spring in carolina

things that make me happy:

my first carolina spring: warm climes, beautiful skies, flowers burstin', and scores of students laying out on the quad in the sunlight;
carolina basketball! yet another tourney game tonight;
UNC, because it is so good and brings much joy to my life;
stephanie haas, my systems analysis teacher, who will dance across the room to illustrate a point;
the promise of summer: work, no school, porch-sittin', river-going, bbq-eating, beer-drinking, and general destressing.

things that fill me with rage:

seeing bicyclists wearing headphones instead of helmets;
the fact that, with the end of the semester coming soon and all the subsequent work needing to be done, all i want to do is go outside and lie down in the grass.

things that i have recently encountered that are good:

mia doi todd's new album, gea;
google news alerts RSS feeds
XML, XSL, and XML schemas -- beautiful, beautiful code;
whether i like it or not -- twitter, which has turned out to be the best tech support method ever;
photo booth:

At March 28, 2008 3:02 PM, Max said...: Maybe I had bad XML experiences, but it kind of makes my mouth taste like vomit. I've switched to Python for anything I can use it for, and everything else seems ugly and kludgy by comparison now. I don't relish the thought of having to polish up my Java and C++ for job interviews.
At March 28, 2008 3:43 PM, erin said...: i think you probably have had bad experiences if you don't like XML. :) let's face it: it's the new standard of data sharing and is probably the greatest thing since sliced bread. even if you don't like it, it's taking over the web, so if you have your eye on web-work you'll need to know your way around. not that XML can replace any programming languages, but it's still pretty rad.

you're right about the java -- but from what i hear, it's not so much important that you know the syntax as you understand the principles of object-oriented programming. you'll be fine, smarty.

let me know what you're working on. i'm sure it's some pretty cool stuff.
At April 08, 2008 1:03 AM, Rachael said...: um, that album title "gea," i originally read as your way of saying "gay" until i clicked on the link.