Being CS

Welcome Back, It's been a While

Tomorrow is my birthday. Today it is two weeks since I'm in Vienna. My grades from last quarter were quite disappointing, and though I think that some of them are not quite justified, this confirmed that I completely overworked and overwhelmed myself. Last quarter, in some sense, felt like a disaster, after some of the things that happened to my group of friends and the immense amount of work and stress I had to deal with. But on the other hand Stanford is supposed to be a busy place, and I saw a lot of my friends more often than I might have imagined, and was very happy about the way things were going. Last quarters' room situation worked out amazingly well, and I think Albert, Donald and I managed life in a triple very well.

I tried to relax and "de-stress" over break, but things do not always work as planned. My driver's license exam is on Tuesday, and I've been driving four hours every day for the last two weeks. This has taken up a lot of my time, and sometimes made me feel like there are too many things to do and too little time. But I have also realized that such negative thinking is completely useless, and that the time has been, overall, amazing. I've been sleeping twelve hours everyday, spending time with Nora and my parents and reading.
Christmas was one of the best I have ever had, and it was the first time that I really bought presents for others, rather than just gotten stuff, and it made quite a difference. It also turned out that Nora and my dad bought me the same gift twice. This means that I know have 2 books on Zen gardens (What now Doug!) and 2 hard-to-describe hand-grip-training-devices. I also got a Matrix Revolutions poster, which raises my Matrix poster count to 4.

I saw Return of the King, and it changed quite a lot for me. To say it simply, the movie was amazing. I've been working on a review of Hacking Spiders for OSNews, which I will hopefully finish in the next few days. I have not had time to do any programming, mostly for lack of a computer.
Next quarter will be very different than the last one. I will have few units and courses, more time to concentrate on each course, and time to appreciate what I am studying rather than the wish to just finish something and work on something else. I will not try to fix other's problems anymore, but still be open for anyone to come talk to me. I will be more relaxed, and worry less, spend time with friends, and not get involved in big drama. There is enough drama and pain in the world as it is, and it is hard to avoid creating new one.
I've also been thinking about ways to decorate my room and redesign my blog. I've been feeling calmer and more relaxed but excited about doings things at the same time. I am looking forward to blogging again. This entry is not nearly long (or structured) enough to narrate the last two weeks or explain my thoughts, but I very much wanted to write something again. Some things to end this entry with: 1) Spidering Hacks has taught me a lot about the web. 2) I often worry too much. 3) Penny Arcade has been ridiculously hilarious lately.