11/15/15

1. Highlight: Went to Math review session and was able to describe something nobody had seen before--obtaining the double angle trig identities with Euler's formula!
Otherwise: lotsa work on the CSE project (finally done!) midterm review. Came back and Xin had some ice cream saved for me :)

11/14/15

1. Lots of work. Played Smash Bros with Xin. Three good things that happened today:
Finished grading! Had fun doing part of project writeup! Xin bought chai tea and I had some.
I'm kinda on the StruggleBus right now--tomorrow things are coming down to the wire, and I have things to prepare for during the week, but I still want to enjoy at least part of my weekend. Trying to plan a trip to the Indian buffet. But facing that weird sort of sword of damocles' ennui.
Wish me Leroy and health friends!

11/13/15

1. Highlight: Winnie's birthday party! Got to meet some people, talked with Max Bobby from physics and his friend Trevor, watched a horror movie. I felt it lacked the cohesion of homeschool parties. Beforehand, made a trip to the bookstore and wrapped up the first two volumes of Bone as a gift, which was fun.
2. Other things: TA meeting (James was annoyed that Becky and I hadn't finished grading yet). Get the Physicists Together was again, only SPS members, but it was a blast. Just played loot for an hour. Oh! And I kicked my 312 midterm into the gutter. I'll be surprised if I don't get 100%. Not a difficult midterm, but still I'm surprised at how quickly I moved given my lingering illness.
3. Leroy on friends!

11/12/15

1. Highlight: Slept in until noon rather unexpectedly, missing my math class. 
2. The rest of today was pretty straightforward, a lot of work. Continued reading fun SlateStarCodex articles:
1. Meditations on Moloch
2. I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
3. Who By Very Slow Decay (10).
3. Glee club was fun. Only 8 days until the concert!!
4. Ate dinner in the floor lounge. Lots of ppl hanging out. It was neat.
5. Long conversation with Dad. Has the software economy transitioned from the exciting discovery phase to the more straightforward deployment phase?
6. Winnie's birthday tomorrow, and 312 midterm!

10/11/15

1. Highlight: Went out to Indian buffet with Xin and Brandon! It was amazing! The chai was incredible, its warm richness assuaging my sore throat. 
2. Other things that happened: before that, played badminton with Xin, Joey, and Rita. A lot of fun. I managed to not strain myself but get enough exercise that I was really hungry when we made it to the buffet. Also: worked on 332 project (we made it to the write-up!) and did math hw. This math hw was really easy, which surprised me, and I was able to help Issa with a couple problems. What up?! 

11/8-10/15

11/8: Got off the Lavin Retreat bus. Spent 4 hours doing 332 project, which were actually pretty productive. Then freaked out about grading I had to do. Eventually realized that other graders weren't done either and there was no way in Hades I would finish by the evening, so I relaxed, went to Yoga, which was great.

11/9: Highlight: Took a 2 hour nap! I'm running a pretty serious sleep deficit right now.
Other things that happened: did 312 hw all morning, had fun presentations class, went to SPS meeting, had dinner with Jasdeep at EJ burger.

11/10: Highlight: Played soccer with the floor! We have a great sports tradition going on top of our normal Tuesday floor tradition night. It was a blast, even though I'm feeling a bit sick. I got all competitive and sprinted a lot, which is going to cost me.
Other things that happened: Glee club, ate ice cream with Xin and Zach, who, as it turns out, is also auditioning for Urinetown! Also, after math, got a quick, bracing tutorial in group theory from the 15yr-old early entrance student Thomas. Weird transformations between the group that is the real line under multiplication and the group that is the real line under addition (basically a group is a set plus a binary operation; the two of them together must satisfy certain properties, like closure [two elements in the set must map to a third element by the operation]). And there's this crazy thing where you can cross product two smaller cyclic groups to get a higher-diml cyclic group. This probably doesn't make any sense, but I had fun; I'm trying to get back engaged with the math after being dispirited by our journeys deep into seemingly insightless symbols, as well as my poor midterm performance. There is really cool stuff going on, I just have to work to look at it the way I like to look at math.

Leroy on gentlepeople! Sincerely,
Spencer

11/7-8-afternoon/15: The Lavin Retreat

1.     11/7-8-afternoon/15: The Lavin Retreat

a.     Woke up bright and early for the Lavin retreat! Slept on the 2.5 hr bus ride.

b.     Arrived in a remote camp with no service. Loaded stuff into dormitory, then embarked on a crazy day of activities.

c.      Moving speech by entrepreneurship professor, a very happy fellow who extolled the joys of passion-motivated ventures.

d.     Minute-to-win-it competition! Our team, led by the enthusiastic libertarian Josiah from NextSeattle and succinctly named “TRUMP”, won.

e.     Awesome icebreaker—speed-questioning. The questions were very well chosen. Examples: “What, to you, is the most beautiful language?” “What meal would you choose to be your last if you were on death row?”

f.      Snacks.

g.     Pitch competition, health-themed. I was put on a team with the infamous Michael Petrochuck, who is extroverted and self-promotional beyond even the social limits stretched by Lavin members, and who, at a recent StartupUW event, gave the now famous “Tinder for Fighting” pitch. I anticipated, and endured, a lot of conflict, as the Petrochuck supported a pitch based entirely on moonshot data analysis tech that would use an iPhone extension camera and spectroscopy to return, in real time, a nutritional analysis of an arbitrary plate of food. Eventually, a more sober strategy prevailed; a simple app to sell to general practitioners, dentists, etc. that would notify patients who signed up, when a cancellation occurred. Better cancellation filling, I later learned, could save a ridiculous amount of money in the medical industry at large. Joan, you’ll have to let me know what you think—is this really a problem? What is the current state of the art for filling cancellations?

h.     We managed to put together a decent pitch at the last minute, winning third place and dinner with the entrepreneur who founded CoinStar and now runs a venture group J J

i.       After the pitch competition, we did another get-to-know-everybody event that I thought was ingenious. When we signed up for the retreat, we all entered a fun fact about ourselves. The advisors made a Bingo sheet out of the fun facts and had us go around filling out the Bingo sheet with signatures of people who entered the fun facts. I know so many names now—it’s crazy.

j.       Then we had a fire, some good conversation, made s’mores.

k.     And then we watched a movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. It was fun, if a bit disjointed. While watching the crazy antics of Gates and Jobs, I happened to glance to my right at the other Lavin students, and thought, these are the insane shmids who might just try stuff like this!

l.       Went to bed late and got only 6.5 hours of sleep. Again L.

m.   Woke up, ate delicious breakfast, took short hike. Actually got a bunch of people to play Ninja Tag. You know what my lifetime success rate at the NT question is? Not high. But this group, they jumped right in J

n.     I’m writing this on the bus right now, 20min away from the UW, ready for a day of hw and grading. LEEROY…

o.     Best of luck and life to y’all!