So, the last few days was Dorm Rush. The point of dorm rush is to make sure that freshmen find a dorm where they are happy. The truth of dorm rush is that freshmen spend the week exploring a little, but mostly enjoying the free food offered by almost every dorm.

Some of the other interesting events of the week:
Underground Capture the Flag, or at least an unofficial version run by people from Discover Ocean Engineering—the real thing is this Saturday.

Exploring the many corridors of campus and trying to learn my way around, preferably not entirely above ground, either, so I don’t have to spend too much time outside during the winter. Yesterday I managed to get from Lobby 7 to the Stata Center without ever going outside. This isn’t actually very hard, but the last time I tried to do this was when I visited campus last October, and I had no idea where I was, and the area looked a little sketchy.

18.02 (multivariable) Advanced Standing Exam, which I apparently passed. Difficulty really varied by problem. I know that I finished 12 or 13 of 20 problems, all of which I think I did the right way (although might not have gotten the right answer). I was far along in 4 or 5, and only clueless on 1 or 2. They obviously gave partial credit, and were also willing to set the bar below impossible, fortunately.

Today I have Core Blitz, where they talk about the classes everyone has to take, and the Academic Expo, where the different majors give out free stuff to convince you to join their department. I also have a meeting with my advisor, which I’m really looking forward to, because he’s supposed to be a very cool guy.

Dorm rush is now officially over (the housing adjustment lottery closed last night), which means that the dorms aren’t going to give us food anymore. However, frat rush starts on Saturday, and the frats are notorious for spending lots of money on food for freshmen. Generally steak and lobster are available.

So until then, I need to go actually buy some food.

So, this is a short and relatively uninteresting story, but it made me pretty happy. My server got in today (we had it shipped in hopes that it would make it in one piece—it did, fortunately), but I had to reconfigure it for the MIT network, and I didn’t have a monitor. So one of the guys on my floor takes me down to the lobby and into what was once a photography lab, and there are 3 or 4 different monitors sitting in there that nobody wants. So I grabbed one and carried it back up to my room. I didn’t even have to leave the dorm.

So I have a monitor now, network configuration was easy, and I have a server too. Which means that my spam filtering works again. Trust me—this is good.

And now, for a brief summary of today:

Since yesterday was fission day, today was fusion day. Fusion is apparently believed by many to be possible, and MIT has an entire center that studies it. However, there are still several problems, and most of our mentors are fission people, so the kind of laugh at the fusion people.

After that we went to Salem, where we saw this terrible presentation on the witch trials. It was kind of funny because it was just so bad. Then we were given a few hours to wonder around Salem. However, none of us knew what we could do, and none of us wanted to spend money, so we spent a long time sitting by a cemetery talking about different stuff like classes and dorms.

Tomorrow (well, today now) is officially the start of REX, or Residence Exploration, or dorm rush. For the uninitiated, rush is the period where dorms try to convince you to leave your temp housing and move to their dorm. This means free food for the next 5 days.

But in the mean time, I should get to sleep, since I still have to wake up in 5 and a half hours.

Good night.

So, being bored a few nights ago,…

Well, not bored, but more avoiding certain things I didn’t want to do, I took photos for a brief photo tour of my suite/room. Of course, the prospect of photo editing tends to scare me away from doing any of it (I have tons of photos that need editing), so it took me an extra day to actually do anything with it. But, I finally got around to it, and fixed my iPhoto plugin to publish photos to Flickr, so you get a very brief tour of my suite in Burton-Conner.

Our suite is at the far end of one of the hallways on Conner 4. I say that hoping that it’s only enough information for MIT students to find me, and not anyone else, because they could find me anyway.

Anyway, right inside all Burton-Conner suites is a little lounge area. One of my suitemates actually managed to get a piano in here, although by what magic I know not.

Also in the common area is the kitchen, one of the coolest features of B-C. Generally the upperclassmen keep it stocked well, although I’m sure the freshmen will be pulled into the stocking process eventually.

(N.B.: The last photo and the next photo were both taken facing roughly the same direction. This one was taken facing the opposite direction. That may help to orient you within the photos, or it may serve to just confuse you more.)

