I think I like this schedule. I'd like to go back through the course catalog in a week or so to make sure I'm content with it.

6.002 - Circuits and Electronics

6.004 - Computation Structures

6.034 - Artificial Intelligence

14.02 - Principles of Macroeconomics

14.12 - Economic Applications of Game Theory

21M.301 - Harmony and Counterpoint I

I've really been enjoying this summer so far. My schedule is far less intense than it's been ever in the past two years. I tutor a little and work for AoPS a little. Besides that, I starting on a research project but I quickly realized that I felt it was a waste of time and thus I quit. I know, that sounds pretty bad, but I don't have any regrets and I'm confident it was the best thing for me to do.

Otherwise, I've been spending a decent amount of time doing math this summer. I usually don't get too much time to do math, unfortunately. A lot of the math has been AMC 12 Level, harder AoPS V2 problems, or AIME level. That's because of my tutoring position and the classes I assist for AoPS (AIME PS and now AMC 10 PS). I've been having a lot of fun revisiting those geometry problems that gave me such a hard time back in high school. They come so easily these days and often fit together so beautifully.

Recently, one of my fraternity brothers, Anand, just got back to Boston for the next month. The last two nights, along with Omar, we've been randomly doing math problems together. It's really interesting to work with him. He often has approaches to problems that are different from what I would usually do. I'm definitely looking forward working with him more this month.

*cough* Samson, if you're reading this, you should join us...we'll probably either be two doors down from you or 1 floor below you *cough*

My first year at MIT is over! It went by sooo fast, too fast. It was just so awesome. I was never bored. The things I did, the people I met, the knowledge I now have. It's all so great. It's crazy. I just can't believe 1/4 of my MIT undergraduate career is over. I don't think I'll want to leave this place. I haven't gotten to the really hard classes yet though. On the other hand, I'm getting better at being more efficient and focused in my studies. So it seems to be going as planned. I haven't gotten my grades for this semester yet, but I think they'll once again be 'satisfactory'. So neither 'unacceptable' nor 'extraordinary'. I can live with that though...just as long as I feel improvement in some form next year.

I recall writing a while ago that I was going to dual boot linux. Well, I finally got around to it over the last couple days...er, well, not dual booting. I'm currently just running Kubuntu (Feisty Fawn version).

So, I was planning on dual booting, but it didn't work out so well. I attempted booting Knoppix from a cd, which worked, and then partitioning my hard drive using QTParted. It wouldn't partition the hard drive for me so I started messing around more and more and eventually de-activated my hard drive (I think that's what happened) and instead of trying to figure out how to reactivate it I went ahead and installed Kubuntu.. My hard drive was wiped clean. But luckily I backed up my important files on the ZBT server beforehand. Phew. I'm in the process of downloading them back onto my computer now.

So far, I have been unsuccessful at installing anything from the command prompt...however, I did find Adept Manager which has been a godsend mainly because I can't install MIT certificates on Konqueror which, among other things, prohibited me from accessing the ZBT server...

And in other news, it's the final push for this semester. Just another round or two of psets, a final project, some tests, and I'll be done! I can't believe my freshman year is basically over :'( Well, I should hopefully pass all of my classes.

I've also been playing a bunch more intramural sports. Recently there was this competition called the octathon where you get teams of up to 15 and play 8 sports (softball, volleyball, basketball, football, dodgeball, frisbee, water polo, and soccer) over two weekends. We ended up playing 10 games and I got to play water polo and soccer for the very first time in my life which was awesome =) My own personal proudest moment of the octathon was during one of our dodgeball games. Everyone on my team had been knocked out leaving me against four. So I played very cautiously. Eventually I ended up getting one of them out. A little bit later I caught one of the balls they threw at me knocking that person out and getting one of my teammates back. So then it was 2 on 2. I can't remember exactly how it went down after that, but we won Oh yeah, we also won the octathon overall with a record of 8-1-1

I never did blog about CPW...I started writing an entry but never finished it. I'm not sure I could do justice to how awesome CPW was in one of my blog entries...anyway...

