me... :O |
give me...
brainz...
deliciousness!
This is my average blog on how life goes down at the greatest school in the world, Stanford University. These are the ins and outs of an engineer's life as he struggles through various problems, temptations, and high lactose intolerance! Life is tough at Stanford University, but very fun! Any funny topics or questions you have of Stanford, ask right away, and I'll blog about 'em!
I'm absolutely terrified right now. I was walking back to my dorm at around 11:50 last night when I was suddenly ambushed at midnights by the screams of zombies. I jumped in fear as at least about thirty zombies came running out of nowhere. They continued howling in demonish voices, voices of pure "I want to eat you"ness. I ran for it, leaving my bike Cher. I made it to Green Library where most of it was secured. I decided to hide in the stacks for the night till the zombies finished their crazy howling. I've never been that terrified, ever! As I was hiding, I knew there were zombies in the libary. I could hear them. So I couldn't use my laptop as MacBooks are super loud when they turn on (damn drive is so loud).
The Stacks, always a safe place |
I stayed watch and decided it was safe to move at around two in the morning. I managed to make it back to my dorm alive, by then I ran into my RA. He is still a zombie, sadly :( I managed to get sleep and recharge for another day of zombie evading.
My Zombie RA reaching out to eat my brains |
Peter Thiel came to talk today at Stanford University about entrepreneurship and how his company that he started, PayPal, became more and more popular. I helped set up the event with BASES volunteers and we got the ball rolling!
BASES Peeps!He first started with talking of California and Silicon Valley, how its become such a place of entrepreneurship and affluence. He jokes that "why would somebody move to Oklahoma from California". He then moves to which businesses have been successful, those being mainly in the internet business. He makes sure to point out that companies need to look ahead and think of the future. From here, he moves into talks of past man's hopes, those of living on the moon, Mars or even Jupiter. After this is when he really moves into his main focus of his discussion: entrepreneurship slowing down in the past 25 years.
Peter Thiel and I :DAccording to Thiel, in the seventies and eighties, progress was quick. "There were far more drug innovations in the seventies and eighties then in the last twenty years..." Thiel's main worry is that people are not really moving forward, innovation is slow at the moment.
Setting up for the event!He moves into the example of China, and of it being great and doing tremendous amounts of work, but it being bad at innovation. It will catch up to the US according to him because it uses the innovations of China.
He reemphasizes "intrinsic growth" and his example that for something to go from zero to one, it takes a lot more effort then from going to one to n. What he means that for some sort of innovation to start, it usually fails or is really difficult to start from zero to one. Such is the example with Facebook. It started from the (1-n) field when other social networking businesses that came before Facebook *cough cough Myspace* started in the (0-1) field when the jump was much bigger and there was a lot more to use.
Peter ThielHe later took questions from people... These are some of my favorite. (and not word by word)
If you're going to take a risk, go big on your company.
Be passionate in your company, and take pride in it.
Don't be afraid for risk, and actually do sacrifice.
Successful company's CEOs make under 120 grand!
Things are quiet! QUIET! I can hear zombies outside, but they are being kept at bay thanks to these awesome peeps! But anyways, I'm working on CS assignment little schemer. I'm not cool like the other kids that finish it so fast, but I am attempting to finish it by today so I can work on my other CS assignment due Friday as well. Hmmm, I'm a little behind work but that's ok :D
Tonight I'm going to a BASES event in which Peter Thiel is coming to talk at Tressidor. For you guys that don't know Peter Thiel, he is the cofounder of PayPal and is the first primary investor in Facebook. He is an amazing individual whose networth is currently estimated at 1.3 Billion Dollars. That's a lot of dough! Amazing! Well anyways better be going to some awesome CS! ADIOS, and remember, zombies do not like light! Use a bike light!
So I'm up again on the third floor with Nick doing some awesome homework so I can hopefully pass my finals in two weeks so that I don't lost my scholarship funding! That would really suck. If you are thinking of going to Stanford, be really careful your first year. I was so used to always taking the hard classes at my old school b/c they were pretty easy since it was a public school. I should've realized that the hard classes here are Stanford hard. Even worse for me, they're engineering. I jumped from AP Calc AB to CME 100. Not smart. I missed a ton of fundamentals that I needed for the class. Luckily tutoring is awesome on campus. The tutors are usually grad students specific to the subject. My CME tutor is Mavis, who is a first year grad student in the CME department. She's really awesome! CS 106X is also killing me slowly. In super slow bites. I thought X would be cool, and it is, but people are really intense in the class. I feel so intimidated by all the intensity in the class, but it also makes me work harder and push myself more.
Yeah, so today was a pretty awesome productive day! yeah! Instead of going to the football game with the band, which I only regret a little, I finished a CME (computational math for engineers) P-set, which had been bugging me for a while. You just gotta love surface integrals! MMMMMM!!! Nothing like taking a surface integral over some f(x,y,z) or even better f(r,theta,phi). Yummy times ahead definetely for CME!
But then the most exciting thing happened today. I knew I needed a haircut and was going to go to the Stanford Hair Styling, but then I learned that it was a whole $20 for a haircut there. A WHOLE $20!!! I'm not made of money! So instead I finished the haircut that I started on two days ago and cut all of my hair down to my short length with only these pair of scissors and this comb an. Truth be told, I did mess up on the bangs, but it looks mostly OK! Overall consensus for myself, not a bad decision. Now I'm sporting a semi-OK haircut and still have my $20. Yay!!!!!!
Edgar
I thought he was one of my friends, but no! He was a secret communist, trying to hurt society and corrupt the minds at Stanford University. He secretly endorses Cal, trying to get others to go to Cal, the dark side where nothing comes back from. NOTHING!
While we are in between moments of time of work, or play :D, we hold random debates in which we argue out our views and moral matters of our society. This is one debate on whether it is best to monetize everything society has, and put a value on every service done. I personally think its right as everybody does their fair share to get their fair share, but again as you can see, its debatable.
So we decided to pregame Thanksgiving dinner today, and by pregaming, I mean precook some wonderful heart cookies and wait for the Dining Hall's supposed spectacular Thanksgiving Dinner. So this is us cooking at Otero's awesome sorta kitchen. It was pretty fun and spectacular. Now we are just hanging out to some Taboo in Natalia's room.
Tried to do some homework, but like any typical Stanford night, got caught up in a conversation with Nick Hartly about his RBA, or research paper, on which he was talking about the...
"About the pervasiveness of indirect discriminatory language towards the LGBTQ population and the parallels between such language and hate crimes."
As quoted by the great Nick himself. Now I'm heading back to some fun triple integrals and surface integrals. Oh how these thin me out! <O_x>
See the Future... Power the Future!