Graduation

I’m now an official graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, commencement at Georgia Tech wasn’t that much different than commencement at ASMS. It did feel quite a bit more impersonal, though; I only recognized a handful of people from a graduating class of hundreds. John Salley, former NBA national champion and Georgia Tech alumnus, started the event off with a lively and entertaining address, and then we all filed across the stage to shake hands with Wayne Clough, president of the school, and receive a diploma placeholder that proved to be just a picture of the Tech Tower. (I’m told that we will receive our real diplomas in the mail.) It was a very brief moment of glory.

After the ceremony, I joined family for another enjoyable meal at The Vortex on Peachtree Street. We parted ways after lunch, and I returned to my apartment to begin my career (suitably brief, I hope) as an unemployed college graduate.

Final Final Exam

With Thermodynamics out of the way as of approximately 2 PM this afternoon, I’ve taken my final final exam (at least for the near term). I don’t really feel any different. I’m still in more of a semester-end mode than a college-end mode. Commencement is tomorrow and all my immediate family has made efforts to be at the event. Maybe the impact of the event will leave a more forceful impression.

Week of October 31

Cold

Hotlanta is finally starting to cool down and I’m starting to feel it too. By the end of the week, I was well on my way into my first cold of the new season.

On College

Just over one month left; the end of the semester—and possibly my college experience—is closing in at alarming speed. I handled various Japanese tests and my second make-or-break thermodynamics exam as best I could. I’m cautiously optimistic about thermodynamics as I feel like I understand things better now than I have all semester. On the other hand, I thought I had done pretty well on my first exam until I got it back.

As I alluded to above, I’m feeling a bit unsettled as I realize that is the home stretch of my final semester. Suzuki-sensei recently polled our Japanese class to see who would be continuing on to the intermediate level; nearly everyone raised their hands. I would like to count myself among that group too, but I’m out of time; they won’t let me take any more classes once I’ve graduated. Looking back, I would have preferred to split this final semester over a couple semesters and possibly take some more Japanese and other electives. Looking further still, I would have liked to have persued a minor or a certificate in one of these areas. Maybe some of these options will show up on the table again if do go down the graduate school path at some point.

New Software: Miranda Instant Messenger

I just started playing with Miranda IM this Saturday. It is (another) multi-protocol IM client for Windows and it is released under the GPL license. The key features that the web site pushes are low resource overhead and customization through modularity. I have been happily using Gaim for a while now, but I thought I would give Miranda a shot; I’m always looking for the next thing.

New Wallpapers

• GundamZZ’s “Nothing” from Card Captor Sakura
• Sword’s “Itsuki” from Air Gear|
• Kenzuke’s “Walking Amidst the Blossoms” from School Rumble

Fall Break

Fall Break 2004 officially began with the close of classes this Friday afternoon. With no pressing tasks and a little bit of breathing room before my Computing & Society term paper outline is due, I plan to make it a true break. I began by leaving the city for my Aunt Kathy’s house in Auburn, where I’ll spend the next few days recharging and spending quality time with family.

I can’t spend the whole Break on break, so I’ll have to return early and get to work on that term paper outline.

Mixed results

Classes were remarkable today for a couple reasons.

On the one hand, Prof. Keene absolutely loved my first political ideology paper comparing pre-modern and modern political thought. I was more than a little surprised; I thought the paper was barely passable and thus quite suitable for my "pass/fail" needs. I fear that the professor will expect the same level of work from subsequent papers, thus destroying the objective of taking the class solely for credit.

On the other hand, simple mechanics escaped me in my time of need. Prof. Smith administered the first exam of the term to our thermodynamics class today. I hit a wall on the first problem, a simple mechanics problem involving a projectile traveling at constant velocity (until caught). The remainder of the test flowed with relative ease, perhaps too easily. I really can’t call this one; Prof. Smith seems to be generous with partial credit so there may be hope.

