Howitzer

I'll notify when I return to writing.

Take a moment to reflect on something in your life that you are thankful for.

Reference:

"We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it"

In the Doldrums...

Reference:

It's go time.

...

LET'S DO IT AGAIN.

I got a 68 on my quantum physics class quiz 2! The average was 77, so overall, I'm below average. However, this is a big improvement over my last unmentionable score. I see potential here.

So I finally got past this week, where I spent almost all my time studying. I think I listened to music all day today, first to get myself in the right mood for my test, and then to celebrate finishing my test. Now I'm in NYC, to enjoy the weekend before studying hard for another quiz on Tuesday. gogogogeorge. Tomorrow will be a fun day in NYC, capped by delicious korean bbq, and karaoke (ugh).

Just Do It, George.

....

LET'S DO IT.

How remiss of me. I almost forgot to make a tribute to the men and women who volunteer their time and health to defend the country. Talking about the sacrifices that the military makes for us citizens is something that seems almost cliche and automatic now. You hear it all the time from politicians, from average people everywhere.

When I first got here, I saw graffiti labeling MIT as a very unpleasant place. An example would be on Harvard bridge, with the words "This way to Hell" pointed towards MIT. It seemed pretty funny at that time, but it's no longer so.

I have to say, MIT is a very, very challenging place. Prepare to give it your all if you are here. I'm definitely starting to do that. Furthermore, it's very emotionally taxing, as MIT forces you to look at your inadequacies, and tests you on how well you can work through them. Let this be a warning to all future prospective students.

It does seem like Hell at times, yet I know I'm being pushed, something that doesn't happen very often. This is unequivocally, a good thing. We'll see in a few weeks whether I'm staying here or not. Until then, wish me luck everyone!

I just came back from using the bathroom by my office. I happened to see a guy standing at the sink as I walk in, nothing really noticeable. However, as I finish my business and go wash my hands, I see fucking short hairs at the sink. Like all over, in the bowl, on the faucet and handles. Wtf! People shave at work?? Not to mention, it's 7pm, so it's not like someone was shaving after working all night at the office. The guy didn't even have the decency to clean up his mess.

Some people...

I guess I'm going on a relationship meme, after spending so long on MIT related issues. Today's topic will be about giving space in a relationship. This is a tricky matter, one that I'm sure almost every couple must deal with at some point. Feeling caged up by your significant other is inevitable; it's very rare for a couple to desire one another in exactly the same way, at exactly the same times. Then, how does one deal with such problems?

Let's examine some more fundamental issues here. When two people pair up who have different levels and types of needs, it is inevitable that one or both of them will end up going out of their comfort zones to satisfy the other. Perhaps they meet halfway, or perhaps one is more willing than the other to compromise.

To navigate this, it's important for both members of a couple to understand both sides. It's important to understand that while spending time with your significant other is a joyful activity, there are other things in life that are worth pursuing too. It is a common trap for many people, especially young adults, to fall into the trap of thinking that your significant other is the sole purpose in your life. (Largest purpose vs. only purpose)

In contrast, it's equally important for the other party to sympathize with the needy person. You must understand that some things are done unselfishly, in a relationship. For a relationship to be successful, there must be much sacrifice from both sides. Thus, you must remember to satisfy your needy significant other. The essential matter to remember is, this needy person is important to you. While you may not wish to spend so much time with them, you do want to see them happy.

Each couple needs to decide what extent each of the views are carried out from the previous two paragraphs are taken.

Bah, this was not one of my better posts. I wish I could've presented things more clearly. Perhaps I'll work on that later.

I'm in a very emotionally depressed period of my life right now. My interests at school have become near-absent, and my out of school life here has been non-existant. My personal life elsewhere is also..eh..a struggle. I would like at least one portion of my life to be care-free.

It seems like everyday that I see a group of asian tourists at MIT. This place is really popular.

Feeling extremely stiff today. I had a tough work out last night, where I was actually sweating. I usually don't sweat very much when lifting. Anyways, I had a ton to eat last night and I'm starving now, so hopefully that's a sign that my body is burning up that fuel for building muscles. I may have to skip out on Thursday basketball because of this.

