kistaro

A habit of mine, as y'all know, is to brag (or cringe) at my semester grades on my LiveJournal. I'll get that out of the way first: Abnormal Psychology B+, Embedded Systems A, Selected Topics in Space Engineering (Independent Research 3.0cr) A, Switching Theory A+. Last semester's Computer Architecture changed from an Incomplete to a B as well, despite the fact that my final project didn't actually work. I think I impressed Dr. Bayazit by not whining for a grade (the e-mail I sent had more of an "I didn't make this work, here's why, here's what I shouldn't have done; what is my score for this?" flavor to it, rather than a "please give me a good mark" flavor) and going to the trouble of analyzing what went wrong so despite failing in my task to build a working CPU, I still learned a lot.

Less bragging and more comedy, you say? Okay. Well, another habit of mine: Posting highlights from my notebooks at the end of the semester. Now that I take notes electronically, that's even easier to paste in!


Switching Theory
I) More Set Rubbish I Already Know
    A. Partial Orders are...
        1. Antisymmetric
        2. Transitive
        3. Depending upon who you talk to, either reflexive or antireflexive; Dr. Lockwood prefers reflexive

II) Boolean Algebra I Already Know

A. "Can't Happen" becomes "Don't Care"
3. Can allow for drastic simplification, but make sure your can't happens can't happen!
No shit, Sherlock

A. Aaagh! Its the same crap I already know!

Oh my gods, Dr. Lockwood actually arrived today!

Abnormal Psych

A. Neuroticism: freakoutability versus unflappability. Expression of negative emotions
D. Agreeableness: Kissuppery vs. asshattery

F. AAAGH what pronouns to use professionally?

A. The entire brain is fucked

1. This hasn't changed a lot in the last N hundred years; people are still as crazy as they ever were
Medical Student Syndrome: You do not have most of the disorders in the textbook
..."most", that is

A. Depression
    2. Over-generalization: "everything sucks"
    3. Selective recall: only remember what sucked
    4. Arbitrary inference: "everything sucks and it's my fault"

5. The difference: depression induces low positive affect, anxiety gets high (duuude)

E. Usual criteria for "it has to suck"

Embedded Systems

5. BLETCHEROUS power needs

a. Example: The Mars rover crashed. If the software got corrupt, it can be fixed and replaced, but hardware is FUCKED

A. Real-time characteristics are difficult to test for; many Heisenbugs
B. Shitty I/O

2. Simple crap

D. Like the bastard child of C and VHDL
I. the smart pointer operator is completely different!

IV) Really Fucking Tiny Shit

4. Long jumps hate you
    a. "Okay, jump to instruction 1000... now where the fuck is instruction 1000?"


And if anybody's curious about where any particular line came from, I'll be glad to tell you the context, I just don't feel like pasting my entire semester of notes in!