Hello everyone,

I’m afraid I must apologize for my lack of posts recently. Its been a very busy week and I’ve begun to receive homework in my classes. Not to mention the many distractions that float around here. I have however been keeping up with my homework and getting decent amounts of sleep and even doing social things (amazing I know) so there’s just been a lot going on.

I’ve progressed in Greek to the beginning of the grammatical section of the class. This has been nothing short of frightening. Before grammar, we had 30 people in the class, at last count, we’re down to 25. Its tough, but I’m keeping up and I always leave the lecture with a good understanding of what we read in the textbook.

EECS 10 has been quite the opposite. Because I have used a command prompt interface before the UNIX environment has been very easy to pick up and because I’ve been encouraged to take up programming several times already, I already know what’s going on in the easy assignments that we’ve been given so far.

/*if you don’t care about the technical side of programming don’t bother reading this paragraph, but for those interested, the programming environment is either pico, vi, or emacs for UNIX. So far I’ve only used pico which is basically only notepad for UNIX. The compiler is built into the UNIX command prompt and is a simple gcc command (“GNU C compiler” I think). It seems functional enough though and the learning curve is practically nonexistent.*/

The EECS lab today was quite an ego boost. Primarily because there were not enough computers and I had already done the homework. I simply walked around and helped people who were really lost, much as the teaching assistant was doing.

Both chem. and calculus have been moving very slow conceptually, so there is little to talk about for them.

In other news I attended the RPG club meeting on Monday night. In attendance was a variable cornucopia of geeks in all their kinds. The general atmosphere was very laid back though and I had fun so I’ll probability be back next week.

Also of a nonscholastic nature, I went to the ARC this evening and lifted weights, stretched, did isometrics and ran back to the dorm. I went with four other guys and had a great time. Hopefully I won’t turn into a blob of jelly while I’m here.

Once again, im sorry I haven’t posted for the last few days. As you can see by the timestamp, I kind of have to make time for it. Thanks for all your comments and emails. I’ll try to post more regularly.

Lucas

Hello everyone, I just got back from church. Collin (my cousin, for readers who don’t know) picked my up this morning and I attended the service and had lunch at the Stubblefield’s with all the cousins and their various wives and girlfriends. The service was excellent. Although the music seemed subdued after what I heard while attending foothills, the message was well prepared and well spoken.

I finished my Greek and calc homework last night and now I’m off to do some EECS and Chem. related activates.

Be sure to let me know how you’re doing in the comments, or even drop me an email from time to time. Its nice to hear from all you who read this.

Off to do my homework,

Lucas

I’m between classes right now and so far things are looking great. EECS intro looks like it will be the easiest with an introduction to programming in C and familiarization with the UNIX environment (that means the Linux environment too). Chemistry looks like it won’t be much more difficult then the honors stuff that Wichersham already threw at us in 11 grade. Greek is another story; I’m expecting it to be the most difficult of my classes this quarter. I am, however, quite exited by it. The instructor is passionate about Greek and has been teaching it for 20 and studying it for 30 year. It’s also a class that I’m taking largely because I want to, so that makes it more interesting as well. Or perhaps I want to take it BECAUSE its more interesting.

In other news, we had our first dorm network Counter Strike game yesterday and I watched the matrix in the common room with a bunch of people from my dorm.

I’m very glad classes have started now. I was starting to get lonely here with nothing to do all the time.

I’ll try and post regularly, but I’ve got to be off to calculus in not to long here and I want to look over the stuff from Greek before then so that’s it for now.

Lucas

P.S. since I see from all the comments that Capoeira is less well known than I had though. This video shows some Capoeira being performed. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LwbuDYcrUOo

Hello again, I’m still doing well here and I’m rather anxious for classes to start, although I am starting to have some fun. Yesterday (Wednesday 9/20) I woke up late and found out that my roommate had returned at 5am. This wasn’t a problem cause I found out cause he told me. I slept right through it.

