Now that I've finally finished my BS in Computer Science, it's time to tackle the next hurdle: inertia.
I feel like I should have a plan. Whenever I think of corny, worthless interview questions, the first that comes to mind is, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" I'll tell you where I see myself in five years: out of the South, as far West as possible, and much happier for it all. An attempt at the solidification of details at any finer precision would be futile. This is the beginning of a good plan.
Another place I see myself in five years is in an apartment/condo/loft, by myself, with a pet. Not just any apartment, but a clean apartment with a studio for a living room. One wall will be mirror, one will be whiteboard, one will be bookshelves, and the other will be electronics. I require one chair for reading and one for rolling around the electronics wall. That is my living room. I see that in five years.
Money invested in some kind of growth fund and diversified in stocks would also be a good place to be in five years. It would be good to have some money saved up in the case of an emergency early retirement. This is why my apartment is going to be furnished in such a spartan manner and my apartment only a studio or one-bedroom. I don't intend to grow old anytime soon, but it is, as they say, "better to be safe than sorry."
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. I see myself in one of these cities in five years. The list is prioritized, but truly LA and SF share first place. I think I am more of an SF person, but I know there is quite a bit of Los Angeleno in me. After all, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is in LA. How can I possibly go wrong? Then again, San Francisco has wine country. I think I win regardless of which I choose.
You'll notice I have made no mention of what I will be doing professionally in five years. I haven't the faintest idea what I'll be doing in five years. I've come to the realization that I can pretty much do anything. I don't mean that I can work anywhere or go to school anywhere, but if I decide to go get a Ph.D., I am 100% certain that it will happen--regardless of the subject matter chosen for research. If I stumble back into the arts, I am absolutely certain that I will be wildly successful. If I get another job as an engineer, I will be great at that, too. It doesn't matter what I do--so long as I love what I'm doing.
Right now, I love what I'm doing. I'm moving to New Mexico to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I was offered a one-year post-baccalaureate fellowship, and I happily accepted. There is the possibility of permanent employment at the end of the fellowship, and I'd like to continue working at LANL. I am in Network and Infrastructure Engineering, and my projects revolve primarily around automation, report generation, vulnerability assessment, and intrusion prevention. It's incredibly challenging, demanding work. National Laboratories present interesting security problems. I hope I can create a position for myself to assist them in their mission.
May 9, 2012
July 22, 2011
Vim trick to generate POD
So, I hate writing Perl. I'll just throw that out there. When I do, I try to make it as easy as possible on myself. For example, I write OO Perl. You can laugh at me all you want, but I find that the APIs are easier to deal with, and I like the way the scripts read in the end.
Part of the API I'm writing involves a lot of class member variables. For class variables, I use file-scoped lexicals (from man perltooc):
So what's the big deal, you ask? Well, it lets me do things like this:
my $foo = Foo::new();
$foo->CData1("foo");
etc.
So, generating documentation for these is pretty trivial. I do inline POD, so it'll look something like this:
=head1 MEMBERS
=over
=item b<CData1([$CData1])>
=item b<CData2([$CData2])>
=cut
Or you can replace the $CDatax with a variable type, if you want.
I'm working on a class right now with about 20 member variables. I wanted to generate documentation for all of the member variables, so that you could do perldoc MyClass to get the list instead of having to look at code.
There is a very easy way to do this! I use vim as my editor, so I did the following:
Part of the API I'm writing involves a lot of class member variables. For class variables, I use file-scoped lexicals (from man perltooc):
package Some_Class; my %ClassData = ( CData1 => "", CData2 => "", ); for my $datum (keys %ClassData) { no strict "refs"; *$datum = sub { shift; # XXX: ignore calling class/object $ClassData{$datum} = shift if @_; return $ClassData{$datum}; }; }
So what's the big deal, you ask? Well, it lets me do things like this:
my $foo = Foo::new();
$foo->CData1("foo");
etc.
So, generating documentation for these is pretty trivial. I do inline POD, so it'll look something like this:
=head1 MEMBERS
=over
=item b<CData1([$CData1])>
=item b<CData2([$CData2])>
=cut
Or you can replace the $CDatax with a variable type, if you want.
