2011 Winter Quarter day 1

Back to school early on Sunday so I could go to the bookstore before the crowds and get the used books before they sold out.  I have this stack of 10 books on my desk.  "Ohhhhh cool, 10...yeah I've heard that number before.  I'm comfortable when people use small, every-day numbers like 10, that's a nice even number."  Well maybe 10 is a nice number for you but that's not taking into consideration the pages in each of these books.  Each book has a good number of pages, typically more than 10.  To the reader of the books (me, for our slower audience), 10 is a death sentence.

One of them is a math book, which was $180.  If I can wait until Thursday for my book, I can return it and have an amazon book shipped to me by then for $110.  That's $70 IN THE POCKET.  (Would've been $80 if I thought of this earlier.)  I returned my $80 Physics textbook today and bought the $25 e-book, which we pretty much have to buy anyway because it comes with the online homework program.  $80 IN THE POCKET.   Silly UCSD bookstore thinks it can defy the law of supply and demand.

So I saw Zach and Vince and Jordan and Greg and Zack and Andrei and it's cool to be with them again.

Humanities:  This (50 year old?) Greek fan dude is teaching it.  We spent a whole hour listening to him talk about the course and learned nothing.  I wasted my paying-attention energy on nothing.

Physics: 50 or 60 year old awesome white-haired crazy scientist man with a Polish accent whose parents come from Poland but who was born in Mexico.  We at least talked about things that made us think at the end, and he was entertaining to listen to.  Imma like Physics.

BEGIN MONDAY:

Math: dude in his 20's.  This guy is alert and quick and so far is my favorite.  We dove right into the material (at a slowish pace but that's okay.)

Computer Science (CSE 21):  Respectable man named Graham who moves like a snail but you can tell he has wits.  Today was mostly review from CSE 20.  He's cool.  If we find a typo in his textbook we get a dollar.  All his texts are online for free.  I was nervous while I watched him set up for 5 minutes and saw how slow he moved but I think it'll be alright.  I can't say too much this early on but he doesn't have the energy and alertness that Daniele Micciancio did.  I miss that guy.

So the HUM teacher loses. He's a historian though, so what was I supposed to expect?  Historians have to be old or else they wouldn't know anything.  If they had energy for thinking while reading rather than just reading, they would do math.  But instead they just study stories and myths because that's all they can handle. And Grandpa, don't even think about saying that this criticism is short-sighted.  It makes perfect sense.

Didn't run with Strides today because of computer science.  Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays are no-run days from now on.

I have homework.  Not for CS yet, but for Math and Physics my first assignment is waiting for me.  HUM homework is due on Wednesday: chapters 1 to 27 of Genesis.  I have 2 nights for 27 chapters. And I also have this 14 page "outline of the bible's historical books to the time of nehemiah" (for background knowledge) packet I have to read by Wednesday too.

I have to die--i mean read--now.  Bye.