Fire Mountain Is No More In Savannah.

They reverted back to Ryan's. My father and I went there for dinner tonight. I had a variety of items on the menu. My dad had steak. Ryan's is better than Fire Mountain.

The other day, during the ACM meeting, Jack was telling me he went and spoke to the professor that handle the graduate program in Computer Science. As a result, I know what additional classes I have to take on top of the graduate level classes. Before I'm considered a full fledge graduate student, I will have to take these classes:

• MATH 2072 - Calculus II
• CSCI 2201 - Unix and Secure Web Development
• CSCI 2620 - Discrete Structures Computer Science
• CSCI 2410 - Data Structures and Algorithms
• CSCI 3201 - Computer Organization and Architecture I
• CSCI 3202 - Computer Organization and Architecture II
• CSCI 3321 - Software Engineering

Being that I will have an IT degree, I can get out of entry level JAVA classes that are required. I'd have to take the UNIX class again, but it wouldn't be so hard the second time around. Plus, I hope I'd get another professor for it. I will have to go talk to the graduate coordinator next week about it. It would take me about 3 or more years to get it. I'm not sure if I will get the degree, but I'll try a semester in trying to obtain a Master's degree. At this point in my life, I have nothing to lose. The most I'll get out of it is trying to expand my knowledge with computers.

Thursday night was spent at Lindsey and Chris's house having dinner with them. They have a nice little apartment and one trained little gerbil. We ate, talked, and played with the gerbil. It was quite fun to do something like that. We also watched some TV, like all of David Beckham's time in the soccer game. We were really wanting to watch some baseball. It made me wish I had my own place. That's why I'm so torn about the Master's degree. I want it, but I want my own life, too. Decisions, decisions!

I've been listening to a lot of 80s music lately. As a result, I ordered Chicago - Greatest Hits: 1982-1989 on Amazon.com last night. I got it for about $4.00, including shipping. Cheaper than using iTunes. I mainly got it for "Along Comes a Woman." The 1980s were so simple for me. I lived up in Augusta; I was just a child. I didn't have to worry about college, money, and the lack of a love life. Oh to have that again!

[♪ Listening to:"Along Comes a Woman" - Chicago]

The Thursday Threesome: Swimming Pool Pumps

Onesome: Swimming-- along? Do you swim? Can you swim? Do you like to swim? Do you have a place to swim? I'm drowning in questions here <g>! I love to swim! I can swim. I repeated swim class in college because I loved it so much. That and the professor said I'd get an A the second go around if I took it for a grade. If I could get all 3 of my PE credit hours in swimming, I'd do it. I took the intermediate swim class, instead of the more popular beginning class. I wish the pool at school had reasonable hours.

Twosome: Pool--? ...or billiards? Have you played either one? ...or would you like to learn? I know how to play 8-ball and 9-ball, but I suck at the game. I don't play it often enough. The last time I played it was when the ACM Council was downtown. We did team play, and my team sucked. It was my fault. Also, didn't help to have Pool Shark Joey playing.

Threesome: Pump--ing iron: is that in your reps? ...or does the thought of that style of working out just do you in? Inquiring minds and all that... We did weight training in middle school! 5^th and 6^th graders! I hated it.

In other news, I've got an ACM meeting today related to our upcoming Welcome Back cookout. Later, in the evening, I'm going to Lindsey's house to have dinner with her and her husband. We'll probably play some game afterwards, like we do at Melissa's house.

[♪ Listening to: "You Might Think" - The Cars on .977 The '80s Channel]

"Eternal Flame"

I can recall my mother learning this song on the piano. It was 1989, before we moved to North Carolina. I can't believe I was 10! Looking back, I feel like I was younger than that in our time in Augusta. My year didn't really start until the time at Bragg. I'm digressing, again. I have a habit of doing it.

My mother played the piano. She wasn't a professional, but she played it at our Catholic Church. After a few years of my mother playing, the priest went out and hired a guy with a degree to play and dropped my mother. My mother ended up getting a laugh out of it. It got to the point she was the only one that could play for the children's service on Christmas Eve. Seems the professional the church hired couldn't do it! So, she played the organ for Christmas Eve mass the last few Christmases in Augusta.

Because she played the piano and her church service, when someone we knew or one of their friends needs piano services, they came to my mother. In the case of "Eternal Flame," it was a song chosen for a wedding of friend of one of my mother's friends. And my mother was hired at the pianist/organist. As a result, my mother spent many a days up until that wedding playing "Eternal Flame" on the piano. Nicki, when we were home, would sing along. "Eternal Flame" became on of Nicki's favorite songs.

I miss my mother's piano playing.

[♪ Listening to: "Suddenly" - Billy Ocean on .977 The '80s Channel]

Any One Can Have A Bad Photo

It just sucks when the school decides to use it for the header image for Financial Aid. Poor Aric. I visited the Financial Aid site this afternoon for something I needed to do. I looked at the people pictured to see if I knew any of them. These are real students. Well, 2 of them just graduated. One girl is a girl I've taken several classes with, like English and Women's Ethics. The guy pictured is Aric. Personally, I don't think it's a flattering photo of him. It's not the glasses. I've got a few photos of him in his glasses from last year. It could be it's not flattering because it doesn't look like him. It took me a minute to even realized it was him. However, this little site just comes to show that any one can have a bad photo. I'm glad I'm not a school model.

