Checking In

Well, it's been a while since I last wrote. This really is going to be a busy semester - whoever told me that fourth year was easy straight-up lied. The biggest problem I've encountered is that most of my classes are based around long-term deadlines, which are hard to pace out, particularly when two or three of them involve coordinating group work.

The Android game is coming along well, though because of difficulties getting the engine set up, I haven't been able to contribute as much to the coding as I would have liked. I have mostly been working on writeups, assets, and level designs. It's a top-down stealth game, so the pretty standard avoid the guards and get the gems sort of fare. It's not terribly original, but it's the best we could come up with that would satisfy the requirements of the project. We are learning some interesting stuff in lecture and I'm excited to jump into the XNA (Xbox) project that we're getting assigned next week.

Capstone is proving to be a somewhat frustrating project only in that we don't seem to know enough to complete each deliverable. Because the course is taught by ten different faculty members / professional engineers, it's a little hard to track down a lecturer for questions. We also haven't gotten feedback yet on our initial architectural design, which is worrying because we have to plow ahead with putting the buildings on the site like that. Hopefully he doesn't have any major issues with it or we're going to have a lot of catching up to do.

I decided to go with an independent thesis project, which is creating more work for me, but I'm more excited about what I'm writing about. I'm going to get into the lab this week and start working with the data, as well as hitting the books to find sources for the bibliography I have to turn in next week. The fun never ends...

Outside of that has largely been marching band - our last show was fantastic. The theme was Superheroes, and we played the theme from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the Danny Elfman Batman theme, and James Bond. It's up there on the list of my favorite marching shows, definitely. Next up is Rolling in the Deep and Party Rock anthem, which sounds like fun (though the dance we have to do looks a little odd...). After that is another Disney show, and later on we've been promised a video game theme. All in all, it sounds like a good year for band!

With so much going on, I really haven't had time to consider what I'm doing after graduation. I didn't have much time to spend at the fall career fair or to spruce up my resume beforehand. Really, I'm still in denial about this being my last year. I'm not sure that I'm ready to go out into the world. Then again, senior year of high school, I didn't think I was ready for college.

Fall break is in two weeks, so hopefully I can make it til then without cracking. For now, I've got Carbon Leaf's live acoustic album in the background and some problem sets to get back to.