pg 161 meme

Snagged from mom; here's the fifth sentence on page 161 of the book nearest to me:

"Evaluate the determinants of the following matrices (i) using the first row (ii) using the "diagonals" method."

Hmm, not very interesting. Ah well. Would that linear algebra was that easy these days.

This week was kinda unpleasant academically, but really good otherwise. Had tests/quizzes in all my classes except philosophy, and had a writing assignment thing on Aristotle's De Anima due in that. Today was an exam in stats and a quiz in partials; both of which I think went well, but it's hard to tell until I get them back Monday. I'm quite sure I didn't butcher either of them, though, so that's nice.

There was a test in my Geography of Disasters class that just doesn't bear mentioning; if the sort of stuff on the test was really what he considers important about the material we've covered, then I absolutely don't feel bad about working on other homework through those class periods. It was just...wow. He had had us all (as an assignment) email him five possible test questions, and their answers. He then compiled the test using almost entirely these questions, and believe me when I tell you it showed. That was on Tuesday, and I was absurdly glad that that class was furloughed Thursday. Gah. What's incredibly depressing about whole thing is it's such an awesome idea for a class, and I really want to know about it. Grr...

Oh, and I (along with everyone else I know) failed our second linear algebra quiz. So there's that.

Soooo, it wasn't a great week as far as school went. But! All was not lost. The bf and I were able to hang out a lot, which was marvelous. Thursday was particularly fun, since I had 2/3 classes furloughed. I know on an intellectual level that furloughs are bad things that are stunting an important time in my education, but seriously? It's really hard to be disdainful of extra time to get some done. But yeah. Hanging out this week was fun, and we're headed to Spaghetti Factory tomorrow for a bit of a break. Exciting! So it's been a happy week there :)

That's pretty much all that's going on here. The AC is broken in the big room where we have our step class, which is...unfortunate. I've been spending a lot of time up in the math tutor lab, doing work, killing time, and helping out when they're busy. I got to teach a CE major IBP the other day- that was really rewarding. It's supposed to be 100F again this week up here, which, like the room's AC being broken, seems to be lacking in a certain amount of good fortune. I like grocery shopping with company. We had the first math club pizza night of the semester on Monday, and it went really well (I may mainly think so because I got to cuddle a baby during it). I made tortilla chips this evening, and had them for dinner. I'm looking forward to House starting on Monday.

Aaaand, I'm quite tired (long week!) so off to bed with me. Everyone have a good weekend!

Cooking, card games. and quizzes (and the immortality and pre-existence of the human soul) Oh My!

Have been making food the last couple of days. It was starting to get necessary- I really don't feel like cooking, most of the time when I get home from classes, and it's easy to just be able to yank something out of the fridge or freezer and shove it in the microwave. That said, I'm not yet ready to utilize Spencer's method, which is to just buy hot pockets en masse and live off those for weeks at a time. So! Chilli beans and rice it is.


I actually already had a bit of leftover rice, so I made the beans last night and ate them to today after step with the last of that rice. Then made new rice while I ate my dinner!





Food! So now I have about half of each in the fridge and freezer, respectively. That should keep me going for a while. Also, I'm almost halfway done with my 25 lb bag of rice. (I typed bog rice there first. That's not what I meant.)

So there's that. Other than cooking, it's mostly just been classes and homework out here, with some fun game nights with friends in between to break it up. Beer pong ftw! Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, and San Juan have all been introduced to me in the last couple of weeks, and there is the possibility of D&D this weekend. We will see. As I wrote to a friend of mine earlier, "I think when peoples' four-day-weekend plans involve a Risk marathon, there's really no j/k needed when referring to them no lives." And it's true.

We had a linear quiz on Tuesday that I thought went better than it actually did. That said, I did better than the four people that sit around me, and there are only 11 of us in the class. And while that's nice and all, it doesn't really do much for my 13/20. Sigh. Well, I think he drops our lowest quiz grade, so this'll just have to be my one fail!grade for the semester, y/y?

And at any rate, he only assigned us 13 more proofs to do over the long weekend. Le sigh. Also, while I'm complaining about him, he let us out ten minutes late today. So there.

As for soul statuses, ( I always think that 'status' should have a better plural form. Stati?) medieval philosophy was really cool today. Not that it isn't usually, because it is. Pretty much made of awesome. And there's no one thing about it that makes it great, just the overall effect- enthusiastic professor, challenging subject matter, educated/intelligent classmates that care about this stuff and really want to understand everything about it, an atmosphere where questions and comments are encouraged.

And the fact that the material is cool is just icing. We spent our 75 minutes today studying a brief bit out of Plato's dialogue Phaedo. I'd read the assigned bit beforehand, so I was able to follow along without having to scramble for notes. So. Much. Fun. As we went through the arguments presented, we got to pick at them and discuss them, and argue about their soundness and which conclusions Plato might have been assuming. (Bad!Plato!)

Aaaaanyway. Take home message? Linear algebra bad, philosophy good, food good, college furloughs technically bad but really? Good. Non-slanty bathtubs bad, geeky world domination games good.

Sleep, good.

Trufax