Right now I’m focusing on the Capitol Hill district. After talking to coworkers and friends who live here, this seems like an interesting place to be and a good place to get my feet wet (pun definitely intended). I hear a lot of people live there and it’s very busy and exciting and hip with lots of things to do. I hope I can find a place that I like. Microsoft has put me in touch with a rental provider, who is putting together a list of potential places to look at, and later she’ll take me on a tour of the ones I like. Wish me luck!

Eventually I brought myself to dispose of the rest of the tuna casserole, about two days’ worth, down the garbage disposal. I ran some water and turned on the garbage disposal for a few seconds until it was clear. Then I started preparing some other, better, food, and turned on the faucet a few times. I noticed that the water was getting backed up in the sink, which was weird because it had seemed clear a moment before, so I flicked on the garbage disposal again. After a few seconds, the entire mass of tuna casserole that I had dumped down the sink exploded several feet upward and outward from the left (non-garbage disposal) side of the sink, covering me, the counters, and the floor in vomit-colored, onion-smelling casserole goo. After completely changing my clothes and wiping it up, the kitchen still smelled like tuna casserole and onion. Even in death, its curse lives on.

Floating birds.

After the ferry I passed through gently rolling hills and lush forests, and toward the end along the sound shoreline. Sequim lies on flat, verdant land between tall mountains and sea bluffs. I was amazed at how much of the area you can see from the flat land. My aunt and uncle’s house lies at the base of a steep hill on the edge of the valley. Driving less than a minute up their hill, you can see most of the area laid out beneath you.

Valley floor.

Sequim from above.

Their house, which they built themselves, is amazing. The kitchen was my favorite room, which I think is true of most of their guests, but the house as a whole has a great feel to it. I love the open spaces, where rooms are separated and shaped more by small walls and supports.

Aunt Deb cooked a delicious salmon dinner the night I arrived, and afterward we went to a choir and band show at the high school, which was very good. The next day they showed me around Sequim and bought me a few gifts of warm clothes to help me survive the coming winter.

Their fantastic kitchen.

The beach was foggy, but pretty.

It was a great trip. More pictures.

I started my job at Microsoft on Monday. Monday and half of Tuesday were spent attending orientation, where I and other new employees were introduced to Microsoft the company, Microsoft the paycheck giver, Microsoft the health benefits giver, Microsoft the ethical enterprise, and the like. We were also issued our employee badges and e-mail addresses. I’m now an official Microsoft newbie!

I reported to my building on Tuesday and couldn’t find my manager. Eventually I found some people I had met when I visited there before I had decided to accept the job offer, and we went out to lunch at the cafeteria near our building. The food was decent, but not great, and there seemed to be a good variety. I’ll probably get sick of it all eventually, but right now it’s all good. After lunch, my colleagues (I have colleagues…weird) found my office and my manager. It turned out I had to move my computer, which was still in boxes, across the street and set up temporarily there. Moving and setting up my computer took the rest of the day. I’ve spent the rest of my time since then arranging things in my office and configuring software on my computer. It’s a long, slow process; I won’t be done setting up until next week.

I immediately liked my office mate, Varun (rhymes with maroon); my development lead (my immediate boss), Joel; and my manager (my boss’s boss), Dwayne. The team members that I’ve met so far have been open and friendly too, so all in all, everything is off to a good start, I think.

It’s exciting to sense the intelligence and capability that I’m surrounded by now. I was thrilled by a conversation I had today with a team member about functional programming. I’m not used to being around other people who share my passions and interests, especially within computation.

They emphasized networking a lot at Microsoft orientation, but it’s not something I’ve thought much about before. It’s strange to me to walk around and see the people around me not as people, but as nodes of a vast web of personal connections. I see networking going three ways: I put in minimal effort, excessive effort, or just the right amount of effort. Too little and I worry that I’m missing out on opportunities and experiences. Maybe if I had reached out more, I could have gotten that job, that invitation, or that date. Too much and people become facets of a diverse social life to be collected, cultivated, multiplied, and milked. Fat (job referrals) for the hibernating (unemployed) bear to burn during the cold winter. Just right and I’m happy. I’m not the most gifted social butterfly, so I doubt I’ll overdo it. I need to work on pushing myself out there more.

