It's been a rough couple of months, hence the lack of blogging. Besides school getting unreasonably busy, I had a terrible loss, as many of you already know. But the kitty gets her own post.
I had a birthday in April which passed relatively unceramoniously.
School ended on May 7th. My class on decision theory remained interesting throughout and the professor was great. I did a project where I analyzed how technical (engineers) and non-technical (business and psychology majors) professionals make decisions when presented with various gambles. It was something I was very curious about and I actually found that there is a significant difference in the way the two groups make decisions. Grade: A.
The class on Integer Programming got crazy and I got frustrated. The class started with linear programming and creating models and constraints for various optimization problems. The professor was available for questions and the subject matter was difficult but not impossible. Then suddenly halfway through the class, she started teaching only in theory with no examples and stopped answering questions. I felt like she pulled a bait and switch; had I known the class was going to be like this, I would never have stayed in it. I'm the type of student that needs to understand every detail of a problem to really "get it". I ask a lot of questions along the way but once I get it, I really get it and can apply it just about anywhere. But since she wouldn't answer questions or provide examples, I was sort of stuck with a vague understanding of the subject matter. So the class was essentially a waste of my time.
We had a take-home final that had nothing to do with the course. We're not allowed to discuss the exam but my friend in the class actually called just to see how I was doing- she needed to hear that she hadn't lost her mind either. We were given no resources, no book, no lectures, and I couldn't find any information on the internet to help me. So I turned in my test knowing that I couldn't have scored better than a 50%. Seriously. Not exaggerating at all. It was so hard to hand in that test. Thankfully, I had an A going into the final. Course grade: B. Guess she figured it would be unfair to give me a C after all that work. Needless to say, I will NOT be taking any more classes with her. And that's not due to the grade; it's due to the teaching, or lack thereof.
Work has been busy as always. We finally set the date for our CMMI Level 3 appraisal. It's scheduled for the end of September/ early October. I've been working towards this since I started with the company in February 2007 so this is a big deal. There's still a lot of work to be done so the summer will be very busy. Thankfully, I'm not taking any school classes, so that should help. I've also been working on creating a training program for the entire company. I'm sure I'll talk about this more as I get further along.
My health is a mess. The bad posture due to working at a desk all day, combined with being bent over to study all night and a lack of exercise has allowed my migraines to continue. I'm hoping that now that things have settled down a bit, my migraines will calm down. In general they have been a little less than they were initially and I think with some exercise, I can really reduce their frequency. All of the stress has basically killed my diet as well. I've gained a few pounds back but still haven't quite reached my top weight again. Another couple weeks and I'll be able to concentrate on the diet and exercise again. I realize this should be an all the time thing, but I really broke from the stress and sadness this month. I am looking forward to some downtime this summer to recuperate.
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