Brian's World

Backlogged Updates

Last time I wrote I completely forgot that I had graduated from RPI and celebrated my 22nd birthday.  I forget those sort of events pretty quickly, but I’ll try and remember any notable (maybe memorable is more appropriate) details.

Let me think, I guess I shall start off with “Senior Week” which I did not participate in at all.  I made a deal that in exchange for filming a few events earlier in the year I would not partake in any of the events, and to be honest none of the events were really down my ally.  I don’t enjoy drinking socially and that seems to the theme for everything senior-week related.  I would have much preferred some really exciting lectures from people doing cool stuff…. not just a colloquy about a topic that I really don’t care for.  During my 4 undergraduate years at RPI I never remember there being a lecture or speaker on campus that was super thrilling to go see.  I guess Richard Stallman comes around every now and then, but he isn’t really my kinda guy.  Chris DiBona from Google came once 2-3 years ago but was in a really small room so I couldn’t get in.  It would have been neat if senior week wasn’t all about bar hopping and included some components of a collegiate nature.

Somewhere in there I celebrated my birthday.  Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, even those of you who only did it because Facebook told you to.  It’s ok, I regularly forget my birthday too.  Ah yes, I remember now.  For my birthday I got a cutting board and dish towels.  My parents (read as: mom) always pick out the best gifts.  Included was a coupon for more information about Office 2010 Small Business, which my mom said was a coupon for a new laptop… despite the fact that it was only a picture of Office 2010.  Katie got me another super cool gift, which I will be debuting once I get around to writing a widget for it.  My brother gave me a computer chair, which makes sense because my college one is 4 years old and not so usable these days.  I celebrated my birthday by…. hrm, I’m not sure exactly what I did.  I bought a cake for myself and probably ate some food, it’s not really standing out to me.

I also graduated, completing my B.S in Computer Engineering.  The ceremony was very long, and the primary speaker was lackluster from my point of view.  It would have been nice if, instead of having the sun in the eyes of the entire audience… they put the sun in the eyes of the few dozen people on stage.  Luckily it didn’t rain, which would have been a huge deal because my mom hogged all the rain tickets and wouldn’t let me dole them out as I saw fit (aka Katie couldn’t get one).  After taking 0 pictures with my graduating colleagues at RPI, I packed up and moved out of BARH for the last time.  I think in a few years I will have wanted to take >1 photo with people I associated with during my undergraduate years, but it is particularly lame to say “Please gather so I can take a photo proving I worked with people at RPI so in 10+ years people believe me when I say I knew you.”  I admit, I have done a particularly good job staying out of photographs.  Excluding pictures taken of me entering and sitting at graduation, I count a total of 20 photos on Facebook taken at/near RPI of me with another RPI community member in them… this is over the last 4 years.

Upon graduating, I entered into my Masters program with the Computer Science department.  My plan is to get an MS in CS ASAP.  I switched from the School of Engineering to the School of Science for a few reasons.  I really didn’t like how Computer Engineering was taught in the ECSE department.  I felt it was an Electrical Engineering curriculum that made you take a handful of computer science courses.  I gained a lot of knowledge about stuff I don’t really care for (circuits & signals) and didn’t dive deep enough into the computer sciency stuff I’d like to be doing in my future.  I’m not saying the engineering program is bad at RPI, I’m just saying that the Computer Engineering program is not an engineering approach to computer things, like I thought it would be.

The weekend after I graduated my mom organized a graduation “party” which she renamed the Memorial Day Cookout.  I invited my friends (brother Kevin and Katie) and mom invited the family + Katie’s parents. Mom instructed everyone to not bring gifts, so I got a few cards and a business card holder from Katie’s mom.  I also opened up the gifts from my parents (read as: mom) which included a pen with the RPI seal, several pencil with the same logo, a mirror with a very strange rendition of the quad, and a blanket with the RPI seal on it.  You would think we were celebrating Rensselaer here, not my graduation from the place.  I am not sure what I will do with all this strange RPI stuff, it won’t be appropriate to display for ~20 years so I’ll have to figure out how to archive it.