Coming out to LA

I got to visit USC on Friday as a potential Masters student. It was kinda cool, a lot different than when I visited as a potential applying undergrad.

As readers of the backlog may know, I have no car. In case you're interested, I'd estimate about 1/3 of the students on campus have a car. So, I had to take the train. Luckily, we have a Metrolink station a few blocks away. And by a few blocks, 20 minute walking distance 5 minute bike ride (downhill). What's really neat is that it only took about 1 hour to get to LA Union station, and the round trip cost me $14. That's cheaper than the gas it would have taken. Plus, I didn't have to worry about traffic or driving myself, I just read my Philosophy of Science book instead. A pretty sweet deal if you ask me. USC also provides a nice tram to get to and from Union station, an extra perk.

The ride itself was also very interesting. In a row behind me a black gentleman was trying to figure out when he would arrive at one of the train stops so that a friend could pick him up. Suddenly, everyone around him was giving him maps and advice and even specific instructions on how his friend will have to drive to get to the stop. As he said, "I'm feelin' the love here." Turns out he's visiting LA to follow up on some job leads. He grew up in Chicago and lives in Florida now. What's interesting is he then started to ask how it's like to live in LA. One of the ladies spoke up and described that there's still quite a big of the gang issues and all that. In fact, she used to take drugs and had been cut up quite a few times. However, she eventually decided to quit and now has kids that have grown up and are starting their own families. There were also talk about the nasty traffic and the smog problem too.

It was weird in a way. I've lived in the suburbs near LA for all my life, yet I know so little about downtown LA. Sure I've heard about the gangs and all that, but it was an eye opener to have someone who had survived through that life talk about it as a personal experience instead of some statistic. Claremont has even less of these gang problems, although we often get all the smog that blows out of LA hanging in our air.

As far as the USC trip itself, it was interesting. I met a person from Boston (MIT) and another who was deciding between USC and Carnegie Mellon. I got to talk with the advisers and the staff there. I even managed to grab a student who gave me some advice. Unfortunately I didn't catch any professors since it was Friday and they were all off-campus.

The campus is the same as you would expect from USC. Really pretty outside, inside is kinda drab for the older buildings (especially where they stick their professors' offices) and there's some really olde stuff. I'm going to do a little more research on the kind of work they're doing and seeing if it's stuff I'd want to do. Apparently about 98% of the Masters students there just do their classes, get their Masters, and head out to a job. It's a 1.5 year, or 3 semester, path.

The other college I'm considering is UC Davis. Professor Bevan Baas is doing some really cool stuff up there. Hopefully I can get into his research group, and he seems willing to let me in. Plus, I can probably rent a room from Michael Braly.

That's all for now. I'm currently trying to slay Clinic as fast as I can, but it's gonna be tough. Not to mention this team is riddled with bad traits. For starters, I'm a lazy bum, tend to over think the problem too much, and yet miss the important detail. Yay! \o/

Community Comparisons

Still on break. HMC returns on Jan 19th. So that means one more week to fix all that Clinic stuff I still have to do. Gr....

Anyways, on to the topic of the day: communities. While a loose term, I'm going to reference it in regards to the supportive (or lack thereof) nature of people doing similar things.

Let's start with the DotA community. If you're unfamiliar, DotA stand for 'Defense of the Ancients' and is a WarCraft 3 Frozen Throne custom map. It is also perhaps the single most played WarCraft 3 map, with a huge community, patches, it shows up in competitive leagues, and basically tends to be a big deal. It is based around teams of players each controlling a hero. The goal is to push into the enemy base and kill their super structure, a tree or a throne. As the game progresses, the heroes level up, gain cool powers, and you can buy items to further augment your heroes. The core gameplay though is very micro dependent (fine control of your hero and its actions) as well as team coordination (acting as a team when fighting, allocating who does what, etc.). Team coordination in some ways trumps the micro aspect since 4 heroes attacking 1 hero should win, unless that 1 hero is ridiculously overpowered due to levels or items.

So, here's the crux of the matter. The DotA community is not very supportive of new players. In fact, there are times when people have actually told other players to leave because they were so bad at the game. There's also what are known as griefers, or people who intentionally do things to annoy others. Some of these actions might be intentionally dying to the other team to give them an advantage, or leaving a game in progress (no one new can join and now the team is down a hero). Why? Because people want to win, and DotA is very team dependent, so if you have a bad team people get frustrated. However, in the long run, there seems to be a problem. If you chastise all the new players and get rid of them, what happens? There is no influx of new players, old better players might eventually leave, and now you're stuck with no players. Of course, there's a few really stubborn players who keep playing, and there's definitely some helpful players out there, but in general the community is pretty hostile. Most new players only get better because they are trained by experienced players, usually friends who introduce them to the game. I actually started playing because we have a DotA game night each week at Mudd. I'm still pretty bad.

Now, the HMC community. I tend to cite this as the reason I decided on Harvey Mudd College, and it didn't disappoint. The very concept that it's a high performance school, but everyone lives on campus and the professors are there to teach make an uber combo. Plus there's other perks like the hands-on work and such. At the core, though, I'm a big fan of how supportive the community is. It's a place where if you have questions, someone is bound to know the answer and is willing to explain it to you. I managed to debug and learn about boot failures when my computer went bonkers right before finals week. I've had people explain crazy algorithms to me. I was just interviewing at JPL and explaining what I knew about a CS class that I hadn't taken, and the interviewer thought I had taken the class. I eventually told him that this was just from learning from the CS majors complaining about chunky string and that I didn't know how to fix the problem itself in detail. I've also spent many hours walking others through problems of their own, sometimes in sacrifice of meeting my own deadlines.

Now, it's not all flowers and rainbows. I've mentioned in others posts about the downsides of such a tight community such as if you do something stupid everyone finds out, or that if you're the jerk people end up not liking you can't be anonymous. But, overall, I enjoy the community of Harvey Mudd College. Plus, we have professors who participate in some of the randomest stuff, like dressing up as Santa so we can take pictures with him. Go Prof. Yong!

And now, for no good reason, a video.

The Intelligent Person's Folly

In Dungeons and Dragons, abbreviated D&D, there are six primary attributes. Strength, a measurement of physical power, Dexterity, a measurement of nimble actions and fingers, Constitution, a measure of endurance to pain and body, Intelligence, a measurement of knowledge, Wisdom, a measurement of perception and application, and Charisma, a measurement of physical beauty and nimbleness of the tongue.

D&D explains the difference between Intelligence (Int) and Wisdom (Wis) as the former being book smarts while the latter is street smarts. Also, having a lot of one doesn't necessarily include the other. The example would be an absent-minded professor for high Int and low Wis, or a perceptive idiot for low Int and high Wis. Intelligence is numbers, calculations, lore, and held knowledge in the character's mind. Wisdom is the application of faculties to perceive the world around you by hearing or sight or general insight. Of course, a synergy occurs if you have both since you can take in the situation and then apply your dazzling archives of knowledge to take advantage of it.

This brings us to a common folly about smart people. Being a student of Harvey Mudd would imply that one would have a high Int score. However, not all of them would have a high Wis score right? They should be bumbling morons that only have book smarts and no other smarts. That is where you'd be wrong. Harvey Mudd prides itself on trying to find and admitting "well-rounded" students. I know it's a trite buzz word, but bear with me. They look for smart students, but they need something else. For me, it was a mish mash of music (band), a bit of athletics (tennis and frisbee) and random other things. But in the end, the students aren't complete book junkies. Granted, I'm sure one of my friends being a data miner (especially about politics) doesn't strike people as being less geeky.

Now, for another folly. The folly that smart people have. It's the concept that you're smarter than others. While, this belief isn't necessarily bad, the implications aren't so nice. For one thing, this tends to make smart people think they're better than the not so smart people, which is not true. The biggest problem is that they think they can outsmart everyone. Some, if they were teased or slighted at younger ages for their intelligence, may even feel entitled to the ability to outsmart everyone else. Of course, this doesn't necessarily hold. For one thing, there is always someone smarter. Secondly, which smart are you measuring? Someone might simply be more clever, or accidentally come upon a better alternative.

