Apparently Ovid never heard of Clark’s Laws:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I’m sure people thought the same thing about black powder, mechanical engines, computers, TVs, and well basically everything else that has ever graced his lifetime. Remember Ovid, there was a point in time when structured programming reigned supreme.

Since it’s New Year’s Eve, I figured I’d reflect on what I accomplished for 2008 and what I expect out of 2009. If you’re not into these “year-end wrapup” type of posts, just scroll over to Slashdot now.

In 2008, my main goals were to re-evaluate my graduate school plans, finish a half-marathon in 2 hours, run a 5K in 25 minutes, and buy a house. I am pleased to report that I succeeded in most of my goals.

I took the Database Systems qualification exam in the Spring and passed. That was a major hurdle in my willingness to continue taking them and pursuing something beyond a Masters. I also took the Data/Text Mining for Computational Biology this Fall and await the grade (on pins and needles). If I pass that exam, I am 2/3rds of the way to completing that requirement.

I have not run a half-marathon this year. I wanted to do the DRC Half again, but decided against it due to my educational requirements. I have a half marathon on January 25 that I’ve always wanted to do, the 3M Half Marathon. Let’s hope for the best (likely target is 2:05).

During the RunOn! McKinney holiday social run, I finished the 5K course in 25:22. There were about 40 people, nearly twice as many, and I came in with the lead pack. In fact, I was the fourth one to finish. That’s a rather impressive time for me considering I struggled to maintain a 9:00 pace last year. It’s not an official time, but I’m still going to count it until I do another 5K and can beat that time.

In October, we bought a house; well, technically it was in September. We had been wanting to buy a house for nearly 3 years. We aggressively saved, struggled through having to buy a car, unemployement, paying for graduate school, and huge tax payments. We are now the proud owners of a nice home (3/2/1, 2000 square feet). It requires more work and more money, but it beats living in an apartment any day of the week. I will eventually get some pictures up (one thing at a time).

So what do I expect out of 2009? Well, I hope to accomplish just as much. My better half will should be a CPA this time next year and I will be nearly complete of the Masters program. I also hope to be moving towards the PhD program, possibly look into other universities.

I think next year we will get a dog for the empty dog house out back. We might also consider having rugrats of our own, but we don’t want to be neglegent parents (with school’s demand). We’ll have to see how that pans out, her biological clock is ticking loudly.

I want to do a half matarthon in 2:00 and finish a 5K in 23 minutes. I would like to travel to do a race as to keep things fresh. There are still no marathon plans yet because I haven’t grown bored of the half; plus the training for the half allows me ample time for my many pursuits.

Lastly, I intend on committing more effort to my faith. Since I have no problem waking up at 6am to run, I have no excuse to not make early service on Sunday. I won’t make a lofty goal like I did with the Daily Bible. Keep it simple and you’ll surely succeed.

Anyways, I have to finish celebrating the New Year and so should you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

I just wanted to post yet another heads up to anyone out there. This weekend, I will be making the final move of the office equipment from the old apartment into the new house. Today, the new house was connected, thus how I am finally able to post something. I signed up for Time Warner Cable’s 10Mbs package and I’m rather disappointed I can’t see anywhere near the the full speed (only about 2/3rd’s the speed of the u-verse connection).

Anyways, don’t be alarmed, the webserver, router, and workstation will be setup in my newly painted office this weekend. I’m tempted to install a second and third network card into the file server and run the router system through a virtual machine. That may have to wait until another weekend when I have a sliver of free time; right now every ounce of free time is spent either unpacking or on schoolwork.

No rest for the wicked.

Wow, has it been that long since my last posting? Well, I have a good excuse. For the last few months, the wife and I have been trying to make a big change in our lives and it finally culminated last Friday.

Back in July, I called a realtor and we started the process for searching for a new home – our first home. We weren’t looking for anything special: one-story, 3-4 bedrooms, and moderate backyard. We were open to various neighborhoods in Dallas: McKinney, Allen, Frisco, Plano, and Rockwall. We spent our weekends seeing upwards of six homes a day. The weekends were draining, especially since I was working overtime as well. One trip to Rockwall ruled it out; it was too rural for me. Plano never seemed interesting. Frisco was too far away from work for me. Allen is expensive unless you live in the “shady” part of town. McKinney seemed like a good middle ground.

