4/28/16

1. 4/28/16
1. Math
2. Physics group meeting! Entered in all the data we gathered last week into mathematica, and learned a lot about the Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) the lab uses. The MOT is a super nifty device--I couldn’t help myself from grinning as we went through how it works. All this crazy laser zapping -> transitions -> momentum transfer stuff.
3. Ran over to other physics building, made lunchbox posters, put them up.
4. Grabbed lunch and went to global trends class. Another very interesting class--”led” the discussion on Ch.5, but typically how this works is you ask like 1 interesting question and then the rest of the class and Raj just go off on tangents for an hour :D I asked what advantages existing multinationals have over emerging-market players with more local knowledge and cost structure advantage. It seems like (obviously) access to global resources, capital and talent, interesting examples Raj gave about big multinationals being essentially called in by countries as sources of capital and resources. Poor emerging markets can’t originate this stuff from nothing :D
5. Sat outside and did math for 2.5 hours. Basically finished the hw--was kind of astounded.
6. Glee!
7. Went to Swing board game night that Alex had absolutely insisted I attend. But turns out she had way too much calc hw--the irony :D Had fun playing the game Coup with Eleonore and a bunch of strategy geeks.
8. From there back to Haggett, studied for physics exam, caught up on some email (physics peer tutoring is finally about to start!) Decided to sleep before starting CS.

4/27/16

1. 4/27/16
1. Woke up, had a very pleasant and productive morning in part thanks to figuring out quickly what I had done wrong in the C++ exercise of the preceding night, and partly thanks to doing my 7 min exercises for the morning :D
2. Went to math. I’m starting to feel like that grad student sitting at the front of a QFT class, no notes, trying to imagine a universe described by a mattress of springs described by some arcane equations. I feel like I’ve lost my intuitive handle on what complex analytic functions are--everything is mediated by this layer of theorems that on paper are really simple and elegant, but feel as unintuitive as the axioms of quantum mechanics :P
3. Thermal Physics--STILL mostly review. I may have to start taking things somewhat seriously for the upcoming midterm though :D
4. Accounting--interesting but really slow. Spent half the time reading articles :D
5. Got some exercise in McMahon gyms, made lunchbox poster, went to SPS meeting. Turns out department is having a BBQ (yay!) which means we’ll have to plan our tentative barbeque around it (mrrh…). Basically worked on inverted index for systems. Took a quick break to sign a frisbee that Eleonore had bought for a Swing Kid.
6. Went to intermediate lessons! Worked on more fundamentals, actually felt very useful. Afterwards, went to Team Food at Mongolian Grill. Talked a long time with Alex, Trevor, and Eleonore--probably longer than was prudent :) Walked back to West Campus with Alex and Trevor, then to CSE for a few hours of work. Made it past a few tests with my index before hitting strange behavior, so pivoted to math. Struggled with lack of intuition on things which I thought ought to be intuitive. Hmm.
7. Wrote this journal entry and back to Haggett for sleep! Good night all!