I personally have had this folly, a kind of hubris that I should win. I recently bought two copies of Blokus, one for my family and one for the gaming club at HMC. It's a game where you try to place as many of your pieces on the board while preventing your opponents from placing their pieces. It's so simple that anyone can play, but a bit of strategy so there's depth. However, it's not so complex as say chess. Thus, there have been a few games where I think I have the winning solution, and if I played it right I would have won. Unfortunately, I screwed around, messed up, and ended up losing.

So, something to think about. What's your folly?

Politicks

The video is a little dated, but still so true.



Let me be up front. I happen to classify myself as a Conservative. I tend towards conservative social policies and some economic ones as well. But, I hope to stay fairly balanced in this particular post. Apologies in advance.

Let's think back a bit. Back to before I left school for the summer. Back when the primaries were still going strong, and Obama and McCain just started to pull ahead. I was eating at the Hoch and we were discussing the candidates, and most of us agreed that a contest between Obama and McCain would be fairly solid. On one side you've got the fresh face of change, on the other a conservative who isn't off his rocker.

Fast forward to the summer. Obama has the majority, McCain is off campaigning, and we start seeing the weak points in each candidate.

Now, we're in convention mode.

I am a firm believer that the most important class you can take and must understand is a good Economics and Civics course. Why? It's so you can understand the basic workings of economy and government and don't get cheated by fast talking dealers or 30 second soundbites from the news. My economic policy would be to raise taxes and pull down spending. Essentially, let's get rid of that stupid federal debt, or at least stop increasing it. As it stands, simply paying off the interest (i.e. minimum payments) on the debt takes up the largest chunk of our federal budget. Not only is this stifling other programs, but this is just paying off minimum payments. Any smart economist knows that paying minimum payments means you're going to be paying a whole lot more from the interest than the original principle amount. There's the whole compound interest problem, and the fact that it takes forever to pay off the debt. This is why credit card debt is such a huge problem in the US. Interesting fact, we've actually managed to, on average, be in personal debt as a nation, even with crediting our retirement funds. That's negative personal savings. Aren't we such a gluttonous people. Plus, our debt is being bought through bonds by foreign organizations. Not good.

But enough about generalities, let's rip these candidates a new one.

First, Obama. The easiest target is that he's young. He hasn't experienced a whole lot, and probably hasn't solidified what he believes in. Then again, this might be a virtue since he's not stuck in his ways yet and can change his mind based on new data and ideas. My personal concern is his voting record and his speech abilities. He has voted on several issues, and his record shows him to be the most liberal voter ever. He was the singular person voting against the Born Alive Protection Act in Illinois. It wasn't named the same thing, but it was essentially the same bill. Furthermore, there are several instances where he voted as merely present, or even better, he voted present then changed his vote after everyone had voted. Sounds a little sketchy to me.

As far as his speeches, he is perhaps the best orator the nation has seen in modern times when on a teleprompter. He has a great delivery, huge ideals, and the ability to whip his followers up and make them believe that the waters of the ocean will begin to recede at his command. When he's off the teleprompter, he keeps pausing and stuttering and throwing in lots of "um"s and sometimes plain out lies. Recently was the panel with Rick Warren, and let's be honest, Rick Warren is probably gunning for McCain but as far as moderators go he was solid, let the candidates speak, and gave simple concise questions. Yet the big Obama mess ups were his "above my pay grade" comment on deciding when a child gets full human rights, and his claim that he worked with McCain on the finance and ethics reform bills. He may have worked briefly on the ethics reform bill, but the finance reform bill was done and in law before Obama even was elected to the federal Senate. Now, all of my friends can attest to me flubbing up my wording quite often, but Obama really needs to get a handle on this chronic problem. I don't want the messiah, I just want a good President who can candidly tell me what he thinks. None this of trying to have both sides of the issue.

Last thing is the company he keeps. Reverend Wright, his grandmother, Bill Ayers (now convicted), and others that have basically not made Obama look good. As an added bonus, Obama then commences to disown them, or as the conservative radio talk people like to call, "throw them under the bus." I will concede that we can't know everything about all the company we keep, and I'm sure it's a little extra publicity since he's on our newspapers every day searching out all his brief encounters. However, some of them had to have shown signs. Reverend Wright is a very good example. Led a church for many, many years, and I'm sure that's not the first time he made interesting remarks. If anything, I'd hope he turned them down knowing Obama was part of his congregation.

On to McCain. He's old. Very old. Plus, he's not necessarily in the peak of health with the skin cancer and the swollen left cheek. On the other hand, you hope this means he has more experience and knows his way around the government and foreign affairs better, but it also probably means he's more set in his ways. Beyond that, he's a bit of an odd cookie. The reason we liked him a year ago was he was a moderate conservative, but had a pleasant liberal streak sometimes, especially on environmental policy. The problem is recently he's tried shifting right. Really, really right. There was a period where he was agreeing with Bush almost word for word, even while major advisers were saying otherwise. For example, they made statements about not even talking with hostile leaders, while their advisers wanted to at least give diplomacy a shot.

McCain is also a bit hawkish. He's a big military buff, and in a way that's good. A strong military is a powerful show of ability as well as a defender of the populace, plus it's usually what applies all our academic research into something more practical. However, when he made the comment about staying in Iraq for another 100 years, plenty of people were up in arms and with good reason. McCain is big on the military. He fights to win. Unfortunately, as it stand right now, most people don't want our military spread around the world. Getting tangled in too many conflicts is generally a bad idea. Just look at all the major wars in the past. Two front wars end badly. Heck, you could learn that from a simple strategy game.

McCain is also subject to being called the second Bush. We've been giving Bush a bad record for a variety of things, some warranted and some not, but the fact is most of us just don't like our President all that much. Big selling point is Iraq and the perceived trumped up charges on WMD production. Looking back, it is true the evidence was a little shaky, but on the other hand many people in the field still suspected Hussein since he broke his promises before. We also did find a little evidence that the program were ready to start up again, but not enough to really validate the claims. Then there's the slumping economy, which I personally blame on the stupid banks and lenders but oh well. But let's face it, Iraq is widening our debt, he's not the best on economic nor environmental policy, and his "either with or against us" attitude right after 9/11 was probably a bad idea concerning foreign relations. While I don't think McCain is quite as bad, you will have to suffer some classic conservative ideas such as businesses lift up everyone in the economy and growing economy is a good thing, sometimes no matter what cost. Which unfortunately recently has merely squashed the middle class, and prompted a nice recession. Then again, us middle class people always get slighted. Not rich enough to pay for stuff outright, but never poor enough to get much government support. Guess I gotta make it big to get out of here, or go broke trying.

McCain is also the "maverick." On some cases, this is a good thing. He reformed public financing, has been butchering earmarks, and generally is not afraid to go against the party. On the other hand, this makes him a little unpredictable, so you can't take what he says now as the truth. As I mentioned before, he swung way way right for a while. Thankfully he's a bit more sane now, and even had the guts to pull out quite the Vice President choice. He has been solid on a couple of main issues, for example abortion, so you can definitely line up or rail against some of his core ideals.

A minor note. Everyone keeps complaining about this recession. Economists will tell you it's part of the natural economic cycle and a requirement to help trim down the business sectors and make things more efficient again. We skipped our last two, one being around the dot com bubble bursting which was offset by a booming housing market. Not surprisingly, that formed a housing bubble which is currently deflating. So, recession is an OK thing, just as long as it's not a nose dive. Don't I sound like a horrible person, promoting rising unemployment and failing businesses?