It may seem like a strange time to buy a house, what with all of the complete financial market meltdown, but what seems like a bad market to some is really a good investment opportunity to others. We met with a Chase bank representative and setup a loan. We had actually planned and saved for the last three years. After running through the ammoritization tools and calculating things by hand time and time again, we knew exactly what we were able to afford. Our lender was amazed at how much work we had done to prepare. Our hardwork paid off later.

After seeing approximately 60 homes, we invited our parents up to see our top 5 homes. They pointed out a few things we hadn’t noticed. We talked about them for hours and hours. Finally, we settled on a house and wrote the offer. After waiting for 4 days, the sellers decided they didn’t want to sell their home after all. The home was taken off the market and we were back to square one.

Twenty homes later, we finally found something we both loved. It had wood floors, nice backyard, granite countertops, 3 bedrooms, a study, was in an established neighborhood, and was in good condition. The price was in the ballpark; the floors and kitchen were upgraded to our liking. Overall, it was what we were looking for from the beginning. It had only been on the market for two days and we made an offer and started the process.

The selling agent went on vacation after listing the house, so we were left to deal with her mother. This woman became the selling agent as the listing agent was away for a majority of the negotiations; she quickly became a major hassle. The buyers were working on buying a forclosure and were having trouble dealing with the bank. They procrastinated, fudged the contract, and gave us grief. The selling agent changed a counter offer contract after the sellers signed it. They quibbled over small things like the refridgerator and demanded a 3 day lease-back.

Finally, we finished the contract and scheduled the inspections. All of the inspections came back without any issues (we of coarse we went to our own inspectors). We asked for a few minor things to be fixed that could be potentially hazardous. The financing was finished and we were set for our final walk-through. Unfortunately, they had chosen not to do one of the repairs.

Our lender waited until the last second to finish their paperwork but it cost us about $800 less in the end. When we got to closing, I was pretty pissed off about the repair the sellers refused to do. We kept our end of the contract and closed in 2 hours. The title closer kept receiving phone calls. Turns out the selling agent was trying to prevent the title company from releasing the keys to us before the lease was over. This was audacious and we took them anyways.

Our agent worked very hard for us. She did what I would expect of an agent. She was understanding and patient. Considering that we looked at nearly every home for sell in the area, patience was a virtue. She stuck up for us when the selling agent was being a pain in the ass too. All in all, I would absolutely recommend her to other people.

So after the house was funded, we received a call from our realtor informing us that the listing agent had incorrectly listed the house as being part of the community with access to a pool. Under the threat of legal counsel, the selling and listing agent agreed to do the repair, give us a handwritten letter of apology, hire a maid service, and write a $1000 check for a washer and dryer. I didn’t care about the pool, so I was very pleased to be saving even more money ($800 off closing, plus $400 our lender owes us for trying to double dip a fee, plus this $1000 makes for $2200 in savings).

So we’re in the process of moving, changing services, and preparing for ownership. We own our first home now! We had been saving for 4 years and it finally happened. No more stairs, no more balconies, no more loud neighbors, no more full parking lots, and no more living on inches away from your neighbors. This is going to be fun.

I had originally planned a much more tasteless title for this post, but in light of recent events, I had to change it.

So I spent the last few weeks feverishing working on my Database Systems work. I had a project due, an overly lengthy assignment due the following day, and the final exam the following week. As if that weren’t enough, I had decided this was going to be the exam I was going to give one more shot at, so I signed up for the qualifier. That was yesterday.

Let’s see, after I received an A in the Databases class, I took 7 days off total to study for the qualifier. I spent an average of 8 hours a day studying. I rewrote all of my lecture notes into a huge pile of flash cards, about 200 of them. Then I reread the book (2 and a half times total). Then I worked through all of the problems that had solutions available. Then I worked though other university exams. I found this treasure trove of tests for similar qualifiers over at Stanford. University of California at Berekely had a nice stash of exams as well (few mistakes though). I practiced working under time constraints. I polished my SQL skills though there are MANY ways to answer problems usually.

