Interesting Stuff

So… I could use some good stress reduction right about now. There are too many annoying parts of my life at the moment. One of the bigger ones is one of the Systems tutors. This week in lab, we’re writing a dynamic memory allocator, which is fascinating. We have two tutors – Chainmail Chris and Other Chris (I know his last name, but if you don’t know him, I’m not going to give you a bad impression of him). Chainmail is awesome, knows his stuff for the most part, and is a pretty great guy. He answers our questions, and tells us when he doesn’t know the answer. Other Chris is rather different. Here is a summary of an actual conversation that took place Monday:

me: Hey, Chainmail – the way I read this lab, we have to make an allocator with perfect memory utilization that runs faster than the standard UNIX version, in order to get full credit. Is this true? Should that be different somehow?
Chainmail: I’m not a grader, so I don’t know how this lab is graded. The Profs aren’t here tonight, so you should try asking them on Wednesday, or maybe just email them now.
me: OK. Thanks.
Other Chris (walking over, without us asking him for help): You shouldn’t be worrying about how to get points in this assignment; you should be trying to write a memory allocator. Don’t concern yourself with how your work is graded, just code it up, and do a good job, and things will work out ok.
me: Well, how the points are divided up will affect how hard I work on each part of this, so I think this is a very important part of the lab.
Other Chris: You don’t have to worry about how your work will be evaluated.

WTF?! Other Chris also seems to have a habit of staring at us while we’re working, and then inserting himself into our conversation when we pause to think. He doesn’t ask if we need help. He doesn’t even make sure that he’s talking about the same thing we’re working on. He just jumps in, wastes our time, and agravates me. I want to just tell him that no one asked for his help, he’s wasting our time, and I want him to shut up and go away. From now on, I think I’ll have to start sitting as far away from him as possible in the Graphics Lab, so that he might jump into someone else’s discussion instead of ours. If we asked for help, that would be one story, but when we’re happily working along and he comes in, interrupts us, and gets us completely off-track it’s more than just annoying. Argh!

On Monday, I managed to get out of Systems lab an hour early, which was fantastic, because I could actually go compete at bridge club. I was paired with a guy named Alex, who hasn’t played in 20 years and didn’t remember any conventions. Consequently, we bid everything naturally. We had Stayman, Blackwood, and that’s it. Alex was proud that he remembered weak 2’s. Needless to say, it was a bit of a challenge to bid. However, I think things worked out ok. As usual, we took last, but I think I played pretty well, all in all.

On Wednesday, Bruce Schneier, one of the worlds leading security experts, came to speak to us. His talk was absolutely fascinating! One of the more important things he said, in my opinion, is that when you assess any potential security measure, you should ask yourself these 6 questions:
1) What are we trying to protect?
2) What are the risks?
3) How effective is the countermeasure?
4) What problems will the countermeasure bring about?
5) What are the costs of the countermeasure?
6) Is it worth it?

One example he gave is bullet proof vests. We are trying to protect our bodies from being shot, and bullet proof vests are a very effective way of doing that. There aren’t any big problems with bullet-proof vests, except that if you wore one all the time you’d get some pretty funny looks from people. The costs are in money, time, comfort, and maybe a little mobility (can you easily move your body in one?). For the average person, the vest is not worth these costs, which is why the average person on the street doesn’t wear bullet-proof vests on a day-to-day basis.

If you follow this analysis, a lot of security measures our government has implemented are useless (our color-coded alert system, ousting Saddam, electronic voting, etc). This leads us to the conclusion that very rarely are security decisions made for actual security reasons. In general, you should watch the entities involved in a decision, and look at their agendas. For example, in airports, you now must have your photo ID checked when you buy your ticket, and again when you go through security. This doesn’t make the planes safer at all (whether or not I still have my photo ID 10 minutes later has no bearing on how dangerous I am). However, this was passed with the airline’s backing because it solves a different problem of theirs: apparently there used to be a market for scalped non-refundable tickets (if I bought a non-refundable ticket but canceled my trip, I could sell the ticket to someone else). With the 2nd ID check, the airlines cut down on that drasticly, under the guise of “security,” and the public thinks it was a government decision, which works out really nicely for the airlines.

All in all, it was a really neat talk. I’m now getting Schneier’s monthly e-newsletter, which should be pretty neat. If you get a chance to hear this guy speak, I highly recommend going to see him.

