Beginning of year 4 at Michigan
Sep. 11th, 2012 11:41 pmOh my, I have a bunch of stuff to write about. Maybe I'll make Hunter's Mafia games a separate entry. Let's start with Justine's return. Which happened several weeks ago, but I didn't mention at the time.
So Justine lived in Truth House last year, but didn't sign a contract for this year. By the time she thought to, the house had filled up. So she signed with Renaissance house, up on north campus. Well, when she returned to Ann Arbor, she had to come pick up some stuff here, and basically on the way here[0] she learned that Ashley's roommate had failed to materialize and so hey there's a spot now! So now Justine is back and rooming with Ashley. (Though she stayed with Hannah for a bit while things were getting set up. Hannah has set up her room to be a good place for visitors to stay...)
This past Thursday was the initial house meeting. Surprisingly it didn't run as long as expected, considering we had to pass all of the new constitution that Nick had drafted, article by article. It did all get passed, except for one thing. Surprisingly to me, the article that drew objections was the key policy[3]. Or, an objection. The new key policy was going to be that there are only 5 master keys, which go to the President, the Board Rep, the Number One, and the two Maintenance Managers. Samba insisted the Work Manager should get a master key as well, just because having people with master keys around is helpful for e.g. when people get locked out of their rooms.
Enough people agreed to this that it got written in, which I think means that the set of positions which get master keys is the same as it was before the constitutional convention. Also, once Samba brought that up, some people objected to how high the fine was for losing a key, but that was kept the same.
An unintended consequence of this appeared later during the election for Work Manager. There were two people running, Marquise and a new person by the name of Vijay. It was an easy victory for Marquise; most people agreed that Work Manager is not a position for someone new to the house. And while it probably had minimal effect on the election, it was funny to see someone bring up the argument: Do we really want the new guy to have a master key? (Samba facepalmed.)
Also at the first house meeting were proposals to get a new Wii and a new TV, wich both passed. The Wii had been having trouble reading disks, and the TV... well, the main poblem for a long time had been that the RCA ports had serious trouble; you wanted to hook anything up to it, you needed a component cable. (So e.g. the Dreamcast was out[4]. Though I suppose that could be played on the other TV. Unfortunately the distinction between the two seems to be eroding, by which I mean people are more commonly using the game TV for watching movies and old TV episodes. Well, it can erode in the other direction.) But during the meeting it was also mentioned that a few times during the summer it just didn't work at all (and now that I think about it, I remember this) so that's another good reason. We won't be able get a new TV as cheap as this one, though, seeing as (going by what I've heard) we got it for free from a departing house member.
We already have the new Wii, thanks to Kristin (working in the local game store helps). Although new Wii means having to unlock everything in Brawl again (do we have a copy of Melee? I forget). (Also, the old Wii had some games on its hard drive, in particular Smash 64.) But it's good to at least see people playing the game again. Got to get some Guilty Gear going. But today I saw Nick playing Brawl and something was wrong with the color.
Remember I said you had to use the component ports on this TV? Well, for a while our only component cable for the Wii had problems with the color. Also with working at all, but especially with the color. Eventually I bought a new one (it's not exactly expensive, just nobody bothered to do it before) but if it was occurring again... I figured must have been just they accidentally used the old one, but I couldn't find any other. And if it were the old one, wouldn't it have been even worse? Meanwhile other people reported no problems, so I don't know what's going on there. I'll have to test it myself, I guess, or maybe just buy a new cable regardless. I mean, it's like $5 or so IIRC.
I guess this'll all be moot once we have the new TV and can use RCA cables again. Assuming we actually get one; we voted to allocate the money but we hadn't finalized just what we were doing. Well, Angus is taking care of it, I think.