Career Fair, Day 2

The second day of the career fair at Georgia Tech brought heavy hitters like Microsoft, Intel, AMD, IBM, and Siemens. I dressed a little more nicely and devoted more time to make sure I would have a chance to talk with each of the companies. Some of my visits proved to be more helpful than others. I was rather turned off that Siemens seemed interested only in hiring interns rather than full-time employees; IBM supplied few technical representatives so I didn’t gain any truly useful information there, either. The representatives from Microsoft, Intel, and AMD were all reasonably helpful. I got my resume out to each company, but I’m still not sure exactly what the point of the career fair is. I have pondered putting off the job hunt until after I graduate. The lease on the apartment runs through March so I will probably be in town anyway.

Career Fair, Day 1

Georgia Tech held the first half of its annual or semi-annual—I’m not sure which—career fair today. I dressed business casual because it seemed appropriate; most of the job-seekers at the fair were dressed in full business attire. I mainly targeted large, reputable companies with a definite need for software engineers. I talked to representatives from HP, Amazon.com, Micron, and MathWorks. Buses reserved for the fair shuttled students back and forth so it wasn’t too difficult to get there.

Resume Building

I paid my second visit to Georgia Tech’s Career Services department to seek guidance on building my résumé in preparation for my upcoming job hunt. I met with recruiting manager Cindy Jordan and we went over a recent revision of my resume together. The most significant ideas to come out of the session were that I needed to restate my objective and expand on my work experience. The rest was along the lines of “format this” and “fix that.” The session was helpful, nonetheless.

More class impressions

Tuesday brings new classes and new challenges:

CS 4001

There’s one unfortunate girl and a bunch of geeky guys talking mostly about privacy and IP concerns. Looks like lots of group-based assignments.

JAPN 1002

Well, Suzuki-sensei is young and semi-cute, but I thought Matsushima-sensei was cuter. I’m still kind of lost, though things started coming back when we started doing introductions.

ECE 4006

The professor (Schlag) seems to have no aesthetic sense at all. His PowerPoint slides were nothing but black Times text and carriage returns on a white background. I do at least have a vague idea of what I want to do for a project.

acpstudios.net has finally been transferred to Go Daddy as of late this evening. I played with the site colors some more, but I’m still not entirely sure what I’m looking for.

First day of classes

This was the first day of classes for the Fall 2004 semester at Georgia Tech. This will be my ninth semester as a student here, and I am planning to graduate at the end of the semester in December.

I’ve tried to compile some of my initial impressions of my classes here:

HTS 2061

“Traditional Asia” seems like it could prove to be quite interesting as the focus is (not surprisingly) on China and Japan. There is a take-home final for this class. Fellow Japanese student Brooks-san is in this class as well.

INTA 2210

I went to the wrong classroom and ended up with HPS 1040 deja vu. Location corrected, the professor (Keene) is definitely British or some derivative. The entire grade seems to be based on a set of four essays of a rather short length. When I inquired about this, Prof. Keene said that he was trying to get students to focus on the most important things. Sounds good to me.

ME 3322

Another fellow Japanese student, Ronald, is in this class. The professor (Smith) mentioned something about group problem-solving that sounded unusual.

JAPN 1002

I’m rusty; what can I say? I was disappointed to see that the class is indeed being taught by a completely different set of professors. I’m told that one of the professors is very cute, though.

I made a late-night run to the Austell target to pick up a few more things for the apartment. It’s still a long way out there; I don’t know why I thought it might be any shorter. I was surprised that we actually seem to have a quicker route to the East-West Publix, where I used to do pretty much all my grocery shopping.

I also found a neat toy called AveDesk. It’s a small freeware app that will run ObjectDock docklets as stand-alone “desklets.” The end result is something much like Konfabulator for the Mac or the new Dashboard feature coming in the next release of OS X.

I also watched “Bakuretsu Tenshi” and updated a bunch of Debian packages on Freya.