Monetary Stuff, Wednesday, May 6, 2009
This morning, at a band rehearsal, I was talking with Jeffrey about how I need to find somewhere to spend all my change - I have sooo many pennies - without annoying someone. For example, a vending machine that accepted pennies would've been perfect. Then, Jeffrey suggested I exchange my coins for bills at the bank. Great idea. They have machines that count the coins for them, which then just repackage the coins into rolls, right? So the bank's a perfect place to exchange my loose change and I don't even have to buy anything!
Thus, I decided to count my money at lunch and go to Wachovia right afterward. While counting my money in the Berkeley dining hall, an employee came up to me and asked for a dollar in change to pay for the parking meter. I happily agreed because I was planning to exchange my coins for bills anyways. After that, I finished counting and ended up with 100 pennies, 41 dimes, 8 nickels, 2 quarters, and 9 one-dollar coins for a total of exactly $15 dollars. The remaining coins amounted to less than a buck.
I put the pennies in one container and the rest of the coins in another, and I went to Wachovia. When it was my turn, I went up to the counter and asked the lady, "Can I exchange some coins for bills?" She looked at me for a second and blinked, and then she said, "Sure." First, I gave her the container with 100 pennies, expecting her to dump them into a machine. But to my surprise, she began to count them by hand! This is gonna take a while, I think, so while she's counting, I prepare the next batch of coins for her to count: $4 in dimes. After that I give her another dime plus the 8 nickels and the 2 quarters (another dollar). Finally, I give her the easiest to count last: the 9 one-dollar coins. I leave with a Lincoln and a Hamilton. That was fun. I wanna go back with more change.
So I ended up exchanging $16 in coins for bills today. I also found a total of $1.14 today, bringing my money found total to over $40 in less than two years since I started keeping track. I was also look through my suitemate Tom's coin box and found two state quarters I didn't have: Alaska and Wyoming. Five more states to go: AR, HI, MI, OK, and OR.
Currency is fun.
Notes on Spring Semester 2009/Year in Review/Summer Plans
- Starting January 30, 2009, I've been trayless. It saves water, it reduces food waste, it saves space (at the table, where everyone's trays sometimes barely all fit). We should be like Johns Hopkins and do away with trays.
- Starting February, I've enforced a dietary restriction on myself each month just to try something new and keep my eating life interesting. The diets were as follows:
- February: vegetarian. It was a very interesting experience but afterward I realized I like meat and fish too much to give it up, even though I disprove of some industrial animal farming techniques. I was successful in staying meatless except during my San Francisco trip (more about this later) and this one time I sampled food in a dimmed room at a festival and accidentally ate a beef quesadilla. This diet put no restrictions on the desserts I could eat, because they're practically all vegetarian! So next month:
- March: I gave up sweets: candies, chocolates, desserts, pastries, ice cream, smoothies, pudding, soda. Borderline foods in bounds: granola, yogurt, cereal. Successful, except for that leftover chocolate bar I found on top of our TV and ate before realizing it was March 1 and a few meals in Mexico (My friend kept telling me everything that happens in Mexico stays in Mexico, so I could eat and do whatever I wanted.). Definitely the hardest diet. So many tempations. The first few days of April, I gorged out on desserts. So good. So unhealthy.
- April: Back to a normal diet, everything in bounds. The only rule was I had to eat at least one piece of fruit at every meal. I came up with this idea because I realized I rarely ate fruit, even though it's healthy and I like fruit. I ate a lot of bananas, apples, and pears, and the occasional orange, peach, or kiwi. I also ate many slices of cantaloupe, honey dew, and watermelon and sometimes ate tossed fruit salad.
- May: Only allowed to drink water. No soda, no smoothies, no alcohol. Milk is allowed for cereal and soup is okay. Successful so far except when I visited Szajko yesterday and his mom brought out Dr. Peppers for both of us and I felt rude refusing.
- Ideas for future: Eat a salad at every meal (along with other things). Combine several of my previous diets into one diet. (None of them restricts any other diets.)
- Early Monday morning (late Sunday night), February 9, 2009, Erik Santoro, David Zhang, and I were doing our pre-bed routines in the bathroom. We were tired, and we tend to talk about random things late at night and when fatigued. Tonight, David prompted a topic with his joking question, "What if we just dropped out school?" Well, we joked around for a bit, then Erik went to sleep, and then David and I went to my room to contemplate the question more seriously.
A few hours later, excited about the idea, we agreed to do it, shaking on it. Rather than try to renarrate our thoughts and the trip, I'll summarize with our journal entries, pictures, news articles, and some highlights and notes.
- Journal entries from the trip.
- Pictures. Memorabilia.
- Yale Daily News article about our trip. Humorous The Yale Herald sidepanel about our trip.
- Highlights from the trip:
- We got to the bus gate at the Philadelphia station when David realized he didn't have his ticket. After some frantic searching, we found it still lying on a countertop by the ticket booth.
- We got back in line, went through the gate, put our luggage on the side, and were about to board when the bus driver told us we needed destination tags for our luggage. So we had to go back inside and spend $20 on four luggage destination tags, causing us to miss the bus. This is the beginning of the delays that turn what's supposed to be a 72-hour trip into a 90-hour trip.
- An Indian bus driver we had from Philly to Pittsburgh was stating the bus policies, and as he was saying "No talking on the cell phone," he looks in the rear-view mirror and spots a man talking on his cell phone. He yells, "Hey, sir, you there!" several times before he gets the man's attention and then threatens to stop the bus unless the man stops using his cell phone.
- At the Pittsburgh station, some random guy follows us around for a bit, then asks me about my black peace sign bag and where I got it.
- There was a White Castle across the street from the Indianapolis bus station, so we feasted on 10 burgers. It was David Zhang's first time.
- At the St. Louis station, we're waiting in line to board the Denver bus and it fills up before we get on, so we have to wait another six and a half hours for the 1 am bus.
