Deuteronomy

Numbers:

43: Hours I was in Soda in a 50 hour period this weekend, working on our 265 project. We wrote and debugged 4500 lines of code in 5 days. Perhaps I’ll post the paper later when I switch back to Linux.

6: Hours I slept in a 60 hour period during the same debacle. It turned out pretty well, actually, but I’m still recovering.

0: Conversely, the number of times I had to stay up while doing my CS270 project with Bill. It was a lot of fun, and we got some good results. It concerns a problem that occurred to me one day while we were brainstorming. Here’s the opening paragraph of the paper:

You are a poor graduate student. For spring break, you plan to drive down to L.A. on Route 1. Unfortunately, you can’t bring your massive CD collection on the road because your 1984 Plymouth Reliant has only a tape player. So, you would like to convert your music library to mix tapes. Since you like variety in your mix tapes, no two songs from the same CD should be copied to the same mix tape. Tapes cost money, and considering your measly stipend, you want to use as few as possible. What should you do?

It turns out that solving this problem is NP-Complete, meaning that as far as we know it’s basically just too difficult to do for any serious number of songs. We go much further in the paper and analyze some approximation algorithms (and make up some of our own). Read it if you’re interested. Bill is an awesome partner, by the way.

T40: The model number of my new IBM laptop. I love it! Best laptop ever.

0%: Chance the Lakers have of winning the championship this year. Hoooooo!

3: Concerts I attended since my last update: Kenny Garrett (not Kenny G) at Yoshi’s, Dar Williams at the Fillmore, Richard Shindell at the Freight and Salvage. All with jcliao, actually (and assorted other friends: yayu, Marianne). Dude Kenny’s drummer was just sick. Sooo good. I seriously couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I don’t think I looked at any of the other band members until halfway through the set. Dar and Richard were, of course, quality. The only problem with growing up with the same artists is that every new time you see them live, their sets seem shorter, since they have even more good songs to play.

too many: Good-byes I have to say this weekend as everyone leaves IHouse :(.

too much: Drunken revelry on the Love Boat, IHouse’s spring cruise on the bay. Still fun though!

2267 Hearst #6: Address of my new place. Moving tomorrow morning. Still have to pack, of course.

1: Number of times I’ve played any kind of sport in the last month. And that was soccer yesterday. Ouch. That means I haven’t done anything: no footy, ultimate, volleyball, not even ping pong. My touch wasn’t so bad (I scored a brace in our 2-1 victory, heh) but I was terribly out of shape. That will have to change this summer.

14.5: Consecutive hours spent administering and grading the CS172 final on Wednesday. No more TAing for a couple of years. The students in my sections kicked total ass though: their median was 14 points (out of 120) above the rest of the class! And 6 of the top 11 students for the semester were mine (even though I only have 16 of 64 students). Yay! Yes, obviously I am proud :).

2: Articles you should read right now. The first is a great speech by Arundhati Roy, entitled “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy, Buy One Get One Free”, that my mom sent me. Also read about awesome Sherpas. I love Sherpas!