So there’s been a lot of random things on my mind lately.

Right now, I’m pissed off at US Airways. I did their online check-in (which, BTW, is way too complicated for being check-in) and went to print my boarding passes. Hm… something screwed up with their page and I can only print my boarding pass from Denver to Pittsburgh. Oh well, not big deal, let’s try that again.
…
Oh, so I can’t check-in again because “a member of your party has already checked-in; please check-in and recieve boarding passes at the airport.” Um, what? Okay, getting past the stupidity of that, then there must be a “reprint boarding pass option.”
…
Nope. Well, damn.
Why can’t all airlines be like Southwest?

Also been thinking a lot about college and how it changes people. I dunno… I remember when I was sitting here a little less than 2 years ago, excited as hell (but nervous as hell) to be heading off to college. I remember arriving there and feeling invinsible… like I could do anything. It was a brand new start for me (just like when I moved here from CO), and I felt confident… like I could leave behind who I was in high school and become who or what I always wanted to be.
And, of course, you can’t really do that. You can only change who you are gradually. It’s unreasonable to expect yourself to be able to suddenly become the opposite of what you were.
At the same time, it’s also unreasonable to expect nothing to change. It’s a different environment. You’re with different people. If you were well-known by everyone… well… you’re not anymore. If you were the loner who sat in the corner by himself, you won’t have much of an opportunity to do that at Orientation.
So I guess a big part of heading to college for me was finding the right balance of the two, and I have to say I think things worked out pretty well. I’m not nearly as bold or outgoing as I envisioned myself being. At the same time, I’m not the same shy-but-popular-in-a-geeky-way kid I was in high school. And I think I’m really happy with that. I mean, yes, there are still things about me I’d change, but I can work on those. I don’t expect things to suddenly change overnight the way I did before.
Meh.
Anyone else have similar experiences?

It’s also amazed me how much I’ve learned in the past 2 years. I mean, I got back and was able to talk to my dad about a lot of the work he’s doing (he’s an engineer at Intel; not sure what area). I actually know more than him now in some areas (CS areas though, obviously). Some of the stuff I’m learning was stuff he did in graduate work.
I wrote up a page of major programming projects (on my CMU page) yesterday, and a lot of the stuff is actually quite impressive. I mean, how many freshmen get to write a photomosaic program, solve the Kevin Bacon problem (ick), write various compression algorithms, and write a (primitive but functional) AI? What about design a processor from scratch using nothing but NAND gates? And who could forget the auto-cannibal maker?
Even stuff that I’ve done this year… malloc, the caching web proxy, buffer bomb, and the Sudoku-solver… when you think about it, those are non-trivial problems. The fact that they’re giving them to us as sophomores says something as to the quality of education here. I mean, hell, the fact that OS is a sophomore/junior level course says something.

A lot of people told me, as I was deciding on my undergrad university, that it’s grad school that really matters. Undergrad is insignificant and where you go isn’t important. You know what? I disagree completely. I think that, at least for me, undergrad is the most important. I mean, really, all grad schools are the same. You’re going to be researching stuff you’re interested in. Sure, having more resources at your disposal might be helpful, but really, is that going to make or break your thesis?
Undergrad, on the other hand, is where you learn all the skills necessary for your (eventual) career. For me especially, since I plan to go into the workforce immediately after I get my BS, it’s even more important. Plus coming from a good undergrad school undoubtedly has some effect on what grad schools you’re accepted to (if you’re into that kind of thing).
So yeah. All of you who said I should go to UofA because undergrad doesn’t matter–you were wrong :-P
Curious what other people think as to this as well.

Oh yes, I promised pictar.

Using up printing quota FTW!