Day 2

German 3: There isn't much to report about this class. It looks like a pretty standard language class. The syllabus is online. The one surprise is that the class is enormous. My German 2 class had less than 10 people. this class may well have more than 20. I think that this is because there is only one section of german 3 (as opposed to 2 of german 2). Maybe they counted on more people doing the LSA, which takes care of german 3. The only other thing of interest is that prof Drysdale (CS undergraduate advisor) attended class.

Computer Science 23: The website has a lot of information including a roster with pictures. The prof seems a little odd (but then again, who in cs isn't?) and the class seems to be half engineering and half cs majors. It is a required class for cs majors, and it seems to be a weeding out class; the prof boasted that the last time he taught the class, half of the students had dropped it before the second lecture (to become econ majors, he suggested). This is understandable; there are no classes for the last half of the term -- you work on a group project instead. However, it doesn't seem that he really teaches the first half either, so much as just answer questions (often with questions). He demonstrated this method today. Because of this, most learning supposedly happens in the computer lab where TAs and other students work together. The method sounds interesting, but it may also mean that I'll live in the lab for the next 10 weeks (we filled out paperwork to have our ID cards open the lab 24/7). I think that I might not be in such trouble because I have more Java and C programming experience than others would have gained from 2 quarters in CS, but I also haven't programmed much in a while. Our first project is due next Wednesday, i'll see how it goes.

Delay

Due to an accident that has put my laptop in the shop, more details on my random number generator and wireless access along the route of Amtrak's Vermonter will not be published yet. Stay tuned.

Day 1 -- Theater 7: the Art of the Manifesto

Let me first say that theater people scare me. Not that they're threatening, but just weird and seemingly different from me (some may argue that the two are really the same, that would make them weird too). At robotics we viewed the hallway separating the shop area from the theater area as a sort of red state/blue state dividing line or North/South Korean DMZ. However, I do need an art credit and to take a freshman seminar, and the description didn't sound too bad. So, I set of in time for the 10-11:50 class, and, after several minutes of searching the alien Wilson Hall, I found the room. The class is being co-taughby two grad students from yale who are friends. The teacher listed in the description is "very pregnant" and thus won't be able to be around for the whole course. The class looks to be about half "theater people" and the rest social sciences people (at the moment I'm still a hard science person). But that didn't phase me; something else did. It turns out that about half of the manifestos we will be looking at will be art (painting, theater, film, etc.) related and few political related (I don't consider "free the animals" truly political, but we do spend a week since one prof likes the idea). Such surprises seem to abound in humanities course; Cena (girl on the hall who just mended a damaged pair of my pants) took a history class supposedly about american history from 1870 something onward. However, it turned out to be about race relations from 1870 something onward. Such are the arts? Our topics, which we will spend a week each on are: Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, Film, Feminism, Gay Liberation, Race and Ethnicity, Anarchy, and Animal Rights. Still, I'm not fearing this class... yet. It could still be ok. Ask me in two weeks.

It turns out that the median grades for my english and physics classes both 'A-'s. No word on German (there is a blank in the median grade spot). So, another average term.

The world's first handheld electronic random number generator. No more messy and possibly biased dice or coins. Useful for consumers who have trouble making choices. More information to come. Also, look forward to a report on wireless access along the route of the Vermonter.