stripethree

Now that I’ve recieved my grade for my last class, not that I had any worries anyway, I can really declare that I am done with grad school. Master of Science in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins, less than three years removed from finishing at Maryland. I am very, very happy to be done with this degree. Goodbye school, don’t let the door smack you on your way out!

I’m been busy, hence, the lack of blog action other than random dog and cat pictures.

- Visit to Maryland was fantastic, can’t say enough about friends and family and how great they are. Margaritas reign supreme, so do slow Mk3s. I could go on for pages and pages.
- Moved to Tucson and so far it’s great. The new place is nice, I met some cool VW (and non VW) people, found a great shop 2 miles away for those car things I can’t do, and there’s plenty of autox. Will probably go broke furnishing this place, but such is life, I’m enjoying living alone thus far. The cats are cool as well, finding ways to get on top of and into the cabinets. And it’s hella warm. =)
- One more homework assignment and one more ‘exam’ (10 question multiple choice finals rock) from being done with my grad degree. It will all be over by the first weekend in May and I am psyched.

That’s all I got right now, too many things to do!

A recently got a reply from a current professor that only left me more frustrated. I thought about posting a line-by-line analysis of it, but decided not to.

I wouldn’t even be ticked except that this email, and the annoyance it caused me in it’s lack of useful information, personifies my experience with this class, and to some degree, this program. This professor is complacent about answering emails and sparingly posts to the class message board that he constantly encourages people to use. Homeworks have been given with material that (admittedly) wasn’t touched in class and there have been numerous points where the professor has answered questions on assignments by admitting a lack of knowledge of what he has actually assigned. Apparently he’s not only having trouble reading my emails, but is also having trouble reading his own assignments. I never stay the full class because I can read the slides myself and I don’t need him to read them to me, which is essentially what he does. Any question I’ve had could be answered through the Java Doc or Google, because, well, I’m talented like that.

It ticks me off that this what you get for $2350. That’s right. Read it again. $2350. Twenty three hundred and fifty dollars. That’s a lot of Frosties. One third of a turbo kit. Four car payments (sadly, I wish it were more than 4). Point being, why am I spending that $2350? It ticks me off that time and time again professors in this program show a general lack of interest in their students. It’s so painfully obvious that most of them are working or doing research and are teaching ‘on the side’ and really don’t care what you pull away from their course. That’s what I miss about Maryland. Many, I’ll even say most, of the Computer Science professors made sure you got something out of their course. Even if they did so by causing you great anguish and pain through programming assignments that bent the sleep-time continuum or exams that fried your brain so hard you had to bring something to wipe the drool up. It was challenging, it broke people, and when you finished, you felt like you’d accomplished something. You survived. This program, this grad program, with it’s stale course notes, reused assignments, and class sessions that do nothing to keep students interested, it isn’t going to feel that way. It’s going to end, I’ll get my piece of paper, add it to my resume, and probably not speak much of it again.

It feels pretty shitty to question the value of this degree so close to being finished. Beyond the point of no return. To some degree, it’s a $25,000 sham: I know that a Masters from Johns Hopkins looks good, real good, but is it just skin deep? How much new knowledge and ability am I really gaining for that much money, because there certainly are times when it feels like I’m just giving them money for them to check some boxes, pat me on the head, and say, “you did some work, your check cleared, here you go!”.

…and saw that a week from today I’lll register for my last graduate class and apply for graduation.

Homestretch!!!

…three to go.

Exactly three weeks until it starts again.

I am here to proclaim, now that I know for sure I passed and then some, that I am halfway complete with my Masters degree. Five classes down, five classes to go. What am I doing to commemorate this glorious day? Enjoying the month I have of no classes before I start two more in early June. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design starts on June 5th and User Interface Development with the Java Foundation Classes starts on June 7th. I know, they sound thrilling dont they? No matter, this time next year I should be jumping up and down when this degree is complete.

That is all.

