I wanted to post this before I forgot...

Hello again! Once again, I'm reporting in from OSBA (my laptop) while in the TV lounge. Julie and I are currently hosting a movie marathon here in the lounge, although I had no idea how much other stuff was also going on tonight. Well, mainly it's an orchestra concert and other people are going out to go salsa dancing. Since I was in here (and planning on being in here for a while... you know, multiple movies), I figured I could blog and maybe live-blog a little whatever it's called... you know, when you blog about something you're watching (TV show season primieres, movies, etc).

Currently, we're watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The resident turn-out is... not so high. We had two residents in here before, but right now, it's just Julie, Blayne (Julie's boyfriend), and me in here. A lot of people are at the orchestra concert and I think at least a few of them said they will come here when the concert is done. Plus, Julie and I did advertise during the staff meeting, so we might have some CA's (and maybe even other residents) stopping by at some point. We didn't put up huge posters, but Julie did put little posts on people's doors and I talked about the movie marathon over the past two week's newsletters... oh well. Now I have a reason to sit in the lounge, watch some movies, and enjoy chips & salsa and other snacks.


Let's see... things have been pretty well. I don't think I've given a run-down of my classes yet this year, so here goes:

Complex Analysis: First of all, this course is about imaginary numbers and analyzing them... complexly. This course has been going alright. Unfortunately, I've ended up sleeping through that class on more than one occassion, but I think I'm getting better with that now. We had our first midterm in that class today (which was my first midterm of the year), which basically covered the basic information we already knew. It's kind of scary because each midterm is worth 20% of my final, which means that each question that was on today's midterm was at least 3% of my final grade. I think I did pretty well, although I might have a point or two taken off for not calculating some things by hand (like sin and cos of pi/8).

Chamber Singers: Yay choir! It's really nice to have CS in my schedule again. This year, we have some graduate conducting concerts planned, as well as a performance of the Talmud Suite at the Temple of Aaron (apparently the first time it would be performed in a Jewish temple), as well as... CARMINA BURANA!! That's the big end-of-the-year project which I'm so excited for. Oh, and (wouldn't have guessed it before the year started) one of my residents is in CS with me. (I actually also have one of my residents in Complex Analysis with me as well.) As to be expected, choir is awesome. We're mainly working on the music for Matt C's grad recital, as well as a thing or two for the future, including "Promise of Living"... again.

Cryptology: Oh Cryptology... As you could probably guessed, a large part of the classwork is crypting/coding & decrypting/decoding messages. We've also been learning about modular arithmetic, simple ways to find the GCD, and other things that end up working with codes. Learning about all these different codes is definitely fun. As for the homework... the professor writes some extra problems in addition to problems from the textbook. Well, the second homework was due Wednesday... Yeah... The first extra problem the professor wrote was basically this: "here's a string of ~650 characters. it's a vignese cipher. have fun". After at least 4 hours of work, I came up with a key using the decipher method/procedure we learned in class, and I decided to check it online (thanks to a very useful online resource). Yeah, my key had 2 of the 6 characters correct... After fiddling around with the online resource, I figured out the actual solution... The key was "lennon" and the message was the full lyrics to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"... I will never like that song again. After looking at my work and the real key, I found so many places when the the decryption method just didn't work... Grr... other than that, things are going well, and hopefully I can take time to study this weekend (there's a midterm in that class on Monday).

Technology & American Culture: For this class (which is an HSCI class), we've been learning about technology and how it's affected American culture. So far, we've learned about the technology of the Native Americans and colonial Americans, and are now learning about the Industrial Revolution. A large part of the class is a research paper about a particular technology and it's evolution. My paper will be about the air warfare of WWI and the evolution of the airplane. It's nice to read about what people thought about the "brand-new" technology of the steam engine and sawmill... although sometimes it's just a lot of reading.

Sociology of Music: This class is definitely one of my challenging, in terms of understanding the material... and boy is there a lot of it. As to be expected, it's talking about the sociological views on things like the music scene of punk and the rise of rock & roll. Our lectures are based purely on the readings and the class is really small, so I can't exactly go to class without reading the day's material. Part of my classload is going to be what's called the "Service Learning Option". In my case, I'm going to work at the Cedar Cultural Center (which is really close to Middlebrook and definitely sounds like an interesting place), and write a paper about my experiences at the end of the semester. What's nice is that the Service Learning option makes me exempt from the other big projects of the class (which might also include tests...?).

Fundamentals of Music: Yes, it's true. I'm taking more courses relating to music than I am about math. I originally signed up for this class to take as a fun class along with C and Towey, but also to increase my credit load to "full-time student". (I think at that point I wasn't sure if I would take Soc of Music.) I'm glad I stuck with it, because it is fun to increase my music proficiency and learn new things... and when I have extra time, it'll be a good excuse to go to the piano room to work and ramble. If anything, it's a lot of busy work and it is a night class... but it's fun. You know, give and take...


Well, that was a brief overview of all of my classes. I've been in and out between watching movies and blogging, so some time has passed since I started this blog. We're actually watching the original Pink Panther movie right now (another movie Julie has never seen) and we've had various residents come in and out. Monty Python went well and Jesse B was really set on checking Anchorman out from the front desk, but even though it was checked in, it wasn't actually there.

I have to admit, the first Pink Panther movie is kind of confusing, with a lot of main characters (Sir Charles, his nephew, the Princess, Inspector Clouseau, the Inspector's wife, etc). The Pink Panthur sequels are definitely better than the original (once they realized that Peter Sellers is amazing as Clouseau), but since other people hadn't seen any Pink Panthur movies before, I figured it'd be appropriate to start with the first one.

So yeah, things have been going well in terms of the CA'ing. Over the past few days, I've definitely felt more comfortable just hanging out in the lounge with residents, which is nice. Many of the residents have had multiple midterms already so I'm hoping that my presence amidst a group of studying residents is reassuring... and I've been helping them out with some math and chemistry. I also had to do a new monthly bulletin board this week. I decided to go with the theme of the University Libraries and made some posters that featured different libraries (Magrath, Andersen, Walter, Wilson), and had the hours, location, and resources of each. I ended up having more poster space than open wall space at first, but I was able to get all the posters up over a few walls.

What else is there to say? After Pink Panther, I put in Johnny English and one of my residents is doing math while watching. I think I can claim this movie marathon to have an "English Comedies" theme now. It definitely turned out well. It was nice to have a formal floor event, and I'm glad I have Julie as a partner, because she took the lead on getting the food and paper advertising. I honestly can't wait to have events that are more than just watching movies... or even something that takes place out of Middlebrook.

Well, I'm going to wrap this up. I'm getting stuff dropped off on Sunday, but other than that, I don't really have anything planned for the weekend. I do have a Cryptology midterm on Monday, so I will need to study for that. Oh, and I should probably tidy up the room before family stops by. Alright, I think that's a long enough blog entry. I hope everyone is doing well with their own endeavors and staying healthy. Good night to all, talk to you later, take care and God bless!

~Matt dB