is a blog by Brendan
Fun With Iteration
Jon once proposed that Will Smith produce a franchise of songs in the same vein as “Miami,” ranking each city in order of preference:
“Miami, my second home!”
“Los Angeles, my third home!”
“Dublin, my… 467th home.”
More Fun With Iteration
This morning, TARCing in ten minutes late to my advisor appointment, I managed to correctly get his office extension by picking a known number down the hall and trying each subsequent number.
I know, I know, this is kind of boring lately. Now that I don’t spend five days a week staring at a computer screen in an isolation cube, I just don’t have as much free brain with which to think up overly cute observations. It’s a conundrum. Well, it’s not really a conundrum.
I don’t actually have any promises that it’ll get better, although if I ever get this AIM-as-a-MUD-client idea off the ground, I’m sure I’ll bombard you with stupid nerd posts about its progress. I’d be using it mostly as a project to learn about Java (I’d probably try to turn Jaimbot into a communications layer), so I could justify it that way. Think I could get it approved as a class project for Object-Oriented?
2212 hrs and Emma Hayes has tricked me into showing up at a party at her house, filled with cool hip extremely professional twentysomethings I don’t know. Emma Hayes herself is predictably not here, so I’ve vaguely procured a 7-Up from her roommate Dawn. I am lucky to have met Dawn once in a parking lot, and to have her mercifully remember me.
Here I am sitting on the front porch of a freshly warmed house, trying to look writerly with my pocket Moleskine. Perhaps, I think, this will politely make it less obvious that I have no idea what I’m doing.
Adventure!
Sumana is not actually the big sister I never had, and would probably be a little weirded out if I claimed she was, but she DID display a frighteningly big sisterish sixth sense in calling about half an hour after I wrote that down. This was wonderful; it gave me a good excuse to laugh for twenty minutes, recharged my ability to talk to humans, and gave evidence that I have a life outside of showing up at parties filled with people I don’t know.
Emma finally did show up at what, 2320 hrs? And it was great to see her, and I got to know some of the people at the party. By the time I hitched home (around 0300) I had actually had a good time. None of this outweighs the first panicky hour I spent retreating into introversion, though, really. There’s a reason for the fact that, in college, I only went to parties in my own apartment.
Things I Have Made Now:
Actually, all my attempts at cooking so far have turned out really well; I’m just waiting for something horrible to happen, like the time Audrey and I made noodles without boiling water. I guess I could also set the kitchen on fire, which won’t be hard if I keep forgetting to turn the oven off. Remind me to turn the oven off!
Everybody, but particularly Jon, read Downhill Battle (found thanks to Fujichia). Basically what it comes down to is: it’s on.
I didn’t write anything Wednesday, because Wednesday was Secret Project Day and I’m sorry but you’re just not cleared. Talk to Ian–I’m sure he’ll have something for you eventually.
Today was my second day of classes. This morning, I hadn’t quite done the reading for my first class (Artificial Intelligence). I hurriedly flipped through it on the bus, worrying that I’d be behind already in my first week.
Then I got to class, which turned out to be about… truth tables. The fourth time I’ve learned truth tables. I know, they’re important, first principles, et cetera, but four times in four different classes? They should just have a one-day truth table seminar for everyone who declares a major related to math or philosophy and have done with it. I demand an end to redundancy! I demand an end to redundancy!
During my last class (Object-Oriented Information Technology), it started raining really hard. Like, New England hard. I had to walk several blocks to and from the bus stop; by the time I got home I was actually soaked directly through my underpants. At one point, the wind was at my back, and that and the rain were so hard and horizontal that I appeared to be going backwards through hyperspace.
The day went very well, actually. Object-Oriented Software Development is going to be hard and a lot of fun; AI and Algorithms are going to be hard and… well, basically just hard. I managed to buy my books and a lunch and backpack. Oh! That’s a great excuse for a gimmick, because I was actually buying said backpack for Maria, and I had biked to class and had only one way to carry it. That’s right: for a few hours, mine was a metabackpack.
That biking was the first time I’ve ever actually done a real bike workout, and it was pretty cool. (It’s also longer than I thought; now that I’ve scouted the route, I think I’ll mostly TARC it.) At times I felt like an escapee of TRON, whizzing through lightfields with limitless dexterity. At others, such as when I ran into a chain link fence within five minutes of leaving my apartment, I did not. And at still others, I tried to stop, ha ha, whilst riding with a misaligned brake pad and fifty pounds of new textbooks. The other thing I learned today is “inertia.”
Also! I returned Sumana’s call and ended up talking to Leonard, who was gentle and solar-powered, the way I imagine dimetrodons. I babbled a lot, at one point, I think, engaging in extended discourse on the subject of avocados.
Yeah. I lived through one day, and tomorrow it’s already my weekly Hump Day Vacation, wherein I do nothing but hang out with Ian and get excited about secret projects. Also, try to find a longer CAT5 cable so I can get Yellow Puppy out on the interweb. Ph34r! My… vastly underpowered new computer!