HELIOLITH

I thought that since the clocks are turning back tonight, I’d use the extra hour to come up for air, re-initiate the space with voice, text, and life. If you wondered where I’ve gone (as I do when someone whose blog I’m accustomed to checking up on goes quiet for a while), I’ve not gone anywhere; just been busy.

I recently got an email from the loan agency saying that one of my student loans had gone into deferrment as they had received notice that I was enrolled “more than half-time.” It’s quite intuitive that a government with tabs on everything and everyone should be able to keep track of little details like that, but I still find it amusingly amazing. I’m currently taking 3 classes, one in html (to see how it’s taught & for practice), one in Pascal, & one in Java (utterly new subjects for me). I’m not really trying to educate myself into career-changing it’s just that it seemed a natural manifestation of my inexplicable curiousity around the code that weaves together our experiences in the world of information. Follow those links to see things I’ve done with those languages… the pascal link is a fun little game I wrote on my own time, and the Java is just a homework assignment that is deceptively simple-looking on the outside (at least that’s how I feel about it right now, if you’re an accomplished programmer it’s not deceptive at all, just simple). The whole concept of Object-Oriented Programming is really pretty cool. I can’t say I really understand it well yet, but I’m working on it.

I’m amazed by it all– the way the code works and the multiple layers of logic– I could sit and talk about it for hours, learning so much so quickly is like being a child again. The pace is indeed frenetic at times as I buzz through the weekly relay race from work and family and night-classes. With my learning I can’t wait to finish these classes so I can move on to studying the book on Python that I bought recently after talking with a friend who adores that language.

I guess I’m somewhat of a penguin too after realizing one connotation after reading Robert’s story. It doesn’t help that like Daveb, I really think penguins are an amazingly cute animal… That and the last good book I read happened to be Torvald’s autobiography.