I LIVE

It has been like a month and a half, but I am still alive. School has been in session for over a month now, and I am currently in the midst of midterm season. Which is why I am blogging, but let's not talk about that.

Lots of updates--first up, classes. Some of you may know I started off the semester with 19 units, 23 if you include the waitlisted Philosophy 115. Well, it just so happened that was the first one to go after the second class--it was either that or History 105B, since they actually conflicted with each other. I just wanted to shop around, but it was pretty clear that, as interesting as Political Philosophy is, the professor's accent plus the bitchy GSI just totally turned me off from the class.

On the other hand, the history of the Hellenistic age (Alexander the Great through the rise of Rome) has been extremely fascinating. Frequently I am able to parallel the course of history there to one of my favorite historical periods, the Three Kingdoms era in China some couple hundred years later. Anyway, I just had a midterm for the class a couple days ago, and I feel okay about it. Depending on how I do, I may change it to P/NP; it doesn't really matter to me, since I just want to learn the material. I don't even do most of the readings for the class, instead opting to save money and time on the primary sources. But yeah, it's all good.

The next class I dropped was CS/Physics/Chem C191, one on quantum computation. That was done the following week. As great as that stuff is, I was feeling pretty lost from day 1. I tried my best to comprehend, but I didn't feel like the refresher on quantum was sufficient; it really did seem like it'd be much easier after I take Physics 137A (quantum mechanics), even though it's not a formal prereq. No worries though, I still have a lot of time to take it later, and at this point I still had 16 units.

After I dropped 191, I decided to add CS9E, the self-paced UNIX course. I am glad I did so, as I finally becoming fluent in the OS, and not just the measly few commands that almost everyone else knows. The only bad thing is that I'm a week behind (oops), but I will catch up (one of these days...). As for the assignments and quizzes, they're not too bad, and the readings are also stabilizing, so that I don't have to read too much a week.

My other physics class is 110A (E&M). I am enjoying the class for the most part, as it forces me to basically relearn and constantly use Math 53 material, mainly in vector calculus. At this point we are also learning new concepts and ideas as well, in addition to the stuff that I'm learning for like the fourth time in my life now (honors, AP, 7B, and now 110A, yay). I'm still not entirely sure on the physics minor thing, but I'm working on it. =P

The last two are EE40 and CS70. 40 is fine--basic circuit theory isn't too hard; we just had a midterm, and I feel that I did relatively well. Our professor is a little strange, although I love his very stereotypical Chinese accent. It's just the labs that are annoying. As for 70, the material is getting tougher, but still interesting--we swept from logic to proofs to stable marriage to security algorithims, with some other stuff in between. The main professor, Rao, is not that great; I only look forward to when the other professor, Tse, takes over. Midterm for that plus physics is coming up next week (I should really get studying).

So yeah, that's a total of 17 units. My Monday and Tuesday afternoons are pretty free, so I am still continuing to work up at SSL. As of now, my previous project is at a standstill, waiting for Steve to have time to review my boards. So I am working on a new project, in which I am actually supposed to design a board rather than just reimplement one. It is definitely intimidating--more details to come when I actually start next week.

Social life I'm pretty satisfied with. On the first weekend of school, Eta Kappa Nu had a retreat--we went to Bodega Bay, some 1.5 hours north of here. It was okay for the most part, somewhat boring at times but enjoyable. Learned some new games, met some new people, and froze at the beach, and the usual stuff. Speaking of HKN, I am pretty glad I'm a StudRel officer, or else I'd have a lot more work to do. Trying to reserve the stupid field for Engineering Sports Night is trouble enough on its own, and we have to start organizing food runs for EECS undergrad midterms pretty soon. In other news, we just had our candidate meeting and a Ben & Jerry's Night yesterday; it's pretty cool to meet all these new people, and I've even given out a few challenges already.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention I'm also going to initiate for Tau Beta Pi this semester. It seems pretty fun as well, and I don't see any reason not to (well, there's the membership fee, but I guess it is lifetime). The only weird thing is that I have completely opposite roles with people who are in or initiating for both. That is, I'm an officer for HKN but a candidate for TBP, and I may have to interact with people who are just the reverse. It can be pretty awkward.

What else... the apartment is fine, as well as the apartmentmates. While the place could be cheaper and bigger, I won't deny that it is nice to have work-order services right there. People came up to fix our leaking toilet and clogged sink within the next day of our requesting it. The other thing is that the place has pretty poor ventilation, so it's usually very warm in there. On the bright side, the weather seems to be cooling down, so that's good. Also, having SSBB around isn't always a good thing, but it's useful for stress relief.

How quickly time flies--the fact that the schedule for next semester has been out for almost a week now just reminds you that college speeds through more quickly than any other time of your life. Well, I certainly look forward to whatever may be ahead, so bring it on.