Now here's something they're both weak on. Energy policy. On one hand, giving a bit of relief on energy costs would be nice. There's the Alaskan oil, offshore, shale, etc. Why not knock off the speculators a little with some drilling. Just the perceived promises of future supply can kick the prices around quite a bit. On the other hand, just because it's there doesn't mean we should use it. I'm impressed the American people finally got out of their cars for once instead of being the gas gluttons we usually are, and as a result the price of fuel dropped. Basic economics at work.

The truth is, we should move to less polluting and more renewable areas, like solar, wind, and so forth. Problem is solar only works where there's sun, and we only capture around 12% of the energy right now. Wind is OK, but they can be an eyesore and you need strong winds to make it worth it. Something that only happens in select regions. Nuclear is nice, but unfortunately the capital costs are huge, and there's the small matter of what to do with the bloody nuclear waste. Water generation is actually the best in efficiency, but setting up dams and getting the giant turbines are huge, not to mention the destruction of the riverbeds by the giant lake you form. The thing is that these potentially pollute less than continually burning gas and oil for power, not to mention we're taking advantage of the more natural forms of power available in nature.

I will be the first to admit that none of these sources of energy are perfect. None are the perfect panacea to our problem. Some are actually a little impractical, especially since energy harvesting systems and batteries aren't quite there yet. But that just means research needs to get on top of this issue. Many other nations are starting to catch up or even overtake the US in terms of research and academic abilities, and we need to step it up. For example, we're losing the biogenetic research to Asia. They house their scientists in the latest labs with huge amounts of funds and almost no restrictions. We lock them into academia with bureaucracy and them scrambling for fellowships and grant money. Nothing wrong with competition, but the spigot could be loosened a little.

So now we come to my problem. Who the heck do I vote for? Also, in case you didn't notice, I contradicted myself by saying the government should spend less, but then I advocate more research funding. In the end, there is no perfect answer. All the economically sound ones are unpopular with the general populace. How many like hearing that unemployment is a good thing? However, all the popular ones (like health care for all) are economic suicide, not to mention most major government projects to "help" the underprivileged have a bad habit of backfiring in some weird way. So, you do need to cut the candidates some slack because neither of the poles are going to work perfectly.

I personally happen to agree with McCain on more issues than Obama, and I simply don't think Obama is ready. He feels a little too tricky and changes his mind too readily. Maybe next time when he's solidified a little and shaved off his more radical ideas. Then again, I'm not enthralled with McCain and how some of his policies are flat out wrong. Not gonna be a great next four years either way.

Here's my wimpy advice. Stay away from the soundbites, from the sensational news, and take a look at the facts. Try to not listen to the current claims, they're propaganda to get your vote. Take a look at their past voting history, their decisions, and what they've done. As much as they swing around now, they'll return to their old ways. For better or for worse.

And even if you hate both of them, what can you do? It's still a two party system, and you might as well throw away your vote because Ron Paul is not gonna win.

Welcome to the 50th Percentile

or below.

Perhaps one of the most surprising and yet most obvious things about Mudd is that there's smart students here. The obvious factor is, well, quite obvious. It's bragged about, stories are written about it, and the statistics support it. The surprising part is what students do when they get here.

They think it's gonna be like High School.

You know. The place where you're the best of the best. Maybe valedictorian, top 10, National Honors, smartest person around, impressive and gawked over by teachers by your natural insight and talent. Plus, you've probably got some other talent, such as being involved in Band like I was, or art, or a sport, or taking over the student government. You were on top of the class. Maybe a little socially ostracized, but you were excelling nonetheless.

The problem is that everyone at Mudd was the same as you. They all were near the top of their class, they took advanced courses, they have special talents, and they're also here to prove their mettle before stepping out into the real world and dazzling it with their brilliance and awesomeness.

This presents you with some interesting circumstances. Best case, you're still the brightest in the class and breeze through your homework. Lucky you. For the rest, you're not on top of the grades, you're dreaming of As while you shoot for that B and sometimes settle for the C or even the D. You're not admonished with proposals to do extra work or to be on the team for the big project. Next best case is you've still got that special talent. You wow people with your guitar skills at parties or your ability to frag anyone on the net. You dazzle the halls with art or show the competition who's boss on the court.

But then again, maybe you're not. For perhaps the first time in your life, you have to be the average person. Or, even worse, you're the baseline, the minimum passing grade, the straggler.

The question is what to do?

I've mentioned before that you don't want to become the attention seeking jerk who annoys everyone, so here's some alternatives. Be content that you're the 50th percentile of the top 10% of the nation, and perhaps even the world. Improve yourself so you still shine in the areas you want, even if you're not the best. Diversify and pick up new things that interest you. Reach out to others. Do something. Do not sulk about not being the best around.

Personally, I'm somewhere just below the 50th percentile. The thing is I've never quite been on top. I was in low end of the top 10 of my class, but couldn't move up no matter how hard I tried. I never made first chair Flute in Band. In some ways, I always knew I wasn't gonna be on the top. Coming to Mudd solidified that idea. Now I live with Cs on my report card, and I'm OK with them. I've chosen some areas and hobbies that I enjoy, and have diversified my resume. For those who know me, they know I'm quite interested in games. I enjoy games for their novelty, the competition, the balancing, the strategy, and even the critique of games. Even though I almost never top the scoreboard. Perhaps more surprising is that I didn't play many video games before arriving at Mudd. I've also worked on my musicianship. I am still a far cry from my musical peers who can tear up the room with amazing ingenuity and skill. I've decided that I won't give in to failure, and will enjoy myself and do my best while I'm at Mudd.

It all boils down to this: don't sweat it. Yes, coming to Mudd is difficult. It will most likely challenge you. People have been scared away by this. Most people will break down and cry eventually during the course of their education at Mudd. There have been stories of people who had to be forced to come back to Mudd.

However, you are also coming to one of the most accepting community imaginable. You don't have to go out of your way to prove yourself the best. Just do your best and make sure to have some fun along the way. I'm sure you can find yourself a niche if you really wanted. Even if it's just being the person who hangs around the lounge too much.

Oh, and on a brighter note, the two people that I know of who were forced back to Mudd eventually found their place and graduated from Mudd, content and glad they came back.

Don't Panic (?)

While the witty Douglas Adams placed this little gem of wisdom on his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we have to ask ourselves why not?

We live in a time where there’s plenty to panic about. There are global items, like global warming and theories of peak oil and that California is long overdue for a giant earthquake that will eventually split us off from the rest of North America. There’s local stuff, like the fact that both Obama and McCain don’t seem to be all we thought they were, or the state of the economy and the housing bubble bursting. Then there’s personal stuff. You’re moving up in life, getting a job, moving out of the house, heading out to college. Face it, there are plenty of good reasons for why we might go running around the neighborhood grabbing dried and canned food and buying plenty of weapons and ammo and a shortwave radio.

Of course, we haven’t yet. Most of us believe that there’s no reason to go nuts. It’s either in the future so we’ll worry about it then, or we can handle it, or there’s nothing we can even do about it. After all, giant meteors crashing into Earth is a very real threat, but the probability of it happening is close to nil and there’s not much you can do if it does come along. Same with the Sun going supernova, although they expect we’ve still got a couple million years to go, and we should have intergalactic space travel by then.

But here’s a question. Should we panic more often? Or, conversely, should we never panic at all?

In the past, there was a famous theory that the population of humans would increase exponentially, and the food supply only linearly. Basic math indicates this would have caused a giant famine, and the only way we would survive would be by portions of the population dying by war, famine, or disease. Well, we’re still around. Why? It is because we’ve been able to increase the food supply to match the needs of our exponentially growing population and not because we’ve managed to kill each other off for that little bit of food. Ah the wonders of science.

Economists have often been called the scientists of doom. Inflation will not stop, and eventually things will spiral out of control as the inflation compounds upon more inflation. That is, at least according to classic economic thought. Mind you that’s a huge oversimplification, but we’re still alive. Sure the inflation rate is high, the dollar is getting weaker, and oil prices are higher than we’d like, but there hasn’t been a giant communist revolution nor have there been huge upheavals of the economic system. Well, unless you count those couple of stock market crashes.

