You have just won the internet, but you weren't online to claim your prize.

winter break is over. And hell's pretty much frozen over at this point. In a literal sense.

It's 40 below!

But I'm back in the gym and classes are in full swing and it's pretty fucking awesome, honestly. I fucking rocked last semester. All Bs except for math, which was an A. It's a wonderful feeling to know that the two shitty classes you had to take you ended up passing, just barely. 80% is still adequate.

I no longer have the feeling of "oh god oh god oh god how the hell am I sitting in an upper division CS class?" which makes me think I'm becoming more confident with my intelligence. It really is a scary thing, sometimes. We actually had a guy from IBM walk in for a minute to say hi to the professor one day and I honestly felt like I was on another planet at that point.

But its a good thing. I would not trade the opportunity to be surrounded by really smart people for anything in the world, because when you surround yourself with people smarter than you, you will become more intelligent. College is the best place for that. Plenty of smart people (and smart asses, like me), running around.

I think it's pretty amazing how far I've come, both as a person and in my studies.

Da Brick Wall

I woke up today, exhausted. I actually got 7 hours of restul sleep, so that wasn't the issue.

The issue was that for the mast three months or so, I've been running at 60-70 hrs a week, either doing homework or dnd or work or whatver. Now, with the crappy weather, UAF cancelled classes for the week, so I've had nothing to do, and so, bam.

From 70 hrs a week to 0 hrs a week and yeah, the exhaustion that comes from running so fast for so long has finally caught up to me.

I think I'm gonna celebrrate with some rest.

Without an alarm clock.

for once.

I haz a job

So excited. I should be starting in a week or two.

I am so flipping happy right now words just can't describe it. There's a lot I want to do, that needs a lot of money. Like, I want to buy a humidor, for cigars, pay off bills, and save up some cash for after I graduate college/go on to a master's program, that I just cannot do if I don't have an income.

I should be starting in a week or two. Just need to wait for the background check to clear. So not worried about that.

First month of college is over

And everything is starting to pick up. It honestly doesn't even feel like a month has passed by. I think it's because I'm doing so much this year that I have very little time to sit down and rest. I actually installed Chandler for linux to help me manage all of my activities. It's not the greatest PIM around but it's the only one I knew off the top of my head.

When you have work and exercise, it's easy to keep track of these things. Go to work, go to the gym, come home. You also get lots of downtime to do nothing. When you go to college, you go to classes, and in between you get lots of downtime, but there is all this homework to do. Nonetheless, you keep finding ways to fill the gaps.

To make up time, you cut down on sleep. Things start to get more hectic and then who knows what after this. I feel somewhat hypocritical because I declined rejoining Toastmasters, saying that I wanted to be careful with my time, only to join a group called Circle K, which is a community service organization and is tying up my weekend with two events.

two snterviews, a massage (really need one, my body is trying to turn itself into a blackhole it's so tense right now), weightlifting, two awesome classes, will take up most of this friday.

So here I am, after 5 hours of sleep, getting an early start to knock out a lesson of Anthropology so that I can keep on track. I think I can knock out lesson 5 of English on sunday after my Dungeons and Dragons session gets out, and then there's just some math homework to do. Just a quiz, I believe.

The only two classes I haven't had any homework for thus far are Political Economy (have a test coming up that I need to study for though) and dance. I get homework for Assembly programming but thus far it has been really simple stuff.

Stop! Hamma time!

Can't touch this!

SO classes are a few weeks in and my activites are full, between dance class, and then programming class (Which is completely blowing my mind right now! Details in the other blog), and then all the rote work I need to do for other classes they want me to take, and mathematics, my days are pretty full. If I find a job they'll be even more full.

But, I'm loving it. It's pretty sweet. I dropped the firefighting classes and am retaking some other classes to get my GPA back up. Turns out this is a much better plan.

I was a bit disappointed until computer science class blew my mind away, twice, and I came across an opportunity for a student research position. I might get this, and I might not. I'm going to spend my free time studying Python and PERL though, and eventually PHP, so that if I don't get the job, the next time the position is open, I'll be that much more marketable.

I think I at least left a good impression.

Class is in full schwing!

And I'm loving it so much. My responsibilities are pretty basic, now that I've cut video gaming out of my life. Thanks, leechblock, and my uh, "clicking" the wrong button when attempting to save my 512-character password for you in gedit. I guess the only way out now is to re-install linux but that's not happening for awhile.

Yes, Mint version 10 is out. Version 8 is still doing all the things I want it to do.

So far it's been an amazing week. We had this whole three-day weekend thing, so classes didn't start until tuesday. I get smashed at the pub tuesday night (whee, fun), to the point where I was basically falling down and had to hold myself up. Well worth it though. I usually don't get hangovers. No idea why.

Wednesdays are ballroom dance and assembly. So are mondays and fridays. These are literally going to be my three favorite days of the week until December and then I get to take two programming classes (hooray!)

Back to college in five days

Music for the road trip. Check.

Brain in proper gear for CS? Check.

So many unanswered questions about computer technology? Yup. It's going to be a long road.

It recently occured to me that I could never learn everything about computers in one lifetime. This means I could learn for a lifetime. Really.

I spent the better part of a year (maybe more like 4 or 5 months) studying math. From Algebra to Precalc to part of Trig. I understand it a lot better, so now I just need to prove I can do it. I've spent a few weeks digging down into C++, and I think I remember the general idea of how to program. Doubt I'm as great as I once was (not that I was rockin, or anything) but my coding style seems to be coming back, and things are starting to make sense now. I have the next two days off so my plan is to program some problems involving pointers and string manipulation, and attempt to build a big number class in C++. Just a simple one. Addition, subtraction, maybe multiplication and division. I haven't laid anything down, but I am wondering how much the efficiency of it will matter. If I have to add two 10 million digits together, and my processor can perform 1.6 billion instructions per second, how fast will this operation be?

Other than that, I'm gonna read a little bit of effective C++. I'm not looking to become a god at C++ before college starts, there's no time for that now. I just want my mind to be in the right gear for Assembly Programming class.

This is my class lineup for the fall

Intermediate Algebra (3 credits)
Assembly Programming (3 credits)
Fire Fighter I (12 credits)
Ballroom Dance (1 credit)

I will take a class over Christmas break, which will be pre-calculus (4 credits)

Over spring, my schedule will be
EMT 1 (6 credits)
Anthropology (3 credits)
Another programming class (3 credits)
trig (3 credits)
Breakdance classes ( 1 credit)

which will be 39 credits. A lot of these are retakes to repair my GPA, so a lot of these aren't actually new credits. The firefighter/EMT classes are a diversion so get me out of retail, and firefighting is fun.

My GPA should be somewhere close to 3.0 at this point. From there, I'll have to get scholarships. I might switch majors to computer engineering at this point, or discuss double majoring. Not sure. I love programming but I hate that for an engineering field, I don't have a whole lot to show for my hard work like an engineer who builds a bridge or arch might.

we'll see. It all depends on funding.