Times and Measures

Hello, all!

I’m in beautiful, cloudy, foggy (and thus perfect) San Francisco, CA now, having just finished my second week at Six Apart. Life is, therefore, awesome. :-)

I stopped home for two weeks for various reasons first, and got to have a good time with Nick and Ryan, both friends from high school in Billings. Always good to see friends— and if the local brewery has a “kill the keg” night, so much the better!

My parents also had dinner at our house for the priests in our diocese, which, with thirteen or so priests, was a fun time. (You wouldn’t necessarily know, thinking of a bunch of Catholic priests with the Bishop, that they would be a good time— but it was.)

Anyway, after all that, it was at long last time to start my internship with 6A, which has, thus far, been a bloody blast. I’m working on David’s team, and working primarily with Simon on a project to do neat stuff. I’d probably best not go into the neat stuff at the moment, though I’ll talk with David and see what’s currently public. Certainly, when it’s released I’ll talk about it here. And I have an awesome workspace too!

Anyway, one of the interesting things about this new internship is that I’m working almost exclusively in Perl. Now, those who pay attention to nasty little things like my resume might notice that I don’t, strictly speaking, list Perl on there. Those of you who know me might also know that I don’t, strictly speaking, know Perl, and have traditionally avoided it in favor of Ruby. Well, all of these things are essentially true (I spent a year on Perl in high school, but that was until this spring the last time I’d used it; Information Retrieval was in Perl, but required very little of it to get by), but I’ve been working quite readily in it for the last two weeks, and I have to say, I really enjoy it. Even if Perl is somewhat incantation-prone (I had to explain to my mother what that was, which was amusing), CPAN makes actually using it in practice completely fantastic.

Besides merely CPAN being fantastic, there’s also the advantage that 6A’s people wrote a really large part of it. The guy who wrote XML::Atom::Stream sits immediately to my right, Simon’s written a fantastic number of modules (although I note he wrote a magic 8-ball for no reason that I can fathom), and in general, I’m told that over 2% of CPAN as a whole is donated by Six Apart. Which is staggering. So whenever I need help with something, I can ask nearly anyone, and they’re incredibly nice, as well as knowledgeable. And Simon, in particular (as he gets the brunt of them) is especially patient with my stupid looks.

So 6A is wonderful, I’m doing fun work, I’m living staggeringly close to work (and in the heart of the city; I live in SoMa, so I’m half a mile from work, and close enough to nearly anything to get there if I really want), and I’m just generally having a blast. And now, dear readers, I’m off to Pinole, CA for the evening, to have dinner with a friend of my parents.

Dear readers,

At long last, I’ve done it! I’ve left a school in a normal amount of time!

(For reference, I spent only five years in elementary school, then I spent three years in one high school before transferring to an IB school, which is a mandatory two-year program; spending five years in high school is somewhat difficult to explain to the neighbors, regardless of its merit.)

But this time, I’ve actually finished Hopkins, in eight semesters! W00t! And I got to wear shiny white and maroon honor cords as well (UPE), which is always nice. (Some people were wearing 8+ cords, which seems like a lot to me; presumably they were highly honorable, or at least colorful.)

Of course, I’m not leaving Hopkins; that would be too easy. I finished my Bachelor of Science degree, but I’ve now ascended from Concurrent BS/MSE status to fulltime Graduate status; while I was a grad student before, this makes the whole situation much easier to explain. (Also I can take far fewer classes that I don’t like, which is a nice side benefit of grad school.) So I’m still planning to finish my MSE in one additional year; all that’s necessary is six classes, and a thesis. (It doesn’t sound so bad when reading it on the page, so for correct context, please read “six classes,” then turn on this music, then read “a thesis.” Got it now?)

So my parents and brother came out from Montana / down from Yale on the 15th, and only left yesterday, for a full two weeks of adventures. And packing. (A lot of packing; I’m leaving my apartment for another even closer to campus (technically, the same distance from campus— across the street— but closer to the School of Engineering, where my classes are), and Shannon’s leaving her apartment for one underneath my new apartment. So that was interesting, but much easier with all the help.)

And we went up to Yale to hear Quinlan play (in a pretty chapel) before he leaves to go on tour in Italy with the YSO, then to New York City to see Spamalot on Broadway, which was fantastic. Now they’ve taken my cat (Lysistrata) back to Montana with them for the summer, and I’m staying in Virginia for the last days until I fly to San Francisco, CA Saturday morning! Yay!

Other fun things: * I got a new iPhone today— after only 60-odd days. :-( Thank goodness for AppleCare— and also for the Apple approach to replacements, which was awesome. I described my problems (short version: “it don’t work,” with crashes, lockups, batteries dying, and other nastiness), they checked it over for about 45 seconds at the Genius Bar, then said “yep, seems bad,” and handed me a new phone! Compare this to my blood pressure ticking up to stroke levels to get Dell to acknowledge anything bad exists in the universe— I think my Apple switch will be permanent, as I’m in love. (Although I’ll make sure to renew AppleCare.)

• We had a new Upsilon Pi Epsilon initiation, of these guys, and I got elected President— a completely powerless position (it’s an honor society, not a legion of doom), but it’s fun nonetheless. (In related news, should anyone wish to join a legion of doom with me at its helm, please contact me.)

• I did a fun Information Retrieval final project, which consisted of graphing XFN relationships. I could only run the simulation out to one level of contacts (because then Kevin Rose’s friends overwhelmed any static graph), but it was fun, and my professor seemed to enjoy it.

• I finally broke down and bought a Wii, which is incredibly fun to play with.

So then, off to California in just over 24 hours (as I leave in the middle of the night); I’m excited. Time to run for now!