I got a parking ticket, but Stacie will take care of it. Drove back to the apartment here in Atlanta. Took a short rest before driving to Georgia Tech to teach recitation, where we discussed iteration, basic classes, and finished up conditionals. After recitation, the TA group and I ate and chatted at Doc Chey’s on North Decatur, where I enjoyed the usual.

We dropped Tracy (I’ve been meaning to do that for years). Off at her dorm because she had work to do. I think she just didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. I’m just kidding. So for lunch it was just Stacie and I, and, having a craving for a good burger, we went to the Carolina Brewery. After lunch, but before returning to the apartment, we went to Blockbuster to rent a movie. After much debating, we finally settled on a 1984 film, The Killing Fields. For dinner we ate a wonderfully greasy pizza at Franklin St. Pizza & Pasta. It’s within walking distance from campus.

Lunch at the Cosmic Cantina, a quaint little burrito place much like Moe’s here in Atlanta. Went with Stacie, Tracy, and Tracy’s roommate Emily. After lunch, we played a few rounds of Dance Dance Revolution at the mall. It was Emily’s first time.

Left in the afternoon for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to spend the night at Stacie’s dorm. Tracy came along too. For dinner, we ordered chinese delivery at the Asia Cafe. We also watched two excellent independent films - Y tu mamá también and Amélie. Both were excellent films, though I enjoyed the latter slightly more.

Had a late breakfast consisting of Belgian waffles, bacon, scrambed eggs, and hot cocoa. After breakfast, we watched the Duke vs. Maryland basketball game, while Becky amused herself with her Gameboy Advance. Guffey and I periodically had conversations about computers to make the time more bearable. Maryland won, and as a result, Tracy owes me dinner.

After the game, I commited the greatest cardinal sin - allowing Tracy to select a movie. We watched Chicago on Guffey’s DVD/SVCD player. It’s a Hollywood adaptation of a Broadway musical. It made me sad and hungry, so Tracy and I decided to go out for dinner at Red Lobster in Cary. We had the All-You-Can-Eat shrimp dinner. It was quite tasty, despite the forty-five minute wait. This is because there is nothing to do in Cary except eat and shop.

After dinner, we returned to Tracy’s apartment to meet up with Stacie and several other Duke students for various dorm and fraternity parties. There was lots of dancing and lots and lots of girls. I like Duke.

After classes, left for Duke University to visit Tracy and Stacie. I arrived around ten, picked Tracy up, and we left for the Guffey Inn. I was very hungry, and for late dinner we had cheese bread. We’ll be meeting up with Stacie tomorrow morning.

I slept soundly that night.

Attended a ProgDev meeting before heading off to to lunch at the Student Center with some of the other TAs. I took the meeting minutes, and e-mailed them out later that night.

Volunteered for several hours at the Hands on Atlanta main office. By the end of the day I had familiarized myself with the network topology, assembled and configured several PCs, and developed a web frontend for their Microsoft Exchange e-mail server using Active Server Pages. It’s a stressful and exhausting affair, especially when working on mission-critical servers that several community service offices around the United States depend on for their everyday tasks. But hey, it sure beats picking up trash on the side of the highway. Being a skilled laborer definitely has its perks.

I returned to school after work to hold my lab hours for CS1322.

I took a biology quiz online. After classes, Josh and I went to the Embedded Microcontroller lab to work on Project 3, which we successfully completed after about four hours. We had to interface a PIC microcontroller with the IC equivalent of an iButton. It was actually a really neat project. After lab, I gave Josh a ride back to his apartment and then left for home. A few hours later, I made yet another trip back to Georgia Tech to pick up Michael. Hopefully he’ll have his car soon.

Met with my probation officer early in the morning before quickly driving off to the Hands on Atlanta office through traffic. I’ll be volunteering in a network administration and software engineering type role. Job description includes developing software, consulting on network installations, and every now and then, performing technical support. I start on Thursday. Ostensibly, everyone there is very excited to have me aboard their team. I mean, it’s not every day that you get a senior Computer Engineering major from Georgia Tech to work for you for free.

Of course, I’m just as excited to be there. I hope that it will be a great opportunity to work in a small business environment and gain valuable skills in computer systems and networks. And who knows, maybe I’ll get to meet some great new people too. And, because I’m a volunteer, there is absolutely no obligation. If at any time I feel that things are going sour, I can just walk away.

After our productive meeting, I returned to school for my first biology lab of the year. It was so silly that I don’t even want to talk about it. I guess that’s what I deserve for waiting so late in my college career to take a freshman level course.

After biology lab, I left with James, my partner TA, to the Instruction Center to teach our first recitation of the semester. We covered introductory Java concepts such as primitives, boolean operators, the basic class, and conditional statements. For a first recitation, things went surprisingly well. The students were very comfortable and actively participated in discussions and in answering questions. I think we’ve got a great section this term.

I took a biology quiz online. It seems that we have one of these almost every other day. As far as classes go, I’ve decided to now drop Spanish due to its awkward time slot. It also conflicts with my other goals for this semester, one of which is completing my required community service. To be safe, I first cleared this decision with the College of Engineering academic advisor. While at it, I also had a brief discussion with a financial aid counselor to determine how this would affect my loans and scholarships. Finally, I spoke with an admissions counselor about out-of-state tuition waivers. It seems that I’m basically out of luck until I turn twenty four. Or join the military. The lesson here is that it never hurts to ask.

Ben hosted a ProgDev meeting in the afternoon which I eagerly attended. We talked about grading software issues and some advanced Java topics such as reflection and class loaders. ProgDev consists of a group of people who develop course software for Object-Oriented Programming.

I slept in. Some minor updates to the PHP journal software. The night was spent completing Circuit Analysis homework and updating the large amount of journal backlog. I got a chance to finally take a look at the camera; it’s pretty nice. And, after a quick kernel re-compile, the camera worked like a charm on Linux. The operating system simply treats the camera as another hard drive.

For dinner, I made spaghetti and meatballs. Adam noted that our washing machine is broken. Have to call Azuma Leasing tomorrow. Being sick is annoying.