![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wednesday and thursday
Feb. 10th, 2005 10:49 pmwednesday
On Wednesday I have only one class, which is called "Math." The scare quotes are definitely deserved, because it is, so far, a ridiculously trivial class, the basics of probability. I mean, it could be taught in an exciting way (the whole of this class occupied just four lectures of CS70, which was the awesomest class of all time at uc berkeley) but it's not. Or maybe the excitement just started: the most recent homework assignment (number 4) may require thinking. Anyway. On wednesday I skipped the lecture and used the time to do the homework that was due at the end of lecture. This plan worked perfectly.
In the evening Ryan and I went to dinner at Cori's house. Cori had randomly found both of us on Friendster and claims to have not known initially that we were roommates. I believe this. Anyway, she invited us to dinner at an awesome "apartment" (the downstairs of an awesome house) on University Avenue. Something that you must know is that there is no university on University Avenue in Rochester. Supposedly there was at one time, but there is not now. This dinner party was fantastic. We met a bunch of epidemiologists, toxicologists, immunologist, and an awesome dog named Zoey. Actually Cori as an undergrad studied Italian Studies or somesuch subject. I asked how she switched to epidemiology for grad school. She said, "I would expect you, of all people, would understand how an interest in world traveling would lead to an interest in epidemiology." Or something like that. These people were very cool — food and travel people, good to have as friends. (At some point someone, looking at advertisements, said, "We could go to Amsterdam next weekend for $350!" Then credit cards were handed to this person.)
When we got home, Micah and Vijay and Qin were just sitting down to watch a newly burned copy of the movie Rounders. (Did you know that you can copy DVD's now, and cheaply?) I enjoyed the movie. I'd like to get one of those projectors in the house to project movies onto a wall. And have a TV for only movies, and not have any actual television reception. It might even be in the basement.
thursday
I woke up late (09:45) and gultily snuck into statmech half-an-hour late. Prof. Teitel's statmech class is pretty good. He seems way more excited about statmech (statistical mechanics / thermal physics) than he was about electrodynamics. I feel like statmech is something I should be good at. It reminds me of Claude Shannon et al every day, all this talk about entropy and ergodicity. Then I daydream about computer science.
Quantum mechanics today was spectacular. I mean, at the end of lecture on Tuesday, Prof. Hagen said, "And next time I'm going to talk about spherical, trace-less irreducible tensors." Tensors! The black magic of linear algebra, an alchemy of indicies that go up and down and somehow you compute something from it. It was a pretty good lecture, I thought. I followed along in a nervy, stumbling pursuit, but just barely. The lecture reached crescendo in what must have been the most botched explanation of "balls and bins" that has yet been uttered on the face of this planet. Afterwards we napped and cried.
Our homework delayed by several days, we had a Free Day. I set out on errands across the city of Rochester, all through the suburbs. At the post office I picked up a package that had been waiting there for me having come all the way from India, a little book wrapped in string and brown paper, a statistical mechanics textbook by Pathria. It has an Elsevier hologram on it and says, "Prevent piracy!" I bought another sheet of Buckminster Fuller stamps. And then, out to the town of Greece to pick up maps at AAA: Rochester, Monroe County, New York State, Albany, Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City. While waiting for my car to cool down, I walked around in Lowe's, a gigantic hardware store. They have such fun things there! Pipes and tubes and valves and wires and seven kilowatt electric generators and european front-loading washing machines and high-efficiency tankless water heaters. On the way home I stopped at the Lyell branch of the public library to pick up a guidebook to Toronto, and randomly, a book about the Rochester Race Riots of '64.
In the evening I went with Brette and Ryan to see short films at the Dryden theatre. I enjoyed walking through the snow from Brette's house to the theater. We drank hot chocolate. In the mail at school I received another item from India, a postcard of China, mailed from India, from Kristine who wrote, "Remember when we exchanged postcards from the Baltic countries and Chile and Argentina?"
Now Ryan and I are going for hots. That's "hot dogs" anywhere else in the world, but that doesn't quite explain it. You get a "plate" and it has hots (red or white) with meat sauce and fries and it takes years off your life.
