1/31/16

1. Only a quick outline tonight.
2. Morning: went with Brandon to visit a house we'd seen. Highway noise was fine, neighborhood was a bit sketchy. Then to Safeway for ingredients for brunch the next morning, and finally to the Indian buffet. More good conversation.
3. Math review session! Did some decent work, arranged for a dinner with math buddies.
4. Took a run and hit the gym. Grabbed Brandon on the way back, went to Little Thai for dinner. Found out Issa is planning on living at home next year, only (essentially) coming into UW for tests. He's given up on in-person networking.
5. Had an interesting discussion with Brandon and Issa, who I guess is having a more severe and more different version of our "how to find the right people" problem. Except Issa has this big tribe online he's pretty confident fits the bill.
6. Did CSE homework; defusing the bomb by reading through assembly. Pretty legit.
7. Skyped with Monica! Lots of fun. Talked about all the crazy stuff happening in both of our lives, reminisced about Park Day and the changes that are happening.
8. Xin randomly walked out the door with the basketball as I came back from brushing my teeth, so I followed him out to Denny and we played hoops for a bit before coming back. 
9. Wrote this log, hit the hay. Wish me lunch (whoops, I mean luck) with the brunch tomorrow!

1/30/16: A Leroy day

1. Today was fairly interesting! I'll describe it in chronological order, but with text density proportional to interestingness. 
2. Early morning, woke up, jumped in the shower, had several epiphanies about math problems I'd failed to solve the preceding evening. Bashed them out in true Leroy style, went to class, where Will went off on a crazy tangent about the gamma function (generalization of the factorial, useful in number theory) and how you can express it as an infinite product.
3. Hardware, where we reviewed the calling convention and went over some examples of the way the call stack is managed. 
4. Went to lunch with Johan. Talked about philosophy, a proof he wrote in Algorithms, housing.
5. Johan went to class, and I stood outside in the sun, thinking, "Man, it would be a bummer if it were sunny at Get the Physicists Together and all I had were indoor games!" 
6. So I returned to Haggett, fetched my big bin of outdoor equipment, took it to Neural, where there were a whole bunch of demos. Some neat educational stuff, like an arm wrestler controlled by electrical impulses recorded on the arm--the more muscle motion / muscle nerve impulses the contestant can induce, the more the mechanical "arms" doing the "wrestling" turn in their favor. Some brains in jars, oh, and I got to try an Oculus that they happened to have in the lab! Only for like 2 minutes, since I had to get to Get the Physicists Together, but it was neat. Latency was low. And combined with fairly high-accuracy sensors, (similar to Kinect), it was running a basic but powerful-feeling hand-controlled game. 
7. I showed up at GTPT one minute late; Frank, bless his heart, had already started a game of Exploding Kittens. We're slowly getting traction--Wesley showed up again, and Isaac from the Honors physics last quarter. After the Kittens games died down, I managed to get Wesley, Devin, Isaac outside for some frisbee, which turned into a fun game of touch football. 
8. After that, I returned to Haggett, helped Siri with some physics homework, met with Brandon. Brandon and I headed out for dinner at the Korean Tofu House, which was boss. We had a fairly deep conversation about the types of people we'd like to live with (since we're analyzing housing for next year.) It's amazing how people tend to fall into one of two frustrating categories: 
1.  the introvert, introdisciplinary scholar who thinks their field and perspective is the most important--that is, a person driven inside of a finite game. Often, this seems to happen because of a feedback loop. I'm working on this, thus it must be important, so I'll double down and pursue it even more unbalancedly, hence it must be of all-consuming significance, etcetera. This frustrates me because it seems like important insights come across fields and I want to communicate with people in other fields; it frustrates Brandon because it seems that specialists are shirking their responsibility to communicate with the public--n.b. the current abysmal state of layman's explanations of quantum mechanics.
2. On the other extreme, there are the lightweights who don't seem to be passionate about anything, least of all academic subjects. They are often fun to be around and good to fill out social groups, but one can't go very deep with them.
3. Where are the people who know themselves, who maintain a balanced and cross-disciplinary drive, who wear their hearts on their sleeves without breaking down, who are willing to communicate their understanding to those outside their field/in-group? Brandon and I have each met surprisingly few. 
9. We looked at some houses while we waited for our meal, then afterwards hit Cafe Avellino and looked at more houses. We found exactly 1 that seemed very promising, and plan to visit the neighborhood tomorrow. We also scheduled a visit on Monday. 
1. https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/5424778087.html
10. Now, the craziest part of the day. As we walked back to campus, Brandon and I ran into Anwell, whom I knew from CSE and Brandon knew via a mutual acquaintance. He was heading to a party at Johan's, and we decided to tag along. We took the bus up to 65th, where Johan resides. The party was already in full swing when we arrived--probably upwards of 20 engineers and students. Brandon and I awkwardly joined the affray, eventually ending up in the living room. As the conversation sprawled around him, Johan sat on a couch, dialed in, working to finish his Algorithms hw before midnight. But Brandon and I met an Amazon Web Services systems engineer, some people I knew from the hackathon, a dude we knew from physics. 
11. There was a good deal of beer, and I decided this was as good time as any to try some after Brandon cracked one open. I tricd a couple different kinds, consuming probably one bottle total. And yet I felt noticeably more relaxed, more jovial. It was very strange, but pleasant. (I wonder if you can perceive a change in my writing style stemming from my mild inebriation.) 
12. After more conversation, Brandon and I headed back to campus. Brandon went with Anwell and Grant to the EEB, where they proceeded to light up the lecture hall speakers with some crankin' tunes. Brandon sent me a video :D
13. I went back to Haggett to write this log and sleep. And I think now I will do just that. Good evening all, peace and joy be with you!

