Happy Happy Joy Joy

how shall i put this? i am busy. i work 20-24 hours a week now. but i'm not complaining. i like my job. the people i work with like me. it's a big happy love fest. i write code that makes their lives easier. i am also greatly enjoying the convenience of an increased income much of which has gone to buying records over the last four months.

to put it bluntly, my classes are butt ass hard this semester. gone are the days when i gloried in a very high GPA. i do not think this semester will turn out like the last. but then, i am encountering a lot of new material. i actually dropped a class which i will pick up this summer because of the workload.

currently, my ass is being kicked by my hardware architecture class. assembly language programming is no joke. nevertheless, i really like this class. we play around a lot with ancient (translation -- inexpensive) hardware in the labs. i am finally beginning to understand the relationship with hardware and software in a sophisticated way. i can even write very crude drivers for serial and parallel ports. even better, i now understand the difference between them.

the thing that continually amazes me about computer science is that all the incredibly complex tasks we perform with computers are based on two fundamental states -- on and off. to put that in perspective -- the massive global communications system we know as the internet is built entirely on this very sparse binary logic. it simply boggles my mind.

i've gotten to the point where i can understand and appreciate the differences between programming languages. i think in the near future i will know how to choose which language is best suited to solve a given problem.

that rocks.