The Home Stretch
Today was the first day of classes in this semester, my last semester. Some would call this the home stretch. One would think I could see the light at the end of the tunnel by now, but I cannot. I simply assume the cables lead somewhere.

Already I have a problem with the software engineering class this semester. Then again, I would have a problem with any class that forces UML-RT (better than plain UML!) using Rational Rose RT, Powerpoint, and eMail only accepted from the cruddy Carleton Connect system. The plus side is that RR is supposed to output C++ rather than Java, which is all we've been using lately. I nearly burst out laughing when someone a few rows back, upon hearing this, commented with disgust: "but C++ sucks!"

In the end, all of the things on the to-do list for the break happened. My last item, cleaning up my old AMD K7/700 and converting it to a RAID machine for permanent storage just got finished a few minutes ago. The second hard drive I was using worked perfectly until about five minutes after I copied the last file from it prior to making it part of the disk array. Good timing, though it took me hours to realize that the fault was with the disk, rather than a mistake of my own.

Another unfortunate event is that my car failed the mandatory emissions test. It passed with a huge margin on all tests except the part where they test the parts-per-million concentration of NO. The maximum allowed is 526, while the car was putting out 890. This is surprising, since at the last test, the number was in the 300 range. Possible causes are timing issues or a faulty catalytic converter. It's too bad they make us do the tests in the winter when the junkyard is a most unpleasant place.