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This coming Monday starts the beginning of the end of my college career. At this moment, I can’t think of a better feeling. The last three weeks before the end of this past summer semester were, to say the least, way too busy. Of course, it was my own fault for procrastinating, but I’m so tired of being busy outside of work, my fault or not.

College had its ups and downs. I loved the challenge and I like to learn, but I’m not necessarily doing what I spent 5-6 years studying (referring to undergrad, here). For my profession in doing what I love, I’ve essentially taught myself nearly everything. Grad school helped to fill in a few gaps, but even there I wasn’t overwhelmed with useful information. I’m sure I picked up a ton more than I realize, though—hopefully.

Despite my thoughts on college, I’ve only got four months left, forever. No more projects, finals, group work, or summer semesters that span the length of two summer sessions. It’s all coming to an end, and I couldn’t be more ready.

I’m currently taking a grad class on data warehousing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m somewhat intrigued by useful data analysis, which is the exact reasoning behind data warehousing.

After a month or so into the class, I wonder how companies and large organizations can compete without having a data warehouse. Do you know why Wal-mart always beats out its competitors and K-Mart doesn’t? They maintain one of the largest and efficient data warehouses in the business, with analysts and pattern recognition scripts to spot trends based on products, location, cost, date, time, day-of-the-week, and a million other things. Amazon.com is another prime example. I believe they’re currently generating around $3 billion per year in sales, and I bet it’s because of how well they watch customer habits and trends. Personally, I’m not one to be coaxed into buying the “recommended” books, or “some who’ve bought [product A], have also bought [product B],” but I’m sure some people bite. Actually, they’re pretty good recommendations. I’m a penny-pincher for the most part, and have considered them at times.

The size of the database is another amazing facet of data warehousing. For instance, Amazon.com runs a data warehouse around 10TB in size; AT&T is around 90TB; Yahoo! has one exceeding 100TB; and the mighty Google is analyzing a couple of peta-bytes worth of data (which is almost incomprehensible). For perspective, a peta-byte is 1,024TB, or ~20,000 PCs with 50GB each.

Designing a data warehouse contradicts pretty much all that I know about database design. It’s almost the exact opposite: de-normalize instead of normalize, optimize for querying rather than transactional processes, duplicating data becomes popular, no more relational tables (goal is to remove the JOIN), and so on. It’s definitely a different way of thinking, but interesting nonetheless.

Sometimes I don’t understand people and their use of email. I don’t know about you, but when I get an email of any significance I usually read it. Let’s say you were teaching a class—we’ll call it SENG 691P. Would you consider an email with the subject SENG 691P - Assignments significant enough to read?

Monday night, I emailed 3 out of 4 assignments, due yesterday evening by 6:00 pm (the missing link being the one I forgot was due Monday by 5:00, but was for the Tuesday at 6:00 class). Anyway, in that email, I explicitly told my teacher “I lost track of the due date for the assignment [blah] that was due [Monday] by 5:00, so I won’t have it this week.” This was to prevent him from putting my name on the opening slide with the rest of the class, as he does each week, to talk about one another’s assignments. But I guess the English language failed me, because he put my name up there with a blank topic and called me out on it, having no clue I had emailed him. Without a real excuse, explaining myself in front of the entire class was exactly what I intended to avoid. It would have been much easier had he read his email (although he claims to have searched for it twice).

I’d hate having to manage an entire class and their emailed assignments, so I’m glad I don’t have to. But at the same time, it’s irritating to me when the people who do have to do it, don’t.

From Thursday evening to Sunday evening, I’ve been doing homework pretty much non-stop. Let’s look at it in terms of hours. Since Thursday after work I’ve spent 32-35 hours finishing out the semester. It’s been a frustrating couple of days, as I’ve had to pick up the slack for group members who “forget” (on purpose) their part of certain group assignments. I’d much rather work alone. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the next 4 weeks of no evening class and no lengthy assignments. Plus I’m not working Coca-Cola through the holidays this year, which is a first in 6 years for me.

And on a side note, I’m getting tired of reading words that contain meme. It seems like they’re all over the place now.

But in the end, WVU pulled through. It’s hard to admit it, but the WVU vs. Rutgers game was probably the best game I’ve seen all year. I would have rather it not been so close, but it’s a win nonetheless. Then again, we did have a redshirt freshman quarterback playing his first real game, plus Slaton wasn’t feeling his best, so there’s my justification as to why it was so close. In the third overtime we stopped the 2-point conversion attempt by Rutgers, making us victorious with a 41-39 win:

It was cold, but the excitement was overwhelming. The stadium was so loud, and everyone was on their feet. It was awesome. I’d love to go to the bowl game.

My sister is starting her second year of college, and she isn’t completely sure what she wants to do, yet. I undersand how that can make things inconvenient and a little stressful, but I’m at a loss when it comes to good advice for her. I’m positive, eventually she’ll figure out what she wants to do and everything will be fine. Those measely 4-6 years, when compared to your whole life, mean nothing. There’s no reason to rush into things. I’ve tried to explain to her how insignificant the specifics of the degree really are. My first real job out of college was for something that had nothing to do with my degree(s). I stop myself, though, because I think this may be something that you have to realize for yourself after you graduate and get into the job market. I’m not sure if I should be mentioning things of that nature while she’s still making key decisions toward her college career. The last thing I want is for her to get the slightest idea that these decisions don’t matter and she can take a disinterested approach to making them.

I always remind her to do good and to get good grades, but ultimately grades have done nothing for me. Well, that’s not true; I guess scholarship picks were influenced by grades. Even so—that’s not the reason I tell her that. If her college experience was covered and she had an extra $10,000 per semester, I would still tell her to get good grades. I guess it’s the “big brother” in me to remind her to strive for the best. Overall, I only care about her success and happiness. I’m realizing, now that I’m done with college (undergrad), I have a hard time giving her good advice based on my experience. I’m glad I went through an “engineering” program, but I’m not necessarily glad it was computer/electrical engineering. But we make decisions and move on. In the end, life tends to work itself out. It did with me, and I’m sure it will with her.