There's actually a surprising number of math people in the house this year. Or maybe not -- the past few years there's been one or two, and then it turns out they're doing financial math or something. Seems like we hardly get any people doing straight-up math or physics or CS or chemistry or what-have-you. Still, even accounting for that it is (or depending on how you take it, may turn out to be) a surprising number. Though it seems like many of them may still be at the calculus-and-stuff stage, so I guess whether they actually stick with it is another matter. Meanwhile, well... oh well, Truth House has never exactly been very academic (in my time here). Hence why I've been hanging around the department more lately.
I guess I still tend to make the assumption that if someone says they're a math major that means they're a math person who's been doing this stuff since high school, etc. Similarly with CS. Or other subjects I know a bit of. If I don't really know anything about the subject then it's not really relevant to me!
I'm taking one class this semester, the course on modular forms that Jeff is teaching and asked me to sign up for. I think I'll probably stick with it. Modular forms seems like the sort of thing I should probably actually know about. Also going to try to go to more seminars... I've largely missed those due to not paying attention...
Speaking of which, Monday was the organizational meeting of the student combinatorics seminar. (Kevin baked cookies! OK, I guess he often does that.) We kept waiting for people to show up before starting, hoping some first-years would show up. So whenever someone walked in we said "Yay, a first-year!". Finally one first year (Charlotte[5]) did actually show up, but not till after we'd already started.
Meanwhile I apparently have to teach this semester once again? I'm not too clear on how this works, I thought I wouldn't have to teach, but apparently I do. I guess I have to, y'know, actually apply for other funding if I want to avoid that. Except actually it's not bad at all, because I got assigned to the MathLab again. Clearly, this is not luck. Apparently, Irina considers me a good tutor. Except the thing is Jeff things I actually should spend another semester actually teaching a class in order to get more teaching experience. Which means I should have done so before. Eech. Oh well...
...yeah, this is long enough. Mafia will be a separate entry.
-Harry
[0]I'm not really too clear on this. The story as I know it doesn't quite make sense. Oh well.
[3]Well, OK, I had some minor objections to some other stuff, but since this had already been discussed at the constitutional convetion I didn't want to bring it up again.
[4]Not that I really play Mr. Driller these days; nobody else here has ever taken it up and tried to challenge me, so...
[5]That's Charlotte Chan, who was head counselor of PROMYS this past summer along with Will Perry.
So Justine lived in Truth House last year, but didn't sign a contract for this year. By the time she thought to, the house had filled up. So she signed with Renaissance house, up on north campus. Well, when she returned to Ann Arbor, she had to come pick up some stuff here, and basically on the way here[0] she learned that Ashley's roommate had failed to materialize and so hey there's a spot now! So now Justine is back and rooming with Ashley. (Though she stayed with Hannah for a bit while things were getting set up. Hannah has set up her room to be a good place for visitors to stay...)
This past Thursday was the initial house meeting. Surprisingly it didn't run as long as expected, considering we had to pass all of the new constitution that Nick had drafted, article by article. It did all get passed, except for one thing. Surprisingly to me, the article that drew objections was the key policy[3]. Or, an objection. The new key policy was going to be that there are only 5 master keys, which go to the President, the Board Rep, the Number One, and the two Maintenance Managers. Samba insisted the Work Manager should get a master key as well, just because having people with master keys around is helpful for e.g. when people get locked out of their rooms.
Enough people agreed to this that it got written in, which I think means that the set of positions which get master keys is the same as it was before the constitutional convention. Also, once Samba brought that up, some people objected to how high the fine was for losing a key, but that was kept the same.
An unintended consequence of this appeared later during the election for Work Manager. There were two people running, Marquise and a new person by the name of Vijay. It was an easy victory for Marquise; most people agreed that Work Manager is not a position for someone new to the house. And while it probably had minimal effect on the election, it was funny to see someone bring up the argument: Do we really want the new guy to have a master key? (Samba facepalmed.)
