{"id":884,"date":"2007-05-20T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-20T15:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/05\/20\/graduating-college\/"},"modified":"2012-01-28T16:28:54","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T21:28:54","slug":"graduating-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/05\/20\/graduating-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduating College"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I did it. In case you weren’t in the know, I went back to Fitchburg State College<\/a> this past semester to finish the 2 remaining classes that were keeping me from my degree in Computer Science. The two classes weren’t big ones; in fact, I didn’t know about them until my last semester there in 2000, when I decided to pursue my dreams and start a software company. The two classes were “Intro to Speech” and “Business Statistics.” Who-hoo. But still, they were requirements, and I had to take them, so… I did! And I did quite well, I must say. My final grades in both classes were 4.0.<\/p>\n

So, yesterday was Graduation, and (alas!) I attended – for my parents & grandparents, of course. I would have been quite happy to receive my diploma in the mail (which I still will – they don’t hand them out at graduation, as is quite common). It was raining here (as it has been for nearly a week now), so it was inside and quite cramped. I won’t bore you with the details of the ceremony, because they were quite… boring.<\/p>\n

So now I am officially<\/em> a graduate of Fitchburg State College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. (Technically, it’s called “Bachelor of Science: Computer Science, but that just sounds awkward.) So now I have the degree to go along with the extensive experience and knowledge I already posses. Yay for me!<\/p>\n

As a graduation present, I received a NEW DIGITAL CAMERA! Yay!<\/p>\n

It’s a Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a 6 megapixel camera with all the features I could want – exposure compensation, aperture priority, ISO settings from 50 to 800 – the works. I can’t wait to try it out, once the weather clears. Digital photography is kind of a hobby of mine – as you may have guessed, I love any sort of technology that enables “ordinary” people to do “extraordinary” things. One example is WordPress, the blogging software I use to run this (and the Buns’) site. It enables an ordinary person to publish a professional website and become syndicated world-wide, using just the power of their own words. Similarly, modern digital cameras allow ordinary people to become amateur photographers and take stunning, beautiful photos with (relatively) little effort and (more importantly) money.<\/p>\n

So, in the next week, expect some new photos to show up here as I play with my camera. Yay!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally went back and finished the last 2 courses keeping me from my college degree – and in return, I got a new digital camera! Yay!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[93,386],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-education","tag-personal","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-eg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":493,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/05\/12\/joel-on-software-back-to-basics\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":0},"title":"Joel on Software – Back to Basics","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This article makes a good point about something very important; namely, that to be a good software programmer, you have to know a lot about the nuts & bolts of how the computer works - from raw CPU instructions right up to drivers & other high-level nonsense.","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1016,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/01\/03\/long-term-away-messages\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":1},"title":"Long-term Away Messages","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, I've started using Instant Messaging software again after a long hiatus. I stopped using it (for a variety of reasons) shortly after I left college (back in 2001). Now that I'm back \"on IM,\" there's some things I've noticed \u2013 some of which I used to do myself, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2876,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/12\/31\/my-life-2000-2009-what-a-crazy-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":2},"title":"My Life, 2000 – 2009: What a Crazy Trip!","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking back at the last 10 years in my life - what a journey! (And what a handy summary of my life, in case you don't want to read the rest of my blog!)","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1147,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/06\/09\/clearly-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":3},"title":"Clearly Stupid","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Take a look at this ad I saw just the other day: This has to be the single stupidest thing that has come about since the increased airline security policy went into effect after 9\/11. It's a card that supposedly will let you get through airport security faster - something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "society"","block_context":{"text":"society","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/society\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/06\/clear-card.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":688,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/12\/11\/content-management\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":4},"title":"Content Management","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The bane of all web site owners like me is content management.","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":667,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/10\/26\/the-second-amendment-and-the-living-constitution\/","url_meta":{"origin":884,"position":5},"title":"The Second Amendment and the Living Constitution","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Eugene Volokh has an excellent essay on the Second Amendment - and I think it's obvious that I wholeheartedly agree with him.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}