Archive for September, 2011

First Real Assignment of the Semester

21 September 2011 at 7:14 pm
by Berck

Just got back my first homework in Design and Analysis of Algorithms. I worked very hard on it, so I was glad to have gotten 119/125 on it. Here’s the assignment, as I turned it in.. I missed points for not evaluating 1c at infinity, and for not providing enough detail for the average case in number 3.

He’s just assigned the second homework. It looks to be about the same difficulty level, depending on how hard the recurrence relations at the top turn out to be. And I’m guessing they turn out to be hard.

I’ve been neglecting the category.

21 September 2011 at 1:52 pm
by Berck

Not for want of subject matter, I assure you.

Writing Porfolio

12 September 2011 at 7:14 pm
by Berck

Passed!

So, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. The last big worry is the Spring schedule, and I’m not sure when that comes out…

I had all sorts of frustrations with my Programming Language class today. I went to school an hour early to use one of the Windows labs because we have to turn in Windows executables which I think is a really stupid requirement. Providing a windows executable has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to code in the specified languages.

Anyway, the COBOL compiler worked fine, after I spent half an hour figuring out how to use it. The FORTRAN compiler didn’t work on my source file, and the ADA compiler refused to work at all. I spent an hour futzing with it with no results. This is precisely why I don’t use windows.

I have perfectly valid source code that compiles and executes beautifully on Linux, yet I’m supposed to waste hours of my life with lab computers that aren’t maintained correctly? Ridiculous.

Rye Grass Smiley

11 September 2011 at 6:46 pm
by Jonah

My senior year at the University of Mobile, I schemed a plot and persuaded my buddy Cris to help me carry it out. I spent the night at her dorm room, and we got up very early and donned all black clothes. Unfortunately, we hadn’t set our alarm early enough, because it was already light by the time we got up. We were the only people up and about, except for the security guard patrolling in her little car. Unfortunately, this made us stick out. Fortunately, security at UM has never cared about much of anything.

We went out to the quad in the middle of the university. Cris stood in the center, while I played out several feet of twine. Then I walked in a circle as far as the twine would let me, holding a plastic bag of rye grass seed in one hand and sowing about a foot wide swath with the other. Next I shortened the string and made another arc of seed. Then we eyeballed a couple of dots. When the security car would drive by, we would drop the twine and act like we were chatting.

When we returned from winter break, we admired our handiwork from the third floor of Weaver Hall:

I think groundskeeping had tried to blur it by planting more rye seed around it, but our face definitely had the taller grass.

(Cris and I were senior class president and vice-president at the time.)

50 Cakes Update

10 September 2011 at 6:44 pm
by Jonah

Last Christmastime, Amanda made a chocolate, coffee, peanut butter cheesecake; I can’t remember what we decided to call it exactly. She also made two mini cakes for Berck and me, so that counts as two cakes.

She made Irish car-bomb cupcakes this last visit, but they actually involved Scottish and Mexican heritage, so I’m not sure what that makes them. All I know is that they were (and are…we haven’t finished them yet) delicious. That counts as cake number 5. 45 to go.