A couple of things that I decided to get today that I had been needing for a while but never really thought to get: a flashlight and a toolbox.

Every once in a while I have required the use of a flashlight and never have had it on hand. I have had other small flashlights but I figured that if I were going to get one, I’d get one that could get run over by a Mack truck and still function properly. That’s right…a Maglite, baby! And I found it in a nice crimson, too.

Getting the flashlight made me think, as I was in Wal-Mart, that I really needed something to put all of my tools in. Most of my tools before this afternoon had resided in the bottom cubby of my Yaffa blocks, but not all of them. I needed a central location. And I found a nice-sized one (19″ by 12 1/2″, which is plenty big for me) for 10 dollars. So now my admittedly limited arsenal of tools has a permanent home.

Now, if I only had a reason to actually use the tools…

All of my Christmas shopping is done. My sister and brother-in-law (and their dog) have made it in safe and sound, and while the dog’s incessant yipping will mean little sleep for me tonight, it’s good to see them.

Tonight I went to Chad and Karen’s house for a get-together with some of the young adults in the church. I got to see Michelle Piper, who currently attends grad school at Alabama and goes to the BCM sometimes, as well. I gave my old Rubik’s cube for a white elephant gift (my new one moves more freely, so it’s not a big loss). We had a good time.

Tomorrow night — the Christmas Eve tradition that we’ve had for years. We’ll go over to my aunt’s house, eat, and play games until around midnight, at which point we’ll come back over here and sleep in on Christmas morning (except my sister and/or brother-in-law, due to the aforementioned dog). I have given some thought to going to see the Blue-Gray game since it’s only 30 minutes away, I’ve never gone before, and it’d be one last chance to see some Bama guys play this year. I doubt I’ll end up doing it, but you never know…

So, the other day I’m playing golf and in the process of a round I lose my 3-wood’s headcover. It’s not a big deal, really, in that it was just a plain blue muff with a 3 on the top, but it put me on the lookout for a new set of headcovers.

At first, I naturally looked at the Alabama headcovers, but I found that the best price that I could get for a set of three was a touch under $30. This seems a bit much for me right now. My discretionary income (what little there is) could best be spent in other ways. But in the process of looking around, I stumbled upon a site that lets you make headcovers with your own logo on them.

Now, admittedly, it’s even more expensive than the college ones. And I’d have to order at least 12 headcovers. But the whimsical part of me thinks it’d be really cool to have 1122 Productions-brand headcovers.

I caught a cold (which included some major sinus headaches) starting Thursday. It is only now going away. So I didn’t get anything accomplished school-wise. I lost the remainder of my energy 15 seconds into the Iron Bowl, only to get it back 15 seconds into the second half, only to lose it at the very end.

Of course, my sweetie isn’t here, although I do get to see her tomorrow (for almost a whole week!) when we make the trip to Bama for Thanksgiving. So things are looking up already.

Not a lot of updates recently, I know. But I have been very busy recently, and I haven’t had much time to do anything other than working on research and TA work. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even gone to my algorithms class in four weeks! I’m farther behind in that class than I’ve ever been before.

First, some will notice that the graphics on the front page of the site are a little bit different. This is due to my getting the latest version of Macromedia Fireworks, my graphics editor of choice. This was a little “birthday/I finally have money” present to myself. The problem is that the bottom of the menu graphic will look strange in IE. (Ed. Note: I have fixed this by changing the PNGs to 8-bit versions.) IE doesn’t support alpha transparency for 32-bit PNGs. Translating the technobabble, this means that Microsoft needs to fix their browser. If you look at it with a recent version of Netscape or Mozilla, you’ll notice that the graphics have nice, crisp edges, even against whatever background I might have in the theme. No more artifacts (read: little grayish areas right at the border). It looks really nice – just the way that I’ve always wanted it. You’ll also notice that the typeface on the graphics changed…I finally caved on this because I figure that most people wouldn’t have Calisto MT on their computers (I don’t on my laptop), but most do have Georgia, and with a little tweaking of the sizes, the type looks just as good.

Now, away from the techie-graphics talk, and on to real life. Teaching is still quite fun, if still a lot of work. I have come to the conclusion that I really do enjoy it, and so I feel better and better about it the whole time. I have a good class; I believe that has something to do with it. I’ve heard horror stories about people in other TA’s classes in the past; I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with that.

Research is slow, unfortunately. I have been trying to work on it, to no avail, for a while. I progressively got closer and closer but just couldn’t get my implementation to work. After a meeting today, my advisor and I have decided to see if we can hash out what’s going wrong by determining exactly how we believe the implementation should work in certain situations. I will be working on it tomorrow.

In apartment news, I am still undefeated in the Super Tecmo Bowl season, although it was not without a fight. I beat one of my roommates 33-28, but had to hold on after starting out up 30-7. It was almost an Alabama-Arkansas moment, but I held on and won. That being said, my defense is still pretty atrocious. I need to work on it…when I get time and stuff.

