Daniel R.

A couple of people I know convinced me that I should join Goodreads, so I did. I haven't decided how I'm going to handle capturing book information here versus there. I suspect that I'll continue to write my more verbose reviews and notes here and just have the summary review (i.e. star rating) on Goodreads.

Having recently read The Once and Future King, it seemed good to finish the series by reading T.H. White's The Book of Merlyn. I'm on the fence about posthumous works. I know that I take pride in the work that I release and half finished or working but rough ideas I have laying around I'm not sure I'd want released. Putting that aside, I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others. I think that is mostly due to wanting to treat it more as a continuation of the adventure instead of the philosophical bent it has.

The experiences Arthur has as animals fit better in this book but the tone is very different and doesn't make then as enjoyable as the spirit of childhood play and learning that the other book uses. Again I'm probably biased due to the untold viewings I had of the Disney movie. Many of the philosophical observations he makes in the book are good but not being in the proper mindset they were lost on me.

Tags: books

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After many a late night and busy weekend I'm elated to have finished tonight the last class in the last course of my Master of Science in Computer Science from Northeastern. I'll be graduating the 1st of May! It hasn't completely sunk in yet that I'm done. I started this journey 4 years ago in the cold winter of January of 2005 while I was at Towers Perrin and they had a sweet reimbursement deal. I had originally planned to complete the end of last year but ended taking a semester off when I learned I was being laid off from Ruckus and didn't want to be looking for a new job in the middle of my next course.

In looking back I feel I was a better student as an undergraduate. I've lost track of the number of times I thought I wasn't going to make it through or just couldn't pull myself to get the work done on time. I don't remember those thoughts being as frequent as an undergraduate. Then again, at that time being a student was my full time job. Since I've been working full-time while pursuing my degree, and always put that first, I know I should have done better in a couple of my courses. On the flip side, it feels like I learned a lot more in my graduate work. That probably is mostly due to the fact that the majority of my courses were filling in gaps or delving deeper into topics that I studied as an undergraduate.

Now to figure out what to do with my new-found free time :) I should be able to get back to working on some projects I've put to the back burner while I helped build out Allurent's latest offering and finished this last course.

Tags: graduation life northeastern

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)