The PE I'm taking this semester, High Ropes Adventure Course, is so much fun. During this week's session we finally started climbing things. Well, first we learned some basics of climbing such as safety, belaying and tying knots. So I ended up being the one to tie the knot for the actual rope we were climbing...and then I was the first one to climb. Going up was fun, but not too scary. Then at the top it was really cool looking down and being able to see the whole gym But then it was the moment of truth - letting go of the rope so I could be let down. I didn't hesitate although I did think about all of things I was trusting for my life, all of the things I was putting my trust in. First of all I was trusting the instructors. Will this contraption keep me safe? Then there was faith in myself. I was the one who tied the knot...did I do it well enough? Then for the people on the other side of the rope keeping me up. Would they fail? To tell the truth though, the only thing that made me uncomfortable was the knot I had tied. I had perfect (or almost perfect) trust in everything else.

So, well, it's the weekend now

I just got back from running the Boston Marathon! Er, well, 16 miles of it. A few friends and I decided to jump in at Natick. We took the T/Commuter Rail and started at about noon. It was so much fun running. The crowds were awesome. I was wearing my ZBT jersey which has 'ZBT' written on the front in big letters. The number of people that yelled out 'Z-B-T!' was enormous I also high-fived a bunch of people along the sides You get to run by Wellesley (with all the cute Wellesley girls ), Boston College, BU, and then through Boston where you see a substantial number of MIT/Harvard people. Next year I want to do the whole marathon. This year I kinda just decided last minute to run 16 miles of it. I haven't really been training too much either. So I don't think that doing the whole thing will be too lofty of a goal.

Last week was an incredibly packed week for me. I was slacking off way too much and I'm recovering today. As usual I'm not getting as much work done today as I would like. I'm playing IM softball in 1.75 hours and then there's a party at my frat tonight. I vow to get at least my Mastering Physics (MP) done before I go to sleep again. MP is actually a really neat online supplement to the book we use for physics. It gives you a problem and you submit an answer. You have multiple chances in case you get it wrong the first time. I really like the script or w/e they use for submission. You can use LaTeX to get the symbols and it'll even do computations for you (so if you enter 3*5 and the answer's 15 you'll get it right, for example). Anyways, talking about MP wasn't the main point of this entry...

The week started off with USAMTS grading on Monday which I've already blogged about.

Tuesday night I played a scrimmage game of Unihoc which was a lot of fun.

Wednesday I had the usual 5 hour straight marathon of classes. Then I ate dinner, assisting Interm. NT and tutored for an hour.

Thursday I had my first class of High Ropes Adventure Course. It's going to be a really fun class. We started off by learning each other's name. Then we did some team-building activities such as getting everyone through a 'spider web' of wires and getting a cup of water across a 'pit' by swinging across on a rope. I had pretty much done all the activities before at cross country camp but it was still lots of fun doing them again a second time with new people. I really look forward to getting up on the high ropes

After that I went and got CPR trained (for free I might add). I learned that MIT is the first university to be recognized as HeartSafe. Later that night we had histories at ZBT. Histories are where the two historians make a bunch of amusing things that involve the brothers.

And after that...I just stayed up doing all my psets until 8 am when I went around postering for Battle of the Bands. If you're going to be around during CPW come check it out! I'll be working the Anna's booth (i.e. I'll be feeding you). I think the cost is 4 for prefrosh. That's definitely a steal for a music competition, a burrito, and icecream.

Last night I slept for around 10-12 hours (not sure exactly). And now here I am typing this. So I'll just talk about things I'm looking forward to.

CPW is next week! Woot!!

The Boston Marathon is in a week and two days! I might run part of it as a bandit...we'll see.

ARML's probably approaching soon...which means this semester is on the down end. Geez...

I'm going to be learning Javascript and php on my own in the next few months to prepare for my summer UROP (assuming I still do the one I'm thinking about). I also plan on getting familiar with apache and mySQL (the latter I've done a little with just randomly). Finally, I still haven't dual-booted linux yet! Gotta do that.

