Blog

A reasonable summary of this post would be that my life continues to have stuff happening, but none of it is hugely exciting.

For background, you could read my previous blog posts.

Classes are classes. They continue to go fairly well. I got back all of my tests, and I did quite well (I think) on all of them.

I finally saw a doctor at MIT Medical. She didn't have much particularly useful to say, but she did reinforce my inclination to get a decent chair for my room --- I'll probably be going to buy one with Amanda on Wednesday, it seems.

I got my picture taken for ET's composite, and attended another LGC meeting. I get to rewrite the standing policies... Yay.

I also went on The Tech's retreat, which was fun. Shortly afterwards, I finally made staff via copyediting.

On Monday, I went up to PA to see old friends. It was a lot of fun, though I wish I could have stayed longer.

MIT continues to continue to go decently.

For background, you could read my last post or the post before that.

Academics

Academics are fine. Last week I had a math "quiz" (worth 25% of my grade...), chemistry test, physics test, and Ancient Greek Math & Philosophy paper, not to mention two psets and a set of readings. It was fun... I think they all went reasonably well. I got back my chem test, and I did quite well --- well enough to be allowed to stop going to recitation, which is nice, since they were fairly useless.

Epsilon Theta

Epsilon Theta recently has been... somewhat interesting.

Sometime last week, we had elections for the Undergraduate Association Senate. The Living Group Council (the umbrella organization for Independent Living Groups, including ET, but not including fraternities (they have the Interfraternity Council) or sororities (they have the Panhellinic Association)) gets a senator. As it happens, nobody in the LGC appears to care about the UA, so there were no official candidates. This was noticed by one the upperclassmen at ET, who felt that the LGC should elect a senator, if only to assure that the UA knows that the LGC exists. Since nobody else at ET was interested, I volunteered. I also won. Yay.

We also had elections last Saturday for semester positions at ET. In a not-very-heated race against one other person, I won the position of "Alumni Contact Officer", which basically means I have to deal with alumni mail that arrives at the house --- getting it to them, or destroying it, as the alum in question prefers. Upon obtaining the position, over the next 24 hours, I catalogued all the mail we had, and sent each alum an email with a list of the senders (eg, Bank of America) from whom they have recieved mail, and how many items. This appears to make me the most enthusiastic Alumni Contact Officer in memory. Yay.

We also had the Pledge-Alumni Dinner last Sunday night (about 3 hours after I finished contacting all the alumni with mail). As a result of then-recent history, after any mention of an alum that I knew had mail (which was many of them), I would mutter happily to people sitting next to me, "They have mail...". It entertained a bunch of people.

Right before the Pledge-Alumni Dinner, we held a meeting to discuss reforming the Living Group Council. At the moment, it is a mostly-defunct organization --- it hasn't really done anything in years, and it no longer has any officers, since they all graduated. I attended, since I felt it made sense to as the UA representative of the same group of people. Anyway, it looks like the LGC will be reformed --- we have a new Speaker and Secretary, and it looks like there is a consensus that a much more streamlined LGC could be useful as an interface with the rest of the world.

Other Stuff

I've gotten a dev server set up for ESP, and even made my first significant commit (getting the last updated time to update --- this sounds trivial, but turned out to be surprisingly painful to fix...).

I finally talked to some people at The Tech, and it looks like I'll be doing copyediting and website work for them. I also went to Six Flags with them yesterday --- it actually was fairly fun, and I went on a bunch of rollercoasters, which was actually also fairly fun. I've also been watching the presidential debates at The Tech, which has been interesting.

There has probably been other stuff going on, but I forget what.

Well, MIT continues to go decently. Honestly, there isn't anything hugely fascinating in this entry, but feel free to read it anyway.

For background, you could read my last post.

Academics

I did follow through and switch out of Calculus II into Algebra I. Algebra is still largely stuff I've seen before, but that should change. We're starting vector spaces next week, I think (we finished groups for a while today).

Chem, Physics, and math/philosophy go okay. There is still a lack of hugely fascinating material. My first tests and papers are all next week --- that should be interesting.

