Day 0 - Driving

The first day of our "vacation" really wasn't a vacation at all. It was driving. Ugh. We decided to save some cash and drive down to Florida rather than catching a pretty expensive flight. So we left Sunday morning pretty early and drove 12 hours.

We decided to take a slightly different route to Florida than I normally would. We took 65 to Louisville, 64 to Lexington, 75 to Knoxville, and then we deviated a bit. We took 40 to Ashville, 26 to 95, and then on to Savannah, Georgia.

The idea was that we wanted to see the Great Smokey Mountains and then get to drive down the coast. The reality was that it rained like crazy through the Smokies. It rained so hard I could barely see out the windshield, let alone see the mountains. So what about the coast? Well, we never saw the ocean. I thought I did once, but it just turned out to be a retention pond. So much for that plan. :^(

We stopped South of Savannah near Brunswick. Have I mentioned how much I hate Georgia? I'll get back to that on Day 5. The reason we stopped after 12 hours was that there was a very important TV show on that we didn't want to miss. And the winner was.... Survivor. It was the season finale and we didn't want to miss it. Sad, I know.

That's day 0. I didn't label it day 1 because it sure wasn't any fun. I figure it was lucky to get an entry at all. Stay tuned....

We're back!

Well, we've successfully soaked up the sun, swam through the ocean, and drove across the country. We survived the trip and the cat survived the boredom. We had a great vacation and we can't wait to tell everyone about it. I'll try and put a Day-by-Day description on here as soon as I stop being lazy. Who knows when that will be.

Bye everybody!

See you in a week. I'll try not to drown if the ship goes down. Of course, I can't swim more than about 20 yards so that could be a problem. :^)

Sunward Bound

Well, it's officially too late for me to be awake but I still am. Jen and I are leaving for Orlando tomorrow morning and then it's off on our first cruise ever. We're pretty psyched for it. Actually, I'm pretty stressed out right now, but we won't get into that. Suffice it to say that you ladies take about 10x the appropriate amount of time to do just about anything. :^)

We're not looking forward to the drive tomorrow. Although, we did buy a bunch of snack food and sandwich stuff. That should make the ride much more pleasant. I'm sure the ride home will be much worse than the drive there. Isn't that always how it is?

We're interested to see how Mosby is going to do while we're gone. The neighbor kids (a.k.a. their dad) will be checking on him (a.k.a. playing with him) once in a while. As excited as they are, they might just move in with the cat until we get back. That might keep Mosby from getting mad and peeing all over the house.

We've had a long day. I worked 5 hours this morning and then got the oil changed in the Matrix. Jen's been doing laundry all day. We've been working hard. Although, I must point out that Jen did sleep about 4 hours longer than I did today. Then again, I should also probably point out that Jen has worked about 30 hours a week more than I have for the last year. Hmmmmm, I'll take getting up early.

We've shopped about five times today. That has been a direct contributor to the quickly elevating stress level. We also went to dinner for a little relaxation time. That was nice.

Oh yeah, we've pretty much finished up our flowers for the year. We need to mulch and plant a couple more and then we'll be done. We did the back of the house today and that got us all caught up. Our bushes out front look good and the flowers really help things out. I know I promised a picture a while ago so I'll make sure to get on that when we get back.

Next time I write I'll be much, much redder. That's my version of tan. Thanks for those genes dad. Bye everybody!

Class

Those of us that took the class I was in this spring got together last night with the professor. He wanted to get some feedback on the class and give us our tests back.

Apparently I managed to get the best score on the test. Weird, huh? In fact, if I hadn't written something down wrong I would have gotten a perfect score. Of course, some of the problems I didn't get completely correct. I just got them more correct than other people and he had pity on me. You've gotta' love partial credit!

That professor is trying to get me to switch to his department now. He's part of the Applied Math department. Apparently CSCI and Applied Math used to be the same thing, but have recently split. I'll have to check it out, because I've been pretty disappointed with the CSCI curriculum. I do enjoy applied math and I know that it applies to my job. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thank goodness for curves.

I got my grade for my class today and it looks like I got an A. I don't know if that indicates that I knew what I was doing or not. It may just indicate that I'm not the dimmest bulb in the 4-pack. Then again, maybe everybody got an A. Whatever, I'm happy.

Cruise

Jen and I are taking a cruise in a week and a half. I think I had mentioned that Jen had some vacation coming up. We had been planning on taking a cruise or going to a resort or something. We hadn't really planned much out because we knew she had another week off in June. So if we couldn't find a good "last minute" deal then we would just wait until next month.

Regardless, we found a good deal and we're going on a cruise. It's a Royal Caribbean cruise and the itinerary is below.



We're pumped!

Hindsight is 20/20

You know, I was asked this morning if taking my class was "worth it". "Did I learn anything useful?" It got me thinking.

Looking back I guess I do know more now than I did when I started the class. Cramming for the past two weeks taught me a lot about the topic. It turned out that the professor's notes were much better than his lectures, so reading through them did provide some insight.

Perhaps I shouldn't complain so much. I ended up learning what I needed to. Of course, I haven't received my final grade yet! :^)

Another class down

Well, it looks like I've finished up another class toward my CS masters.

Our only grade this semester was our final. It was a take home final and it was handed out last Thursday. I took Friday off from work and I'm glad I did. It took forever to finish. Anyway, it's due today so it looks like I'm done. I didn't quite get two of the seven problems finished up quite correctly, but I got enough down on paper that I should get some partial credit. We'll see how the grading goes as to what my final grade will be.

To briefly complain, this had to be the worst class I've had so far. I didn't learn anything for most of the semester. The professor was probably one of the worst I've seen. He was a nice guy and personally knew the material very well. Unfortunately he just couldn't teach. Oh well, at least it makes me appreciate my education at Rose-Hulman and Stanford.