Went to 331 lecture for the first time in a while ;) this morning. It was nice to just sit there and not try to maximize my efficiency reading slides at top speed, felt relaxing.
Straight from class I headed to the Engineering Discovery Days booths to help Winnie and the other physics volunteers. Our booth was about particle physics, so I wasn’t sure what to expect–but it turned out I knew more particle physics, at a middle school level ;) than I thought I did.
We had a monster Lego model of the ATLAS detector, which was genius. Apparently it took a week to assemble and contained 9000 legos. But it drew curious kids like flies to honey. It was Friday, the weather was beautiful, and our booth was right by Drumheller fountain where everyone sat to enjoy the views. We were swamped. Winnie sat on the edge of the table frantically expositing about the detector and the LHC and smashing protons. I jumped in to help and we got a rotation going so we wouldn’t wear out our voices or exhaust our brains. I slowly developed the most exciting way to describe the detector, all the most “Wow, that’s crazy!” points, about its size relative to the smallness of the things it collided, about the rate of data throughput, and so on; and all the best question points and simple physics, e.g., analogies to “nuclear chemistry” and why like charges repelling explained why we needed to accelerate protons to near light speeds to get them to crash into each other rather than bounce back from the collision. Man, so much FUN! Sometimes the kids would ask really great questions, even if half of the time they just wanted to know how many legos were in the model. One little guy, probably around 9, wandering around with his mom, had this great goofy shy grin. He had heard about ion drive rocket engines and wondered if they were related. I could talk to him about any bit of physics and he would come up with some interesting question that caused me to move into different physics. We ended up talking about magneto-optical traps and quantum computers :D :D Winnie and I gave his mom our emails in case he came up with more scientific questions.
Walked Winnie to her class, went over to physics, and sat outside catching up on 331 and reading about this week’s homework, advertised as the hardest. We have to do end-to-end API design, detailed implementation specification with representation invariants and abstraction functions, and THEN write all our code. I started on the API design this evening though and I’m looking forward to the challenge.
Winnie came back from her class and said hi :D We talked about going to the Arboretum tomorrow morning, which looks like it’s going to happen :D Then I went back to Stevens for a 30 minute micro-nap, followed by work on 331.
Then… N FACTORIGOAAAAAL! Finally, I got to play a game!! Came early and warmed up. Winnie showed up from the lab right as the game was about to start with her dress shirt still on :P
I was put in goalie and had 5 minutes to get in gear, taking shots from the whole team. Then the game began. Our defense was playing too aggressively (as last year!) and getting beat left and right. I had a few good pressure plays the first half, and a few close missed saves. I also had a few really awkward moments getting back into goalie, where I forgot where the box was / punted when I was supposed to kick the ball on the ground, but managed to stop these things from costing the team. We were down just 3-2 going into the half. But the breakaways were too much. I ate a few nearly unblockable shots, but kept up the energy. I could feel the defiance building, and made a really improbable play. I pressured a breakaway striker, who went for a really high chip over my head. I sprinted back, leapt up like for a layup barely in time, and swatted the ball out as it arced into the left upper corner of the goal. Man, I could feel the energy! We lost like 5-2, but everyone was happy afterwards. I got a lot of kudos, which I was somewhat surprised by since I had to eat a lot of goals. Even our hard-nosed captain Yael gave me a “Good job.” and my buddy Temo came over from the sidelines of the other game and shook my hand :D It was hilarious!
Walked back to West Campus with Winnie, who’d gotten less playtime than optimal because of some shin guard shenanigans, but I think she still had fun. Took a shower, then met Winnie at Cedar (yet another West Campus tree dorm :P) and we walked to Cedars (the legendary and classy Indian restaurant), holding hands happily all the way. We had a truly incredible meal. I had a coupon for 2 beverages, 1 entree -> 1 free entree. It said up to 9.99, but they gave us the whole $14 AND a free naan after I forgot to order one. And the butter chicken was amazing :D :D We had a great time as well–there were some hilarious moments involving Winnie trying my only slightly spicy food and nearly dying, then myself nearly dying of laughter and somehow getting my own bite of the spicy food up my nose, where it actually was spicy… #karma We talked about her family, experiences we’d had with different professors as the one-off undergrads who took the time to talk with the yokels we didn’t think would have time to talk with us :P
We were nearly the last people in Cedar’s, so we finished off our mango lassis and headed out. On the way back we stopped at the Sketchway for random things–Winnie had never heard the term “Sketchway” ;) and thought it was hilarious. Walked back to Cedar, where Winnie gave me a box of wet wipes for the apartment (it was on my list but she had an extra one via circumstance) AND a hilarious little blue-and-orange Rick-and-Morty wallet with a goofy smiley on the front. We had been admiring hers over dinner, but apparently when she got it she’d gotten another one ;D We were enjoying a long hug so I decided to show her the form of hug-dancing I knew–the little of balboa I’d retained from the Big Sky Weekend last year–and we actually figured out the Basic. Went back to Stevens, cleaned my room, worked a bit more on the API, found one more canvas wallet in my Useful Stuff Bin that I think would be a hilarious reciprocation play, pwned some chess tactics, wrote this log and hit the hay :D