One might argue that the only thing that fuels science, or any advancement in general, is fear, and to an extent a bit of panic. Or, to borrow another saying, necessity is the mother of invention. If there is a need, and someone cares enough, it can probably be fixed. Except if the need is faster than light travel (or some FTL drive) without the folding of the space time continuum. We’re pretty sure that’s impossible. Thus, it is sometimes a good idea, and even healthy to panic just a bit.

Let me give a more practical example. There’s a saying around Mudd that you should take your high school GPA, subtract 2 points, and then you have your new Harvey Mudd GPA. Probably you’re panicking about getting a 2.2 GPA average and how horrible that will look to the scholarships and graduate schools. So, what should you do? If you allow yourself to panic just a bit, perhaps you’ll work harder and exceed that prediction and maintain a 3.5 GPA instead.

On the flip side, there’s stuff you shouldn’t panic about. Meteors are a prime example. Even the Harvey Mudd GPA curse isn’t that big of a deal. After all, the average GPA is closer to about 3.2 at Mudd, and graduate schools are glad for Mudd not having grade inflation. It makes those grades have weight and they can understand much better your abilities just from a look at your GPA. They also understand that there have been less than 10 students who have graduated with a 4.0 in the history of Harvey Mudd College.

So, what am I getting at? Fundamentally, a little bit of panic and worry is healthy. It keeps you going and helps put stuff in perspective. There are things you should panic about, like the energy concerns or nuclear war or your checking balance. Then there’s stuff you can loosen up a little bit once you know all the facts. Trust me. Those headlines on the newspaper are just to sell pages. If you actually read the whole article, thing’s aren’t quite as bad as you may be led to believe. Especially with some of those more slanted papers. But I digress.

In closing, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

In moderation.

Thing I Wish Existed in Real Life

OK. I'm sorry. I claimed I would be giving updates regularly and epically failed yesterday. Will try to do better in the future.

To the topic of the day, stuff that is not in real life that I wish did exist. This is not a definitive list, and again probably has very little to do directly with Mudd.

Magic. In the most basic of definitions, this is pretty much anything that bends or breaks what we consider reality. For example, invisibility potions and being able to conjure up fireballs and all that kind of stuff. There's actually been some interesting pieces of work that consider what the world would be like if magic was the norm and you even went to college to learn about magic and elven history instead of thermodynamics and quantum physics. But yeah, that would be kinda cool. Of course, knowing me, I'll be the moron with little to no magical aptitude and have to make due buying wards and enchantments from the local shop.

A Soul/Spirit Analyzer. Maybe it's just me, but being able to analyze and detect qualities of the soul/spirit/spirit would be really cool. For example, you could do a scan and find out that your anger problem stems from a certain incident or preconceived notion, and then perhaps it would zap it or you could deal with it. Something similar to perhaps how in Psychonauts you go into people's brains and help sort out their issues. Maybe it's because I have too many issues myself or it's my self-improving nature.

Lightsabers. Seriously. Best weapon evar. Cuts anything except another lightsaber. Has this really cool hum. And it can deflect laser blasts. LAZERS! You just don't get any cooler than that.

Gundams. OK, I know they break physics since they're the biggest robot around and yet are the most agile, but the very concept of a giant battle machine with weapons and beam swords flying around and doing ninja-esque moves is pretty sweet. Space combat is also really fun since there's no natural "down" so in effect you have to watch in all 6 directions for enemies. Read Ender's Game for some interesting theories about Zero-G battles.

Zero-G generation. Zero-G chambers, directed zero point energy, lots and lots of magnets. It doesn't matter. Being able to float around and be weightless is pure awesome. Enough said.

Heads Up Display. Eventually the Cyber Warrior program will equip our soldiers with something like this. The idea is a HUD which provides useful information. Stuff like health status (heath bar?), quest log, overhead view of surrounding people, highlight useful objects, infrared overlays, and of course a reticle and ammo readout just in case those terrorist wanna bring us a traditional war in our home towns. Everyone suit up with your carbine rifles and shotguns, and the HUD will even help highlight enemies, allow team communication, and notify you friend from foe. Even just an automatic "quest log" to keep track of your to-do list would be sweet.

So, there you have it. Fun stuff that could be really cool to have around in real life.

Oh, and check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. You won't regret it.

Food Glorious Food

I’ll be trying to update about once every other week. At least until school starts. Or I run out of ideas. Whichever comes first. You can also use the RSS feed feature to check up for when I update.

One of the biggest concerns for most people is what you’re going to eat when you go away. First, let’s get something straight. Your mom and dad are no longer around. So, you’re not going to get your favorite lasagna dish or fresh soup or favorite sweet and sour pork chops. If you’re a regular on-the-town kind of junkie, well, feel free to run rampant in The Village or a quick trip down to any of the other food joints around.

As for the rest of us who prefer food that doesn’t come off a menu or waiting in a giant line for reservations, we have the dinning halls. You might still have to wait in line to get your food, but at least you’re not paying gas to drive out. Convenience is nice and sometime people shy away from going down to Pomona to eat because it’s too far. See how lazy you become when you get to college? OK, to be fair, it might also be because you don’t have time to spare due to that giant project that is due tomorrow, but usually it’s because we’re lazy.

The meal plan is a required part of your life at Harvey Mudd College with the exception being if you live in Sontag or a special Atwood suite, and are not a freshman. Basically you choose a number: 8, 12, or 16. Bigger number means you pay more. It also corresponds to how many meals you get per week and how many Flex dollars you get. Please note there is NO rollover, so on midnight between Saturday and Sunday your amount gets refilled. This leads to a phenomenon knows as “Flexing out” where you go down on Saturday night somewhere and check how much Flex you have left. Then you try to spend as much as you can. Be sure to get there at least before 11:30pm, or else the line might be long enough for you to not Flex out in time. Flex dollars are usable for a variety of things, including snacks, drinks, more meals at dining halls, muffins at the breakfast cart, chocolate on Scripps, etc.

Meals are used one per meal, and only up to one per meal. Since all meals in their eyes are created equal, breakfast costs less Flex than dinner but both are worth a single meal. So, if you plan on using Flex to supplement your meals, use it on earlier meals. The meals themselves are actually pretty good. They do have a tendency to be a little greasy or over flavored, like how their idea of Asian food is throw as much soy or teriyaki sauce at it as you possibly can, but it’s better than a lot of colleges. It’s also buffet style, which is a blessing and a curse. Be very wary of the Freshman 15 here. They also have a decent rotation of foods and a few staples that you can fall back on if nothing appeals to you. I have seen some people eat cereal for dinner. One of my friends eats nothing but white bread, chocolate chip cookies, bananas, milk, and vitamin supplements. I’m not sure why, but the guy isn’t diabetic yet. They have served stuff like hamburgers, pot roast, curry chicken, soup bread bowls, lasagna, gyros, Swedish meatballs and noodles, and turkey cutlet to name a few. Don’t worry if you miss a dish, it’ll be rotated back in eventually.

One of the coolest things is that the chefs have been given plenty of freedom. It’s become a familiar event when one of the chefs concocts something new, like a Mexican pizza or something, and offer it up alongside the usual fare. I strongly advise you try them at least once. Not only is it nice variety, but usually they make good stuff. Just goes to show they can cook and not just mass produce a recipe.