- Turns out to be a good thing because we went to a Marriott hotel across the street and were able to get Internet access for the first time on this trip. I also notice I don't have my Yale ID anymore. I forget where I lost it/put it, but I have it again now (and I didn't get a replacement).
- We're eating at an Arby's for our lunch break in one of the Great Plains states, and a man asks David to bring his cell phone charger back to the bus for him. I'm not sure why he didn't just wait around and do it himself. David brings the cell phone charger back but forgets his Ethos water bottle.
- In Denver, we find the first bus to Salt Lake City is canceled, so we end up having to wait six hours for the next bus.
- Another blessing in disguise. We go to a Ritz-Carlton across the street, where for $10, we are able to connect to the wireless (the second and last time we get Internet access before arriving in San Fran). Upon checking our old e-mail accounts, we discover that our absence has been noticed. Our inboxes are full of e-mails from family, friends, Lair suitemates, and our dean and master.
- Also at the Ritz-Carlton, in the bathrooms, they didn't have paper towels or hand dryers. Instead, they had individually rolled small hand towels. After using one, you simply deposit it in a chest with other used towels. So I got the idea to go to the handicap stall (which had its own sink and stack of towels), strip naked, and wash myself using several of these small towels. This was my only "wash" during the four-day bus ride. David followed suit.
- Now that people knew we were missing, I figured it wouldn't be long until they had called the New Haven Union Station and pulled up records of the tickets we had purchased. I figured they would contact the San Francisco station or perhaps even an earlier station like Salt Lake City and authorities would be waiting for us there. So I asked Dave if he wanted to start our new lives in Denver instead of San Fran. He thought about it and we checked Craigslist for housing and jobs in Denver, and he decided, "Nah. There's not as many opportunities in Denver. We gotta get to San Fran." So we went back to the bus station and got in line to board the Salt Lake City bus.
- While waiting in line, we saw flashing sirens gather outside the building and security officers came in. We thought this was the end of our trip, but fortunately they were there for somebody/something else.
- Upon entering Reno, NV, our bus driver pointed out this Circus Circus, praising what a great casino it was and saying how he "couldn't resist." He parked the bus next to the entrance, told us to stay on the bus, and then ran in to play 2 minutes of slots before coming back on and driving us to the bus station. He told us he lost all his money. I wonder if he stops at a casino every time he drives into Reno...
- After we had decided to return to Yale, we told our parents where we were, and Dave's parents drove down from Washington state to meet us at our motel. Twenty minutes before they arrived, we had called for a taxi to bring us to the airport. When his parents arrived, the taxi still hadn't come, so we just flagged a taxi on the street. Then, after we had loaded the taxi, the ordered taxi came, and there was a big argument between the taxi drivers. The ordered taxi driver was very pissed, and before we left, he opened the passenger door (where I was sitting), and said, "Just wanted to let you know, you're an asshole," and slammed the door.
- Major stations we stopped at:
Note: All pics of Greyhound Stations are apparently illegal.
- New Haven Union Station, CT
- New York Port Authority Bus Terminal, NY (pic)
- Philadelphia Greyhound Station, PA
- Pittsburgh Greyhound Station, PA (pic)
- Columbus Greyhound Station, OH (pic)
- Indianapolis Greyhound Station, IN (pic)
- St. Louis Gateway Station, MO (pic)
- Kansas City Greyhound Station, MO (pic)
- Denver Greyhound Station, CO (pic)
- Salt Lake City Greyhound Station, UT (pic)
- Reno Greyhound Station, NV (pic)
- Oakland Greyhound Station, CA
- Sacramento Greyhound Station, CA (pic)
- San Francisco Greyhound Station, CA (pic)
The entire journey, with all stops.
- Jobs I saw on Craigslist that interested me:
- Warehouse picker packer: must be able to stand for long periods of time, must be able to lift over 40 pounds, must read, write, and speak English
- Sperm donor: up to $200/wk, $100 per usable sample
- New product tester: pick it up, try it out, do some interviews
- Sign holder: had to stand on the road and hold a sign, $10/hr
- Senior Clerk Typist: probably like a secretarial job, perhaps involving data entry
- Clerk at the Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe: free food when the store closes?
- All-around helper/clerk at the Shell Cellar: within walking distance of our motel, selling seashells :)
- Clerk at a children's boutique.
- Our log (Excel file) of expenditures. We only kept track of bills spent, so if something cost $9.61 and we paid with a ten, it was recorded as $10.
- Stuff I heard happened at Yale while we were gone:
- We left Tuesday morning. It wasn't until Thursday evening that our suitemates told our freshman counselor (froco) we were missing. He checked the libraries and the computer science building and did not find us. Then he told our dean, who called the Yale police, who came and opened my door.
- Julian, upon seeing the letters we left, nearly fainted, believing they were suicide notes.
- Apparently Dean Wood and Master Pitti had our letters professionally psycho-analyzed for signs of depression, stress, and suicidal thoughts. The verdict: none whatsoever.
- Police looked at the records of the last time we used our ID cards: The last time my ID had been used was for entering Lawrance Hall (I had lent my ID to David to get in.).
- A missing person report was filed on each of us.
- Kate apparently spearheaded a search effort, talking to the Lair, calling many of my friends, e-mailing others, getting in contact with my dean and master, and leaving a note on my door. I am sorry for the stress and worry I caused her and everyone else.
In retrospect, I'm still glad I went on this trip because I know I'd probably never go on such an adventure if I had waited. I didn't get to do very much on the trip, but the emotions, thoughts, realizations, and experiences I did have were worth it.
- After the San Fran trip, I was behind in a lot of my classes and was catching up work until spring break. During this time, Kate and I decided our math class - linear algebra with matrix theory (a proof-based course) - was too hard and we both dropped it. She transferred into the problem-solving-based linear algebra class, which we had both shopped at the beginning of the semester and deemed too easy, haha. I dropped math altogether because even without a math class, I would still have four credits, giving me nine for the year, which is on track for the 36 needed for graduation.
