Attended Juan’s graduation party at the Shake Rag Knoll Skateboard Park in Peachtree City. Even Luke showed up. Other than the fact that I’ve instantaneously gone from being a student to being unemployed, things don’t really feel that much different.
On May 16 of this year, Jon Stewart, Class of 1984, of The Daily Show fame, delivered his stellar commencement address at the college of William & Mary. If he’d been the speaker at my college graduation, I might have actually gone. Some choice excerpts, though the entire address is worth reading:
When I left William and Mary, I was shell-shocked. Because when you’re in college, it’s very clear what you have to do to succeed. You knew what you had to do to get to this college and to graduate from it. But the unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective. The paths are infinite and the results uncertain. And it can be maddening to those that go here, because your strength has always been achievement. So if there’s any real advice I can give you, it’s this.
College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong.
Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.
I graduated. Isn’t that nice? So roll up your sleeves, and let the work begin.
Proctored a final exam bright and early in the morning for Languages and Translation, with our usual grading session immediately afterwards. Bill bought us pizza. Nicky was home early from work so we went to Dad’s Garage followed by a late night dinner at the Waffle House.
Turned in our senior design project. Juan, Luke, and I went to Moe’s Southwest Grill at Technology Square for lunch. Met with Mark and Tammy in the evening at the Atlanta Rocks! indoor rock climbing gym before having dinner at Fellini’s Pizza. Rock climbing is harder than it looks. Also, Tammy is a very cool person. She likes concrete.
A handful of changes to the unstable build of the online journal. The goal is to automate as much of the administration as possible in time for my upcoming trip to Argentina. As such, expect a new release sometime within the next two weeks. Also expect parts of the stable site to break, as many of the core resources are shared between the two sites.
The SQL database now fully supports referential integrity on all tables. Categories have also been implemented, though there is currently no web interface to add and remove them. PHP has been compiled with the GD graphics library in order to add automatic thumbnail generation. It’s impressive stuff. In particular, Jeff Knight has an excellent introduction to PHP image functions tutorial that’s worth taking a look at. Finally, fixed text sizing issues in Internet Explorer. It’s hard to imagine that something as simple as text sizing could be so complicated.
Apartment related errands during the day. Returned a call from Paul Moran of TalentFusion for a software developer and analyst position at Sapient. I’ll probably at least apply as long they accept resumes in a format other than Microsoft Word. If anyone knows anything about this company, let me know.
Lunch and goodbyes at the Mellow Mushroom before eventually returning to Atlanta. I greatly enjoyed my visit to North Carolina. Filled out a convenient change of address form online with the Post Office when I returned to the apartment. Tired.
Laura and her roommate Rebecca joined us in the morning for a trip to Carrboro Farmers’ Market for free melon tasting. Several varieties of watermelon and cantaloupe were served starting at eight in the morning. Delicious. Lots of nice people too. Laura had to eventually leave for work and the rest of us had a rather quick and complicated lunch at Rick’s Diner in order to make it in time to pick up a keg and attend the beer tour at the Carolina Brewing Company. We unfortunately missed the tour, but hey, free beer.
We made a detour to the Guffey Inn after the event and were sadly greeted only by Montana and Liebchen. The Guffey’s were nowhere to be seen. Dinner was had at the Mexican El Rodeo restaurant with Rebecca, Stacie, and Duane. They have a lot of vegetarian dishes, and are surprisingly inexpensive.
A potentially disastrous situation was averted and I had a fabulous and thriller night at Stacie’s party. Even Tami was nice to me. Laura barely said a word this time around, but I got over it rather quickly largely due to Rebecca and Sravanthi. Rebecca is really amazing at dancing and politely tolerated my poor hip-hop skills. She’s extremely friendly and really fun to hang out with. Thanks for the smile. Stacie’s mom also came to visit. Stacie’s mom has got it going on.
Arrived at North Carolina in the evening. Stacie, Sravanthi, Duane, Amy, and I had dinner at the 35 Chinese buffet. We watched the Bourne Supremacy at the Southpoint Mall after dinner. Good to see friendly and familiar faces again.
It’s the last day of recitation for the semester. Juan and I went to Moe’s Southwest Grill for dinner, and the discussion inevitably turned to our relationship woes, a seemingly all too common problem here at Georgia Tech. It was also a small crowd at Dad’s Garage tonight. Many people could not attend because of final projects and other such obligations. Slightly anxious but looking forward to a trip to North Carolina this weekend.