Happy

Friday

My Fridays always seem to be good days. I can only hope the trend continues. My first class, Cloud Computing Lab was a lot of fun. It was an introduction to working with MapReduce functions. We used Hadoop and worked with the provided Word Count example. (Given an input, in this case a folder with several books in plaintext, it would output the frequency of each word to a given output.) It was written in java and we were tasked to make a few alterations to it: making it ignore punctuation, make it sort words only based on file name and not in bulk and an option exercise to create a partitioner class and use it to direct all the books with a file name starting with the same letter to the same reduce task. It was nice to do something with code again, as it'd been a while for me. I anticipated I'd have a slow start with the exercise since it had been quite a long time since I actively worked on java, but it was surprisingly easy to understand and write the code. It's nice to know that I remember more than I think.

Lab

Modified WordCount.java

Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop at the cafe between classes, as I spent the whole allocated time working on the lab. I didn't mind the lab itself, but I was quite hungry during my next class. (And wishing I had some coffee.)

In Coding Theory we talked more about irreducible polynomials, the unique factorization theorem and extension fields. I feel like I understand the material in class, but obviously I'm missing something if I have so much trouble with the homework. Luckily my professor seems to understand that, and has agreed to meet with me and discuss my difficulties with the homework. It's a relief that he's willing to work with me. (Although at this point I don't know if I can manage an A, I really just want to pass the course.)

Once class was over I headed over to the Metro cafe to meet up with Ariail and get some lunch. It was nice to just chat while eating, as I hadn't had lunch with anyone in a while. After we finished eating we went to the bus stop so that we could get to the migration office and pick up our residence cards. These were ready a lot quicker than I anticipated (Only took a little over a week for me to receive notification.) There was a short wait when we got there, but not as bad as I thought given the volume of people there. It was quite easy to get them, just a quick sign of a paper and voila. I still need to register my living situation with the population office and provide my Estonian ID code to the school, but I'm a legal resident now! (Well, for the duration of my stay.)

Once we got our cards we hopped back on the bus. We decided to stop at the mall for a little bit, as Ariail wanted to get a new coffee maker and I wanted to look at shoes. (No particular reason, but I'm entitled to my girly moments.) Neither of us found what we wanted but I always enjoy looking. After perusing the selections we headed downstairs to the supermarket. This was the first time that I'd seen this particular grocery store and I was surprised at how well stocked it was. And, as always, the abundance of alcohol to choose from was almost startling.

Once we'd finished walking about we headed back to the dorm. I was quite relieved that it was the weekend, as I always am. I also had very little homework to do, so was looking forward to some nice relaxing.

Saturday

Didn't really do much today. My roommate and I decided to rearrange the room, as we were getting bored with the layout. I like it a lot better now, it's more open while being more cozy and separate (just pretend that isn't a huge contradiction). I imagine that it would have been quite amusing for somebody to watch our attempts to move the wardrobes around (as we were both too lazy to empty them, and they're quite large/heavy). We dissolved into giggles a few times during the process, but eventually got them where we wanted them.

The rest of the day was devoted to doing...nothing! Until around 11 at night, where I made a late night grocery store run for some ice cream. And then promptly ate the entire pint. Not my proudest moment.

Sunday

Nothing happened. The end.

Monday

I had another great day, I was just happy in general. It probably helped that it was an incredible 54 degrees today. It was sunny in the early afternoon, but by the time I got outside for my 4pm class it was a bit overcast. Though that didn't stop people from sitting outside some of the restaurants. It's interesting how fast I've acclimated to the weather and how much I appreciate a day like this. In Charleston I would've considered 54 and slightly overcast to be cold and gross, but here in Estonia it's amazing weather! It's nice to gain little bits of perspective on things like this.

Really enjoyed my Crypto course today. We talked about block ciphers, their benefits, and some specific examples. The teacher mentioned AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and DES (Data Encryption Standard). While AES is more modern, it's also more complicated. So he focused on telling us about DES, as it was moderately easier to explain. It's a block cipher from 1976 that was used for 25 years without being broken. He told us about the basic structure, how it was based on the feistel network and permutations.

We also received our graded homeworks. I did better than I expected: 10/20. Not the best grade I know, but at this point I only wish to understand the material and do well enough (50% of total HW points) so that I can take the exam. Looking at the answers and comments provided on my homework I can see where my mistakes were, which is the important thing.

Stopped by the grocery store to buy milk and bread, using my debit card for the first time. I was a tiny bit nervous because they use micro-chips instead of a magnetic strip. So you don't swipe the card, you stick it in the machine until the transaction is completed. I felt like I was gonna mess up, but it was very simple. I feel like it was better than swiping honestly, and I'm curious as to why the US doesn't use micro-chips.

Once I got back to the dorm I got started on my reading for Religion and Politics. I may have gotten distracted a few times along the way, but I got it done before the night was over, which is the important part.

Not looking forward to tomorrow, it's always intimidating to think about and I generally get tired/bored before I'm through with classes. I wish that wasn't the case, but there's really no avoiding it. Ah well, gotta do what I gotta do!