11/21/15

1. Highlight: Attend the men's basketball game against Penn. It's super fun. We destroy Penn, who was previously undefeated; the freshman recruit Marquis Crisp goes frickin' Leroy with 3 dunks and about 10 midrange shots. What a boss.
2. Other things that happened today: go out to Indian buffet and have a lot of soft rice with sauce. It's amazing. Finish math hw and start grading, which shouldn't be too hard to complete. Also played badminton with Xin, which was cool.
Note: lots of random positive social interactions today. Talk with Charlotte and Xinyu from the floor. Run into Jasdeep on the way back from Ode and toss the frisbee.
3. Good evening gentlepeople! Time to hit the hay.

11/20/15

1. Wake up, go to Math bleary-eyed. Get some interesting sympathy from my classmates for the rather large gap in my grin. But honestly, I continue to handle feelings of regret very well. I think it helped to have Xin be the extreme pessimist and apologist--makes me realize in embodied form the futility of worrying about split enamel. I make an appointment to get the teeth built up again with composite on Monday. Eat some oatmeal. 
2. Skip classes and practice for the concert for two hours. Go to TA meeting, then SPS Get the Physicists Outside with my bin of balls. Initially nobody shows up, but then Bearded Jacob, Frank, Devin, and finally a new guy Erin come. It's really fun. Frisbee and football at first, and at the end we play team bounce maximization with my volleyball :)
3. Head back to Haggett, dress in my Glee duds. Rehearse. Go out to dinner, eat miso soup :) Return to Kane, 10 last minutes of rehearsal, then the concert. Women's Choir, then us, then the U Singers, who rock this year. We sounded pretty good too, although I (and I think a bunch of others) screwed up Ramkali :)
4. Met up with family. Mary and Izzy were almost unrecognizable with their cosmopolitan haircuts and stylish black dress--I thought they were members of the Women's Choir. Go out to EJ burger and I manage to very carefully eat half a burger and some fries, plus a milkshake. Great to see everyone. 
5. Return to Haggett and crash.

11/19/15: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

11/19/15

1. Most of the day is normal. I do math with Issa and Peter, have classes, work on CS homework, hang out with my SPS buddies, have Glee Club, go to the dance audition for Urinetown after Glee Club, which is really hard because I can't learn quickly, but kinda fun. I finish up CS homework.
2. Then I go out with Xin and boffer. We have a great time. Until...
3. Xin stands up on a rock, I try to jump up on the rock to attack him. I trip--still not sure how--and fall. Normally my hands would have protected me. But somehow my hands reach out to either side of the rock (this is the only way I think this could have happened) and the rock punches me in the face. Right in the upper teeth, precisely. 
4. It doesn't hurt. Not really. It tingles like mad, and I can tell I'm bleeding. I reach up and feel, and I calmly realize that, crap, this is not good. One tooth is quite loose, and several others are chipped. 
5. Xin and I start walking towards Hall Health, hoping it's still open, when we run into a bunch of floormates. I try to talk as little as possible to avoid dislodging the loose tooth, but the situation is communicated successfully :) My floormates take me back to Haggett, where they, very kindly, call a campus police officer to take me over to the UW Medical Center ER.
6. The officer shows up after about 10 minutes, even though he's not supposed to give rides for non-life-threatening medical things. He takes Xin (who, unfortunately and completely incorrectly, feels culpable for the whole debacle) and I down to the ER. 
7. We wait for nearly two hours, but it doesn't feel completely dehumanizing :) I make friends with a couple of the personnel. Eventually the emergency dentist, who is fortunately in residence, sits me down. He cleans everything up, pumps my upper lip full of anaesthetic, jams the loose tooth back in place, and binds everything together with a splint. Meanwhile, Xin is taking pictures for some presentation on dental trauma the dentist is going to give :)
8. We get a prescription mouthwash and some overkill painkiller which I'm not going to need, and walk back to Haggett at around 5am. I give up on finishing math homework and crash hard. 

