Thursday, August 9, 2001

I had an odd day at work. I had the first leg of a performance review soon after I arrived at work. My boss gave me thumbs-up all around; his only “suggested improvement” (as the form called it) was to be more vocal in the project that I have to do. In other words, if I have a problem, I should find somebody to help.

I agree with his assessment; I tend to rely on myself too much, and I avoid “bothering” co-workers. So, I spent much of the morning and early afternoon banging my head against a problem I’m having (launching a Netscape browser window from a Java application running on Sun Solaris).

Those of us in my cube then began designing our putt-putt hole in earnest (see yesterday’s entry for an explanation of this). We ended up with a pretty neat design, which we’ll complete tomorrow. I will post pictures, if I can remember to take them.

Tomorrow, Otakon begins. Since that usually sucks a lot of time an energy out of me, I probably won’t be updating this diary too much over the next few days. I will do my best to post a complete retrospective once I’m done, though (complete with plenty of pictures, thanks to that new digital camera).

I’ll also mention that I’ve decided to submit an application to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science at George Mason University (my alma mater). They have a lot of cool-looking artificial intelligence classes, and the entire degree only requires ten courses. If I complete one or two per semester, it would only take two to three years.

Why do I want a Master’s degree? Two reasons: 1) It’ll make me worth more, increasing my salary. 2) I love to teach, and this is the first step towards being able to teach more often. I’d love to teach a college course or two.