On Sunday I went to Dan’s to watch the Seahawks game with him and his family, who were friendly and interested in my job and my recent move from California. They invited me to go with them to dinner, but I had to decline to go to dinner with my other friend, Tom. Hopefully I can take them up on a dinner invitation another time. Tom, his friend S.G., and I ate at a local Thai restaurant later that evening. I ran into Tom and S.G. at the local gym a couple days later; big gym, small world. I’m looking forward to visiting my aunt and uncle in Sequim on Saturday.

I was so happy that Obama won! I couldn’t stop smiling. I was surprised at and pleased with how gracious McCain’s speech was, although I guess it’s no surprise he’d want to end on a good note, since he’ll have to work with Obama as a senator. I was excited and gratified to see how Obama’s election had touched so many other parts of the world, especially Kenya. I try not to think about and see the world as if it revolved around my country, but the world’s interest in our election was undeniable. It’s quite humbling when you realize how many other national elections there are around the world all the time that Americans rarely hear about, much less care about. I’m just glad it’s all over.

I watched Obama’s press conference on the economy today, which followed his earlier meeting with economic experts, and was again satisfied with the substance of his words, his poise, his intelligence, everything. I hope it pans out in the long run.

The South Park episode about the election was pretty funny.

Arrival

I flew from Sacramento to Seattle at 10 AM on Monday, November 3, and arrived just before noon. Picking up the rental car and finding the spot where I was to pick up my apartment keys went swimmingly. I couldn’t check into my apartment until 5 PM, so I killed time in a nearby Starbucks. I used my iPhone’s maps to find the Starbucks, which are usually very accurate, but they got the location for my apartment totally wrong, which left me driving around for almost an hour in the rainy gloom. Eventually exasperation drove me to open the envelope containing my apartment keys, where I found a map giving directions straight from the place where I had picked up my keys to my apartment, which, it turns out, was just down the street. I was tired, so I ordered pizza, unpacked, watched the election news, and went to bed.

My apartment building.

Provisions

My apartment is fully furnished and lacked only a few necessary kitchen items. It came with single-serving portions of stuff like detergent, shampoo, dish soap, and the like and no food, so I had to go foraging for provisions. I split up the shopping for food, household necessities, and a few kitchen items over Tuesday and Wednesday.

Attire

I found my wardrobe to be severely lacking, so I went on a shopping binge. I bought four pairs of shoes, two of them formal and dressy, since my last pair of black dress shoes maimed me. Men’s Warehouse is awesome. The salesman who helped me tried talking me into a two-for-one deal on suits of any price, which sounded good, but I need to prepare myself mentally to spend $500 on clothes, so I had to put that on hold. I’m going to call a friend who used to work there to see what he thinks. It can’t hurt to have a suit, right? I just need to find excuses to wear it.

New dress shoes.

Transportation

On Tuesday I went to the Department of Licensing to apply for a Washington driver license. Thankfully I didn’t have to retake the driver test. It took about an hour to wait for my number to be called, as I expected, but when it was my turn I was told that I needed a proof of residency, which I hadn’t been told before. I had to drive all the way home, get a letter, then drive all the way back and get back in another line (which was shorter, I’ll give them that). I got my car emission tested today, so it’s ship-shape. As soon as I receive the pink slip, I’ll be ready to roll.

My temporary ride.

The Roads

The roads in Redmond are a little different than California’s roads. A few things I’ve observed:

• carpool lanes are on the right side,
• low, yellow, triangular prisms used sporadically as lane dividers,
• left turns often lead into two left turn lanes and a straight ahead lane,
• lanes appear and disappear with little notice,
• and lines are hard to discern and lanes are hard to follow at night.