- I've decided not to take another linear algebra course. Instead I'm gonna self-study it some this summer just to get familiar with matrices and all that jazz. The next math course I'll take (besides discrete math, required for the CS major) will either be diffy-q (I prefer this spelling than the traditional diff-eq) or probability/statistics.
- After my B+ in Intensive Introductory Physics (260) last semester, I transferred down to Fundamentals of Physics (201) for this semester. I guess I'm not that good at harder-level math or physics.
- My faculty advisor mentioned the possibility that I might be able to go directly into intermediate macroeconomics due to my strong math background (which apparently isn't that strong, considering the courses I had to drop), despite the fact that I've never taken an economics course before. I shopped an intermediate class, decided it would be too hard, and joined the introductory macroeconomics course that like a quarter of the freshman class was in. I figured it'd be easier, would give me a better foundation, and would allow me to go over problem sets with friends. Well, the professor and the class turned out to be terrible. I learned how much I dislike economics and how bad I am at it. Still waiting on my course grade, but it's probably a B or B+. (Just like last semester, the class I do worst in always takes the longest to post grades.) I discovered just how much truth there was in the following course evaluation (from 2008):
Without question, the worst class I've taken at Yale. Abysmal lectures, time-taking problem sets, uninterested TAs. This is as bad as it gets at Yale. Frankly I'm still struggling to determine where exactly fault for such a craptacular course lies. Is it the ungodly boring professor? Is it the long and difficult problem sets which we are not taught how to do? Is it the econ grad students who couldn't care less about teaching something they learned years ago? Or maybe it's the fact that economics may be the most boring subject on the planet. Do not take this course under any circumstances!!!!!!!! If you're thinking about being an econ major sit in on one lecture. If you don't fall asleep, maybe you will survive. But seriously, there are so many great classes at Yale. Do not waste your time and effort on this class. Read a book, go on a walk, learn a new language. You are better off reading the phone book than being frustrated, confused and bored on Monday and Wednesday afternoon.
- I came into Yale wanting to do the joint-major of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. However, I did not take any EE courses this semester and after taking an Introduction to Electronics course, I felt my heart lay mainly in CS. Plus, looking ahead, an EECS major just seems to lock too many courses in place, preventing me from taking other random classes I'm interested in. So I now plan to do pure CS.
- My metabolism seemed to be fine all of first semester and up to spring break. Then I went to Mexico and after coming back, I noticed I started packing on pounds. I wonder if trying out these new diets affected my metabolism? Well, by the end of the year, I had probably gained about 5-8 pounds. Noticing this weight gain, I've been doing more exercise recently. I started running around New Haven, playing Endless mode on Dance Dance Revolution, and biking around Cedar Knolls and Whippany. My goal is to exercise daily from now on. I'm thinking I should also supplement with weight training, perhaps alternating lifting and cardio.
- Toward the end of the school year, I've also increased my explorations of Yale campus. I've discovered we have 24/7 access to this music building called Stoeckel Hall. The practice rooms in the basement make good study rooms, and there's also a computer lab on the 4th floor. I've also climbed Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (which just involves walking up the stairs and exiting onto the roof), Saybrook Tower (which involves climbing out a thin window and along the outside of the tower to get onto the roof), and Payne Whitney Gym (which involves climbing onto the scaffolding and taking the scaffolding stairs up to the top). I hope to do more exploration of Yale's buildings and of New Haven next year.
- This school year, I visited Andy at Johns Hopkins three days after I returned from San Fran. I also visited Lulu at Harvard when I went up for the Harvard-Yale football game. Lulu came to visit Kate and me the weekend of April 17-19. It's definitely refreshing to be in a different school environment and also to host people from other schools. I hope to do more visiting and hosting next year.
- Also this year, spearheaded by Mona Zhang (alias hazelynut, Princeton '12), a collegiate StarCraft league (CSL) was started, involving 25 U.S. and Canadian schools, each with its own coordinator (Andy was JHU's coordinator) and team. I was very excited about this and got involved with Yale's SC team, though I wasn't good enough to play in any CSL games.
There was another tournament less than two weeks ago called the Cotter Cup that even involved $1,000 in prize money donated by a Princeton alum. This tourney involved 8 schools: HYP + MIT, Tsinghua U., Peking U., the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, in Sweden). The finals were between MIT and Tsinghua, with an outcome of 3-1 in favor of Tsinghua.
These tournaments have generated a bit of publicity for StarCraft, including a Harvard Crimson article by Christina Kelly (alias peanut) and a NY Times article as well. Famous YouTube StarCraft commentators CholeraSC, klazart, moletrap, and diggity even commentated on several matches of the CSL and the Cotter Cup.
It's awesome to see the craze for a 10+ year old computer game still so strong! We'll have to wait and see what happens once StarCraft 2 comes out (this year?).
- Two things I constructed this year were a Rubik's Cube costume and a buckyball, for Halloween and the band scavenger hunt, respectively. Making stuff is fun, and I think I might just decorate my single next year with origami.
- I was very productive the first week back from spring break, and then the second week, I felt very depressed. I was probably a bit burned out from my sprint start right back from spring break. I was also thinking about stuff my parents talked to me about over spring break regarding my San Fran trip and my summer planning. I was also thinking about how I'd changed since coming to Yale, how I fit in at Yale, and what things about myself I'd like to change or improve. I thought about the friends I had, what kind of friend I was, and how I was living my life. I thought about a lot of things and maybe it overwhelmed me a little and made me feel depressed. Some time around the Freshman Olympics on Saturday, April 4, I was able to put my thoughts and rest and I've been pretty content since.
- I realized that band is a lot of fun to me and it makes me happy. When I'm attack banding with the YPMB or hanging out with bandies at band lunch/dinner (BLunch/BDinner) and social events, I destress and really enjoy myself. A combination of the people and the music really lifts my spirits and warms me.
