5/1/15 (plus backlog)

1. 5/1/15 (plus backlog)
1. A couple days behind! A quick recap.
2. Friday
1. was a day of Leroy debugging. From 8:30 in the morning to 7pm, with brief interludes for classes, helping Alex with calc (which was great--I was able to communicate the intuition behind the chain rule via a numerical, experimental example of related quantities) and SPS board gaming (which I had to bail on to work halfway through)--I wrestled my file indexer into shape. As exhaustion crept over the horizon, I killed the last bug and the tests passed. But alas! I had forgotten I had written a little command line interface, and it was giving me weird results.
2. I grabbed my laptop cord and some pizza, and off to Eastside with Diego and some swingy company. Spent the first hour at Eastside cleaning up code, then tried to debug my interface. The stupid thing wouldn’t resolve, so I said, “s***w it, let’s dance and take another late day.” and I did. Dancing was fun, but I was so brain-fried I danced with the same person twice and didn’t realize I’d met them before the second time :D
3. Well rested, I set to work the next morning
1. and realized I hadn’t delimited out a freakin’ newline on the last token. Removed that, then encountered a bug in the rest of the code. Break, lunch with Brandon at the india buffet. We discussed several interesting problems, including a neat thermodynamics model i’ve been thinking about :D Then we grabbed the whiteboard from my room and went outside to do math. Worked out the details of how convoluting (a type of integrating) the response of a system to a short impulse, with a whole input function, gives the response of the system to the whole input function. Very legit.
2. Went back to work on code, found my bug, it was very simple. Everything worked. I was so excited. Cleaned up my files, removed all the printfs and cursing comments I’d inserted, and submitted.
3. Skyped with parents over dinner. Decided to go home for my actual birthday and hold the party at school some other day.
4. Went to Lavin “kickback” at Henry’s house (dude from Google Games team). Turned out Jade and August from last year’s Honors floor were there. Not many people from lavin though. Did a bit of dancing, got into some weird conversations--met a dude that works as a tester/designer at Wizards of the Coast, the Magic company. Fun, but a bit awkward since I didn’t know most of the people.
5. Long bus ride/ walk back to Haggett, crashed (although not before finishing the arrangement of a morning meetup with Alex!)
4. Sunday morning I woke bright and early
1. and made my way to a French bakery south of West Campus, across the bridge to Eastlake. Had coffee and croissants with Alex, then we walked to the Arboretum. It was an incredibly beautiful day, and we walked through a lot of cool neighborhoods, talked about architecture and landscaping and houses, plus Alex’s upcoming trip to France.
2. Wandered through the Arboretum for a long while, discovering new paths, lakes, pipelines, crossing roads and cutting through meadows. Eventually we came to rest on a sunny hillside and lay in the sun for a while. Not something I do often enough by myself :) We talked of the uncertain future (Alex can’t decide between trying to do vet school, going for environmental science, or following up on her writing interests and majoring in comparative literature), listened to music, made up metaphoric poetry and song lyrics, and just let the breeze roll across the hillside. At one point, we started holding hands again :D
3. Walked around a bit longer before I had to catch a bus back to campus and Alex had to catch a bus to meet her mom for a few hours. Brought up the prospect of teaching swing classes as part of the Homeschool Summer Classes project--Alex sounded really interested, thought it would be fun to teach. Would also be neat to see her weekly over the summer :) Parted ways at the bus stop.
4. Met Xin in West Campus with his friend Yaoming from EE, made crepes from a recipe he found. (Brandon was off playing Pokemon). They were actually really good.
5. Returned to North Campus, went to the IMA. Xin kept challenging me to catch him in sprints before he reached X obstacle on the way over, which I did. Unfortunately I got a bit carried away and accidentally pushed him on the last leg and poor Xin wiped out :( We went to the first aid section of the IMA for a bandaid. By the time we got around to badminton, both of us were a little wiped out by the heat and the sprinting, but Xin more than me--possibly due to the wipeout. Still, played a few games.
6. Back to Haggett, did laundry, did systems programming exercise (worked the first time!!) Dinner with Xin outside McMahon.
7. Looked at bolt buses for the weekend. Maybe really early Saturday morning, or saturday at 10am. Gotta make a decision. Also, looked at weekends for birthday party--it’s looking like 3 weeks out on the 20th-22nd will be ideal.
8. Skyped with Monica outside for a long time. Swapped relationship stories and talked about her plans for Western, trying to get housing together. Good to catch up!
9. Got Rick’s, split with Xin. Did thermal hw. Also, encountered this very inspirational cartoon…
10. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2722
11. … which I’ll leave you with for the night! Fare thee well!