I'm working on a class right now with about 20 member variables. I wanted to generate documentation for all of the member variables, so that you could do perldoc MyClass to get the list instead of having to look at code.
There is a very easy way to do this! I use vim as my editor, so I did the following:
- Visually select all of the contents of the %ClassData hash.
- Copy the text (y) and paste it (p) into a documentation block
- Highlight all of the pasted text
- Unindent it (<<)
- :s/\(.*\) =>.*/=item B<\1([$\1])>\r
- Enter
June 24, 2011
LANL Continued
I'm wrapping up week six of my summer internship with Los Alamos National Laboratory. It's Friday, I met a major milestone in one of my projects, and I feel that now is a good time to update the world on all things Greg. I should preface this with: working at LANL has been a life-changing experience for me. I've met incredible people, discovered a new research interest, started formulating plans for graduate studies, and joined a band.
The student population of LANL is fairly diverse and immensely fascinating. I have made friends from schools all over the country in many different programs of study. My core group of friends is made up primarily of physicists, geologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, biologists, and political scientists. There's truly never a dull moment, and nobody knows how to have a good time like a scientist. It's through these amazing new people in my life that I've had the opportunity to explore research areas outside of network security and high-performance computing.
One of my close friends here, Brian, is attending MIT in the fall to study computational biology. He's incredibly brilliant, and I get to have some of the most fascinating and entertaining conversations with him. He and I have spent a great deal of time discussing his research interest: protein folding. For those that don't know, when ribosomes (the construction factories within mitochondria) generate the polypeptides that make up proteins, they do so by stringing them together into long strands of peptides. After synthesis has completed, they are in a random coil state until they start to quickly fold into their final three-dimensional structure.
The modeling of this process is only part of his research interest. If we can understand, ab initio, how the protein folding process works, we can predict the structure of various proteins. Once we've determined how these peptides/amino acids interact with one another, we could begin to catalog their 3D structures. If we knew how to identify a protein from its 3D structure, we could more easily discover treatments or cures for diseases such as HIV or the amyloidoses such as Alzheimers or Huntington's disease.
As you can tell, I have become enamored with this research topic. I will admit that Brian's charisma has much to do with my interest in the field of computational biology and biophysics, but what spurred my recent spree of discovering how these mechanisms work is some research being done at MIT:
My grandmother recently passed away, and I was extremely saddened by her decline. She had late-onset Alzheimer's, and toward the end could not remember much, if anything. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia steal the pleasure of dying gracefully with dignity and replace it with a nightmarish hellscape of confusion. This is no way for any person to have to spend their final years. This research could potentially allow biochemical engineers to develop treatments for Alzheimer's that wholly inhibit the disease's progress.
Computational biology and computational biophysics is a relatively new field with incredible research being done at universities across the country. Doctoral programs for computational biophysics exist at Washington University, MIT, USCB, Berkeley, UCSF, UMD College Park, and many others. That's the beginning of my list of graduate schools to which I'll be sending applications, by the way. I'm hoping that the OPM will allow me to do a one-year post-baccalaureate appointment at LANL and then continue on with my doctoral work in computational biology or biophysics (henceforth referred to as CBP).
I have already begun formulating research projects and theses based on current research at universities in CBP. The options seem limitless right now. Brian and I discussed this last night, and he informed me that this field is very, very young. It is the current, bleeding edge of biology, and should have an exceptionally lasting impact on the state of affairs in biological systems analysis. The computer science research topics inherent in the field are, in themselves, fascinating.
It's not all biology review and coding this summer, however. I met several of my friends via a Facebook group for students at LANL when one of them asked if anyone wanted to be in a band. I've since been collecting gear and playing with Ableton Suite 8.2. I play keys and do some singing. It feels amazing to have an outlet for musical expression again.
If ever presented with an opportunity to intern at one of America's national laboratories, do not hesitate. Apply, get accepted, and enjoy your summer or year or two. This has truly been a life-changing experience.
