Settling In
January marked the start of my 4A term at the University of Waterloo. I had found housing quite late in December, so was relatively happy to find a place at Rez-One Elora House since I had lived here for the last two school terms (and because it has an ensuite washroom). The room I renting as a subtenant faces the University Ave W and has a nice view being on the 17th floor, which is nice for shooting timelapses of the Ion Lightrail crossing. The 4 other subtenants seem to keep relatively to themselves, which I don’t mind. As long as they continue to keep cleaning up after themselves, I don’t see any issues in the future.
Summer Internship Secured!
I had interviewed with a handful of companies over the winter, so was very thankful to receives an offer during the first week of class from NVIDIA. The role is for a System Software Intern on their Autonomous Vehicle System Software team and is located in Santa Clara, California. This is the earliest I’ve had a co-op sorted out, so I enjoyed not having to look for co-ops on WaterlooWorks this month. I did take a peek out of curiosity for the posting, and it looks rough 💀.
Research Roadblocks
I was intending to do be an Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA) this term. Unfortunately, all the projects I found interesting either already have students or will not be taking undergraduate students this term. While this isn’t the end of the world since I don’t have a plan of immediately pursuing graduate studies, it still would have been nice.
Courses Load & First Impressions
This term, I’m taking CS479: Neural Networks, CS456: Computer Networks, CS482: Computational Techniques in Biological Sequence Analysis, CS480: Introduction to Machine Learning, and MUSIC333: Music & Landscapes. I had initially had CS484 (Computer Vision) instead of CS456, but had bad feeling about the professor’s assessments so decided taking CS456 would be better. Overall, the workload seems to be manageable. I imagine CS480 is going to be the most time consuming as it’s assessment scheme is assignment favoured (4 * 20% assignments, 5% midterm, 15% final). It’s nice that some of the content overlaps with CS479, and later parts of CS482. CS456 appears to just be a memorization course, and MUSIC333 is a nice break from technical courses.
After this term, I’ll be finished with all my required courses for my CS degree so all I have left are 5 electives. Two of those electives I’ve already decided (CO370 to finish my CO minor and CS444 because I couldn’t take it this term), but the rest are still up in the air.
Personal Setup
Not much has changed in terms of my setup for work. I did decide to not bring my keyboard or monitor this time. Honestly, after switching to Sway and setting things up exactly how I want, I’ve been feeling less and less like I need another monitor. Deciding the not bring the keyboard was mostly to deter me from playing League of Legends this term.
In terms of productivity, I’m still using almost all the same tools I have for the past 6 months, with one exception. I started using Morgen Calendar as a central task/event management tool. I had seen Morgen earlier when I had made the decision to try out Amie. I made the jump to Morgen because of two factors:
- Amie become paid only ($19USD/Month!), and
- Morgen added Obsidian task integration.
In doing so, I finally have what is the closest I’ve been to my ideal task management and calendar tool. I’ll decide whether I’ll stick with it once my trial ends.
Random Highlights
In no particular order, here as some interesting/fun things that happened:
- I hit Platinum in Master Duel playing my favourite archetype: Galaxy-Eyes.
- FINALLY finished Campaign 2 of Critical Role. I’ve been listening to this Campaign since 9th grade, making it 7 years that it took me to finish. The actual campaign was played over 3 years.