One of my five classes this semester is in computer architecture. We are basically learning how to program in hardware — that is, to use actual circuits for things we would normally do with a single line of code. Even though I won’t be using such a skill much in the future, it’s a nice thing to learn.

My stubbornly incompetent addition circuit.

In lab two days ago, our task was to build a simple machine for addition of two-digit binary numbers on a circuit board. (We also built another adder using a different design and then built a circuit which would turn an “error” light on if they gave different answers given the same input.) Solving the problem was quite rewarding until I tested my creation and saw that it couldn’t add.

A working circuit is just as messy.

I spent a very frustrating hour troubleshooting and pleading with the circuit board. Most of us were having problems, and we weren’t required to have a working circuit by the end of the lab, but I was still so irritated that I took pictures.

That night I returned to the lab and fixed the problem after rewiring most of the circuit. I was so happy I took pictures.

Today began with a half-awake shuffle to the computer, not the bathroom. I checked the university’s web site to see that school had been called off due to weather and promptly celebrated the occasion by making a pot of coffee. The day before, when it was cold enough for my bike lock to be frozen over all day but not quite cold enough for classes to be canceled, our 0.03 inches of ice gave me an excuse to whip out my camera and gape at my surroundings like a tourist. Still, it wasn’t that cold. As my roommate said, around here, people treat cold weather as a sign of the apocalypse.

A squirrel who was undoubtedly more cold and miserable than I was.

Last week, the first of the semester, was tranquil except for the fact that I mistakenly had four of my six textbooks shipped to a nonexistent address. A call to the postal service left me even more worried: they can’t reroute media mail packages, and undeliverable mail is returned to the sender. I didn’t really want to wait several weeks for each package to travel across the country three times at the blinding speed of media mail. Fortunately, my mail carrier happens to be a smart and likeable guy who figured out the right street address, and all of my books arrived before I needed them.

A tree brazenly ignoring the encroaching “snow”.

Soon after my books arrived, I learned that my upstairs neighbors are football players who are skilled at parking in multiple parking spaces simultaneously and in being loud. Their favorite way to make noise is to walk across the floor — the ceilings of these apartments were aparently not created with linemen in mind. They also make noise by shouting outside at late hours and by the age-old “play music loudly” method. My roommate and I have hypothesized that they do all of the above in shifts, so that while one of them uses a pogo stick in the middle of the living room for four hours, the other is free to do more productive things.

All in all, this semester is probably going to be quite difficult. If I work extremely hard and get four A’s and just one B, I’ll make the Dean’s List. But with 18 credit hours of classes, I’m not getting my hopes up just yet.