The Big C

Hiking up Charter Hill from campus to the Big C is incredibly short and offers a nice view, especially at night. The Berkeley Online Tour of traditions mentions the C was built by moving the materials uphill in a human chain by the classes of 1907 and 1908. It also provides the "cheap seats" on Tightwad Hill that overlook the football stadium.

One (super intuitive, now that I think of it) caveat I feel I should mention is you probably don't want to be anywhere near a BBQ before climbing. The smoke from the grill will likely infuse a heavy meaty smell in your clothes, making you attractive to bugs of all sorts. .. either that, or I'm just that much more delicious than my fellow hikers.

From the trenches... first week of school

Right, so it's Wednesday night of the first week. Whew, feels like Friday of week 3 or something. Most of us have been going to a bazillion classes while shopping for that perfect schedule and, you know, sitting in lecture isn't as easy as you'd think. Then there's the little time in-between lectures - how does it evaporate so quickly? I guess I have to relearn how to actually be productive in time blocks less than 3 hours.

Unlike many of my classmates, however, I think I'm pretty settled by now. It's toughest on the first years - they don't know what many of the class names actually mean, let alone which professors to gravitate towards. I have a year left and I'm going to use it well - nothing to loose really. I'm taking Visualization (super cool with a nice touch of programming), Tangible Interfaces (never done artsy before), one of the Project Management classes (will try the second tomorrow), and do some work for the Law&Tech clinic (intellectual property research for a biotech group). And TA Web Architectures. Hm. That sounds like a lot, maybe I should actually start the readings now.