Reflections

So I have come to the end of my fourth year here at UMass. My grades will tell the true story, but I think this semester went fairly well, one of the better semesters I've had. A lot has happened in my four years here that I am going to miss, as I will soon be leaving UMass for bigger and better places, but I still have one semester left.

In the Fall of 1999 I started as a little freshman, 18 years old living away from home for the first time. Moving into McNamara in Sylvan was an experience. I remember the first few weeks here were great. Since I was one of the only people that actually understood how the Internet worked at UMass (stupid TAU's), I was able to help a lot of people setup their computers to get on the internet, and as a result meet a lot of people. Many of these people I still hang out with to this day.

Another thing that happened freshman year was the start to a line of weird roommates. My first roommate, Evan (whom I think I saw in wheeler a few weeks ago but wasn't sure) was cool for the first few weeks, but then he started disappearing. By the end second half of the semester I saw him once a week tops as he lived with his girlfriend. No problems with Evan, it was just weird.

The second semester Evan moved out to live in another residential area and I got assigned a new random roommate, Ndubiouse or something like that... Nice guy but we didn't really match and he only started there for about a week. He used to wake up around 6:30/7am and loudly play Christian rock music.. and also leave it playing loudly every time he stepped out of the room which was often. He left because our whole sweet used to play starcraft and he said we were too noisy.

After that week Russ, who didn't like his roommate decided to take his place, and moved in with me. Russ and I were roommates the rest of that year and all of the next. The summer after freshman year, and sophomore year I decided to take a class over the summer and live on campus so I got another weird roommate then. The first roommate which I can not recall his name used was by far the strangest I've ever had. He ended up dropping his class so he had absolutely nothing to do all day long. Whenever I was in the room he used to sit on his bed and stare either at the door or at my back & monitor. So whenever I was in the room, my internet activities were monitored.. Freaky.

The summer after, as I said I had another random roommate, David, who actually was ok :). Through him I met Murat who at one point was even going to set up a blog here on urgo.org. Not too much to say there.

For the next two semesters, (sophomore and senior year) I've been living with Martha aka BUY BUY BUY, SELL SELL SELL aka Brian. I think for the most part we've goten along greatly, and I'm going to miss rooming with him. Best of luck Brian! Damn you for graduating hehe.

As I said earlier, I still have one more semester left at UMass. I hope my "random roommate" will work out. =]

These last two years really seem as if they've flown by. So much has happened, but happened so fast its hard to remember it all. I'm thankful I was able to share the times with a lot of great friends including Elizabeth, Elliott, Russ, Brian, Chris, Jeff, Mac, Evan, Don, Brett, Capri, and many more. You guys are great. :)

I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to be doing for the summer, but it will include working in Amherst almost definitely. More details will be posted when they become available hehe.

Well since this blog entry is already over a page I guess I'll wrap it up. I'm at OIT right now and am thirsty so I think I'm going to get something to drink. Have a great summer everyone!

Class Reloaded

So classes are finally over for this semester. I am both happy and sad. I did like my classes this semester, except for the exam part which ISN'T over yet.

Yesterday we celebrated the end of the school year with a morning showing of The Matrix Reloaded. For anyone who for some reason hasn't seen this movie, I highly recomend it. Also, make sure you stay through the end of the credits as there is a trailer for the next movie there.

For anyone who is bored and is looking for something to do I recomend checking out this little pig game. It's addicting and has a very calming song. :)

Also it has come to my attention that not everybody!! everybody!! has seen Home Star Runner yet. I highly recomend checking out that site. Great fun :) Make sure you goto the new users link first.

Mission: Java

In the past two days, well really day and a half a lot has happened. I spent about 9 hours yesterday (friday night), and about 6 1/2 hours today working on my java project for compsci 377 (see link on sidebar). We are implementing a filesystem into java to teach ourselves about inodes and such. It's a pretty interesting project, but it requires a lot of time. The good news is we are almost finished with it! Good thing too since its due monday.

After the countless hours of programming that I counted for you in the previous paragraph, I spent two of the funnniest hours of my life at the farewell "episode" of Mission Improvable, a comedy improv group here at UMass. I've been going to their shows for the past three years on average of once every month (maybe two months) and these guys really put on a great show.

Tonights episode was the last episode for seven of their members as they are graduating and/or moving on with their lives. Tonights show was one of the funniest that I can remember. The show was 2 1/2 hours, and I was laughing almost the entire time without stopping. My face hurt it was so funny! I still have one more semester left at UMass, but I'm going to miss seeing these guys performing. Hats off to Turbo, Bulldog, Alfalfa, Misty, Dungerees, Kryptonite, and Chilly.

Weekend of fun

With all the stress of work going on recently due to classes and work It was nice to be able to relax a little this weekend, along with getting some work done. Friday night was the best 2600 meeting we've had in a while. It was mostly just UMass students at the meeting, but that was fine. One of the best things we covered was what the Linux kernel SOUNDS like. Yeah. cat /boot/vmlinuz > /dev/audio is fun. :) So much more can be done with that as well. What does slashdot sound like? Go check. =] cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp also produces some nice white noise. Oh, and don't forget /dev/mem. Enjoy the sounds of the sea from your Linux kernel.

Saturday I spent the day hours in the Edlab's doing two labs. A lot of progress was made on our 377 lab, and almost all of my networking lab was finished as well. (The rest will be finished tonight).

The real fun started Saturday night though. After working on my paper that is due tomorrow for awhile Elsie decided that she wanted to go out to karaoke so Liz, Elliott and I all went to Rafters around 11:30. After a few drinks it was already 1am and we were getting kicked out. We decided to go back to Elizabeth's for awhile to hang out, but our plans were foiled when we tried from both directions to get into the road leading to her apartment. This weekend was the famous Hobart Hoedown which involved 6000+ drunk college students rioting in the streets. It was so bad that they actually destroyed a bus stop and lamppost. Destroyed as in they uprooted it, moved it into the road, an set it on fire. Anyway, by three am we finally were allowed to drive through, so we did.

Good times. =]