foolish_m0rtal | Entries tagged with engineering school

This just in: I have officially graduated with my Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Virginia engineering school. Phew! Sadly, this may be one of the last times I use my 'engineering school' and 'college' tags in a post, which is sort of bittersweet.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Our technical project team was done for the year earlier this week, so we all went out drinking. I woke up the next day at 8AM with a spectacular hangover and had to go participate in a 4 hour research study for a grad student in the systems engineering and information department.

I hadn't eaten breakfast beforehand and didn't have time to pick it up, so I asked if I could have one of the free bags of Doritos for breakfast and started eating them. The proctor was unimpressed/horrified and tried to dissuade me from doing this, but I kept repeating things like, "I'm a coder. I've eaten worse," which is sort of true. I think the worst breakfast I've had is three ibuprofens and a can of Red Bull.

So I built them a sensor network that used a weight sensor and some C# code to tell the time someone took a newspaper from the dispenser and how many newspapers they took. I got paid $100 for the study, so it was worth it, I guess.

Then I went home and realised all I had in my fridge was beer, yoghurt, half a pie, and milk for tea. None of this was lunch, and I gave no fucks and ate the pie.

Okay, so this is driving me crazy. There was a AE Inception fic that had Eames as the host of a television cooking show, and Arthur and Ariadne were fans who watched his show and went to one of his book signings. And I remember one of Eames's tv episodes featured him showing his viewers how to use various parts of a pig when cooking food. Of course this entailed him going to a local slaughterhouse and taking off his shirt so that he wouldn't get bloodstains on it, because Eames is shameless. For the life of me, I cannot remember the fic, and believe me, I have Googled every variation of "inception + fic + eames + cooking show"

So my harddrive crashed yesterday. This was not surprising. I'd been taking care of my suspiciously slow computer for a few days like it was a drunk friend from out of town, so I had piled it on top of frozen vegetables wrapped in dish towels and done a Restore Point so that I could pull all my files off. Still took forever, and I was up till like 4AM. Grumble grumble.

Unfortunately, engineering requires a great deal of proprietary software that I don't currently have on my loaner laptop, so I basically have to go into the labs to work, which is not cool, as I have a major homework due this week for Dark Arts. I am under a lot of frustration and work and sadfeels at the moment, so if anyone has any fic recs they would like to put forward, I would love to have something to come home and read at the end of a long and tiresome day.

That awkward moment when you walk out of the lab with wet-gel electrode leads still stuck to your arms and don't notice it till your friends point it out.

(First day of class, professor doesn't come in wearing wizard robes like his predecessors. However:)
Professor: Let's talk about malware. Mal from the Latin for bad. Anyone who watches Firefly knows that.

Student 1: Why would anyone ever write a virus?
Student 2: They're chaotic evil.
Professor: Well you know, some people...
Student 3: JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN.

Professor: I will be away in California next class. Just in case you think this means you can go out and party from 10-11AM, you have a reading assignment due.
Student 1: Can we use the time to present the reading in the style of slam poetry.
Professor: ASKAKSKLLS YES, I WILL SKYPE WITH YOU GUYS.
Student 2: It's going to be 7AM in California.
Professor: I WILL BE AWAKE.

Professor: "All right, so you guys have 2 hours to complete this final...wait, why is there a pegasus in the back of the room?"
Student: (holding a statue of a pegasus) "It's our patronus."

My professor was frustrated that our university's March Madness game was during class, and he wondered if the university would let him show it on the big screen in the auditorium (it's CS 1110, so there are a million people in the class) while he was teaching class. Apparently he decided it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Current Mood: amused

UGH. We had our Defence Against the Dark Arts exam today. For those of you who don't know, our computer science department is amazing, and this is the name they gave our malware/cybersecurity class.

This exam was like taking a 3 hour exam in 50 minutes. It was just like...I mean, there are sections of the study guide THAT I WROTE UP that were on the test, and I still don't remember them, so I don't know what hope other people have. There were some questions where people just answered with "Really? REALLY? This?" and didn't even bother trying. Still it could have been worse.

Afterwards, a bunch of us from the exam went out to brunch and got drunk off mimosas. Aaaand my psych evaluation appointment is in an hour, so we'll see how that goes. I should be sober by then. Keyword: should.

