We're Online

A photographer came to GSH recently to photograph the group for an article about the house. At the time I thought it was for The Tartan, which is the student newspaper. It turns out that the article was a bigger deal than that. It went up on CMU's homepage!

This was a busy weekend, but I feel that I got a lot done. I finished physics and most of calculus, as well as my 15-111 lab that's due on Thursday. I also baked 180 cookies, went to an opera, attended a SWE retreat, and danced a polka. It may have been busy, but I think you can find balance in there, if you look closely enough.

My mentor called me this weekend, too, which was great. We've never physically met, due to unfortunate circumstances. I think that the phone conversation was a good substitute, though.

Edit: I changed the link so that it actually links to CMU's homepage. The article is under the header "The Global University." Hopefully you were able to find the page via the links in the side bar, although the link in this post wasn't working. If you didn't find it, well, I won't tell anyone. At any rate, the link's up now! Enjoy!

Power Programming

We were assigned our first lab today in 15-123 (C and Unix). For some reason I thought the website said it was due on 1/22 at 11:59PM, which would be 25 minutes from now. I turned it in 3 hours ago, after having spent a number of hours in the afternoon and evening on it. One of the course assistants (there are at least 15 of them) graded it and sent back the points marked off my lab already. At the bottom of the email, he wrote that it was a good job for such an early submission.

Then I looked back at the website.

I'm glad I'm done with the work, but I still wish I had the extra week.

Reflections on Week 1 of 15

Week 1 is now over. I promised I would finish my class impressions, so I'll do that now.

15-123, Programming in C and Unix, is one of my best classes so far. My professor is really good (and very popular among the student body). His class has a two-digit waitlist in only one of his four sections! He has said he wants to open up another section and guaranteed that everyone on his waitlist will make it into the class.

15-123 is going to help me with 15-111 (A course in Java). My 15-111 professor is harder to follow, but I pick out a lot of important information based on key words that my 15-123 said in lecture just beforehand.

I got permission this week to take 64 units. I may be able to do it, but when I get a job I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with the work. I may drop a course later in the semester, but based on the past week, it would be a difficult decision. I like all my classes.

Second First Day

The first day of second semester is over! So far all my classes are going well. I had all but one of them today, so I have at least had my first impression of most of the courses.

Here is a link to my schedule, if you would like to see it visually: (Click Me!)

I am taking a total of 61 units. I dropped the Nicaragua mini course so that if a slot opens in Calculus 3-D (for which I'm currently waitlisted) I can be added to the course. 61 is the maximum amount of units I can take. I emailed my faculty fellow to ask if I can participate in the course without being registered or getting credit for it, but I have yet to hear from her. Either way, I may be dropping a course sometime during the semester anyway. Six courses make quite a load, and I won't know until a couple of weeks in whether or not I'll be able to handle that load.

Now let me give a brief description of my first impressions of my classes so far.

Physics: I can't say much, because we have a guest professor for the next week (the real one is in India at a conference at the moment). I do already know that this course will be a challenge, however. It is the only course so far that I have done work for (or started on the homework, for that matter).

Calc in 3D: Professor Mihai is apparently from Romania and she is my second of three female professors this semester (excluding Professor Tardio, my faculty fellow). Two of the three are in courses that traditionally have few females to begin with.

German: Some of the students have taken this particular German course two or three times, not because they had to retake it, but because they want to practice their German and they like the professor. This is my smallest class by far: 10 people. It's almost intimidating.

Engineering and Public Policy: This class is supposed to be really easy. You can essentially only take it if you know that you will be majoring in the engineering you took the first semester. So by taking EPP, I am basically declaring my major as ECE. The professor is somewhat amusing and incredibly lax. I am not sure why I was determined at first not to take this course. Not only will it be relatively easy (so I can concentrate on physics and programming), I am interested in the topic.

15-111: This is the programming class in Java. We only learned how to submit homework today. The first lecture is tomorrow, so maybe I can post something about it then. If the material we cover this semester is as complicated as how to submit homework, however, this is going to be a very long semester.

When your flight's delayed an hour...

...you get to your destination 6 hours later than you should.

I shouldn't speak too soon, however, because I haven't reached my destination yet. And if my flight to Phoenix, Arizona, was delayed, who knows what will happen in the near future.

This was bound to happen at some point. There's no way my luck with flying could last.

For now, I will continue to sit in the airport until they board the flight I've been rerouted to. I should be in Pittsburgh around 10:00.

Yixin, Mian, and I are back from our trip up north. Although we had to cut our trip short due to poor weather conditions, we were able to make good use of the few non-rainy days there were to enjoy.

We first went up to San Francisco to stay at my Aunt Kathryn's house. The same night we drove up from Southern California we went downtown to watch the New Years fireworks display at the Bay Bridge. This is the second year in a row that I've been in San Francisco for New Years, but I found the fireworks display as fresh and exciting as ever.

Some of the places we visited while staying in the city I've seen before, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street. We went to a few new places above San Francisco, however: Muir Woods, an ancient redwood grove, and Marin Headlands. We hiked through both of these places.

Chief Engineer Strauss

The Golden Gate's shadow

Hiking up the Marin Headlands, we could see the storm blowing in.

The redwoods at Muir Woods.

San Francisco downtown area, as seen from the Twin Peaks.

Alcatraz from Telegraph Hill.

Telegraph Hill from Lombard Street.

The seals of Pier 39.

From San Francisco we headed to Sacramento. Unfortunately we couldn't stay in the state capital for long, because by the time we left San Francisco bad weather was already on us. Sacramento was so flooded, it was hard to come by a street you could cross without walking ankle-deep in water!

So we left Sacramento for Sonora, a small town in gold country, to stay with my uncle Chris and his family. While in the area, we visited a gold rush town, Moaning cavern, and Ironstone vineyard (to see the 44-pound gold specimen they keep there, not the wine).

Standing in front of the "natural bridge"

A small tunnel.

Draperies in Moaning Cavern

The gold town

The view from my uncle's deck, the morning we left Sonora.