A few days ago, an e-mail went out advertising a programming competition for a financial data analysis firm known as Morningstar. Initially, I dismissed the e-mail figuring there would be no chance of me getting first or second place especially considering the only programming languages I know with fluency are Python and calculator B.A.S.I.C.. The next day (or two days later depending on how you look at it) the e-mail made rounds again shortly after the midnight resume deadline. I stared at it for a bit before finally deciding to take the bait. After adding Google Summer of Code to my college application resume and updating the contact information, I sent it off before retiring for the night.
The next morning, my inbox was empty. I put my phone into airport mode so I could use the Wi-Fi when I needed it but not have to worry about my phone going off during classes. When I returned to my room after my last class, I had a phone call from one of the program coordinators saying they had a couple of slots left and they were glad to take me. My excitement was quickly overshadowed by the prospect of getting to the competition and being the only person in the room that unable to approach the task at hand. I sat for a bit debating on whether or not I would actually go especially since the competition was from 5pm to 8pm, kickboxing would be starting at 8pm and I had homework to do. Fifteen minutes before I had to be at the competition, I decided I would go to the competition and forgo kickboxing today.
The coordinators gave a brief overview of their company, its mission and some employment opportunities before going over the contest rules. There weren't too many competitors there, maybe fifteen at most. My mind raced coming up with back stories for each of the people in the room. The girl that asked if she could use M.A.T.L.A.B. -- obviously a data analyst that specialized in matrices and linear algebra. Oh and the guy fooling around on a terminal of the campus system as opposed to using his laptop was, of course, a cryptography expert that wrote all of his code in Assembly or even better, a hex editor. When the assignment was finally given to us, I could have just died. Not because of how difficult it was but just the opposite and how perfectly suited for the task Python was thanks to its excellent string manipulation.
I finished within the time limit and was satisfied with my code. A discussion afterward with someone I knew was a competent Java programmer made me feel better about the algorithm I used as he ran into some problems I did not. Even if I don't win anything, I'm glad I sucked up my fears and went anyway. I'm not quite sure why programmers intimidate me so much but coming in last in track never bothered me. A silly fear that's hopefully overcome. Best case scenario, I win something and I learn something. Worst case scenario, I learn something.
A bit of an aside to Mr. McCreary -- I think you would be happy to know that I probably spent more time commenting my code than actually writing it. A little over half the lines of my program are nothing but comments.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Dinky Darts and Clumsy Kicks
The first week of school has not been too terrible. Things were initially rather bleak. I had no textbooks and the study lounge that had copies of the books was far too noisy for my liking though it often host to some rather amusing conversations amongst the upperclassmen. My books slowly trickled in and with the exception of Calculus, I was able to get my work done in a timely manner. Most of what we have gone over in physics and chemistry have been review. I'll save commentary on most of the academics till things ramp up. Islam, Middle East and West, my first choice when I selected my classes in the Humanities Arts and Social Science (H.A.S.S.) lottery, is far from light on reading. Skimming the syllabus, it looks like I've got around two hundred pages worth of reading to do over the next couple of weeks and I'm banking on that being a low estimate as I can't see the page count for everything. I don't mind so much as the subject matter is interesting and in class discussions have been rather enlightening especially with the diversity we have.
Freshmen here are cut a nice break for the first semester with the pass / no record system and while I hope I can keep up well enough to not have to take advantage of the no record half of that, it's nice to know my back is covered if I get too overwhelmed. Every upperclassman I have run into encouraged the freshmen to take advantage of the system but made it clear that that didn't mean slack off, just figure out what workload you can handle and toss in a few more extracurricular activities than you might normally.
I've always had an interest in marshal arts, specifically those dealing with weapons (hence my incessant spinning of sticks) and now that I have a chance to learn some, I am readily exploring my options though I think I have found one I like. Monday, I went to Jiu Jitsu class and yesterday night I went to kickboxing. I still need to attend an Aikido and Karate class, I'm pretty sure I will stick with kickboxing. It fits into my schedule well and doesn't seem like it will run into my Seminar XL study groups. Jiu Jitsu was awesome but until I break my tendency of doing things late in the evening, three practices a week from nine to eleven at night probably wouldn't float to well with my GPA. Varsity fencing* tryouts are Monday but I've decided not to bother as they have practice every evening from five to seven and until my time management skills improve, I don't want to get too involved in sports.
