SwimFinsSF

Connections

Just got back from having a beer with Corin, his partner Jett and a friend of theirs from some time ago… Corin and Jett were out visiting San Francisco for the weekend and our schedules finally collided tonight.. Was great meeting all of them - VERY nice guys.. Felt bad though cuz I was this weird cross between being too tired to stand and a chatty cathy (don’t ask me how that happens - probably the massive amounts of coffee I consumed today)… But I had fun!

At any rate… was great meeting you both - hope to see y’all again some time soon! I’ll make sure Kevin can join us next time..

Friday Five - August 29th

Friday five time again - don’t know why I like these so much - probably cuz it gives me something to write about when i’m not feelin clever

1. Are you going to school this year?
Nope.

2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?
Got my degree from CU December of 1992… Moved out here right after that to start work and been doin that ever sense

3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?
Favorite subjects in high school were my music courses. Orchestra, Marching Band, and Jazz band. Also really enjoyed Yearbook (yes - at my high school that was a class). The rest of my classes in High School bored me for the most part.

At CU Marching Band was still on the list but my software classes were on there too. LOVED my Data Structures class - largely because the professor kicked my ASS - Evi Nemeth. Most people HATED that class but I loved it and to this day its THE class that had the most relevance to what I do today. She would have us design a library implementing some particular data structure and then she would write a test harness that would beat the crap out of the library. Almost no one could survive her tests - myself included - but its pretty much exactly what every software engineer need so know..

4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
English in high school - I’m a REALLY slow reader and had a REALLY difficult time staying on top of the reading, let alone understanding the symbolism and all that crap. My writing skills were also pretty piss poor too (in case you haven’t already figured that out)

Semiconductor theory in college - It was REALLY math intensive and I had a hard time convincing myself I cared since I knew I wanted to be doing software for a living.

5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
Mrs. Mitchell and Mr. Schmenk in High School - Both english teachers. Probably my favorite because they went out of their way to make the reading interesting and to be sure that everyone in the class was involved and interested… I learned a TON from those two.

Prof Nemeth and Prof Ravenel in College. Prof Nemeth for the reasons above and Prof Ravenel because she seemed to be one of the VERY FEW professors I ran into in college that seemed to care about teaching. She would come in on weekends and evenings to help her students if they were stuck and didn’t seem to be 100% research focussed like all the other engineering professors. (Didn’t hurt that she taught my software architecture class either - senior software project was FUN)

15 Minutes.

Was just doing some maintenance this morning and glanced at my referral logs and discovered I’m gettting hits directed from here:

Internet giants catch on to blogs Major portals provide services for online journals

I got a call from the reporter that wrote the story last week. Seems he stumbled over here after digging around on Globe of Blogs. Talked to him for a little while - very nice guy. He was in the middle of writing an article on blogging and trying to figure out what kinds of things inspired people to do this and how the big corporate blog dabblings will effect those of us doing this already. How he stumbled here out of all of the various sites listed on GOB I have no idea.

Do find it funny that he chose that one quote out of the whole conversation to post.. For the record I write here for all sorts of reasons - more than just to see what will draw discussion - for personal reasons, for political reasons, to practice my writing, and just cuz I’m feelin silly. But I definitely do enjoy seeing what kind of things I post and others post that spark discussions where other topics don’t.

Anyway… Silly monday morning stuff!