stuff going on
So I was really tired like an hour ago. But then I took a shower and sat down under a blanket on my couch to copy over my 18.085 hw. I put on Counting Crows radio on Pandora and, I don't know why Counting Crows does this to me, it put me in a really zen moment. I just felt suddenly very calm about everything, and it's difficult to describe because I think it's one of those things that you can only have by yourself. There's a slight breeze from outside that feels very slightly cool, with the blanket smooth on my skin, I just feel totally refreshed. The music makes me think of all of those peaceful times of the past, and the way that it echos from my computer around my room, I really love the way I set up my room. I think the fact that I'm copying a pset by hand, no computers involved, remind me of younger college years when everything was so simple. It was really Maroon 5 "She Will Be Loved" that put me in this mood. It all gave me this feeling of freshman year, when it was Christmas time, and we went shopping and decorated everything. Also of high school when we drove around listening to Chili Peppers. I miss that. Feels nice.
18.085 is interesting because for some weird reason all of these old Conner 3 people are in the class. Like Spike, Emzo, Alisha, Holly, Amanda, and Gina and Jeff from Conner 5. So on Thursday evening, I went back to Conner 3 in a rare event and saw everybody at study break and ate Ken's beer butt chicken and was introduced with Alisha as old alumni. It was totally random that Alisha was there btw, apparently she's back from Spain, but I never knew it until I saw Spike's email about 18.085. But it was such a surreal experience, we went up to Conner 5, 513 suite, and sat down around the table doing the pset. I haven't done that in a couple of years now, I felt all young again. And then I remembered why I didn't get good grades in undergrad - I suck at math. Doing the pset with people without having looked at it beforehand was stupid, it was much slower and I understood less. But the first part was fairly easy, so it was okay. Then we got to the second part and basically went into crazy stupid mode, because he hadn't covered it in lecture yet, so we just pretended to read the chapter. People started leaving, and it ended up being just me, Spike, Emzo, and Gina. After Gina tried in vain to read the chapter (and Spike wrote MATLAB code called ginafinishesreading.m, which outputs "boo" for false and "yay, spike gets a gin and tonic" for true), she finally gave up and made us all gin and tonics. I didn't know Gina before very well, but she's actually pretty cool. So we just sat and drank gin and tonics with half finished psets.
Incidentally, i bought the 18.085 book from Gilbert Strang directly. It's $90 everywhere, including amazon, but the link that Strang has on the course webpage is to the publisher directly for $74. The contact email was his email though, so I just emailed him, and for some reason it was $80, but I figured it was okay and didn't want to argue. Gina kept saying, "He's awesome," and Holly said he was like Bob Barker. But he's written like all the major linear algebra textbooks, so I guess he's kind of a big deal, because when I went to pick up the textbook, he was really nice asking me about myself, and then he said, "Would you like me to sign it?" So now I have a math textbook that says, "To Ling, best wishes, Gilbert Strang." On the one hand I thought it was cute, but on the other hand I just kept thinking, that was really weird? I guess I was never big enough of a math fan to want my textbooks signed, but I guess it's pretty cool. It just makes me wonder who these people are who do get their textbooks signed...
First 6.042 lecture was really cool. I'm liking Tom Leighton (did I mention that is like freakin cofounder of Akamai?). In class we watched Colbert Report, when Colbert started talking about Poincare's conjecture and "donut mathematics". Then Leighton talked about the proof of the irrationality of square root of 2, and he said the proof was actually discovered by the Pythagoreans, who worshipped math as a religion. Apparently the Pythagoreans had two gods, the god of finite things who was good and the god of infinite things who was evil. They thought that nothing was irrational because irrationality is infinite and therefore evil. Then they found out this number that they use all the time (*ahem* Pythagorean theorem *ahem*) was actually irrational, and Leighton described this as, "finding out that out of the ten commandments, nine were commandments and one was actually written by the devil." He then said that they tried to cover it up, but then one guy leaked it, and they killed him. Leighton was like, "It's hard to imagine now getting killed over the square root of two..."
Then we had recitation, which was okay, though my favorite class is still so far fall '07. We'll see how it develops, but I think it's the classroom setup that is more for lecture and less for groupwork. I liked how my icebreaker that I always use (describe one interesting thing about yourself that is not related to academics) always brings out the most random and awesome facts about people. Then today, if this is even possible, I had about thirty people show up for office hours. THIRTY. I was in my little office which holds maybe four people, then we moved across the hall and people were spilling into the hallway, and then we moved all the way down the hall to my actual recitation room. It became like me solving problems on the board, which was okay because the point of these first problems is for them to practice proof writing anyway. But it was still tiring. I had to do two hours because Bill wasn't able to be there today, and for some stupid reason everyone else put their office hours on Monday right before the pset is due. I don't know, but I would personally hope that students were finishing their psets before a couple of hours before it is due.
Friday night I went with Mike to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay at LSC. I haven't been to LSC in a while, but it was fun. The movie was funny in all its Harold and Kumar totally random weird funny way. I downloaded it and White Castle for Andriy to see, since he was staying home sick.
Finally, Saturday evening I dragged my ass to the ballroom social. Andriy and I went to Koreana (delicious), and after we got home it started to rain really hard. But unfortunately I had to work the desk shift at 11pm, so I made it there soaking wet from the rain, sat down, and danced a little bit afterwards. I did finally get to meet this Ed Fan character though. He's actually pretty cool.