1/28/15

1. Today was another fairly normal day! Highlights: volunteering at Rick's! I forgot that I had a shift until nearly an hour into the shift, but it ended up fine--the crowds didn't show up until I did. Learned a little bit of the backstories of my fellow volunteers Samuel, Andrea and Vivian, plus Catherine from the floor. 
2. After that, watched the first half of an episode of Newsroom over ice cream. This is the show my floormates have been watching, that I need to catch up on--it's really very good!
3. Rest of the day: math, hardware, neural, oh, a Lavin MentorConnect lunch with this venture capitalist. He manages the venture division of Paul Allen's private investment firm Vulcan Capital. Another dude with a crazy backstory--he tried entrepreneurship in Russia after the collapse, then returned to law school, tried to work up an Internet startup on the side, then happened to pick up a WSJ with a classified hiring a new VC associate. Met the VC's, became the Internet partner, pulled off a lucky first deal, and never looked back!
4. And come to think of it, I have an academic tidbit to share from neural. Today we talked about extracting "features" from arbitrary data. One method is known as Principal Component analysis--it takes N-dimensional data and projects it onto a smaller K-dimensional subspace that lies in the direction of maximum variance of the data. Applied to images of faces, it works like this--take the 10k vectors of pixel values for each of 10, 000 images, put them as the columns of a 10k X 10k square matrix. Now take the eigenvectors of this matrix. (This is an expensive operation.) Now take the K of these with the largest eigenvalues. These vectors are arrays of pixel values--they look kind of like faces, each with their own exaggerated features.  I'm not sure quite why these eigenvectors represent dimensions in "face space" that capture dimensions of large variance in the data--I need to study more linear! But in any case--this is great--these eigenvectors are called "eigenfaces", and you can use linear combinations of them to approximate any face! It's pretty great. 
5. Also, played badminton / basketball / soccer with Xin and finally got to eat dinner with him. It's been a while. 
6. I think that's it to report for the day. 'Night!

1/27/16

1. Today was a fairly normal day! Crazy, right! It started with circuits hw at 8 am, proceeded with morning classes, then the SPS meeting. We discussed the regional meeting, I reserved a room for the ice cream social. Then off to lunch. Ran into Phoebe from Rick's last year in the HUB. 
2. Hustled over to UW Advanced General Dentistry for a consult. Everything went as expected and I scheduled an appointment to get restorations / cleaning done in mid-February.
3. Made some lunchbox posters. By the time I was done, it was past 5. Headed back to Haggett, read some Linux Tools slide over some apples and Nutella. Then off to Glee! Pretty dang good rehearsal. 
4. Dinner at the 8 with Mitchell from Glee, who randomly ran into Odin from Chess Club and Ethan, Issa's chess whiz roommate.
5. Returned to the Hag for floor tradition. We played a bit of CatchPhrase before everyone dispersed to study. 
6. Did some reading / hw for linux. Installed Homebrew on my machine and used that to bootstrap a few more tools. 
7. Played a bit of frisbee with Xin, then took a run. Worked out some triple integrals with Xin for his 324 class (with Annie Raymond, my boss instructor from Linear :) ). Took a shower, wrote this log, and retired. Good evening, peace and joy to y'all!

