Interesting Stuff

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!

Woah. Yesterday was bridge club again, and it was the highest turnout that we’ve had since I joined. We had 2 tables going pretty much the entire time. It’s not enough to play a “real” game of duplicate yet, but we at least had to start keeping score (with one table where the partnerships switch every hand, there’s not much point in keeping score). So… yeah. We had about 13 people show up over the course of the evening, and even kept playing past 1:00. Sherri and I were partners for much of the night, which was a bit weird. Over the summer, she played regularly with someone she met at home, and got the hang of his style. However, this was a bit different than the way I played, so we kept getting some of our signals crossed. Oh, well. When I have the opportunity to start getting competitive (which won’t be until next semester, due to Systems lab conflicting with the start of the Unit551 games), I’ll get a regular partner and we’ll work out all of our quirks. There were some pretty good hands, though, and I had a great time. Hopefully, we can get our Monday games going like this too.

Well, I watched the presidential debate tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with either candidate. Kerry pretty much just said “I have a plan” a lot (but not actually saying what sort of plan this was, or how it would work), while Bush dodged most of the questions (he didn’t answer the question about who he would put on the Supreme Court, he didn’t answer what mistakes he’s made or how he corrected them, he didn’t answer how he will protect people’s rights from the PATRIOT Act, etc).

In related news, my absentee ballot arrived today. I’ve found the notary on campus, so I’m pretty much set to vote. I had a bit of a scare last week when I opened my absentee ballot that I’d been saving for a while to realize that it was for the primary election, rather than the upcoming one. After panicking and firing some frantic emails to my dad, he got me straightened out, and explained how I should be getting another ballot soon.

Lets see… Stephen alerted me to the Stop-Loss provisions that have gone into legislature recently. They pretty much say that you can’t leave the armed forces for 3 months before or after your company is deployed. Since companies are pretty much deployed every 6 months, many people who were supposed to finish up their service have been forced to stay in the armed forces. A pretty good blog about it is here (the October 2 update Edit: this one). There’s a lot of shit going on in this country these days. I wish there was something I could do about it, but this kind of crap just seems so widespread. If anyone has an idea about how to actually get something done (note: this does not involve writing to my senator’s intern’s garbage can), I’d love to hear about it.

This evening was our first official Bridge Club meeting of the year, and I think it went quite well. At 9:00, we only had 4 people – me, Carl, and two newbie frosh. As soon as they left, however, another newbie frosh showed up, as did Hadley, and later we got Carrie, Robin, Andrew, another newbie frosh, and Whitney. Usually, Sherri should also come, not counting anyone else who might show up. I think it’s gonna be a good year. Unit551 will be playing with us every Monday starting at 7:00 (lessons start at 6:30), but sadly I can’t make it until 8:00, so I can’t compete for Master Points. Argh! I can still play while I’m there, I just can’t compete until next semester.

So, yeah – bridge club Mondays and Thursdays at 9:00 in the 2nd story Case lounge on the west side of the building, and in November, Monday games will start going from 7:00-10:00. You should all come!

So, you know how over the summer I spent a fair amount of time setting up Linux, and it was a lot of work, but once it was done it was great? Well, about a month ago I figured out what was wrong with emerge – there were 15 bad blocks on my hard drive, which I couldn’t get rid of for the life of me. And supposedly modern hard drives will swap them out automatically. Well, I called Best Buy, and they decided to come out and replace the hard drive entirely. That happened about a week ago. And the new one didn’t have any working operating system on it. It claimed to have Windows XP, but that would give me the much-beloved Blue Screen of Death as soon as I booted up (while some people are surely saying this is typical of Windows, XP has mostly been better at this, to be fair). Anywho, I’ve now got Gentoo back up, and most of my system is back on. I’m still missing sound, my 2nd monitor, and a bunch of little, unimportant things (Shockwave, for example), but it’ll come. I guess the biggest problem right now is that I can’t seem to get my 2nd monitor working. And I can’t find the specs for it online, which is a bit weird. Well, I’ll get it eventually. In the meantime, I should be back online semi-regularly now. Though there are still some weird things going on with my system – for some reason, I can’t turn on DMA on my hard drive (this loads stuff into memory fast enough to play music and movies without them skipping). Perhaps I forgot to build something into the kernel. I need to learn more about that. Oh! and whenever I try to shut down X, it hangs and I have to power cycle. This isn’t really a problem, since after my other monitor starts working I shouldn’t have to turn anything off for 9 months, but in the meantime it’s a little weird.

