You’re freakin’ ancient, now,
csh
Back in Beantown
Getting up this morning wasn’t as difficult as I had expected, I guess my sleep schedule didn’t get too wacked out in Rochester. I had a great time seeing all the CSHers again, and graduation was fun as well. My family came up for the festivities, and they seemed to enjoy getting to finally see me walk across the stage. Many thanks to all the family, house members, and friends who cheered me on as I walked across the stage. The Dean commented on the size of my cheering section as I shook his hand. :)
So that phase is now unarguably complete now; no longer can people argue that “well, you haven’t really graduated yet”… It was nice seeing everyone, but living like a nomad is always a little uncomfortable for me. I am glad to be back in my own place again. :)
Supposedly we are going to hear some “really good” news later on today, which makes me curious.. I hope it is good enough to keep me from worrying about looking at Monster for a year or so. :)
There is a new feature in the Mozilla nightly builds, the “-turbo” command line flag (Win32 only). If you pass this switch, it will start mozilla in a windowless mode, running in the background. The next time you start mozilla, it will pop up almost instantly, since it is already residing in memory. This will be a nice retort to the people that believe that Internet Explorer is so much faster because M$ pulls the browser into memory on startup (since it is “part of the OS”…)
It’s a Small, Weird World
Well, how’s this for 6 degrees? It turns out that our Oracle consultant here at work also happens to train miniature seeing-eye horses in addition to his DBA career. A bunch of us were talking about this the last time soco visited Rochester, but I find it amazingly weird that I now work with the guy who was doing this completely bizarre work. :)
They have finished training their first horse, and are delivering him to his new owner soon. They are coming to Boston to throw a graduation party for the horse. My verbal skills have been rendered completely bewildered by this whole thing…. Wow…
OH NO!
Payback
Ok, I have been terse, vague, and gappy for the past month, so I am going to try and make up for my insolence. :)
You know, many people think that doing nothing but having fun for a month and change sounds like quite a bit of fun. Well let me tell you something, they are right! This time off has really helped me work out a lot of the confusion in my life, and my relaxation levels are back to where they were before pre-school. It doesn’t bother me that it is all going to draw to a close soon either. Instead, I am truly looking forward to being an adult for a change (although I will only act like one 40 hours a week max). I am glad I didn’t set any truly noble goals for this time off, because I really have simply enjoyed the relaxation.
While at RIT, I would often contemplate whether or not my time there was worth it. Would the frustration, heartbreak, hard work, shitty weather, and close quarters ever pay off? I am sure that some of the people reading this think the same on occasion. To you I say that the answer for me was a resounding “yes”, I learned more in the past 4 years than I had to date, and most of my education was in subjects outside of Computer Science. We all learn at some point that some people can’t be trusted, but there is nothing you can do about that. Try as hard as you may, you will never be able to catch all the assholes out there (and more than likely you will get caught off guard anyway). I learned that shielding your feelings from the world will not keep the assholes away. I learned that there is no need to be so secretive, so closed to the world and, more importantly, there are some people you should open yourself to. I once thought that erecting a partition between myself and the rest of the world was the solution, but it just had the disappointing side effect of closing me away from new friends.
I have been offered a job which I am currently considering. It is a good offer, and I would get to be a city dweller for awhile. The company seems like fun, and I would get to work with a few people from CSH. I need to make a decision this week, so it is time to go for some long walks. :) If I did take the job I would probably live sans-auto for awhile, relying on the Boston public transit systems. They aren’t as good as NYC, but they aren’t the worst I have seen either. Rent is a bit steep there, but my other options weren’t much better. The weather won’t be as nice as other places, but so it goes.. The apartment search is something that I am definately not looking forward to whatsoever. I don’t want to live in a shithole, but I also don’t want to be raped in rent each month. I am aiming for a 1 bedroom with an office/den kinda thing (for my computer equipment), but I am flexible. Boston is also only 4 hours from home and 6 hours from Rochester, so it is a decent location in that respect.
If I do take this position, I might go out to the ArsTechnica Boston Party at the end of the month. It would be at Jillians, which is like one block away from my potential employer. Sure it will be geeky as hell, and has a high lame potential, but it might be a ton of fun. Plus, I have never been to a Jillians.
I think that is all for now, I think I am going to go outside and enjoy the lovely weather. Oh my god, I just looked at the thermometer and it told me it is 82 degrees outside! Later!