One of the things I like about M.I.T. is there are always random things you can do around here if you get too bored. Just last night, on my way from kickboxing, some students clad in medieval outfits and weaponry were fighting each other in one of the green spaces. Last week, I played Patrol. In Patrol, you get a small, cheap plastic dart gun that holds a single dart that goes about four feet if you're lucky. One shot, you're dead (temporarily) and have to walk back to a re-spawn point with your headband removed before you come back into the game. It's a rather good workout as there's quite a bit of running around and you can dodge the bullets which can make for some really fun duels.
(*) Most people join the fencing team with no prior experience. You train for a couple of weeks before they decide whether or not you stay.
Freshmen here are cut a nice break for the first semester with the pass / no record system and while I hope I can keep up well enough to not have to take advantage of the no record half of that, it's nice to know my back is covered if I get too overwhelmed. Every upperclassman I have run into encouraged the freshmen to take advantage of the system but made it clear that that didn't mean slack off, just figure out what workload you can handle and toss in a few more extracurricular activities than you might normally.
I've always had an interest in marshal arts, specifically those dealing with weapons (hence my incessant spinning of sticks) and now that I have a chance to learn some, I am readily exploring my options though I think I have found one I like. Monday, I went to Jiu Jitsu class and yesterday night I went to kickboxing. I still need to attend an Aikido and Karate class, I'm pretty sure I will stick with kickboxing. It fits into my schedule well and doesn't seem like it will run into my Seminar XL study groups. Jiu Jitsu was awesome but until I break my tendency of doing things late in the evening, three practices a week from nine to eleven at night probably wouldn't float to well with my GPA. Varsity fencing* tryouts are Monday but I've decided not to bother as they have practice every evening from five to seven and until my time management skills improve, I don't want to get too involved in sports.
One of the things I like about M.I.T. is there are always random things you can do around here if you get too bored. Just last night, on my way from kickboxing, some students clad in medieval outfits and weaponry were fighting each other in one of the green spaces. Last week, I played Patrol. In Patrol, you get a small, cheap plastic dart gun that holds a single dart that goes about four feet if you're lucky. One shot, you're dead (temporarily) and have to walk back to a re-spawn point with your headband removed before you come back into the game. It's a rather good workout as there's quite a bit of running around and you can dodge the bullets which can make for some really fun duels.
(*) Most people join the fencing team with no prior experience. You train for a couple of weeks before they decide whether or not you stay.
Friday, September 11, 2009
First Days
The title of my blog has, much to my dismay, finally become accurate. The daily lows hover around the upper fifties and for the next couple of days, the highs aren't even expected to reach room temperature. All of this is further worsened by the rain that we're told is to disappear after Sunday.
Orientation week was filled with loads of free food, random events and a number of stage productions for the freshmen discussing topics ranging from the campus environment and the new experience, both positive and negative, to a presentation from one of the architecture professors. I learned it takes nearly ten thousand one dollar bills to suspend an iron safe from a ceiling...
A week ago, I moved into my permanent dorm which was decided in a process known as dorm rush. Over the summer, you rank the dorms from 1 to 17 with ties allowed. A lottery algorithm then assigns every person to their first choice and then randomly removes people from dorms that are too saturated. The process is then repeated for the next rank and so on. When you first arrive here, you are placed in a temporary room based on the summer lottery. If during the time you are temped in the dorm you discover you don't like it, you can usually move during dorm rush. I got my first choice in dorm and was quite content with the room I was in and hoped to get to keep it. Then there was dorm rush.
I'm going to go off on a tangent describing the dorm; MacGregor is divided into two parts: the sixteen story high-rise and then low rise wing. In the high-rise, the floors are divided into "entries" based on where the elevator stops which is approximately every through floors. Usually, the floor the elevator stops at, the one above and below that compose one entry. Going from the second floor up (the first floor is where the gym, music room, lobby, front desk, entertainment room and some other things are), the entries are lettered E to A. In the low rises, they are lettered G to J with "i" being omitted because it's imaginary (unless you're an engineer then I suppose my entry would be the imaginary one). In the low rise wing, the entries are grouped based on building segments.