On Wednesday I have only one class, which is called "Math." The scare quotes are definitely deserved, because it is, so far, a ridiculously trivial class, the basics of probability. I mean, it could be taught in an exciting way (the whole of this class occupied just four lectures of CS70, which was the awesomest class of all time at uc berkeley) but it's not. Or maybe the excitement just started: the most recent homework assignment (number 4) may require thinking. Anyway. On wednesday I skipped the lecture and used the time to do the homework that was due at the end of lecture. This plan worked perfectly.
In the evening Ryan and I went to dinner at Cori's house. Cori had randomly found both of us on Friendster and claims to have not known initially that we were roommates. I believe this. Anyway, she invited us to dinner at an awesome "apartment" (the downstairs of an awesome house) on University Avenue. Something that you must know is that there is no university on University Avenue in Rochester. Supposedly there was at one time, but there is not now. This dinner party was fantastic. We met a bunch of epidemiologists, toxicologists, immunologist, and an awesome dog named Zoey. Actually Cori as an undergrad studied Italian Studies or somesuch subject. I asked how she switched to epidemiology for grad school. She said, "I would expect you, of all people, would understand how an interest in world traveling would lead to an interest in epidemiology." Or something like that. These people were very cool — food and travel people, good to have as friends. (At some point someone, looking at advertisements, said, "We could go to Amsterdam next weekend for $350!" Then credit cards were handed to this person.)
When we got home, Micah and Vijay and Qin were just sitting down to watch a newly burned copy of the movie Rounders. (Did you know that you can copy DVD's now, and cheaply?) I enjoyed the movie. I'd like to get one of those projectors in the house to project movies onto a wall. And have a TV for only movies, and not have any actual television reception. It might even be in the basement.
thursday
I woke up late (09:45) and gultily snuck into statmech half-an-hour late. Prof. Teitel's statmech class is pretty good. He seems way more excited about statmech (statistical mechanics / thermal physics) than he was about electrodynamics. I feel like statmech is something I should be good at. It reminds me of Claude Shannon et al every day, all this talk about entropy and ergodicity. Then I daydream about computer science.
Quantum mechanics today was spectacular. I mean, at the end of lecture on Tuesday, Prof. Hagen said, "And next time I'm going to talk about spherical, trace-less irreducible tensors." Tensors! The black magic of linear algebra, an alchemy of indicies that go up and down and somehow you compute something from it. It was a pretty good lecture, I thought. I followed along in a nervy, stumbling pursuit, but just barely. The lecture reached crescendo in what must have been the most botched explanation of "balls and bins" that has yet been uttered on the face of this planet. Afterwards we napped and cried.
Our homework delayed by several days, we had a Free Day. I set out on errands across the city of Rochester, all through the suburbs. At the post office I picked up a package that had been waiting there for me having come all the way from India, a little book wrapped in string and brown paper, a statistical mechanics textbook by Pathria. It has an Elsevier hologram on it and says, "Prevent piracy!" I bought another sheet of Buckminster Fuller stamps. And then, out to the town of Greece to pick up maps at AAA: Rochester, Monroe County, New York State, Albany, Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City. While waiting for my car to cool down, I walked around in Lowe's, a gigantic hardware store. They have such fun things there! Pipes and tubes and valves and wires and seven kilowatt electric generators and european front-loading washing machines and high-efficiency tankless water heaters. On the way home I stopped at the Lyell branch of the public library to pick up a guidebook to Toronto, and randomly, a book about the Rochester Race Riots of '64.
In the evening I went with Brette and Ryan to see short films at the Dryden theatre. I enjoyed walking through the snow from Brette's house to the theater. We drank hot chocolate. In the mail at school I received another item from India, a postcard of China, mailed from India, from Kristine who wrote, "Remember when we exchanged postcards from the Baltic countries and Chile and Argentina?"
Now Ryan and I are going for hots. That's "hot dogs" anywhere else in the world, but that doesn't quite explain it. You get a "plate" and it has hots (red or white) with meat sauce and fries and it takes years off your life.