Finally, I want to build something cool this summer such as a neat LED display that I can program or speakers.

This is the third week in a row I've pulled an all nighter...and last week was Spring Break!! And yet I still don't have very much time left Dunno why I'm writing a blog entry now but, hey, whatever, I'll be ok.

So Samson wanted a spring break recap. Well, we (me and 6 of my friends) did the touristy thing in London and Paris. Nothing really crazy happened which is sort of unfortunate. The most exciting time was the last day when we were coming back from Paris to London. We took a bus that left at 10 pm Paris time and arrived a little earlier than 6 am London time. My flight was at 11:30 am. We took the tube+bus back to the apartment and I packed as quickly as possible...didn't even take a shower (didn't take one the day before...yeah... ). By the time I left for the airport it was 8:30 and the buses/tube take a while to get to the airport. So I got on the first bus I thought got me to the Grenwich tube station. But apparently I was wrong. So I began to panic. I got off the bus, looked at the map at the bus stop, and pulled through it and got to some random tube stop. From there I was homefree...except I didn't have a watch so I was kinda just hoping I'd get there on time. I got to the airport about 45 minutes early. But then I had to check-in and check a bag...and then airport security...oh man, will I make it? Running through the aiport. Gate 38, gate 38,...good god how far is it? FINALLY THERE! They were already boarding and it was maybe 10 minutes before the flight took off. I made it and that's all that matters. Had to sit between two big guys, but they were nice and it wasn't too bad.

Did I mention that was when I pulled an all nighter? I kinda napped a little on the plane, but not much. Oh, also, on the tube out to the airport I insisted on standing even though 3/4 of the seats were open. I dunno, it was just a neat little challenge. It got tiring with a bag in one hand and purposely not using the handrail or pole for balance. It helped me stay awake...and you don't get much exercise on a plane anyway.

The next day I went to the North End of Boston and found a place with some smoked mozzarella to die for.

I think that pretty much recaps my spring break. I mean, I could talk about all the tourist things I did...but that's pretty boring to just talk about.

The last round of the USAMTS has been graded. Phew! We were mainly grading problems 3 and 4...which aren't the easiest problems to grade. In addition we had a low turnout but it was the best we could do on a Monday after Spring Break. I believe there were about 7 or 8 there at the start which slowly faded to 4 or 5. I arrived at 4 and stayed until 9 with the exception of a break from 9:15 to 10:00 to go to part of my 6.00 review session. But we pulled through and got it done.

I have an incredibly busy week ahead of me. Luckily I'm renewed and ready for it after spring break.

Spring Break is next week! Woot, I'm going to London with some of my good friends from my frat. Plans? We'll hopefully go and see as much interesting stuff as possible. We'll probably even make a trip to Paris at some point.

In the meanwhile, I'm trying to kill my workload early this week. We'll see how that goes... I might try pulling an all-nighter tonight. Even so, I won't be able to get everything out of the way.

Other things happening in my life:

Grading Intro Geometry Finals: This is mainly the reason I've been attacking my psets early this week. I will hopefully be able to grade a bunch of them this week. I'll also do a few next week as well.

ZBT Beta Beta Party: At my frat, each incoming class (our's is the Beta Beta class) organizes and hosts a party. I really like being able to help run one of these. I feel we have good support for the party among the class and that we'll get a lot of work done together. I'm mainly co-in-charge of music, in charge of advertisement, and plan on just all-around trying to get involved.

Oooh LED's: I want to try and get a board, hook up a bunch of LEDs and connect them to some kinda computer so that I can make it display pictures/text/whatev. I probably wont get around to this until the summer.

Other than that, I've just been busy with my classes, some running and some lifting. I've also started to play basketball again since a bunch of guys from ZBT go on Fridays. That's a lot of fun I'm also looking forward to IM softball and IM ultimate.

Finally, congrats to those who got into MIT (and other schools, the ivies haven't released decisions yet, have they?)! Any questions or anything, feel free to contact me.