This fourth of July weekend has certainly been an interesting one. On Thursday night we (Kirk and I) left Nashville on a weekend trip to Atlanta to visit some old McGillites. The list includes Ryan, Kerrie, and the infamous Tim Ball. To say the least it has been entertaining. I have met some very interesting people including a few guys that Tim works with, a guy who goes by the handle acidus who is well know for some interesting work on the card swiping technology known as blackboard, and others. Everyone I have gotten the chance to hang out with has been very intelligent and that is truly refreshing. A nice break from the mostly stagnant life I had while working in Texas.

On a related note, I found it interesting to note that while chatting with acidus another kid that I know from Texas was mentioned. It seems that it is a small world after all since this guy knew two of the guys that I met at a small party down in Texas. I guess it is in fact a small world after all.

So far everything has been great. I am now absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind convinced that choosing to come back to school was the right thing for me. Keep in mind that I am not in any way shape or form excited about doing the long distance thing for an extended amount of time, but sometimes things just have to be done. Overall this will undoubtedly be one of the most positive experiences of my life. I fully intend on making maximum use of this opportunity to learn everything I can about everything I can get my hands on. To clarify that rather broad statement, I may offer some more specific goals, which include but are (of course) not necessarily limited to learning EE, reinforcing and growing more of my Comp E and CS knowledge.

I spoke with Timball tonight a bit about coding. He brought up a good point that I really think I should focus on. Basically he reiterated what I already knew. The only way to get better at coding is to code. But what he did mention that I found to be of particular use was to code small little things that don’t accomplish much, but can be used later. Te idea is to create small shell code that teaches you everything about that certain thing you are learning about, but doesn’t really do anything. Then at some later point when you are trying to make a real thing of that nature, you take out your old code, remember what it does and plug it in. In the end you spend less time messing with setting it all up, and more time writing the interesting parts. I need to get on this soon. I’ll throw it on the list, but higher up than a lot of the other things I have on there.

Well its almost 4 am so I really need to grab some sleep. I’m sure almost no one is reading this anyway, but here’s to a great weekend!

Good night!