Some of the work I've been doing for the private company I work for (I work part time for a private company and part time for the University), has been making demos of some of the software we work on. Rachel has even helped me out, here is our latest one:

I don't think I ever blogged about this, so I will now that Winter term is over. All of my complaints about homework and take home midterms/finals this last term came from the most dreaded CS (computer science) class for graduates at the UO, 621: Algorithms, especially when taught by Andrzej (which it was). He thinks that if a problem takes him 10 minutes to think about, then it shouldn't take us any longer than an hour or two...

The take home midterm had a due date of Monday (at noon), and was probably going to be given on Wednesday, but after a couple of delays, it was finally given out Friday afternoon. He had mentioned that he was making extension deals with people who had things going on over the weekend, so I tried this:

Hello Andrzej,

I'm not sure if my situation merits an extension or not, but here it is:

Due to work/other group meetings, I can work on the midterm today, tomorrow afternoon, and Monday before class. Sunday is sacred to me, and I do not do any work on it (for which I've been very blessed).

From what you said, I should have enough time, but from former students I hear that I will need more... So if you think Tuesday at noon is an acceptable extension, I'll take it.

Thanks,
Anthony


and I got this back:

Sure, you can get a religious exemption -- as long as you keep your Sabbath and do not work on Sunday.

Andrzej


In another class, I was working in a group and one of my friends (who was also in my algorithms class) kept bugging me about how I couldn't meet with them on Sunday to work on the project. So I forwarded Andrzej's email to him saying "now you wish you were Mormon!"

So, in closing, I think I've said this before, but I really have been blessed since I stopped doing any homework on Sunday - I've only received one grade lower than an A, an A- (though I have taken classes pass/fail - as you can take a few of your classes as such - and one of my physics classes would have been scary!).

There is a chance that I won't have a job at the end of Summer (the grants I've been working on are finishing up - and unless more are approved, I won't have any work). So I've been applying to a few places, we'll see what happens. But Rachel hopes I don't find anything, as that would force me down the path of graduating in the Fall (as opposed to Winter or Spring). It would have to be a job that either paid well or gave me the experience I need to get a job that does in order to make it worth dragging school out. Anyway, if we save our tax refund, we could live off of it while I finish up in the Fall (though we would need to take out loans for tuition, which will run us 5K - and I'm a resident!).

Only 11 or so Mondays and it'll be Summer! In other news: it was the first day of Spring term today - this term might be worse than last...

Jacob did a great job giving his first talk in primary (because Rachel prepared him so well). Rachel gave him one picture at a time, which he held up and said a sentence on; it went something like this:

(holding a picture of president Monson)

This is president Monson, he's our prophet

(holding a picture of Joseph Smith's first vision)

He talks to Heavenly Father

(holding a picture of an ear)

If we listen to him, we can know

(holding a picture of Jesus)

that Jesus Christ is our Savior

(holding a picture of a family)

how to help our family

(holding a picture of the Earth)

how to help the Earth

(not holding any picture)

I know that this is true, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

He did awesome (which means that Rachel did awesome). When we were doing FHE this evening, I was showing some pictures with my lesson. One of the pages I wasn't using had an Earth on it, when Ethan saw it, he said "how to help the Earth... that's what Jacob says" - which is another testament of how much Rachel practiced with Jacob.

And just to end my random nonsense: we started FHE singing "Families can be Together Forever" and ended by eating some crepes. When we were eating the crepes, Jacob was singing the line "I have a family here on Earth, they are so good to me" - but with "family" replaced with "crepes". It was pretty funny, but maybe you had to be there.

And as one final note, I'm starting to abandon the period inside the quotation; i.e., "crapes". in favor of "crapes." - even though I'm not sure I want to fully embrace the Queen's English. What do you think? (Maybe I'm too tired and should go to bed before this drags out any further.)

It's Spring break! but it really isn't that exciting as I need to work a ton this week to make up for the last couple of weeks (in the which I've been finishing up a final project and two take home finals). I really just want to play Warcraft III... speaking of which, I see that beta testers are releasing videos of Starcraft II on youtube.

Ethan and Jacob have been in their beds for about 10 minutes. About 5 minutes ago Ethan started saying "mmoooomm" over and over again. Rachel told him to go to bed (as she was feeding Makaylin and I figured I'd just let him give up). After Rachel told him to stop, he did. So I went up to check on them, and he gave me his sad story about how he wanted mommy and I told him that I know he does, but that she isn't coming up as it's night-night time. I gave the boys kisses and as I was leaving Ethan said, in his little grumpy voice: "you're giving me a headache."