- The band does a lot of crazy stuff and has many traditions, such as the annual scavenger hunt. For a week, I kinda put my academics on hold as I dedicated an inordinate amount of time to the scavenger hunt. Here's the list of items. Stuff I did for the scavenger hunt: steal dining hall plates, put up our team flag on a traffic light pole and behind a fire exit, make a buckyball, play chubby bunny (senior love), deliver three pizza pies (senior loves), get doused in chocolate syrup (senior love), take a picture inside Toad's, make a lunar module out of Ginger Ale bottles, print out lots of college acceptance and rejection letters from Google images, use Linux for a week (see next bullet), shave my head, enact a musical in Commons, and then some.
After the judging of the items, our team was in second place. But it wasn't over yet. There was still the speed round on the night of Thursday, April 16.
It started at 8pm. I woke up from my nap at 8:15pm. I ran to the band room, where Jackie Bruleigh told me my team was at Naples Pizza. (I had missed the first event - trivia with Steve Lao and Frank Cirillo (?)) I ran in and finished up the pizza we had to eat without using ours hands. Then they gave us a logic puzzle, one of those where you had to match the five people with the five restaurants they ate at and on what day, based on clues like "On Wednesday, Sam ate at either Bulldog Burrito or Ivy Noodle." Depending on what the solution was, we had to go to one of five possible places. We weren't able to completely solve the puzzle (we thought it was taking too long), but we had narrowed it down to two places, Payne Whitney Gym and the Becton Center (the engineering building). Since Becton was closer, we ran there first and luckily, we guessed right.
Our next task was to ride the huge elevator up and down between the first and sixth floors, listening to a playlist on iPods that were provided and dancing non-stop. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, someone had to take a roll of toilet paper and run down the stairs to meet the elevator on the first floor. Then the roll was passed off to another person, who would run back up the stairs to meet the elevator on the sixth floor, and so on. We completed this task and were given our next clue, which was something like "Ding dong, smoke a bong on the grass." First we thought it meant Timothy Dwight College (they have a saying "ring the bell"), but then we figured it was more likely a reference to Harkness Tower.
We ran to Branford Courtyard and found the next station. Our task here was to construct a model of Harkness Tower out of toothpicks and marshmallows! I don't think we were even close to the 18" height requirement Marina first gave us, but she said it was good enough and took a picture of us with our tower. Our next clue was a paragraph, but all the words had their letters jumbled up. We quickly deciphered the first line - "In memory of the men..." - and realized our next destination was the World War I memorial in Beinecke Plaza. After running there and being greeted by two suited people with sunglasses, we realized we forgot our banana (which the attendant at each station signs once we complete the task) at the last station. This station could not begin until the attendants had our banana. So Tory ran back and got it.
Our next clue was "fish and books" and we were told that it was outside. Immediately thinking library, we ran to the entrance of Sterling Memorial Library and started looking around for some sort or clue. But what was fish supposed to mean? We thought perhaps it was a reference to a fountain, but there was no fountain! Finally, after five minutes of stumbling around, we realized "fish and books" was a reference to Bass Library. We ran to the entrance and answered a call on the emergency blue phone located there. They told us our next destination and hung up. It was another blue phone. We ran around from blue phone to blue phone, answering their calls, until they finally told us to return to Beinecke Plaza. Our next clue was a library call number.
Soon we were in the stacks of Sterling Memorial Library. We located the book and found another clue inside. It was in binary code. We translated it into another call number, found the book, and retrieved the clue inside. The next clue was 236282 05 22 (with a picture of a cell phone). The 2362 translated to CN (cell phone texting), and again, put together with the other numbers, this gave us a call number. We went to where the book SHOULD have been and found no such book! After much frustration, a scav hunt helper told us what we thought was "05" was actually "OS" for oversized.
The finally clue we found was a chemical formula: C16O6NH13. This clue nearly drove us mad. We calculated the molecular masses of the constituent elements, trying to piece together another call number. We searched online for a compound with this formula but found none. We even tried drawing out a Lewis diagram for the compound. Eventually, a scav hunt helper tipped us again and told us to calculate the molecular mass of the entire compound. 12*16 + 16*6 + 14 + 13 = 315. Ah, a room number! So we ran there and a person in a full gorilla suit jumped out from behind a bookcase and scared us. Then he told us our final destination: William L. Harkness Hall.
In a classroom in WLH, we completed several mini-stations:
- We solved a bunch of anagram puzzles created by Andrew Hoffman. First we unscrambled five words, which were things like TRUMPET, CLARINET, and PERCUSSION. Then, next to each word was a clue whose answer was another word that could be created with either all the letters or all but one of the letters of the word we had already unscrambled. For example, next to TRUMPET was the clue "brass club," with a corresponding answer of PUTTER (derived from TRUMPET minus one letter (M)). (IMO, "brass" was kind of misleading.) For CLARINET, the clue was "reed performance" --> answer: RECITAL. finally, the clue for PERCUSSION was "explosive boom" --> answer: SUPER SONIC.
- We had to match the 11 seniors with their corresponding bras and underwear. The names were written on a chalkboard and the undergarments were taped up next to the names. We let Ned, who was a senior (but had never participated in the scavenger hunt before) do the matching. As he was moving the clothing around, he gave very humorous explanations for why he thought such and such piece of clothing was who's. After our initial matching, the seniors present told us how many we had matched correctly, and then we swapped the clothing two at a time, asking for the number correct after each swap, until we matched all 11.
- We drew a card, which told us to perform "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" from the Lion King. I didn't know the song, so I scrolled the lyrics page on the computer for the rest of my team.
- We were all blindfolded and had to identify different candies on our plates.
- On the chalkboard was a list of classical songs, like Dvorak's "New World Symphony," "Pictures from an Exhibition," "Mars," Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," etc., and based on 20-second clips, we had to identify the song.
- Each team member had to carry a quarter between his or her buttcheeks, walk a short distance, and drop the quarter into a bowl.
After completing all the stations, we were given an easy integral: the integral, from 0 to 10, of (6x + 1/5). Being so excited, we messed up the integral and got 320 the first attempt. We ran up to the third floor of WLH and found room 320 locked. Then we redid the integral and got the right answer of 302 and realized that meant the band room, where the scavenger hunt started.
