Revamping

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I'm updating my life and moving on to some other things. I've been very lax with everything for a while. Presently, it seems I'm receiving freelance projects with a bit of regularity. I finally broke the RentACoder jinx last week and earned about $34 on a WordPress theme customization.

Work on Authware still continues, but it appears I won't have anything concrete until October, given my lackadaisical approach to things of late -- I haven't been writing, coding or even reading anything useful. Somehow, I manage to make time go by swiftly while achieving nothing.

I've fallen in love... No it's not what you're thinking. Ikezi sent me a link to a Swedish song he listened to in Amsterdam. It's by Basshunter and it's called Boten Anna. I just kept playing it over and over today.

Here's a good view of it from Youtube.

(I need my page to validate as XHTML 1.1 so I can't use an <embed> tag for Netscape users. I'm sorry)

There's a slower-loading one with multi-language subtitles at http://basshunter.m0o.eu/anna/index_en.php.

Transfer?

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Transferring to a different school has been an idea rolling in my mind right from time. A friend I’ll call Rock told me MSU’s not for me. Another guy [let’s call him Kofi] had a discussion with me today. When I told him I was contemplating transferring, he said,’That’s the wisests thing I’ve heard you say!’ It was daunting to say the least.

I know I’m not MIT material but this guy seems to think I ought to go there, or somewhere ‘important’ — not poor old MSU that grants scholarships to only basketball players [we have a great team here]. I’ll just wait and see — something like this requires lots of rumination.

In other news, I’ve been prancing around on a very high horse for a while. I think it’s high time I maintained a low profile and learn all I can [gives Azuka a hard ‘konck’ on the head].

ExamDirect, Authware

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With little to do to keep me busy, I think the time has come for me to overhaul two scripts I wrote. I installed a development wiki but haven’t done anything worth putting up there.

I’ve already come up with a design for Authware — I’ll be posting it on my writing site when I’m done with it. For now, I’m still planning my code architecture. The plan is to have nearly nearly every function callback a series of functions if a plugin has registered its functions as executing before or after, or replacing another function. Of course, the core ones won’t be subject to this rule. I’ll be dumping all my classes except my Db abstraction layer. I intend to test for SQL Server 2005, MySQL and PostgreSQL.

I’ll also be modifying ExamDirect and giving it a new name — what it’s going to be, I don’t know. My ‘oga’ back at CAD Consulting hasn’t contacted me for a long time — I suppose he’s still battling Michelin. I think Examdirect will be released as a commercial-grade piece. There are a lot of security holes in the current implementation and the design is horrible because I lifted it directly from the MTN site. Well, I’ll be doing a very clean rewrite as well as redesign to get something very uncluttered and accessible. My outlook on design, PHP security and AJAX have changed within the past few days.

Hopefully, these two projects should keep me busy for the next few months or so.

Lectures, Lectures

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Susan Bonifer, PhD is everything I’ve been told about her and more. I walked into her class yesterday and she was simply excellent. I’m looking forward to a fun but demanding semester. It’s Communications 204 and we’re going to be doing a lot of public speaking in front of the entire class. We got paired up yesterday to learn about ourselves, then introduce ourselves to the class. I got paired up with a former colleague at the library — Elizabeth — and when she introduced me, she said ‘He doesn’t talk much,’ and Dr Bonifer said,’We’ll work on him.’ The class cackled.

That incident, and the fact that she couldn’t pronounce my surname(s) properly have gotten me more attention than I wanted. I guess I’m going to overcome my fear of public speaking. I’ve heard she’s tough, but I like tough people — at least I won’t complain of being bored when I’m reading in a frenzy and practicing my speeches.

Economics class was interesting. On the pretest we had to know the population of the United States, its inflation rate, it’s GDP, unemployment rate… gosh! When it comes to precision I hate cramming. When it came to the discussions about utility, cost and so on, that was more my turf. Oh dear, this looks like I’m going to be doing some excessive cramming of facts and figures this semester. Luckily, this is a substitute teacher and the main one is joining us on Monday — I hope he’s more interesting.

I’ve got two Chinese professors for Computer Science. Dr Qian is one great lady [I remembered talking to her in Spring to see if I could get her to give me some placement tests to skip the rudimentary Computer Science courses, although this is the first time I’ve ever had her]. Her huge, thick glasses almost make her look comical but she does exude authority and its fun learning from her.

