Summer 2024 Wrapup

2024-08-25

I flew home. To spend the summer in Shanghai.

Reasons:

  • Reunion with family
  • Everything cheaper
  • I need to order a bunch of PCBs and parts which are also cheaper

By "summer" I mean 2024-05-07 thru 2024-08-25 inclusive.

Projects I Did

Reflow Workshop 2

In 2023, me and my buddies at TechJI did Reflow Workshop and it was a huge success. Which begs the question:

If Reflow Workshop is so good, why is there no Reflow Workshop 2?

There is.

Poster for Reflow Workshop 2. Vector graphic of a pair of tweezers picking up a QFN chip.

▲ I designed this to be as different as possible from last year's poster. Color scheme yoinked from Clancy (2024).

Based on last year's overwhelming demand (I bought for 20 but more than 20 people signed up), I decided to buy enough for 30. However, this time I did not see enthusiasm as high, probably because it was scheduled on the weekend leading to the midterms. Only 17 people signed up. However, I did get sweet extracurricular credits out of this.

Linux Install Party

My buddies at TechJI hosted a Linux Install Party, so naturally I showed up (to help). Not many people were with us, as it was raining. One person had an old ThinkPad, and when I looked closer it was an E220s, which was 32 bit and ran Windows 7. Hardly any distros support x86-32 now. Fascinating that it still boots. Also, the plastic was all sticky.

Bookmarkotchi

Bookmarkotchi is an ongoing project. It's a PCB bookmark that helps you form a reading habit. The irony is that I broke my reading habit once I flew home. whatever

Places I Went

  • Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xuhui campus
    • Had a meetup with my friend and gifted him a copy of Scaled And Icy (2021)
  • Xi'an with my parents
    • Terracotta warriors
    • Hua Mountain: With considerable help from a cable car, we climbed two peaks, including the tallest in central China. There was an orange cat on our way down
    • A "musical" titled 驼铃传奇 (Tuo Ling Legend, literally the Legend of the Camel's Bell): see below
    • Shaanxi History Museum, where a gallery was playing a NileRed video
    • Two jade jewelry stores that the tour guide forced us in (she later threw a fit when basically nobody bought anything)
  • Sichuan with my father and ten friends of his
    • Mostly 甘孜 (Garzê, a Tibetan autonomous prefecture), including a bunch of mountains atop the Tibetan Plateau which got me panting
    • 映秀 (Yingxiu), where an earthquake struck in 2008
      • There's a public square with pillars commemorating soldiers who sacrificed themselves in the Sino-Japanese war or the civil war (forgot which). I find it absolutely unnecessary. It's like, "oh yeah, your father died in an earthquake? well check this out, this guy died in a war!" They're both tragic, ok?
    • 资阳 (Ziyang), a suburb east of Chengdu, where I busted a tire while pulling out of a parking lot
    • A friend's hometown (village) in 内江 (Neijiang)
    • 罗泉 (Luoquan), also in Neijiang, where we bought hundreds of yuan's worth of assorted tofu
  • Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Minhang campus
    • Volunteered at the graduation ceremony
    • I failed to mention in the Winter 2024 wrapup that I volunteered at a UMich grad ceremony as well, for JI students in the CoE
  • Drove our family car to a dealership to sell it, because we're getting a new PHEV (wise move)
  • Cycled to the bank with my grandpa to withdraw 300,000 CNY in cash for a completely legal transaction. I felt like a drug cartel
  • A record store in Xuhui with my friend because I heard they had a bunch of Radiohead. Couldn't afford any, so I just picked up three stickers and dipped
    • There was a restaurant called "Normal Canteen" which totes sounds not suspicious
  • My childhood apartment where I lived from 3 to 10. Unfortunately, there's a mouse infestation.
  • Flew back to Ann Arbor
    • Flight was delayed on tarmac for three hours. Captain quoted "electronic" and "hydraulic issues"

Tuo Ling Legend

It's a show, a musical of some kind, about the folks walking the Silk Road (the real one). The tour guide recommended it, and I find it disappointing. I mean, the dancing and the props were good, but the story seems to be the product of a junior high project that was done over recess in three days. Not to mention the cheesy lines, which were, of course, dubbed.

The show tries to be touching, but the playwright and/or director failed to consider that, just having the actors (voice actors, in this case) speak the lines operatically does not automatically make it sentimental. It comes off to me as cringe.

I did not get the point of the play either. It could be one or both of:

  • Look how much our ancestors did for us on the brave new road
  • Look what superpower we were back in the good ol' days. We're gonna do it again haha am i right guys

Our tour guide claimed that the show was what foreign guest officials would watch, and I don't believe it. If I were an official in a foreign country and they showed me a musical hinting that they once dominated the world and had a luxurious palace, I would leave.

