In Which Some Things Get Started
October 31, 2014
Thursday was notable in that I had a large amount of work that wasn’t even started and that day I had a chance to make a little progress on a large number of things. New crypto homework (exploiting Bleichenbacher’s RSA signature forgery exploit), new machine learning homework (implementing state vector machines and perceptrons), a research proposal and, study for the every terrifying algorithms midterm on Monday (courtesy of Sudipto Guha).
I left a little time to practice piano and an hour for ‘lattice club’, the latter being a difficult seminar with Nadia and a few of her minions that involved relatively difficult number theory and abstract algebra. Too much of it went over my head.
I went briefly to a graduate engineering happy hour, before heading back to Hillel for dinner. Following dinner I attempted to work a little more, getting distracted, and so I filled some needed tasks. After picking up my mail and a package for Pearl’s birthday, I was off to the Glouse for a game of Settlers. Mostly tech members were present and it was a great chance to get to know them better (Ariana does physics!). A little later in the evening Lainie from Penn Dance popped by, but we were unable to draw any more from the pool of dancers due to many varied commitments on their part.
Home at about midnight, I was just about to go to sleep when a message from Pearl arrived informing me that she was back from her date night and that I could see her briefly to drop off her present and talk for a few minutes. Stayed up later than expected and sleep was welcome when it finally came.
In Which I Surprise A CEO
September 30, 2014
I woke up at 9AM for the judging and to put the final touches on my app ‘Plagiarite’, designed to both circumvent censorship and also to provide a proof of concept as to the issues in automated plagiarism detection tools. While I didn’t win, my app entertained a good number of people who came by and was enjoyed by nearly everyone who visited.
There was a Hillel graduate student BBQ after the judging so I raced off to that but realized I was far too asleep to really stay and so went back to my room for a nap. After some sleep and some work I attended dance rehearsal with PD, and then retired after a super busy weekend.
The next week started off in high stress mode with many assignments due and me in a state of panic due to the amount of time I had spent on PennApps that weekend, getting very little done. I only barely scraped through in submitting my homework on time. In the middle of the week, a very exhausted me had lunch with Melody Cooke, a friend who I had yet to catch up with since returning to the USA. We had a lovely time catching up but it seemed she had changed far more than I in the interregnum, and in a way that made her happy too. I had also changed and had more adventures and so it was quite a refreshing break from the never ending stream of work.
Thursday nearly killed me. I was up at 6.45AM in order to arrive at a gig for an international funeral home convention. My voice was hoarse, my eyes bloodshot, but I still managed to sing the heck out of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “O Canada” before racing back to bed. I skipped my physics lecture, as I would’ve fallen asleep in it regardless, and returned later to the PhD “dungeon” (the basement lab) to finish off a group project in machine learning that I had been struggling with.
In the early evening after successfully finishing the homework, a somewhat refreshed me raced off for yet another Glee Club gig. This one was for the World Presidents’ Organization, a high profile performance for Philadelphia local CEOs. We arrived at the venue and relaxed in the green room for a little before bursting through the doors and surprising all the executives with a flash-mob performance of ‘Footloose’. The event itself was Philadelphia themed and as a result all the CEOs were dressed down in tshirts with Philly themes. After the performance we were requested to get on the dance floor and encourage the audience to join us which, after a little prompting they did. The rest of the evening was spent chatting to high profile figures and for some, munching on Philly themed food. I met a number of interesting and friendly people, among them an Aussie CEO who told me to keep in touch.
After our best gig for the year so far, I got home and went to sleep, free of the burden of looming deadlines and ready for an easier Friday.
In Which My Calendar Is Abused
September 16, 2014
Today’s schedule was fairly intense, with my first scheduled break appearing at 11PM.
The morning was a fierce bout of work, aiming to complete some of my homework for physics and machine learning (which was taking far more than the expected number of hours). I was realizing that my skills in probability and statistics left much to be desired for graduate coursework. The lineup following that was my usual physics class, which I had now resolved to understand but not to complete all the homework for.
After a quick lunch, it was time for a fuller piano lesson. For forty-five minutes I had a great time learning new chord progressions and a new song, felt like with a bit of practice and some guidance I’d be able to make progress much more quickly than I had previously been doing. Unfortunately I had to truncate the lesson for a meeting with the dietitian, which, while helpful, provided me with advice that I found very hard to follow. My schedule was really too hectic and I needed to do something about that before anything else.
From the appointment I set about arranging an event for the CIS PhDs in mid October. I had to fill out a whole bunch of forms for room bookings and to get permission to serve alcohol at the event as Philadelphia and the University regulations were quite tight.
After finishing a few more hours in the lab, I went to the Graduate Student Center for an event with Graduate Hillel, and met a few nice new students, who though small in number were high in quality. There was a fairly even gender balance however it was highly slanted towards Masters and Professional degrees with me being the only PhD student in the room.
Dinner was a little more relaxed this evening, but following it was a full three hour PGC rehearsal that lasted until 11! I worked until a little after midnight before sinking in to bed from a busy day.