First day.

This may be really borring, just skip to the end for the highlights.

First day of School! Not like 1st grade (because I am supporting James Bronder)

Left the house at 7:40 ish. It is about a 10 min. walk to the nearest bus stop. I ended up getting on the wrong bus. It got me to CMU, it was just the long way, and took some extra time. Once I got on campus I was supposed to meet my academic advisor at 9:30. Turns out he was working at home and forgot about the time, so he missed our meeting. I proceeded to wonder around campus, trying to find where all of the buildings are, and what is the best way to get around. At 10:30 my first ever class at CMU started, there were about 100 people in a room made for 75. 45 people were registered for the class, and there were 55 people on the wait list; I was part of the later group. The professor came up with a rather clever, and if I do say so, fair way to determine who would get to stay and who would leave. He gave everyone a pop quiz on material that would have been covered in the pre-requisite classes. If you were registered for the class and you did poorly, it was suggested that you drop the course (it was not mandatory, just strongly suggested). He would then determine who would be able to stay in the class as determined by the scores of the test. It was a Embedded real-time operating systems course, and with my knowledge from Dr. T's Embedded Course I did soso, not great, not too bad, but I don't think it will be good enough to get in to the class. So the labs in this class were going to be hacking in to a Smartphone kernel and writing your own code, it sounded super interesting.

"The Fence" - On my first day

Right after class I tried to find a spot to eat my sandwich, but it was raining, so I had to retreat to inside of the Gates Center. I greatly enjoyed just sitting and not thinking about anything other than the tasty morsel I was eating. After this I headed back to my advisor's office to try to catch him, which I did. We had a long conversation about both of us and what direction I should go. He currently has a game plan for getting me a position as a research fellow this summer, I will tell you all if anything happens with this potential opportunity. He was sympathetic as to my course conundrum, but he cannot really do much for me other than guidance. Over all the meeting was awesome, very informative, and I like the guy.

Art in the Gates Center - It's Me!

Now I had a bunch of time to kill, I think I got done talking to my advisor 2 ish. I tried to talk to the professor of the first class, just to get a feeling for where I stood in the class, I still don't think I am getting in. After Hunting down the right person I gained access to the Graduate Study area. It is in the basement of the Civil Engineering building, it is a little hard to find, but a great space. This is the first time that I saw a computer that I could use, only to find out that I needed a different password than the one I thought I had. Turns out they e-mailed it to us. Well without being able to log on, how should I find this password? Some kind guy let me borrow his laptop for a sec and I was able to get the password I needed. I was able to register for one more class (one that I am not sure if it counts for my degree) and get on the wait list for another. I killed enough time here so that I could leisurely try to find all of the professors that I am wait listed for. Let me tell you CMU is ridiculous to get around. The part of campus that the engineering part is on is really hilly, so you walk in to one part and go up a floor that connects to a sky walkway that leads you in to another building, then you go down a set of stairs and walk in to another building then go up 4 levels just to find something. It is crazy! and of course the engineering and computer science departments are spread across 6 or so buildings. Needless to say I got my allotment of walking in today. I made it to my second class, this was 35 or so people trying to fit in to a room with 15 seats. Eventually people took seats from the adjacent room. I was on a wait list for that, but it looks like I will be able to enroll soon.


Not so surprisingly after this class, at 5:20 I was ready to get out of there. I made it on to a bus and got home with no problems. Debriefed with my mother on the long walk home (lol, it is up hill, I was out of breath the whole way). Then enjoyed a nice piece of left over pizza with Larry. After dinner I went up to my man-loft and watched some LOST while enjoying some chocolate that Jamie gave me. It has been a very relaxing evening, but a very stressful day.

Pros:
Got to meet my advisor, he seems like an awesome guy
Mapping out CMU, I am getting the hang of how to get around
Great Sandwich
Making it home

Cons:
Super frustrating bureaucracy, with little help from the administrative staff
Not getting in to any classes
Getting on the wrong bus
Wrestling with the obscure CMU campus (at least it was good exercise)
Thinking that I should have just stayed in the Tri