Getting to the end of Week 4: "Welcome to the Big Leagues"

First off: This is an Umbrella city. Everyone has one. I found out people carry them around even when it is not forcasted to rain. Having the conditioning of the northwest, they are a little annoying when you are trying to walk down the sidewalk and you almost get your eye poked out with the sharp thingies poking out. Don't worry, I have been rocking the Troop 639 coat. It has been keeping me very comfortable and dry the past few days as summer is being flushed out by fall. Apparently weather changes here == rain and wind. If it is going to change from hot to cold, Pittsburgh gets rain. If it is going to change from cold to hot, Pittsburgh gets rain. It is never for very long, but when it rains... it really rains...


Earlier this week I received my first Machine Learning homework assignment. Shortly after I contemplated Chris' urging to drop out and hang out with him in California. This homework was a set of 5 topics. Each one being an assignment in itself. It is mostly hefty probability, kind of like Dr. Braileanu's class, but taken to the nth degree. Seeing as I did not know what I was doing, and my general stance towards probability, I am struggling to say the least. Good news: the TAs and the professor have been very understanding, and very helpful; even when I went in and asked for pointers on how to do the first part... that is never a good sign when you cant figure out the base case. I think James' comment sums it all up:
"Yeah... tell me about it. Welcome to the Big Leagues"


Other than that, which I have been spending a lot of time working on, life has been good. I got my grade back on my Computational Photography project, apparently I did better than they were expecting, sweet! At least I can do well at one of my classes! Last night Larry hosted a fancy (well not really...) dinner, he invited Joe and Peter, who both were former residents of the attic. Both of them are cool guys, Joe is a video editor for an advertising company, and Peter works for a professor at Pitt. Dinner was steak, potatoes and green beans. Peter made a great dessert with strawberries, ice cream and a pumpkin roll thing... awesome! Afterward, I found out that Peter was having a hard time with his discrete mathematics course that he was taking. This course is basically digital logic, but for computer science majors. And seeing as digital logic was one of my favorite classes at GU, I happily helped him out with some concepts that he was trying to grasp.


In other news, my dear cousin, Cory is just starting up at UCLA as a freshman. I am super excited for him! He is also keeping track of his progress, you can check it out here. Go Cory!


Well, I need to head to Computational Photography, apparently we are getting another project assigned toady! I cannot wait to see what we get to work on.