Now, Harvey Mudd has its dinning hall called Hoch-Shanahan, or the Hoch (pronounced like “hawk” in Mudd slang). However, we’re right across the street from Scripps College, which has its own dinning hall, and a few blocks from CMC with their own. And lucky us our meal plans work on all the Claremont College Campuses. So, if you’re tired of the hamburgers from the Hoch for lunch, enjoy a nice trip down to CMC and their giant sandwich bar. Pitzer is known for organic options. Pomona is more of what you’d expect in an older back East College. Mudd tends to be a bit more fast-food in nature. Plus, you can use your Flex at their shops as well. So, you can head down to Pomona and the Coop and buy stuff there as well as the stuff on Mudd at Jay’s Place. This actually creates something interesting, since they get money based on attendance. By spending your meals or Flex on another College, Mudd has to send part of your meal plan payment to them, and the same thing if an off-campus student spends their meals on Mudd. Thus, it’s an incentive to make good food that the students like to attract more students, thus earning them more money. Pretty cool, huh.

If you get off the meal plan or have access to a kitchen, there’s also your own cooking, which is very much subject to the chef’s abilities. Or you can get yourself a microwave and lots of Ramen, but I wouldn’t advise that. At least bring a rice cooker and some furikake, although that’s not too healthy either.

In short, you won’t starve here. Or if you start looking starved, we’ll track you down and force feed you.

Being a Real Engineer

Double feature today.

Now that I’ve been in a real job for a while, I can make a few statements about a job and how well Harvey Mudd prepares you for it. OK, it’s not a real job, it’s an internship, but I’m getting paid to do it.

First, a quick overview of my job. I’m an intern at CornerTurn. They’re a small company that broke off from a larger firm so that they could do engineering without all the bureaucratic methodology. They specialize in special application boards, although they’ll do a variety of tasks. One of their claims to fame is a special internet router designed for boats. People on their yachts want high speed broad band internet, but that requires a giant satellite dish. So, they designed a special router that can use multiple antennas and combine their signals into a single internet connection. This means that they can use a couple of small antenna, and treat it as a single Ethernet connection to your computer. Pretty neat, or at least I think so.

My particular job is to do whatever they want. This so far means that I’m working on three separate projects in parallel. First, I am building a printed circuit board for monitoring liquid levels in a storage tank. Second, building scripts for hashing data from a remote sensor that’s been acting up. And lastly, trying to understand and apply energy harvesting for another remote sensor.

The cool thing is I’ve actually been helpful. Not in the thanks for doing the grunt work helpful, but some of my ideas have actually found important results. Looking at the second project, I’ve been building MATLAB scripts to parse data that we get from a sensor. It’s supposed to find itself using GPS, and then report. The problem is that for some reason we’ve been having periods where there’s no GPS data in the database. So, I’ve been parsing NMEA protocol and console dumps trying to help track down the problem.

One of the things I did was to use what I’ve termed gap analysis, or plotting the duration of the time gap in the signals. I’ve recently learned that gap analysis is a term for something else, so probably delta analysis would have been better. This creates an interesting graph where these peaks show up, indicating a giant gap in the data stream. I’ve also created ways to compare these gaps in the NMEA packets the database makes with the attempts of the sensor to try and transmit a GPS fix, and to track throughput of packets. One key element we found was the sensor would try to transmit, but either it’s getting lost or the database drops them. It’s still unsolved, but hopefully we’re moving forward.

As far as Mudd getting us ready, I think the answer is they’re doing a good job. I have had to put my knowledge of energy and computer science into practice already. I’ve done some physics and mechanical applications. As a bonus, the theory has given me a really strong base. Sure I don’t know everything, but they can start explaining something and I’ve figured out what’s going on and what they want by the end of their explanation. Plus it’s not all spoon feeding, I’ve been working mostly on my own to figure out the energy harvesting, and that’s been quite the experience. It turns out that there are lots of options, not just solar cells. There happens to be vibration and heat as well, but those only seem to work well if there are strong driving forces. Not so great in the middle of nowhere, which just so happens to be where we want this sensor to be.

All in all, it’s been pretty good. I even get my own desk that’s getting filled with lots and lots of datasheets. That’s right, better get used to scouring datasheets people, they’ll be with you for many years to come.

It's the End of the World...

as we know it.



So, the year is coming to a close. That means registering for next year's classes, projects, and of course finals. I've currently knocked off 6 out of my 16.5 units semester. Wheee! Big Stems and High-Speed PCB Design to be exact.

So, I find it interesting that I'm probably a pessimist. It's not that I'm depressed or anything, it's just that for some reason I always think of what's the worst possible thing that could happen within reason. So, I don't worry about meteors hitting me. However, I do imagine myself clipping something with my handlebars on my bike, causing it to spin out and throw me onto the street. Of course, it hasn't happened yet, I imagine it every time I transition to the sidewalk (thus a strong bump) and then have to maneuver a moderately small space.

Anyways, this means I expect the worst. Works for strategy, basically expecting the best possible move your opponent could do. Works for dangerous situations, I'll be ready. Works for a lot of things.

Doesn't work so well in school.

Expecting to get low grades is one thing. Bombing a test is another. Getting a zero, that's a little out there. However, there's a serious problem. If I did the worst case, to prevent it I would have to work hard. Really really really hard. Attend all office hours, converse with at least two other people on answers, study at least 3 hours before a test. That's a lot of time, and to try and do that for all of my classes would be suicide. Then there's the moderate case. I've been getting about average with moderate work, I bet this will be average as well. Then there's that little voice in my head that knows I'm a pessimist, and tries to convince me that I'm just being pessimistic and that actually I'm doing better than I think I am. Which I promptly shut up, and get back to work.

The key is to set priorities. For example, this blog is NOT a super high priority. It's why I haven't posted in over a week. I've been busy. VLSI is pretty high priority. High-Speed PCB was a HUGE priority as the deadline for our final project rolled in and I wanted our stuff to get better, more accurate, more comprehensive. It's worth almost 40% of my grade after all, and I could use the points.

There's actually a saying that at Mudd, there are three things. There is good sleep, good grades, and a good social life. Pick two. While this is mostly true, the trick is to realize you get to pick two on a daily, or even maybe over five times a day. Tomorrow is a test, sacrifice social life to get more sleep and better grades. It's a giant party tonight, sack some sleep and maybe a little on your grades to get a boost in social life. It's this balancing act that is key at Mudd.

I mean, let's face it. You can't do everything. Especially at the Claremont Colleges in general, since each College is doing things every day. Plus, there just aren't enough hours in the day to hang out for 3 of them, eat for 1-2 of them, sleep for 8 of them, spend at least 1 of them on personal time, especially hygiene, while getting work done and attending classes. Granted, some people need more than 8 hours of sleep, and some can survive on less, and perhaps you feel a good healthy social life is more like 5 hours of social hanging out. Or you're a girl and washing your hair takes an hour all by itself.

The point being, if you don't have time management skills, you won't do well here or you'll get some fast.

But, what's the worst that could happen? You ITR (Inability to Re-register) and transfer somewhere else. If you got into Mudd, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of other colleges that will have you.

The question is, after coming to Mudd and seeing the awesomeness that is Mudd, will you have them?

Things I've Learned from Anime

First, I guess I should start off with an apology. The last couple of posts have been kinda haphazard. I tried my hardest not to make them rants, and yet the main point was kinda to rant, so it all was in pieces. I'll try to get things a bit more coherent.

Anyways. If you don't know what Anime is, it's a broad classification of romance, comedy, action, horror, philosophical, visionary, melodramatic, stupid, ridiculous, and insane things. In short, it's Japanese cartoons. Several have made their way to the US, including stuff like Pokemon, Naruto, and Spirited Away, but who could forget the stupidity that is Dragon Ball Z. Suffice to say that if you think all Anime is like that, you're sorely mistaken. It would be like trying to collect all American movies and categorize them as "American". The style varies from studio to studio, and since it's animated the content is a varied and limitless as the animation. Everything from realistic drama to giant battling mobile suits with beam swords, Anime's got you covered.

The key thing about Anime is often its themes and/or style. It is extremely distinctive form the American style, although The Avatar on Nickelodeon has done a very good job at imitating it. Also, a common trademark in more comical ones is the expressions are distilled into very specific things, like a single sweat drop to illustrate nervousness. Also, a common feature in many Anime is large eyes, since the Japanese culture has a fascination with eyes and their ability to convey emotion and character.