Yeah, Green Day. Boo election! I honestly don’t see what people like about Bush. Yes, he’s very charming and charismatic. However, I don’t know of a single thing that he has made better in this country (if you know of one, please tell me; I’m willing to learn). He has made a mockery of our foreign policy. He has committed our troops to an unjustifiable war and more are killed daily. He is the first president since Hoover to lose jobs during his term, he has increased the national debt more than anyone else, and he has impeded science on almost every front (stem cells is obvious, but I might remind people of this article as well). He is against gay marriage (I can’t believe that 11 states have banned it, either). We all know what happened to No Child Left Behind, as well. Notto mention the USA PATRIOT Act, which he is trying to strengthen. I honestly cannot think of anything good about the man besides his personality. Mind you, I don’t think Kerry would have been a good president, but anyone is better than the fool we have now.

Travis claims that Republicans, as a whole, help the economy by trying to implement a flat taxation something-something (everyone gets taxed equally, rather than the rich getting taxed a lot and the poor getting taxed a little). He does this by giving tax breaks to the rich, who pay higher taxes. Yes, I agree that that’s a pretty good idea in theory. However, over the summer, I read an article in the Star Tribune about how Republicans, empirically, are much worse for the economy than Democrats. Sadly, I haven’t found the article since, so I can’t show people. However, I did stumble across some people who looked at the same data and arrived at the same conclusions here. It mentions a website here, where the data is presented, comparing Democrats and Republicans, and Bush to everyone else. As far as I can tell, this suggests that Bush is, by far, the worst president ever, from an economic point of view. I really don’t understand why half the country likes him.

The one bright note out of all of this is that California voted for the stem cell research funding (I believe it’s $3b over 10 years). Nifty!

This past Monday was the first time that Unit551 played with our bridge club. Due to a big E&M test the next day, the only Mudders who showed up were Carl, Robin, and me, and the only one who could play was Carl (I had lab for the first hour, and Robin had to go study). Still, there were enough people for a 3-table Howell (sort of a round-robin-type game), and Carl didn’t take last place! He got 2nd-to-last. Still, that’s quite a feat, when competing against a bunch of Life Masters (his partner was one, too, but they hadn’t played with each other before, which must have made things a bit hard). Well, hopefully, I’ll get to play with them next semester, if not before.

One last thing, that I thought was really scary: http://www.livejournal.com/users/anniesj/331112.html Just so people know about what can happen these days. I’m rather jarred by this, all in all. A bit too Orwellian for me.

Well, that’s about it, and I hope to update this more regularly, with shorter posts.

Last night, Sherri and I went to Bridge Etc for their last game at that location. It was the biggest turnout they’ve had in as long as anyone can remember – there were 11 tables! While it was a lot of fun, we took dead last, with a 36% game. Sherri hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, and was only semi-coherent. She and I are also not yet used to each other’s bidding styles (over the summer she played with a really good player in Oregon, and picked up a lot of bidding conventions I’m not used to). Not only that, but we’re both used to having more agressive partners, so neither of us bid as high as we should have. And then on top of all that, we both made some stupid, stupid mistakes. Still, it was fun. Afterwards, I stayed after to help Tom move some of the stuff to Mudd (remember that they’re coming to Mudd to play every Monday starting the day after tomorrow). We now have 3 more tables, 16 chairs, and a complete set of 36 trays. \/\/00T! Before now, we’ve been using the only consecutive 8 we have, and we have to stop and shuffle every 8 hands. Now, we can shuffle a bunch at the beginning and then play through the whole night.

So, today was the Systems test. Due to high levels of both serotonin and caffiene in my body, I went into the test with a weird I WILL TAKE THIS TEST LIKE IT’S NEVER BEEN TAKEN BEFORE sort of feeling. And perhaps it was just the sleep dep (last night I went to bed around 5:30, so my guess of 6:00 wasn’t too far off), but I think I did pretty well on the test. Systems is my favorite class, so I enjoy studying the material, even if I’m up to horrible hours of the morning doing so. But tonight I get to sleep! Oh frabjous day!