1/26/15

1. Highlight of today: Yoga with Hannah (from Polygamy)! We had time for a short conversation before the session began. It was really intense. Lots of balancing poses. When it was over, I was sure it had been 90 solid minutes, when it was only the normal hours. Time expansion FTW!
2. Walked back to West Campus with Hannah. On the way, this dude approached us, said he had to make it to his new second job at a restaurant in Northgate in 30 minutes, and his drunk girlfriend had just kicked him out of her car. He needed $15 for a cab. My skepticism was rendered unnoticed by Hannah's enthusiastic, System 1 affirmative. We walked to the ATM, Hannah withdrew a $20. The dude told us to roll by Cedars on the Ave where he works for repayment any day. Seemed very genuine. But my weak System 1 could never have made the snap judgment that Hannah's did.
3. Other things that happened today:
4. Lunchbox seminar! Professor was very interested in each of our personal scientific interests, offered his take on each. He seemed really world-weary, though.
5. Circuits lab! My partner works really fast, makes plenty of mistakes but keeps things going. We got stuck for a while on one part but otherwise would have finished early. 
6. Went to the Endo clinic, got directions to the Advanced General Dentistry clinic where I had been referred, and busted some heads. More accurately, I got the secretary to print out my referral, and extracted a promise that they would call me tomorrow to make an appointment. 
7. Returned to Haggett, did some reading for math and physics. Then grabbed dinner. Ran into Catherine and Vivian, ate for a bit with them, but they finished before I did. I also had run into Hira from physics, so we chatted for a bit over the remainder of my meal. We talked about homeschooling, since her mother works at a Montessori school. Made plans to make plans to get coffee. Actually, this last was really hilarious. She was like, "We should do this again sometime," and I replied, "Yeah, maybe we should grab coffee," (as a stand-in for a particular class of social interaction), and she picked up on this immediately. She knew (again, boss System 1) that I was using "coffee" in this sense and that I didn't actually drink coffee. Crazy, right?
8. After Yoga, did some physics hw with Brandon, Brianna, Daniel, Winnie, which was fun.
9. Now I'm going to sleep! Good night all!

1/24/15

1. Highlight of the day: epic brunch-making session with Xin, Brandon, Donovan. It happened like this: Xin wanted to make a pie. He wanted something to look forward to at the end of the week. But when he woke up, he had to face the full complexity of the task he had set for himself, and decided it was too complicated. Neither of us wanted to give up on his beautiful wishful idea completely, and some brainstorming uncovered some pancake mix he had been hoarding from home. We needed ingredients, grabbed Brandon, decided to go to Safeway--things snowballed. We got blueberries, whipped cream, extra eggs, picked up Donovan and his extra skillet, made it to the 5th floor, and started cooking away. We made 5 omelets and a metric crap-ton of pancakes. While we were cooking, a random girl from the 5th floor poked her head in and obtained a job and some pancakes for her trouble :) 
2. It was 3pm by the time we sat down to eat what we had made, and we had barely the time to finish before Brandon and Xin were whisked away to an EE study session. I did dishes, took a quick run while the sun was still out. Then I settled down, wrote the SPS Newsletter, and worked on my CSE study abroad essay. Ate dinner, Skyped my parents, finalized my decision that next year would be the better one for studying abroad, ditched the essay for homework. After a good stretch of productivity, hit the lounge, got into a debate about gun control with Siri and Jonne, the new Dutch dude who's super interested in Americans' viewpoints about their own politics. Watched some great YouTube comedy on gun control. Worked a bit on circuits, then watched an episode of Newsroom with Jonne, Siri, Arif, and Sierra. Super neat show! Maybe I'll try to catch up on the first season over breakfast--but then when would I read Death and Life of Great American Cities??
3. Anyway, debate over, show ended, it was late as fwqhwgads, and I had barely time to write this log before sinking into exhaustion. 
4. Leroy on fellows! -Spencer

