Checksum Arcanius

Saturday Morning: CSE Departmental Graduation. Lots of CSE friends in attendance. I won an unexpected “Undergraduate Service Award” for volunteering a lot for CSE events. Jacob Nelson won a well-deserved Bob Bandes TA award for his excellent work as a TA in CSE 467 — the 3D video card class. The presenter read one of my quotes during the presentation of the award. Christine talked to me during the reception afterwards (she was attending for/with someone else) and my mom broke her shoe, so I had to fix it. Thats the way things go sometimes.

Saturday Afternoon: UW Graduation. Quincy Jones spoke, I thought it was mostly good with a few odd places, but overall a good speech. Listening to all of the Ph.D.’s names was painfully long, but it was nice and sunny (I have the burn to prove it) and I was seated with friends so life was good. We finally got to walk and received nice diploma holders with (of course) fake diplomas in them. The ceremony lasted a little over 4.5 hours; we began queuing an hour before that. So it was a long day already.

Saturday evening: Graduation party. Lots of friends and family showed up. We had great food and I had a great time.

Now I have one week off before I start up at Amazon.com for a summer internship!

After class yesterday, I went to the Technology Alliance’s annual State of Technology Luncheon. Google had some extra seats, and they are being nice to me right now. The keynote address was a conversation between UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska and one of the few men who can legitimately claim to be the inventor of the internet, Vint Cerf. The conversation consisted mostly of Ed asking questions and Vint responding at length. The event was enjoyable, the food quite good, and the conversation was great as well. Afterwards, I made sure to shake Vint’s hand and thank him for participating in the event. I also owe thanks to Google for the invitation.

At this point this, my day was only half over. Next came Rage Against the Turing Machine, ACM Chair Helene Martin’s brainchild superparty for the CSE department. Undergrad, grad, and faculty were all in attendance, and it was a truly phenomenal production. I helped a little by setting up and tearing down the ping pong and foosball tables, but really, this production is Helene’s seminal achievement — truly a great way to go out.

I made sure to wear my VisionUW t-shirt, and actually had a few people ask me what it was about. Being a diehard supporter of the VisionUW ticket for the ASUW elections, I of course expounded to each inquirer why they should vote for the ticket.

After clean up, I made my way back home, party winnings in hand (biking with a poster, a cup, and t-shirts must look kinda weird), and then played a bit of TF2 with Bobby before hitting the sack. Overall, a great day. Now to keep up the momentum, I’m preparing for mother’s day activities and I need to write some Capstone paper before heading off to a barbecue.

In other news, Microsoft extended their offer through the 22nd of this month — meaning I can hear back from the 5th years masters program (barely) before I tell them my decision. Amazon’s offer is good through the 23rd, and Google’s offer is good through August or something crazy like that. I now have the three offers in front of me that I was aiming for; now I need to sit down and figure out which one would be best for me in case I don’t get into the 5th year master’s program. However, only 35 people applied to the program, whereas I was expecting upwards of 60, so I feel my chances are particularly good to get in to the program now. Of course, time will tell.

As the title says, the days are just packed!

Four hours two nights ago followed by about one hour from 9:30-10:30 today really wasn’t enough; fortunately I had some reserves stored up from earlier in the week. On the other hand, I did finish the homework due today as well as made my first useful contribution on the robotics capstone project, which is a good feeling.

Tonight I’ll be getting a full night’s sleep in preparation for an interview at Microsoft in about 9 hours.