Let’s see… news… people recently discovered a new species of hominids in Indonesia. The weird thing is, this species only grew to be about 3 feet high, so the excavators have dubbed them hobbits. Nifty! (Original publication here)

Sunday night, I went to bed at 3:00AM. Monday night, I went to bed at 4:30. We’ll see when I go to bed tonight, but I think that 6:00-7:00 is a realistic time, unfortunately. I’ve just gotten back from spending 9 straight hours in the CS department (10.5 if you count the Pomona CS department too), and because it was sunny when I went in, I was in a T-shirt and shorts. It’s now raining quite hard out. I am cold, wet, tired, stressed, frustrated (the mock ACM didn’t go as well as I had hoped), and have to study for a test. Systems is fascinating, but I don’t feel that I have a good handle on the material, and I’m still 50 pages behind in the reading (this is one of the few technical classes where you actually, really, seriously have to do the reading). So… yeah. I expect that starting Thursday night life will be good, but in the meantime, I might be a bit on edge.

Abstract assignment due tomorrow, mock ACM tomorrow from 9-1AM, Systems test Wednesday, History reading/reflection due Wednesday, Philosophy reading due Wednesday, CS81 take-home exam due Thursday. We’ll see how much sleep I get this week.

On a brighter note, Sheri and I are going to Bridge Etc for their last game on Friday.

And to leave you all with something that is just awesome, look at this.

We’re having a birthdayful week here. Yesterday was Elicia’s birthday, and today was both Whitney’s and Rami’s. Whitney spent the day at home with Zack, so I IM’ed her. Rami, however, was here. We got a group of 11 people, went to Buca’s, came back and had cake, and then 8 of us went bowling. What a fantastic night for bowling! Amanda got a 132, Robert got a 134, Rami got a 146, I got a 136, Nadia got a 117 (which is fantastic for her – it was the only time she broke 100), and then Robert got a 159(!). Rachel, however, had a bad night – she only broke 80. Well, she’ll do better next time.

Let’s see… Amanda bought an X-box over break, which is kind of neat. Then, this past week, Elisa and I (among others) went to an informational meeting about Microsoft. I’m a bit torn: they offer fantastic internships and it would be wonderful to get one. However, I spent much of the summer purging my system of anything Microsoft-related. I doubt I’ll be offered an internship, but if I am, I’m not sure if I want it, because on the whole I can’t stand Microsoft’s products. They’re like the AOL of operating systems: many people are reliant on them because they make it easy, and hold your hand every step of the way. However, you can’t get anything useful done on their machines, and they’re full of problems. I can accept that they offer a great service to the barely computer-literate masses, but they’re certainly not for me. Well, we’ll see. I doubt I’ll have to make a choice in the first place. I bring this up because they had a raffle, and Elisa won a game for the X-box (which she has given to Amanda), and I won a copy of Halo for the PC. Argh! Halo is a neat game, but I can’t use it, since I’m not running Windows. Robert has offered to lend me his computer if I want to play it.

Bridge Etc is closing down in a week, and in honor of that, there is no admission fee for the last game. Sheri and I will be going to that, but we really need to get our conventions straight before then. She’s coming over tomorrow to do that, and hopefully it’ll go well. But there are several things where we adamantly disagree on certain, important things (for example, she claims that jump responses are weak, while I say that that is preempting your partner, and they had better be strong). I don’t know who is right, but hopefully we’ll find out. On a related note, I’ve started work again on the guide to bidding that I began over the summer. First step: to switch it to LaTeX (\/\/00T!). If you are into math or science and don’t know about LaTeX (or another variation, such as MikTeX), you should definitely learn. It’s just wonderful. I now type up all of my homework in it.

So, I had a prefrosh named Mark yesterday and today. He’s a pretty cool guy. I hope he gets in here.

Well, that’s about it. Good night!

So, for fall break, Jack, Whitney, Elicia, and I went camping in Sequoia National Park! Jack apparently goes camping a lot, and definitely knows how to do it. His van had a panel in the side that folds out to become a table for meals. His back seats fold down into a bed for two. The roof pops up to make room for two more people to sleep. It was pretty neat. He also had a GPS device that plotted our course, and charted new courses when we decided to take a different street due to heavy traffic.