Ok crap, this homework IS really long. Luckily, my EM homework went pretty fast. I just had to show you what this quantum homework looked like though. Here's part of the answer for part a) of problem 1: Unfortunately, until I figure out how to load bigger pictures to blogger, you'll have to click on the image to view it properly.

The gods must be smiling on me, oh thank the gods. Both of my classes have homework sets with only 4 questions. Now you might say, well those problems are probably harder. I say, I don't care, 4 questions is still less than 6, and it makes me feel much better.

Apologies for anyone who doesn't know me personally. This is another rant-type post.

I'm having a lot of difficulty concentrating today. I think I'm feeling better though, but it's hard to tell when emotions inevitably flucutate. I have two homeworks due Wednesday, so I have a feeling I will be up late again on tomorrow night.

The good thing about all this stress is that it motivates me to exercise a lot more. I suppose it's a physical release from my mental pressure. I can report that lifting is producing a lot of results for me. Also, my basketball skills have been steadily increasing. Last week, I made many shots, although I feel like this week I will have a regression in my shot making. Oh well, I suppose that progress is never steady.


I'll try to come up with something to say here for everyone. I guess if it's one thing I learned, it's that hard times will always come. Life is never smooth sailing; the rough seas inevitably show up. Like a cycle, we are always forced to navigate through treacherous waters. I suppose, the knowledge that hard times will always appear helps us focus on dealing with our problems, rather than trying to get rid of them. Once the tough times are dealt with, you have to enjoy the easy times while they last. And of course, always keep in mind that easy times always follow the tough times.

-Howitzer

Graduate students and free food. If you've ever read the comic PhDComics, written by some people at Stanford, you'll understand the relationship. I guess I'm not as big on free food, but I definitely have a friend who is the epitomy of Mike with free food. I think as much as half of his diet is based on free food. What a guy. Imagine when I introduced him to MMS back at Michigan: free lunch every Friday.

Things are at their lowest point between us right now. Neither of us is really sure what is going on anymore, but we are just sad all the time when we talk to each other. I'm having a hard time dealing with her being in Spain, having tons of fun, while I'm working here at school. At this point, I just want her to be happy. I'm so tired of hearing my baby crying, I don't even care about why I was mad at her in the first place. The only, ONLY thing I want now is just for her and I to make it through this year together. I can't express how much it is that I want things to just be "ok" between the two of us. We're both so willing to make this work, yet it just seems to get harder and harder. I think we really need to just STOP. Just STOP, and remember the things that are important: we still care about each other. I need to figure out myself and just...chill out.

Scarlett Johansson wtf? Penn State football game coming up this weekend! Fuck that, GO BLUE!

Here's a few tidbits for any Wolverines that remember.

2006 - Alan Branch ripping Anthony Morelli a new one. Ouch. Looks like Morelli forgot to dig the grave here. And look at Alan Branch strolling happily away, very satisfied with his work.

Not sure who/when this was, but it's Daryll Clark getting sacked/fumbled.

Why is it so hard to find the 1 second touchdown by Mario Manningham? This will have to suffice.

Per Dan's suggestion, I will be posting something other than MIT-related stuff. For today, I'll put up pictures of Scarlett Johansson. Why? I think the reason is implicit.

So the title of this post should actually be a lot more downbeat. I actually did terrible on my exams, and am in the lowest quartile in both of my classes. Sigh. I'll need to put more work into my classes. I'm also not doing that much research at the moment either. This all adds up to be BAD.

I done with my first round of exams at MIT. They took up a lot of my time and focus, but overall, I don't feel like they were too much harder than any other exam I've taken. I have to say, the EM exam today was super easy. Not to brag, but I think I got something right that two other guys got wrong. Ok, I am gloating a little. Also, people complained about the exam from quantum physics, so we are getting a take-home re-do of the test, to be turned in tomorrow. I'll have to get on that tonight, though I feel pretty good about my work last week.

