Today marks the first day of class in the spring term. I'm taking Programming Languages and Theory of Computation, which are both required. 2 old-timers are teaching PL. One was the project manager for the AT&T research group that crated UNIX. He invented UNIX pipes, and the first C program he invented was "echo". The other guy, well, he seems like he was a pretty good programmer back in the day too.

I'm cautiosly optimistic. The possible con with learning from people who have been in the business for fifty years is that, well, they're stuck in the past. These profs seem with it though. Here's to hoping it'll be a good class.

Work with the advisor went well today.

And I signed a buyer agreement with a real estate agent today. We look at houses Saturday, and hopefully I'll find my house by the end of the month.

This weekend is so full, and its not really with school. There's perspective students, taxes, ugh.

I was about to go to bed cranky and stressed by day 1 of the new term, but as I checked email "one last time" I saw I received a note from the Gomez-Mira. I'll only go to bed a little cranky now.

Springtime brings the sun early in Hanover.
Despite the shut blinds, I awoke wide awake at 6:30 to a bright sun-shiney day.
I planned on waking up at nine, so with the few extra hours, I stayed in bed and finished off the Hobbit and listened to the trucks go by.

When I was little, I would wake up early some Saturday mornings. With no school to go to, I had time to lie in bed and listen to the trucks drive along Rt. 100.

As an adult, there often isn't time to listen. Or maybe its just too easy to not make time.

Jason leaves today. The term starts in earnest tomorrow. Two and a half months of the grind again.

I've had stuff to post about, but just plain no desire to post. The past month or so, I've had my crankypants on more than I'd like. Its tough getting out of Hanover sometimes. All the same, crankypants aren't doing me any good, so, with luck, I can chuck them by my birthday.

The Shamrock Biathalon was last week and a pretty good time. I ran 25:07 in my first 5K, which was much better than my 28:00 goal time. So I got that going for me, which is nice. I can totally see how people get addicted to racing. I try to run roughly 5K 3x a week already, so it wasn't a super huge physical challenge. Its fun to pit yourself against yourself and try to do as well as you can.

The second event was a 13 stop pub crawl throughout Hanover. Dennis and I were the only ones who finished the whole crawl -- Many people stopped everywhere, but we were the only two who got served at the Canoe Club. I guess one or two people we crawled with were pretty drunk by the end. All in all though, a pretty good time. We should do it next year, so if you're in the area (har har) stop by.

Blog posting certainly seems to have died down. Maybe everyone is done with the idea of blogging? I too haven't been posting as much.

The winter term is almost over at Dartmouth, and all in all, it was easier than my first term here. I have and advisor, and things are generally going good. I am unfortunately back down to a Haviland score of 2, but it was nice two week visit to the land of three.

I'm not sure what else to write. I haven't left the Upper Valley in over a month, and I sure need it. My crankypants have been on for quite some time, and I think a change of scenery and a good time back home with friends would take the edge off. But people have day jobs and work weeks, and all my weekends are committed to Hanover activities. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

end of term

Blink and you miss it.
I woke up this morning and realized that there's a week of school left before the end of term. My last assignment for the IT class came through today; there's 1 or 2 more for OS, plus the final.

So yeah, this term's gone by pretty quickly. Chalk it up to settling in. In the past 3 months,
I got an advisor, a tight group of friends, and a handle on work/life here in Hanover. Graduate school at Dartmouth is really pretty good. There's a ton of cool people here (yes, even in the computer science department) and Hanover is beautiful. Sure there's not as much to do as there was in the East Village, but who has time anyway?

2 terms over. Its hard to believe. I'm still at the stage where day-by-day things time passes very
slowly here, but occasionally I look up and it hits me how much time has passed. It reminds me of six months into the Peace Corps service. It seems like forever, but it won't be so long before I'll finish my time here too.

Will any of you new yorkers be in town and ready for visitors in mid-march? I'm thinking of coming down, but it unfortunately must be during the week.


Joshua