1/23/15

1. Oops, another absence! I need to be more consistent :)
2. What happened today? I played some racquetball with Tommy in the morning--Brandon, Xin, Zach,Tommy and I were going to play some badminton but the courts were closed. Thankfully Tommy knew the rules of racquetball. We played a fun match, which Tommy won 13-12. Then a bit of lifting with Brandon, before Brandon, Zach and I headed to Indian buffet. Very tasty. Talked with Brandon about housing.
3. Then lots of homework, a bit of essay writing for CSE, but at 6:30 Tommy, Vivian and Catherine from the floor, and I headed to the Lunar New Year festival put on by the Chinese Students Association. Xin had work and I couldn't convince him to switch his shift. 
4. It was super well organized! The hosts were awesome, and they brought in programs from all over Seattle--a dance school with really cute 7-yr-olds, a taiko drumming club, a group that played this crazy guitar/piano instrument called a guzhang. 
5. At the end, all the officers, including Demi whom I know through Xin, did a goofy dance. It appears that Demi is to CSA as Ayush is to Startup UW--the humble, friendly, hardworking shmid whose presence everyone enjoys. Lots of people were yelling her name as she did the goofy dance :)
6. Afterwards, grabbed a microwave dinner at the Nook, ate in the dorm, watched the end of a movie called Over 21, filmed on the UW campus. Super madcap. Then more HW, a bit of ping pong with Xin, then some Super Smash Flash to finish out the night. Destroyed Xin on the last round, matchup between our two favorite characters. Super exciting since I'm usually crushed. 
7. Note to self: I've noticed that I've been posting less academic stuff than I did last year. I've gotta include some juicy tidbits about assembly language and bridge rectifiers next entry. But until then, life high five!

1/21/15

1. Highlight of the day:
2. Ok, today was pretty interesting.
3. First highlight: took my whiteboard down to the Physics machine shop and cut it up. Big giant (but floppy)  4' x 8' sheet--was a real pain to carry.
4. Went to math, leaving whiteboard stuff in SPS. Then CSE 351--intro to X86 Instruction Set Architecture, registers, all that jazz. 
5. Then highlight 2: an afternoon in the SPS! First a lunchbox seminar which is pretty interesting, although much of it goes over my head, on superconductors. Then, 
6. --well, I guess I go to Neural Engineering for a lecture on signal processing, but then
7. I'm back in the SPS making 2 lunchbox posters. It's a lot of work, but they're some of my best posters. I also make some little update squares describing the board game we'll play this Friday, to attach to the Get the Physicists Together poster. 
8. By the time I'm done and heading back to Haggett with my whiteboards, it's like 6:10. Run into Max and Ayush on the way. 
9. Get dinner with Chase at 6:30. He's doing pretty well--still hanging with the other PnPGA officers. Run into Brandon heading back to Haggett with Chase, and we all decide to go to the gym. Hang out with Chase in my room, try to do a bit of work while Brandon eats, then we head down, grabbing Zach on the way. 
10. Btw lots of people have grabbed and installed my whiteboards! I'm calling that a win.
11. Work out pretty hard, try out the inclined bench and the squat cage. It's fun with more people!
12. Get ice cream at Ricks with Chase, Zach, Brandon.
13. Shower, back up the machine, write some email, write this log, hit the hay. 'Night!

1/19/15

1. Wow, I've missed almost a week! Just a few highlights from the weekend:
2. Grace visited on Thursday! We took a walk, ran into a physics professor I'd been meaning to talk to--I was sure I'd written a post about the day, but I guess I hadn't.
3. Henry Banks came up on Friday, ended up playing Catan with some SPS people, getting dinner at the Gyrocery. He took me back to Bham for the long weekend.
4. Did some boffing on Saturday. My sister put makeup on my face, got some crazy pics. 
5. Got back to school Monday night, realized I'd forgotten my computer! Forged on and did lots of circuits hw, then borrowed Xin's computer for the boatload of CS homework I thought was due later than it was. Hectic day. Glee was fun though. And we had open door night on my floor. Got to meet some new arrivals.
6. Going to get some decent sleep tonight! Farewell!