Notable features, among this failure:

  • They have real wolves (who I hope weren't mistreated) running down the aisle
  • The audience sat on a rotating platform to view six stages clockwise
  • There was a scene where they poured a literal tonne of water in a waterfall and it splashed all over us

Sichuan

Much more enjoyable experience than in Xi'an (if you don't count the flat tire night) overall. Never was pushed to a store to buy anything. Only time I was persuaded to buy anything was a street vendor selling ready-to-eat walnuts in a bag for only ten bucks. It was good. Everything was voluntary. The people were nice. Lots of dogs. I learned a new card game called 干瞪眼 (staredown). Food was hot and greasy but that's how Sichuan cuisine works. Once one of my dad's friends got drunk and told me about the time he and his team reverse engineered the .doc and .xls formats in the 90s. Only complaint (other than the tire) was the hours of being in a car every day.

Ann Arbor

Things I did after landing:

  • Abused my privilege and requested a SafeRide™ home (I can only do this six times per year)

  • Volunteered to pick up new arrivals from SJTU twice at DTW

  • Volunteered on an IKEA ride and bought a Livlig husky plush

  • Installed a cargo rack + basket for my bike, didn't apply enough torque, lost two bolts on a bumpy road

  • Got a replacement from Fabrication Underground; also pumped my tires
  • Got a flat while riding around Bursley

  • Fixed my flat (and a couple other problems) at Common Cycle with help from Matthew. Basically got a new tube for free. Donated 5 dollars.

  • Visited the phallic dumpster exhibit at UMMA. Five stars

  • Saw the furry club poster at Duderstadt and almost had a heart attack 💀

Poster on a bulletin board. Grey anthro dog staring menacingly and pointing at you. Caption reads "I want you for the furry club". URL runs underneath.

IA application

I applied for IA back in April, and despite HR saying the "goal" was to have the "majority" assigned by "July 21", I didn't hear from the professor until 2024-08-05. But hey, progress.

We had an interview, then I waited. On 2024-08-19, I got news that I was hired. Now all that's left is training and paperwork, which should not be hard.

It turns out I was literally the last hire; I was really lucky. Also, my former roommate is also an IA now, which is cool.

They gave me a sheet to indicate which hours I'm free so they could schedule lab sessions. And that's where I fucked up. I forgot I had a lecture on Friday afternoon, and by the time I discovered that it was too late. I've emailed and texted but to no avail.

Shit.

Movies and Shows I Watched

  • "Barbie": Watched it for the second time on the flight to Shanghai. Someone in front of me was watching Oppenheimer at the same time, and there was a brief moment where Ryan Gosling danced to the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Also realized Billie Eilish sang in the movie. (Barbie, not Oppenheimer)
  • "The Garfield Movie": Saw the negative comments, wonder why. They're right. Plot was unoriginal.
  • 抓娃娃 ("The Successor"): Comedy film on helicopter parents. Seems biased toward the parent side, but the actual message requires critical thinking and speculation, which will takes another five pages, so no. Open to interpretations.
  • Stand-up comedy night with 严值高 (Yan Zhigao, homophonic to "good-looking"): Lots of sexual humor.
  • 逆行者 ("Upstream"), which is about a former software engineer who becomes a delivery driver (rider to be more specific) to pay mortgage. The ending where everything worked out is dystopian. The riders compete against each other without even once questioning capitalism, or the authority who exploit them. Imagine showing Mao this movie.
  • "The Lion King", on the flight to Detroit. Can see why it's one of the classics.
  • "Everything Everywhere All At Once": I have suspicions that it's just an elaborate pun on the everything bagel

Music I Made

This was a musically prolific summer. I wrote two songs, covered one, and forced a computer to cover two and a half. In chronological order:

Music I Listened To

  • Fedivision 2024 songs (all 72 of them) (I even kept a spreadsheet to rate them so I can vote)
  • twenty one pilots
    • Clancy
  • Radiohead
    • Amnesiac
    • In Rainbows
    • The King Of Limbs
    • the other albums as well, but mainly these three

Things I Bought or Otherwise Acquired

These were bought online in China:

  • A fume extractor for soldering which I should've ordered in 2021
  • A CO detector in my grandpa's kitchen
  • A pair of earbuds
  • A logic analyzer
  • A ten-port USB hub because apparently four isn't enough
  • Some accessories for my bicycle, like a cargo rack
  • Some stickers including this one:

Left to right: UMich logo, "EECSISTENTIAL CRISIS", checked box

Also I made a few badges with the badge press in the hackerspace I worked in last year, including this one:

"This individual is no longer allowed to operate a badge press" surrounding a badge press crossed out by a red circle of forbiddance

These were bought in the US:

  • A Livlig husky plush

Things I Am Going To Do

Notable event happening in the coming month:

  • August 26: First 370 staff meeting, Festifall North
  • August 28: Festifall Central
  • September 1: Pride Outside
  • September 4: Green Day Saviors Tour
  • September 9: Practice teaching as part of IA training
  • September 29: twenty øne piløts Clancy Tour