We ran back and were the first team to finish, at 10:52pm! The next team came in 15 minutes minutes later. Ultimately, our second place finish in the item judging round and our first place finish in the speed round made us the overall winners by less than a 100 points with a final score of around 15,000. No prizes, it was all for fun and bragging rights! Finally, after one of the craziest weeks ever, my life was back to normal.
- So in exchange for information on how to get a blue phone (an item on the scav hunt list), I promised to use Linux for a week. (The junior who offered the information was trying to promote open-source software.) I got a copy of Linux Mint 6 Felicia from him and installed it on my Dell laptop and used it for a week. Initially, I had many problems with Linux and was pretty sure I would uninstall Linux and switch back to Windows at the end of the week. But the more I used it, the more cool things I discovered about Linux and I liked enough features about it that I decided to keep it installed. Some features I liked:
- I had "four" desktops. I could scroll between them using my mouse wheel and I could drag windows from one desktop to the other.
- Linux came with a SSH client with X Windows capabilities, so I could easily remote access the Zoo (computer cluster in the computer science building) computers and do my programming homework remotely and still utilize my favorite text editors, like Kate and gedit (which I suppose I could also download but haven't gotten around to doing. Actually, gedit is the default text editor that came with this version of Linux.), with a graphical user interface.
- Linux starts up way faster than Windows (but probably helped a bit by the fact that not much is installed on my Linux OS yet).
- Gnome calculator was nicer than the Windows calculator, allowing you to type in a whole expression (like you can on a TI-89) before pressing 'Enter' to evaluate it. Also it has more built-in functions.
- Whatever directory you're in, you can right click and open it in a Terminal window. SO MUCH POWER AT YOUR FINGERTIPS (with the proper commands).
Things I didn't like:
- It doesn't come with the full collection of fonts that Windows has, so the text on a lot of webpages was ugly.
- Keyboard shortcuts are a bit clunkier: for example, Ctrl+Alt+D to 'Show Desktop' rather than just Windows key + D.
- No Microsoft Word! Gah, Open Office Word Processor messes up the formatting of documents produced in MS Word.
- My wireless card worked briefly when I first started using Linux. Now only a wired Internet connection works. Should be a fixable problem but I haven't figured it out yet.
- Some websites, like playlist.com, gave me problems.
All in all, Linux is a nice operating system and I think I'd prefer to do programming on it. But Windows is just so much more universally compatible with stuff.
- I've found a lot of stuff (besides loose change) during my first year at Yale: two chapstick tubes, a Yale sweater, multiple towels, a few shirts, three CamelBak Nalgenes (I lost mine), pens and pencils (found lots of mechanical pencils, which I've been desiring because I have 0.7 mm lead pencils but only have 0.5 mm lead), an Ethernet cord, numerous bags, tape, and probably other stuff I forgot about.
- This summer, I'm doing research at Stevens from 5/18 to 7/24. I'll be posting weekly reports here. After that, I'm doing an unpaid internship in NYC at the company my brother works at from 7/27 to 8/28. I'll be living on the Stevens campus while doing research and hopefully in NYC for the internship. But I may end up living at home and commuting.
- Some other stuff I'm doing this summer: working on the Yale Asian American Students Alliance (AASA) website and learning Python in preparation for CS 323 in the fall, which is known notoriously as the most time-consuming course of the CS major, involving biweekly assignments that take on average 35 hours.
- February: vegetarian. It was a very interesting experience but afterward I realized I like meat and fish too much to give it up, even though I disprove of some industrial animal farming techniques. I was successful in staying meatless except during my San Francisco trip (more about this later) and this one time I sampled food in a dimmed room at a festival and accidentally ate a beef quesadilla. This diet put no restrictions on the desserts I could eat, because they're practically all vegetarian! So next month:
- March: I gave up sweets: candies, chocolates, desserts, pastries, ice cream, smoothies, pudding, soda. Borderline foods in bounds: granola, yogurt, cereal. Successful, except for that leftover chocolate bar I found on top of our TV and ate before realizing it was March 1 and a few meals in Mexico (My friend kept telling me everything that happens in Mexico stays in Mexico, so I could eat and do whatever I wanted.). Definitely the hardest diet. So many tempations. The first few days of April, I gorged out on desserts. So good. So unhealthy.
- April: Back to a normal diet, everything in bounds. The only rule was I had to eat at least one piece of fruit at every meal. I came up with this idea because I realized I rarely ate fruit, even though it's healthy and I like fruit. I ate a lot of bananas, apples, and pears, and the occasional orange, peach, or kiwi. I also ate many slices of cantaloupe, honey dew, and watermelon and sometimes ate tossed fruit salad.
- May: Only allowed to drink water. No soda, no smoothies, no alcohol. Milk is allowed for cereal and soup is okay. Successful so far except when I visited Szajko yesterday and his mom brought out Dr. Peppers for both of us and I felt rude refusing.
- Ideas for future: Eat a salad at every meal (along with other things). Combine several of my previous diets into one diet. (None of them restricts any other diets.)
A few hours later, excited about the idea, we agreed to do it, shaking on it. Rather than try to renarrate our thoughts and the trip, I'll summarize with our journal entries, pictures, news articles, and some highlights and notes.
- Journal entries from the trip.
- Pictures. Memorabilia.
- Yale Daily News article about our trip. Humorous The Yale Herald sidepanel about our trip.
- Highlights from the trip:
- We got to the bus gate at the Philadelphia station when David realized he didn't have his ticket. After some frantic searching, we found it still lying on a countertop by the ticket booth.
- We got back in line, went through the gate, put our luggage on the side, and were about to board when the bus driver told us we needed destination tags for our luggage. So we had to go back inside and spend $20 on four luggage destination tags, causing us to miss the bus. This is the beginning of the delays that turn what's supposed to be a 72-hour trip into a 90-hour trip.
