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.