2/29/18

1. 2/29/18
1. One announcement since I haven’t been on the blog for so long: I got accepted to ETH study abroad! Woot woot
2. Woke bright and early at 7:30 and started crunching on biophysics. Context: I had found out I got accepted to Study Abroad the previous night, and told Gaya; then we both got sad that we wouldn’t see each other for 9 months or so after the Spring Quarter ends, and we stayed up late bawling our eyes out.
3. So! Biophysics. Very nifty stuff. We applied a vector calc equation from E&M, plus a Boltzmann-law atmospheric distribution from StatMech, to get a handle on how screening works in ionic solutions. EG, if I drop a big + into the liquid, all the little minuses get attracted to the + and their charge “shields” the +, so that the potential seen outside the screening layer is much smaller than the potential of just the +. With the strategy above we got the thickness of the screening layer.
4. Gaya dropped in for a few minutes then left; I finished biophys and turned my attention to my discourse paper. Then I borrowed a folder from Lisa and holepunched all my paper printouts, showered, and went to biophys, where we mostly went over derivations from the notes.
5. Met Ayush at the Red Pepper (authentic Sichuan restaurant) for lunch. It was tasty. He’s going on an internship binge, first Google then Facebook (cuz why not?) Says he’s giving the engineering life one more shot. Talked about grad school, different types of research.
6. Went to CSE for discourse group meeting. On way in checked with advisers--looks like I’m in for ETH on the solid :)
7. Discourse was a bit thin today, only 4 of us. Good though! Despite having only skimmed the last bit of the paper, I was able to make some contributions (I’m good at clarifying the meaning of the equations :))
8. Went over to Terry, said hi to Gaya and some RA friends and a very cute dog in the RLO. Meanwhile, Secret, is going viral and literally one of the RAs had just watched a Secret video.
9. Gaya and I go for a walk; her heart is heavy but the walk helps and we have some good conversation. By the end we’re singing together :D
10. Head to CSE, review notes on website building. End up working a lot on Alex’s study abroad essay.
11. Damir comes by, we look at the website builder and spec, divvy up responsibility.
12. Head back to 2104 where Xin and Lisa are frying spring rolls. Make myself an omelette, heat up some ridiculously spicy soup from Gaya and my date after the Lavin Gala, grab some spring rolls, and go to town. Very satisfying meal.
13. Head up to room, don’t get a ton of work done. Finish up working on Alex’s essay, get in a good Skype session with parents, put in some laundry, write this entry and hit the hay.

2/2/18: A Short Day for a Long Weekend

1. 2/2/18
1. Slept in until 12:30!
2. Did laundry, washed dishes, ate some instant oatmeal to raise my glucose levels and then
3. Did the Amazon preliminary internship assessment! This was a hour-long challenge that ended up not being very challenging; the debugging portion was trivial, and the logic portion was like a bunch of letter cipher puzzles plus some SAT-like comprehension questions.
4. Chase came over to hang out and we made lunch, then took a walk around some pretty neighborhoods north of 45th. Lots of fun conversation. Sounds like his PGPNA (D&D club) exploits are going awesome.
5. Meet Henry Banks at the Oasis for some bubble tea. Very fun! Catch up on each other’s programming projects; he describes a little memory management hack called “object pools”. We oddly ran out of conversation about an hour and a half in, whereupon he returned to the Academy of Interactive Entertainment and I went to join Gaya’s Singaporean buddies at the Kong Tofu House. Very good food, similar to the Korean Tofu House ;)
6. Go back with Gaya to Terry to work. Find the 8th floor lounge unoccupied and get rolling. After a short interlude *, I settle down to wringing the very essence of the belief propagation algorithm from a paper linked in the homework. 3 hours later, I have a decent sense of what’s going on. BP is complicated!
7. Decide to stay over in the 8th floor lounge. Send some email, write this log, and * hit the hay.

2/2/17: Work and Peace

1. 2/2/17
1. Sleep like a log.
2. Breakfast and work.
3. Grad class! Learn more Markov Networks stuff.
4. Meet Caleb (from my Presentations class way back!) for lunch. Trade stories from classes and trying to do research. Good time.
5. Try to understand my frickin’ homework. The data and starter code are presented with minimal explanation.
6. Run over to the gym to squeeze in some hoops! Get into some good games. I play well, but my technique is off--I’ve already lost the ‘twitch’ :P
7. Skip ENTRE because it’s another one of Alan’s 15 minute lectures + check in. That way, I get to read a bit of my grad class textbook--which is titillating but not relevant to the homework--and examine the provided data to make sure it’s formatted how I think it is.
8. Glee rehearsal!
9. Schultzy’s! Chew the rag with Wesley.
10. Run back home, grab my stuff, off to physics to study with Jacob, Brandon, Eric. Jacob and I spend most of the time talking about quantum stuff not directly relevant to the exam ;) Spend a long time trying to figure out this Hund’s Rules thing. Eventually come up with a nice proof for what it was we were trying to do, connecting z-angular momentum and regular angular momentum.
11. Meet Gaya for just a few moments since I’m close to West Campus :D
12. Run back home, write this log, and crash. Wish me luck on the midterm!