- An Indian bus driver we had from Philly to Pittsburgh was stating the bus policies, and as he was saying "No talking on the cell phone," he looks in the rear-view mirror and spots a man talking on his cell phone. He yells, "Hey, sir, you there!" several times before he gets the man's attention and then threatens to stop the bus unless the man stops using his cell phone.
- At the Pittsburgh station, some random guy follows us around for a bit, then asks me about my black peace sign bag and where I got it.
- There was a White Castle across the street from the Indianapolis bus station, so we feasted on 10 burgers. It was David Zhang's first time.
- At the St. Louis station, we're waiting in line to board the Denver bus and it fills up before we get on, so we have to wait another six and a half hours for the 1 am bus.
- Turns out to be a good thing because we went to a Marriott hotel across the street and were able to get Internet access for the first time on this trip. I also notice I don't have my Yale ID anymore. I forget where I lost it/put it, but I have it again now (and I didn't get a replacement).
- We're eating at an Arby's for our lunch break in one of the Great Plains states, and a man asks David to bring his cell phone charger back to the bus for him. I'm not sure why he didn't just wait around and do it himself. David brings the cell phone charger back but forgets his Ethos water bottle.
- In Denver, we find the first bus to Salt Lake City is canceled, so we end up having to wait six hours for the next bus.
- Another blessing in disguise. We go to a Ritz-Carlton across the street, where for $10, we are able to connect to the wireless (the second and last time we get Internet access before arriving in San Fran). Upon checking our old e-mail accounts, we discover that our absence has been noticed. Our inboxes are full of e-mails from family, friends, Lair suitemates, and our dean and master.
- Also at the Ritz-Carlton, in the bathrooms, they didn't have paper towels or hand dryers. Instead, they had individually rolled small hand towels. After using one, you simply deposit it in a chest with other used towels. So I got the idea to go to the handicap stall (which had its own sink and stack of towels), strip naked, and wash myself using several of these small towels. This was my only "wash" during the four-day bus ride. David followed suit.
- Now that people knew we were missing, I figured it wouldn't be long until they had called the New Haven Union Station and pulled up records of the tickets we had purchased. I figured they would contact the San Francisco station or perhaps even an earlier station like Salt Lake City and authorities would be waiting for us there. So I asked Dave if he wanted to start our new lives in Denver instead of San Fran. He thought about it and we checked Craigslist for housing and jobs in Denver, and he decided, "Nah. There's not as many opportunities in Denver. We gotta get to San Fran." So we went back to the bus station and got in line to board the Salt Lake City bus.
- While waiting in line, we saw flashing sirens gather outside the building and security officers came in. We thought this was the end of our trip, but fortunately they were there for somebody/something else.
- Upon entering Reno, NV, our bus driver pointed out this Circus Circus, praising what a great casino it was and saying how he "couldn't resist." He parked the bus next to the entrance, told us to stay on the bus, and then ran in to play 2 minutes of slots before coming back on and driving us to the bus station. He told us he lost all his money. I wonder if he stops at a casino every time he drives into Reno...
- After we had decided to return to Yale, we told our parents where we were, and Dave's parents drove down from Washington state to meet us at our motel. Twenty minutes before they arrived, we had called for a taxi to bring us to the airport. When his parents arrived, the taxi still hadn't come, so we just flagged a taxi on the street. Then, after we had loaded the taxi, the ordered taxi came, and there was a big argument between the taxi drivers. The ordered taxi driver was very pissed, and before we left, he opened the passenger door (where I was sitting), and said, "Just wanted to let you know, you're an asshole," and slammed the door.
- Major stations we stopped at:
Note: All pics of Greyhound Stations are apparently illegal.- New Haven Union Station, CT
- New York Port Authority Bus Terminal, NY (pic)
- Philadelphia Greyhound Station, PA
- Pittsburgh Greyhound Station, PA (pic)
- Columbus Greyhound Station, OH (pic)
- Indianapolis Greyhound Station, IN (pic)
- St. Louis Gateway Station, MO (pic)
- Kansas City Greyhound Station, MO (pic)
- Denver Greyhound Station, CO (pic)
- Salt Lake City Greyhound Station, UT (pic)
- Reno Greyhound Station, NV (pic)
- Oakland Greyhound Station, CA
- Sacramento Greyhound Station, CA (pic)
- San Francisco Greyhound Station, CA (pic)
- Jobs I saw on Craigslist that interested me:
- Warehouse picker packer: must be able to stand for long periods of time, must be able to lift over 40 pounds, must read, write, and speak English
- Sperm donor: up to $200/wk, $100 per usable sample
- New product tester: pick it up, try it out, do some interviews
- Sign holder: had to stand on the road and hold a sign, $10/hr
- Senior Clerk Typist: probably like a secretarial job, perhaps involving data entry
- Clerk at the Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe: free food when the store closes?
- All-around helper/clerk at the Shell Cellar: within walking distance of our motel, selling seashells :)
- Clerk at a children's boutique.
- Our log (Excel file) of expenditures. We only kept track of bills spent, so if something cost $9.61 and we paid with a ten, it was recorded as $10.
- Stuff I heard happened at Yale while we were gone:
- We left Tuesday morning. It wasn't until Thursday evening that our suitemates told our freshman counselor (froco) we were missing. He checked the libraries and the computer science building and did not find us. Then he told our dean, who called the Yale police, who came and opened my door.
- Julian, upon seeing the letters we left, nearly fainted, believing they were suicide notes.
- Apparently Dean Wood and Master Pitti had our letters professionally psycho-analyzed for signs of depression, stress, and suicidal thoughts. The verdict: none whatsoever.
- Police looked at the records of the last time we used our ID cards: The last time my ID had been used was for entering Lawrance Hall (I had lent my ID to David to get in.).
- A missing person report was filed on each of us.
- Kate apparently spearheaded a search effort, talking to the Lair, calling many of my friends, e-mailing others, getting in contact with my dean and master, and leaving a note on my door. I am sorry for the stress and worry I caused her and everyone else.
