Homecoming Weekend

Well I was not on campus, as a matter of fact I wasn't even in Gainesville, for homecoming this year. Instead I was attending the ACM ICPC Southeast Regional (a programming competition for college students). We took four different teams this year. It was my first time going and I didn't do all that well on the placement test so as a result I ended up on the 4th team. At the competition we managed to answer 3 of the 10 questions and finished 21st out of abut 62 teams. Also we beat the 3rd team. Our school's first team answered 5 questions and got 2nd place (the fist place team also answered 5 questions), while our 2nd team answered 4 question and I am sure that they were in the top 10. Overall I believe that we did very well, considering we were with out the aid of the C++ STL and Java API refernce sites which we were promised.
Any case, it is time to prepare for next year's competition. My goal is to be on the fist team and get 1st place.

Comfortable in an Open World

Now when I use my laptop I mostly boot into Ubuntu Hardy (8.04). The only time I boot into Windows Vista (which I still think is a better OS than XP) is when I need to use MATLAB. However, this is becoming more of a rarity since I have started using Octave and have become quite comfortable with its interface. In addition I find that compiling and running programs is much easier under Ubuntu. I suppose I could set it so that it is just as easy under Vista but that would require some work. All of the applications I use on Ubuntu are Open Source, with the exception of Adobe, and this is only because I find that it is considerably better than any of the Open Source aternatives I have found thus far. I used to have WINE installed but removed it once I realized that I had no need for it sicne it could not install MATLAB and I'm not much of a gamer so really everything I need can be done with Linux compatable programs.

As far as programming goes I have started using Java. It isn't that difficult to pick up since I know C/C++ it just takes a little getting used to. I might go back and try to convert some of the solutions I did for SPOJ problems and convert them to solutions in Java (they are all in C++). Learning a new language really can't hurt since there are some problems I see and am like "I know how to do that but I can't fit the necessary data into as a long long (64 bits) is C++, if only I could use Java's BigInteger."

Next week is the South East Regional Programming Competiton for ACM. Wish me luck. I feel pretty prepared, I have a grasp of most of the basic algorithms we coverd. It is just coming up with the correct data structures to use that is giving me problems now, but that should soon be fixed.

Post 100 and about 900 days later

Well this is post #100.
Unlike other post this one will be dedicated to someone (you will know who you are after reading).

I know you have done nothing to deserve what I am doing (well that's not entirely true but this isn't the place to discuss that). I just want you to know that it was a wonderful 3 years and a portion of my life I will not easily remove from my memory. In that time you became one of my best friends, if not the best friend. But that isn't enough for me anymore so I am saying goodbye.