andymatuschak.org: Journal

Aw, the widdle fwoshies.For the last week, I’ve been going through the very lengthy process of Rotation here at Caltech, which is sort of like fraternities’ rush week at another school. Here at Caltech, social life revolves around one’s House, which acts as a family and huge source of social activity for students. Each House has very distinct personalities and ideas of what’s fun (mine stereotypically enjoys fire, explosions, geekery, and adventure), so for a week at beginning of term, new frosh spend a day at each house, eating dinner and getting to know its members.What I didn’t understand until this year was how things work from the Houses’ side. It’s a huge ordeal trying to meet and remember every one of the frosh!It’s all over now, though, so Blacker has new frosh! It’s very exciting; most fit right in with the Hovse, and I’m sure the rest will change over time—I know I did.It’s important that I spend a lot of time around the Hovse to meet the new frosh and help welcome them into the culture of Blacker, but that’s tough, because as a sophomore, I’m forced to live off-campus this year. My apartment is huge, but it’s about three quarters of a mile away, so it’s tough, especially since I’m not on the Caltech board program. I’ve ended up coming to Hovse dinner (which is about an hour long), as it’s a good chance to connect with everyone and keep up with what’s going on, but since I can’t eat at it, I have to head back to my apartment afterwards to cook for myself, adding on another hour or so. Long nights!Other excitement comes from Fluid Dynamics, the a cappella group I sing with. We managed to impress a whole lot of people at frosh camp, so we had about twice as many people audition this year as last. There was a great deal of fantastic talent, and we picked up six new singers—five of them female—that we’re really excited about. We only had two women in the group before, so with this new crop, we’re near-even with eight guys and seven girls. Even though the new members haven’t really had a chance to learn yet, our sound is already so much richer from the improved balance.Now that rotation and auditions for Fluid Dynamics are over, the workload has ramped up to fill the rest of the time. I’d like to write a number of articles I’ve been saving up as soon as Leopard comes out and I’m no longer NDA’d, but we’ll see how my time ends up working out. Making things worse, I’ve been asked to keep working on my summer research project (which I’ll write about sometime once I’m not NDA’d on that as well) throughout the year. This is nice because it pays pretty well and is an exciting project; it’s unfortunate because it means even less time for Sparkle and my other Mac-ish projects.We’ll see.

My summer vacation is basically over. Uh-oh. I’d better write something on here before I get sucked back into nothingness.

I’ve returned to Caltech and moved into my new apartment (which is huge and fantastic). Since my arrival, though, I’ve been very busy practicing with my a cappella group, Fluid Dynamics.

Yesterday, we went to the freshmen orientation camp and performed for the entire incoming class. You might say we were under just a bit of pressure to impress. Fortunately, the show went fantastically well—I think we made a lot of new fans.

I’m still hoping to get a substantial part of Sparkle 2 done before classes start on Monday, but with all the people arriving, I’m finding increasingly difficult to concentrate. Software update is not exactly exciting.

Prefrosh have arrived. They are tasty.

You know, I pretty much dropped off the face of the planet in September. I was doing all this great Cocoa development stuff, writing all these articles, getting my name out in the bloggoblag, and so on.

And then Caltech attacked.

I actually did escape my first year at Caltech happy and bitterness-free (this is rare!), but these last few weeks of summer are the only free time I’m going to have for a very long time, so I’m feeling vaguely like a man trying desperately to complete a huge list of tasks before an appointed execution date.

It’s not all stress, though! I spent last week lying on the beach of a gorgeous, peaceful island. The only photos I have are old, as my camera decided to self-destruct on arrival, but you can click the first to see a few more.

Caltech has the highest density of bitter, cynical people I’ve ever seen, but I’ve got a lot going on to keep me relaxed. Between trips to the gorgeous beaches of California, I joined Caltech’s a cappella group to get my music fix. I became a member of Blacker Hovse, one of Caltech’s frat-like dormitories. A lot of interesting things seem to always be happening in Blacker. And, most contributing to my sanity, I have an absolutely amazing girlfriend.

So that’s pretty much what’s going on with me. I’ve acquired quite a lot of great stories from a year at Caltech—if I find time, maybe I’ll share a few.

Alright. Okay. I’m going to try this blog thing again. I’m serious this time, guys. My eyes are gleaming and everything.

If you’re new here, check out the sidebar for a little info on what I’m all about.

With a new site comes a new format. andymatuschak.org is now composed of three sub-blogs:

• Square Signals: coding and other Mac-ish nerdery;
• Journal: a plain name for a journal about a pretty plain guy;
• Sparkle: the Blog!: by popular demand, a blog just on Sparkle.

There are RSS feeds for each—subscribe to only the content you want to read. I felt bad before pushing news about my schooling to all you Cocoa hackers. When you open your RSS reader, I know that’s serious business, and I want your feeds to distract you from your work in the least distracting way possible.

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