4/26/16

1. 4/26/16
1. Cr. Operations Expense 50
1. Dr. Cash 50
2. Whoops! That was an accounting journal entry, not a normal journal entry. Moving on…
3. O-of all the money, that ‘ere that I’ve spent...
4. Whoops, that was a lyrical refrain, not any kind of journal entry! It is somewhat related to the accounting entry above however :D
5. Ok, let’s get down to business. Or not business. Not accounting anyway! Life. What happened today? I only had one class, math--we discussed the implications of the fact that every analytic function has a power series representation, which are pretty wild and easy to derive.
6. After that, I settled down to work on my big CS homework. Put in several productive hours, then I went to the HUB for lunch. Read a bit of Disruption for Thursday’s class. The book had a lot of evidence for a reversal in the 20th century trend of declining resource prices--demand is just too great, and environmental pressures may make extraction increasingly difficult. This in itself is kind of a wild shift--the mindset that we can just keep moving on to the next mine or plot of arable land, always produce more in terms of raw resources, might be insufficient to meet demand as well as environmentally unsustainable.
7. Then I went to an astrobio colloquium, posters for which I saw around the physics building. This Indian postdoc had an incredibly entertaining and data-overloaded presentation. He argued that the reason we don’t see more aliens is that a particular kind of life-driven feedback loop is required to stop runaway positive-feedback climate processes (such as warming resulting in ice melt releasing more co2 -> runaway warming.). Life isn’t limited, recent evidence suggests, by 1. scarcity of necessary elements 2. Scarcity of habitable planets (there are WAY more planets than we thought there were recently) 3. Difficulty of basic life-forming chemical processes (studies are showing that little snippets of RNA and sugars can form in very natural ways and that life probably existed very early in the Earth’s history (suggesting that the processes that resulted in it weren’t that improbable. So this dude suggested the feedback-loop hypothesis (or Gaian hypothesis, nature protecting nature like a nature-y Gaia god).
8. Walked back to physics with a group of astrobio shmids; they were complaining that the dude’s hypothesis was as yet untestable. (He had thrown out various BS ways of corroborating the idea.)
9. Did more work, 2/3s done with CS project! Went to Glee.
10. Solid rehearsal, we sounded pretty good. Took a short run, grabbed some tacos at the 8, and went up to floor lounge for floor tradition! Got in a good, intense game of Pictionary with Siri, Ashleigh, Maddie.
11. Started working on mini-CS exercise. Really annoying C++ syntax stuff. I went over to a practice room in the music building and actually couldn’t finish the darn thing. So I spent a relaxing hour singing along to chords--revisited some songs I’d played with Alex eternity (that is 4 weeks) ago, plus a classic rendition of the Parting Glass.
12. Returned to Haggett, where I encountered Brandon with a big 226 study group. Talked with them for a bit, then
13. wrote this log and crashed.

4/25/16 (4-day recap)