The student population of LANL is fairly diverse and immensely fascinating. I have made friends from schools all over the country in many different programs of study. My core group of friends is made up primarily of physicists, geologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, biologists, and political scientists. There's truly never a dull moment, and nobody knows how to have a good time like a scientist. It's through these amazing new people in my life that I've had the opportunity to explore research areas outside of network security and high-performance computing.
One of my close friends here, Brian, is attending MIT in the fall to study computational biology. He's incredibly brilliant, and I get to have some of the most fascinating and entertaining conversations with him. He and I have spent a great deal of time discussing his research interest: protein folding. For those that don't know, when ribosomes (the construction factories within mitochondria) generate the polypeptides that make up proteins, they do so by stringing them together into long strands of peptides. After synthesis has completed, they are in a random coil state until they start to quickly fold into their final three-dimensional structure.
The modeling of this process is only part of his research interest. If we can understand, ab initio, how the protein folding process works, we can predict the structure of various proteins. Once we've determined how these peptides/amino acids interact with one another, we could begin to catalog their 3D structures. If we knew how to identify a protein from its 3D structure, we could more easily discover treatments or cures for diseases such as HIV or the amyloidoses such as Alzheimers or Huntington's disease.
As you can tell, I have become enamored with this research topic. I will admit that Brian's charisma has much to do with my interest in the field of computational biology and biophysics, but what spurred my recent spree of discovering how these mechanisms work is some research being done at MIT:
Modeling the Unfolded State of Tau Protein
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia among older populations. The disease exhibits distinctive pathological hallmarks – extracellular aggregates of amyloid β peptide, known as amyloid plaques, and intracellular aggregates of tau protein, known as neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The proteins found in these aggregates are not only disease markers, but are suspected to play a role in the disease process. The focus of our studies is tau protein, which is a natively unfolded, microtubule-associated protein. Specifically, our goal is to elucidate the molecular basis of tau dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies with the aid of computational models of tau in normal and disease states. Furthermore, these models are used to design and optimize peptide inhibitors to tau-induced neurotoxicity.
My grandmother recently passed away, and I was extremely saddened by her decline. She had late-onset Alzheimer's, and toward the end could not remember much, if anything. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia steal the pleasure of dying gracefully with dignity and replace it with a nightmarish hellscape of confusion. This is no way for any person to have to spend their final years. This research could potentially allow biochemical engineers to develop treatments for Alzheimer's that wholly inhibit the disease's progress.
Computational biology and computational biophysics is a relatively new field with incredible research being done at universities across the country. Doctoral programs for computational biophysics exist at Washington University, MIT, USCB, Berkeley, UCSF, UMD College Park, and many others. That's the beginning of my list of graduate schools to which I'll be sending applications, by the way. I'm hoping that the OPM will allow me to do a one-year post-baccalaureate appointment at LANL and then continue on with my doctoral work in computational biology or biophysics (henceforth referred to as CBP).
I have already begun formulating research projects and theses based on current research at universities in CBP. The options seem limitless right now. Brian and I discussed this last night, and he informed me that this field is very, very young. It is the current, bleeding edge of biology, and should have an exceptionally lasting impact on the state of affairs in biological systems analysis. The computer science research topics inherent in the field are, in themselves, fascinating.
It's not all biology review and coding this summer, however. I met several of my friends via a Facebook group for students at LANL when one of them asked if anyone wanted to be in a band. I've since been collecting gear and playing with Ableton Suite 8.2. I play keys and do some singing. It feels amazing to have an outlet for musical expression again.
If ever presented with an opportunity to intern at one of America's national laboratories, do not hesitate. Apply, get accepted, and enjoy your summer or year or two. This has truly been a life-changing experience.
May 8, 2011
Los Alamos National Lab
I leave for New Mexico tomorrow where I'll be interning at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). I am extremely excited, and pleased that this satisfies my summer internship requirement for the NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS). There's a good possibility that the internship this summer will lead to a post-baccalaureate appointment at LANL, but it will depend on how well things go.
