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| On a Midsummer's Eve - Pt.II |
| Wed July 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 AM PDT |
|
So where was I? Oh yeah. CodewiseBlog eating my posts. Yeah, it choked when I entered the HTML entity for 1/2, posted, edited it, and saved. Everything past the half was cut off. No idea why. There's like 4 layers of input filtering in there and I admit, it's a mess. I'm working on it. No wait, where was I really? IE 342. Probability and Statistics for Engineers. Dag, it's a godawfully boring subject - trivial stuff that any middle-schooler should know. But there's a bright side: story time with Uncle Yarin. Prof. Yarin gets two and a half hours twice a week to lecture on this subject. If he actually did that, It'd be a lunchtime siesta for me every time. But instead, what he spends most of the time on are these digressions that have little or nothing to do with the subject matter, and they're often highly amusing and/or thought provoking. For example, last week he started talking about how the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Boltzmann's Law seem to suggest that there is something very large and significant outside the boundaries of the Universe that we aren't seeing. (I think he's misapplying the Boltzmann Law, but he is a professor of mechanical engineering, so he should know better, so I'll go with him on this one.) And today, Prof. Yarin calculated the probability of the air molecules on the left side of the room all spontaneously moving to the right side of the room and asphyxiating everyone on the left side. Long story short, while it is possible, the time it would take for that event to become probable is greater than the amount of time the Universe has been in existence for. But then that somehow segued into a discussion about the storied history of nuclear energy and the Manhattan Project, and about how uranium centrifuging works. So every class period, I write maybe one or two pages of notes, and the rest of it is spent listening to and sometimes chuckling at the professor. But I stay awake! Overall: good class. There's more to tell, but it'll have to wait for another post. _WRF. |
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| On a Midsummer's Eve |
| Tue July 1st, 2008 at 8:16 PM PDT |
|
... I write this update. So what's happening? On the legal front: the DA gave me the option of locking up William Washington for 100 days or having him pay me restitution for the damage to my car (two hundred bucks). Naturally, having another guy in jail does me no good, so I chose the latter. They told me to come back next week and I'd get my check. Yay. "Next week" was this morning, and surprise surprise, the asshole's not there. Judge issues a warrant for his arrest, and another two hours of my life are pissed away. Later I get a call from the DA on my cell phone (interesting side-note: their phone number shows up as simply "773", a local area code), saying that he came in later that day, was taken into custody, and I can come in next week, AGAIN, and get my money. Great. Can I surcharge him for all the wasted gas and missed class time? Make it more expensive to stay out of jail every time he pulls this crap. If he again doesn't show up can the court pay me out of his bail money and lock the shitbag up finally? All he's doing is making it a pain in the ass for me, because if at any time I don't show up to these court hearings, he gets let go. Massive inconvenience for me, thrice over: getting my car vandalized, paying for repairs, and lasting hours in the Cook County Circuis Court. I only get the second one back. Good game, really. Good game, Mr. Washington. >:/ And ah yes, classes. MCS/CS 401 ("Introduction to Algorithms") and IE 342 ("Probability and Statistics for Engineers"). Every weekday, from 10am to 11:40am (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) or 12:30pm (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Anndddd... I had a lot longer of an update but CodewiseBlog ate it and I have nobody to blame but myself. Awesome. Maybe I'll re-type it later once I fix this bug. _WRF |
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| Shoutbox |
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Anonymous:
lonely shoutbox :( Mon April 7th, 2008 at 5:09 PM PDT |
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Anonymous:
hello Mon April 7th, 2008 at 5:12 PM PDT |
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Anonymous:
o hai Mon April 28th, 2008 at 12:31 PM PDT |
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CHIZUBAGA:
I CAN HAZ CHIZUBAGA!!!!!!! Wed January 20th, 2010 at 12:58 PM PST |
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Not Jeremy:
o hai remember when i threw hot sauz in yer eye. lulz Thu January 28th, 2010 at 11:28 AM PST |
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JEREMY:
MOAR NAPKINS DURR HURR Thu February 11th, 2010 at 9:33 AM PST |
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Shoutbox:
I wuz on a DAtZ.. haffing chizubaga!! Om nom nom nom!! Wed May 26th, 2010 at 1:04 PM PDT |
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Totally not anyone you know:
Problem? Thu June 3rd, 2010 at 2:09 PM PDT |
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Random Randomstein:
Shitpickle. Fri June 11th, 2010 at 6:04 PM PDT |
