Supposedly we were pranked by MIT today, quoting my roommate:
“I was just on may way back from the gym and happened to notice the letters M-I-T strung in large white lights across the top of Millikan Library. I’m not sure if it’s a genuine prank or the work of some disgruntled undergrad/grad student (imagine that…a bitter Techer).”
If it was a genuine prank, not a lot of people noticed, really. It’s kind of a bad time since everyone’s busy doing homework and studying for finals.
Professor Nathan Lewis is a really famous chemistry professor at Caltech. He’s probably going to save the world some day (by solving the energy crisis with his research). He also teaches Ch 1a, first term freshman chemistry. Well, every week, he invites about 6 freshmen to lunch and today, I was picked.
He’s a really cool guy. Perhaps the thing that struck me the most was when he mentioned that when he was here at Caltech for his undergraduate degree, he thought that he was one of the dumbest students here. Although that was probably not true (he was probably a genius downplaying himself to make us frosh feel better), at least it gave me some hope. I’m certain that I’m one of the dumbest students here at Caltech. But if I can manage to just get through this school, maybe even I can be a great chemist like Dr. Lewis…
So Thanksgiving. At Caltech. Pretty normal -> Food + Turkey.
I appreciate the break. However, my brain is too addled and is thinking about tons of things at once to be able to write coherently.
Something cool two days ago: Numb3rs was filming at Caltech and I got to watch them film a scene! It was pretty cool seeing the characters in person.
“Charlie” is the guy who is waving in that picture. Everyone else in that picture are background filler people they hired or the flim crew.
I read on Wikipedia today that one method of brainwashing is to keep feeding people information without giving them time to really think about it. I immediately thought Caltech…
Ah, another two weeks and then I’m back home! I can’t wait to get back to hang out with my old friends again and see how UD is going. I definitely appreciate my home town a lot more now.
(22:59:28) mikeXstudios: okay
(22:59:35) mikeXstudios: we make ipod killer
(22:59:53) Eugene [Redacted]: 200 gb mp3 player
(23:00:21) mikeXstudios: why 200?
(23:00:24) mikeXstudios: why not 300?
(23:00:28) Eugene: good point
(23:00:39) mikeXstudios: size of the device doesn’t matter
(23:00:44) mikeXstudios: the storage size does
(23:00:45) Eugene: haha
(23:00:50) Eugene: backpack size mp3 player
(23:00:55) Eugene: 10 terabytes of music
Imagine the success of a backpage size mp3 player. That’s a sure iPod killer there. I shouldn’t even be releasing this idea since someone else might take it and use it.
I thought this was funny: Caltech placed 1st in the “Professors Get Low Marks” category (possibility because of the classes’ extremely high rigor and the professors’ incomprehensibility), and 3rd in the “Students Never Stop Studying” category although I really think that should be 1st since I find myself constantly doing homework or studying. In fact, I must stop posting these things now so I can study for a math quiz!
Note: Directly clicking on the link will bring you to a registration page. You can either use: BugMeNot to find a login or visit the Princeton Review Rankings site and then click the links from there to bypass the login.
Registration for classes (Winter Term) started today at 8AM. Of course, everyone else had their schedules planned out meticulously and got up at 7AM so that they could click the submit button at 8:00AM sharp. Naturally, the (.9999999999…) Mike got up around 8:30AM, went to class, came back at 10AM, and then tried registering for classes. The only problem with that is a lot of the good sections and times were already taken…. so my schedule right now seems kind of weak without some of the Biology courses I want to take.
So I woke up this morning, stepped out of Avery, and saw this strange blob of white (I didn’t have my glasses on) which I identified as a snowman. Okay, maybe that’s not so strange. But it took the place of this n-gon structure (taken with a real digital camera from when I visited Caltech many months ago):
That had lots of wires attached to nearby trees to suspend it over the stone slab below.
Naturally, it was a prank, and I thought it was fairly well done. But, my question is, can they put the n-gon structure back together again? (Well, more like back in its original spot)
I just met Mark Zuckerberg about two hours ago over an informal cafe chat with another upperclassperson. Mark is the creator/founder/CEO of thefacebook which is a multi-million dollar company and one of the top 10 most visited sites on the internet! I expected some egotistical guy in a business suit, but he was a down to earth person wearing jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt, really easy to talk to, and a generally all around cool person. He’s giving a talk here at Caltech today, but I’m too busy to go. Nevertheless, it’s amazing to meet him. I actually didn’t know what to say (I didn’t want to offend him with any dumb questions that he might have heard about 100 times+) so I probably looked kind of dumb ^^;;.
Life has been extremely busy as usual these days. This weekend that just passed, I went to Los Angeles for the Gates Millenium Scholars conference. I lived in a big hotel, met a few people, ate some food, listened to some people talk.
Overall, it was good, but I just wanted to get back so I could finish my math problem set ^^;;. I don’t really have a life here which I sometimes regret, but then again, I came to Caltech for the science and math. *nods* That’s probably my only good reason…