Social

Um... We had the first ET pledge meeting last week, and then my advising group went out to dinner (tasty & free --- a good deal...).

On Sunday, I had my first SIK (Society for Interactive Killing, part of the Assassins Guild) game, called "P is for Powerarmor". This one wasn't so much a LARP as training for playing SIK games at MIT (which are LARPs with less plot and roleplaying and a lot more death). It was fun, although I ran around enough that I'm now very sore.

On Monday (MIT's suicide day), the ET actives went kayaking together. This was quite entertaining. We kayaked through a huge pipe (really, under a small bridge, but it was one of those bridges made by sticking a big (20 foot radius or something) pipe in the water and piling soil on top) and landed on a small island (covered with numerous beer bottles and a dead rat --- we're not sure how the rat got there). We saw a metal sculpture of a turtle and one of a bear, plus a rather realistic crocodile (which, admittedly, could use some dental attention). As we were kayaking, we saw "Water. Enjoy!" on a big sign, with a sketchy rusted metal bucket/basket thing under it. In the bucket we found bottles of Charles River Spring Water (the spring, apparently, being located in New York... no connection to the other half of the label), which are apparently produced by the Charles River Watershed Society, which is working to make the "water in the Charles River as clear as the water in this bottle". For anyone sketched out by the idea of "Charles River Spring Water" (or drinking bottles left on the side of the river), the label helpfully continues "Until then, rest assured that the water in this bottle is regulated by the USFDA and state and local water agencies" (or something along those lines). Not convinced? The bottle also mentions that it is bottled "By the same company that bottles for several legit super markets" (in almost exactly those words --- "legit" was in there...).

On Tuesday, I went to an Educational Studies Program coding party, and almost got a dev server set up (I did finish setting one up today).

Afterwards, I also went to another session of contra dancing (my PE class --- apparently some find the phrase "I have to go contra dancing at eight" to be a strange announcement of a conflict...).

This weekend I'll be heading to Six Flags (again) with The Tech --- hopefully this will be fun.

Oh, I've been having fun with mailing lists --- I am now the proud possessor of such addresses as ''@mit.edu and ~adehnert@mit.edu.

I've been at MIT for almost a month now. Here is what I've been up to.

FPOP

I showed up around Sunday, August 18 for my freshman preorientation program (FPOP) --- the Freshman Outdoors Program (FOP), and, in particular, the sailing option. The day before we left, I attended an organizational meeting where I met a couple of cool people --- Julia, Amanda, and Rebecca. The next day, we headed out to Thompson Island to see the boats, meet the instructors, and set sail. I was expecting one of those nice, new boats with the cabin that is mostly below the deck, but has windows sticking a foot or so above the deck. (Does that make any sense? *shrug*) Instead, what we got were three 30-foot-long pulling boats (essentially, 1940s era lifeboats with sails) for the 32ish students and 7ish instructors. We spent the next few days sailing our ship (10 or 11 students, one uncover campus police officer (CP), and two Outward Bound instructors) around Boston Harbor.

First night was a little hairy, and since I wasn't well dressed for it, I didn't enjoy that night much. The next day we sailed out to an old lighthouse, and then visited a rarely visited island with several old bunkers. We wondered around them, and then discovered that they were asbestos filled and should not be entered with proper training and protection --- oops. The next day we met up with the other two boats at another island, and wandered around for a few hours. That evening, we sailed up into the harbor proper, and docked in a mooring field for private boats. The third, and final, day we sailed (and rowed) up the Charles to MIT. We got to dock at the MIT sailing pavilion and then wander around on shore for a bit. That evening, we sailed back down the Charles, and then across the harbor to Thompson Island. I was navigating (night nav = scary, awesome, and somewhat fun). We scraped on a submerged rock that was clearly marked on the map cause I thought we were further out in the harbor. Oops...

At first, we weren't informed that Katrina, the CP, was one --- she just said she was a yoga instructor with the PE department (aka DAPER), and did some other stuff too. The last night, we had a guessing game in which we tried to guess what she did. Nobody got close... At the end, she revealed her main job.

