Keeping up... just!

I know, I know - far too long without posting. I've been extremely busy though. This is what's happening:

I have returned to Polytech, and am doing a full second-year course of engineering papers. It turns out that I actually passed the first-year management paper last year, but an administrative error totally buggered things up, and the results notification said that I had failed, when in fact I had not. (They had neglected to include the result from one of my assignments in the final result, and since we had to hand in all assignments to pass the paper, I 'failed' because it appeared that I had not completed the coursework.) This had a knock-on effect, as before the error was corrected, it appeared that I wouldn't be able to take enough second-year papers to qualify as a full-time student, hence I wouldn't be eligible for a student loan or allowance. Without a loan, I wouldn't be able to re-enrol either. So, it has taken a while to iron all these wrinkles out.

I started back three weeks ago, and already we've covered a huge amount. I'm doing Engineering Maths (signal analysis - Fourier series and transforms of periodic/ aperiodic signals, modulation), Management (standards and compliance, project managment), Electrical Engineering (three-phase theory - power factor correction, star-delta systems), and Communications Engineering (voodoo, witchcraft, black arts, transmission lines). I'm also doing electronics again this year, but at night school, since I did actually fail that.

On top of this, I've continued to work, although I have cut back my hours drastically.

Life is good. I'm really enjoying being back at Tech. It feels like we're finally getting down to some serious engineering topics. We've had presentations from people in industry too, which have been very useful for gaining an appreciation of what kinds of sectors we might end up in after we're finished.

Had time to have lunch with Psychiatric Geriatric yesterday, who has switched over to the Diploma course. We had a very interesting discussion about globalization and manufacture. I've also been able to catch up with Anyzoom on occasion, who has switched to doing Computer Science, and is doing all manner of interesting things with servers and databases.

My pile of books to read is growing almost daily. I picked up a book by Wilfrid Hodges titled "Logic" last week, which promises to be very interesting. Skimming through, I found a quote that struck a resonance with me: "It is simply impossible to believe, fully and without reservation, two things which you know are inconsistent with each other." Plenty of reading material for the holidays.

I also have plans in the pipeline for a series of T-shirts... I'll have to organise a few bits and pieces first though.

For relaxing times, make it Coffee time...