school

Buffer Zone

Posted on by grahams

Even though the weather wasn’t interested in cooperating, this weekend was fantastic. A bunch of friends from RIT descended upon scenic Lake Hopatcong this weekend for the now annual Summer Outing. This year we actually camped in the back yard, which was rather full (mostly due to my gigantic tent, though). It’s tough trying to figure out who to invite, etc… The boat provides a good upper cap to the number of people, I’d hate to have to leave people on shore because I over-extended… Heck, a few of the people we were expecting were unable to show. But I guess if we grow too much we can always rent a second boat.. :P

Anyway, it was a ton of fun, we boated, swam, caught a flick (Clerks II), and drank. Another highlight of the weekend was tooling around with Air Hogs, which several people purchased… They are neat little toys, makes me want to get a real R/C plane to compliment my helicopter. This was also the triumphant return of my Helicopter, which has been out of commission for awhile due to a bad crash.

Clerks II was fantastic, way, way, way better than I had expected.. Working long hours again this week to make up for Friday, which I am taking off for Stellafane 2006. Then I am going to hide in Boston for a few weekends to recover from all the recent travelling…

Phew

Posted on by grahams

is having some friends over tonight to celebrate the completion of her classes… Our apartment is so small, it should be interesting to actually have a party there with more than 6 people… =) I’ve been distributing the load of obtaining all the stuff she wanted acrossed the past few days. I have one more trip to the grocery store this evening before I’m done. Last night after she got back from work we cleaned the apartment. It’s been so long that I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like having a girlfriend who doesn’t spend every evening in class or tethered to the computer. It will be nice to have her (somewhat more) relaxed and not stressing out about a new assignment, etc.

Tomorrow is the Goodrich christmas party, which hopefully won’t be lame. Last year was OK, and Corinna’s volunteered to be DD, so I can take better advantage of the open bar this year… I have convinced more of my coworkers to go, so hopefully we can at least make an oasis of cool..

Back in Beantown

Posted on by grahams

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”…)

Tired

Posted on by grahams

Heading back today, good to see the people I did, but I unfortunately didn’t get to see everyone I had wanted to…. If I missed you, get in touch!

I am gonna take a shower, see jon off and help him pack anything into his car that he needs help with, and take off with Adam and Molly at 12:30p…

Sorry for all the friends-only posts the past few days, but I didn’t want to announce to the world that I was going away for the weekend after my recent break-in… After I return things will be back to normal.

Good to be back

Posted on by grahams

Back in CSH here, waiting for my parents to show up so we can go get some food. I went to a presentation by the person who invented Spanning Tree over in the IT department before. Her presentation was on Security, Encryption, the PKI, etc… Nothing new, but it was a cool presentation.

Saw jerronimo and everyone other than Pat over at CIS, and I have run into lots of other friends today (but not all of them). If you want to get a hold of me and hang out, give me a call on my cell phone…

Unexpected Surprise

Posted on by grahams

I got my diploma in the mail today! And my final transcripts say that my GPA was a couple of degrees higher than I expected, which is cool as well. :)

I did quite a bit of running around trying to get the Cashier’s Check written for the balance due on my apartment. My grandma loaned me the money, but the check was made out to my father, instead of me. To compensate for this, my parents wrote out a check to me drawn on their account for the same amount. So yesterday, I went and deposited the check in their account, they told me it would take a day for my grandma’s check to clear…. So I had to wait until today.

Today, I went back to said back to cash my parents check, and I asked if I could get a cashier’s check from their bank even though my account wasn’t there. No dice, so I had to cash the check (which involved me sticking a thumb print on the check, which I had never seen before), and I then had to take that money to my bank to get the cashier’s check (nothing is cooler than walking around with a few big boxes of ziti on your person, even if it was only for a limited time. :P). When I get to my bank, they tell me that I first need to deposit the money into my account, and then write out a check to them, so they could write out a check to me (As opposed to giving them the cash, them giving me a check). Not only that, but Fleet charged me $6 for a cashier’s check in Boston, but the local Fleet branch charged me $15….

But ultimately, that is all taken care of now, which is a good thing. :)

Payback

Posted on by grahams

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!

Yawn…

Posted on by grahams

I finally have a decent interview prospect, but it won’t happen until April…. Not that I have anything against the prospect of not having anything serious to do between now and then, but I think I would seriously prefer having a clue of where my life is going.. :)

I am going to bed real soon… I am trying to figure out which Skinny Puppy CDs I need to complete my collection (in order to celebrate their entire catalog!). I am only a few singles off, so I might as well staple things up once I get some money… The discs are becoming more and more rare, as Nettwerk decided to discontinue the individual singles in favor of two CDs, one for the singles themselves, the other for the various b-sides. Since I already have most of the singles, I might as well get the 2 or 3 I am missing.

I have been trying to teach myself various meditation techniques lately, something I told myself I was going to learn before I left for RIT (yet never did). I am also going to plan some exercise into my day… it would be nice to at least achieve the moderate level of out-of-shape that I was in before I left for school. :)