In the end, the exam was over before I knew it. 90 minutes was barely enough time to come up with answers, not to mention check my work for mistakes, which were bound to be made. Plenty of people were still there with about a minute left. I’m really hoping that other people had a hard time finishing, even though there were only 4 problems. I also found out there were several people (of the large 18 person group taking it) who had not just taken the course. They all had studied material from the reading list the professor said would not be on the exam (decided to exclude it and I asked him about it). I wasn’t too surprised about the questions, but I’m hoping the other students were.

The reason why I had to change the title of this post was because I originally was going to name it “Another One Bites The Dust.” Last week, I finalized my plans to make a surprise visit to see my grandmother, aunts, and mother in Kansas for their Mother’s day get-together. However, in the last few days, my grandmother’s health has taken a serious turn for the worse. She’s dying of many complications, but she is unable to fight off pneumonia right now. My aunts all decided to remove the oxygen supply and let her pass away. They took her off today and she is likely to pass within the next few days. Her birthday is on the 18th.

I might have to fly out a little early tomorrow, depending on my grandmother’s health. Meanwhile, Sunshine has traveled to the last of rising stars (LA) to be with her friend for graduation. I have the house all to myself and all I want to do is watch Detroit crush Dallas, again.

Today I turned 26. I am almost half my parent’s age, and I was born at 1:15 PM on a Cinco de Mayo. Today was a surprisingly good day.

It started off by getting a surprise from sunshine. She apparently hurried while I was out running yesterday (amazing weather) and blew up over a dozen balloons and placed them in my car. She also put my birthday card in there as well. She pulled a fast one on me; I’m impressed she did it without raising any suspicion. She also informed me that I will be receiving a pair of custom Oakley sunglasses (I’ll be getting the polarized black iridium with carbon fiber frame) to make my summer a great one.

I missed the vanpool, but I found my grade in my Database Systems class. I received an 88 of 100 on the final (to match my 80 of 100 on the midterm), which beat the average by 14 points. I was basically gauranteed an A at that point, which I was informed of when I met with my professor. We discussed the material for the qualification exam and he is omitting the material I understood the least!

Unfortunately, on the way to the campus, I had to break up a fight. You’re probably thinking, “who would I catch fighting?” As I waited at a stop light near campus, I saw one guy beating the holy snot out of a smaller guy. When I say beating the tar out of him, I mean the smaller guy had been hit so much and so hard he couldn’t keep his balance and actually fell into traffic. I pulled over and yelled at the guy doing the thrashing to stop and it became clear he had a serious case of ‘roid rage. Even though he was trying to talk to me, he was yelling. The smaller guy’s face had litterally been beaten to a pulp. If another guy and myself hadn’t stopped it, there would have and may still be, a death because of this. The smaller guy climbed out of what we thought was his car and into the car next to it and drove off while we were calling 911. The cops never showed and neither guy had stuck around. I hate to think the smaller guy died of such a bad head injury.

My family made sure to call me just after sunshine and I enjoyed some killer home-made Mexican food. We stayed in and enjoyed some House on TV.

Lastly, I just found out that Nine Inch Nails has released a new album. To make things even sweeter, when you register, you can receive the FLAC copy completely free of charge! What other musicians do that?! I have finished downloading the FLAC (not the MP3) version as I type this.

Happy birthday to all of you out there who had a birthday, and congratulations Mexico on the sweet victory over the French.

So I now have finished CS 6375 Machine Learning, with the exception of the final exam. This marks the 12th credit of 33 required credits towards my masters degree. I also found out that they are changing the PhD qualification exam policy, so I’m not really sure what I am going to do in that regard.

Today is Thanksgiving and right now, the thing I am most thankful for is rest. I desperately need some time off that does not involve studying or working around the house. I decided to make today one of those days and it has been extremely peaceful. We decided to have a quiet dinner by ourselves this year. I started a fire in our fireplace since the temperatures dropped by about 40 degrees in 2 days, and we have been sitting around the living room all day.

I also went out for a run today to start getting acclimated to the cold weather run in preparation for this year’s Too Cold Too Hold 5K. Last year, I won my age group, so I’d like to repeat that performance. Starting in December, I’m going to follow the Ryan Hall Half Marathon training plan in hopes of reaching the elusive sub-2-hour half marathon.

I don’t really have any other news to report other than I wanted to express my gratitude for a day of solitude.