I’ve just finished with my finals for this round of classes. This means I have two more courses and a capstone course before I’ll officially have my masters degree. I have to say, of all the classes I’ve taken so far, the software maintenance course that I took this semester took the most out of me. It could be that I left the military, packed up an entire household, move from North Carolina to California, started a new job, and setup a new home. Or it could be that the teacher decided to test us on stuff that wasn’t in any of the reading material. I’ve never been so annoyed or angry about a course. All her tests were essays that required writing at least 15 pages and had to be complete a couple days after they were assigned. I really don’t mind having to work for my grade, but when the instructor gives you absolutely no material to work with, you can never know exactly what she wants. I was given a zero on one section of my midterm because I did it in the wrong format….

Anyway, I’ll quickly move on so I don’t waste more of your time ranting about how bad the course was. I have one more class on project management and I’m taking an elective in Cryptography and Data Protection that looks pretty promising. Classes start at the end of the month and I hope to learn something new this time around.

This month also marks my 5 year wedding anniversary. To celebrate Tina and I are going to the Caribbean for some R&R. I can definitely use some relaxation time. I’m still unsure what we’ll be doing there, but I do know I won’t be taking any of my computers. I’m a little afraid of the withdrawal symptoms, but I hear scuba diving and jet skiing are some great home remedies. I’ll let you know how it works.

Another thing that is coming as a shock to me is that I’ve almost been working for Tellme/Microsoft for six months now. I’ve been officially out of the Air Force for two months. I can’t believe time is flying by so fast. I’ve been so stressed with school and trying to make a good impression on the job that I haven’t had time to really notice anything else. I do notice one thing though, my life is SO much better now that I’m out of the military. I’m actually working on something that uses my skills and my work is actually appreciated. What a concept! I’ve been working mainly on the Ford Sync project and it’s really interesting how the car communicates with our servers to pass along voice and data. I think it’s a really cool system and find it incredibly neat to think that it’s my programs that actually pass the data back and forth! Also, a lot of the voice/sms rendering for the mapping system was written by me too. Too bad Microsoft doesn’t allow easter eggs… it would be really fun to add something neat if you requested to go to “strider’s realm.”

The Bay Area has been pretty cool as well. I still haven’t been able to make it to many of the places I’ve wanted to visit (due to the time constrains already mentioned) but I hope to have some time to see the sights now that class is out for a while. I haven’t really been anywhere in San Francisco, nor have I seen the beach yet. I’ve been able to meet some friends that I know from IRC, but have yet to find anyone to invite me to lunch at Google! (hint hint.. don’t worry, I’ll hide my Microsoft badge 🙂 My apartment is wonderful as well. Great view, awesome resources, and cool people.

And one last note. I will most likely be flying up to Utah in early June to go to my 10 year High School reunion, so if there is anyone up there that wants to hang out let me know. 🙂

And with that I guess I’ll go to bed. I’m sure there is a lot I haven’t mentioned from the last six months, but such is life I guess. Take care!

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ May 6, 2008 2:49 am

Tags: anniversary, life, school, work