Back to dorm rush. All the freshmen in my dorm were divided into nine groups before being herded through all the entries of MacGregor as well as the "housemasters'" apartment by groups. The housemasters are the overseers of the dorm as a whole and have been living here for around ten years. We were chocked full of free food and we conversed with the upperclassmen of each dorm and tried to get a sense for the personality and atmosphere of each entry. Some, I stuck at the bottom of my list instantly generally because I knew they would be too loud for me such as the entry that had turned one of their lounges into a dance room that was very well done with colored lights hooked up to respond to the surround sound, a computer with a large music library and Pandora open 24/7 or the entry whose spokesman sounded like a megaphone and announced how much they liked being loud. Others seemed like they would be OK but unacceptable for one reason or another, most often because I felt my keeping a closed door constantly would feel out of place in an open door entry. If I were in a segmented room, I might not mind but when I have one door that leads into my small six by ten room, I don't feel like hearing what everyone else is doing in their room or the conversations in the lounge. When I visited J entry, it was perfect. The Graduate Resident Tutors (G.R.T.s), boyfriend and girlfriend in the case for this entry, were nice and the latter likes to cook a lot and does it well. Most people keep their doors closed and it was quiet but not anti-social; the personality of the dorm fit me. It's kind of like the McCreary's place minus their kids and steak (the G.R.T.s are vegetarian). At one point while I was visiting another entry, I used the lack of a water fountain in the area as an excuse to run back to J entry. The G.R.T.s and the upperclassmen can add or remove weight for people interested in joining their entry in the lottery algorithm. I introduced myself as Eric to them all but I am "James Pruitt" on all of the documentation around here so I got that straightened out. Lo and behold, I ended up in J entry.
There is something random going on in this entry on a regular basis from free candy on the third floor, watching Blazing Saddles or singing along to West Side Story in the main lobby. Just a day or two ago, Donny, one of the G.R.T.s, Ben and I were playing laser tag.
Orientation week was filled with loads of free food, random events and a number of stage productions for the freshmen discussing topics ranging from the campus environment and the new experience, both positive and negative, to a presentation from one of the architecture professors. I learned it takes nearly ten thousand one dollar bills to suspend an iron safe from a ceiling...
A week ago, I moved into my permanent dorm which was decided in a process known as dorm rush. Over the summer, you rank the dorms from 1 to 17 with ties allowed. A lottery algorithm then assigns every person to their first choice and then randomly removes people from dorms that are too saturated. The process is then repeated for the next rank and so on. When you first arrive here, you are placed in a temporary room based on the summer lottery. If during the time you are temped in the dorm you discover you don't like it, you can usually move during dorm rush. I got my first choice in dorm and was quite content with the room I was in and hoped to get to keep it. Then there was dorm rush.
I'm going to go off on a tangent describing the dorm; MacGregor is divided into two parts: the sixteen story high-rise and then low rise wing. In the high-rise, the floors are divided into "entries" based on where the elevator stops which is approximately every through floors. Usually, the floor the elevator stops at, the one above and below that compose one entry. Going from the second floor up (the first floor is where the gym, music room, lobby, front desk, entertainment room and some other things are), the entries are lettered E to A. In the low rises, they are lettered G to J with "i" being omitted because it's imaginary (unless you're an engineer then I suppose my entry would be the imaginary one). In the low rise wing, the entries are grouped based on building segments.
