Illusory Follies

Ho hum — been a bit slow on the blog posts of late. Okay, well, November 20th was the last one. To be fair, I did start a post in draft format and I never actually made the post. And then I accidentally lost it and I can’t even remember what it was about.

Lots of new stuff and yet, not really all that much is new. I took the GRE in mid-December. Did well enough to most likely get into the graduate program that I’m looking at. Not stellar, but good enough. Now I just need to figure out what classes I will need to take to be considered fit to begin. The problem is that my undergraduate degree is in “Computer Information Systems” which isn’t really Computer Science. It’s a bit weak on the in-depth computer programming and particularly the math. I’m not too concerned with being able to do the catch-up, but it just feels like a waste of time.

The wife and I have been busy around the house trying to get things straightened up and to our liking. Lots of painting projects. I think we’re almost done. I keep saying that, and this time I hope it’s true. We’re still a “young couple” and we have WAY too much stuff. It’s kind of sad… Stuff accumulates and starts to drag you down with all the maintenance and organization that it requires. I think a good policy to help address this issue is to only buy replacement stuff and to get rid of the old when you’ve purchased the replacement. It’s hard to do though. Old stuff has some value and it’s hard to part with it.

On the geek front I’ve been fairly stagnant. I did spend some serious time getting into some Python and in particular Django and TurboGears— both are web development frameworks that run on Python. It’s a lot of fun but it’s hard to squeeze in time to practice. I’m hoping to implement one of these solutions down the road a little bit on one of my work projects where I have some freedom to choose the implementation. I was able to get into using AJAX with PHP for one of my last projects. It was sloppy code and very non-object oriented but I was able to get a good feel for designing template-driven websites using PHP and play with some AJAX libraries like Script.aculo.us and others. I also looked at Ruby on Rails again but didn’t get far on that either. All fun stuff and I’m sure that much of it is valuable for the future, but it’s hard to tell how much of it will morph between now and then. I’ve been trying to advance my C# skills but I don’t think I’m getting too much new done with it. We’ll see how that goes…

I’m hoping to stop biting my finger nails (filthy habit) and drop some weight this year. I started off the year with a nasty cold that has convinced me to stay out of the gym. It’s not hard to convince me. Oh, and there are still cookies that need finishing off and you’re supposed to feed a cold, right? I’m trying to prep for taking some Microsoft Certification exams, get ready for graduate school, and get in shape for possibly joining the Air National Guard. Maybe by the time I next post, I will have accomplished one of those goals. Or maybe I’ll actually start posting regularly!