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September 2000 Archives
High fidelity was a moderately amusing movie. Grant, although he works for a cult, is highly amusing and fun. So let's play a game of Pronounce That Boston Suburb.
Hey I finally got paid! Happy Day! So, anyway, Mars Week is coming up. I just registered, I'm excited. Lots of great speakers and a chance for me to rant on about how important space exploration is to the future of humanity. I heart Mars. So my going to a Mars convention isn't perhaps the most shocking thing in the world. But today I also bought a ticket for the Ralph Nader convention on Sunday. This, in my opinion, is very odd behavior for someone like me. I'm not into the green party, or Nader, or even politics at all. But, you see, I am into Michael Moore and Howard Zinn, who are also speaking at the convention. And who knows, maybe I'll get to stand up and ask Nader why he's against nuclear power. That's the biggest reason why I can't vote for him. Maybe anti-fission power I can understand, but he has actively campaigned against nuclear fusion research because it's nuclear. He's one of those people who forced us to stop saying Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), and instead say Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) because it sounds less.. oooh.. nuclear! I think maybe I should get injured. Maybe that'll justify the $600 dollars I just dropped on my mandatory MIT health insurance. For that I should get a sweet gold-plated cast or something. Or at least something to rub on these aching kungfu muscles... So my second trip to Morris Cave was even better. Rob and I managed to explore most of the cave. I'm really excited to contact the Vermont Caving Association and see if they have survey data for this cave. If they don't, I'd like to survey it. We made our way up to the very top of the big room, where there are a lot of bats (last trip I saw maybe four bats, this trip we saw in excess of 30). We found a side passage that loops around from above the hand-line cliff in the big room to the entrance of the diagonal crevise. Most interestingly, though, is something we noticed in the long horizontal tunnel which connects the marble corkscrew to the big room. About half-way down the tunnel, a ways before the long tight pinch, we noticed a rushing sound coming from somewhere. After determining that it was coming from below, through a crack in the floor, we attemped to find a way to get there. Failing that, I layed down on my head so that I could see through the crack, and reach in and removed some fist-sized stones. I was unable to discover anything about the rushing sound, though. It sounds like a lot of water flowing or even like some man-made mechanical noise, like something you'd hear in a machine room. We built a rock cairn near the noise and noted it in the registry on the way out. Sometimes I think that if people didn't lead Rob around by the hand, he'd never leave his room. The only thing I like about my life is the new experiences. The whole purpose of my existence is to challenge and surprise myself, and to do and see things that I wouldn't have, had I not put forth the effort. Without that effort and the associated reward, I don't understand what life is worth. Not only does Rob not try new things, but he seems to go out of his way to avoid them. I don't understand at all. Radio Shack employees come in two varieties. There's the one guy who has a clue, typically the franchise owner. He's always a tightass, usually well dressed, and generally annoying. Then there's the peons, one of which I just had the privledge of dealing with. So all I want is a set of alligator clip test leads. I know where they are, and I'm making a line for the back of the store to pick them up when the clerk gets in my way. "Can I help you?" "I'm just picking up some alligator clips." He looks confused. "Alligator clips? I've never heard of those." "No problem, they're right up there." "Yeah if we have them, they'd be right there. Any kind of clips." He follows me to the back, and I reach down and grab a pack of clips, conveniently labeled "Alligator Clips (12)." "Huh. Alligator Clips. Well I guess we do have them." Looking around, I notice that the only ones here have no leads. "I was hoping you had some with leads, but I guess not." "Now what are leads?" "Wires." "No, we don't carry anything like that." "No problem, I'll just buy some wire and solder them together myself." At this point, he just leaves and goes to help someone else. Next to the wire, I find the alligator clip test leads. As I'm buying them, the guy looks at the package for about a minute and proclaims, "Yeah these ones do have wires." Purveyor of alligator clip test leads, master of the obvious. Today, for the first time, I really started to understand the radiation transport equations. It's one