Wonderful
Greeting from BeOS. Ever since I came home I have been without network access on my personal PC, instead using my father’s machine (and its cable modem) when I needed to “get out”. A few people know that I have had a free shell account with a certain ISP from back when I worked at Sears. One of the reps of the ISP came in asking me to push their service, and in return I would get free PPP access. I said yes (even though it was probably against story policy), and they hooked me up with a free account.
Now, that was 6 years ago. :) They never took the account away, and so I have been using that account when I don’t want my real email address to get into the hands of spam harvesters. I had kinda forgotten that I had PPP access, and had assumed that they disabled my PPP access long ago. When I got home, I started thinking about it, and remembered that the PPP accounts for this ISP were seperate from the shell accounts, with different usernames and passwords. But I couldn’t remember my PPP password, and I wasn’t about to call their support asking to have it reset, so I just wrote it off.
I got an email from my father today…. I had apparently given him my username/password at some point when he was having trouble with the ISP he was using, and I figured he might want an alternative. My dad still had a copy of my password, so now I am dialed in.. Not that big of a deal, but it is useful in some respects, most importantly of all, I can sync to the Perforce repository at CSH again, which means I can start working on some of the projects again.
I am gonna go jump in the shower now… :)
This is Sean Graham, signing off….
This is it, I guess… My parents are coming by in a few minutes and we are going to go wrap up a few things at Financial Aid and then go get some breakfast. After that we load up the car, say some final goodbyes, and hit the road this last time. Phew, this is kinda heavy…
ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Man, things are really hitting me hard…. I am no longer a student… Wow…. I was up unti 7am chillin’ in the lounge, talking with a ton of people.. Even though I went to bed at 7, I had difficulty sleeping; I spent a ton of time just thinking about what I am going to miss here.
My parents should be here soon… Then it is time to start packing my shit up…. ugh.
stuff
This is a way-cool picture.
I just finished my DataComm 2 final… It wasn’t too bad, but one question had me running around in circles until the last few minutes…. It was lots of math that I had no rememberence of at all… But I eventually figured it all out (thank god for open book/notes exams).
I sold back a bunch of books that I had no use for today, for some play money for the next week or so. I might also need it to feed myself, since I am running low on debit (unless some over-debited soul wants to help a geezer out.. :P).
As this chapter draws to a close for me, I am left feeling very awkward. Each final milestone I reach leaves me feeling excited, relieved, anxious, and empty all at the same time. It is painful to know that the time I spend with my friends here will be it for awhile, but I look forward to spending time with my other friends and family back home. I guess any parting of ways is going to be bittersweet, and I have really been looking forward to this parting for 4 (6?) years now, but it is somehow still coming as a discomforting shock. Last night’s house meeting was particularly awkward and painful….
I will not miss Rochester, I will not miss RIT, I will not even miss CSH as a place. But as a smart man made me realize many years ago, CSH isn’t about the bricks, or about the workrooms. CSH is about the people, the great people, that make it up, both on floor and off. My comfort comes in knowing that the bricks can be taken from me, but the people will be there for some time to come.
Not quite a waste of time, but still….
Earlier today I had to go fax a letter to my Insurance Company to tell them to cancel my policy. I decided to take a walk over to the new Print & Postal Hub in the Crossroads building. I hadn’t had a chance to really explore the new building, and I only had a few minutes between classes to send the fax. The guy there was very nice and helpful, and while I waited for the fax to go through, we started talking about random stuff..
CSH purchased an arcade machine towards the end of the summer. It was in pretty beat-up condition, but it was only $100… So James Kieliszek has been working on refurbishing it (it has been a very tedious process). He recently completed a refinishing of the entire control surface (lots of sanding and painting), and it looks beautiful. He did up a new design for a replacement marquee (the top glass on the arcade machine), and so it occured to me that this print shop might be able to help. I asked the guy, and he is able to print 40″ wide pages and as long as you need… He can also print on to this rad translucent paper in that size… So I figured we could print the marquee on that paper and attach it to (plexi)glass.
I got back after class and talked to James, and we decided to walk over there, print the stuff out, and grab some chow at the new eatery. We walked over there, but unfortunately, the guy I had talked to earlier had left and some student was working. He didn’t know how to work the printer, so it was kind of a wasted trip… But the food at the Crossroads is pretty good, and the atmosphere in the eating area is really cool. So it wasn’t a total waste, and James and I are going to try again tomorrow afternoon, so….