I'm trying to build one, but efforts have so far revolved around UM football. I find myself increasingly searching for cheap thrills in the form of internet webpages and video games. I think this is rather the wrong path to go down, as it is really just a distraction from the things that would really make me satisfied. If I don't change, I may soon be unfulfilled with both school and non-school parts of my life.

The first thing I need to do is to make some better friends, real people to talk to. Right now, I've met a lot of people, but haven't really formed any connections with. That half of my group speaks chinese does not help me(though it does allow me to practice my chinese). The friend making process may take awhile, especially in this environment. After all, I did just arrive recently; good friendships are hard to find and take time to build.

The good thing is that I've identified parts of my behavior that arise because of deeper causes. I'll try to reduce the amount of time wasting that I do on the internet, in order to direct more of my efforts to doing other things. Hopefully this will change a few things for me, and make life better here. Let me brainstorm some things that can occupy my time: food, working out, sports with labmates, tennis, labmates living in Tang Hall. It seems like I still need to find something more significant. Happy Hour with lab mates a start? MIT does have its own pub. I shall think on this some more.

Two people to target: Sejoon-roommate and labmate-girl ZT. Sejoon plays tennis, which I had a lot of fun trying out the other day. The labmate-girl is also lonely and missing friends. Misery loves company no? Also, I don't feel like I get along with J. that well yet. He's a cool guy, but I think it's just like Dan and I talked about. You have to "get" a person, have a feel for what they are thinking, in order to connect with someone. It's just not happening with me and J., or many other people here yet.

I think an important skill to have no matter what you are doing is proper time management. I'm struggling with my time management a bit right now. As a first year graduate student, I am supposed to be working half the time, and focusing on classes the other half. In reality, I am doing 80+% of my time on classes. I spend all of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday working on homework and learning material for classes. Wednesday night is then dedicated to recharging. And that leaves Thursday and Friday when I don't have classes or seminars or whatever to try to do some research. If I have an exam, they are usually on Thursday or Friday. This semester, it looks like my exams are staggered with one another, ie. one exam each week, rather than together. This past week, I spent all of Thursday and Friday on my exam. This all adds up to very little time for me to spend on research.

I'll have to work on being more disciplined in my schedule. I'm also experimenting with going into the office on the weekend to dedicate some time to reading on research related topics. I will monitor this to see how it goes. Hopefully my time management problems are due to adjustment issues here at MIT. I found that another member in my group barely got anything done his first semester here. I think I can get something done this semester, such as at least getting something set up for experiments.

So. I'll start by describing things that I heard over and over this Friday night, after a stressful week. Then, you'll guess what it was that I was doing.

Quotes:
"I'm gonna BANG you!"

"No you can't, he's too far away. Bang her instead!"

"You can only bang one person at a time"

"Don't make me punch your balls"

"My balls aren't where you think they are"







Interestingly, this was a card game I played with some fellow ME students, called BANG!, a country western card game. You shoot each other by using BANG! cards, and really everyone is just shooting each other all game. Me and Jonathon were the two newbies at this game, so I guess I was the only laughing at everyone saying, "I'm gonna BANG YOU". Over. And over. Oh and there was this one girl who was really butch, threatening to punch people in the face and balls. What a bizarre night in some ways, yet really fun at the same time. I think I was laughing the whole time, which was good after working hard on my homework and studying for my quantum physics exam.

I did ok in my quantum test today. It was pretty damn tough though. As I was going through the problems, I felt like I didn't know how to do any of them. I had to really think deeply, and apply the concepts in different ways to get a solution. This was definitely not one of those tests where it's like a cookie cutter: you can not apply a specific method to determine an answer.

I just hope I did as well as everyone else. I heard from someone else today that the professor only gives A-, A, and A+ grades. That would be pretty sweet to get an A+ at MIT huh? Who knew you had a 1/3 chance to do it.

Tomorrow is my first exam at MIT. I'm pretty sure I'm about to be spanked. I'm taking a quantum physics course which is...pretty hard. It's an abstract topic to learn, and to really understand it intuitively takes some time. Until then, I'm just learning formulas and equations and more math than I ever wanted to. I think my preparation has been ok, though another day or so would be optimal. I'm going to turn in now, so that I can rest my brain. Really, if I could just remember everything that I've learned, and be able to use them tomorrow, I'd be ok. It definitely would help me more than studying some more.