Tonight we also had run-throughs. It's actually been about a month since I've been to run-throughs, so it's a little tough, but it was fun. Highlight was when Armin played some samba music that was vaguely like salsa, and Wei and I started dancing salsa, which seamlessly transitioned into samba. That was awesome. But it'll probably be some work to get back in shape. I was very tired afterwards.
18.085 is interesting because for some weird reason all of these old Conner 3 people are in the class. Like Spike, Emzo, Alisha, Holly, Amanda, and Gina and Jeff from Conner 5. So on Thursday evening, I went back to Conner 3 in a rare event and saw everybody at study break and ate Ken's beer butt chicken and was introduced with Alisha as old alumni. It was totally random that Alisha was there btw, apparently she's back from Spain, but I never knew it until I saw Spike's email about 18.085. But it was such a surreal experience, we went up to Conner 5, 513 suite, and sat down around the table doing the pset. I haven't done that in a couple of years now, I felt all young again. And then I remembered why I didn't get good grades in undergrad - I suck at math. Doing the pset with people without having looked at it beforehand was stupid, it was much slower and I understood less. But the first part was fairly easy, so it was okay. Then we got to the second part and basically went into crazy stupid mode, because he hadn't covered it in lecture yet, so we just pretended to read the chapter. People started leaving, and it ended up being just me, Spike, Emzo, and Gina. After Gina tried in vain to read the chapter (and Spike wrote MATLAB code called ginafinishesreading.m, which outputs "boo" for false and "yay, spike gets a gin and tonic" for true), she finally gave up and made us all gin and tonics. I didn't know Gina before very well, but she's actually pretty cool. So we just sat and drank gin and tonics with half finished psets.
Incidentally, i bought the 18.085 book from Gilbert Strang directly. It's $90 everywhere, including amazon, but the link that Strang has on the course webpage is to the publisher directly for $74. The contact email was his email though, so I just emailed him, and for some reason it was $80, but I figured it was okay and didn't want to argue. Gina kept saying, "He's awesome," and Holly said he was like Bob Barker. But he's written like all the major linear algebra textbooks, so I guess he's kind of a big deal, because when I went to pick up the textbook, he was really nice asking me about myself, and then he said, "Would you like me to sign it?" So now I have a math textbook that says, "To Ling, best wishes, Gilbert Strang." On the one hand I thought it was cute, but on the other hand I just kept thinking, that was really weird? I guess I was never big enough of a math fan to want my textbooks signed, but I guess it's pretty cool. It just makes me wonder who these people are who do get their textbooks signed...
First 6.042 lecture was really cool. I'm liking Tom Leighton (did I mention that is like freakin cofounder of Akamai?). In class we watched Colbert Report, when Colbert started talking about Poincare's conjecture and "donut mathematics". Then Leighton talked about the proof of the irrationality of square root of 2, and he said the proof was actually discovered by the Pythagoreans, who worshipped math as a religion. Apparently the Pythagoreans had two gods, the god of finite things who was good and the god of infinite things who was evil. They thought that nothing was irrational because irrationality is infinite and therefore evil. Then they found out this number that they use all the time (*ahem* Pythagorean theorem *ahem*) was actually irrational, and Leighton described this as, "finding out that out of the ten commandments, nine were commandments and one was actually written by the devil." He then said that they tried to cover it up, but then one guy leaked it, and they killed him. Leighton was like, "It's hard to imagine now getting killed over the square root of two..."
Then we had recitation, which was okay, though my favorite class is still so far fall '07. We'll see how it develops, but I think it's the classroom setup that is more for lecture and less for groupwork. I liked how my icebreaker that I always use (describe one interesting thing about yourself that is not related to academics) always brings out the most random and awesome facts about people. Then today, if this is even possible, I had about thirty people show up for office hours. THIRTY. I was in my little office which holds maybe four people, then we moved across the hall and people were spilling into the hallway, and then we moved all the way down the hall to my actual recitation room. It became like me solving problems on the board, which was okay because the point of these first problems is for them to practice proof writing anyway. But it was still tiring. I had to do two hours because Bill wasn't able to be there today, and for some stupid reason everyone else put their office hours on Monday right before the pset is due. I don't know, but I would personally hope that students were finishing their psets before a couple of hours before it is due.
Friday night I went with Mike to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay at LSC. I haven't been to LSC in a while, but it was fun. The movie was funny in all its Harold and Kumar totally random weird funny way. I downloaded it and White Castle for Andriy to see, since he was staying home sick.
Finally, Saturday evening I dragged my ass to the ballroom social. Andriy and I went to Koreana (delicious), and after we got home it started to rain really hard. But unfortunately I had to work the desk shift at 11pm, so I made it there soaking wet from the rain, sat down, and danced a little bit afterwards. I did finally get to meet this Ed Fan character though. He's actually pretty cool.
Tonight we also had run-throughs. It's actually been about a month since I've been to run-throughs, so it's a little tough, but it was fun. Highlight was when Armin played some samba music that was vaguely like salsa, and Wei and I started dancing salsa, which seamlessly transitioned into samba. That was awesome. But it'll probably be some work to get back in shape. I was very tired afterwards.