so yeah. i'm in wyoming. this is my story...
it all started when i was trying to find summer work. i talked to some of my prof's, and one of them introduced me to nathan ryan, a number theorist post-doc at ucla. i talked with him, and found out that he is going to be teaching the crypto class at ucla next year, and wanted help writing java programs to use in the crypto class. at the time, i was waiting on my pittsburgh job, so i told him i was interested but still waiting. eventually the pittsburgh thing fell through, so i contacted nathan and we decided to work together. it's a pretty sweet deal, as he's very comfortable with me haivng to learn java on the way, and we'r eworking well together. we talk well, and he likes king of the hill and futurama and whatnot.
anyway, he told me he was going to this crypto conference for 3 weeks, and that he'd bring back crypto problems to work on. later hes like "uh, why don't you apply?". it was after the deadline, but i did anyway, and got in with funding. at first i was hesitant, because it meant i was going to lose my last month with michelle, and miss sara's ranch trip, and spend half the summer in
wyoming. but work before play, so i decided to go with it.
so now i had to schedule this, subject to the following constraints: 1) classes start 8am monday, june 19th. 2) graduation was sunday morning, june 18th, and i had family plans until 3pm. 3) laramie has a very tiny airport, so no real flights in. 4) a plane flies from denver to laramie, and a van from UWYO was leaving cheyenne for UWYO, both of which left at 9:30pm sunday night. the final solution was the following: have michelle bring me to the airport at 6 with her family, and take a 7pm flight that stopped in vegas and arrived in denver at 11:20pm, for full price because it was such short notice. then i had to take a shuttle from the airport to the greyhound station in downtown by 12:15am, when the bus for laramie left. take the bus and arrive at laramie at 3am, then take a taxi to the dorms, check in, and wake up at 7 for classes.
my plane left late. it managed to catch up by denver, which was good, because the airport makes you take a train to the exit, so that added 10 minutes i didn't have. i'd contacted a shuttle company about 5 times and had them promise each time they'd be waiting for me and that they could get me to the bus station on time. i arrived, called the guy, he said everything was fine, i got outside, i called, he said he wasn't there. i found another shuttle guy and told him to get me to downtown pronto. i paid for an extra seat to make him leave immediately. he told me he wasn't sure we'd make it, because they'd shut down the major freeway in denver, but we'd try. we ended up having to take backroads, many of which he was guessing on the right way to go. we got to the busstation as the bus was loading, so that was barely ok. i dozed in and out through the ride (i'd only gotten 3 hours the previous night), and arrived at laramie to the waiting van of UWYO (they'd sent a van, because i'd called htem earlier in the week and they told me laramie didn't have taxis). got to the dorm and checked in. my roommmate was awake, cuz he was suffering from bus lag (he took a 30 hour bus ride from atlanta to "see the country". he now knows the country conists of plains and trees). we chatted a little and i crashed.
first day of lectures started at 8. they varied in difficulty; some topics i already knew, but mostly i only kind of knew topics and could mostly follow, even though i clearly didn't have the background many others did. at 3 we go to our research project groups. this was actually pretty good; the guy (recommended to me by nathan because he teaches well) taught really well, and i felt pretty comfortable with this brand new topic (NTRU lattices and LLL algo).i dunno how much i'll be able to contribute, but i feel like i'll be able to keep up. the difficulty of everything is ok, since i'm not graded on anything. this is just a chance to get exposed to new developments and hopefully start learning what i need to learn to do this stuff later.
laramie is interesting. the stoplights turn off at night; they figure there isn't enough traffic to make people wait at red lights. everything is closed on father's day; everything. most stores close at 9, some bars stay open till 11 or so. it's really dry, becaue of heat, wind, and altitude (7200 ft).things have a strange, bluish tint, except when the plains south of us are on fire (like today), so everything had a red tint. the buildings are really nice, but really small. their student union is as big as my house, and all the stuff is closed atl ike 4.the gym is big, and they won't let me lift weights over my head.
i've been trying to be more social than i normally am. this means not reading at meals by myself, and not listening to my wonderful michelle-bought ipod all the time, to the exclusion of conversation. most people seem cool. found out nathan played rugby and that he's a kettlebell lifter (a very cool pavel-based exercise). natahn's getting cooler by the minute; besides the cartoons and kettlebells, we joke pretty well about this place together. like how crappy the dining hall is. the food is way worse than ucla, and they only let you get one entre at a time. and this math thing isn't the only camp here. i can honestly say, without hyperbole, that there are more teenage girls here for sports camps than there are atoms in the universe.
yeah. pretty tired; got like 3 hours the night before, and 4 hours tonight, so i've been dozing in and out all day. mrrrrrh
