So, I thought I’d write about the past few days as they were quite exciting, eventful, and since I’m forgetful I don’t want to forget. I’ll begin of course at the beginning. Which probably isn’t really the beginning but oh well. The excitement started 12/12/15. I went home to hanover that Friday (12/11) and had supper at the Landing with Logan, Rebekah, Josh, Terri, and Mom and Dad. Food was great, I got a bbq burger and it was massive and delicious. But, more importantly it was the last meal I was eating with Logan before he became a married man!!! The next day (12/12) on a beautiful sunny and probably around 60 degrees (practically spring in December!) at around 10am Logan and Rebekah were married!!!!!!!!!!! The rest of the day was a bit uneventful. But I wore a suit so that was sort of different (planning on wearing it again Jan 3…). But I had a fun evening/night taking apart Mom’s new laptop and replacing the hard drive with an SSD. Before replacing I did a quick boot speed test and it took about a 1.5 minutes to do a cold boot with the hard drive. With the SSD it took about 12 seconds. The really cool part was when I installed all of the stuff (anti-virus, dropbox, etc) it still only took about 15 seconds to boot (I wait until all the icons in the task tray are loaded). Word and excel start pretty much immediately as soon as click on the icon. Which is amazing :). So, I was satisfied with the $80 250 GB SSD over the 1TB hdd.
But wait that’s not all :). Wed. 12/16 I finished my last class for my PhD!! I only have to do comps, propose, and defend!
And then to celebrate (not really but I like to think) the next day (12/17) I went with some friends to the DC zoo lights :)! Basically my bible study group went to Kings Dominion and we Wesley couldn’t come and we wanted to do something with him. So, Stephen Kuhl told me about the Zoo lights and I got everyone together and figured out the schedule etc. This was really fun. It was my biggest group of people I’ve organized into doing something together ever (9 people). The group consisted of David, Kelsey, Cameron, Addie, Stephen Kuhl, Ashley, Stephen Emerick, Wesley and me! We metroed in which was quite slow as we all tried to get there together. I should try to get better at driving in DC. But, altogether the lights were pretty and we got to see bison, monkeys and gorillas. We then ate at Chipotle afterwards.
Next, came Saturday (12/19)! I really packed all the fun into a short period of time didn’t I haha. Saturday was New Hope’s 25th anniversary dinner hosted by the lovely Katy and Jonathan of The Pixie and the Scout (which now that I’ve met them I think the name is based off of her and him). I got the opportunity to work in the kitchen with them plating the food and cutting sausage and learning all kinds of tricks. I got to direct a group of people to set up the 18 tables so that they looked nice and like the model table (I’ve actually gotten good at giving orders since having to direct undergrads with robots). The food of course was sublime! Never had anything taste soo good. I really need to get the recipes for the dishes. I however ate in the kitchen because I couldn’t find a seat. It was ok because Katy and Jonathan mostly were in the kitchen too so I got to talk to them a little. They actually cater for Redeemer! Tim Keller knows them by name!!! Totally awesome :). Through this experience I’ve developed a challenge problem for multirobot task allocation and that is serving tables. It is a multi-robot task problem (coalitions may need to be formed), we need multi-task robots (robots that can do more than one task), time extended tasks, and some of the tasks have dependencies! So, it is a very difficult problem and having a real life problem to try and solve is always better than just trying to solve it in the abstract and then looking for a problem to use your solution on. So, I’m ecstatic! I’m hoping to send them an email or facebook message to say thanks!
What do you know thats not all yet! Sunday 12/20 I saw Star Wars VII The Force Awakens!!!!!!!!!! It was totally awesome, I actually might go and see it again tomorrow (12/22). I got some people from New Hope to come with me to the IMAX at the Air and Space museum in DC to see it. We drove in and waited in line for about an hour and got pretty bad seats (right in the front). But, the movie was excellent. Went with Corrie, Cameron, Addie, Stephen Emerick, Stephen Kuhl, and Ashley. The cool part was that Steven and Pastor Scott came with some people from HCC.
So, was Star Wars the pinnacle? I doubt it. But it will be hard to beat.