of those fundamental realization things that suddenly makes everything much easier. Let the research commence. It's a good thing I'm understanding it, I guess, since I'm giving a lecture on it tomorrow. Even weirder: I'm giving the lecture to my advisor. So here's my fundamental problem: I don't think I grok what it is that my advisor does. We've chosen me a thesis topic, and my first piece of work is to explain the basics of the field to him. Doesn't that violate something about what a thesis advisor is for? Hey! It's 5:30am, and I just got back from the cluster. Note to self: don't leave homework until the last minute, especially when they end up being 18-page be-whemouths. I did, at least, finish it before class began. Granted, only 4.5 hours before... So I'm watching the Fox morning news, and they're talking about Bush being on Oprah. And there's a clip of a crowd of very prissy-looking republican women standing outside the studio chanting "We Want Bush." Something about that just makes me smile. Morris cave was really different from any cave I've done before. For starters, there were no formations. These caves are formed by flowing water, which basically destroys formations before they can form. Also, as a result of the pervasive wetness, everything was coated in mud - including us. The entrance is behind a waterfall above a nice pond, a really picturesque setting. The first portion of the cave consists of a crawl tunnel that quickly descends, going through a number of tight pinches. The smallest pinch is nine inches high at the highest point and about twenty inches wide. These pinches would drive a claustrophobic person batty, I think. The passage slopes down into the pinch and then back up on the far side, so you can't look through to see where you need to go. Also, going through requires putting your face up against a wall and there is no room to look forward. I had to put one arm forward and one back along my body in order to tilt my collar bone in order to fit through. This means that I couldn't really use anything to propel myself except my ankles. I moved at about one meter per minute. And what a workout. Whoa. But once through the entrance crawl, the cave opens up into a series of larger spaces. This includes a very deep lake of emerald green water. We also saw some cute bats. Through one lead from the main room, we went down through the "granite corkscrew," a vertical portion of tunnel that twists around in circles a lot. At the bottom of the corkscrew was a small room with another pinch. This pinch was filled with water, making it a very cold experience to get through. This meant putting my face and arms in the water and bellycrawling through until the entire front of my body was in the pool, which was so very very cold... Once in the room, I could see that it was a dead end (or possibly a sump). The pool covered the entire floor of the room, causing me to chimney out over it. Towards the back of the small room, the pool got to be at least two meters deep, by the looks of it. It was a pretty room, although the three of us that made our way into it muddied up the water quite a bit. Unfortunately, the dead end meant we had to go make our way back up the corkscrew to get out, which was a pain. Being totally soaked and in a 50 degree cave made me thankful for the polypro long undies I bought yesterday, they worked like a charm. The only part of me that got wet and didn't have a synthetic covering was my fingers - which were freezing! After another hour of wandering around, we decided to make our way out. Going back through those pinches uphill was really trying, especially after four hours of strenuous caving. I was exhausted. When we made it out of the cave, we were all completely covered in brown mud. We walked back along the trail to the cars, parked alongside the highway. People driving by, seeing seven mud people walking out of the woods, probably though it was the weirdest thing they'd seen in awhile. We drove to a diner and played with the PA Alex had hooked up to his car. This guy alled Adam, who is an artist working with the biology department, was completely hillarious. We're pulling out of the parking lot at the diner and right when some people are right in front of us, he broadcasts really loudly, "please rescind your marsupial allegiance." just something random that really cracked my up in my tired state. The four hour drives went quickly, I slept most of the way home. The way there I talked with Adam and Alex about the ethics of genetic engineering (someone made a glow-in-blacklight bunny! I want one!), the railgun, smoke ring geneartors, vintage videogames, and other nerdy topics. Lots of fun. I fell asleep as soon as my head was on the pillow. More Adam: "So the space shuttle just ejects sewage into space, right? and then it reenters the atmosphere and falls to the ground. And there's