Frustrating night for me. I think I will call in quits early and just get some sleep.

So, next in my series, I will talk about the pressures of getting started in research as a new graduate student.

When I found out I was going to MIT, my first priority was to find a professor to PAY ME mentor me in my research. That was pretty stressful. Having spent four years being mostly supported by my parents, I was not looking forward to spending the next four in the same way. On top of that, I wasn't entirely sure on what I wanted to do in grad school, which you really need to know when going to grad school.

So I just threw in the towel on doing my quantum physics homework. Seriously right? Quantum Physics? I'm a mechanical engineer. I last took an introduction to quantum physics in my junior year, as a requirement for my materials science degree (dual major). Man was that class tough. Towards the end, I was just struggling to finish it up so that I could leave it in the past and forget about it. Hell no I was not gonna remember anything from that class. Hell yes I was glad to be done and over with it.

And now it's back.

I didn't finish this week's homework, due in a few hours, which I'll attribute to not starting it until the day before it was due. BAD IDEA. To be fair, I was busy over the weekend (visited my cousin in Hartford), so I didn't get to start my two homeworks until Monday. I did manage to finish the first homework, at least.

Lesson learned: I HAVE to start quantum physics on the weekend, and it would be even better if I could read a bit towards the end of the week. I'll start tomorrow.

So I just got on the bus back to Boston from Hartford, after visiting my cousin for the weekend. I had a pretty fun time there, and got to see Dan too. I met a bunch of engineers working at UTC too.

I’m going to take this time to try right a bit about my experience at MIT. I learned a lot since arriving here, and have been meaning to record it, but never had the will or time to do it. I’ll start with my initial feelings about when I just arrived.

To many, MIT is the ivory tower of academic learning. In my mind, it was the most revered and prestigious school of learning, as far as science and technology goes. Obviously, we all learn as we grow up that the school you go to isn’t the only important thing. I remember in highschool, as one by one we all got rejected from incredibly prestigious Ivy schools like Yale or Harvard (guess some of did get into that one), we started saying, “hey, what do rankings mean anyway right?” Well it’s true that rankings don’t tell the whole story, and for four years while I went to University of Michigan, that was my belief. That perspective changed as soon as I got into MIT.

After getting in, there was the predictable feeling of euphoria and achievement, but it was a few months after (June or July of this summer, ’09), that my original impression of MIT from above hit met. It went something like this:
Holy shit…what did I get myself in to…

I had a big case of the panic attack. I just completely got caught up with the MIT stereotypes, and thought I was completely out of my league. Maybe people will find out that I actually don’t belong there. After all, admissions departments make mistakes. In addition, I had gotten in only after being rejected, because I was offered a fellowship (S.M.A.R.T. Fellowship by the Department of Defense). For almost three months, there was a gnawing worry in the back of my mind about how I would deal with MIT.

This didn’t really change after I arrived on campus. For the first week, I had to go through orientation session after session, in which the speakers intoned that we didn’t have to worry about not fitting in, or not making it here. They kept telling us how great we were, and we would go on to do great things at MIT. This did not help at all, as I continued to think it was the other people who were the great ones. I certainly was not one of them.
Eventually, this feeling of inadequacy passed. I do not feel like I’m any better than I was before. It’s just that, the other people seemed less overwhelming. More normal, albeit with a geeky streak. In particular, two things helped me to change this. One, my classes were hard, but I found that other people were struggling just as much as me, or even more in some cases. Two, another person in my group (lab group), was feeling much more depressed than I was. Thomas, a new international student, had and still has a sense of disorientation. He seems like a bright guy, but just found everything really intense, and was struggling to keep his spirits up. For me, I realized that even if smart people can feel this daunted, then perhaps we are all just experiencing the same challenges.

