UW Update Monday 4/20/15

1.     UW Update Monday 4/20/15

a.     Another great day! Woke, ate a peanut butter banana, and was off to physics.

b.     Linear.

c.      Worked in one of the CS breakout rooms for a bit.

d.     Grabbed a torta in Red Square and went to lunchbox. Unfortunately, lunchbox had been canceled; fortunately, John was there messing around on his computer. I grabbed John and we ate lunch in the Hub. We discussed the way light polarization can be used to send information (almost as good as a lunchbox seminar!) and he showed me the code he was using to visualize it and some of the problems he had while writing it. Apparently, you can’t do animations or graphics in python very well because python doesn’t handle arrays very well—it prefers dynamic lists. Weird. Offered to introduce John to some CS folks; he had chosen another major because he had already done so much work in CS, but I think he needs some CS geeks to talk to. He accepted excitedly. Will have to set up a lunch or something with Johan or Ayush.

e.     Went to 311. Interesting stuff about functions mapping from sets to sets and modular arithmetic (basically arithmetic on a clock face, where 4 + 13 (mod 12) = 5, although there are some subtleties, such as, is the order of modding vs. adding important? Apparently this is going to be useful).

f.      Returned to the dorm and did physics homework. Did some Frisbee with Xin. Did some more physics homework. Then nearly completed CS homework (only tricky extra credit to go) Yay! Went up to the 7^th floor and asked some residents about the “Global Experience” theme community. One guy (who apparently had moved in relatively recently) didn’t know he was living in it. The other residents were mildly positive—liked the RA, other residents, talked about a few events. The biggest thing speaking in its favor, IMHO: the residents told me there was a lot of shifting from quarter to quarter because so many of the students went on study abroads J.

g.     Messed around with planning classes. If I play my cards right, there’s no reason I can’t get a CS-Physics double-major and an entrepreneurship-math double minor J. But scheduling individual classes proved tricky.

h.     Went with Xin and Brandon to the restaurant in Lander, met up with potential clustermates. They seemed nice, although they weren’t super interested in things like group dinners and organized movie nights (they did seem interested in an ultimate group in Denny Field). One of them is a CS major, the other, also Brandon, is civil engineering, and there were two others who couldn’t make it. Xin told me on the way back he’d probably opt to live with Joey over living in the cluster if the 2104 House was not open. Interesting.

i.       Returned to dorm. Played some ping-pong with Brandon. Thought about getting Rick’s, but decided I wasn’t tired enough yet and went to Denny Field for basketball. Got into two epic games of 21.

j.       Properly exhausted, I showered, did my laundry, wrote this log, read a little Martian, and went to bed. Pumped to get my first taste of heavy machining equipment in the machine shop class tomorrow!