Enough with the background.

So, some fun things I've learned form Anime.
1) The protagonist will always have a secret past. This isn't completely true, but it's something people like to use as a plot device. Something about the history of the person will define something about the current period of their life that we're watching. Whether this is a latent superpower or an explanation of whey they react the way they do to certain situations, the past makes a difference. Of course, to counter this, a common theme is also being able to break away from the past and destiny in general and to be yourself.

2) Your body can take it. For example, Bleach seems to think the human body has about 3+ Liters of blood that you can lose, and still get up and use your super powered move to finish off the bad guy. Or, how about several instances where people undergo intensive training and eventually become super powered over the period of about 1 year or less. Note they never break a bone or anything during all of this. Weird.

3) When the going gets tough, be sure to have friends. Now here's a theme I can get behind. The support of friends is awesome. Period. Mudd takes advantage of this by often times forcing to rely on your peers for homework and projects. And usually people do a good job of helping each other. Anime sometimes takes this to a whole new level. Basically, if you beat up the protagonist's friend, suddenly they get all pumped up to defend their buddies. So, if you're a bad guy, remember to kill the main character first, then gloat, then kill the friends. Hurting friends will mean the main character will suddenly get a power boost as if they ate a Mentos or something and then commence to beat you down.

4) Family is important. Sometimes people get confused when Anime makes such a big deal about family. This applies to not only relationships, but also to family history. Often they have to deal with something that their father or predecessor has done. However, to the Japanese, family is extremely important. There's often even a sense of debt to your parents for raising you and caring for you. The extreme case is the family is more important than the self, a theme that crosses with honor of the family name. Relationships, especially broken ones, are often a key and central theme in many series. Finding a family is also important, whether it be comrades or blood relatives, the idea of a family unit being together is important.

5) Only teenagers can pilot giant mech suits. OK, make that angsty teenagers that are maladjusted. See Evangelion. On second thought, don't. You might not be prepared for the insanity of the series. This is more of a LOL point. Most likely this theme appears in certain genres since they are geared towards middle school to high school aged kids. And let's face it, the time of change during High School is perfect emotional fodder in general.

and finally 6) Serialization is a bad idea. Trying to continue a series for to long usually ends in fail as the makers try to keep topping themselves with more outrageous characters or abilities and situations. First season they stop a nuke? Well, next season let's have them stop an entire insurrection. Then the national army. Then... ALIENS! You get the idea. The good ideas may still pop up every now and then, but usually they become so sparse it's not worth it anymore. I guess the same rule applies to this blog. Eventually, I'm gonna run out of good ideas to talk about. Then I'll have to try and write some random gibberish, or only talk about current events. Merp. That would be sad. I'd become a reporter. And it's not like I live an exciting life with robots and ninjas and cute girls everywhere... wait... I do live a life with robots and ninjas around. Now I just gotta get myself a cute girlfriend. A girlfriend with a mysterious past that will unlock my latent superpowers.

Heh, that would be hilarious.

Christian on Campus

Again, a disclaimer. I don't claim to speak for Christians nor any other sect of religious affiliation. This is a personal opinion.

So, I happen to classify myself as a Christian. The way I look at this is not that I attend a Christian church, or that I believe in the Bible, or any of that. I mean, the above statements are true, it's just I personally feel that doesn't make you a Christian. Being a Christian is a way of life, not filling your head with a bunch of facts or simply being at a certain place at a certain time, as great as those things may be. Nope. Being a Christian involves realizing your own shortcomings, how utterly lousy you are, and putting your faith in something greater than you who cares and is willing to help you. Of course, there's more to it than that, but I don't want to plunge into a giant rant about being a Christian and all that. This is just to let you know where I'm coming from.

In a prior post I talked a little about differing opinions and such. This is extremely applicable and so I suggest you read it if you get confused, because I'm going to assume you've at least skimmed it.

Now, to the main topic.

First, realize that there are differing definitions of being a Christian. I've presented one of them. Also, people tend to classify Christians in different ways. I use the word "people" to include Christians themselves in the prior sentence. I'm sure you know about Catholicism and Protestants and all that jazz, but even on a finer grain there's variety. Showing up for church is what some people think is a necessary pre-requisite for being a Christian. Perhaps being good enough or doing good deads. Others feel you have to believe the entire Bible literally, some think it's more of a guideline manual. There's huge variety, even down to people who claim to be Christian but don't believe in the divinity of Jesus nor the resurrection. Personally, those people kinda confuse me. I mean, you think someone stole the body or something? Bug me with your theory and I'm pretty sure I have a rebuttal, I won't list all the various crazy theories I've been presented here. Seriously, Jesus just went into a deep sleep? There was a spear stuck in his chest for crying out loud.

Moving on, there's plenty of different ways to express your faith on campus. We do have an Intervarsity (IV) group here on the Claremont Colleges, and they are awesome. I kinda wish I'm able to attend more often, but homework keeps kicking me in the face. Of course, there's also several churches locally, and people with cars who might be able to get you there. And of course there's everyday stuff. I mean, we don't have Bible burnings and being an awesome person in general is never frowned upon.

Conflict of course arises when the extremists start being, well, extreme. For example, going around being the stereotypical "you're all going to hell" kind of Christian is a Bad Idea. Not only are you being a jerk, you're also making people less likely to view Christians in a favorable light, and probably pissing off other Christians as a result. Also, there have been times that Christianity in general has butted head with other groups. The issues of abortion and homosexuality are the big current ones, evolution to a lesser degree. Maybe I'll do a random rant some other time on one of them and what both sides have been arguing so people will stop getting one-sided information. I hate that kind of stuff. Back to the point, while the general Christianity, or at least whoever the media report about, may set some kind of platform, even withing Mudd you'll find people who agree and disagree with the general platform. Kinda fun. Lovely little microcosm. Hey, there's another idea for another post.

This beings me to the final point. A weird thing occurs when you profess to be something. You are now an example of what that label might be. I profess to be a Christian, so I can be a representation of what a Christian is. Others claim to be jerks, and we all know the connotation of that based on people we know who are labeled or label themselves as jerks. Some people avoid labels because of the connotations and that their actions may reflect badly on that label. Sometimes I don't want to call myself a Christian since it would tarnish what other Christian I know have worked hard on to give it a good name. Then again, it's an accountability system. I need to live up to what I say I am. And, as I mentioned above, I know how lame and lousy of a Christian I am, which is probably a good thing. Being a self-righteous Christian is usually a bad idea.

I imagine that all of these things apply to other groups as well. Just wanted to share some stuff form my side.

Your View, My View: a Survival Guide

I mentioned that I'm a Christian in my little intro. Just want to preface this by saying I don't speak for Christians, I wouldn't call myself a model Christian (then again, by definition a Christian should be someone who realizes they're flawed, but I'm getting off on a tangent there), and etc. all that legal stuff that gets me off the hook should I say something stupid.

Anyways, the main thing to note is 1) there are other Christians on campus and 2) there are people who are NOT Christian.

The first point in pretty obvious, as should the second.

The key is understanding what this means.

You'll recall in a previous post I talked about how small and tight knit the Mudd community can be. Everyone more or less can know everyone, or at the very least have heard about them or passed them on their way to class. I also talked about how you can't hide.

So, people have different views on life. For example, I'm not a fan of alcohol, whether it be underage or legal. If I was a jerk, this could lead to me shunning those who do drink, me ranting loudly about how alcohol is a social evil, and basically be a jackass. After all, there are those who do think alcohol is OK. Heck, there are those who think getting yourself drunk is a good stress reliever, albeit can cause hangovers. Never got why they still like it, even those who regularly get hangovers, but then again I don't drink.

So, I recognize others are different than me. Now, once you make this realization (if you haven't already) you need to choose what you do about this.

