out of the blue

As promised, here are my photos from the latest trip to Yellowstone for the purposes of snail gathering.

I've been doing very little besides getting the hang of working full-time, these days. That is in addition to occasional adventures like Sarah's and my trip to Yellowstone weekend before last. The Tetons, as usual, were breathtaking, and the geothermal features were peculiar. I'll let you know when pictures make it onto Flickr.

Today I finally got back into some intense reading. Finished Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen, as well as a major portion of Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen. Good stuff. Makes me want to write more. It would be good to get a few stories out this summer.

On another subject, I've had some vague web presence for a while now. Being a web developer, that's pretty important. I'm thinking I may start writing web development posts, which might not get cross-posted to LiveJournal. There would be some gray area if I were to do reviews of web services, or musings on philosophy of design. I'm really not sure how I want to handle the separation between a personal blog and a professional blog. I don't want complete separation, because some bleeding back and forth makes sense. I'm not the sort that wants my professional life to be in an entirely different compartment from my personal one. I also don't want to bore most of you with my recent JavaScript adventures.

So perhaps a triptych: reading/writing, computer science, and personal life. Of course, it remains to be seen how these ideas will develop as I consider the problem more. After all: on the web, nothing is constant.

On Wednesday, May 6th, I finished my last final exam at Gonzaga. Sarah came up on Thursday, and we drove down to Portland to celebrate and visit our families. After a fun-packed Portland weekend, we drove back up to Pullman on Tuesday, and I did next-to-nothing for the rest of the week. We drove to Spokane to help Josh and his mom with packing all his stuff for their return to Eugene, and then came back down to Pullman. I had my first 40-hour work week at my job, which was mainly spent getting used to the idea of working full-time. That brings us up to today, at the end of a relaxing weekend with Sarah. Tomorrow I begin my second full-time work week. It looks as though it'll be quite interesting. Chad (one of the other PHP/MySQL developers on the team) and I have been conspiring to do a database-access-layer rewrite. It'll be lots of work, but it will also mean that we have a decent foundation upon which to base later development. I hear that's important.

Oh, and I appreciate laundromats with wireless internet access.

Done with my senior project. Done with my honors thesis. Done with classes. Before this time tomorrow, I have to write a 7-page essay and take two tests. After that, I essentially have my degree.

By Wednesday at 6, I should be done. Graduated. A summer job lined up. Let's hope everything goes according to plan.

Off on my first business trip to Seattle. 4.5 hour drive over, 40 minute plane trip back (with appropriate airport lead time). I get to stay in a hotel in downtown Seattle. Too bad it had to be placed during some of the busiest days of my life. Ah well. Sleep is for the weak.

I present my thesis tonight at 8:00 in Admin 128. You're all welcome to come, though certainly not obligated. My thesis is "Applied Science Fiction: Science Fiction, Innovation and Society". In it I examine how science fiction interacts with the realm of innovation, and in what ways it might make meaningful contributions.

I will be trying not to be a boring speaker. But no promises.

The [Flat Earth Society] also took the position that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax, staged by Hollywood and based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke, a position also held by others not connected to the Flat Earth Society. On hearing this, Clarke sent a facetious letter to NASA's chief administrator:

"Dear Sir, on checking my records, I see that I have never received payment for this work. Could you please look into this matter with some urgency? Otherwise you will be hearing from my solicitors, Messrs Geldsnatch, Geldsnatch and Blubberclutch".

The Wikipedia article on The Flat Earth Society is quite worth reading.

Watch out when swiping your debit card.

This is sad. I feel like I haven't been very responsible today, like maybe I devoted too much time to blogs, or something. But I just counted up my time spent: 5 hours at work this morning, 3 hours devoted to our senior project this afternoon, and 2 hours studying tonight for a quiz tomorrow (by catching up on readings). That's 10 hours of work. What does that say about the days that I feel good about being responsible?

I can't wait to graduate. I don't ever want to be this busy again. It's not how I roll.