Driving here makes me nervous. More than once I’ve made mistakes or felt that I was close to getting into an accident. I feel a little more confident now, though. I feel stupid that I’m inexplicably having a difficult time adjusting to driving here.

At one point, the freeway leading from the airport to Redmond split three ways at once, which boggled my mind. It reminded me of the awkwardness of the left-sided off ramps in Santa Barbara. I think we’re just wired to think of oncoming traffic being to the left of us so some kind of danger warning flares up when we start veering left.

Flora And Weather

The trees here are amazing! Most are broad-leafed, like Maples, and have turned yellow, orange, and red. I love driving down 8th St. because it’s like driving through a park or colored tunnel. I tried to take pictures with my phone as safely as possible while driving. Some of the leaves have fallen and carpet the streets, but it doesn’t look messy. There’s no doubt that it’s Fall here.

Beautiful.

The weather has been relatively mild, with sporadic rain showers and drizzle, some occasional sunshine and blue sky, but mostly gray clouds. It’s cold day and night, but more so at night. Thankfully I bought a few warm things before the trip here!

Touring

I’ve been focused on getting acclimated and settled since I arrived, so I haven’t had any time to see the sights or explore yet. I’m planning on driving to downtown Seattle tomorrow to check out the Space Needle and the Seattle Center and anything else worth seeing in that area of downtown. I had dinner tonight with a friend of mine, Dan, from Cal Poly and Delta Upsilon who lives in this area too. We talked about hanging out more, and he might be interested in doing some touristy things with me. I can’t wait to see it all! I plan to contact and hope to connect with my aunt and uncle, who live in the area, soon.

Microsoft

I checked out the building where I’ll report on my first day today. It’s actually very close to my apartment. I bought several dressy items of clothing, but I’ll probably dress somewhat casually for my first day. What can I say? It’s the way of the programmer, and of Microsoft. I’ve been trying to read through a book on the technology my department builds, but I doubt I’ll be able to finish it before I start. It’s probably not immediately critical anyway. I’m really excited to start work, to meet new people and hopefully make new friends, and also to possibly work on something interesting and challenging. We’ll see.

Thesis

As you might expect, I haven’t been able to focus on my thesis much the past two weeks. Now that things have settled down somewhat here, I’ll be able to pick up where I left off. It’s always felt like two steps forward, one step back, but I just keep my head down and focus on what’s in front of me. I think that if I paid attention to my overall progress, I’d have gone crazy by now.

Pictures

I’ve started an online collection of my pictures that I will add to periodically at faught.shutterfly.com. I just unpacked my digital camera, so the pictures should on average be of better quality from now on. Check there and here for further updates to my new life in Seattle!

Could that work? Contemporary computers are manifestations of a model of computation called a register machine, which is equivalent in computational capability to a Turing machine. Turing machines are well understood to be incapable of several important tasks, such as reliably determining whether another Turing machine will in fact do what it was meant to do, or if it would ever finish doing it. Human intelligence can compute those things; it is capable of computing things that Turing machines cannot. If Turing machines (computers) could simulate a brain, and thus simulate human intelligence, then that human intelligence, and thus Turing machines, could compute things that Turing machines cannot, which is a contradiction. Therefore Turing machines, and thus computers, cannot simulate human intelligence by simulating brains.

Turing machines can simulate brains, but not human intelligence. What’s the difference between how Turing machines simulate brains and how real brains work? One difference is that the state of real brains changes concurrently, whereas Turing machines must compute brain states consecutively: one atom at a time. Turing machines have no sense of time. Perhaps human intelligence requires brain states to be computed concurrently. Perhaps human intelligence arises because signals that are determined concurrently cross between the brain hemispheres and feed into each other’s next state like a feedback loop.

Computers can simulate concurrency through hardware or do concurrency with multiple cores. Perhaps their concurrency capability renders them more powerful than Turing machines.