Mudd is a very small community, so being a jerk is not a good idea. In fact, it's a very good idea if you want to get shunned by everyone. Instead, usually people either agree to disagree or you accept the person and shun the crime (or habit, or sin, or whatever). So, bottom line, don't be a jerk. I guess this applies to lots of other things as well, but here it applies very rigorously.

Now that we've established what not to do, i.e. go around acting superior, let's look at some more reasonable courses of action.

I would personally recommend being a good friend. This entails accepting people of different views. I'm using the word accepting in a manner that does not force you to embrace or promote their views, just accept the person. After all, even with different views on certain topics, there's plenty of other topics that you should be able to find common ground. Like how expensive war can be. So, be a good friend, and make your view a positive influence in yourself and others. No body likes a jerk, but sometimes if people see something they like about you, they just might change over to your perspective. Plus, it's always good to have friends you can mess around with. Now, this doesn't mean you have to be the most outgoing get all the attention person, just be considerate and even being available to talk to can make a big difference.

Of course, with differing views inevitably comes discussion. Since there are many very intellectual people here, we often get into discussions about our different views. And this isn't random tossing around ideas, often people cite studies, personal experience, philosophical rants, etc. And it's not just about drinking, but also on the Problem of Evil, where a particular phrase came from, and of course politics and religion. So, if you have a certain view, there is a chance it will come into question. The key is that people here tend to argue on a very logical system. Leave a hole, and people will tend to find it. So, feel free to believe whatever you want, but the moment you step into a discussion, you'd better be prepared to defend yourself.

This, unfortunately, can lead to a problem. Since it's a small community, it can actually become a very strong priority to be accepted by others. This might mean hiding or burying your personal views in fear of them being picked apart by the heavyweight argument lawyers. Also, your view might be perfectly valid, but if you don't support your view, it can be extremely disheartening.

Trust me, I know. I've taken the minority side on a couple of issues. This tends to lead to me arguing against several others, each with their own wit and skill. On some topics we find mutual ground and agree to disagree, others seem to be extremely one-sided, and while losing an argument doesn't seem that big, it can be. Now only am I disheartened about what I used to believe was right (or maybe even still believe) but it sometimes feels like I've lost credibility. There goes that moron who took the losing side. I mean, it was obvious since we have twenty different statistics and studies to back up our side, and he tried to pull some random babble and maybe a rumor or two.

This is perhaps a very negative aspect of the small community. People feeling the need to hide their views because of fear they won't be accepted. However, as much as I personally feel defeated, I still have great relationships even with those I argue quite a bit. You see, the Mudd community is usually pretty good about accepting people, as crazy as we all might be. Sure there's been a few bruises, but overall I'd say the discussions have been positive. If anything, they've helped clarify my ideas, and actually fix some really bad old presumptions I'd had. Also, I've let other people know what I think, and maybe some people have even converted to some of my ideas. At the very least I've shown those with similar views that they're not alone. And finally, it can be a battleground where you can gain respect as someone who's thoroughly thought over their opinions and can acknowledge other people's views without putting them down.

So, what's the point in all of this. First, remember that there are those who see life differently than you. Second, I'd recommend not being a jerk about your beliefs. In fact, be as awesome and fun to be with person as possible. And lastly, be prepared to defend your ideas, because inevitably someone will question them.

And that's my little survival guide on how to deal with differing views at Mudd. Feel free to flame now.

The First Rule of Room Draw is....

You don't talk about Room Draw.

Unless you're in Room Draw. In which case, God help us all.

Now, you might be wondering why this is such a big deal. I mean, the idea is pretty simple. People get a random priority number, you pull a room and roommate, some special rules about special petitions and stuff. Seems like a simple enough procedure. They even help us out by providing white boards of the dorms so people can lay claim to a room and work things out.

You see, at Harvey Mudd, you're guaranteed housing all four (or five, but usually four) years that you attend. Wait, all four years? You mean it's not just freshmen and then they kick you out into the real world to find an apartment? Yes, about 98% of all students live on campus all their years at Harvey Mudd. So, it's literally one huge community. Walk down the hall and you'll pass by classmates' doors, and upperclassmen doors, and freshman doors, and your best friend's door, and you get the idea. Everyone lives on campus.

The upside to this is everyone can get to know each other. Homework help is just a door or dorm away. It's quite common to randomly pass someone's room and suck them into your dinner posse. So, pretty much one giant community.

The downside includes Room Draw.

Since everyone lives on campus, that means there's almost exactly the number of rooms as students. So, chances are that people won't get the room they want and have to take whatever is left. Also, since you know everyone, you don't want to be a jerk (Rule #1: Don't be a jackass) and mess up other people's plans for their happy little suite living with their friends, but at the same time you want a certain room so you can be with your friends and also happy about noise, traffic, accessibility to certain things like the lounge or stairs. Also, if you've ever done a group project, you know how much of a hassle it can be to get a group of four, five, or six to agree on anything. Now try getting a campus of 700 to agree on optimal rooming situations. Not happening.

This leads to certain interesting emergent organizations. For example, there are those who try to machine. This term refers to a massive large-scale organization of students who work with each other to ensure they as a group get what they want. South Dorm is famous for machining the entire dorm such that only Southies can live in their almost 100% single occupant room dorm. Typically, a dorm to some extent machines itself to try and get those who are part of the dorm community to get the best situations possible. Also, there are special suites that have been formed to ensure that a group of Sophomores can live in their desired dorm. Time Suck in East is an example of this, a suite that goes to selected Sophomores that sometimes is designed to keep Sophomores in the dorm. But, they also are selected so that they will put on events such as movies and parties for the dorm to enjoy, i.e. be a Time Suck and help relieve stress. These are typically a big issue, and heaven forbid you pull yourself into that suite because the entire dorm is expecting that suite to be their selected Sophomores.

This also leads to a lot of drama. I mentioned machining. What happens if you can't machine everyone in? I mean, there's a limited number of rooms, what if you have too many? Well, sometimes people get burned and machined out of the community. Back many years ago, this happened to a group of students, and they then formed Suite Vengeance in other dorms. Suite Betrayal spawned since there were too many trying to get into East a few years ago, so they voluntarily left for another dorm. Also, certain rooms are preferred over others. Singles, for example, are preferred over doubles. More privacy and less of your roommate, love them as much as you do, having their alarm go off while you're sleeping because they have a 8am class on the days you start at 11am. Trust me, you'll want those 3 extra hours of sleep. Sontag is a highly coveted dorm because it's the newest dorm on campus and has a kitchen in every suite. So, living there means you can get off the meal plan and cook for yourselves. Ironically, Sontag also has the smallest singles, but there is a high density of singles, and the doubles are HUGE. So, typically, Sontag is almost completely Seniors and Freshmen.

By the way, Freshman are distributed among all the dorms so there isn't a Freshman dorm at Harvey Mudd. All dorms are open to all classes and both genders, although you can petition for a single-sex suite and currently you cannot room in a double with a roommate of the opposite sex.

So, in the end, not everyone is happy. Plus, the whole random number thing tends to be weird and annoying, giving to some the grace and option of whatever room they want and forcing others to grovel and make deals just to ensure they have secured a room. For example, one of my friends hasn't gotten a number higher than 100 out of 170 for the past two years. There's random numbers for you.

Oh, and did I forget to mention there usually ends up being a wait list? Yup, there is always a few fewer rooms than students in Room Draw. Don't worry, though, because students go on leave of absences or study abroad, so it's an extremely good chance you'll have a room during the year. It just can be very uncomfortable not having a spot locked down in the dorm and with the friends you want. But, you will have a room.

Thus, Room Draw can be a pain. A necessary pain, but still a major pain with lots of planning, drama, reconciling, loss of sleep, nerves, the whole bit. And since it leaves a bitter taste in some mouths, plus the fact that some of the machine fanatics would never sleep during the rest of the year, it's a rule that you DON'T TALK ABOUT ROOM DRAW.