The moral of the story: MIT is not really the ivory tower I once thought of it as. It is a challenging school, but as a famous professor here said, “Getting an education from MIT is like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrtant.” Everyone here feels just as overwhelmed as I do. And it’s ok.

Prof. Hagelstein does Darth Vader: *Whooooo-shhhhhhhhhhhh.....Whoooo-shhhhhhhhhhhh.....Whoooo-shhhhhhhhhhhh*, *I AM DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR LACK OF PHYSICAL INTUITION*
(In this quote, he asks us for our intuition as to what will happen to a wave packet with a parabolic dispersion relation. Apparently, the appropriate response would be to say, "the packet will spread over time".)

Clarice the TA: "The professor says that doing integrals by hand builds character"
(However, even she professes to use Mathematica to solve big integrals.)

More later.

Sometime soon, I need to make these posts more substantial. I've just been a little busy with classes and homework. Tonight, I spent about 3 hours stumped on this quantum physics (6.728) homework. Thankfully, I started getting it towards the end. Also, I switched to EM (6.630), which was a lot easier, so I can end tonight on a more positive note. Will be working on this tomorrow again.

Just had a fire alarm. I'm sitting here in my pajamas, thinking "uh oh, what to bring." Good thing it was all resolved rather quickly. I think someone was probably cooking, and set off an alarm. We were all back in less than half an hour.

Also, I climbed 16 flights of stairs. Good work out.

Edit: Turns out that later that day, we had another fire alarm. This time I think it was a faulty system error.

!!!!!

Edit 2: This morning (Monday), I get an email from the hall director. Tang Hall is undergoing fire drills this week, and we should be ready.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will start this now, and probably finish the rest tomorrow, since it is late.

Screw it. Time for bed.

Edit 1: Boston water tastes pretty damn good. At least, the MIT tap water in building 35 does. More later.

Just cried my eyes out when Grace was leaving. I haven't done that in a long time. I'll write more when I get to Boston.

EDIT 1:
So I am now in MIT. I'm quite busy trying to settle in, but I'm going to try to update on what happened the past few days. Grace and I had a long talk about our future, and we poured our hearts out talking about how we felt. She's still not completely sure if she's ready for the next step in our relationship, but I think she's getting closer. We shall see how that goes. We both cried a lot because we were going to be separate for longer than ever before.

EDIT 2:
I am now officially at MIT, as in my RA has started. I was freaked out last weekend, before starting orientation at MIT. I have it in my mind that MIT is this ivory tower with super duper geniuses, and that I was gonna get run over by their brain power. I guess I'm a little less freaked out now. The people here seem pretty normal, albeit a little geeky. The same thing happened to me when I started at Michigan. I remember the first few engineering classes, I was just in awe at how smart some of the people were. In the end, everything turned out ok for me. I suppose the same thing will happen here (hopefully).

Though I'm less scared now of failing out, a new problem has come up: I have no project. That means that I have nothing to work on all day, except to talk to people in my group and find out what they are doing. It doesn't help that people keep asking me what project I am working on. I feel like I have to give an answer. I tried talking to a few people today, and they were nice about it, and took time to explain to me what they did. However, I feel if I keep asking people to take time to explain to me what they do, some of them might get irritated. I will try to see if I can catch people doing experiments, and maybe I will be interrupting less.

So these are my immediate thoughts on school and being apart from Grace. I'll post an analysis later.

Listening to Take Me Home Tonight - Eddie Money. This song is sweet.

-Howitzer

Hurrah!

I got four vaccines today: Hepatitis A, Meningitis, Mumps/Measles/Rubella, and Tetanus. I'm overdue for three of those shots, so I'll consider myself lucky that I'm not dead at this point. Especially since, as George points out, I go to China pretty often. I only found out I needed all these shots because of some vaccination forms I needed to fill out to go to school in Massachusetts. Imagine, I show up at the clinic to have them fill out these forms for me, only to find out that I'm horribly under protected against dangerous diseases(haha).

My arms hurt like a bitch.

Also, Grace back in 3 days!

