It’s been an insanely busy couple of weeks. Working for a university during Fall startup can be a real bear (if you’re one of the ones who actually gives a shit — I think anyone who works at a university or maybe even anyone who has been to one will know what that means). This Fall was no exception. I spent most of my time supporting a fragile and poorly documented web CMS and its main users who pretty much always operate in freakout mode. I’ve pretty much vowed to never support something that isn’t well-documented. Yeah, like well-documented home-brew software, –or my being in a position to choose what I support while still being able to pay the mortgage– will ever happen! Anyway, that took up a lot of time. And while that has been going on, I’m taking two classes this semester (first semester in part-time studies taking two instead of one).
In the eves I’m taking the follow-up course to the Introduction to (Java) Programming course, Algorithms & Data Structures. Aside from finding out when I showed up on Thursday (thinking that the class met one day a week) that I had missed the first class and that the class really met two days a week (great first impression!), it’s been going well. The teacher’s a real-world programmer for Red Hat, so he’s definitely got a lot more real-world experience than the I-moved-over-to-CS-from-the-math-department-because-I-had-to academic programmer types who know tons of stuff but don’t really ever have to work on big software projects under timelines and to keep their bills paid. It might seem subtle, but to me it’s a big difference in knowledge and skills. Anyway, this teacher seems really fired up and is someone who genuinely loves the technology, so I’m thinking this class will be a really good opportunity to learn stuff from a programmer who can impart some real world experience and knowledge. I’m repeating myself, methinks. (Give me a break, it’s 04:30AM and I’ve found myself wakeful)
The second class is an introduction to Latin. This is the one I’m most excited about right now. I’ve been wanting to learn Latin well enough to read and write it for at least 12 years now. I can date it to the time I picked up “Teach Yourself Latin” at “The American Bookstore” in Amsterdam when I was living there, it had to be in 1996. I had been studying English vocabulary (as I’m generally naturally inclined to do) and the etymologies piqued my interest. I got fired up about it again in another class I took at Villanova where we read some Augustine and The Aenead. So I decided to burn up some electives on Latin (first, then after a couple years, on to ancient Greek). The class seems to be moving at a reasonable pace. There’s a ton to know. I feel so lucky to have spent some time learning German at Santa Monica College back in the early ’90s. Even though my German is still pretty weak from atrophy, various grammatical concepts seem to have remained and things like the case system don’t seem so daunting. The teacher seems nice and has a sense of humor. I hope to do well in the class. Here’s to hoping that work won’t get in the way and bork up my attendance, since this is also the first class that I’m doing that happens during my work hours. My new employer’s been great about OK’ing the schedule shift, so it should be fine. We’ll see how it goes if there are any big emergencies though. Anyway, my state of sleeplessness feels like it is going to come to an end very soon…. I’m signing off.
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on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 am and is filed under Misc Commentaries.
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Back to school… Fall 2008
It’s been an insanely busy couple of weeks. Working for a university during Fall startup can be a real bear (if you’re one of the ones who actually gives a shit
— I think anyone who works at a university or maybe even anyone who has been to one will know what that means). This Fall was no exception. I spent most of my time supporting a fragile and poorly documented web CMS and its main users who pretty much always operate in freakout mode. I’ve pretty much vowed to never support something that isn’t well-documented. Yeah, like well-documented home-brew software, –or my being in a position to choose what I support while still being able to pay the mortgage– will ever happen! Anyway, that took up a lot of time. And while that has been going on, I’m taking two classes this semester (first semester in part-time studies taking two instead of one).
In the eves I’m taking the follow-up course to the Introduction to (Java) Programming course, Algorithms & Data Structures. Aside from finding out when I showed up on Thursday (thinking that the class met one day a week) that I had missed the first class and that the class really met two days a week (great first impression!), it’s been going well. The teacher’s a real-world programmer for Red Hat, so he’s definitely got a lot more real-world experience than the I-moved-over-to-CS-from-the-math-department-because-I-had-to academic programmer types who know tons of stuff but don’t really ever have to work on big software projects under timelines and to keep their bills paid. It might seem subtle, but to me it’s a big difference in knowledge and skills. Anyway, this teacher seems really fired up and is someone who genuinely loves the technology, so I’m thinking this class will be a really good opportunity to learn stuff from a programmer who can impart some real world experience and knowledge. I’m repeating myself, methinks. (Give me a break, it’s 04:30AM and I’ve found myself wakeful)
The second class is an introduction to Latin. This is the one I’m most excited about right now. I’ve been wanting to learn Latin well enough to read and write it for at least 12 years now. I can date it to the time I picked up “Teach Yourself Latin” at “The American Bookstore” in Amsterdam when I was living there, it had to be in 1996. I had been studying English vocabulary (as I’m generally naturally inclined to do) and the etymologies piqued my interest. I got fired up about it again in another class I took at Villanova where we read some Augustine and The Aenead. So I decided to burn up some electives on Latin (first, then after a couple years, on to ancient Greek). The class seems to be moving at a reasonable pace. There’s a ton to know. I feel so lucky to have spent some time learning German at Santa Monica College back in the early ’90s. Even though my German is still pretty weak from atrophy, various grammatical concepts seem to have remained and things like the case system don’t seem so daunting. The teacher seems nice and has a sense of humor. I hope to do well in the class. Here’s to hoping that work won’t get in the way and bork up my attendance, since this is also the first class that I’m doing that happens during my work hours. My new employer’s been great about OK’ing the schedule shift, so it should be fine. We’ll see how it goes if there are any big emergencies though. Anyway, my state of sleeplessness feels like it is going to come to an end very soon…. I’m signing off.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 am and is filed under Misc Commentaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.