Saturday, December 18

Of Schools and Saturdays

School is done for the year. Not only for myself, but for my son as well. He's happily out back at this moment riding around the patio with his sister and having fun. As for myself, I just finished a grueling three-hour session of putting together my final project for Foundations in Information Technology. It's not so much that I didn't know a lot of this stuff, but the project was asking for a level of detail that I was not familiar with. Ask me to explain what a USB Hub is, and I can. Ask me what happens to the speed and power of the hub as more devices are added to it, and I'll draw a blank. There were twenty such questions, but they are done and I am confident that they are answered well enough to push me to another 4.0 for this quarter.

Next quarter will be interesting. The first course I am taking is on Microsoft Access. I'm familiar with databases but I couldn't make a living on it if that was required. I do know that I am going to be needing such information in the future, and the fact that this is all new information being presented to me means I'll be paying attention. Don't tell anyone, but I've sort of been coasting along with my classes so far. The second course I'm taking is a 200 level communication course labeled Effective Writing for the IT Professional. Yes, it's a writing course. I look forward to the response from my professor when I mention that I'm a published author. It's likely to be underwhelming, because those kinds of things are, but one should always seek to point out accomplishments when they are appropriate. What better venue to say you're an author than in a class about writing?

After those classes I'll have been in school for close to a year. Effectively it'll mean the end of my Freshman year. That's going to feel good. It'll also mean that I'll be able to take a required course on management, something that I think will immensely help me out in regards to the day job. See, while I really do want to write for a living, I'm not there yet by any stretch of the imagination. Which means I need to spend as much time as I can also working on making sure my family is provided for. Some opportunities are going to come up in the next year that I plan on being in position to take advantage of, and one of those is possibly going to be an opening as the manager for my department. It's not a definite, nothing is until it's written in stone, but even if it doesn't materialize, everything I'm doing at school means better opportunities in the future.

As to the writing, because of the end of the quarter I haven't been too focused on getting the short story done. Since I turned in my last project today, that'll change. I'm not going to set a firm date for finishing, because every time I do I end up not making it because of outside circumstances, so it'll get done when it gets done. I'm not far from finishing, but that's just the first draft. More work comes afterwards.

I have big news concerning Spiral X coming the middle of next week. In the meantime, it has reached the coveted 5th review (well, I coveted the 5th, not sure about anyone else) which can be found at Juniper Grove. She calls it a "tragically beautiful must read", a description that leaves me breathless every time I read it.

That's it for today. Make sure and come back tomorrow for Sample Sunday. I'll be posting something from the short story, just to whet your appetite for that piece.

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