UW Update Sunday 4/26/15

1.     UW Update Sunday 4/26/15

a.     Woke around 1:30 J

b.     Grabbed brunch with Xin and Donovan at the 8.

c.      Returned to dorm, did physics hw.

d.     Played Frisbee with Xin and Donovan for about an hour and a half. Posed the “Happiness Chair” dilemma: if you could sit in a chair that guaranteed you would be happy for the rest of your life, would you do it? Donovan was in for the 90-day trial J, but Xin adamantly rejected it. Donovan and I got into a longer discussion about the best way to model utility functions (he at first thought that the “hedonic treadmill” would make it so Utility(t) ~ constant for any world conditions that stayed stable long enough for people to adapt to winning the lottery/becoming a paraplegic, etc.). Then Donovan brought up the Singularity and simulated reality. Xin eventually agreed with us that simulated reality involving other people is not fundamentally “fake”, despite initial protestations.

e.     Returned to Haggett, did a bit more physics, video chatted with family.

f.      Ate dinner with the homeschool Macbeth-filmer turned RA Alexis. We caught up for a bit, then talked about housing. Alex agreed with my housing choices, concurring that the upper floors of Haggett where 1 floor -> 1 lounge vs. 2 floors -> 1 lounge, generally have stronger communities. She also affirmed my observations about the friendliness of the 2104 House. When I asked her if our floor’s relatively distant RAs and few floor events were normal, she replied that her floor had many more events, as did many of the other floors, but that the variance across RAs is enormous. RAs in Haggett all have to plan 5 floor events, but some blow it off.

g.     Halfway through our dinner, Raymond from chess club showed up. In a strange flashback to last quarter, I called him Anthony and he called me Patrick before we both corrected each other. (This used to happen almost every time we would meet J).

h.     Chatted a bit more about RAing. Alex took me up to her awesome room on the south tower 5^th floor with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the lake, and showed me her “End-of-Year” video for Haggett (apparently every building makes one).

i.       Returned to Haggett, spent way too long trying to solve a physics problem that was basically a pure math problem. Kept forgetting my trig identities, but learned some new Mathematica trying to check my work and made good use of the whiteboard. Ended up basically solving it (need to write up my solution). Took periodic breaks to read Diaspora.

j.       Headed out to Denny Field, got into a game of 5-on-5 (I’m realizing there are people at Denny almost every weekend night!).

k.     Returned to dorm, showered, wrote this log, and went to bed.