Um… oh! news from Bridge Club! At the Activities Fair, we got roughly 30 more people to sign up for bridge-club-l (our mailing list), which is just fantastic. And for those of you who I haven’t told yet, Unit 551, the local ACBL sanctioned bridge club, has lost their lease on their building, and will be moving to the LAC starting at the beginning of November! So it looks like Mondays and Wednesdays we’ll have competitive games, and Thursdays we’ll have fun, teaching/learning/screwing around days. It looks to be a good year for bridge club, all in all.

Classes are going ok, all in all. Systems is absolutely amazing (CS105 Systems, not E59 Stems). We’re learning how computers work. Really. The first week, we went over data representations (two’s complement arithmetic, etc), and we’re now tackling assembler for the IA32. However, we have been looking at other architectures as well (SPARC jumps to mind as a prominent alternative example). Anywho, it’s a lot of work, but absolutely fascinating! This is the stuff I’ve always wondered about. My other classes are going ok. Nothing great, but certainly no complaints, except that my CS81 (Logic and Computability) class seems like a review of CS60 but with a boring prof. Well, I’m sure it’ll get better soon.

I haven’t been paying attention to world news for a couple weeks, so I have nothing to post about right now (hopefully that’ll change). um… my world news is that many of my friends are going to be abroad this semester. Yeah. It’s a little weird, but neat to hear what they’re going to be doing.

Oh! and for a strange, nerdy time, read up on John Conways work concerning Surreal Numbers. The subject is just that. And since I am in a weird mood, I leave you with a quote from my History82 reading last week:

“Having been entertained with no new theory now for a long while, I am sinking into a mere practical farmer. I have not a single new thing at present, except one experiment I am making to convert moss into dung, by endeavouring to rot it in a dunghill, by mixing it with fresh horse-dung. I shall let you know the result. If I succeed I shall be able to multiply my manure greatly.” – Henry Home, in a letter to William Cullen, 1752.

I’m pretty glad I didn’t live back then.

Well, I recently discovered that there is a bridge club near my home, so on Monday I decided to stop in and play a bit. I was paired up with a guy named Jim. Though we had fewer than 5 minutes to get our conventions straight, we seemed to pretty much understand each other’s bidding and playing styles. After a very rocky start (on one contract, I went down 4… doubled… vulnerable. -1100 points – ouch!), we played really well, and finished off the evening in 2nd place out of 7 partnerships. Pretty good for C stratification, eh? For those who don’t know, the A stratification is for good players, B is for OK players, and C is for bad/new/unregistered players like me and Jim. And we finished 2nd overall, not just in our stratification. The only pair to beat us were two guys named John and Cecil, who are absolutely amazing players. For those of you who have been to Bridge Etc. in Pomona, they are like Vick and Hans, but without the sour attitudes. Because we did so well, we were each awarded 0.49 of a Black Master Point! The different colors denote where you got the point – black is for club play, while gold is for regional and national tournaments, etc. Technically I didn’t get any points because I am not a registered member of the American Contract Bridge League, but I’m going to count it as my first Master Point nonetheless. Jim and I had such a great time that we agreed to meet again the next night to play in the North American Open Pairs qualifying event (same place, but it’s a dollar more, there are more people, and you can get Red Master Points).