1/14/16

Highlights from yesterday: Humans vs. Zombies mission where the humans were routed and my brains were eaten. Also, doing math with Issa and Andrew and some others. The weirdnesses of our math homework are better shared, plus, Issa and Andrew and I ended up going to the Gyrocery for dinner :)
Also! Super happy about finally getting into the mindset of bit vector operations and crushing some tricky 351 lab 1 problems.

Highlights from today: I climbed with Brandon in the morning, then did some lifting. I finally understand and have experienced what a bench press is. Then we ate some breakfast. It was awesome. Bigger highlight: Grace came down from Bellingham to hang out! Her mom was also visiting a friend, so it worked out well. We took a tour of the physics building, including going to the downstairs labs. Y'all remember I've been meaning to email Prof. Gundlach to see about hanging out in his lab? Well, Grace and I ran into him, he invited us into the lab, explained what was going on to Grace, answered a few questions of mine, and then said I could hang out in the lab anytime. What the frick, right?

Then we had lunch, played some hoops, took a walk, ate dinner at SomTamThai. It was great. After that I had Glee, talked with Paul for a bit about singing tips, etc.

And then... math. Did writeups. Oh, and Rick's with Brandon and Zach! Hung out in the floor lounge for a bit.

Now I really do need to go to bed. Fare thee well!

Spencer

1/12/16

1. As of this writing, my brain is fried. Circuits are hard (not the homework, but the concepts). Math is hard (homework harder than concepts, although both are hard). CSE 351 is hard (concepts seem easy, but our homework is to write a bunch of functions without using control structures, without freaking arithmetic--just with bitwise operators like shiftLeft, negateAll, etc.)
2. So yeah! I'll keep it brief. Today, I had classes, met with a new tutee (Emma). That went pretty well. I'm never sure how helpful it is to give a thorough, maths-on explanation of some random, over-specific equation that the goofy lower level physics book gives, but tutees seem to enjoy it (equations demystified!) and it certainly seems to validate my knowledgeability. 
3. I also met with Jamie, my roommate from last year, for dinner. It was fun to catch up--he's moving through the business track, thinking about interning at a consulting firm, still excited about political doings.
4. After that, I basically fried my brain on all three classes, so that I have to go to bed. :D

1/10/16

1. Highlight: Touch football with floormates! It happened almost by chance. I woke, fairly late, wrote up the SPS newsletter, then messaged Brandon to see if he wanted to toss the football, since blue light was fairly streaming through my window. I walked out into the lounge to meet him with my football, only to find a crowd of floormates watching the 'Hawks game. The game was for a spot in the playoffs, and there was 1:15 to play. The Hawks were up 1, but Minnesota had driven to the 15. The game looked over. Minnesota lined up for a field goal.
   And the kicker missed! The floor exploded in celebratory chaos. Then people saw my football, and rapidly a group snowballed. Brandon, I and 6 others headed down to the turf fields. We warmed up for a bit, then somebody started organizing a game.
   It was really fun! I played wide receiver pretty dang well. Afterwards, Ricardo, Brandon, and I went to the Indian buffet, which was awesome, and carried on a wide-ranging political discussion.
2. Other things that happened: 
1. Did 390 homework--fun Unix commands stuff.
2. Read ahead on my 334 lab and did some prep. 
3. Go to Yoga! Meet Hannah Martens from Polygamy last quarter, and her floormates.
4. Roll socks for Humans vs. Zombies.
5. Hang out with floormates baking cookies. 
3. Gotta log off and write an email to Professor Gundlach so I can hang out in his lab! Cheers!

