Monday/Tuesday – Day 231/232
March 21, 2013
I’m really noticing now how long I’ve been away now, starting to miss home quite a lot. The prospect of staying longer for an internship while still appealing has lost a little of the shine and I’m investigating ways to come home at least for a little before starting something of that nature. Physics tutorial was cancelled today due to our professor being on travel, thus I slept in a little later. Almost decided not to go to Networking but thought it might be wise given the upcoming release of project 2. Turned out it wasn’t really worth my time, slept through most of it.
Then it was back to my room for another interview with a big tech company. I’m slowly getting the hang of them but I still wasn’t confident that I aced it. However, I did have an interesting conversation on the rate of convergence for a Taylor Series computation of the root of a real number. Turns out at the end of the day it’s slower than the Babylonian method! Who knew! This was also the last big firm thus far not to turn me down so I was pretty hopeful.
Recitation this afternoon was fun, as I violated the ‘don’t play with food’ rule by demonstrating the importance of version control using jam, candy and pictures made out of the above. The rest of the recitation was a workshop on git and DVCS.
The night was made up of my usual gruelling rehearsal schedule, no rest for the baritone in me!
Tuesday started with a pre-recorded lecture from Prof. Mele of physics as he was still away on travel. A quick break for lunch at Hillel and then a singing lesson which was pretty good today, I’m slowly improving at transitioning between primo and secondo passagio. Also had great fun playing with more of the musical subtleties in the jazz numbers I was performing. Things are going very well on that front.
Office hour, nothing special to report, but that all my funds from working so hard this semester have been guzzled up by the Glee Club. Out of all the money I’ve made, a paltry $12 remains after dues, tour payments and unexpected fees that were levied from last semester. I’m not exactly super excited about that, but I guess the price of admission is worth it.
Tonight’s rehearsal was far too short, only and hour, and was marred by a full club meeting discussing disciplinary issues within the club. More of a sad meeting than anything. It also ran substantially late. No rest for the wicked.
Sunday/Monday – 180/181
January 29, 2013
Sunday I was up bright and early, despite a late night of coding, to go work with Charu Jangid, a friend from my Networking graduate course. We spent a number of hours together, hacking away on some basic socket coding (networking stuff) and when it got to 2PM we decided it was getting late and that we had better stop for some modicum of food. Lunch was nice and we finally got around to chatting about a few things other than computer science. Following that we both when to our respective dorms and I worked inefficiently on both Physics and preparation for my lab the next day. Rehearsal at 5 took a lot of my remaining energy and so I was pretty tired when it came to dinner and learning at Hillel. Read a few nice thoughts on Purim while studying there and then worked till the early hours of the morning to get my Physics done.
Monday morning was another bright and early start, with a Physics tutorial starting at 9AM. After that I went to office hours with a few professors to help get a handle on some work. I planned my lab and worked out how I was going to run it. What was nice was the company as I was surrounded by fellow TAs and this gave me a chance to get to know them at least a little better whilst working. My classes almost put me to sleep this afternoon. Thankfully I had my recitation to wake me up. The snack roster worked as planned and a game of memory at the start helped to engender a sense of community amongst the class. From there we divided up into teams to work on generating accurate solutions to the lab problems with prizes for the best team. In my opinion other than a few breaks in my coherence during the proof sections, the lab went well.
Monday night meant Glee rehearsal, and though I was late, I still managed to gain plenty out of it. Following rehearsal I received some bad news via email, and a few of my summer plans were shot down, however I knew that any disappointment would be short lived. Dinner was a quick stop off at Hillel and then off to learn more of the Brahms requiem. Rehearsal was ok, though I was exhausted at this point and so my sight reading was a little off. The one saving grace for my evening was my time with Steph Li who amusingly and much to my excitement was now roommates with Alba Braso, a wonderful exchange student from Barcelona. So over the next forty minutes I had a chance to feel a little better by chatting to those two before returning to my room to work that late physics night again.