Okay, I had to write this paper for my Science, Technology, and Society class (a writing class for engineers), and I'm actually kind of proud of it. It investigates approaches to software development against a book we had to read called Shop Class As Soulcraft that addresses the state and history of craft or trade vocations such as mechanics. I don't usually post college work up here, but whatever. It's really as much for my records as anything.

( What Can Computer Scientists Learn From Mechanics? )

My professor for Web Development and Mobile Computing was talking about different types of software today. These are the highlights.

About Wal-mart marketing: "How do they make those damn smiley faces dance?"

About UPS: "UPS's business model is to move crap from one place to another."

About Wachovia: "I used to work at Wachovia. The security in the main building in Winston, Salem called it the phallus palace."

About SIS (internal school software): "They didn't build that from scratch. They Frankenstein-ed that fucking getter."

My Operating Systems professor is a very matter-of-fact humourless Asian man who has no brain to mouth filter, so everything he says is automatically hilarious. Try to say any of these quotes with a straight face. Go on, try.

About semaphores: "Maybe they don't like the Dutch. P and V, what is that? I don't care."
"These days, if anything goes wrong, we can just blame our genes."
"Some of you say the material is a little dry. Well, most operating systems concepts are dry. I'm trying to make it more interesting, but there's a limit."
About time-outs: "Sharing resources is like using the bathroom. Only one person can use the bathroom at a time. What if he stays in there and doesn't come out? You can get someone to go under the door and drag him out. (beat) This works in software, not advisable in bathrooms."
"I received an anonymous feedback asking me not to call on them during class. Please send me an email."
About messages: "It doesn't matter what language you write in: Greek, Arabic, Korean. The postman only needs an address on the envelope. Actually these days, if you write in Arabic, the post office might be interested in the contents of your letter..."
About message sender IDs: "You can ask, 'Who are you?' And they'll say, President Obama. And then you can say, 'No, you're lying!'"
"What is the most important resource? The CPU. It is the numero uno. I speak some Spanish."
"One scheduling goal is fairness. Try to minimize the number of angry emails."
About Shortest Time to Completion First (STCF): "You can ask the process when it will finish. But I can say, oh, one millisecond and run for hours. So end the process at whatever time it gives you. You lie, you die."
(About our T.A Ben): "You need to talk to the Ben."
(About finals) For the next two weeks, keep washing your hands and don't get cold. You can't afford to be lying down.

Too Much Milk problem:

"So you go to class, you're in class all day. You're thirsty. The classes are all so boring, it's fourth year in the engineering school, and all you want to do is go home. (finally getting to the point) So you want a nice cold glass of milk."
Too Much Milk cont, about thread time-out: "So this time, it's your roommate's job to get the milk. You wait and wait. She doesn't come back. She's gone to Florida. You are standing in front of the fridge, so thirsty, saying, 'Come back.'" (beat) "I am not trying to make this romantic."

Dining Philosopher's Problem

Prof: "What do philosophers eat?"
Student: "Wine."
Prof: *cracks the first grin I have ever seen*
"Are the philosophers worried about communicable diseases?"
"Are the philosophers are tired of meat? Do they want another food? Maybe they don't want to share chopsticks." (class is taking notes) "That was a joke."
"Maybe some of you are thinking the world would be better off without philosophers."
Student, describing solution to deadlock: "What if the philosophers wait till one philosopher dies, and then they take his chopsticks?"
Professor: "That is not humanitarian."
"Drinking Philosopher's Problem. That's messier."

I'm missing all the coverage of the Bin Laden news because I'm in the basement of the CS Building working on software with my group members. I have been here for five hours now, and god knows when I'll leave. AUGH. At least there's cheap Chinese food and beer.

EDIT: SWEET, it's 3:10AM, and I'm back home. The night is still young-- back to coding!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: basement of Olsson

YOU CANNOT DENY THE SIERPINSKI

I...think I'm going to Tokyo, dudes!

Attached email:

The Engineering School has a newly established research exchange program
with the Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo. This program will place UVA
undergrad engineering students in research internships at SIT during the summer
(for approx. 8 weeks), and SIT students in UVA labs for a similar time period during
Feb-Mar. We are expecting to send the first two students on this program to SIT this
summer; they are Mr. || |||| and Ms. ||||||| |||||||||||||||||||| <------that's meeeee!