You've been warned.

By the way, numbers for Room Draw came out last week, so room Draw has begun its terrible reign over the campus. Pray for us, and our souls should we not make it.

It's a Small World After All

Preface: if the pictures are too big or whatever, I'll try harder next time.

Harvey Mudd is classified as a small college. 700 Students. This means that you can potentially know everyone, and potentially everyone knows you. Of course, you can subvert the system by never leaving your room, but then usually your dorm/suite mates takes notice and try to contact, foiling your plot of anonymity.

Anyways, the advantage is you know everyone. One big giant happy family where it's familiar faces all around and since everyone lives on campus (OK, about 98% do all four years. We're guaranteed on-campus housing for all 4 years) you can walk down the hall and bug people about homework, life, or making a group to split a bill down at a restaurant down the street.

The disadvantage is you know everyone. Do something stupid, people will likely find out. Don't even try 6 degrees of separation, try 2, or maybe even 3 if you're a hermit, to everyone. And that's ignoring the lame degree of went to the same college, I'm talking about direct friendships / usual contact whether it be your groupie circle or through classes. So, if you want to slide with a B- and miss weeks of class, you'll have to try really hard. Some professors shoot their students e-mails asking where they've been if they miss class, and usually offering them homework and telling them to grab notes off someone.

Anyways, here's some pictures to illustrate:


My E80 group from Sophomore year. Well, you can't see Kacy's face, but you can see her hair at the bottom of the picture. Engineering Major here likes to do lots of team building, so often you do team projects. Like the whole class building a 6502 processor in VLSI. Yeah, trying to communicate between 14 students gets kinda hard.


People wanted to vacuum the lounge, so sofas got moved outside. It was also a nice sunny day and good breeze so very low smog in the air. The result? Outdoor lounge.


This is Jenny aka Alaska (because she lives in Alaska, duh). She's making LOL with her hands and face. What'd you expect? We're nerds. Although we're not all that crazy all the time. OK, so maybe we have a distribution of weirdness. The majority of students could blend in with the real world if they tried. We just enjoy being ourselves and messing around when we get the chance. And it doesn't matter how weird you are, you can always find someone weirder, so feel free to be crazy if you want.


People decided they needed to stack people on a couch. For some reason, not sure if it was intentional, the girls were on top. Yes, there are girls at this school. Freshman class had a whopping 42% females. Overall it's about 35% female for all the classes combined.

Unfortunately, Picasa is having issues publishing more pics, just like Skye, so I'll be back later with more. Maybe.

Slang/Jargon you Might Hear

Here's some terms you might see pop up in the blogs or hear if you visit the campus. While not canonical definitions, they should help give you a good idea of the general meaning of the word/phrase.

5^th year – a student who is taking a 9^th semester at Mudd due to scheduling

AC – pronounced “ack”, short for Academic Computing (computer lab) or Academics, usually referring to the academic end of campus as opposed to the dorm/residential end

Bio – Biology

Clinic – The act of the College outsourcing it undergrad students to a company who pays for the students to fix something for them. Often considered a timesuck due to high levels of involvement. Required to be done by CS and Engineering Majors in order to graduate.

Crack – anything addictive. Usually associated with a game, for example World of Warcraft or Civilization 4.

CS – Computer Science

DOS – Dean of Students, includes several students who help organize random events about once a week, things like a trip to Mt. Baldy or showings of movies on the giant inflatable screen with themed snack or bed races

Flame war – an argument often carried out on e-mail lists or a forum between two or more parties, often but no necessarily including personal attacks, ad hominems, and/or continuing longer than anyone not involved cares. Usually, but not required, it starts out as a civil argument.

Graduate – the goal of most Mudders to do. Afterwards they disappear into the Real World, sometimes reappearing with tales of how easy life out there is yet wishing they were still here to hang out with us.

Graduate Student – these don't exist at Mudd

Honor Code – Rule #1: Don't be a jackass. Created under the assumption that if given the choice, people will do what is right. Covers both academic and social responsibilities and fosters a strong mutual trust and sense of community between students, staff, and faculty.

Hygiene – Something many people maintain, but there are those who don't upkeep it as much as others would like. Degradation of this stat is usually from the Sleep dep status effect.

LAC – Linde Activity Center, contains lots of cool stuff including fitness center, computer lab, ping pong table, and a printer. Also the hub for intramural sports and Dean of Students (DOS)

Nerd – what everyone has at least a little bit of inside them

Northie, Eastie, Westie, Southie – Student who identifies with North, East, West or South Dorm respectively. These dorms are not positioned according to the cardinal directions, South is the north most dorm and north of West and west of North.

Mudder – a student who is currently or previously enrolled in Mudd and is associated with Harvey Mudd College.

Prank – a humorous setup organized and executed to be relatively harmless but humorous for both parties involved, the prankster(s) and the prankee(s). Must be reversible within 24Hrs and you must leave contact information. Can be on a No Prank List to pranks in general or specific pranks from being performed, but you can not do any such pranks to others.

Prefrosh – a prospective student who is not currently enrolled in Harvey Mudd but potentially wishes to in the future. Sometimes visiting from the Real World to observe or even stay the night.

Proctor – not be be confused with a Resident Assistant (RA) at other institutes, the Proctor(s) of each dorm are there to help keep the students safe, provide emotional counseling, and look out for the well being of the members of the community. They also have keys to let you into your room if you locked yourself out and are required to host a number of events for the dorm.

Prof – short for Professor, as in Prof Yong or Prof Ran. Teachers of classes, people with office hours so you can talk about homework, your best friends and worst enemies, especially when they give out tests.

Real World, the – a mythical land out there where people have jobs, earn money (usually), and are much less sleep depped.

Sleep dep – short for sleep deprived, often a result of homework, projects, all-nighters, waking up early for class, or messing around instead of sleeping.

Timesuck – A sophomore suite in East or anything that takes up a lot of time, such as Clinic.

Wank – An action. To complain.

The Observer

One trait that I really pride myself on, and I don't have that many, is the ability to observe.

Now, anyone can see. Anyone can hear. Anyone can perceive. The trick is first to do it, and secondly what you do with it.

I mean, how often do you observe your surroundings? What's the shape of the lights in your room? What was the last three people you were talking with wearing? How many windows are in the room where you work (if you live in a cubicle, it would be the number on of windows in the room where the cubicles are). Honestly, I usually don't know the answers to these question either, but that just goes to show how little we observe and log in our memory.

What I usually observe is myself. Constantly re-thinking what I said, what I did, the decision I made. I also enjoy observing interpersonal dynamics. Sounds weird, but observing the little quirks that show the situation between two persons is very interesting.

Now, what to do with it. With info on myself, I try to better myself. Maybe I'll log away that one liner for later. Perhaps I should start that homework earlier. I really should've handled that differently. Stuff like that. Self improvement is really important, in my opinion. Also, when I observe other situations, I can ask myself, what would I do in that situation? What can I gain from this experience?

Now, the weird part is when I do this for random things. For example, when I watch movies with fight scenes, I usually like to pick apart the fighting styles and try them out later. Except of course I can't to some things like Matrix-style jumps and stuff, but more times than not you can pick up a thing or two from the fight. When I watch Anime, I sometimes like to pick up Japanese phrases or perhaps think about the character development. Also, you can always ask yourself, what's the purpose of this? What was the maker trying to convey? What am I taking away from this? Do I actually even emphasize with these people, or is it just raw enjoyment? Also, that was a cool shot, I should remember that next time I film and edit movies. Stuff like that.

Now, for something even weirder. I also like to observe motion of people as they commute. Dynamics of people getting out of the way for bikes, pedestrians, etc. I mean, it's a fun physics problem if you wanna look at it that way, but I also use it so I can get to class extra fast.

See? Useful. I swear I'm not weird.