Matthew's Big Blog of Adventure!

Friday, May 27

Photo update!

Howdy!

Me at Lambert's Cafe -- Home of Thrown RollsThis online photo album thing has been really fun! I just added over 100 more photos to my Flickr account! Click here to see my album! They're all photos from school in the past couple years: fine arts, graduations, and just regular life.

Let me know what you think!

Well, the last of my laundry is in the wash. After I pack that up in my suitcase and put some hangables in the garment bag, I think I'll be ready for this internship thing! The car looks really great now that it's clean -- I wonder if it'll stay that way until Sunday! ;D

Sometime in the early afternoon, I got to talk to Brittany and Stephanie! They're hanging out at Stephanie's place in Lynchburg, and are planning on terrorizing Richmond for who knows how long. :) It sounds like a lot of fun and sure makes me miss those grand gals.

Gotta go fold laundry now!

PCC Professors

Hey gang!

Just restumbled across this site while Googlin' around for something else. It's called RateMyProfessors.com, and gives you an inside view of how students at many different colleges and universities around the U.S. view view their professors. The Pensacola Christian College page has a rather extensive list of professors. Most of the ones I've looked at (professors I've had for classes) look fair. Maybe it's worth a look if you're considering PCC... It's really remarkable how many people marked the professors as being really helpful!

Carwash!In other news, I got to help another person with computer problems this morning. Later, after lunch, I vacuumed the car I'm taking with me to Columbia and washed most of the dirt off. It's 85 degrees right now, so wet is FUN! ;D Speaking of heat, I hear that Russians were complaining a couple days ago when they lost power in Moscow during their 70 degrees "heat wave." Must be your perspective. :) Now, I'm packing my stuff up into a couple boxes. I'm gonna try to finish loading up tonight, because tomorrow Crista, Miss Cindy, and I are going to the Georgia Renaissance Festival in Atlanta Saturday! My family went earlier this month before I got home from college, and they said that while it wasn't entiiiiirely historically accurate, it was a lot of fun.

It'll be grand!

Thursday, May 26

Depressed

Hey all. Please pray for me: I just got some rather bad news and have to make some pretty big decisions this summer. Thanks.

Monday, May 23

Online photo album!

Hey, gang!

I registered with the folks at Flickr and made up a couple online photo albums of things that happened this past semester. Hop on over and take a look at all the cool features! You can access my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/masyukun/. Add it to your bookmarks: more photos are on the way from college and then later my internship in Columbia, SC!

Proposed Fall 2005 School Schedule

Click to download potential scheduleHey, gang!

Now that I've had such a nice time to rest and relax, I thought I'd put some time into thinking about what needs to happen next year. If you click on the PDF logo, you can download the schedule I registered for for this coming Fall semester. This is one of the best schedules I've ever had! It's right up there with that one freshman semester where I had ZERO morning classes! ;D Ah, no first hour classes AND I get to eat lunch right after chapel most days.

Unfortunately, I may have to change it. Looking into Computer Science graduate programs, I discovered that the University of Utah, for example, requires a score of 80% on the Quantitative section of the Computer Science GRE. For some weird reason, my Software Engineering degree doesn't even include a class in Probability and Statistics, which is the prerequisite for Quantitative Methods. Therefore, if I want to do well on the GRE, I need to take BOTH Prob. Stats and Quantitative. Since I'm already slated for 19 credits for all four of my remaining semesters, it means I have to figure out how I can shove a couple more classes into postterms -- double postterms, here I come!

Windows Programming looks like another really good course to have before I graduate since all of the programs we've done so far are all terminal-based.

Gotta go!

Graduation reception and syzygy

The graduate giving her speechCharlotte's graduation reception was from 3:00 - 6:00 today at our house. It went really well and I think that way more people than the 7 that RSVPed came! :D Here's that photo of Charlotte graduating, as promised! She did really well delivering her speech. It was a poem she wrote herself and lots of people asked for copies after the ceremony. *sniff* That's MY sister! :*)

Most of the familyAfter the reception today, Miss Cindy stayed and we got to listen to some fun music about cell phones and play Syzygy, one of our favorite word games. We then finished that movie that we started the other night, and I stayed up late reading email and replying with telephone directory thoroughcity.