^0^ I have finally finished and submitted my code for my C++ class. After three all nighters, a steady diet of only crackers and coffee, skipping class, choir, and literary debate meeting, smelling a little ripe at the end of the week, wearing the same pile of clothes all week, and then 6 hours in the Stacks (engineering computer lab/workspace- I've heard people sleep there sometimes?) I'm FINALLY finished.

DAMN YOU, Computer Science! You're lucky I love you!

And perhaps as a sign from God, we're supposed to have upwards of 20 inches of snow tomorrow, so the University has closed- yes, you heard right- CLOSED for one of the first times in years, only the SECOND time they've ever closed for snow.

So now I can do all my other work for my other classes/sleep like the dead /eat at least two out of three meals/clean my room tomorrow. I may include pictures of our outside since we live in the pretty wooded part of the college. (I still haven't posted the ones from our 12 inch snow fall from last time. Why are we getting so much snow all of a sudden?)

I can't believe this is only the third week of class. T_T It seems so long. I used to cry sometimes in nerd school back in the day, but nowadays I'm usually too tired or busy to cry, and I think complaining or crying is just a waste of time and energy I could be using to rectify/endure the situation.

Aaand I just totally compulsively hit C-x C-s at the end of this. (XEmacs keyboard shortcuts- we have to code everything in Linux/Unix) This is a signal I need to go to sleep.

P.S. You guys like my new icon? It's Thessaly from Sandman! She has her own comic and everything!

Current Mood: exhausted

Religion and Wine: A Cultural History of Wine Drinking in the United States
By Robert C. Fuller

Okay, what I think about this thing so far:

1) Nice book cover, designer man! Trendy, yet comfortably elegant. It kind of looks like the dummy covers they put on books that will eventually have another cover on top. But I've always liked those. Nice. Very nice.

2) A statement in the introduction really annoyed me. It basically said "This is the first book of its kind in the United States, so all you social scientists and religious experts should read this." Over-confident much? Just because it's the first of its kind doesn't mean it's GOOD. (Just look at Duchamp's Fountain.Not that I'm disrespecting Dada- Hannah Hoch is totally awesome) I don't believe you, Mr. Introduction writer. And I spotted at least two spelling errors even before hitting chapter three, dude.

I much preferred our other reading, where Robert Bolling basically said, "Sorry if I say wrong things. Hope you'll bear with me being a total freakjob and talking in Latin all the time." He was hi-LARIOUS for a guy from the 1700s. Read the companion post.

( more stupid observations )

Research for an Engineering writing class called The History of Wine. Yeah, I KNOW, right! It sounds like a humanities class. And all the other classes are like, scientific ethics and similar things. I don't know how this got past the engineering board, but I am SO happy to be enjoying a class for once.

1) Is there a patron saint of finding things you've dropped on the floor?

2) This sentence is AWESOME:

A supposed relationship between Praxiteles and his beautiful model, the Thespian courtesan Phryne, has inspired speculation and interpretation in works of art ranging from painting (Gérôme) to opera (Saint-Saëns) to shadow puppetry (Donnay)

Shadow Puppets = WIN; Donnay, you mustachioed French dramatist/engineer, you!

( more interesting bits )

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: January Term
Current Music: Enigma Variations

If I make it through this week, I will be so very VERY grateful. I should even be talking right now, I should be studying the hell out of the exams I have one after another this week. I spent three days studying for Differential Equations (tally it again, for the very last time) because I usually spend more time studying for math than other things.
Right now I'm studying for Circuits, which is beating me soundly, and tomorrow I have CS, which I'm not REALLY concerned about. Studying for a few hours today should suffice since I studied over the weekend, but I want to get a good grade in that class.

Then I have to record a Systems presentation with my group, which shouldn't be too bad. But then I have Digital Logic Design. (T_T) I haven't been able to study at ALL for that class, and I need to get a good grade. I guess I'll just study like hell today for Circuits, (going to office hours, so I need to finish the chapters) work on CS, and then study the life out of Digital Logic Design on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS FREAKED OUT EVER

I'm really trying to look forward to Thursday night, when some people will be coming over to my place to watch Firefly/Stargate. I usually find out I'm staying late before breaks and send out a last minute email inviting people to come. This time I figured everything out early, so I sent the email yesterday. Hopefully too many people won't show up. My common room is only so big, after all, though these are the people I played Quidditch with on Halloween, so I'm sure if sci-fi is involved, they'll find a way to optimize capacity. ^_^

ARRG! I hate taking all math and science classes. Everyone is like, "Well, it's your fault for being in the e-school." People said that about nerd school back in high school. I want to kick them in the eye. There's challenging, and then there's RIDICULOUS. And then there's the engineer that told me he once took a class in the college, and the room beside him basically watched the Office every day for lecture.

