CompSci Grad Not your typical graduate

Well it was clear that what was really holding me back was that damn job! As soon as I left, I was able to really get down to the business of writing and experiment running. I have to admit I didn’t hate my job. I just hated my hours. I worked too many hours for the money they were paying, and I wasn’t learning anything from the work. It was the basic same stuff over and over, and I began to grow unhappy with the work. Essentially, there was no growth potential, and I saw it coming.

Since I left the job at the end of the year, I really buckled down and did a great deal of work on my thesis and on my research. I didn’t need money that badly because I’d saved up quite a bit from when I was working. I’ve found the true value of being able to work on research without the distractions of trying to survive financially. Just a reminder to you students who are going into graduate studies, know where your money/funding is coming from! I cannot stress that enough. Working part time (in industry) and researching sucks more than you can imagine.

Now that I no long have distractions to get in the way, I'm going to be finishing my thesis. Not much more I can say about that. Pay my tuition, finish my thesis, defend, and get the hell out.

Now that I'm not working, the longer I'm in school, the longer I'm out of work, the longer I'm in debt. I won't tolerate being treated like I don't matter simply because I'm not on campus anymore, simply because I'm a part time student, simply because I've been around since Sept. '05.

I know where I am, I know where I need to be, and I know how to get there. All it takes is some determination and patience. Once I'm all done, then I can enjoy life again and be content. Until then, I'm in battle mode.

To be quite honest, I have not taken a photo in close to six weeks! What’s going on with me?! I just have not been inspired by anything. The colours in the winter are very bland, and it has just been so cold out that I’m scared to venture very far from my house to go out shooting. Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of snow. Looking at snow is not very exciting, nor is it very vibrant. I’ll need to get back into it as a form of artistic expression.

As some of you may know, I left my job as lead developer at the company where I worked. I liked flexing my creative muscles there, but now that I will not be building websites anymore, I’ll need to put my creativity into another avenue. Enter photography. It’s still something I enjoy doing very much, and I haven’t logged into my flickr account in a very long time.

Well Drupal 6 is now in Beta (4th one to be exact), and I’ve finally decided to take a good look at it. Well, saying ‘finally’ isn’t exactly true. I was testing it when it was still in alpha. I was the one that found it confusing how disabling the PHP filter module left the PHP filter in the system. Anyways, enough about that. I have been looking at the 4th beta of Drupal and I have to admit, it’s not all that close to being ready for primetime. Drupal 5 was a ridiculously stable beta. Drupal 5 only had 2 beta’s and 2 release candidates before it was available for an official release.