In retrospect, I'm still glad I went on this trip because I know I'd probably never go on such an adventure if I had waited. I didn't get to do very much on the trip, but the emotions, thoughts, realizations, and experiences I did have were worth it.
Without question, the worst class I've taken at Yale. Abysmal lectures, time-taking problem sets, uninterested TAs. This is as bad as it gets at Yale. Frankly I'm still struggling to determine where exactly fault for such a craptacular course lies. Is it the ungodly boring professor? Is it the long and difficult problem sets which we are not taught how to do? Is it the econ grad students who couldn't care less about teaching something they learned years ago? Or maybe it's the fact that economics may be the most boring subject on the planet. Do not take this course under any circumstances!!!!!!!! If you're thinking about being an econ major sit in on one lecture. If you don't fall asleep, maybe you will survive. But seriously, there are so many great classes at Yale. Do not waste your time and effort on this class. Read a book, go on a walk, learn a new language. You are better off reading the phone book than being frustrated, confused and bored on Monday and Wednesday afternoon.
There was another tournament less than two weeks ago called the Cotter Cup that even involved $1,000 in prize money donated by a Princeton alum. This tourney involved 8 schools: HYP + MIT, Tsinghua U., Peking U., the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, in Sweden). The finals were between MIT and Tsinghua, with an outcome of 3-1 in favor of Tsinghua.
These tournaments have generated a bit of publicity for StarCraft, including a Harvard Crimson article by Christina Kelly (alias peanut) and a NY Times article as well. Famous YouTube StarCraft commentators CholeraSC, klazart, moletrap, and diggity even commentated on several matches of the CSL and the Cotter Cup.
It's awesome to see the craze for a 10+ year old computer game still so strong! We'll have to wait and see what happens once StarCraft 2 comes out (this year?).
After the judging of the items, our team was in second place. But it wasn't over yet. There was still the speed round on the night of Thursday, April 16.
It started at 8pm. I woke up from my nap at 8:15pm. I ran to the band room, where Jackie Bruleigh told me my team was at Naples Pizza. (I had missed the first event - trivia with Steve Lao and Frank Cirillo (?)) I ran in and finished up the pizza we had to eat without using ours hands. Then they gave us a logic puzzle, one of those where you had to match the five people with the five restaurants they ate at and on what day, based on clues like "On Wednesday, Sam ate at either Bulldog Burrito or Ivy Noodle." Depending on what the solution was, we had to go to one of five possible places. We weren't able to completely solve the puzzle (we thought it was taking too long), but we had narrowed it down to two places, Payne Whitney Gym and the Becton Center (the engineering building). Since Becton was closer, we ran there first and luckily, we guessed right.
Our next task was to ride the huge elevator up and down between the first and sixth floors, listening to a playlist on iPods that were provided and dancing non-stop. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, someone had to take a roll of toilet paper and run down the stairs to meet the elevator on the first floor. Then the roll was passed off to another person, who would run back up the stairs to meet the elevator on the sixth floor, and so on. We completed this task and were given our next clue, which was something like "Ding dong, smoke a bong on the grass." First we thought it meant Timothy Dwight College (they have a saying "ring the bell"), but then we figured it was more likely a reference to Harkness Tower.
We ran to Branford Courtyard and found the next station. Our task here was to construct a model of Harkness Tower out of toothpicks and marshmallows! I don't think we were even close to the 18" height requirement Marina first gave us, but she said it was good enough and took a picture of us with our tower. Our next clue was a paragraph, but all the words had their letters jumbled up. We quickly deciphered the first line - "In memory of the men..." - and realized our next destination was the World War I memorial in Beinecke Plaza. After running there and being greeted by two suited people with sunglasses, we realized we forgot our banana (which the attendant at each station signs once we complete the task) at the last station. This station could not begin until the attendants had our banana. So Tory ran back and got it.
Our next clue was "fish and books" and we were told that it was outside. Immediately thinking library, we ran to the entrance of Sterling Memorial Library and started looking around for some sort or clue. But what was fish supposed to mean? We thought perhaps it was a reference to a fountain, but there was no fountain! Finally, after five minutes of stumbling around, we realized "fish and books" was a reference to Bass Library. We ran to the entrance and answered a call on the emergency blue phone located there. They told us our next destination and hung up. It was another blue phone. We ran around from blue phone to blue phone, answering their calls, until they finally told us to return to Beinecke Plaza. Our next clue was a library call number.
Soon we were in the stacks of Sterling Memorial Library. We located the book and found another clue inside. It was in binary code. We translated it into another call number, found the book, and retrieved the clue inside. The next clue was 236282 05 22 (with a picture of a cell phone). The 2362 translated to CN (cell phone texting), and again, put together with the other numbers, this gave us a call number. We went to where the book SHOULD have been and found no such book! After much frustration, a scav hunt helper told us what we thought was "05" was actually "OS" for oversized.
The finally clue we found was a chemical formula: C16O6NH13. This clue nearly drove us mad. We calculated the molecular masses of the constituent elements, trying to piece together another call number. We searched online for a compound with this formula but found none. We even tried drawing out a Lewis diagram for the compound. Eventually, a scav hunt helper tipped us again and told us to calculate the molecular mass of the entire compound. 12*16 + 16*6 + 14 + 13 = 315. Ah, a room number! So we ran there and a person in a full gorilla suit jumped out from behind a bookcase and scared us. Then he told us our final destination: William L. Harkness Hall.
In a classroom in WLH, we completed several mini-stations:
- We solved a bunch of anagram puzzles created by Andrew Hoffman. First we unscrambled five words, which were things like TRUMPET, CLARINET, and PERCUSSION. Then, next to each word was a clue whose answer was another word that could be created with either all the letters or all but one of the letters of the word we had already unscrambled. For example, next to TRUMPET was the clue "brass club," with a corresponding answer of PUTTER (derived from TRUMPET minus one letter (M)). (IMO, "brass" was kind of misleading.) For CLARINET, the clue was "reed performance" --> answer: RECITAL. finally, the clue for PERCUSSION was "explosive boom" --> answer: SUPER SONIC.
