I love airplanes, I love spacecraft, I love mechanical things that fly. Airplanes were one of my first and longest lasting obsessions (I’m not sure if my obsession with exhaust pipes started before or after airplanes… I was a weird kid.). Maybe my obsession with airplanes was due to the obscene amount of time I spent on them as a toddler and as a young child. For the two years that my dad worked in Indonesia, my mom and I went between there and the States every few months. I was a United Airlines Premier member when I was two. Regardless of where my obsession came from, I loved airplanes. My mom said she thought that I would be a pilot when I grew up (I am still seriously considering getting my pilot’s license, so maybe that will be true…).

Today we went to the Museum of the Bible. The museum houses many exhibits which explain the stories in the Bible, the Biblical manuscripts and their preservation and translation throughout the millennia, the impacts that the Bible has had on societies throughout history, and brings to life some of the stories and places described in the Bible.

I am going to mention just a few highlights of the museum.

Today we went to the American History Museum. I’m not going to really discuss the individual exhibits, rather I am going to describe my general thoughts on the overall theme of the museum.

The general theme of the museum was that America was founded on certain principles and ideals. However, throughout our history, we have not lived up to those ideals. The main example of this is the stain of slavery and the legacy of racism against black people in America. Despite our failures, we were a beacon of hope to many people around the globe world. To immigrants from war-ravaged lands, we offered refuge (we did this imperfectly, and did not accept as many as we probably should have at times). To the Allies in WWI, our forces turned the tide and helped bring an end to that terrible war war. In WWII, despite our late entry, we helped the allies liberate Europe, while simultaneously (nearly single-handedly) pushing back the terror of Imperial Japan.

We woke up fairly late today because we were quite tired after our long travel day yesterday. Our apartment is very close to a subway station which is a few stops from the National Mall, the big grassy area in front of the Capitol. Our destination for the day was the Holocaust Museum, a tribute to the genocide of the Jews by the Nazi regime before and during WWII.

Today we left for Washington D.C. I drove mom and dad headed to the airport early this morning (like 04:00). Hannah and I stayed in Denver for the morning so that we could attend a friend’s graduation brunch.

Hannah and I ended up leaving for the airport at around 13:00, arriving at around 14:00, and getting through security with no problems. We had nearly two hours before our 16:20 flight. Unfortunately for us, however, the flight was massively delayed. The incoming plane was stuck in Dallas for a few hours, and could not make it to Denver in time. The plane ended up departing at 18:40 (MST).

For the last two years, the Mines Computer Science Department has hosted a High School Programming Competition modelled after the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). The Mines ACM Student Chapter does the vast majority of organization and operations for the competition. As Chair of Mines ACM, I was responsible for a lot of the organizational aspects of the competition.

A couple of weekends ago (Feb. 23-24), nearly 30 Mines students (myself included), attended the HackCU hackathon at CU Boulder.

Since the hackathon was so close and since I was driving up to the hackathon, I decided to bring all of my electronics. I brought my desktop, a monitor, my mechanical keyboard, my ThinkPad, my MacBook Pro, my iPad, a Raspberry Pi, and a variety of other assorted cables and electronics. It was a good thing I did, too, since we ended up using all of them during the hackathon.

Objectively, I’m pretty good at winning prizes at hackathons. I’m not entirely sure how/why, but I am. In this article I intend to try and describe some of the things which have helped me and my teams at hackathons. Please note that these are merely my experiences. Your mileage may vary.

I woke up at 8:00 on Thursday morning. After a quick shower, I went down to eat some breakfast (provided again by Facebook). Then, we got on a bus and went over to Facebook HQ. This is a picture of building 18, one of the smaller buildings on the campus.

This morning I left for a hackathon at Facebook Headquarters. I had to wake up at 3:30 since the flight was at 7:50 and I had to pick up Sam and Jack on my way.

We qualified for the Facebook hackathon at MHacks with our Datanium project. Unfortunately, Robby was unable to make it to the finals since he had too many assignments and projects due this week. So we ended up replacing him with Jack Garner who I had on my HackCU team and on my ICPC team.