11/18/15

1. Highlight: Slept through my alarm, woke up with only a fraction of the time I'd anticipated having to finish 312 hw. Leroy through the homework, pencil blazing, expressing solutions minimalistically. Finish with literally 5 minutes until class (late turnins strictly not accepted) grab my solutions, minus my backpack and all my other gear, and sprint down to Sieg. Lungs burning with cold winter air, I deposit my homework and sit down coughing.
2. Other things that happened today: SPS Lab Tour! It was a blast. We toured a few new labs as well as one I remembered from last quarter. Figured out some professors I should email to ask if I can hang around their labs and go to group meetings, for next quarter. If I'm not TAing, I should get into some research! Also Lavin quarterly meeting (only one person in my Lavin family showed up for family vs. family games :( ), and astronomy lecture I'd rsvp'd for well in advance. Definitely geared to a layperson audience, but interesting nonetheless.
3. Be merry, good shmids!

11/17/15

1. Highlight: Go to StageNotes audition! Turns out Andrew from the floor, a well-connected freshman, is already a StageNotes officer. A bit of a scary experience (panel of 5 judges) and I'm not incredibly prepared because of my Leroy existence. I sing Santa Fe from Newsies--my voice comes out decent, but I get flustered in the middle of the song, and I end up making some weird jumps and ending up singing a few parts way lower than I intend to :)
2. The rest of the day: a lot of prep for the audition, practicing the song, scrapping to get a place in the music room, stepping into building stairwells for a few moments, etc. It's pretty fun. Polygamy class degenerates into non-scientific discussion again :), and I don't get a chance to bring up a potential application of game theory. Go out for dinner with Xin at Shawarma King (tasty), run into Issa and his roommate Ethan. 
3. Good night gentlepeople!

11/16/15

1. Highlight(s): 
1. Pwn math midterm. At least, feel much more confident than I did after the last one. One of the sample problems (all of which I did), ended up on the test, which gave me time to think. Very computational midterm, more similar to a normal, handwavey, practical calculus course.
2. Give crazy weird "artifact" presentation with my boffers as props. Not sufficiently prepared for numerous good reasons, but it's fun anyway.
3. Go out to dinner with Brandon. Long conversation about martial arts and the "choreography" failure mode that Brandon experienced while he was in karate; we plan to sign up for one of the intro martial arts classes at the IMA next quarter. 
4. Get to play basketball for an hour! Play pretty well--make an absurd number of shots from inside the 3-point line. However, one of my awesome $20 Champion tennies blows out in the middle of the first game. The fabric completely separates from the sole over a large stretch of the inside side. This makes play difficult, but still fun. 
5. Get Rick's and walk over to deserted Sieg classroom with Xin. Eat ice cream, read math, catch up on CS lectures, and listen to various versions of Santa Fe from the Newsies prologue, which, after talking to Zach, I intend to audition with. Found sheet music for $5 (whatever :) and plan to hole up in a Music practice room for some hours tomorrow with it. 
6. All in all, a fine day! Good cheer to all!

11/15/15

1. Highlight: Went to Math review session and was able to describe something nobody had seen before--obtaining the double angle trig identities with Euler's formula!
Otherwise: lotsa work on the CSE project (finally done!) midterm review. Came back and Xin had some ice cream saved for me :)

11/14/15

1. Lots of work. Played Smash Bros with Xin. Three good things that happened today:
Finished grading! Had fun doing part of project writeup! Xin bought chai tea and I had some.
I'm kinda on the StruggleBus right now--tomorrow things are coming down to the wire, and I have things to prepare for during the week, but I still want to enjoy at least part of my weekend. Trying to plan a trip to the Indian buffet. But facing that weird sort of sword of damocles' ennui.
Wish me Leroy and health friends!

11/13/15

1. Highlight: Winnie's birthday party! Got to meet some people, talked with Max Bobby from physics and his friend Trevor, watched a horror movie. I felt it lacked the cohesion of homeschool parties. Beforehand, made a trip to the bookstore and wrapped up the first two volumes of Bone as a gift, which was fun.
2. Other things: TA meeting (James was annoyed that Becky and I hadn't finished grading yet). Get the Physicists Together was again, only SPS members, but it was a blast. Just played loot for an hour. Oh! And I kicked my 312 midterm into the gutter. I'll be surprised if I don't get 100%. Not a difficult midterm, but still I'm surprised at how quickly I moved given my lingering illness.
3. Leroy on friends!