probably E. coli in there that survived extreme heat during reentry and can survive freezing cold and vaccum in space. This reentry sorta screens out the super mutant E. coli, right? And then it comes down to earth and probably lands on a hamburger." Coffeehouse. I said I wasn't going to go out. I have to get up at 6:00am to go caving tomorrow. So staying out till 3 or 4 wasn't really a good idea. But I went out anyway. I'm addicted to this stuff; it's too damn fun. But I quit at 2:00am. I slept all afternoon so I think I can get away with this... maybe. Why is it that the older I get, the cuter the new students seem to be and the more inappropriate my feeling this way becomes? Geez. There needs to be more grad student hackers. Non-crufty, cute hacker grads. Thats what we need. Steam tunnels, now with new and improved Hall-effect contact switches, motion sensors, and card readers. But still no match for our e1337 haxX0ring kung fu. Security response time was undefined, as we intentionally activated some of the alarms and got no response at all. Maybe the new system isn't activated yet, we couldn't figure it out. We also went to the chilled water facility. Very cool. Below each cooling tower is a waterfall. I'm sitting here arguing with Rob about how this alarm circuit works and how to safely circumvent it. A sorta heated argument. It's truly a dorky moment. So I slept for 11 hours straight. Felt so good. Tonight was the first coffeehouse of the year. Orange and spelunker tours were a few weeks back. I confess, I took a study break and went on all six nights of tours. Of the ~600 freshmen we gave tours to, about 50 of them showed up tonight to start the weekly process of saturday night coffeehouse club hacking. My group kicked ass. Rob and Mike and I were leading it, and we went to a bunch of places, most of which I had never been to myself. We did the roof of the gym. We did the roof of CP headquarters (!!) and also got below the foundation of the building. Very cool. Finally, we were trying to get below the pool, but ended up on the roof there. On the way through the building to find the basement, we set off a motion alarm and had to bail. It looks like we have some good freshmen this year. Oh, so while I'm telling stories about hacking, here's one from tours: On the second day of spelunker tours, I almost tore my finger off dropping down from an air vent. The Moral: don't hack with a ring on. It's mostly healed now, but I think I may get a cool scar. I'm sorta excited about it. But wow the freshman were sure grossed out by the blood... heh And then on the next night one of the freshmen broke her finger in training shaft. ugh. But she's fine now and all is well. And I'm going to bed. We all arrived at the conference room in NW12 for some free food while the faculty finished up their meeting to decide who passes and who doesn't. There was lots of nervous chatter, tight stomachs, and I beat the hell out of some other grads in a game of hearts. When the faculty showed up, they all dispersed to their various offices and we went off to find out advisors so they could give us the results. Otto poked his head into the room, found Ben, said "yeah," shook his hand, and that was it. Ben passed his generals. So I walk into the office and there's Molvig, ready to tell me about how I did on the exam. I'm basically confident I passed so I'm not too worried. Still, you never know. "Well, you didn't pass the exam." Don't beat around the bush, Molvig, just come out and say it. The next 20 minutes was him telling me that I had done really well on the test, that all the other professors had said good things in my defense. I just didn't hear the part about why I failed. Apparently, the test was an easy one, and all the scores were really high. Usually, they make a cutoff at 60% or so for passing. From what I understand, this year everyone but two people would have passed, so they moved the curve up a bit, putting 10 people right on the edge. And, of course, they had to fail all 10 of those people as well. Twelve people didn't pass. Out of thirty. That's a lot. But what I don't get is that Molvig seemed to be genuinely upset that I hadn't passed, and not with me. He was under the impression that I should have passed and he said the other proffessors were saying good things about me. I don't understand why I failed. So the good news is that he was adamant about petitioning me to get another chance next year. I told him I intend to redo the test and he seemed really happy about that. Also, people who take the test a second time have a success rate of 80% rather than 40%. From what I understand, the faculty fails some people just to see if their hearts are in it. If they take it again, they'll pass. Molvig said that if I took it again and got the same score, I'd pass no questions asked. The bad news is that I have to go through this