January, oh January, how busy you have been. Here I am staying up past my bedtime to blog rather than get the sleep I probably need. The first couple of weeks of the year have been fun for the most part, and, as I said, busy. I recently finished putting a ton of work into the Schnell website that everyone seems happy with and should set us up nicely for 2006 and beyond. Go visit it dammit (hey, if the server’s down, it’s not our fault, email Globat and tell them how much they suck). It went from a completely static site to a database driven beast with quite a listing of extra management and cool-ness features. Definitely something I will be adding and discussing in the online portfolio I am finally (as I should be) putting together for future web site work on the side. I picked up some nifty new tricks as well, always good to learn something. I also recently completed a smaller endeavor, a site for a highly modified Corvette and its owner(s).

A small site, and admittedly, not very similar to the car I get around town in, but it was cool to see what someone in another, different part of the automotive scene does with their ride. Hopefully this will be the start of something, as in more web design projects. It can be stressful and a pain sometimes, working on ‘work’ when you get home that isn’t your regular forty hour a wee job, but I still found it to be fun. That is because I am a nerd. Like I mentioned, I am beginning to finally put together a portfolio of work so I have something to show off for potential, new gigs. We’ll see where it goes from there, as there also might be more work from the same source the Corvette site surfaced from.

Next Monday I will be back in class, Cryptology on Monday evenings and Web Application Development on Tuesday evenings. I’ve heard Crypto can kick one’s ass, and I guess I’ll find out. I’m still aiming to finish by July 2007, maybe a little eariler if I can swing it. This also means I have started researching into the wonderful world of student loans, as JHU wants a lot of money (not as much as Uncle Sam took from me, but that’s another story. Look for a taxes rant sometime soon, unless I miraculously don’t owe the entiretly of what I have in savings). The following Monday Kharissa leaves for Kentucky and is gone until almost mid-March. A blower, but not much that can be done about it; just have to make the most of the time now, and it is just a month. This will be like the warm up of sorts, as I know there will be times she’s going to be away longer than that in the future. Things with Kharissa are fantastic though (oh, but you’re just saying that because she can read this!), ah, no. Really, they are, I’m very lucky; I’m glad I can make someone so happy, and vice versa. What is this sappy talk that has found its way into my blog? Gah, beer, football, :burp:, cars. (Love you babe!). Heh, I did get the best fortune ever at PF Chang’s the other night, “You will soon bring great joy to someone”… in bed. Score. Thankfully I didn’t laugh out loud at this at the table, seeing as how I was at dinner with my parents. That would have been fun to explain.

Oh yeah, sort of speaking of things that are completely not sappy at all, ever. Carly pointed me to this podcast a while back when it started, called GuyCast. Hilarious. Pretty much two college-age guys bullshitting about what every (normal) guy bullshits about. Plus they did a show (episode 10) completely plastered and in a shed. That, my friends, that is quality entertainment. There are on MySpace, their site is GuyCast.net, and you can find their podcast in iTunes. Check it. I havent gotten into the whole podcasting thing, just because there isnt a lot of content I feel like listening to in this manner other than stuff like SportsCenter, which I watch all the time anyway, but this one has stuck around. Im running out of excuses for busting out laughing at work while listening to GuyCast through my headphones though (by the way, the site and show are not, how we say, ‘work safe’, hence, the headphones. Think of how often you hear the word fuck in Boondock Saints and youll get the idea of how much these guys curse). Righteous. Oh, and for the record, don’t make the fucking show go clean! Boooooo!

Anyway, thats all out of me. Im tired and its only 12. Im old, I know. Depressing in that I dont think I have had anything to drink this year since New Years Eve. Paging CP Dubs?

Good night bitches!

Twenty two had it’s up and downs. Who am I kidding, it was good. Really good. It was about this time last year I started going to the Krispy Kreme gatherings as the first step into the Volkswagen ’scene’. It’s been a wild ride that’s resulted in getting to know some awesome people. I found myself looking through the pictures off my camera from the last 12 months (all 2115 of them) tonight and there are a whole lot of cars. Amazing how something can become such a huge part of your life in a relatively short time. I think it has to do with, again, the people.