1. 4/26/16 (4-day recap)
1. Wow, I’m a couple days behind at this point :D
2. Thursday was cool but packed. Lavin lunch with the retired CEO of Pop Cap Games, Dave Roberts (Plants vs. Zombies anyone?). He described how the company was always straight product driven from the beginning, made money from pay to play, sounded like transition to freemium was tricky. Also got to hear a little bit about gaming habits in different countries.
3. Spent all day off and on working on math and still couldn’t finish the proofs! Ugh. Asked Will for a late day, once in 3 quarters, but Prof. Morrow wouldn’t give it--frustrating. But fun working on math with people.
4. Friday, classes, SPS meeting, spent much of the day finishing the math homework ‘cuz I just wanted to get it done anyway. Had a bit of a motivation crisis, went and played some piano in the music building and returned to normal :D
5. Oh wait! I met in the morning with the CEO of Siren, bused down to midtown for some coffee. She told me about various campaigns she and the "hustlers" were running to try to get traction, gave me some stickers and cards I could hand out. Pretty neat conversation--digressed at one point to the effect that I should be blogging (yup, I need to get off my lazy backside and write something other than journal entries!)
6. Couldn’t get a ride to the Friday dance, but met up with some Swing Kids anyway at a Swing Kid’s birthday party (after running to the lake--so pretty!, hitting the gym and some Smash Bros debauchery with Xin and Brandon). The party was actually held in Wesley’s house that he’d given us a tour of a while back. Very interesting experience. Hung out with Alex and Eleonore, danced a bit. Played basketball outside :D Helped a random dude from UCLA look for a girl who’d wandered off. Got hit on by a random Informatics girl waiting in line for the bathroom, that was bizarre.
7. Spent 1am-2am talking with Eleonore, talked about relationships :D Walked with her back to her apartment, then jogged back to the UW for sleep.
8. Saturday: Woke up nice and late, took run, got breakfast with Xin and Brandon. Off to math review session, sample problems weren’t super hard so we spent some time goofing off :D Dad showed up from meeting his buddy Jim at the Husky spring football game, and we took an incredibly muddy but fun walk in the arboretum. Dropped off next to the ethnic-cultural-theater, where I met Alex for a performance by the Early Entrance Drama Society (I had gone to an awesome performance last year :D) The acting started really slow, but picked up, and the storyline was really great. The play “The Foreigner” is about a dude who gets introduced to a rural American South family as a foreigner who can’t speak English, learns all the family secrets and intrigue, and basically saves them from the evil plot of two of the family members.) After that, to dinner and bubble tea with Alex :D
9. We relaxed pretty fast and enjoyed casual conversation over our burgers. But over bubble tea, the Meta-Conversation (conversation about ourselves) resumed. Somewhat at my prompting--I was a bit nervous but needed clarity on where we were at. We started off continuing the Questions we had been answering last bubble tea meetup, but eventually Alex identified that I had questions of my own. We had a long conversation about what we both were looking for from the relationship, which alternated from the concrete to the abstract refuge of those with few data points. Alex was super perceptive and kept figuring out holes in our definitions and statements. I honestly could scarcely believe that we were having the conversation :D
10. After several hours of hashing and refining, our brains were reeling. I didn’t have the strength to pull together a resolution, but Alex did. Basically, Alex was having just as much fun as I was and wanted to continue dating, but after her previous experiences in that other life, high school, she feared the irrevocability of romantic decisions. So we put together a charter of a few points outlining our freedoms and the loose, reversible, informal couplings that bound us.
11. We stepped out of Mee Sum, a sense of serenity and preternatural calmness (perhaps tiredness) steeping over me. We were still talking, though less ardently than before. Alex was talking about reversibility, leading me to realize my naivenesses towards my own System 1. She said, “I’ve thought about grabbing your hand when we’re sitting together--I kinda want to, but I think, is this reversible? I don’t want to break your heart (note, context required for reasonable interpretation).” And a second later (a pause of consideration?), in one completely natural motion, she scooped up my hand and interlaced fingers with mine! I was completely astounded. System 1 emotions washed over me, my grin spread across my face, I slowed down, and part of my brain thought, “reversibility, pal! Keep your wits about you!” That first time holding hands--the memory will certainly be irreversible, though the relationship state transition shall be so, if my System 2 can hold fast the mortal sword.
12. Parted with a hug at the gates of Mercer. I returned to campus via the physics back stairs, singing whatever refrains came to mind.
13. In the quad, dude complemented my singing--I recognized him--TA from Honors Physics last year. We walked up to Haggett together, he’d never been in Haggett so I gave him a quick tour, talked about grad school vs. industry, potential specializations in physics with CS/EE.
14. After that, I hit the hay pretty solidly :D
15. Ok, today! This’ll have to be quick ‘cuz I got a midterm tomorrow.
16. Woke up, almost immediately off to West Campus for brunch with Brandon and Xin. Max and Trevor joined. Super awesome food :D
17. Then to math review session. Pretty fun. Will showed us some crazy group theory stuff, some of which I actually understood, and we talked about our paper topics. I got some good information about potential directions to explore within graph theory.
18. Got some exercise, knuckled down on Thermal hw.
19. Got dinner with XIn, Josh, and Winnie, fun to catch up with those guys.
20. Bashed out a Systems exercise and worked on note sheet, last couple of sample problems for math.
21. Wrote this journal entry. Time to turn in! Health and joy to the lot of y’all,
22. Spencer

4/20/16

1. Quick entry tonight!
2. Classes, then lots of work today. Math hw is really hard, plus trying to get a head start on CS hw.
3. SPS meeting outside at my suggestion, devolved into a frisbee game :D
4. Swing lessons! Learned a new cool move. Then off to Team Food at Udon with Alex and others. Good times!
5. Volunteering at Rick’s! Get to chat with Carmen for a bit, speak a tiny bit of Spanish with Hispanic fellow volunteer Jesus.
6. More work (stupid stupid makefile syntax) and emails, then off to bed.

