So when they say winter quarter at Rose is hectic? They're not kidding. I just found my first solid chunk of downtime since I came back to school two weeks ago. What have I been up to, you ask?
, Christmas, and New Year's celebrations that occurred over my last break were all most excellent. This year was the fifth consecutive Festivus celebrated within the group, and it was by far the smoothest a Festivus has ever gone. The Airing of Grievances was trouble-free, the introduction of a white elephant gift exchange went smoothly, and our Feats of Strength involved that classic game
. For Christmas a few days later, hordes of relatives (from both sides of the family) descended on the house for almost an entire week all told. (Most hilarious was our cousin Keith, who's two and just being ridiculous all over the place. He got an iPod Touch for Christmas. He's
.) Lastly, New Year's went well overall, despite some illnesses on part of a couple of the partygoers. Mario Kart is never so hilarious as when played sleep-deprived at 4am.
School-wise, things are also going well. I tested out of one of my classes (Databases) after a couple weeks, and thus summarily excused myself from homework, labs, quizzes, and tests - the only condition was that I still needed to complete the term project in order to get credit. I'm therefore able to focus a little more time on other classes, of which there are four. It's project season here - I'm writing, all at the same time, a relational file system for Databases, a shell for OSs, and a log file parser for Software Architecture, as well as proposing a way to reduce electrical usage and costs on campus for Technical Communications. (Oddly enough, my hardest class (Reals) hasn't assigned a project, just a massive amount of homework and way-too-hard tests.)
Somehow I still find time for the
Thorn, the campus newspaper. Editor elections are next week, and I'm nominated for the position of editor-in-chief, along with two of my classmates. There are two slots for the three of us, so I have a decent chance. I'm also rewriting the Thorn website, starting from the administrative interface and working my way to the main page. This summer should see a redesign of the print version of the paper, and (hopefully) a paper constitution and redone operations manual.
I got my
triple major formally approved by the Curriculum Committee, and promptly made some changes to it, so I'll have to resubmit it sometime soon. I'm still on track to graduate early, though, so it's all good.
Guitar is progressing smoothly as well, when I have time for it. I'm starting primarily with Coldplay songs, since they tend to have simple chord progressions and quick-to-learn timings. Chord transitions are still a problem, however, as I expect they will be for some time.
I made a pretty grand tour of Big Ten schools during the first couple weeks of this quarter - I don't think I spent a single weekend entirely at Rose for the first three weeks of the quarter - but I've settled down a bit now. I still plan on getting out to Iowa sometime soon, though, and probably MSU after that. Indiana may happen as well for just a day trip - it's only like an hour away.
Finally, Netflix is turning out to be a particularly excellent choice of purchase. New movies tend to get here about twice a week, and it's gradually learning my preferences so as to recommend better films. It's super-convenient, given that it's nigh impossible to find time to organize a movie outing, much less actually get off campus for hours at a time. My only gripe is that the campus mailboxes are just barely too small to fit a DVD into, so every time I get a movie in the mail I have to go and get it from package pickup - less than optimal, but well worth it.
Anyway. Back to work.