There wasn’t really anything planed event-wise till the evening, so I proceeded to sort out the remainder of my text book issues and figure out where all my classes are located. I now have a proto type greek text from the copy center. I guess there aren’t that many good ones around, cause the teacher decided to write her own. Honestly, I wish more was available from the copy center rather than the book store. It was $12 dollars rather than the $120 that some of the texts run. Finding classes took up a large portion of the afternoon, and involved a surprising amount of walking.

After those were done, I preceded to the piano practice rooms and played for probably a good 45 minutes. I might get that parasite eve theme down yet.

The real fun came later though with the all night at the ARC event. They opened the gym for demonstrations and instruction from 8pm till 4am. I had originally wondered what there would be to DO till 4am in the gym. This was not a problem. They opened the rock wall, had numerous martial arts demos and opened the entire gym for use. I left at about 9:30 and, of course, took the opportunity to climb while the wall was open and staffed with belayers who knew what they were doing. I even made it to the top of the overhang climb, after which my fingers would not close and the muscles in my forearms felt like they had been inflated. It was a very strange feeling.

The martial arts demonstrations were fun to watch and I took the opportunity to talk to the Capoeira (capWAY(t/d)a) people that were there. I see now that didn’t mention I had registered for the Capoeira class at my last visit to the ARC. (I did.)

After that I found an open gym room with punching bags on the wall and interlocking pads over almost the entire floor. While I was working on the bags, the Capoeira guy I had been talking to showed up. I think he was probably a fairly low rank but he was happy to share his knowledge. I ended up talking to him and getting what was pretty much a private intro to Capoeira.

Capoeira is so very different from karate, its mind boggling. Even kung fo fits closer to karate. Capoeira does not have any real blocks, they are seen as a last resort and dodges are encouraged. It’s done to a beat and movement is continuous and continually circular (as opposed to kung fo which is circular in small pieces). All and all I was impressed by the fluidity of motion and the ease with which the moves chain and combo.

After I had learned more from him than I could absorb then and there, I practiced katas and met a Tae Kwon Do guy who was doing likewise. We talked about our arts and ended up tricking, this guy can do the wushu butterfly kick perfectly. I stated throwing aerials and forward handsprings and a girl that was there started doing backward handsprings and roundoffs. It was awesome.

I returned from the ARC a bit after 2:30 and I am seriously sore this morning.

Lucas

Hello everyone, this is the first post of my college blog. Obviously Patrick’s blog inspired this but it seems to be working well for him so I decided to start one too.

Yesterday was the new student convocation (read useless ceremony), the deans welcome, and a club fair in the park. The EE students were combine with the biomedical students for the speech from the dean. Unfortunately the EE dean didn’t show up (apparently he had a meeting) so pretty much all we got from that was that 1 out of 4 EE students drop out.

The club fair was entirely more successful. I found a fencing club, an investment/financial topic club and an RPG club. The poor guy at the fencing table was obviously overwhelmed with the crowds, so I didn’t get much out of him. The investment club staffers told me that the club was going to arrange speakers on financial topics, discuss financial and business issues and have paper trading competitions (with cash prizes). All and all the investment club is highly promising. The RPG club was playing catan when I walked up to their table and I expect there is a lot of other incredibly geeky fun to be had with them.

Additionally, I visited a small room with padded walls and a door with a window. I’m referring of course to the piano practice rooms. Some of them are better than others, but I was able to find a piano with all its keys still functioning and able to carry a decent tune. If I have time I’ll hopefully be able to continue my trend of renewed piano playing.

Finally, today I went to visit the anteater recreation center (ARC). Its HUGE! It has several large rooms full of exercise machines, 3 indoor basket ball courts, 3 indoor racquetball courts, and 3 indoor courts that appeared to be for badminton, an indoor track that looked like it was maybe a 1/4 or 1/6 of a mile, several large activity rooms for classes, an indoor rock wall (probably 40 feet tall) and an Olympic sized swimming pool (outdoor). Needless to say, the place is somewhat stunning at first.

Now I’m compiling a list of breadth classes I need to take, and then I’m off to find my class rooms for the quarter and see if I can change my major today.

I’ll try to post regularly, be sure to comment.

Lucas