Throwback Easter Entry

1. Throwback Tuesday Easter Entry
1. This entry, prepare to be transported almost a month back in time to Spring Break, so that my Easter memories might be preserved and strengthened against the rush of new ones :D Highlights below:
2. First up, the Computer History museum. I can’t remember which day we went on, only that it was one of the neatest collections that ‘ere I’ve visited. There was classic IBM propaganda from the era of its domination (“Think” exhorted awesome signs which I should totally laser-cut). Dad, Izzy and I geeked out about the history of CS, and Dad showed us items from his childhood. Super awesome. Will have to go there next year if we make it up to Easter.
3. I *think* a day afterwards, we visited a nonprofit organization doing something very clever--renting costumes! Everyone had great fun trying on hats (I couldn’t decide between the cowboy and the grey bowler). I thought this colorful clown coat looked awesome, but nobody agreed with me.
4. Good thing I picked the cowboy hat, because that evening we squared off in a game of poker. Aunt Joan raised the stakes with elaborate gifts to the winner of each pot, which threw the sisters into competitive fury. I, or shall I say, the brooding Gravel Eyes, protected my $10 in quarters under the brim of my Stetson until they started getting friendly :D The night went late; we adjourned when M became exhausted.
5. Lots of other awesome memories from the trip deserve to be recorded, but I’m short on time so I must be short with words :P We had some great conversations on philosophy (the age the AI pioneers herald was upon us 5000 years ago, according to sage Tom Laurence Floating Cloud Foss), and on modern medicine and teaching (ah, the foolish bureaucracies of large universities :) Was sorry to go, but caught a flight back to Sea-Tac just in time to make my Monday classes.

4/19/16

1. 4/19/16
1. Slept in
2. Math. Realized I hadn’t been hanging a ton with the math crowd, so got lunch with Andrew, Natalie, Emily.
3. Work, then off to CENPA! Met Ronaldo for an afternoon of research fun. Our task: to get some magnetic field measurements. We got our flux gate magnetometer set up, debugged it (iron tables suck), made sure north was the direction we expected. We tried a test run just holding the thing next to a ruler, but way too imprecise and difficult to hold the thing freehand at the right spot and at the right orientation.
4. We wanted to clamp the magnetometer to the ruler, but we couldn’t because the clamps were all iron or steel. So we spent a frustrating hour brainstorming how to attach the d**n thing. A threaded rod and nuts? All the rods we could find were magnetic. Screws and nuts? A pain, and none the right size regardless. An O-clamp--same problems. A custom-cut piece of styrofoam--maybe. We got close to sending me to the machine shop to make a custom aluminum clamp.  Ronaldo insisted we had to have an easier solution available, and I hit upon it--frickin’ rubber bands :D We raided the front office, amusing the deskperson on duty with our sophisticated experimental techniques. Then we took data. Ironically, the process was exactly like the incredibly-phony seeming “science” of the intro labs (I even had a lab partner!). Move the sensor, write down a number, repeat about 500 times :D
5. After CENPA, I headed back to Haggett, ate an apple with peanut butter for much needed impetus, then off to Glee. Good rehearsal.
6. Dinner at the 8 with Xin (outside). Tasty burrito :D Then to the IMA for some badminton. Defeated Xin soundly in an attempt to force him to up his footwork :D
7. Returned to Haggett, sent some emails, looked into Western’s summer programs (looks like you need a teaching certificate to teach). Lots of other little things ate up time. Went to the Nook for ice cream, split with Xin. Laundry.
8. Wrote this entry and shall hit the hay, so that I may work early tomorrow :D Cheers!

