Finals finally over.

My finals are finally over. They were tough, as I failed everything I could in June, but well, I wanted a wedding in the middle of the semester, so I got my semester during the holidays. I'm still happy with my choice.

Now to the exciting stuff. First, I had AI and passed after a few hours of revisions. I was totally prepared in June, but made the lecturer pretty angry by not writing the test at the end of the semester (honeymoon) and not taking it some other time as the result of a few misunderstandings, so, no June exam in AI for me. And the lecturer didn't seem really happy to see me in September either. But, I solved all the problems correctly, so I got a C (yeah, that's my school - they love deduction in both senses of that word).

Then came a few "free" days I used to write my networks program. The teacher was really cool for letting me write in C# istead of C, C++ or Java (none of them being my cup of tea), so I had cool tools like Visual Studio (Why can't Eclipse have a "go to definition" feature? Why? Me wants!) , Linq (goodbye, parsing XML, hello, tricky code instead of for loops) and asynchronous sockets, thanks to which I didn't have to create a single thread expilcitely, and yet my application was super-thready.

That was nice, but still, implementing a protocole and a client took me more than these four free days. It took me the entire day I had for learning compilers and one and a half of the two planned for partial differential equations. There went compilers. Fortunately, they were an extra classs I took.

Equations survived. The battle was hard: revising a whole semester in one afternoon and learning the stuff I didn't get in June. At that point, your goal is pretty much not to know less that you did last time, but I think I did know more, and I passed.

The evening after equations was equally busy: the networks exam was the next day. Dear Hubby explained some stuff to me, I was well prepared. Plans for Friday were clear: get to school by 11:30, print network notes, show the program at 12, study with strangers until 14, take exam, leave.

I arrived at 11:30. My printing limit was reached. Then I realized that I needed my advior's signature bad. Really bad. Panic. The advisor is at school only on Thursdays, so what was the probability of him being here on a Friday, out of the blue? Panic. Run. Buy extra printing credit. Run to the lab guy. He not here. Other student waits too, not knowing more than I do. Okay, let's see if by any miracle the advisor hasn't shown up. He has! Two colleagues are waiting by his door and tell me it's for about an hour of waiting. We exchange valuable advice on handling the masters stuff. Lab guy still not here. Go to the admins for the printing credit, thanking heavens for the advisors presence. Get the credit. Print the notes. Oh, here's the other student waiting for the lab guy, e-mailing him. I go upstairs, because the lab guy should be there. He is! Boot pretty pink netbook. Show program. Program is liked! Advisor again. One guy, new to me, is waiting. I sit and wait with him and praise my advisor for the thesis subject he chose me. The guy enters, I start walking in circles in heels. I finaly get there. I learn that my thesis doesn't need to be extended, just finished - great news! Run. Grab coffee. You think you'll learn anything in the last 20 minutes? Not really. Breathe. Relax. Take exam. Unexpected questions. Think hard. Finally!

I'm sleepy. My head aches. I go home and take a nap. Two hours later, my husband comes home and wakes me up. My head still aches. I take meds, planning on going for a walk. I learn that I'm hot, fever sense. Meds don't work. Let's sleep some more. Sixteen hours more. Then Husband makes me wake up, and finally, finally, finally, I get back to something I like to call "normal life".

What [not] to watch: The Hills

MTV just resumed airing "The Hills" for a fourth season and I just resumed school work. This perfect synchronisation lead me to giving the show a try while writing the networks assignment. (I had watched the previous seasons during previous study sessions.)


The show is about young women moving to L.A. to attend courses at the Fashion Institute and start their careers and it's made to look like a reality show. The realism is questionable, but as I'm not interested in those people's private lives, I don't care. (Quite the opposite actually: the more privacy they get to keep, the better for me.) Anyway, what I liked about the show was seeing what the girls did at work. One was a receptionist but two had an internship at Teen Vogue that included various tasks at various places and that was fun to watch.

But one day the girls moved on form Vogue and became stylists which I guess must be as boring as receptionist, judging by how much airtime it gets. So the plot revolves about the personal life. In the personal lives, someone has spread rumors about Lauren so she's not talking to Heidi nor Spencer who is not talking to Brody but Lauren is friends with Spencer's sister who talks to Spencer and at the same time Lauren moves in with her friends Audrina and Lo but Lo is bitchy to Audrina who becomes a bit estranged and when Lo apologies Audrina says they won't be friends - got it? So now and again someone talks to someone he mustn't and someone is offended and that's what is shown. The only quote that made sense to me came from the sister, who tries not to fight with anyone as she has nothing to do with any feud but always get involved against her will: "are we five?".

Well, let me just say, I prefer writing the networks assignment. It's not as much fun, but I least I get to feel that my intellect is appreciated, not insulted.

Geek gets prepared for school

I decided yesterday to prepare for today's classes, like this page (which I printed and hung above my bed many years ago) advices to do. The task wasn't hard, as I have only two: concurrent programming and computer networks.

I started with networks. There was a lecture yesterday, which I did not attend (still busy with the stuff from the first semester), so I checked the lecture's page to see what had been done. 404. So, as the page wasn't set up yet, there was nothing I could do. I was done with networks.

Moved on to concurrent programming. The thing with this class is that it has both a lab and an exam and I tried both last year but failed the exam. Fortunately, I'm done with the lab. So, I opened my notebook and looked for the second class. It was an introduction to asynchronous communication. Easy. I decided to skip this class. But, does this mean I would go to school for only one class? No way, I can learn those networks by myself.

So, in ten minutes, I was prepared. Plus, I'm free today! (Well, not really free, as I still have a lot to do and I'll have to go back to those networks.) Bottom line: always prepare for school the day before.

School goes on.

The team project meetings have been rescheduled. Me not happy. But, that means I start at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays. Actually, I'm not sure wether I should had come to the meeting yesterday or not, but I believe that if you have any doubt whether you should go to school or not, stay home.

So I spent the morning home. I did some yoga: two sun salutations. They were hard, but I know I'll get back in shape soon. I made some chicken. I cut my hair in order to look more like a decent human being rather than a coughing and coding creature (is there a point to hiding the sad truth anyway?).

I went to school. First, a networks lecture. I am interested in networks. Since today, but I am. I am interested in security so networks knowledge is important for me. Sadly, the teacher had throat problems and only gave us some general information. 15 minutes and we were free. I went to the lab and learned some Java.

Then came my favourite subject, error correcting codes. It's the continuation of last semester's class, focused on cyclic codes. I liked the linear block codes lecture a lot and got 90% at the final exam, so it's no wonder I went for the cyclic codes as well. Huge was my disappointement when the lecture turned out to be another algebra revision! It was hard to take in the first semester, as every single student knew everything already, but twice? Why? What was I supposed to do? Turned my laptop on and played The Sims.

The next class was an introduction to LaTeX. I played Need for Speed on Xbox at my boyfriend's place.

That was a nice day. But today isn't bad either, as I went to the networks lab and was done with school for this week at noon! Now I have the whole rest of the week for quality time with operating systems (which means I'll be busy and won't be blogging my best, sorry about that).