- We had to match the 11 seniors with their corresponding bras and underwear. The names were written on a chalkboard and the undergarments were taped up next to the names. We let Ned, who was a senior (but had never participated in the scavenger hunt before) do the matching. As he was moving the clothing around, he gave very humorous explanations for why he thought such and such piece of clothing was who's. After our initial matching, the seniors present told us how many we had matched correctly, and then we swapped the clothing two at a time, asking for the number correct after each swap, until we matched all 11.
- We drew a card, which told us to perform "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" from the Lion King. I didn't know the song, so I scrolled the lyrics page on the computer for the rest of my team.
- We were all blindfolded and had to identify different candies on our plates.
- On the chalkboard was a list of classical songs, like Dvorak's "New World Symphony," "Pictures from an Exhibition," "Mars," Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," etc., and based on 20-second clips, we had to identify the song.
- Each team member had to carry a quarter between his or her buttcheeks, walk a short distance, and drop the quarter into a bowl.
After completing all the stations, we were given an easy integral: the integral, from 0 to 10, of (6x + 1/5). Being so excited, we messed up the integral and got 320 the first attempt. We ran up to the third floor of WLH and found room 320 locked. Then we redid the integral and got the right answer of 302 and realized that meant the band room, where the scavenger hunt started.
We ran back and were the first team to finish, at 10:52pm! The next team came in 15 minutes minutes later. Ultimately, our second place finish in the item judging round and our first place finish in the speed round made us the overall winners by less than a 100 points with a final score of around 15,000. No prizes, it was all for fun and bragging rights! Finally, after one of the craziest weeks ever, my life was back to normal.
- I had "four" desktops. I could scroll between them using my mouse wheel and I could drag windows from one desktop to the other.
- Linux came with a SSH client with X Windows capabilities, so I could easily remote access the Zoo (computer cluster in the computer science building) computers and do my programming homework remotely and still utilize my favorite text editors, like Kate and gedit (which I suppose I could also download but haven't gotten around to doing. Actually, gedit is the default text editor that came with this version of Linux.), with a graphical user interface.
- Linux starts up way faster than Windows (but probably helped a bit by the fact that not much is installed on my Linux OS yet).
- Gnome calculator was nicer than the Windows calculator, allowing you to type in a whole expression (like you can on a TI-89) before pressing 'Enter' to evaluate it. Also it has more built-in functions.
- Whatever directory you're in, you can right click and open it in a Terminal window. SO MUCH POWER AT YOUR FINGERTIPS (with the proper commands).
- It doesn't come with the full collection of fonts that Windows has, so the text on a lot of webpages was ugly.
- Keyboard shortcuts are a bit clunkier: for example, Ctrl+Alt+D to 'Show Desktop' rather than just Windows key + D.
- No Microsoft Word! Gah, Open Office Word Processor messes up the formatting of documents produced in MS Word.
- My wireless card worked briefly when I first started using Linux. Now only a wired Internet connection works. Should be a fixable problem but I haven't figured it out yet.
- Some websites, like playlist.com, gave me problems.
Have a nice summer everyone!
Treasure hunt!
Went home for the long weekend, went to see Hanover Township's Memorial Day Parade (go band!), and now I am back in my apartment in Hoboken (provided by Stevens - they ran out of housing space on campus so they rent out apartments in Hoboken). According to Wikipedia, there are many theories about the origins of Hoboken's name. One is that the first settlers, the Dutch/Flemish, bastardized the Lenape Indian phrase "Hopoghan Hackingh." Also, interestingly, the term "hobo" is thought to have come from the groups of hobos (railroad journeymen) that traveled by railroad from Hoboken. I've been here a week so far and haven't seen any hobos yet. I walk down the numerous one-ways streets and most of the housefronts seem to have been recently renovated. Lots of people walking their dogs, pushing baby strollers, and jogging. Feels very comfortable and safe.
So I live on the fifth floor (top floor) of my apartment building. When I went home last Friday, there was a ton of stuff in the hallway and I assumed it belonged to the people living next door, who were probably seniors and just graduated last Thursday. I came back this afternoon and opened up their room and it was vacated. I looked through the apartment and found a bunch of useful stuff:
- Cigarette liter still 75% full of butane.
- Unopened deck of Bicycle cards!
- Hole puncher.
- A 70-sheet notepad with less than 10 sheets used (on physics).
- An unopened pack of twine.
- A working power strip
- A stack of Post-its.
- A full roll of paper towels.
- A nearly full 50-oz jug of Secret Garden 2x Ultra 'all' laundry detergent.
- A Playboy magazine. J/k j/k. I did find one, but I didn't take it. And...
- Money! There was a dollar bill taped up on the wall in the bathroom, but a corner was ripped. Someone had also written "ICKED UP" across the front. I also found 104 coins worth of change after scouring all the rooms:
- 13 quarters = $3.25
- 32 dimes = $3.20
- 22 nickels = $1.10
- 37 pennies = $.37
Total = $7.92. One of the pennies was also from 1946 and has replaced my 1964 penny as the 'oldest penny' I have. The 1946 penny even had a different design on the back:
In the hallway, I also noticed the roof latch was opened (meaning the alarm was deactivated or was fake), so I climbed the ladder onto the roof. There were some chairs and a grill up there. Nice place to chill.
I live with two other people - Gustavo, who shares a bedroom and bathroom, and Dennis, who is our resident counselor and gets his own bedroom and bathroom. After returning from my treasure hunt, Dennis was back (with his girlfriend) and I asked him if all the stuff in the main room was his. He said it was his last roommate's, who left some stuff since he couldn't bring it all with him to Brazil. So Dennis and I went through his stuff. Dennis tooks like 3 towels and I took 1.5 boxes of Fiber One cereal and 50 cents in pennies. I LOVE GOING THROUGH STUFF OTHER PEOPLE DON'T WANT. It's so true what they say: One man's junk is another man's treasure.