Month: October 2020

Week four has come and gone. Four me, this was a memorable one. It has gone even faster than the previous week, but four good reason this time. I went on vacation for the weekend, and therefour, I had to get everything done early. It basically was a full week condensed into four days so I could get out and truly relax. Honestly, I feel truly fourtunate to have this opportunity.

Our project has started to charge fourward, building steam as it goes. Ok, I’m done with the fours. At this point the word doesn’t look real anymore. Anyway, our motivation has begun climbing and we, as a team feel unstoppable. Our requirements are nailed down more than ever, but I have the sneaking suspicion, we may not have the full picture, that or maybe the requirements will change down the road. I hope that’s not the case, but this year has so far seems to be the year that Murphy’s Law is basically guaranteed, so I’m not holding my breath. We finally have access to the server infrastructure at Fermilab, so we can begin working in earnest, starting next week. We get access to a lot of interesting information in addition with our accounts, and I’m excited to start poking through the Wiki to try and learn more.

These blogs so far have been very cathartic for me. I’ve basically got like two nonstop streams of consciousness going all the time, and its hard to keep everything straight. I don’t think you really know what you, guy who grades this, has done by allowing me to just word vomit all over an assignment. It’s like I’ve just been mallocing nonstop and the terrified person looking over my shoulder the whole time has just showed me how to free. I guess its been… freeing.

P.S. If you ever get to Manzanita Oregon, go to Yolk for breakfast and order the French Toast. It’s transformational.

Did the week really just go by? I feel like I just wrote my last blog yesterday. I think that means either that I’m getting into the rhythm of school, or I have short term memory loss. This week has been a lot of grinding away at different project. The DUNE project hasn’t been taking up most of my time, but it has been taking up most of my brainspace. I think that’s because its the project that I actually feel a vested interest in, and a connection to the outcome. I think I won’t be able to share any of the details here on the blog because I just had to spend like an hour and a half reading documents that told me in 100 different ways not to share this information with foreigners, else I’ll be put in the stocks. It seemed a little ironic to me as a dual citizen, like, am I these foreigners that I am not to be sharing with? I’ll keep my Canadian personality in the dark on this one I guess, never know what he might do.

This week we prepared our problem statement document. We all worked together through Zoom on one Google Doc. It was honestly refreshing. I’ve been in enough dysfunctional group projects that feel like pulling teeth that one that worked quickly and efficiently writing the document was a breath of fresh air. I think having a group that you work well with is likely one of the Major Keys to success in this class. I feel lucky to have been randomly assigned to such an overwhelmingly competent group. If my partners ever read this down the road, cheers! You make my life better. I’m going on a mini vacation this weekend. This pandemic I guess isn’t all bad, as it has allowed me to let go my earthly tether and get a little bit of traveling in. I’m looking forward to it. I originally began coding because I thought it would be the best job to pay the bills while I sail the Caribbean. It was somewhat a joke at first, but as I went through school the technology and social progress to make it happen has actually happened. Like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and the pandemic normalizing remote work. Maybe it’ll all work out in the end.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m somewhat impressed, it got a little in the weeds for a bit, but we’ve made it out. And you, you know who you are, you’re an everyday hero, and your work makes a difference. Thanks again for reading!

Luke

I’m writing this to continue the momentum built up by the wildly successful Luke’s Blog. This, the sequel I hope will be met with the same critical acclaim as the original. It got me thinking, how do you follow up on perfection? The answer I came to is with more perfection. In this blog you will read the wild misadventures of me doing school.

It’s been quite a week. I find week 2 of school to be the real beginning of every term, as all the classes I take seem to take the gloves off and start swinging in week 2. It’s like they are trying to give you a bit of false hope during week one, only to come around and sucker punch you in the gut week 2. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying the fight. There’s something I find I can get out of that kind of struggle that I can’t find elsewhere. My experience with high school wrestling taught me that. There’s something different about struggling with every fiber of your being against someone doing the same. The fear and nervousness before the match, and the exhaustion 30 seconds in only to find out that you’ve only just begun. Which brings me back to week 2, because I know its only just the beginning.

I met with my group for the first time this week. Our project is called DUNE, and as far as I can tell, we will be trying to make sense of a lot of data in order to understand more about Neutrinos. This was very impressive to me, as were my collaborators. I feel as though I am a very small fish who has just happened to land in the middle of the Pacific. I hope to do my best to be an asset on this project. I have lately been thinking about what I aspire to be one day, and I have come to the conclusion that I would like to be an amazing person that people can look up to. I was pretty nervous about this project, as I don’t know if I am ready or able to do it. It is a daunting challenge that looks impossible from the outset. I was pretty demotivated until I realized that this is the kind of challenge that an amazing person would conquer. They always seem to be just going about their day to day life, casually doing the impossible. Maybe this is my first step to accomplishing that kind of dream.

Thanks for reading my blog to the one guy who has to grade this. You are my favorite.

Hey, welcome to my blog, if you are reading this, you are most likely also grading this, so I hope I didn’t screw this up.  However, if you are here and are not obligated to be here I am glad to have you, you singlehandedly have made my blog far more successful than I expected.  The other person who may be reading this is Future Luke.  Hi Future Luke, I hope things are working out for you the way I hope they do, but I know how these things go, where priorities change and things come up.

I’m writing this mostly as an outlet to just get some of my thoughts written out.  Sometimes its hard for me to keep track of everything so I hope this helps.  I’m writing this in the middle of a massive pandemic, before a monumental election.  Maybe when future Luke sees this everything will be back to normal, but somehow I think that’s a bit unlikely.  Maybe you are reading this in 1000 years after the world ended.  What’s it like? Are there still humans?  Did we ever colonize space? Do you understand memes?  There’s a lot of things I’d like to ask you if this time capsule worked two ways.  I just moved back into my parents house, it seems like the trendy thing to do for people my age.  I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it but I’m determined to make the most of it.

Well, to the one person who has to grade this, I hope this didn’t feel like a waste of time.  I would appreciate 100%, thanks!  And to the people of the future, I hope the good guys won.  I know that maybe this doesn’t fill the requirements, but I feel like this is a better intro to a blog that I can be happy about.  Thanks for reading!

Luke