Well, I show up the next night ready to work out precisely which conventions we will be using. Much to my chagrin, I am told that Jim can’t make it. Instead, I was partnered up with a man whose name I will not mention, just in case anyone reading this chances to stop in at the Twin Cities Bridge Center. He was 70-ish, and just at that age where he thinks that anyone under 30 can’t possibly know beans about anything. We use all of his conventions, including some really weird, cumbersome things (for example, intermediate jump overcalls. Strong jump overcalls are intuitive, and weak ones are statistically better. Intermediate ones have all the drawbacks of both strong and weak, but with none of the advantages). As you might have guessed, our bidding was way off, and our communication during play was not much better. My partner made several huge mistakes, and even revoked (miscarded) a trump that cost us 2 tricks and gave us the lowest score on that board (he claimed it was my fault because I didn’t ask him if he really was void in trump when he played out of suit). However, every time I made a small mistake that he caught, he was certain to point it out, and explain why his way was better (even if his way wasn’t better and I had just been unlucky). To be fair, I had my share of mistakes, and gave us bottom on several boards, but my errors were nowhere near as serious as his. It should be no surprise, then, that we took last place. There were only 3 pairs with lower percentages in the entire tournament. Argh. I can’t wait to get back to Mudd where there are bridge players who use reasonable bidding conventions and familiar styles of play (if you do a takeout double, and I pass after an overcall, do not try another takeout double expecting a response from me!). Thanks for letting me vent.

Wow. School. The summer has just flown by, though much of that is probably because it was only a month long for me. I’d like to relax more, but at the same time, it’ll be nice to be back at school, out of my parents’ house, and seeing friends again. And I’m pretty excited about my schedule this coming semester.

On Sunday, I went down to St. Olaf to visit Michael, one of my two best friends. He’s doing pretty well, and it was good to see him. Seeing St. Olaf also helped me appreciate Mudd that much more (not that you can’t have a great time at Olaf; it’s just not for me, and Mudd is a near-perfect fit). The dorms fit more people into smaller rooms, have no lounges, no air conditioning, and are mostly separated by class (frosh/sophomore/etc, not lower/middle/etc). While this last point might seem a bit odd, I really appreciated getting wisdom/homework help from the upperclassmen as a frosh, and hope to pass this along to other classes. Michael is also a CS major, and says that his school focuses on the programming aspect of it. While this is more fun in my opinion, I appreciate Mudd’s focus on the theory behind CS because it lends itself to more problems and achieves deeper insights (not to mention better jobs, hopefully). Also, Michael has several courses in his schedule that he is taking simply to fulfill distributions, and has a couple that he is actually dreading. While I am not gung-ho about all of my classes, I am at least content to be in each of them. All in all, it was a good reminder that I am sooo happy to go to Mudd.

We also saw the Manchurian Candidate on Sunday. It was an OK movie – I’m not sure I’d call it good. The story wasn’t bad, the acting was great, and there were several points where I found myself holding my breath on the edge of my seat. However, the cinematography was different, in a pretty bad way. Many of the shots of conversations are from the point of view of one of the people in the conversation – just a close-up of the other guy talking. While this was unusual, it came off as rather… amateur. There were also scenes where the camera just kind of drifted around. One guy would have a lot of lines to say, and he’d start off on the left side of the screen. Then the camera would drift until he was at the right side of the screen, and then it drifted back so he was on the left. It was really weird. This is also the first professionally-made movie where I have noticed when two different takes of a scene were spliced together. But overall, there was still something that rubbed me the wrong way about the movie. Perhaps it was that the bad guys seemed so lifelike (I can argue pretty easily that the same thing is happening now, but to a much, much lesser extent). Perhaps it was that there wasn’t any closure with regards to the main character. Perhaps it was that the background of what happened to set all of this in motion was never really explained (like, what was up with that creepy woman with the tattoos on her face holding the brain in her hands?). I’d recommend seeing this eventually, but you might wait to rent it instead of seeing it in theaters. Now I’ll have to see the original Manchurian Candidate. I’ve heard it has little to do with this version, but is simply wonderful.

Lets see… before I go, I should mention something about the Olympics and something about politics. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, the International Olympic Committee has made rules that no one can have merchandise made by a sponsor’s competitor (I first found out about this from Slashdot). This means that if spectators are caught with a can of Pepsi, it will be confiscated. If you are caught wearing a Puma T-shirt, you will have to turn it inside-out, or you won’t be allowed to watch the games. This is a smart move for Coke, but I’m surprised that a non-profit group like the IOC agreed to this. It just goes to show how much of the world is run by huge, money-grubbing corporations. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the world, and I fear it is making me more jaded and cynical about things. Luckily I can soon go back into the bubble of happiness that is Mudd, and live in bliss for another few months.