4/18/16

1. 4/18/16
1. Woke early, started on Thermal hw.
2. Met the SPS National president, DJ, who’s been visiting on sabbatical, at the Cafe Solstice. We talked about SPS growth strategies (some neat ideas!):
1. Listed here for my convenience:
2. Grab freshmen looking for a peer group in classes
3. Email freshmen who’ve listed physics as an interest on the UW app (talk to department)
4. Go to the RSO fair at the beginning of the year (get outside the department)
5. Make liquid nitrogen ice cream
6. Get a prof to take students out for dinner
7. Hmm, what else?
8. Oh, have every other meeting be an activity. One neat example--a photo scavenger hunt where the prompts are physics principles (find an example of buoyancy / self-similarity / second law / etc)
9. Anyway,
3. We also talked about the big SPS national organization, which isn’t that big after all (at least centrally). They’re trying to get a new director after the last guy, who ushered in a period of real growth, went back to academia. It’s a good sign when people leave power because they want to do something else, and the powerful are drawn from the rank and file of university physics faculty :D
4. Parted on good terms, and I was off to math, except not, since I still had Thermal to do. Ended up missing both math and systems, but got a sweet lunch at Motosurf to take to thermal and had time to review accounting.
5. Thermal was interesting, shades of entropy material we covered briefly in the intro series.
6. Took my accounting quiz and got off early.
7. Thence back to Haggett. Went down to McMahon hoops courts, then Xin came down and we went and played a little badminton.
8. To Haggett, to work (caught up on slides for missed system lecture and math reading, plus systems textbook), then to peer tutoring class, discussed exam problems a little bit. Frisbee with Isaac for 10min, nice guy.
9. Grabbed dinner at the 8 and took it to the floor lounge. Madison was playing gorgeous ukelele music and singing classic songs with lyrics like “wanna be your left-hand man”. I sang along a tiny bit :)
10. Worked a bit longer--easy accounting hw--then I headed out. Alex was studying for Chemistry midterm, and so I decided to cut Monday dance and go to a poker night with Lavin students (@Joan I wish I had had my hat :D
11. $5 buyin, these entre students, they took big risks and dropped like flies. I bided my time and capitalized on each irrationality, Hornblower style, chewing gum like a seasoned cowboy. Only 4 left, then 3, then 2, and it was late so we cashed out. +$15! Still gotta collect though :D
12. Returned to Haggett, showered, wrote this entry, got tickled by Xin. Tried to resist, but need to work with Izzy on this :D
13. Good night all!

4/17/16

1. 4/17/16
1. Well, today went about exactly as planned in yesterday’s entry :D
2. I got my 10 hours of sleep, went to brunch with Brandon and Xin! Zach joined us on the way, and Max + Brandon’s EE friend Joseph joined us at Maple.
3. Brandon and I are pretty advanced omelet chefs now, and made some really terrific stuff. We also got potatoes, boiled them in cubes in our skillets, and fried them in butter with garlic and green onions :D Not to mention the french toast (with nutmeg and cinnamon stolen from the 8) was awesome--so much easier and honestly better than pancakes.
4. Thence to the McMahon gym for a short workout, followed by some much-needed emailing and some good work on the systems exercise due tomorrow (interfacing directly with system calls on files! Eww, but I mean, also kinda cool :)
5. Off to the quad with Alex! Laid out in the sun for an hour talking. Much more relaxed than I was on Friday, due to sleep and introspection. Got a sweet selfie to post to the family. Then we walked to the Veggie Grill, arm-on-arm Pride and Prejudice style. The Grill offered a sweet student discount, making it probably the most affordable place in UVillage, and we got some awesome strawberry lemonade on the house :D Talked about family and random stuff.
6. Debated what to do next and decided to watch a movie. Walked to Alex’s Mercer apartment. I got to meet some of her roomies, but not for long. Watched the first half of this old Katherine Hepburn movie called Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Weird story and I’m never quite square with the 20’s dialogue style, but fun hanging out regardless.
7. Finished the systems exercise out of odegaard (string concatenation in C is stupid) and back to Haggett to work on Thermal for a bit. Wrote this entry while listening to this neat bluegrass band Brandon recommended me at lunch, Nickel Creek.
8. Time to sleep. Happy Monday, -Spencer