11/12/15

1. Highlight: Slept in until noon rather unexpectedly, missing my math class. 
2. The rest of today was pretty straightforward, a lot of work. Continued reading fun SlateStarCodex articles:
1. Meditations on Moloch
2. I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
3. Who By Very Slow Decay (10).
3. Glee club was fun. Only 8 days until the concert!!
4. Ate dinner in the floor lounge. Lots of ppl hanging out. It was neat.
5. Long conversation with Dad. Has the software economy transitioned from the exciting discovery phase to the more straightforward deployment phase?
6. Winnie's birthday tomorrow, and 312 midterm!

10/11/15

1. Highlight: Went out to Indian buffet with Xin and Brandon! It was amazing! The chai was incredible, its warm richness assuaging my sore throat. 
2. Other things that happened: before that, played badminton with Xin, Joey, and Rita. A lot of fun. I managed to not strain myself but get enough exercise that I was really hungry when we made it to the buffet. Also: worked on 332 project (we made it to the write-up!) and did math hw. This math hw was really easy, which surprised me, and I was able to help Issa with a couple problems. What up?! 

11/8-10/15

11/8: Got off the Lavin Retreat bus. Spent 4 hours doing 332 project, which were actually pretty productive. Then freaked out about grading I had to do. Eventually realized that other graders weren't done either and there was no way in Hades I would finish by the evening, so I relaxed, went to Yoga, which was great.

11/9: Highlight: Took a 2 hour nap! I'm running a pretty serious sleep deficit right now.
Other things that happened: did 312 hw all morning, had fun presentations class, went to SPS meeting, had dinner with Jasdeep at EJ burger.

11/10: Highlight: Played soccer with the floor! We have a great sports tradition going on top of our normal Tuesday floor tradition night. It was a blast, even though I'm feeling a bit sick. I got all competitive and sprinted a lot, which is going to cost me.
Other things that happened: Glee club, ate ice cream with Xin and Zach, who, as it turns out, is also auditioning for Urinetown! Also, after math, got a quick, bracing tutorial in group theory from the 15yr-old early entrance student Thomas. Weird transformations between the group that is the real line under multiplication and the group that is the real line under addition (basically a group is a set plus a binary operation; the two of them together must satisfy certain properties, like closure [two elements in the set must map to a third element by the operation]). And there's this crazy thing where you can cross product two smaller cyclic groups to get a higher-diml cyclic group. This probably doesn't make any sense, but I had fun; I'm trying to get back engaged with the math after being dispirited by our journeys deep into seemingly insightless symbols, as well as my poor midterm performance. There is really cool stuff going on, I just have to work to look at it the way I like to look at math.

Leroy on gentlepeople! Sincerely,
Spencer

11/7-8-afternoon/15: The Lavin Retreat

1.     11/7-8-afternoon/15: The Lavin Retreat

a.     Woke up bright and early for the Lavin retreat! Slept on the 2.5 hr bus ride.

b.     Arrived in a remote camp with no service. Loaded stuff into dormitory, then embarked on a crazy day of activities.

c.      Moving speech by entrepreneurship professor, a very happy fellow who extolled the joys of passion-motivated ventures.

d.     Minute-to-win-it competition! Our team, led by the enthusiastic libertarian Josiah from NextSeattle and succinctly named “TRUMP”, won.

e.     Awesome icebreaker—speed-questioning. The questions were very well chosen. Examples: “What, to you, is the most beautiful language?” “What meal would you choose to be your last if you were on death row?”

f.      Snacks.

g.     Pitch competition, health-themed. I was put on a team with the infamous Michael Petrochuck, who is extroverted and self-promotional beyond even the social limits stretched by Lavin members, and who, at a recent StartupUW event, gave the now famous “Tinder for Fighting” pitch. I anticipated, and endured, a lot of conflict, as the Petrochuck supported a pitch based entirely on moonshot data analysis tech that would use an iPhone extension camera and spectroscopy to return, in real time, a nutritional analysis of an arbitrary plate of food. Eventually, a more sober strategy prevailed; a simple app to sell to general practitioners, dentists, etc. that would notify patients who signed up, when a cancellation occurred. Better cancellation filling, I later learned, could save a ridiculous amount of money in the medical industry at large. Joan, you’ll have to let me know what you think—is this really a problem? What is the current state of the art for filling cancellations?