Well, that’s about it for tonight. Thanks for reading, and sorry I can’t keep the length of these down.

Over the summer, I don’t have my own computer, so I’m not nearly as good at checking my email or updating this thing. And I haven’t been on IM in weeks. If you really need to get in touch with me… good luck. I’ll get back to you eventually… probably… I hope. :-P

Jeff (my best friend) spent the weekend in town. He’s been working at Rockwell Collins this summer, except for a month that he spent in Transylvania. And he’s now in Texas working for NASA (I’m so jealous!). We spent the weekend looking at pictures of Hungary and Romania, which were really really neat. Transylvania really is a creepy old place with castles and fog everywhere. It was wonderful to see him. We were going to go down to St. Olaf and visit Michael (our other best friend), but he was really busy this weekend. Hopefully I’ll get to head down there next week. We’ll see.

It’s looking like Bridge Etc (the “real” Claremont bridge club) will be having games on campus this coming year! Their lease on their building is almost up, and they’re looking for a new place to play. I talked to Dean Chris (in charge of Student Activities) about it, and he seemed responsive. Well, we’ll see how it all turns out.

At this point it’s probably old news, but the California Supreme Court has nullified the 4,000 gay marriages that took place in San Fransisco. However, their reason for doing so is that no mayor or any other elected official should have the power to rule any law unconstitutional, because if everyone did that, there would be no laws in effect. They said that the right way to challenge the constitutionality of such a law is to have a couple apply for a marriage liscense, get denied, and challenge the denial in court (this has since happened). One of my professors at school was married to his partner in SF, so when school starts back up, I’ll have to go talk to him and see what he’s doing about this all. Well, eventually this will get done properly, and I for one am fairly confident that (at least in California) the law will be ruled unconstitutional, and gay marriages will be allowed. We shall see.

Well, I have to go. I’d like to write more in here soon, but doubt I’ll be able to. At this point, count on sporadic updates for a while.

On Tuesday, Andrew and I went to the ACBL sectionals tournament. We were in the stratified pairs competition, so we were only competing against other players with less than 20 masterpoints (I have 0 and Andrew has 5). We did pretty well – we took 5th place out of 7 partnerships overall, and took 2nd out of 3 in our stratification. I’d like to go back soon. We’ll see.

Mac bought the car he’s been looking at for a bit – it’s an offwhite Toyota pickup that seats 2 and a half. 4 cylinder engine with a lot of pick-up. I got to ride in it a bit because we did errands and bought stuff tonight. Food, power strips, and some mesh to make screens for the windows. It’s summer, so the bugs are out in force. Being a college student, I’m up late and keep my lights on after dark. Let me tell you, when the windows are open, the bugs come in droves! I figure that with mesh, velcro, and a liberal application of duct tape, I should be able to make screens for the windows and keep the place mostly bug-free. Robert is coming on Friday for Rachel’s birthday, so I hope I can do this by then. I doubt it, but it’s nice to have goals. As Douglas Adams once said, “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.”

Oh! I now have 2 monitors hooked up to my computer! I got the 2nd monitor from Travis at the start of summer, and had been looking into getting a graphics card. Then, yesterday, Mac mentioned that the CS Staff had been cleaning out the machine room, and were going to throw out a bunch of 2nd-rate graphics cards, and I should go get one first. I only wanted a crappy one anyway, so I got it. The one I picked out happened to not work, but a second card did, and life is good. At 1024×768 it can only support 16bit color, but I don’t really care; I’m not using the 2nd monitor for raytracing or games.

On the academic side of things, Clair finally got DIRCOL up and working yesterday, so I can start building a model in that. Now I just need to talk to Prof. DePillis a little about the finer points of the system. Raugh thinks I will have a paper to publish by the end of the summer, but I’m not so sure. Time will tell. and it would be pretty neat. Tomorrow’s a Stouffer talk, so I won’t get too much done in the morning. Still, I’ll be getting paid to eat food and listen to a prof talk about what they’re doing this summer, which is always interesting.

So… yeah. All in all, life is pretty nice right now. Having said that, I’m going to sleep.