While out there, I'll also be working on Tomboy development at night and continuing my Hadoop research. It's going to be such an exciting and busy summer. I'm hoping that things go well, and that I'm able to be as productive as I'd like to be. I've also got a number of other goals:
Update on grades coming soon, but I got an A in Operating Systems, and I am really excited about that.
While out there, I'll also be working on Tomboy development at night and continuing my Hadoop research. It's going to be such an exciting and busy summer. I'm hoping that things go well, and that I'm able to be as productive as I'd like to be. I've also got a number of other goals:
- Read a couple more Palianhuk books
- Find a guitar and learn to play it
- Enjoy the incredible sky of Los Alamos at night
- Explore the culinary offerings of Santa Fe
- Write some poetry
Update on grades coming soon, but I got an A in Operating Systems, and I am really excited about that.
April 9, 2011
Tomboy 1.8.0
We held the Tomboy 1.8.0 planning meeting today in #tomboy on irc.gnome.org. It went exceptionally well. Many thanks to all who were in attendance, and particularly to Sandy Armstrong and Aaron Borden who helped me chair the first meeting. Topics included:
We'll be holding a Tomboy bug day in the near future to triage all of the open Tomboy bugs. There are plans in the works to come up with some triage guidelines and Bugzilla help documentation to be put up on the Tomboy wiki. Aaron Borden and I will be coming up with the guidelines as we begin triage work this week. We hope to have them published by next week.
GNOME 3 and GTK-3
There are a handful of open bugs already that we can begin working on to migrate to being more GNOME 3 friendly. We'll be addressing these as quickly as possible so that they get into the development branch soon. One of the biggest concerns is continued support for gtk-2: whether or not we want to continue supporting both lines in Git head. I'm disinclined to do so, as our code becomes peppered with #if's for gtk-2 specific objects and object interfaces. I'd much prefer having 1.6.0 be an LTS release for gtk-2 (ironically, since it coincided with the GNOME 3 release), and have 1.8.0 be the official, stable GNOME 3 migration.
As a side-note here, we'll be helping out the Ubuntu team by pulling some of their patches for Ayatana and Unity upstream. We still have to decide what to pull out of the applied Ubuntu patches to Tomboy. A wiki page for GNOME3 and gtk-3 migration should be up shortly.
Notebook Enhancements
Aaron Borden has been making some good work on fixing some notebook bugs, and will be continuing to do so. One topic we're currently looking to explore is the use of tagging vs. notebooks. Currently, notebooks are essentially a tag in Tomboy, but each note can only have one tag (i.e. be assigned to one notebook). The idea was brought up to expose the tags via UI, but the UI for this can be problematic. Search functionality could prefer tags, and notebooks would be replaced with tags. The main search window would represent tags as notebooks, which could placate some of the ire of the traditional notebook enthusiast. We'll be creating a wiki page and a mailing list thread for the discussion of tagging, its implementation and UI soon.
Snowy/Tomboy Online
One of the core components of 1.8.0 will be updated synchronization functionality featuring synchronization with Tomboy Online. Some of the Snowy team was present at the meeting and gave us insight toward the direction that Snowy is heading and what we can do as Tomboy developers to assist them. We'll be focusing on note sharing, note encryption, and attachments this release cycle. Notes will essentially be shareable with individuals (via e-mail address/Tomboy Online account) or the public. This should also allow for collaboration with other Tomboy Online accounts. Note encryption will be locally done with 256-bit AES as the default. Additional ciphers will be available via add-ins. Attachments are a huge can of worms and have been coming up a lot in IRC and bugs lately. They will receive special attention on the mailing list and on the wiki.
Add-ins
Speaking of add-ins: we're trying to put together an add-in repository for Tomboy. Huzzah! There's nothing concrete here yet, but news as it comes in. I am sure that add-in developers and users alike will be excited to hear about this. Client UI could expose the repository as well as allow for easy installation. We will also be standardizing on the term "add-in," and will be updating strings appropriately soon. The Tomboy project page will also get some love because of this: including new screen shots.