Orientation

Orientation was filled with boring official activities, fun activities at Random, and some other stuff. After dorm rush (picking permanent dorms, since MIT does this strange temporary dorm & reshuffling thing) ended was hall rush (when we pick halls in our dorm --- EC in my case). This was also awesome, with many EC-esque things. Ask if you want to know more, I guess. After hall rush (a one-evening thing) came frat rush. I got free lobster (not my favorite food --- difficult to eat, usually expensive, and while decent, nothing special on the taste front) and steak at a frat one night, and other free food most other nights. I visited pika and tEp, but liked neither as much as ET. After a few days of hanging out at ET, I recieved a bid, which I accepted after a about a week of thought and procrastination. I'm now an ET active. (This means that while I continue to live at EC, I can participate in ET events, eat at ET most nights, and next year will live at ET (or depledge, I guess).) Today (Sunday) we (ET actives, and in particular the pledges) went to Six Flags to celebrate pledging.

Classes

I'm taking three of my four classes through ESG.

Classes are decent, but not amazing.

E&M (8.022) is decent, but not hugely exciting, and the content is review of the AP.

Chemistry for people with 2+ years of HS chem (5.112) is also fine, but most of the content is also review so far. (I took the Advanced Standing Exam (ASE) for this one, and failed --- partially due to material I never learned, and partially just because I haven't covered the material recently enough to have resonably fast recall, and didn't study at all.)

Ancient Greek Math and Philosophy (SP.2H3) is also okay. I'm not really excited about it at the moment, but hopefully that will change. (We've only really met twice, and I was tired for the first of those.)

I am currently signed up for multivarible calculus (18.022). That said, the lectures that I have attended were horribly boring, and the syllabus indicates that the first half of class will be all review, and the second half will have a bit of review. I'm now planning to take the ASE over IAP (January quasi-term) or the class later when I don't have a credit limit, and therefore don't feel like I'm wasting a valuable class slot. Instead, I'm switching to Algebra I (18.701) with Professor Artin (this has a prereq of 18.100, which I haven't taken, and know none of the material for). I'll be dropping 18.022, which is a coreq for 8.022.

Strangely, everyone seems to think this is a fine idea. My 8.022 prof is thoroughly content, since I already know much of the relevant material, and the second half of 18.022 has material that will be covered as necessary in 8.022 before 18.022 reaches it. Artin is content, because 18.100 (Analysis) is only relevant because it covers proofs, and I already know how to do those from Mathcamp. My Mathcamp upperclassmen friends think this plan makes sense. My advisor (also the teacher for the Greek math & philosophy class) doesn't know much about the math department, and agreed without much comment. I already have all the signatures that I need, and will be turning in the form tomorrow.

Visiting Andover

I went up during Andover's first weekend to visit. In the morning, I went to the Techmasters' computing at PA seminars, and got to do the explanation of who the Techmasters are, which was fun. (I don't think anyone realized I wasn't a student.) I saw a bunch of other friends. I even helped some friends move into their dorm. After that all finished, I rode back to MIT with Christie's mother (she was heading back to Cambridge for dinner with her sons, one whom I was friends with at Mathcamp).

This weekend I was hoping to do Non Sibi Day (Andover student/alum community service day, essentially). Since the event I was interested had unlimited slots and no marked deadline, I was putting it off until I was sure of my schedule. Unfortunately, when I went to register, the slots available had been reduced to one (the number of alums already registered --- current students are handled separately). As a result, I didn't participate. Oh, well...

Other stuff

Uh... The MIT Science Fiction Society has 90+% of all English-language sci-fi ever published, which is awesome. I played my first live action role play (LARP) with the Assassins' Guild on Saturday, and it was fun. I went to a Boston-area Mathcamp party at Mira's house afterwards, which was also awesome. I got my new glasses and CS3, though I haven't installed it yet.

Um... Yeah. Socially, stuff is fine, I guess, even if classes could be more interesting.

After a bit of a break, I have another quote:

Wow, even in 2500 or so, when the colony ships left, they were still using file extensions and probably Windows? Impressive...