Back to dorm rush. All the freshmen in my dorm were divided into nine groups before being herded through all the entries of MacGregor as well as the "housemasters'" apartment by groups. The housemasters are the overseers of the dorm as a whole and have been living here for around ten years. We were chocked full of free food and we conversed with the upperclassmen of each dorm and tried to get a sense for the personality and atmosphere of each entry. Some, I stuck at the bottom of my list instantly generally because I knew they would be too loud for me such as the entry that had turned one of their lounges into a dance room that was very well done with colored lights hooked up to respond to the surround sound, a computer with a large music library and Pandora open 24/7 or the entry whose spokesman sounded like a megaphone and announced how much they liked being loud. Others seemed like they would be OK but unacceptable for one reason or another, most often because I felt my keeping a closed door constantly would feel out of place in an open door entry. If I were in a segmented room, I might not mind but when I have one door that leads into my small six by ten room, I don't feel like hearing what everyone else is doing in their room or the conversations in the lounge. When I visited J entry, it was perfect. The Graduate Resident Tutors (G.R.T.s), boyfriend and girlfriend in the case for this entry, were nice and the latter likes to cook a lot and does it well. Most people keep their doors closed and it was quiet but not anti-social; the personality of the dorm fit me. It's kind of like the McCreary's place minus their kids and steak (the G.R.T.s are vegetarian). At one point while I was visiting another entry, I used the lack of a water fountain in the area as an excuse to run back to J entry. The G.R.T.s and the upperclassmen can add or remove weight for people interested in joining their entry in the lottery algorithm. I introduced myself as Eric to them all but I am "James Pruitt" on all of the documentation around here so I got that straightened out. Lo and behold, I ended up in J entry.
There is something random going on in this entry on a regular basis from free candy on the third floor, watching Blazing Saddles or singing along to West Side Story in the main lobby. Just a day or two ago, Donny, one of the G.R.T.s, Ben and I were playing laser tag.
Monday, August 31, 2009
The First Week
See the title of my blog that stands boldly emblazoned at the top of this web page? When I arrived at my dorm last Saturday, I found the weather to be quite contrary. Thanks to Tropical Storm Bill, my dorm was around eighty-five to eighty-seven degrees which didn't bode well with the insomnia I had been experiencing the week prior.
My arrival in Boston was pretty uneventful. The bright red suitcase and humongous brown, polka-dotted behemoth I brought with me were readily identifiable on the conveyor belt with the added bonus of being among the first pieces of luggage to come out the chute. A young man with a heavy Nigerian accent brought a rolling platform to assist me with my luggage. We made idle chatter as we moved my luggage out to the cab pickup area. As the driver loaded my suitcases into the trunk of the cab, the Nigerian man said something I found unintelligible as he shook my hand. Upon seeing my confusion, he leaned in closer and I was able to make out a most dreadful word. "Tip," he said. Normally, I don't carry cash as I see it pointless when I have a debit card however I had a few twenties in my wallet to pay for my cab fare and a couple of lose one dollar bills that I handed him before hastily making my way into the cab.
Before I left home, I neglected getting my dorm's address (as well as eating which made for a very long flight since I didn't have time to buy anything during layover). When the driver asked me where, I just told him Memorial Drive at M.I.T. I figured once I was in the area, I would be able to remember approximately where my dorm was. The area I chose was somewhat close to where I needed to be: I knew that the intersection I chose to be dropped off at was either really close to my dorm or really far away. To my dismay, it was the latter. I had such a feeling but I couldn't bear to watch the meter go up any further and hoped things would work out. The GPS screen located in the passenger seat of the cab had a tip calculator on it but it didn't quite work the way I expected it to. I thought that when I punched in the amount with the tip, it would be shown to the driver and he would handle making change. When I paid the driver, he said "No tip?" The first thing I thought was "It's not a tip if you're expecting it, it's a service tax." I gave him a few dollars and proceeded to see if the dorm I was outside of was the correct one. I needed MacGregor but I was outside of McCormick, a newer girls-only dorm. Off in the distance loomed MacGregor about several blocks away. After a block or so, I ran into a girl and guy that helped wheel me wheel my two lighter suitcases. Checking into MacGregor was simple and painless. Getting my things to my room, not so much but this time I actively recruited someone to carry one of my lighter suitcases up the stairs. I realized the heat of my room would provide me no rest or refuge so I hit the town in search of food.
Down Massachussets Avenue I walked in a direction that seemed like it would have food from what I remembered of Campus Preview Weekend in April before I happened upon a pizza parlour. I ordered a large cheese pizza and downed every bite of it save for the crusts and gladly, as well as voluntarily, tipped the restaraunt. Best pizza ever though having nothing more than half a sandwhich and a bowl of ice cream at ten in the morning probably had something to do with it.
