So, I pretty much got a minimal amount of sleep last nightmorning, and not a whole much more the day before that. So, I’m running pretty close to empty, but at least I don’t have anything big and wildly unfinished due tomorrow. Dumping core right now probably isn’t the best idea, but like drunk people, I’ll think it’s a good idea at the time and just go with it.

Man, I still can’t believe that we got finalist in the MCM; it’s strange, because you hope that you do well, but you have to grid yourself for an almost inevitable disappointment. The more hope, the bigger the disappointment, so you try to make sure you don’t hope for anything. Well, this time around my hopes got vindicated; we’ll see how all these open applications hold up. Also, maybe I’ll outline the models we used in the MCM. Hmm.

On a completely different subject, I’ve been solicited by two different honor societies in the last week: one a general honor society, and a physics society. Now, while I’m of the opinion that recent xkcd comics have been falling in quality, I do invoke a particular comic http://xkcd.com/703/ that I happen to agree with, which I might embellish with a more explicit statement: honor societies are useless. Many of them are based on grades, and fail to actually say anything about their members that aren’t apparent from the other activities they engage in. The membership fees are not a problem: societies obviously have overhead costs, which the fees need to cover. Rather, their mere existence is annoying. Note that I haven’t actually been an active member of any honor society (if I have, then I’ve forgotten about it), so I may be very wrong in my rant.

With that out of the way, I’m gonna muse a bit on some thoughts I had on someone else’s thoughts.

It’s interesting how people tend to assume that the future will be similar to the present; it’s not hard to see why. America hasn’t undergone a societal restructuring since, oh, maybe the 1970’s? I would say that we’re due for some upheaval or at the very least some major evolution in our physical spaces, but I’ve developed a bit of an aversion to the phrase, and it’s true that we have no idea when social changes will happen at any time. Cars have been the main mode of transportation for a few decades, and it seems that consumerism has been the dominant viewpoint for about as long. With this in mind, it isn’t too surprising that people tend to assume that the near future will be similar to how the world is right now. Well, I’ll have to look into changing that.

Well, well, well: guess who’s MCM team got a finalist designation! Meaning that we were in the top 1% of the MCM teams; unfortunately, I think that the lack of graphics in my section might have contributed to our failure to attain outstanding (right, so I’ll stop with the self-blame and try to maintain a better self-view). But at any rate, I’m pretty stoked about the whole high-percentage thing, and we’re gonna have a quick little celebration. Additionally, I spent a fair amount of time in the machine shop, possibly the first time I’ve put in time on a Monday, and I don’t see anything that’s stopping me from doing so the rest of the days of the week. Life is pretty good.

Well, except for homework, an exam, and a big paper. Those are a bit less happy; also, the fact that I’ve made about zero headway into the BAP problem, anim3, and the app app are somewhat depressing. Also, I only have 2 REU’s left to hear back from: cross the fingers and sacrifice the pigs! It’s gonna be a couple nail-biting days/weeks.

So why haven’t I been updating? I like to think that the MCM has irrevocably killed my schedule, but it really ain’t that: life’s just catching up to me over and over again. It’s really annoying. I’ve had viral gastroenteritis (using the power of google, you too can self-diagnose when things go horribly wrong with yourself!), otherwise known as stomach flu, for the last few days, and that just killed my productivity on Wednesday. Shoopdoowap, so that just means I stay up for a night or two. I’m over it now, thought, so that’s one good thing.

Another good thing is the fact that we’ve finally cut our first aluminum reprap part. I finally found an extended period of time when one of the profs and I were both relatively free, and whacked out a z-axis bracket.  It is very rewarding, since I’ve been trying very hard to get to this moment for more than 2 weeks (maybe more like 4). First tutorial in the metal shop was enlightening. If I can help it, we’ll whack out parts at a faster rate. I might have to wake up earlier to do so consistently, which might be an very difficult thing to do. But nonetheless, an exciting moment in the history of UPS’s reprap project.

And one bad thing to wrap up the first half of my Friday: well, I’ve gotten my first D on a math test in a very long time, dare I say ever? Really, if I can’t do math, then I might as well get myself a lobotomy or something. The cloud cover is made of mile-thick lead while the sun is going supernova, I think is a very apt description of these things.

The MCM went alright. We better do well, or we’re gonna have a disowned team mate.

More later tonight.

Hi. The MCM starts in 2 days.

I have to finish a paper and a bunch of lab questions before then, and I want to do at least one run through with my talk on maglev trains (as well as hacking S5 to auto-advance ala ignite), run at least one reprap part into existence, find if we can do etching cheaply, start the E/M test, and talk to a prof about what sort of equation I should use in a feedback loop.

Whew.

So with all of this to do, I took 3.5 hours off and coded up a framework for a problem posed by my prof that could have been a potential summer research topic: looking at the bottleneck assignment problem, what’s the relationship of n and the probability distribution used to assign weights to the assignments? If you are terribly lost, and I manage to do some work on this after the MCM, then I’ll post an update. Point is, I’m code deprived or something, and I just finished something I thought would take me at least a week, which shows me just how good my estimation abilities are (off).

And updating wordpress isn’t such a lark: I gotta do backups? Hell, gotta wrap this stuff up into a script