Posting every other week makes it hard to follow what is going on. I know... But maybe it's because not much is going on right now. I'm still recovering from my crazy times of working late, but I'm still not back to my old self. I've been getting home nervous for some reason that I'm not completely aware of, and this makes me just not do anything really productive until I decide to go to sleep (or am lulled into going to sleep).

There were a couple of events of note, though (in no particular order):

1) I got an email from a total stranger from Brazil asking what it is to go for a Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University. Ok... He was not a "total" stranger, as he is a student of the professor that gave me the contact to the professor in Oklahoma that offered me the position. But it was quite tough to reply to this email. It's not that I didn't like Oklahoma, it's just that I don't know many people that would enjoy the experience as much as I did. It was a very introspective time of my life.

2) I took my camera for a trip to Central Washington, the other side of the mountains. It was a very nice day trip with Amy. The first experience is that you get out of a place with a lot of trees, go to snowy trees, then just snow and when you least expect, the snow is gone and the only thing you see around you are small and sparse bushes! Semi-dry, a complete shock in vegetation change. Very interesting. The rest had some very nice views, small towns and quite some driving. We left my place at about 8 am and were back at 6 pm after driving for almost 400 miles (almost 650km). Fun to be away!

3) Oracle is trying to buy everybody lately. They finished their purchase of Sleepycat, now they are eying JBoss, Zend (that makes PHP-based systems) and even MySQL. They are following the plan of silencing the competition before they are too loud. Something that Cisco has always been very good at doing in the networks world.

4) I'm moving forward on one of my projects. I bought a $200 laptop and now I just need to be brave enough to buy a touch screen attachment and destroy the laptop. It the project works it will be very cool!

5) I'm also working on my spare time on some things for B'nai B'rith do Brasil, organizing publicity for the Cascadian Chorale, and even sometimes going to the gym (didn't go today because I hurt my back doing volunteering work last Sunday and it's still not good enough for me to feel confortable in potentially making it worse again)!

I guess that's what is going on in a nutshell. I still need to write and reply to so many emails that makes me sad just to think about it. So many "I'm sorry for taking this long to reply to you..." that it makes me feel like I shouldn't even bother replying. And I know this is the wrong feeling.