1/13/17: The Final Mission

1. 1/13/17: The Final Mission
1. Wake up late cuz’ I was out late last night at Terry, had an amazing date; we went to spoken word poetry then played some intense MarioKart then relaxed with some pizza :)
2. Write email, decide to skip biophysics in favor of a machine learning seminar in CSE. It’s interesting, but the speaker (Noah Goodman of Stanford) throws so many ideas at us at once it’s hard to follow! The talk focused on the use of probabilistically-equipped programming languages as a way to precisely specify probabilistic models, and then applied the language’s general concepts to modeling certain kinds of human language interactions. One neat, not totally related insight: Generics (statements of the form X are/verb Y with no quantifiers, like “mosquitoes carry West Nile” or “Robins lay eggs) are surprisingly tricky to pin down. The simple translation X verb Y -> Almost all X verb Y fails (note the above examples). But, if you take into account mathematically the fact that most other species don’t carry West Nile and that only some animals lay eggs, you can predict that the statements above make sense, whereas similar ones like “Robins are female” don’t (even though the robins that lay eggs, are precisely the female ones).
3. Go to physics tutorial, which is actually interesting! Argue with Erin about some geometry.
4. SPS meeting; we play Exploding Kittens, I win both games :D :D New dude there, another Justin. Learn that Kyle is now courting that girl Stefana who came to the first meeting and whose name I forgot at swing lessons :P
5. Humans v. Zombies final mission! We start in Red Square with very little information.
6. Frantically my party rushes to Drumheller, to claim a bucket which we escort to Sylvan Grove. We then are beset by zombies; I fight staunchly. Finally I realize we don’t need to defend the bucket and must help our comrades claim the 3rd bucket! But as I’m marshalling the remaining humanity, I am turned.
7. After the final slaughter, alas, poor mankind! We return to Red Square and take photos.
8. I go back to 2104, do a little work. Then I run down to UVill for my Creating a Company meeting. Our team is meeting with our new adviser, John Wang, a professional consultant.
9. He has lots of great advice
1. Don’t pay your photography and graphic design partners to contribute to a joint showcase
2. You’re marketers first, designers second. Market yourself as marketers.
3. Ask for the sale at least 7 times in a meeting.
4. …
10. I take tons of notes and put them up on the group chat.
11. Then I have about 10 minutes to stop by home, scarf down some curry Xin made with Josh, before I head to Eastside!
12. Eastside is rocking. I really lose myself in the dancing. Even get to dance a tiny bit of the balboa basic.
13. Return home exhausted and crash.