Also at the first house meeting were proposals to get a new Wii and a new TV, wich both passed. The Wii had been having trouble reading disks, and the TV... well, the main poblem for a long time had been that the RCA ports had serious trouble; you wanted to hook anything up to it, you needed a component cable. (So e.g. the Dreamcast was out[4]. Though I suppose that could be played on the other TV. Unfortunately the distinction between the two seems to be eroding, by which I mean people are more commonly using the game TV for watching movies and old TV episodes. Well, it can erode in the other direction.) But during the meeting it was also mentioned that a few times during the summer it just didn't work at all (and now that I think about it, I remember this) so that's another good reason. We won't be able get a new TV as cheap as this one, though, seeing as (going by what I've heard) we got it for free from a departing house member.
We already have the new Wii, thanks to Kristin (working in the local game store helps). Although new Wii means having to unlock everything in Brawl again (do we have a copy of Melee? I forget). (Also, the old Wii had some games on its hard drive, in particular Smash 64.) But it's good to at least see people playing the game again. Got to get some Guilty Gear going. But today I saw Nick playing Brawl and something was wrong with the color.
Remember I said you had to use the component ports on this TV? Well, for a while our only component cable for the Wii had problems with the color. Also with working at all, but especially with the color. Eventually I bought a new one (it's not exactly expensive, just nobody bothered to do it before) but if it was occurring again... I figured must have been just they accidentally used the old one, but I couldn't find any other. And if it were the old one, wouldn't it have been even worse? Meanwhile other people reported no problems, so I don't know what's going on there. I'll have to test it myself, I guess, or maybe just buy a new cable regardless. I mean, it's like $5 or so IIRC.
I guess this'll all be moot once we have the new TV and can use RCA cables again. Assuming we actually get one; we voted to allocate the money but we hadn't finalized just what we were doing. Well, Angus is taking care of it, I think.
There's actually a surprising number of math people in the house this year. Or maybe not -- the past few years there's been one or two, and then it turns out they're doing financial math or something. Seems like we hardly get any people doing straight-up math or physics or CS or chemistry or what-have-you. Still, even accounting for that it is (or depending on how you take it, may turn out to be) a surprising number. Though it seems like many of them may still be at the calculus-and-stuff stage, so I guess whether they actually stick with it is another matter. Meanwhile, well... oh well, Truth House has never exactly been very academic (in my time here). Hence why I've been hanging around the department more lately.
I guess I still tend to make the assumption that if someone says they're a math major that means they're a math person who's been doing this stuff since high school, etc. Similarly with CS. Or other subjects I know a bit of. If I don't really know anything about the subject then it's not really relevant to me!
I'm taking one class this semester, the course on modular forms that Jeff is teaching and asked me to sign up for. I think I'll probably stick with it. Modular forms seems like the sort of thing I should probably actually know about. Also going to try to go to more seminars... I've largely missed those due to not paying attention...
Speaking of which, Monday was the organizational meeting of the student combinatorics seminar. (Kevin baked cookies! OK, I guess he often does that.) We kept waiting for people to show up before starting, hoping some first-years would show up. So whenever someone walked in we said "Yay, a first-year!". Finally one first year (Charlotte[5]) did actually show up, but not till after we'd already started.
Meanwhile I apparently have to teach this semester once again? I'm not too clear on how this works, I thought I wouldn't have to teach, but apparently I do. I guess I have to, y'know, actually apply for other funding if I want to avoid that. Except actually it's not bad at all, because I got assigned to the MathLab again. Clearly, this is not luck. Apparently, Irina considers me a good tutor. Except the thing is Jeff things I actually should spend another semester actually teaching a class in order to get more teaching experience. Which means I should have done so before. Eech. Oh well...
...yeah, this is long enough. Mafia will be a separate entry.
-Harry
[0]I'm not really too clear on this. The story as I know it doesn't quite make sense. Oh well.
[3]Well, OK, I had some minor objections to some other stuff, but since this had already been discussed at the constitutional convetion I didn't want to bring it up again.
[4]Not that I really play Mr. Driller these days; nobody else here has ever taken it up and tried to challenge me, so...
[5]That's Charlotte Chan, who was head counselor of PROMYS this past summer along with Will Perry.