I feel like this is an extremely ambitious release, but fortunately we have a team of talented, enthusiastic developers together right now.
IRC log from #tomboy
- Current bugs and how to handle them
- GNOME 3 support and GTK3 migration
- Notebooks and Tagging
- Attachments
- Snowy (note encryption, sharing, synchronization)
- An Add-in repository for Tomboy
We'll be holding a Tomboy bug day in the near future to triage all of the open Tomboy bugs. There are plans in the works to come up with some triage guidelines and Bugzilla help documentation to be put up on the Tomboy wiki. Aaron Borden and I will be coming up with the guidelines as we begin triage work this week. We hope to have them published by next week.
GNOME 3 and GTK-3
There are a handful of open bugs already that we can begin working on to migrate to being more GNOME 3 friendly. We'll be addressing these as quickly as possible so that they get into the development branch soon. One of the biggest concerns is continued support for gtk-2: whether or not we want to continue supporting both lines in Git head. I'm disinclined to do so, as our code becomes peppered with #if's for gtk-2 specific objects and object interfaces. I'd much prefer having 1.6.0 be an LTS release for gtk-2 (ironically, since it coincided with the GNOME 3 release), and have 1.8.0 be the official, stable GNOME 3 migration.
As a side-note here, we'll be helping out the Ubuntu team by pulling some of their patches for Ayatana and Unity upstream. We still have to decide what to pull out of the applied Ubuntu patches to Tomboy. A wiki page for GNOME3 and gtk-3 migration should be up shortly.
Notebook Enhancements
Aaron Borden has been making some good work on fixing some notebook bugs, and will be continuing to do so. One topic we're currently looking to explore is the use of tagging vs. notebooks. Currently, notebooks are essentially a tag in Tomboy, but each note can only have one tag (i.e. be assigned to one notebook). The idea was brought up to expose the tags via UI, but the UI for this can be problematic. Search functionality could prefer tags, and notebooks would be replaced with tags. The main search window would represent tags as notebooks, which could placate some of the ire of the traditional notebook enthusiast. We'll be creating a wiki page and a mailing list thread for the discussion of tagging, its implementation and UI soon.
Snowy/Tomboy Online
One of the core components of 1.8.0 will be updated synchronization functionality featuring synchronization with Tomboy Online. Some of the Snowy team was present at the meeting and gave us insight toward the direction that Snowy is heading and what we can do as Tomboy developers to assist them. We'll be focusing on note sharing, note encryption, and attachments this release cycle. Notes will essentially be shareable with individuals (via e-mail address/Tomboy Online account) or the public. This should also allow for collaboration with other Tomboy Online accounts. Note encryption will be locally done with 256-bit AES as the default. Additional ciphers will be available via add-ins. Attachments are a huge can of worms and have been coming up a lot in IRC and bugs lately. They will receive special attention on the mailing list and on the wiki.
Add-ins
Speaking of add-ins: we're trying to put together an add-in repository for Tomboy. Huzzah! There's nothing concrete here yet, but news as it comes in. I am sure that add-in developers and users alike will be excited to hear about this. Client UI could expose the repository as well as allow for easy installation. We will also be standardizing on the term "add-in," and will be updating strings appropriately soon. The Tomboy project page will also get some love because of this: including new screen shots.
I feel like this is an extremely ambitious release, but fortunately we have a team of talented, enthusiastic developers together right now.
IRC log from #tomboy
January 7, 2011
Washington, D.C.
Scores of men and women in business suits and uniforms for various branches of the armed services wander the halls of Crystal City shops. I'm watching them walk past, sitting in Starbucks, underground, and loving the fact that they have free Wi-Fi now. I've spent the last two days in D.C., and I'm starting to realize that I could live here -- even if it spooks me out a little.
I've been at the NSF Scholarship for Service Job Fair at the Gateway Marriott in Crystal City. We listened to panelists from many of the federal agencies that will employ us over the next 2-4 years, ate well, stayed in a nice hotel, and got to meet people from all over the country. The job fair, which was yesterday, was full of government recruiters eagerly looking for bright, new talent. I got to meet representatives from Sandia, LANL, MITRE, US-CERT, NSA, and CIA. Each of them asked for my resume.