h.     We managed to put together a decent pitch at the last minute, winning third place and dinner with the entrepreneur who founded CoinStar and now runs a venture group J J

i.       After the pitch competition, we did another get-to-know-everybody event that I thought was ingenious. When we signed up for the retreat, we all entered a fun fact about ourselves. The advisors made a Bingo sheet out of the fun facts and had us go around filling out the Bingo sheet with signatures of people who entered the fun facts. I know so many names now—it’s crazy.

j.       Then we had a fire, some good conversation, made s’mores.

k.     And then we watched a movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. It was fun, if a bit disjointed. While watching the crazy antics of Gates and Jobs, I happened to glance to my right at the other Lavin students, and thought, these are the insane shmids who might just try stuff like this!

l.       Went to bed late and got only 6.5 hours of sleep. Again L.

m.   Woke up, ate delicious breakfast, took short hike. Actually got a bunch of people to play Ninja Tag. You know what my lifetime success rate at the NT question is? Not high. But this group, they jumped right in J

n.     I’m writing this on the bus right now, 20min away from the UW, ready for a day of hw and grading. LEEROY…

o.     Best of luck and life to y’all!

10/6/15

1. Highlight of the day: Lavin welcome back reception. I knew a bunch of people from CS, Ayush, Grant, Anwell, and more, so catching up was fun. I also met some new people, including members of my new "Lavin family", which includes Jamie :) Man, a group of more socially competent and engaged people one could hardly meet. It's so weird. I've been reminiscing lately about many of my friends, philosophers, physicists, super great people, who are lacking that sense of social engagement/confidence. And here's this group of people that embody that very quality. Interesting.
2. Other things that happened today: Turned in math hw after long night of toil. Ferried board games, kettle over to SPS lounge in preparation for Physicists Together. I only had 2 people for Physicists Together (Michael and Devin), but it was fun. Talked to Daven (not Devin), who was prepping for CS midterm. Over lunch, started reading interesting SlateStarCodex post, very dark. End of day: went out for Rick's with Xin, played ping-pong with Xin, Donovan, and a new dude from the very social 1-2 North floor named Reese.
3. :) Spencer

10/4/15

1. Highlight of the day: Went out with Xin and Brandon for Xin's birthday part 2) :) Ate at this crazy Chinese place which served cuisine from Xin's native Sichuan province, then went for some bizarre ice cream and tea-like jelly from "O-Dessert!"
2. Also: lots of grading. Went on run to Gasworks and listened to crazy This American Life about a guy who ran a multi-million-dollar "female pen pal for lonely guys" scam. Listened to World of Goo and Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack on Xin's new speakers.

10/3/15

1. Highlight of the day: Played badminton with like 10 people from the floor!
2. Adversity to handle: Adam, whose teaching style I studied but now am at odds with, tried to scare us into finishing our project faster at the project checkpoint. Very irritating. 
3. Other things that happened today: celebrated Xin's birthday! (Surprised him with a cake. It was great :)) Also: glee club, fun polygamy class. 
4. Life high five to y'all!

10/2/15

1. Highlight of the day: managed to play basketball after the SPS meeting! Hurt my lower back, which is really annoying right now, but it was great. 
2. Other things that happened today: got my grade back on the 334 midterm. It's a strange week when you kill two presentations (Lavin, presentation class) and then score below average on a math test :) The first problem was really easy, and I did it the hard way, and now I'm kicking myself. 
3. Ok, other good things that happened today: SPS meeting was fun, got some grading done, helped Xin with linked list problems. Oh, and I got into Lavin! Overnighter initiation this weekend.

10/1/15

1. Highlight of the day: Awesome hike with the family. Galbraith was amazingly beautiful. Got some philosophical issues I've been having with Math 334 off my chest.
2. Other things that happened: Huskies destroyed Arizona 49-3. Ate delicious french toast. Drove down with parents and ate incredibly good Thai food. (It's been a good food day).