1/8/16

1. Highlight: Games session with lots of floormates! Starts in my room with Xin, Josh, and I doing Super Smash Flash; accumulates Tommy, Brandon, and Zach, then sprawls down to the Grey Lounge where simultaneous games of ping-pong, foosball, and Smash Flash unfold. Lots of fun!
2. Other things that happened today:
1. Did math homework in the predawn darkness. Went back to bed for a few hours, then math.
2. Lunch with Andrew, Anwell, Johan, and Alex from CS.
3. Sit in on Neural. Fairly basic intro neuroscience, but breakneck pace. Characterization of a neuron as a "leaky bag of charged liquid" really struck me as direct and accurate. 
4. Run into Frank and Devin on my way to make lunchbox posters and talk for a bit. 
5. Make the lunchbox poster, go to print it, spend 30 frustrating minutes with this tech support dude trying to connect to the color printer, and then to get the margins to work. Hopefully we have it nailed down for the future. 
6. Go out to dinner with Ricardo (a new dude), Siri, Arif. Have delicious shawarma. Get to hear some of Ricardo's crazy backstory. 
7. And games! (above)
8. Take a run before bed, write this log.
3. 'Night all! 

1/7/15

1. Woke up, frantically caught up on Math 335 reading, then...
2. Hustled down to Sieg, skipping Mathematical Physics in favor of the more intellectually honest Advanced Calculus. I've made up my mind to switch classes. Get to talk a bit with Professor Morrow, which is fun. 
3. 351. Standing room only!
4. Meet Kelsey, my first tutee this quarter. We hit it off immediately, plan out a schedule, and then just chat for a bit. She's come back to school after 10 years off and on--reminiscent of people I worked with in the WCC math center.
5. Lunch!
6. Acquire my 351 textbook at a mutual bargain from the new Startup UW president, Mahir. 
7. Go to Neural Engineering! Subject looks interesting, although it appears we're not going to get into any sort of "emotional manipulation/management" software--the field isn't there yet :D And just getting the brain to interact with a computer in any way is complicated enough!
8. Endodontist appt. Goes fine--I have some sensitivity back in the fractured tooth. 
9. Startup UW info night! Make a marshmallow-toothpick rocket (in competition, of course) :)
10. Grab a burger, read Circuits. Then do lots of math hw. 
11. Skype with family. Catch them up on schedule changes.
12. Chat a bit with math buddies about a problem on Facebook. Write this entry and hit the hay.

1/4/16

1. Highlight: Went to the lifting section of the gym for the first time ever, with Brandon. Exhausted my out-of-shape arms fairly quickly on various machines, which are not as incomprehensible as they are initially intimidating. 
2. Other things: 
1. Classes look interesting. Physics math is straight-up Ordinary Differential Equations right now, which I've already learnt; but the pace is fast enough I hope to reach new material soon. Hardware lecture was a bit boring, broad overview, but I like the instructor.
2. Read some Death and Life of Great American Cities (Cities) over breakfast. Since my first classes are 10:30 I hope to have enough stability to make a tradition out of both breakfast and associated reading.
3. Researched and sent a big email about CSE study abroad.
4. Went to Ruzhen Mongolian Grill with Brandon! I'd never been before. It was pretty neat. You load your bowl with raw meat, uncooked veggies, noodles and different oils + garlic water/ginger water, etc., then the whole mess gets tossed on a grill, chopped and scrambled and steamed with water poured on the grill, and finally it is returned to you, so you can add yet more sauces. It's a very simple prep method, but the result is quite tasty. Good conversation with Brandon as well. He's reading the research-intensive Steven Pinker book Angels of our Better Nature, about the statistics showing a general decline in violence.
5. Watched Pulp Fiction, (I think the first Tarantino movie I've seen) with some floormates. Awesome movie, but NSF_. Tried a strange, Tarantino-cowboy inspired social experiment--I couldn't remember the pronunciation of a floormate's name, so instead of my usual apology-polite request, I said, "I been meanin' to ask you--is it ArIF or ARif?" Seemed to work really well. I'm always surprised at the effectiveness of swagger as a secret social sauce. 
3. Signing off! Take care y'all!

1/3/16: Back to School

1. Highlight: Meet with Ian in the afternoon. We have a great time--swapping school stories and enjoying animated chatter.
2. Bid farewell to the family, minus Dad, who drives me down to the UW. We grab dinner at EJ burger and wrestle with existential questions--what products/services are objectively good/"needed"? A strange Dad-version of utilitarianism :)
3. Unpack, take a walk with Xin, shoot some hoops at the McMahon courts, and hit the hay relatively early.