The big news is that Kirsti and I are expecting our first child in August of this year. :D Getting to where we are now and guaranteeing that our child won’t have to deal with the genetic condition that I carry has been quite a story, a far more lengthy one than probably serves to tell in a random blog post. It’s been a real roller coaster, but things are smooth now and we’re both terribly excited for August to arrive. Getting a reasonable (not too big, not too small) tax refund this year courtesy of work-related courses being tax advantaged has helped considerably to defray some of the start up expenses of having a kid.
Compilers last fall was crazy awesome. Great professor, exciting material, ended up doing very well. My only regret is that we didn’t get farther into things like implementing GC, interpreters, VMs, etc. I guess that’s what an advanced or graduate course would serve for. Operating systems this spring is a little less enthralling. I’m still enjoying learning new things, but the book isn’t quite as good and the professor has never taught a course before. So far I’m doing well regardless, but I also haven’t had many grades come back yet so I’m not counting my chickens just yet.
Kirsti is working as an adjunct professor at the local community college, teaching two classes. Thankfully the commute is trivial, less than a mile, and her pay will serve to cover her dissertation tuition for the fall and spring as she will likely not be working. Her students sound like the usual mix; some are promising and some … are special. Naturally due to the applicable regulations I don’t know personal details about the kids in question, but some suitably anonymous stories are too ridiculous not to share I suppose. The one who thought continental drift was responsible for climate changes during human history was noteworthy.
I’m tackling a new project at work which is fairly interesting; it almost reminds me of the java I was working on for the ibank back in the day, but in a completely different domain and using a fairly radically different technology stack (Akka, Play, etc. vs. J2EE). I’ve also been learning a bit about Hadoop and its related ecosystem with a possible eye towards offering that as a service from our consultancy as well, which is pretty awesome. Sometimes I feel like there’s just not enough hours in the day to cram everything I want to learn into my head, but I realize that as problems go, that’s a good one to have.