Saturday Dec. 6: The Detergent Journey, Chocolate, Peanut Butter, and Container Shipping, and Competitively Altruistic Laundry Racing

1.     Saturday Dec. 6

a.     Woke up and did CS PracticeIt problems in the lounge. Fixed my solution from last night—a typo in one line had been breaking it in a complex, not easily traceable way. Watched a floormate come to despair over her upcoming Calc midterm (she thought she did fine afterwards).

b.     Ate lunch at Which Wich. Got the Wicked, a dollar extra for 5 meats. When I picked up my bag I was surprised at the weight of it; it was really good.

c.      Hung out at Which Wich, did more PracticeIt problems and some physics tutorial homework. The PracticeIt linked list problems continued to be frustrating.

d.     Went to Badminton club. Played a match against a better player and a worse player; the results were predictable. Learned some form that I had been lacking.

e.     Took shower, decided I really wanted a peanut-butter, fruit, and chocolate dinner, so stayed in room and ate a peanut butter banana and a peanut-butter apple while reading a pirated copy of this book linked to on Ribbonfarm called “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger”.

f.      Did PracticeIt problem. I needed to get laundry done but had run out of detergent before Thanksgiving. I was trying to ration my socks to see if I could make it to break, but I wasn’t even close. Frustrated with PracticeIt and a floor incident I will neglect to mention, I decided to regain control over my life by obtaining detergent. The convenience store in McMahon had only disgusting scented detergent. So I trekked to Trader Joe’s wearing nothing but a T-shirt (since I hadn’t anticipated the journey when I left Haggett), got detergent, gorp, and fruit, and walked back triumphant wearing a T-shirt and a grin. If only happiness were always so simple to come by J

g.     I brusqued through the laundry process (should be valid English usage) and got to work on my CS practice final.

h.     Finished the final with time to spare and (apparently) all working solutions.

i.       Went to get my laundry. On the way back, encountered Hannah and decided to head up the stairs with her (she had been trapped in our creaking dorm elevator in the dark for two minutes near the beginning of the quarter, so she always takes the stairs). This resulted in a lively game of door-holding competitive altruism as we raced up the stairs, through the floor 1 hallway, and up the main stairwell to the 6^th floor.

j.        Folded my laundry with consummate efficiency.

k.     Hung out in the room with Xin and Jamie.

l.       Wrote log and went to bed.

Friday Dec. 5

1.     Friday Dec. 5

a.     Woke up at 9, showered, and managed to just make it to physics 2 minutes late.

b.     We discussed sample final problems; they didn’t look that hard.

c.      The SPS was closed, so John and I were forced to go to the HUB to study, then to migrate to the Research Commons when John’s overworked computer ran out of battery. I worked on my paper and my CS assignment, and we talked about a program John was trying to write, and his major plans. We went back to the HUB for lunch, then John went to his math class.

d.     I went back to the Research Commons, then to CS class, where we talked about the final.

e.     Finally, I went back to the dorm, turned in my CS assignment, checked my email, and took a nap.

f.      I woke up at 6, went to the IMA, and played basketball until 8:30.

g.     I took a shower, then ate dinner at the 8.

h.     Returned to the dorm and finished meal after being booted out—apparently the 8 closes early on Fridays and Saturdays.

i.       Then went down to the lounge and hung out while doing PracticeIt CS problems.

j.       Couldn’t figure out why one solution wasn’t working, since my reasoning seemed solid. Resolved to debug it in the morning, wrote log, went to bed.

Wednesday Dec. 3

1.     Wednesday Dec. 3

a.     Woke up and walked to eat breakfast at the 8. Encountered Eleanor and Sasha, and another person I didn’t know that well, Freeman.

b.     Went to physics, where we discussed orbits. The mathematical machinery surrounding orbits is very powerful, even if it is difficult to derive; given what seems like very little information about an orbit, you can calculate everything else about it.

c.      Worked on CS assignment outside, then did course evaluations and physics pretest.

d.     Ate lunch at the HUB, finished my physics book (!) and went to computer science. We talked about hashing, a remarkably straightforward technique for building data structures with extremely fast access and search, albeit slightly more memory usage.

e.     Returned to dorm, checked email, and took a nap. 7 hours of sleep is not sufficient for me.

f.      Woke up, did a little work on education paper, and met Christian at the Allen Library Research Commons. We worked on our presentation and paper, ending up with a pretty decent flow for our presentation. The whiteboard-lined walls at the Research Commons are awesome—we ended up doing a lot of work on them J

g.     Went to the 8, video chatted with family while eating pizza. Worked on education paper for a good 2 hours, took an eyeball break to shoot some hoops at Denny, took a shower, brushed teeth, did a little more work on the education paper, wrote this log, and went to bed.

Tuesday Dec. 2: Prisoners' Dilemma Tourney, Heart of Stone, and Portfolio Presentations

1.     Tuesday Dec. 2: Prisoners' Dilemma Tourney, Heart of Stone, and Portfolio Presentations

a.     Woke up bright and early and put in a few hours on portfolio website.

b.     Leroy-ed my way to CSE section, then worked more on portfolio website.

c.      Went to CSE Honors section and watched RPS and Prisoners’ Dilemma bots battle it out. I don’t think our professor, who is awesome, really understood what was going on with Prisoners’ Dilemma, because he had set up the system as a zero-sum pairwise competition. The consequence of this was that the program that defected more won more, even though this behavior is suboptimal in general. When I pointed this out to him, he rewrote his program to report the final scores, but this still didn’t sum up the scores over all bot pairings. Ah well. But the RPS bots were interesting. The more patterned the bot, the more vulnerable; the more random the bot, the safer.

d.     I hustled out of class to finish my Honors Portfolio. I realized I hadn’t added my Honors 100 assignments, the only required components, and rushed to add them. (I’m beginning to think a systematic weakness (strength, in some cases?) of mine is to explore too broadly and neglect things that need to be done). During the last 20 minutes, I fell into what Patrick Rothfuss in The Name of the Wind called the “Heart of Stone”. The layers of chaos and haste fell off me, and I finished what needed to be done in a blur of clicks and navigation. I made it to class with a minute to spare, gave the first presentation—a little rushed and disorganized, perhaps, but earnest and substantial.

e.     Returned to Haggett and put the finishing touches on my website to my satisfaction. Chatted with Xin a bit and headed down to the mandatory Closing Floor Meeting. Floormates seldom seen in the lounge poured out of the woodwork in droves. Restlessness was palpable as Adam and Julia read pertinent information about closing.

f.      Afterwards, a large group went down to dinner. I invited a few Chess Club acquaintances to the table.

g.     I did physics homework for the next three hours (with a quick hoops-shooting break at Denny Field), making up for lost time. I finished up, did a blunder check, wrote this log, and went to bed.

Update Sunday Nov. 30

1.     Update Sunday Nov. 30

a.     Woke up at home in Bellingham.

b.     Ate traditional bagels.

c.      Went with Mom and picked out a pair of shoes to replace my completely destroyed ones.

d.     Drove to Seattle. On the way, wrote an application to become a TA for CSE 143 and submitted it with my mobile hotspot.

e.     Visited our friend in the Children’s Hospital.

f.      Ate delicious deep-dish pizzas at Delfino’s.

g.     Went to meeting with Jessica and Christian. Worked on final project paper.

h.     Hung out in lounge, said hi to everyone, participated in a few random conversations.

i.       Unpacked clothes, wrote log, went to bed.