I won’t get to see Kelly again until next weekend, when we go to the Bama-Southern Miss game. I do miss her, even though we talk on the phone daily. Sometimes you just need to be near each other, and we both feel that way.

Last week, my computer’s battery decided to lose its capacity to hold charge. After much worrying about potentially losing data, a call to the good folks at HP was made, and I am now in possession of a new battery. My respect for them continues to grow…their tech support has always been great to me.

Well, I need to call my sweetie, so I’ll sign off for now. Enjoy the new look!

A few more quick notes from this past week, thrown in with some random randomness for all:

First and foremost, I’ve got to say that I’m really glad that ESPN finally debuted Playmakers tonight, because that means they’ll stop their advertising blitz, and if I hear that “She was rollin’ along” deal one more time, I think that I shall take a page from the Sports Guy and light myself on fire.

Speaking of which, I learned tonight that Omar Gooding is one of the actors on this show. Some of you might know him as Cuba Gooding, Junior’s brother. I knew him first though on the old Nickelodeon series Wild & Crazy Kids. It’s really weird seeing someone who used to get way too excited about kids in a giant pie fight playing a drug-addicted star running back. First Zack Morris, now this…I guess Annette Chavez and Donnie Jeffcoat weren’t available for comebacks. And, yes, I had to look up their names.

And now, to the life story; I’m now a second-year grad student officially, as I had my first class today. Well, the first one I wasn’t responsible for teaching, anyway. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be too bad. Even better, I was looking through my library of computer science books, and it turns out that I’ve already got one of the two books that we can use for the course, saving me somewhere on the order of $100 for a new one. I knew not selling my books back would come in handy one of these days…

Speaking of teaching, I’ve had one class so far, and all I had to do was the overview of the course. Nevertheless, I had like 12 people come up afterwards to ask questions. It’s really strange being the one fielding questions instead of asking them. I guess it’s just one more thing to get used to if I’m going to be a professor one day. I’ll be giving my first real lecture tomorrow…

A quick side note: 50-minute class periods are a lot easier to sit through when you’ve been through an entire summer’s worth of 65-minute periods.

Kelly’s doing well, and even better, she’s coming up to visit this weekend! The update has been changed accordingly. Huzzah!

Got to play golf for the first time in a while last night with a few guys from church. I shot 97 on a par 60, which isn’t that good, but is still my best-ever score relative to par. What’s more, I shot a 44 on the back 9 (par 30), far and away my best-ever effort relative to par. I had a stretch of six holes that I played at bogey or better. This doesn’t sound like much to the good golfers in the crowd, but it’s a big plus for me. Updated the golf page accordingly. I’m hoping that it will turn into a somewhat regular game…we all had a good time. I even got to see someone hit a ball twice on one shot and send it 20 yards behind him, which was a first. I couldn’t really laugh too much, though…he had the only two birdies of the entire foursome.

So that’s life in a nutshell over the last couple of days…I’ll try to keep updating, but I can’t promise anything. Life will continue to be pretty busy over the next few months, especially as my research efforts ramp up. But I’ve got to go for now. I’m exhausted.

Today I could write about any number of topics. I’ve made pretty good progress on my independent study this week. I’ve discovered the joys of Bayesian spam filtering, something that’s allowed me to wade through my spam a lot better than before. I could talk about the ideas that have been going through my mind for the next version of pressing on, and my ideas for site layouts.

On the non-computer side, I could talk about life with roommates for the first time since the 1122 days. I could discuss what I’ve been studying lately in the Bible (I Corinthians 12 and 14, after a few sermons on spiritual gifts at church got me thinking). I might even be able to discuss a little bit of football, seeing as it’s almost that time again.

But the thoughts that keep coming back to my mind are of my girlfriend, now five hours down the state of Florida from me.

She left today. I’ll be honest and somewhat sappy – there were tears shed. It’s kind of funny. I’ll see her in two, maybe three weeks from now. I didn’t see her for a longer period of time when she went to Turkey. But this feels different somehow. It feels more permanent, even though it’s really not – just a longer temporary time. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we’ll only be seeing each other every month or so.

I’ve got a good support group. My roommates will help me in my times of loneliness. The campus intern and his wife, just recently married, have done this exact thing before, for two years. They will certainly prove a good measuring stick for Kelly and I. I’ll be busy with work and church and BCM stuff, so I won’t have much time to dwell.

On the other hand, it’s going to be hard. There will be days where it will be difficult to find the time to call. But I know that it’s necessary, and more importantly, it’s something that I want to do. It won’t be easy during those times when I know that I won’t get to see her for a long time. But I know that God’s prepared both of us for this. I don’t doubt if we have faith that He’ll see us through.

I just got off the phone with her a couple of minutes ago (she called as I was writing the first part of this entry), and she’s doing fine, on day 1 of many to come where I learn from a phone call about how she’s doing. It was good to hear her voice, but it was tough knowing that that voice is so far away now.

I miss you already, my love.

First entry in the new digs. Of course, as now seems to be the case with me, a lot has happened since I’ve updated my site with any personal news, so let’s just perform a mental dump and see what we come up with.