whole process again. Even worse is that for the last week I've been telling people how confident I was about passing, and I have to go around telling them that I was wrong and I'm a failure. That's pretty humiliating. I don't mind taking it again. I'm confident in my ability, and I know I can do better than I did this time around. But I feel like I let everyone down. In particular John and Molvig, both of whom were counting on me to pass. To all the friends who send reassuring messages of support during the last month, assuring me that I would pass because I'm a smart guy, I'm sorry to have let you down. So, to get my mind off of it, I went hacking with Rob. 17, 24, 41, 68, E17, E18, E19, and Cogen! Quite a night; I had a lot of frustration to work off. I've got diversions lined up for the next few nights as well. Tomorow: the pool, Friday: Hahvahd, Saturday: coffeehouse, Sunday: Morris Cave. But first I have to deal with a research meeting with Molvig in the morning. And right now, that's about the most undesireable thing I can think of doing. After finishing the exam, I had some lunch and slept for fours, then had dinner. At dinner, I shit you not, my fortune cookie read: I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have gone immediately to the store and bought lottery tickets with the numbers on the fortune. Oh well. If 16, 17, 20, 23, 26, and 38 win tomorrow, someone shoot me. After dinner I helped set up for a DMC party in Lobdell, then went to Jamie's for a big par-tay. It was a party to celebrate several things. Jamie and Cam had just moved into the new place so it was sort of a housewarming party, it was Dean and Aisling's birthday, Jamie had just finished his quals as well, and (again, I shit you not), Jonah had just survived being stabbed! Apparently, some guy stabbed him with a small blade right outside his house. The wound was not deep and he'll be fine, but apparently it was quite an ordeal. He went around showing the bandages on his chest to everyone. It was rumored that he's glad he got stabbed; it's become a real conversation piece at parties. In other news, the shuttle got off fine today, despite my missing the launch (I had a test to take or something). The replay on NASA-TV was awesome; the atmospheric conditions were perfect so the shockwaves as the shuttle went past Mach 1 were visable and very very cool looking. Maybe, now that I've [likely] passed my exam, I still have a shot at someday being aboard that thing. Mouser = Happy Boy. (tentatively, pending the outcome of the faculty meeting to discuss how much i blow next wednesday) So, for the past 20 years, Chen's 22.51 questions have been selected from a pool of about 6 questions. If you could memorize the solutions to those questions, you basically had it made. The material is so difficult that the memorization technique is generally the one used by everyone. Last year was particularly humorous because the question was identical from the previous year. But, of course, my year is the year Chen decides to throw a new question into the mix. Van Hove correllation functions for condensed matter. Ugh. I think everyone who relied on memorization got screwed on this question. Luckily, I have a supergenius for a roommate and he and I spent the last week going over the concepts. Evan said, and I quote, "There are three Van Hove problems, but you'll only ever see [perfect gas and harmonic oscillator]. The third one [condensed matter] has never appeared in his exams or problem sets." Luckily, though, the Van Hove problems are all similar. I suspect I got about 50% on that question, and I probably set the curve. As for the 22.55, it was trivial. My outlook for passing is now nearly certain. The faculty meets on Wednesday, look at the scores, and then bargain over who they'll pass. Barring a disaster there, I'm golden. And now, at last, I'm going to sleep. For a long, long time. One down, one to go. I estimate: Other than chemistry, I did admirably - certainly enough to pass, anyway. Dad'll probably be disappointed with my chemistry score, especially since the things I bombed he taught me a few weeks back. Wh00ps! Oh well. Now it's time to study for the hard stuff. Tomorrow: Radiation and Neutron Interactions with Matter, Radiation Detection and Measurement, Radiation Health Physics. Outlook: reasonable. It's the day before the exam. The date they sent us was wrong, so now it's tomorrow instead of this weekend. Tomorrow's subjects are: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Nuclear Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, Thermodynamics. My outlook: It's a tossup. I just learned S-wave partial scattering phase shifts, now I'm going to have some cereal, look over my differential equations, and go to bed. This test represents the most important thing I've ever done. 
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