The rooms are just past the lounge area. Mine is the first room on the right, the only double in my suite.

My room is also one of the “smallest” on the floor. It’s not that the actual square footage is less, but there’s this little foyer area that’s kind of off from the rest of the room and makes it all seem a little smaller. The foyer contains one of our two dressers.

The two desks and the other dresser. I will claim mine, here. It’s the one that’s covered in stuff. It’s not really too much stuff, but it’s the only area where I’ve unpacked at all. Since we might move again, I have a towel hanging up to dry on a hook in the dresser, and everything else is either in the suitcase or on my desk.

Our beds. I’m not going to say which one mine is. Maybe you can figure it out. Also note the shelving on the right wall, which is currently very inconvenient, so not sure what will happen there.

And finally, the view from our window. This was mostly taken to prove to my dad’s friend that we can, in fact, see Fenway Park from our dorm. You can see the lights in the top center of the photo.

So, that’s the tour. Brief summary of events…

The Discover Nuclear Science and Engineering program has been feeding us, starting with dinner on Tuesday night. It’s basically run by a bunch of grad students and a few upperclassmen. After a pretty dry lecture yesterday morning, we took a tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor. We did actually get to go into the containment building and everything, although we had to leave bags, cameras, and phones outside for security. It was pretty cool, although it’s not a big operation or anything - it only takes two people to run the reactor.

After that and lunch, we went to the Boston Museum of Science, where we saw the Body Worlds exhibit, which is the one with the plastinated bodies. It was kind of disturbing, actually, mostly because some of the bodies were as much art pieces as they were medical cadavers.

After that we wandered around the museum and saw a few of the other exhibits, and the lightning show. I have photos, but I need to touch almost all of them up first. It was a very good show, though.

There was an employee in the computer exhibit who was basically taking care of two Aibos that they had on display who turned out to be an MIT grad. She was Course VI, decided she didn’t like the cubicle work, and so now she works at the museum instead. I think I’m the only Course VIer at DNSE, so they laughed at me for that one. The lesson, I think, is to avoid cubicles at all cost.

Anyway, I have to go, because I’m hungry and B-C is starting orientation events with breakfast downstairs.

So, I’m not going to write about NJCL because, while I had a great time and being an officer was amazing, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary that happened. I will say that I’m looking forward to coming back as an SCLer next year.

But I will say something about moving into MIT.

Actually, first I’ll say something about how MIT assigns dorms, because then what I say about moving in will make much more sense.

MIT has what is comparatively a very screwed up dorm/room assignment system. First, there are no “freshman dorms” or “upperclass dorms.” Just undergraduate and graduate housing. Over the summer, you receive a DVD where each dorm makes a short video advertising itself. Then, you rank them, and in late July, there’s a lottery to determine your temporary housing.

During Orientation, part of the fun is supposed to be checking out all of the different dorms available and trying to find the one that best fits your personality. At the end of the week, you can enter a readjustment lottery if you’d like, or stay where you were temped.

Once you’re in your final dorm (which may still be where you started), there is almost always an “In-House Rush” to determine your final floor/suite/room/etc, where it can apparently be difficult to retain your original dorm assignment.

Now, I happen to like the room and suite that I’ve been temped in, and thus far, my roommate seems like a cool guy, too. I’ve been talking to one of the room assignment chairs, who lives on my floor, and she says that it’s quite possible for us to hold onto this room.

But still, it’s not guaranteed by any means, and I basically have to live here for a week with the assumption that I’m going to move. Which makes it very hard to get settled in or even unpack at all.

In the meantime, though, my roommate’s pre-orientation program is completely off-campus, so I’ve got a single for the next week.

So, does anyone else find the combined message of Accepted and the Get a Mac ads to be rather amusing?

I mean, I guess they’re saying that Macs will help you do stuff better, but you’ll be so busy creating cool videos in iMovie that you won’t get into Yale?

Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t make the switch sooner…

In the list of other weird computer related things, Stephen Colbert showed his three favorite websites today on his show. I’m normally not a huge Colbert Report fan, but today was funny because, although he pulled out an HP laptop, the screenshots were taken in Safari