Of course, we must start off with the move itself, and all that it entailed. I must say that I couldn’t have done it without assistance (and cars) of Kelly and the Henkel brothers, two of my new roommates. The process took an extremely long time; even spaced out over several days of packing, storing, and moving it was exhausting, especially toward the end.

But I’m here now, and for the most part I’m even unpacked. I decided to go with the “Alabama room” motif that I’ve used for my study room in the past here, and I like the overall effect. If I’d have had the time, I’d have probably painted the walls to get rid of some of the old marks, but it’s okay. The bookcases cover a large portion of the wall anyway. One of these days I’ll snap a couple of pics, but if you’ve ever seen my old “Alabama rooms” you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it looks like already; just imagine a full-size bed in there instead of a weight bench. That’s now located out on our porch.

Anyway, I still haven’t completely finished with the unpacking part. I’ve got one more trip out to the storage area to make with all of the remaining bins, most of which are, thankfully, empty. I’ll do that tomorrow after my meeting.

Went down to Brianna and Mike’s this weekend with Kelly, and we played Texas Hold ‘Em two nights. It’s a good thing that I don’t gamble for money, because I’m terrible at it. Got to see Precious and Mr. Guy there for a little bit as well, since they were also down. That’s nice, seeing as I probably won’t be seeing them again until October, at least.

Classes are now over until the 25th, and that’s something to be grateful for. This was a long summer. I had never taken summer classes as an undergraduate or an MBA student, so the whole thing felt more rushed to me. The final in my computer architecture class was a killer. Even after giving the class another 15 minutes to finish, no one turned their papers in before time was called, and the average in the class was a 66. The professor normally doesn’t scale, but he felt it might be best to do so here. An 80 became a 100, so my 76 looked pretty good on the curve. As a result, I got my A. I am very happy about this, as this ensures higher than 3.5 on my core courses, as long as I don’t fail algorithms. This would be a great thing if I were just a master’s student, because then I wouldn’t have to take the qualifying exam. As it is, I’ve got to whether I have a 3.0 or a 4.0 in the core courses. It’s part and parcel of the process.

I also finally have my committee formed, after much fear and trepidation. I had my committee chair for a while now, but so many things got in the way for a long time that I didn’t believe I’d get it done by the end of the semester. I finally rounded it out, with my outside-the-department committee member being a religion professor that Kelly’s had a couple of classes with. You can imagine how many eyebrows raised when they saw that signature.

Of course, I’ve been trying to spend a lot of time with Kelly in addition to all of this. Originally, she had planned to be at FAU by this time, but various problems in finding a place to live have postponed her departure. In a way, this has been a good thing; we’ve had a little longer to spend together before we don’t see each other for weeks at a time again. She’s actually down there as I type this; tomorrow she’ll be apartment hunting.

Well, I’ll stop here for the night. Just letting you all know that I’m alive, online, and doing well. But I’m also hungry. So that’s all for now.

At last, an update! My public demands that I make my presence known on the web again, so here we go.

The last few weeks have mainly been spent catching up on time with Kelly, since she’s about to be taken away from me again. 🙁 We’ve gone home and to Brianna and Mike’s, and this weekend we’re going to her home to celebrate her father’s birthday.

Schoolwise, things are proceeding okay…got a project due on Monday, but no other major news to report. You didn’t really come here to read my thoughts on school, right? You want pithy quotes and updates, dont’cha? Well, give the public what it wants, I suppose.

So, the Body For Life (take 3) thing is going reasonably well for both of us, except that my hamstrings are crying out to me whenever I decide to, I don’t know…move, and Kelly seems to have strained a ligament in her ankle or something. We decided to take the day off, exercise-wise. But I have definitely noticed a difference in the way I look, so that’s promising.

We’ve also played some golf recently. That’s right, kids…Kelly’s playing golf. (She’s on the Dark Side now, Ricky…MU-WAH-HAH-HAH!) She even went and bought some clubs. This weekend will include more golf, as her dad likes to play and Kelly’s buying a round for his present. Speaking of gifts, I received a nice one myself for our 6-month anniversary (yeah, yeah, I know…it’s not really an ANNIVERSARY when it’s only months…but it’s my web page, so nyah nyah)…a pull cart! This allows me to walk the course a lot easier (and it’s pretty nifty; it even came with its own water bottle!). So we tried it out last week, and to our surprise, actually did pretty well. I even made my second birdie of my golf career; updates are on the golf page. I also almost lost my wallet, but that’s another story…

I’ve also spoken for the youth out at FBC Alachua for the first time, and it didn’t seem to go too badly. I only saw someone yawn once. 🙂 It’ll be interesting in the fall, when I just have the high-schoolers to teach. Will I still be able to relate to people 10 years younger than I? Stay tuned…

Okay, so that’s about it. I hope that this satiates everyone’s desire for all things Brandon for a little bit, ’cause I’m going to be away this weekend. But until next time, stay frosty, kids.