Reflection and Updates

Tuesday was my 25th birthday. I have now been on this earth for a quarter of a century. I consider myself blessed. At the age of 25, I have a good job, am enrolled in a good school working toward my Master's degree, have an excellent relationship with my family, and own property in the most outrageously priced section of the country. I have been mortally ill several times, and have been spared each time. And my mom made German chocolate cake for my birthday :)

Since I last posted, much has happened. Also on Tuesday I concluded my 3rd semester at USC with a final at 8 am. I have a generally good feeling about how the semester went. I completed the final in time and left no questions unanswered. I recently emailed a couple friends from Rolla, neither of whom I have seen or talked to in a while.

At times I think I should have stayed in Rolla. I would have completed my Master's degree earlier, under professors I already knew and had a working relationship with. I do not regret it though. Had I done that, I would not now be a homeowner and my student debt would have been greater. There is indeed no sense in lamenting it. All I can do is push forward with my education at USC. Next semester I am taking two classes. This will be the first time I have taken two 500-level classes simultaneously but supposedly EE562a (the class I just finished) is the hardest EE class there is.

Now that I am out of school, I am working full time and have fewer obligations on weekends or evenings. I hope to accomplish a few things. I would like to get my room wired for surround sound and put the blacklight wiring in-wall. I'd also like to read Schindler's List. I want to progress forward in my Bible study of Haggai so we can start the Isaiah group soon. I accepted a challenge from Laura a couple weeks ago that she mentions here. So far I have been a bit negligent - I have read through Haggai 10 times (which is exactly where I was a couple weeks ago).

Laura gave me her old laptop a little while back. It's a Gateway Solo 2550. I upgraded the ram, installed a larger hard drive, bought a wireless card, and had the battery serviced. After attempting to install Windows XP on it and discovering it was uselessly slow, I installed Ubuntu Linux. This has worked well so far and I haven't found any shortcomings. About all that I do on Windows that I can't do on Linux is game, program (Windows applications for work), and use AutoCAD. This computer is too slow to game or use AutoCAD effectively anyway. At the very least this will be a fun hobby. I've been taking the bus to work since I don't have to ride up to school and it does give me something to do on the way.

Speaking of hobbies, the black Bug is not selling. I lowered the price but no interest. I have sold off some of the parts I have for sale and hope to get some time and nice weather to get the orange one ready for sale.