Dr Wang on the other hand is what we in Fedacad used to call girrilized. One minute he’s talking in a whisper — the next his voice is super loud. His accent didn’t help any and even though I sat in the front row I only picked out five sentences or six. The funny thing was he kept rambling on and on even past the time for the period and when we told him, he just stood there with this ‘girrilized’ grin on his face.

My suite-mate Blake looked like he was about to die. ‘I’ve got him for two courses this semester,’ he told me mournfully. When I asked Khashif about him, he laughed in his bubbly way. ‘I told you — you’re gonna take a long time to get used to his class.’ 😆

Fall Begins

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I must have been pretty dumb thinking all this laziness in the name of ‘enjoyment’ was going to last forever. I’ve got classes starting tomorrow. My suite-mates are real friendly, and like me my roommate doesn’t talk. He seems a nice guy when we do anyway. When I saw the name Lee assigned to my room, I was quite annoyed because I thought he was Chinese [he’s American and completely Caucasian] — don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Chinese people [in fact some people know about my bizarre attraction to the Mongoloid female species of homo sapiens], but I had enough trouble understanding my Korean roommate during the summer.

Blake, the hippie-looking guy in the next room with his long hair and wild beard fit my geek-stereotype and I wormed it out of him yesterday. We had a good laugh over it :lol:.

I weaned myself off a few sites today, especially Nairaland, PHPFreaks and Ajaxfreaks. School begins tomorrow — we don’t want to start off on a falling grade, do we? I’m still trying to give up those fifteen novels I picked from the library. I’ve slowed somewhat — I finished Gorky Park (370 pages) in under seven hours but I could use the frequent naps I took in my defence.

I’m expecting four books from Amazon within this week. The DVD I ordered never arrived and after contacting the seller and getting no response, I filed a claim. I hope I get a refund and some extras [as a Nigerian man, the ‘jara’ principle holds for me ;)].

It looks like Fall is going to be swell. I picked all the reputedly excellent teachers. I hope they give me a good challenge. I’m tired of reading my ears off only to walk into the exam hall and finish in under five minutes. Well, what more can be said except that as lazy as I am, I’m not picking up my books till tomorrow?

I’m eyeing a transfer to a different school that offers scholarships [unlike miserly old Mountain State]. I’ve still got my all-As and I took the placement test in Calculus last semester. This semester I think I’ll place out of the remaining Math courses and whatever ones are available. The bad news is that none of the Computer Science courses is available for placement or I’d have scaled them long ago.

Well, that’s that. If anything, I expect Fall to be anything but boring. Don’t ask me why [that’s my secret].

What is Wrong?

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What’s wrong with me? I’ve gotten over my writer’s block but I run away from pens nowadays. I seem to be scared of doing any writing. Here’s another sample excerpt from my work.

‘You asked for me?’ Coker stepped into the office. His eyes took in everything in the room.

The man known as Filatei took off his glasses as if he could see better without them and studied him through squinted eyes.

‘Have a seat Thomas,’ he indicated the chair in front of his desk, nodding simultaneously at the woman standing in the doorway. ‘That will be all for now, Unyime.’

He waited until she had left the office before he turned to Coker.

‘How’s everything going at your office?’ he asked.

‘It’s dull, monotonous work,’ Coker grumbled. ‘How much longer do I have to work there?’

‘You just have to stay there,’ Filatei frowned, putting his glasses back on. ‘Hopefully, what I have planned for you should be less monotonous. How much do you know about Senator Obum?’

Coker’s hand flew to his chin and scratched at his beard as he racked his brain. He shook his head slowly,’I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name. What’s his constituency?’

‘That is not important for now — what’s important is that there’s a link to him in your case.’

‘How?’ Coker sat up, surprised at the un-Nigerian efficiency with which the organization worked.

‘I was assuming you’d be able to tell me. Did you see the pictures taken by your colleague?’

‘No, I intended to…’

‘Intended. Intended!’ Filatei cut him off in mid-sentence, slamming his fist on his desk. Coker jumped in his seat. The vase of cheap plastic flowers fell over on its side. ‘This is not a bureaucracy. I expect results — not intentions.’
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