biochem major. We made mushroom risotto (lots of fun) and it actually was tasty. We topped it off with good conversation and a Trader Joe’s raspberry tart. Johan dropped me off at Haggett and I dropped like a stone.

9/22/15: First Day back at the UW!

1.     9/23/15: First Day back at the UW!

a.     Woke up in Bellingham. Gathered up my half-finished standing desk and took it over to the big house. Mike and I (mostly Mike) finished it up (nearly; it still needs hose clamps). Mike came up with this amazing swivel mechanism so that the tabletop can sit at any angle.

b.     Ate lunch, packed a bit, and hustling like a goofball, joined Noah, Isabelle, and Izzy at the Trampoline Zone for an hour.

c.      Showered and rushed over to the barber, who was occupied. Made a quick visit to Hardware Sales, who didn’t have the hose clamps I wanted; returned to the barber, where another person had taken my place. In irritation, returned home, stopping at Harbor Freight for a cool organizer.

d.     Finished packing, loaded the car, and left for the UW at about 5:10.

e.     Arrived barely in time, grabbed, loaded and unloaded a cart, returned it to the grateful desk worker in the nick of time.

f.      Went to EJ burger with family and Xin. Delicious!

g.     Walked into dollar store. Unsurprisingly, no Ethernet cable, but there was a sweet $1 allen wrench set and lots of other quite reasonable bargains I had no time to explore.

h.     Bid goodbye to family.

i.       Walked over to Walgreens with Xin and grabbed an Ethernet cable. Took a long route to Haggett, through raucous parties on Greek Row.

j.       Unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked! Everything worked out pretty well, except that there was no great place for my standing desk when not in use. Still working on that. Xin worked on the WiFi, which turned out spotty despite all appearances of working order.

k.     Watched a Dawgs Crew (move-in helper volunteering) training video (orientation tomorrow) and hit the hay.

l.       Postscript: await big summer summary!