I now know that what I feared most about this scholarship is going to be the most interesting aspect of it: 2 years of federal service after graduation. I'm not only interested; I'm excited. I tried not to listen as they talked about access to foreign technology, extremely powerful and well-equipped research facilities, and competitive salary. Truth be told, I recognized a lot of the kool-aid. Regardless, I really like what these organizations are trying to accomplish.
So, as I go into my last second semester (of four) in the SFS program, I'm filled with excitement about post-grad opportunities. I realize, now, that a job with the federal government doesn't necessarily mean that I'll just be another paper-pusher... or that I will somehow become instantaneously incompetent. It means that things both trivial and non-trivial will be constantly changing, the challenges will be daunting and seemingly impossible at times, and that I'll make a little less money than I would have in the private sector.
I don't know about anyone else, but that sounds fine with me.
I've been at the NSF Scholarship for Service Job Fair at the Gateway Marriott in Crystal City. We listened to panelists from many of the federal agencies that will employ us over the next 2-4 years, ate well, stayed in a nice hotel, and got to meet people from all over the country. The job fair, which was yesterday, was full of government recruiters eagerly looking for bright, new talent. I got to meet representatives from Sandia, LANL, MITRE, US-CERT, NSA, and CIA. Each of them asked for my resume.
I now know that what I feared most about this scholarship is going to be the most interesting aspect of it: 2 years of federal service after graduation. I'm not only interested; I'm excited. I tried not to listen as they talked about access to foreign technology, extremely powerful and well-equipped research facilities, and competitive salary. Truth be told, I recognized a lot of the kool-aid. Regardless, I really like what these organizations are trying to accomplish.
So, as I go into my last second semester (of four) in the SFS program, I'm filled with excitement about post-grad opportunities. I realize, now, that a job with the federal government doesn't necessarily mean that I'll just be another paper-pusher... or that I will somehow become instantaneously incompetent. It means that things both trivial and non-trivial will be constantly changing, the challenges will be daunting and seemingly impossible at times, and that I'll make a little less money than I would have in the private sector.
I don't know about anyone else, but that sounds fine with me.
December 5, 2010
Finals, Projects, Scholarships, and Google
I've been extraordinarily fortunate in the past month or so. I was awarded a full tuition scholarship with a living stipend through the NSF's Scholarship for Service program. I'll have to go work for the government for a couple of years after graduation, but I'm not that worried about it. It'll be an interesting experience in the very least--hopefully a learning one, too.
At the same time, I was also interviewing with Google. I was turned down for an SRE position, and asked if I'd like to interview for a different position within Google's enterprise division. I decided to turn down the offer for a few reasons. In my earlier years, I prided myself on being an opportunist. I approached every day as if there was something better to be had. The grass was always greener, and I always wanted to be on that side of the fence. Lately, I've decided that being an opportunist is perhaps not necessarily the glorious, wonderful thing that I used to think.
People bent over backwards to help me get the scholarship at Auburn. I have forged alliances within the department, and I have the support of several of the professors. I realized, shortly after being turned down for the SRE position, that to leave Auburn and go to work for Google would be like thumbing my nose at Auburn. Maybe the people who support me here would support my decision, and maybe they would understand, but I don't think that I'd fell all that great about my decision if I were offered the job. I think I would rather be grateful for the amazing opportunities that I have and focus on what truly matters to me: graduating from college.
Speaking of college: WAR EAGLE! Auburn is the 2010 SEC Champion and hopefully the NCAA National Champion. That'd be pretty sweet. I was happy enough that we beat 'Bama. The SEC Championship game against USC was really not that great. We steamrolled them pretty hard, but it was exciting to watch. Cam Newton was all smiles. I'm a little sad that I had to sell my tickets earlier this semester to make ends meet. Next year, I won't have to... but we won't have the amazing season that we had this year. Oh well. Life's short.