My first week at M.I.T. has been exciting and full of new experiences, both positive and negative. From last Saturday night through this Saturday, I was in the Discover Mechanical Engineering (D.M.E.) Freshman Pre-Orientation Program (F.P.O.P.). It began with a night of basketball and volleyball in the university's primary gym, the Z. Center where I got acquainted with some of the upper classman responsible for organizing D.M.E. as well as a number of the people I would be working with over the week. One of the first things I noticed about M.I.T. was just how innaccurate the stereotype of a programming, computer hacking nerd is. There really is no "typical" student at M.I.T. I have run into a number of people whose experience with a computer extends no further than basic word processing and the community here is just as diverse as that in world outside of campus life.
For D.M.E., we were divided into teams of four people each to create robots from bare plastic, unassembled gearboxes, wires and for most of us, no practical knowledge of how to go about completing such a task. We selected which two people in our groups would construct treaded robots and which two would construct wheeled robots for the soccer competition and set to work with the guidance of the upper classmen that served as our mentors. The first lab session was a quick run through of how to use the soldering irons, drill press, the heating element for melting plastic, calipers and bandsaw. Over the next few days, the teams grew to know its members better as well as their mentors. My team went from a disheveled group of slightly shy people to eventually uniting as the Mermaid Hunters whose identity was developed by a sole member before being adopted and embraced by all of us as we sought to take out the Team Mermaid and its ring leader Ariel (AH-ree-uhl). Each day, outside seven to eight hours of working on our robots, the mentors would have something planned which kept my out to midnight or later most of the time but the experiences proved invaluable in building friendships, navigating the Boston/Cambridge mass transit system and discovering a number of new foods and stores.
Soccer bot D-Day was Saturday at a museum not too far from the school in which a number of spectators gathered to watch our bots vie for victory in the plexiglass arena. In between matches, competitors franctically made revisions, modifications and repairs to their robots: dismembered limbs and destroyed treads were not uncommon. My team got a fair way up the bracket and while we did not win, we took out team Mermaid mercilously. Twice. Dinner that night was a bit bittersweet but a relief at the same time as I would finally be able to get some decent sleep now that I wouldn't be gone all hours of the night.
Now that the F.P.O.P.s are over, orientation has officially begun and all of the freshmen have arrived. All over campus, there are commemorative events, shows and free food as the dorms and Greek societies try to recruit inhabitants and members. Just yesterday, I had competed in Jell-O wrestling. Despite the rather shall we say invasive nature of Jell-O, it was well worth the messiness. I came out one draw, two losses though the latter of which were to people I discovered wreslted for some years in high school. I expect orientation to be just about as exciting as D.M.E. though not as structured.
I can't say I really like the Boston/Cambridge area. There is noise, traffic and squeeling brakes constantly, few trees and way too many people but for the time being, it seems at least tolerable even though I can't gaurantee I'll be saying that when the mercury starts to drop. I don't miss "home" but I do miss being able to see the stars and go to sleep with silence as my lullaby instead of horns and chatty pedestrians.
My arrival in Boston was pretty uneventful. The bright red suitcase and humongous brown, polka-dotted behemoth I brought with me were readily identifiable on the conveyor belt with the added bonus of being among the first pieces of luggage to come out the chute. A young man with a heavy Nigerian accent brought a rolling platform to assist me with my luggage. We made idle chatter as we moved my luggage out to the cab pickup area. As the driver loaded my suitcases into the trunk of the cab, the Nigerian man said something I found unintelligible as he shook my hand. Upon seeing my confusion, he leaned in closer and I was able to make out a most dreadful word. "Tip," he said. Normally, I don't carry cash as I see it pointless when I have a debit card however I had a few twenties in my wallet to pay for my cab fare and a couple of lose one dollar bills that I handed him before hastily making my way into the cab.
