Shabbat/Sunday – Day 243/244
April 4, 2013
I am pleased to mention the inclusion of yet another wonderful person in my life. The delightful Tova Reiter of U Chicago fame. Chol Hamoed (intermediate festival days) brought her to Penn, to spend time with her close friend Ariella. Surprisingly enough, despite our numerate difference we hit it off almost straight away. My only regret is that I will unlikely be seeing a lot of her in the near future due to geographical concerns. My life in a nutshell.
Shabbat was Glee Elections, and boy did they take forever. Most of the day was spent cooped up in a little room discussing the various merits of all the candidates. And we didn’t even finish. That said, I did take significant breaks to try and hunt down food that was Kasher l’Pesach, and ended up eating bananas, macaroons and matza sandwiches. Not the best of lunches.
Sunday was dedicated to a lot of hard work, just getting coding done before chag came in again. There didn’t seem to be enough time though to really do anything between meals and Hillel and getting ready. Additionally, I had office hours in the evening so I had to prepare offline any cards and info etc I needed.
Another highlight of the weekend was the PGC trip to sing at the Philadelphia Philly’s Baseball Game! I saw a few real baseball players and was screened on the jumbotron! So exciting!
Finally, late Sunday night, after shule and dinner, I read my new Douglas Hofstader book while my students coded and occasionally asked me questions. Ended up staying till around 1AM as some people decided to hand in their work past the midnight deadline.
Friday/Shabbat/Sunday – Days 221/222/223
March 13, 2013
This post concludes the rather uninteresting series of posts on my Spring break, but had I known how quickly my workload would ramp up, I would’ve opted for another few days of the mundane.
Friday was a day of physics, which I’m pleased to say, is clicking a little more for me. I’m still a little worried about my outcome in the class but I think I can cope with it. Thinking I had a little time on my hands, it being break and all, I played some Mass Effect 3. This poor usage of time would later prove to be a large mistake. Hillel being closed for Shabbat again meant I was once again alone cooking myself a little home meal, in this case, instant chicken soup, a little challah and some sushi. Not a bad meal, but it was missing something. Perhaps the lack of Aviva, Michal and Ariella was taking its toll.
Shabbat was even quieter, I slept most of the day, did a little reading of a newly acquired book by the ever eloquent and mysterious Douglas Hofstader (of Godel Escher Bach fame) and after nightfall, watched ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ (not bad, standard action film) and worked more on CIS 121.
The next day was also the birthday of two people very dear to me, Adi my brother and another close friend from Penn (who I know is reading this!). Calls and cards were in order, but unfortunately I saw neither of them that day.
Sunday I toiled away on Networking with my team, finding a few more holes in our implementation, worked on trying to finish up the 121 project (that didn’t happen) and then at around midnight, started on 551 which I thought was due Wednesday. At around 2AM on of my teammates for the project was getting pretty depressed, I asked him why he was so down about the project. It was then I learnt it was due at 1PM the same day. So much for getting a little extra sleep that night. I was up till 4AM coding. Engineering Hell. And the project still wasn’t in working condition.
Uncompleted tasks due Monday as of 4AM that day:
- Finish Algorithms Project
- Finish Networking Project
- Finish Security Project
- Finish Physics Project
- Prepare Algorithms Lab
- Start Networking Homework
One of life’s more difficult moments.