Week four of the semester. My mental state is basically the same as finals week…
Since the semester started, I’ve been leaving the dorm around 8am for class and coming back around 11pm-midnight. I’ve been going to so many activities. Even though I’m super busy, I still need to jot things down or I’ll forget what I did.
Men’s Dorm
I’ve been living in the old men’s dorm for a month now, and it’s really different from Er-Cun. There’s only one street with a few places to eat nearby — though Nanmen Road is about the same. But since I’m usually too busy to eat around there anyway, it doesn’t matter much. The access system here is pretty lax — the card reader just reads the card number, so I usually use my Flipper to get in and out. That’s something I couldn’t do at Er-Cun. I only noticed a few days ago that the main gate closes after 12:30am, so you can only use the side door by the security booth. Luckily, someone was coming out from inside at that moment, otherwise I’d have had to use my Flipper in front of the security guard. As for my room in Xin-Zhai — I picked it because a double room was cheaper than Er-Cun’s quadruple. But the school installed new air conditioning this semester, then immediately raised the price, so now it’s actually more expensive than Er-Cun. Feel like I got scammed. As for my roommate, I still don’t know his name — just know he’s a senior from Mechanical Engineering year 4, knows how to build computers, and that’s about it. He’s always sleeping when I leave, and playing CS when I get back. The weird thing is, he never turns on the AC — whether it’s morning, noon, or afternoon, he only uses a fan. So I end up paying for the electricity myself.
Camp
By week four of camp training, I’ve pretty much numbbed out. Just hoping this ends soon. Because of this activity, I haven’t been able to read much — I mean the books I need to read for midterms, not my own books. Actually, so far besides Linear Algebra, everything’s just review stuff, nothing special. But since I took a lot of advanced courses this semester, I have a feeling there’s going to be too much to read. A lot of friends told me: “Just drop a class!” But dropping would mess things up with my own people, so I’ll just pray time goes fast and this ends soon.
Guitar Club
Still love this place, but after the performance in a few days, I need to pick the performance team. There’s no way I can do it this semester — if I take it, I’ll probably drop dead on the spot. These days I’ve been making name tags for everyone. That day, I was the only one at the club office punching holes and threading the lanyards. When I finished the holes and went to throw away the trash, I suddenly realized I don’t know how to open the club office door!!! There was no one else nearby, and I had to rush to camp. So I went to check the next door to see if I could get out — but by the time I walked over, I realized that door is also weird, you need a key just to exit. So I got trapped inside the club office. Eventually I did get out — basically played a room escape game.
Ad Time
Actually, that’s not the official poster, but I like this one better.
3D Printing Micro-General Ed
This is a class I almost forgot to attend. If someone hadn’t reminded me, I would’ve 100% skipped. This course only lasts three weeks, and if things go well, you can get a 3D printing certification afterward �� pretty good value. We haven’t gotten to the printing stage yet, but the class gives you 2.5 hours of free machine time. As long as your model prints within 2.5 hours, you can take it home for free. Once you get the certification, you can print Flipper cases, Pi housings, or even keyboards and mice — print your own stuff.
Random Talk
Recently I’ve been thinking about switching phones, but everything’s locked into iOS — many apps I just log into with Apple ID. This is part of Apple’s scheme: You have to keep using their products. From a marketing perspective, it’s super successful. But I’m a freebie user — YouTube Premium = Brave, even the OS is free. So obviously that doesn’t work for me. So I used Syncthing & KeePass to move my passwords out of Apple and sync the password database. But Apple’s UI is really well done, so I’m going to make my desktop environment look like Apple’s. It’s an Android phone running Linux, so there’s always a way . I’ll write another blog once it’s done.
Also, I split my domain away from www, then redirected the root to it. This makes it easier to self-host services later — having your own stuff on your own server is more secure. I thought I could just use DNS to split the domain, but then I had to set up a Worker on the root to automatically redirect to www. It’s a bit abstract, but it works. Anyway, it’s all done now.
Next I’m planning to take off from Thursday to Monday to rest up. Though “rest” probably means studying — I mentioned earlier that I have this feeling there’s too much to read. Things are moving slowly because of all the activities, or maybe I’m just not used to using Affine to organize, but mainly everything’s new. Starting from scratch is tiring.
One last thought — our group of good friends, ever since sophomore year, everyone’s been busy with their own things. We used to hang out together every day, now we can’t even have a proper meal together once a week. Camp needs to end!!!