Finals are this week. I've been studying my ass off for my statistics final, and I'm pretty sure I can manage a C in the class. Please, sweet lord, give me a C in the class. Last week I was deathly ill and at home in bed on steroids and antibiotics. It was not so much fun. I did get some League of Legends playing in, though. I'm pretty prepared for all of my finals except for stats. We'll see how it goes. I've done okay in the class so far this semester, but I lost a lot of points on the homework, because I just didn't do half of it. Oops.
My Software Modeling and Design class project is coming to a close. I tried to get the group to use Trac, but they didn't seem to keen on it. I did, however, manage to get them using Subversion. One of my team members resolved his first conflict tonight! Huzzah! I feel like I've taught them an extremely valuable skill. I've already written a couple thousand lines of code for the project and am taking it easy. I am mostly here for moral support and guidance at this point.
I have been steadily replacing all of the electronics that I've sold or lost over the years. This week's focus is my car stereo. The new interior speakers have been installed, and boy do they sound amazing. I nabbed four Rockford Fosgate 6.5" 3-way speakers (80W max, 45W RMS) during the Amazon Black Friday sale. They sound freaking amazing. I installed the rear speakers myself, but I paid someone to do the front. I watched him do his work, and I must say it was super pro. If you're in Auburn and you need car stereo work done, go to Jimmy's Car Stereo. They're great.
At the same time, I was also interviewing with Google. I was turned down for an SRE position, and asked if I'd like to interview for a different position within Google's enterprise division. I decided to turn down the offer for a few reasons. In my earlier years, I prided myself on being an opportunist. I approached every day as if there was something better to be had. The grass was always greener, and I always wanted to be on that side of the fence. Lately, I've decided that being an opportunist is perhaps not necessarily the glorious, wonderful thing that I used to think.
People bent over backwards to help me get the scholarship at Auburn. I have forged alliances within the department, and I have the support of several of the professors. I realized, shortly after being turned down for the SRE position, that to leave Auburn and go to work for Google would be like thumbing my nose at Auburn. Maybe the people who support me here would support my decision, and maybe they would understand, but I don't think that I'd fell all that great about my decision if I were offered the job. I think I would rather be grateful for the amazing opportunities that I have and focus on what truly matters to me: graduating from college.
Speaking of college: WAR EAGLE! Auburn is the 2010 SEC Champion and hopefully the NCAA National Champion. That'd be pretty sweet. I was happy enough that we beat 'Bama. The SEC Championship game against USC was really not that great. We steamrolled them pretty hard, but it was exciting to watch. Cam Newton was all smiles. I'm a little sad that I had to sell my tickets earlier this semester to make ends meet. Next year, I won't have to... but we won't have the amazing season that we had this year. Oh well. Life's short.
Finals are this week. I've been studying my ass off for my statistics final, and I'm pretty sure I can manage a C in the class. Please, sweet lord, give me a C in the class. Last week I was deathly ill and at home in bed on steroids and antibiotics. It was not so much fun. I did get some League of Legends playing in, though. I'm pretty prepared for all of my finals except for stats. We'll see how it goes. I've done okay in the class so far this semester, but I lost a lot of points on the homework, because I just didn't do half of it. Oops.
My Software Modeling and Design class project is coming to a close. I tried to get the group to use Trac, but they didn't seem to keen on it. I did, however, manage to get them using Subversion. One of my team members resolved his first conflict tonight! Huzzah! I feel like I've taught them an extremely valuable skill. I've already written a couple thousand lines of code for the project and am taking it easy. I am mostly here for moral support and guidance at this point.
I have been steadily replacing all of the electronics that I've sold or lost over the years. This week's focus is my car stereo. The new interior speakers have been installed, and boy do they sound amazing. I nabbed four Rockford Fosgate 6.5" 3-way speakers (80W max, 45W RMS) during the Amazon Black Friday sale. They sound freaking amazing. I installed the rear speakers myself, but I paid someone to do the front. I watched him do his work, and I must say it was super pro. If you're in Auburn and you need car stereo work done, go to Jimmy's Car Stereo. They're great.
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