Winter Break Recap

I managed to finish out last semester with all A's, despite my worries about Software Engineering. When we got our grade reports in the middle of the semester, I wasn't doing so well - that class was nothing like I expected it to be, and I was expecting it to be much more interesting. Turned out there was no programming at all, just charts and graphs and enough theory to gag on.

Christmas was pretty quiet - on Christmas day, Craig and I went to his parents' house, and then to a movie with a couple of friends. The day after, we went up to mom's house and celebrated with her, and then to Marie and Dan's. For New Years', we went to the Monkey Bar in Amherst. We had a few drinks, hung out with the bartender when he got off shift, stayed until close, then went home and went to bed.

The rest of winter break has been split between drawing and doing web design. I'm in the messy middle of reconstructing Northeast2WayComm - every time I think I've got it figured out, Drupal throws me another curve ball. I will get it done, it's just a lot more frustrating than I expected.

School starts up again next week, on Tuesday, since Monday is MLK day. I'm signed up for Computer Math Foundations (I've got more than enough extra math classes that I should have been able to sub out of that one, but no such luck), UNIX, Database Project, American Revolution, and E-commerce. I've already started reading one of the books for the Revolution class, which is about Thomas Paine. I'm over halfway through it and am looking forward to finishing it before the class starts. The less I have to read during the semester, the better!

Finals and the WWW

I got out the VB exam with a 97 average (but did agree to go visit Matt today anyway). I've got mugs of candy and tea and a box of coffee to deliver to various professors and my advisor. I picked up an extra shift at work this morning in a desperate attempt to have money before Christmas. The Data Structures exam becomes available at 1pm today...got to have the car to the shop at 2 o'clock this afternoon...Matt's office at 3. I really hope Autex mean what they say about the inspection being a half hour, because that's all I've got!

For my chem professor, I got a plain white mug and wrote on it in Sharpie: "Caffeine: 1,3,7-trimethylzanthate". I figured it was pretty safe to assume that a professor would drink coffee, or at least heavily caffeinated tea. Most of them do.

Anyway, on top of the above-mentioned, some part of me seems to have decided that sleep is a useless endeavour and should not be attempted. It drives me crazy lying there in the dark staring at the ceiling, especially when I'm actually tired. I think it's because of finals week; Craig says I did the same thing last year, although personally I don't remember that. Hopefully it will disappear come Friday, when it's all over.

On a note of accomplishments, I finished the new version of the website for The Everyday Epicure this morning! Minimal fighting with Dreamweaver was involved, which is an accomplishment in itself, as anyone who's ever done web design knows. It's still a mystery to me how supposedly "unformatted" text appears on a full page as an inch-and-a-half wide column and stretches the page to a couple of feet in length...and all this because I had the balls to hit the Italicize key. Microsoft is such a mystery some days. Oh wait, ALL days.

Next project: finish sites for Northeast Two-Way Comm and N1PMA.org, and then for my own business. Yeah, priorities. They're a pain.