As I have found myself oftentimes lately, I do not know exactly what I want to say. In some respects, I know no more about where I want to be than I did last year. The thoughts of wanting to leave Maryland linger, but are not as strong as they could be because the opportunity is not there yet. I wonder how much more time there is for that opportunity to come up though, there are times when I really feel like I want, almost need, a change. The last year has also brought more reasons for me to stay… More than ever I find myself going back and forth between things, staying in Maryland and finishing grad school being the obvious examples. There are quite a few more where those came from, but that’s the extent of what I want to let out. If there is one thing I have picked up, it is that I need to figure out more on my own than I used to. We’ll see how that goes…

I wanted to say something about perspective because it’s been on my mind a lot, but again, I’m not sure what to say. It seems like it’s been everywhere, but I still manage to loose sight of it sometimes. Broken windows don’t compare to a house under twenty feet of water, for example. It’s been like that all year, the perspective thing and the examples of it that slap you in the face. I still catch myself flippin’ my shit over things I shouldn’t, but nobody’s perfect.

With class that is. Feels sooo nice. I need the break. Will I go back? That remains to be seen. I don’t want to feel like I’m ‘quitting’, but I still wrestle with the fact of how much it will benefit me. We’ll see, I don’t have to think about for a while, registration for next spring is way, way off in the distance. I was letting class stress me out way too much, no more.

I keep having the recurring thought to ditch my efforts at getting a masters degree. The first two classes I finished, I didn’t feel like I got a lot out of because most of the material I already knew through undergrad classes, my internship and my job. My current class is a similar deal, but I’m getting a little more out of it that the previous two. Not getting much out of it is not a motivator to continue with this at all. After the current class, I’d have seven more to go, and I’d would probably up to taking two a semester just to get it over with quicker. I barely go to this class now, and I just find it hard to be motivated to put down the effort; it just doesn’t seem like this is worth my time. It will benefit me salary-wise at my job when I finish, but not an amount that is life changing and not immediately (first annual assessment after completion I’d see it take effect). I know a number of people at work that have gone plenty far on just their bachelor’s degree and various certifications. I could shift my efforts to getting certifications that would probably benefit me more knowledge-wise and would also help salary-wise in a similar respect. The other thing, and this may sound dumb, but the time spent is taking away from other things… nothing that important, mostly car stuff, trips, etc. but I just don’t feel like I’m doing what I want to do with all my time outside of work. Maybe I’m just burned out because I took no break after undergrad. Maybe I should have skipped a class during the summer months with car shows and everything else going on. The money I have to throw towards grad school is ridiculous as well, if my company weren’t picking up some of the tab I’d never do it. And that’s part of the reason I think maybe I should stick it out… I might not have this opportunity again, and most of the people I know that did grad school in their late 20’s or after say they wished they’d done it sooner. I also don’t want to feel like I’m ‘quitting’ at it, if that makes sense. I started it, I’ve put time in, and I feel like I should finish, but in the meantime I’m missing out on other shit now because of it. Maybe I’m just nuts.

I should probably wait to think about this again after the week is out and I get through the current project in my class. This week has just brought on a pile of frustrating and stressful situations in many respects and I need to get through it before I go off and make a snap decision. I feel like I am overwhelmed in the things that I have committed my time to, and while my priorities might not be 100ight, more school is the one thing that I see that I could give up, be even happier than I already am, have more time to do the things I really enjoy, all those things, but with the catch that it might be an opportunity I can’t get back. I can take a step back from other things, specifically car stuff but I already feel like I waiting so freakin’ long to get involved in that stuff and I love it, I don’t want to give it up. It might sounds stupid, but it means a lot more to me that some piece of paper saying I suffered through more class.