For those of you who don’t know, Sequoia National Park is 5-6 hours north/northeast of Mudd. It’s up in the mountains somewhere in north California. Our campsite had a stump that was easily large enough to pitch a tent on (though we were camping in Jack’s van). And the living trees were huge too! The forest had your usual pines and things, and then every 20 feet or so was a sequoia 5 feet in diameter. Since we were on the mountain, there were also huge boulders to climb on. It was pretty great. We also got to see Sherman Tree, the most voluminous living thing on earth, as well as Grant Tree, the national christmas tree (actual statistic from the info plaque next to the tree: if it were made of gasoline, you could drive your car 350 times around the world with it). We got to drive through a log that crossed the road, and we saw another log that people used to be able to drive on. We also got to walk through a log (the Tennessee Log). Trees used to be named after Civil War generals and states in said war, but this practice has been discontinued. These trees were huge, though! Sherman Tree had a base diameter of over 40 feet! It was amazing.

Super geek points to anyone who gets the title of this update without looking it up. Having said that, it was just beginning to rain at Mudd when we left Saturday morning. We got there, and it was nice and dry, so we collected firewood, had dinner, and sat around the campfire. Jack played some harmonica, which was hilarious because another group of campers (there were maybe 3 groups in the whole campground) sang along to Home On The Range. As I went to bed that evening, it began to rain. I woke up Sunday morning to the rain on the roof. We waited around for a bit, and then went hiking when the rain had subsided into a heavy mist/fog sort of thing. We also decided to spend one more day at this campsite, just in case the next day was drier. Again, I went to bed to the sound of raindrops on the roof of the van. Monday, I wake up to the rain. Again, we eat, but this time we pack up and drive through the park. We see all the different named trees, and I got a poster (it’s a really cute picture of a little boy looking up at a huge tree). All this time, it is raining lightly (or perhaps the trees are just dripping on us; either way, it’s wet). We get to our new campsite, and have dinner. It’s drizzling, so we can barely keep a fire going (we were cooking on a gas stove, so it was ok that the fire had troubles). Again, I go to sleep to the rain on the roof. Tuesday morning, I wake up to Whitney talking excitedly. Overnight, it got cold enough that the rain had turned to snow. Whitney is from San Diego, and hasn’t seen much snow. Elicia is from Colorado, I’m from Minnesota, and Jack has camped in the Rocky Mountains before, so we don’t share her enthusiasm. We cook pancakes in the snow, pack up the car, and head back to Mudd. On the way back, it begins to rain fairly hard. When we get to Mudd, it is still drizzling, and it continued to do that all the way up through this evening (it’s now Wednesday night). I, of course, forgot to bring a raincoat, and didn’t think I’d need gloves, because I didn’t expect snow. Though I was cold and wet the entire time, it was still a pretty great trip. If you ever get a chance to go, go see it! It’s fascinating.

On a side note, it’s hard to type “sequoia” on a Dvorak keyboard. Here’s the layout: The left hand does vowels, punctuation, and uncommon letters like Q. The right hand does common consonants, like S. Thus, typing “sequoia” begins with one keystroke on the right hand, followed by 6 on the left. However, unlike the Qwerty counterparts, I don’t have this problem with more common words like “onion” or “treads.”

The other thing I meant to put up here was that on Wednesday, Robert J Full from Berkeley came to speak here. His talk was absolutely fascinating. He puts animals on treadmills and videotapes them. He then studies how they move, and tries to replicate this. He had some pretty funny videos of these treadmills – lizards, crabs, cockroaches, mice, even centipedes on these treadmills. However, he discovered some fascinating things from this. Geckos can stick to walls because their feet are covered in tiny hairs that are small enough and numerous enough to stick to things by van der Waals forces! For the not-so-scientifically inclined, these are by far the weakest intermolecular forces known (for example, they are what holds butter together). From his studies of cockroaches, he built a 6-legged robot that can go over incredibly rough terrain – he showed videos of it going up stairs, down volcanic craters, and through the forest. It was amazing! He also discussed some synthetic material he has developed that acts like muscle – when a small electric current is applied across it, it changes shape. It can expand, contract, or simply change shape. He has also developed robots that mimic crabs, snakes, and other animals. It was just fascinating.

Personally, this was even more amazing, because I’ve been reading about Dr. Full’s work since high school. I read about the gecko thing when it was published. I also read about the synthetic muscle when that was published. However, in Frosh Chem, I had to give a presentation on any topic I wanted, so long as it was chemistry-related. My roommate and I gave a joint presentation about geckos and van der Waals forces, and for that, we read the original research paper published in Nature. So I was quite excited to meet Dr. Full. I even got to talk to him for about 5 minutes Wednesday afternoon before the talk. So that was pretty neat. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, jump at the opportunity!