Speaking of which... Nite!

Sunday, May 22

Graduations

Today marked the end of an important period in my family's collective life. My little sister Charlotte graduated from highschool. Thus ends our 12th year of homeschooling. I suppose you're never really finished homeschooling -- it's really a way of life, I suppose. Even though I'm a senior in college, I still consider myself a homeschooler. Homeschooling left me with a life-long passion and hunger for learning. It's something no ceremony could make me part with, and I know the same is true for Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Mom has now finished homeschooling her third and final child. It sounds like she's still dead set on a cruise in the bahamas now that it's over. ;)

We got to visit another family this afternoon whose homeschooler is graduated today. It was really great catching up! I even got the opportunity to help him fix his wireless Internet problem. :)

Map to my house, courtesy satellite photos from Google MapsAll that's left is an open house reception tomorrow afternoon -- so if you're in the area, drop by! ;) We decorated tonight for the party and then all watched the first half of a movie together. (It's late so we'll save the rest of it for some other time.)

Oh, One more thing! Thanks to Sehrgut's helpful comment, I hope that my image hosting problem has been permanently resolved. I was only able to salvage photos up through the Wyoming trip last summer though, so no more adorable kitty photos of Gracie and Cleo. ;)

Well, "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten;" I must retire now. I got many many photos from the ceremony today, so I hope to have some up tomorrow or perhaps Monday for you farflung folk. 'Night!

Saturday, May 21

Blog Pictures are fading!

Aack! It seems that the free server that hosts my pictures has mysteriously eaten them. Hmm... I'll have to come up with some alternative. Anybody have an idea?

Back!

Sorry for the long silence! The Spring semester was absolutely crazy! Grades are looking good except for Hymn Keyboard Skills. *bites fingernails* I'm praying really hard for the end of the semester grade report that's supposed to arrive sometime in the mail. Usually, instead of being worried about having passed a class, I'm worrying about losing my 'A'. Ah well, everyone always says college lets you experience new things. ;)

Canadian MargarineOne truly learns new things each day. Tonight, I learned that it is illegal to artificially "colour" margarine in Canada. A fascinating history of Canada's conflicted relationship with margarine tells all. Interestingly, margarine was banned until 1948 by an apparently effective block of dairy farmers who foretold a bleak future of milk-shortages if the pasty yellow chemical stuff were ever allowed within Canada's borders.

Anyhoo, starting May 29, I will be participating in the University of South Carolina's Computer Science Department's summer internship program. I'm not sure exactly which project I'm working on yet -- don't have the info yet, but I've already faxed in my application to get Internet access in the dormitory. ;)

Looking around online for directions getting there sure was fun! Google has a great new feature called Google Maps that lets you see road maps all over the US in excruciating detail. They even have maps of my neighborhood! The site lets you plan trips like Mapquest, but the interface looks much cleaner and is easier and faster to use too since you can just click and drag the map around in the window instead of clicking on edge arrows and waiting for it to load. One last cool feature lets you instantly overlay satellite maps over the area you are looking at. It zooms in quite nicely to the point that you can see the cars that were zooming along on the Interstate when the satellite photo was shot.

Tonight we ate at my little sister Charlotte's graduation reception dinner. It was very nice. The location, First Baptist Church of Evans, is absolutely huge. The grounds of the church campus are very nice. The CSRA-Home Education Assocation's graduations have been so big that we've been having trouble finding places large enough to rent. I think the year I graduated, we had 53 graduates. Even at First Baptist it's standing room only what with all the immediate families, extended relatives, and goodness knows how many friends (what about socialization my foot). Well, just 12 hours until the ceremony, so I should get to sleep!