Before I left home, I neglected getting my dorm's address (as well as eating which made for a very long flight since I didn't have time to buy anything during layover). When the driver asked me where, I just told him Memorial Drive at M.I.T. I figured once I was in the area, I would be able to remember approximately where my dorm was. The area I chose was somewhat close to where I needed to be: I knew that the intersection I chose to be dropped off at was either really close to my dorm or really far away. To my dismay, it was the latter. I had such a feeling but I couldn't bear to watch the meter go up any further and hoped things would work out. The GPS screen located in the passenger seat of the cab had a tip calculator on it but it didn't quite work the way I expected it to. I thought that when I punched in the amount with the tip, it would be shown to the driver and he would handle making change. When I paid the driver, he said "No tip?" The first thing I thought was "It's not a tip if you're expecting it, it's a service tax." I gave him a few dollars and proceeded to see if the dorm I was outside of was the correct one. I needed MacGregor but I was outside of McCormick, a newer girls-only dorm. Off in the distance loomed MacGregor about several blocks away. After a block or so, I ran into a girl and guy that helped wheel me wheel my two lighter suitcases. Checking into MacGregor was simple and painless. Getting my things to my room, not so much but this time I actively recruited someone to carry one of my lighter suitcases up the stairs. I realized the heat of my room would provide me no rest or refuge so I hit the town in search of food.
Down Massachussets Avenue I walked in a direction that seemed like it would have food from what I remembered of Campus Preview Weekend in April before I happened upon a pizza parlour. I ordered a large cheese pizza and downed every bite of it save for the crusts and gladly, as well as voluntarily, tipped the restaraunt. Best pizza ever though having nothing more than half a sandwhich and a bowl of ice cream at ten in the morning probably had something to do with it.
My first week at M.I.T. has been exciting and full of new experiences, both positive and negative. From last Saturday night through this Saturday, I was in the Discover Mechanical Engineering (D.M.E.) Freshman Pre-Orientation Program (F.P.O.P.). It began with a night of basketball and volleyball in the university's primary gym, the Z. Center where I got acquainted with some of the upper classman responsible for organizing D.M.E. as well as a number of the people I would be working with over the week. One of the first things I noticed about M.I.T. was just how innaccurate the stereotype of a programming, computer hacking nerd is. There really is no "typical" student at M.I.T. I have run into a number of people whose experience with a computer extends no further than basic word processing and the community here is just as diverse as that in world outside of campus life.
For D.M.E., we were divided into teams of four people each to create robots from bare plastic, unassembled gearboxes, wires and for most of us, no practical knowledge of how to go about completing such a task. We selected which two people in our groups would construct treaded robots and which two would construct wheeled robots for the soccer competition and set to work with the guidance of the upper classmen that served as our mentors. The first lab session was a quick run through of how to use the soldering irons, drill press, the heating element for melting plastic, calipers and bandsaw. Over the next few days, the teams grew to know its members better as well as their mentors. My team went from a disheveled group of slightly shy people to eventually uniting as the Mermaid Hunters whose identity was developed by a sole member before being adopted and embraced by all of us as we sought to take out the Team Mermaid and its ring leader Ariel (AH-ree-uhl). Each day, outside seven to eight hours of working on our robots, the mentors would have something planned which kept my out to midnight or later most of the time but the experiences proved invaluable in building friendships, navigating the Boston/Cambridge mass transit system and discovering a number of new foods and stores.
Soccer bot D-Day was Saturday at a museum not too far from the school in which a number of spectators gathered to watch our bots vie for victory in the plexiglass arena. In between matches, competitors franctically made revisions, modifications and repairs to their robots: dismembered limbs and destroyed treads were not uncommon. My team got a fair way up the bracket and while we did not win, we took out team Mermaid mercilously. Twice. Dinner that night was a bit bittersweet but a relief at the same time as I would finally be able to get some decent sleep now that I wouldn't be gone all hours of the night.
Now that the F.P.O.P.s are over, orientation has officially begun and all of the freshmen have arrived. All over campus, there are commemorative events, shows and free food as the dorms and Greek societies try to recruit inhabitants and members. Just yesterday, I had competed in Jell-O wrestling. Despite the rather shall we say invasive nature of Jell-O, it was well worth the messiness. I came out one draw, two losses though the latter of which were to people I discovered wreslted for some years in high school. I expect orientation to be just about as exciting as D.M.E. though not as structured.
I can't say I really like the Boston/Cambridge area. There is noise, traffic and squeeling brakes constantly, few trees and way too many people but for the time being, it seems at least tolerable even though I can't gaurantee I'll be saying that when the mercury starts to drop. I don't miss "home" but I do miss being able to see the stars and go to sleep with silence as my lullaby instead of horns and chatty pedestrians.
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