Really? I mean, I understand they have difficult classes too, like Math and Science and Business (though I suspect I did mediocre in that economics class mainly because it always came second place to e-school classes, I couldn't help it. So working for that class had to be like an afterthought, and I couldn't enjoy it) but REALLY?

I actually had some significant stuff to say here that I totally forgot about. Such is the nature of anger and pathetic whining.

(end rant, going back to work)

Current Mood: more...weight
Current Music: "I'll Try Anything Once" by The Strokes

WHY am I in class? It's not even something interesting like Digital Logic Design.
SYSTEMS. Right now it's all about how just because you weight something greater, it doesn't mean it's more important. Apparently you have to use the Marginal Rates of Substitution (MRS) to figure out

Hey, I have three cows and four aliens.

How many cows am I willing to give up to gain one more alien?

Or something like that.

The thing is, you use MRS to determine weights. But you use WEIGHTS to determine MRS.

What IS this mindfuckery? It seems really similar to marginal utility, and that's Econ class from last year. Right now I feel like they're roasting the teams that bothered coming to class the day before freaking THANKSGIVING BREAK.

Oh yeah, great incentive to come to class.

They've been talking for about an hour, and I don't know whether they've really said anything....

Subsequent conversation between one of my group members and me:

2:25 PM me: why did I come to class? Not even paying attention...

2:26 PM H: I only came in hopes that my kindle was here...

( let the geekery begin )

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: class

Because my major has a hacking security class called Defence Against the Dark Arts. And people wonder why I switched into Computer Science?

atomic_goo , this is mostly for you.

Anybody find a place for Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, you just let me know...

Transfiguration: Nuclear Engineering

Transfiguration is essentially the art of changing the properties of an object. Transfiguration is a theory-based subject, including topics such as "Switching Spells" (altering only a part of some object, such as giving a human rabbit's ears); Vanishing Spells (causing an object to completely disappear) and Conjuring Spells (creating objects out of thin air). It is possible to change inanimate objects into animate ones and vice versa — McGonagall transfigures her desk into a pig and back in Philosopher's Stone.

Defence Against the Dark Arts: Computer Engineering

Defence Against the Dark Arts, commonly shortened to D.A.D.A., is the class that teaches students defensive techniques in order to defend themselves from the Dark Arts, and to be protected from Dark creatures.

The subject has an extraordinarily high turnover of staff members — throughout the series no Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher has remained at Hogwarts for more than one school year. It is suggested by Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that "They're startin' ter think the job's jinxed. No one's lasted long for a while now." In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore suggests that Voldemort cursed the position because his application for it was rejected.

( Minimum 15 credits a semester, kid )

Current Mood: stressed

*falls over*

I've been coding straight for the past two and a half hours (not terrible at all, except for the fact that I haven't eaten today...).

My project for computer science class is creating AIM from scratch. It should be able to remotely use an existing email account to add/delete buddies, chat, and save logs (to name a few)

But anyway, I got the chat functionality working and had a great awkward conversation with myself while I tried to fix bugs. As you look at it, you can probably trace through where I was fixing problems and where I was running into them.

The project is called Bubonic. (it's a joke from last year, when someone decided to name their IM client Hepatitis A. This year, Ebola was taken, and Bubonic sounds cooler anyway)

Anyway, it is pretty as hell.

( f1rst log!! )

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Entries tagged with engineering school

Wahoowa

Engineering Life

ARG

Oops

Hilarious things said in Defence Against the Dark Arts, an ongoing collection

And this is why my computer science department is amazing

Well, that went well

Mechanics, Software, and Luddites

Best Part of Class Today

Quotes from my Operating Systems Professor, an ongoing project

Mortuus Est

The Most Dramatic Sierpinski Triangle You Have Ever Seen

The Cherry Blossom Affair

VIC-tory

Textbook Review

Some Notes As I'm Doing Research for a Paper

O_O

Just Because Everyone Has One of These Posts They Write in Class, and I Need the Danger

Hogwarts, as done by the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science

The world is open source