My Temporary Asylum
Before I begin, some notable quotes:
From a bus ride this morning:
girl1: "I don't like Philosophy. Like, I'm not good at it"
girl2: "Yea, like, I took it last semester for a humanities requirement. I thought It'd be more like psychology."
-Two undergrads(I hope) from a neighboring university(I really hope) I overheard on the Bus.
From a bus ride about a week ago:
(Cute mousey-looking Chinese Girl walks down bus)
dude1: "yea, them Asian girls is so cute"
lady1: "yea, well you know they all look the same to me (laughs)."
"once ya seen one ya seen'em all, am i right?" (both laugh)
On to business. At 8:30am EST Today I started my last exam for the Fall. At 1200pm EST it was finished, along with this semester. The first and only afternoon nap of the semester was my reward. I keep going back and forth between "Oh my god I did awful!" to "Meh, That should be enough to maintain a B" and then to "Whatever, I'm effin' done". I just emailed the professor(Doctor Gandhi, what an awesome name!). I just want to know how to really feel right now. There's nothing worse than being in limbo about this kind of information.
Exciting news. I've chosen a thesis project. It involves an adaptive software trading agent. That is, a software agent specialized in adaptive trading. Perhaps some definitions are in order. A software agent is, according to the almighty wiki, "an abstraction, a logical model that describes software that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency". My particular agent will be concerned with adaptive trading, which I will liken to learning how to become an expert middle-man. There's annual competitions where a group of customers and a group of manufacturers are simulated for the agent. The customers want to buy computers from the agent and the manufacturers want to sell parts to the agent. It's up to us lowly humans to design an agent that will intelligently make the optimal choices as far as responding to customer orders and accepting manufacturers' offers. It's pretty much what I've always wanted to work on with a little economic theory thrown in the mix (double bonus!). This particular agent is about 3 years old and has already been in past competitions. There are currently a couple other Grad students working on him.
So it took me a while to really come to that decision. My other choices were to pursue a project in cryptography with a well known security expert(as soon as he answered my emails, of course) or wait it out another semester and see if anything pops up. I'm nominally in a security program, but my first and true love will always be A.I. Don't get me wrong Cryptography is enticing in that it's tightly coupled with number theory, algorithm complexity, and not to mention that whole cloak and dagger aspect. It just lacks the sex appeal, the pizazz, the vivacious curves that molding an artificial mind out of binary, electronic scratch can offer. Besides, I believe a great philosopher once said, "My problem in life is I only wanna do shit that's fun", though I fail to see how that is perceived as a 'problem'.
BeJesus! I'm so done polluting my conversations with school. I can't seem to think of anything else lately. Our department had a holiday party. There was much bad karaoke(the only kind) and your standard convention food. Found myself wondering,"Why can't I just mingle like normal human being?" The only person I talked to was a classmate's husband. He entertained my asinine questions about India and it was the only real conversation I had that night. I managed to score a couple extra drink tickets and consequently my plans for studying the rest of the night were shattered. Bah! There it is again.
Anyway, aside from the post-final stress residue, I am in fact completely,utterly, and indubitably done with my first semester of Grad school. And it's been quite a ride: broke RSA encryption, ate hella legit Indian food, overflowed some buffers, learned "Comptine D'une Autre Apres Midi" by Tiersen, ate HELLA legit Indian food. Most surprisingly I've realized that despite all my planning, calculation, and stratagems I seem to have forgotten my heart in Vegas. But what has really turned my world upside-down is learning that double spacing after periods was an old convention from the type-writer days and is no longer required in conventional literature. In closing, I'm coming home and it is my intention to always be in either of two mutually exclusive states, inebriated Xor unconscious.
From a bus ride this morning:
girl1: "I don't like Philosophy. Like, I'm not good at it"
girl2: "Yea, like, I took it last semester for a humanities requirement. I thought It'd be more like psychology."
-Two undergrads(I hope) from a neighboring university(I really hope) I overheard on the Bus.
From a bus ride about a week ago:
(Cute mousey-looking Chinese Girl walks down bus)
dude1: "yea, them Asian girls is so cute"
lady1: "yea, well you know they all look the same to me (laughs)."
"once ya seen one ya seen'em all, am i right?" (both laugh)
On to business. At 8:30am EST Today I started my last exam for the Fall. At 1200pm EST it was finished, along with this semester. The first and only afternoon nap of the semester was my reward. I keep going back and forth between "Oh my god I did awful!" to "Meh, That should be enough to maintain a B" and then to "Whatever, I'm effin' done". I just emailed the professor(Doctor Gandhi, what an awesome name!). I just want to know how to really feel right now. There's nothing worse than being in limbo about this kind of information.
Exciting news. I've chosen a thesis project. It involves an adaptive software trading agent. That is, a software agent specialized in adaptive trading. Perhaps some definitions are in order. A software agent is, according to the almighty wiki, "an abstraction, a logical model that describes software that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency". My particular agent will be concerned with adaptive trading, which I will liken to learning how to become an expert middle-man. There's annual competitions where a group of customers and a group of manufacturers are simulated for the agent. The customers want to buy computers from the agent and the manufacturers want to sell parts to the agent. It's up to us lowly humans to design an agent that will intelligently make the optimal choices as far as responding to customer orders and accepting manufacturers' offers. It's pretty much what I've always wanted to work on with a little economic theory thrown in the mix (double bonus!). This particular agent is about 3 years old and has already been in past competitions. There are currently a couple other Grad students working on him.
So it took me a while to really come to that decision. My other choices were to pursue a project in cryptography with a well known security expert(as soon as he answered my emails, of course) or wait it out another semester and see if anything pops up. I'm nominally in a security program, but my first and true love will always be A.I. Don't get me wrong Cryptography is enticing in that it's tightly coupled with number theory, algorithm complexity, and not to mention that whole cloak and dagger aspect. It just lacks the sex appeal, the pizazz, the vivacious curves that molding an artificial mind out of binary, electronic scratch can offer. Besides, I believe a great philosopher once said, "My problem in life is I only wanna do shit that's fun", though I fail to see how that is perceived as a 'problem'.
BeJesus! I'm so done polluting my conversations with school. I can't seem to think of anything else lately. Our department had a holiday party. There was much bad karaoke(the only kind) and your standard convention food. Found myself wondering,"Why can't I just mingle like normal human being?" The only person I talked to was a classmate's husband. He entertained my asinine questions about India and it was the only real conversation I had that night. I managed to score a couple extra drink tickets and consequently my plans for studying the rest of the night were shattered. Bah! There it is again.
Anyway, aside from the post-final stress residue, I am in fact completely,utterly, and indubitably done with my first semester of Grad school. And it's been quite a ride: broke RSA encryption, ate hella legit Indian food, overflowed some buffers, learned "Comptine D'une Autre Apres Midi" by Tiersen, ate HELLA legit Indian food. Most surprisingly I've realized that despite all my planning, calculation, and stratagems I seem to have forgotten my heart in Vegas. But what has really turned my world upside-down is learning that double spacing after periods was an old convention from the type-writer days and is no longer required in conventional literature. In closing, I'm coming home and it is my intention to always be in either of two mutually exclusive states, inebriated Xor unconscious.
posted by ali-khan at 4:10 PM
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