4/16/16

1. This day deserves more detail, but I’m tired, so I challenge myself to summarize each part in 3 sentences.
2. Google Games: met up with my team of Cscientists and Laviners in the GooglePlex Kirkland. Played really well and competitively as a team, got to know CS student Irving and designer Henry better. Third overall, first in the coding challenge, and I made a good-sized contribution!
3. Walked to Johan’s house and we ran around Greenlake. Beautiful day, fun conversation about projects we’re working on, dating, summer plans. Then on my recommendation we went to the India Bistro, which I remembered being awesome, but hadn’t had a chance to go to since in Greenlake--it was amazing.
4. Returned to Haggett, did a little bit of work, caught up on email. Then Super Smash Flash with the homies--Brandon, Xin, and this time Siri. Fun times--defeated Xin in a satisfying nail-biter and earned his grudging respect.
5. Bed now! Brunch tomorrow morning and Veggie Grill with Alex in the evening, and the rest is gonna be homework. Grin wide! -Spencer

4/13/16 (plus highlights of yesterday)

1. 4/13/16 (plus highlights of yesterday)
1. Yesterday:
2. Mentor-connect lunch with Lavin was incredibly interesting. I was totally won over by the CEO of this new dating site: http://www.siren.mobi/blog/
3. Also got to talk with Ayush a bit.
4. Terrific Glee rehearsal.
5. Met Alex for bubble tea after the busy day. We actually started at the 8, then migrated over to Oasis on the ave. We spent like 4 hours(!) in Oasis talking. Alex had found these “36 Questions”
6. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/open-gently/201310/36-questions-bring-you-closer-together
7. Intended to draw out revealing conversation. And boy, did they. Things got real meta, real fast. It was kinda scary. Both Alex and I are extremely open, heart-on-sleeve types :)
8. I walked over to Mercer with Alex, then walked back to Haggett in a bit of a daze of thought. On the way back, stopped at the physics building to relieve myself, saw that the light in the SPS lounge was still on. Checked in with Bearded Jacob and others struggling with 226 homework, met a new physicist Sylvia.
9. Crashed solidly.
10. Today:
11. Woke up and worked on 333 exercise. Then off to Math. Complex analysis continues to be amazing. Really neat stuff just pops out of nowhere. To take an incomprehensible example, suppose that f(z) is an analytic (differentiable) function--you can approximate it locally as its value at a point f(z0) plus a complex value (the derivative) times the deviation from the point f’(z0)*(z-z0). But this is COMPLEX multiply--makes everything crazy. Not a tangent line/plane, but some kinda tangent rotation and scale.
12. Anyway, given f is analytic, you know that the real and imaginary parts of f have families of level curves that are orthogonal to each other--you can draw neat plots of these families. I think it’s cool.
13. Other classes, then went to basketball free agent meeting. Found out the teams that needed people.
14. SPS meeting for like 15 minutes, then to HVZ mission. It was fun, but our team didn’t get much action defending our agent.
15. Worked for an hour, then off to swing class! More connection exercises, lots of fun.
16. Said hi to Alex at the Team Food meetup, then split off with Trevor since I had (have!) lots of work to do. Did a bit of frisbee with Trevor since the evening was so nice. Ate at the 8, then up to Haggett to do work.
17. Chatted with Ashleigh and a new girl Bran on this floor this quarter, a CS student back from a study abroad in Germany!
18. Got a little bit of work in before getting involved in a fairly deep and reflective, but also logistical, conversation with Xin. A conversation that I could imagine us having if, in some incomprehensible twist, we were dating. A Taylor & Tami kind of conversation, about planning and time but also about the ineffable essence of friendship. Jeez, how much of this can I handle? :D
19. So my hash table did NOT get done. I’ma pay for that tomorrow morning. But for now, I will trap into the kernel and sleep for a few hours. May the internal negotiations that define you be honest; filibuster not on the floor of the Senate of the mind. Goodnight!
20. Spencer