Prior to going to school this morning, I stopped at Wal-Mart and got some new shoes. My shoes went missing. I can't wear flip flops all day. The skin between my big and index toes hurt on my right foot. I needed sneakers. I got them, plus some makeup removing wipes. After that stop, I stopped at Lake Mayer for a few minutes. I got a few shots and left. It was just too hot.

My time at school was spent working on completing a form for my Senior Project. It works as it needs to work. If it makes no sense to add a person to the database, say having a birth date of February 30^th, it yells at you until you fix it. Birthdays must be logical. Forget to place a name in the boxes? Yells that you need a name. I think I got the few things that needed to be done on that form done. I also developed the coding to list all the members in the database in table, along with their addresses. I'll add the phone numbers tomorrow. That won't be too hard to do at all. The hard part was getting the cities and states from different tables.

Tomorrow's big project is to the develop the edit members form. Using the code I did for ACM, I'm using that and the add members code to work on the Senior Project form. But, tomorrow. I've done enough work today. I figured the look of the site can be created at the end. At the moment, it's getting the actual PHP code needed for the project to work. I left markers in the code to denote where to add the includes for the look when I finish.

Lindsey told me today about the English class she's taking ths fall. Not only is it a class I've taken before, it's the same professor. As a result, I have many of the books she needs for it. I told her I'd lend her mine. I also told her how the class was like so she would know what to do.

[♪ Listening to: "Baby I'm-a Want You" - Bread on That 70’s Channel]

I Failed the Fire Drill Today.

Well, there wasn't a fire drill at school today. The fire alarm did go off, however. I was busy in the bathroom when it happened. They believe it going off was heat-related. I figured it was a false alarm. I did not rush to get out of the bathroom. It wouldn't have been pretty. I figures if there was a real fire, it was probably safer for me to be in the bathroom and break the window in it than it was to leave.

I showed my advisor the work I did for the ACM. He asked me some questions about it. I told him I threw it together in 3 days, so I didn't have a chance to place in redundancy checks he wanted. I did notice I lacked a delete button on the edit page. It was very simple to add the delete button. I spent the rest of my time at school today working on my database and working with arrays in PHP. I can across trouble with a 2D array. I can call information from the database and store it into a 2D array no problem. My echos showed that. However, when I called my 2D array later, I could recover half my information and not the other half. The second field in each array element would print 1 letter of the names stored and that's it. It's not too big of a deal; I can had 2 1D arrays for my project. I just rather have the 2D array.

On my way home, I stopped by Sam's to get some gas. My sister's Sam's card no longer works. I needed some gas. My car was on empty. I called my dad to come out to let me use his card. It took me 4 different bank cards before I could get gas. My 2 cards and my dad's card from one bank did not work. It took my card from my other bank to work. I don't know. I filled my car up. I am getting better at driving that thing!

And for Savannah, it was a HOT day. In fact, it was cooler outside when the fire alarm went off at school than it was when I got gas. My dad and I are wilted. Tomorrow's going to be another scorcher as well.

And Gennie's got the Savannah Blogger Meetup up on Upcoming. If you can make it, we'd love to see you!

[♪ Listening to: "Electric Youth" - Debbie Gibson]

Little Red Hen Syndrome

At the moment, I'm feeling like the Little Red Hen. It's not one facet of my life causing me to feel this way; it's my whole life. At times, I feel like no one wants to help me. I'm also feeling like no matter what I do, someone always has a problem with it. I feel like telling everyone to piss off. If you don't like it, do it yourself. I'm trying my hardest to get things done. Now, I have gotten a few thank yous for things done, but they seem few and far in between these days. I'm tired of me having to be the flexible person. Someone flex for me, once.

I have spent 2 hours trying to install a trial version of the latest Flash program. It should not take me that long. I need Flash for a part of my Senior Project. I have to edit a part of the project because it's not colorful enough. I'm not the best graphics designer person. I wouldn't be bothered by it, except the situtation of the Flash is getting to me. Students don't have $2,000.00 for the software we're expected to know and use for our upper-level classes. I was lucky I spent $400.00 on Dreamweaver. I figured it was the best bargain of them all. Once I get this POS installed, I'll feel better once I get this work done.

I did get something done that needed to be done. I got the membership management infterface done for ACM on Friday. It's not chock full of features, but it allows one to add, edit, e-mail, and list members. I did get a thank you from the person that needs it when I finished it. I plan on showing it to my Senior Project advisor this upcoming week. I want him to see that I have learned things for my project over the summer, and I did put them into production. With the way my schedule is this semester, I can spent my Fridays on coding and finishing the project. The ACM thing is my code from the work I've done so far on Senior Project. Only fair to take it back for Senior Project. The sad thing is while it's going to be functional, it's not going to look too pretty. Like I said, I'm not a graphical person.

The other day, I was looking over Wikipedia. I found an entry on behind the sofa. While it's British slang, I can relate to it! When I was younger, I would literally hide behind the sofa when The Joker's Wild or The Incredible Hulk came on TV. Glad to see I'm not alone! Something about that couch was comforting.

Now back to work.