So, I got my braces off on Monday. Feels strange, just like it did last time. I have the feeling of my lips rubbing against my teeth all the time now, as opposed to being help away by the wires. It's really weird. It will go away soon enough though. My teeth also look fine. I'm not so much excited as relieved. Now I can feel free to ignore my teeth, instead of being bothered when my tongue catches on some crook in my teeth.

I got some retainers that I'll have to be wearing for the next six months. The purpose of these is to keep my teeth set the way they are, until the bone density around my teeth increases back to its normal density. Then, my teeth will be less prone to shifting again. I looked it up, and I got the Hawley retainers. These feel kind of bulky actually, and make it feel weird to talk. I will give it a week, and if they still feel weird, I may ask for the VFR (vacuum filled retainers). These are the retainers that look basically like a clear mold around your teeth. My current ones have a wire that wraps around my bite, with a plastic piece flush against the roof of my mouth.

It's too bad I only got to see my second orthodontist a few times. She was really nice, and we got along well. The first orthodontist was fine, we just never really clicked as well. By the way, these are all student orthodontists, who are maybe 5 years older than me.

So, every former president is still on the US payroll. Not sure how I feel about this, but here is the wording of the Former Presidents Act:

"(a) Each former President shall be entitled for the remainder of his life to receive from the United States a monetary allowance at a rate per annum, payable monthly by the Secretary of the Treasury, which is equal to the annual rate of basic pay, as in effect from time to time, of the head of an executive department, as defined in section 101 of title 5, United States Code [section 101 of Title 5]. However, such allowance shall not be paid for any period during which such former President holds an appointive or elective office or position in or under the Federal Government or the government of the District of Columbia to which is attached a rate of pay other than a nominal rate."

On the one hand, presidents should be thanked for their service. Being president is probably the hardest job in our country, and it's nice that they're taken care of by the citizens after serving. On the other hand, it's not like they're going to need the money. Heck most of them start off rich enough. They are probably earning around $100k to $200k, considering how much a current president is earning.

Got my braces off today. Will add more later.

So I saw Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen yesterday. I must say that the movie was an awesome sequel to the first one. In some ways, it was better. See, when I watched the first Transformers movie, I was just happy to watch a Camaro changing into a robot, in CG. That was like the coolest thing EVER. I had so many memories of playing with Transformers when I was little, and now it's been modernized to be even more awesome than I remembered. That was the thrill of watching the first movie. In the second movie, they added more and better robot fight scenes. There was this one scene where Optimus takes out two power swords, and battles three Decepticons. EPIC FIGHT!!!!!!!! I didn't really care about the story line as much as I enjoyed watching CG robot fights. (You can tell I really like Transformers.)

So, sitting at home, I get the idea that I would wash and wax the Saturn Sky. I had time to kill, and the car needed a wash. As I'm looking up information online, I find that there is a whole community of guys that really take care of their cars. I mean, they go through multiple steps of detailing to make sure that their cars' paint jobs are of showroom quality. I continue reading. Two days later, one clay detailing kit, one car wax kit, 8 microfiber towels...and more later, I am finally ready to start. Oh and I also managed to get my little brother to help me too. This is gonna be great!

So I finally delivered the computer that I built for Grace's parents...and I'm really regretting doing it for them. It's not that it took a lot of time or cost me anything. It's just that..I'm afraid the computer will fail in some unforeseen way, and then Grace's parents will think that they made a bad decision in asking me to build their computer. See, the computer worked fine for a week while I used it. But what if a random hard drive error occurs? Well then it would be "my fault". In an OEM computer, the customer can go back to the OEM company and ask for repairs/fixes. However, if a home built computer breaks, then it's up to the builder to fix it. Which would be me.

Sleeping early is really hard for me. I've been sleeping past 2am the past few days, and I haven't been getting good rest as a result. I suppose I should be sleeping instead of posting. I will deliberate on the reason for my night owl habits more.

I went to the CSE building tonight on North Campus to watch a movie with George. We ended up wasting about an hour before finally starting the movie around 10pm. I think George usually sleeps around that time.

An introduction, since this is my first entry. Howitzer has been my game ID since I first touched a computer game. It's been with me ever since.