What I wouldn’t give for a week or two that’s calm & sensible. Juggling a family (wife and two kids), school (last semester for my second bachelors, thank God), work, and myself is not an easy chore. I’m getting better at it, but there are still days that make me want to rip my hair out, get enraged, and join the postal service. In my case, I think the combination of going back to school and work can be lethal, especially when I’m doing a difficult undergraduate curriculum that usually only meets during the day. I’d like to continue on with a masters program soon after, but it’s going to take a little while for the mental fatigue to wear off. I’m pretty certain I’d hit a huge level of burnout if I didn’t keep reminding myself that this is the home stretch.

And while I do bitch about it a lot, this is going to be one achievement I’ll definitely be proud of and hold in high regard. The last time through, I slack-assed hard and had to pull favors in order to graduate. My record was terrible and it cost me for many years. This time I’m not only doing it the right way, but I’m working my ass off in class and being successful while balancing the aforementioned variables in sentence two. I’ve always been a fellow with low self-confidence and -esteem, but pulling this off successfully would (theoretically) show myself that I am capable of achieving more.

I am looking forward to the end, though, so I can go back to my normal work schedule and not have to worry about which project I need to work on after dinner. I won’t be as distracted playing with the kids and I can enjoy the time more. (It’s not that I don’t enjoy it now, but the outside stress is a definite drag-down.)

After the commencement, it’s taking a well deserved break from academia. After all, so much has happened to me in the last two years: we moved into our new house, we had our second child, our first child started preschool, I had a position change at work, and there have been serious medical problems in both sides of the family. I probably would have been a little more nuts than usual without 6-9 hours a semester. But eventually, I’ll hunker down and aim for the next level. If nothing else, I can target the executive programs that meet in the evenings – relieving my biggest stresses that come when I step away from my desk to go to school.

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Elsewhere…

- Summer vacation is booked. Sandals Royal Caribbean, here we come! Time to celebrate ten years of wedded bliss as well as my graduation. The dogs and the kids are boarded – last year it was family & Disney, this year is a getaway. We’ll be traveling with our best friends Al & Alissa, so we can also commemorate friendship and his graduation from LBS.

- I was seeing success from my fitness routines, which makes it all the more puzzling why I can’t stay focused. Even the carrot of Jamaica hasn’t kept me from falling off the wagon. I lost three pounds (and some measurable floppy fat) the first week from working out, then didn’t do anything and maintained. What they say is true – it’s much easier to stop than start.

- We get to face that terrible stage of parenthood where we have to decide when an activity a kid enjoys crosses over from mild entertainment to behavior enhancer. Yeah. I think we’ve done a good job trying to balance fantasy from reality, but the rubber is about to meet the road.

- Why is this easier to write than the one for my internship?

Well, this has been a week of bust so far. WVU gets their collective asses handed to them in DC on Monday. Now we have the rest of the week to get ready for Seton Hall’s arrival Saturday. The loss to the Hoyas isn’t too crippling – a top 15 team on their court. We need to win our last two home games, and possibly snag either Providence on the road or a 1st round BE game (unless we get the bye) to cement a Dance ticket. I’d love to see a road win at Pitt, but that’s not bloody likely. We don’t have enough beef inside to play with Gray.

Beyond the hoops, the snowstorm we were supposed to get fizzled out quickly into a hard rain Tuesday afternoon. We got a few unexpected inches yesterday, enough to really screw with the roads. No school for the young skulls today.

Not busting – our Caribbean vacation getaway is booked and a deposit has been made on it. Departure is under six months. They won’t get here fast enough.

Of course, that means my fat, lard ass must get into some kind of shape that isn’t pear. With the support and guidance of my lovely wife, I’m getting training tips/methods she got from her experiences and started last Saturday. I’ve tried getting in shape before with pretty pathetic results, but there’s a nice carrot dangling in front of this one. And so far, the unofficial results are encouraging. From Saturday to this morning, I’m down almost 2 pounds – and that includes a crappy night of stuffed crust pizza. And I can see little bulges coming from my upper abs.

Normally I would put this on the sports side, but it’s just too big – the UCLA win was HUGE this weekend.  And while it’s probably not going down as the top victory of all time (it’s in my personal Top Five), it was still quite a significant victory.  Take away the fact that they came cross country, out of conference, and without their point guard.  It’s still quite stunning indeed that this team, a team who lost about 80% of their scoring & experience from last year, showed that not only is the talent here to win big games but that their heads and hearts are ready to win big games.  A bunch of sophomores & freshmen, along with a junior & senior program “lifers”, took on the #2 team in the country – a team that even without their starting point guard would probably still whip 90% of D-1 teams – and learned how to win on the big stage.

The additional hearting point of Saturday was that I was lucky enough to be at the Coliseum to watch it.  It’s not very often that one gets a chance to see any version of the most storied basketball name in history, so I had circled this one on the calendar and dusted off the student ID.  Just being there for this upset was on par with being at the Sugar Bowl last year.  I graduate in May, and with two kids don’t often get to go to games (damn you, Responsibility!!!), so I’ve likely seen my last “free” game for awhile.  And I’m not sad – this is a good one to go out on.

And it must be mentioned that my wife is a goddess for letting me go!

We now enter the week at #23 (AP) and #22 (coaches), and play Georgetown in DC tonight.  After that its Seton Hall at home.  If we play just .500 ball, beating the teams we should, is that enough to make the Dance in what was a renovation (forget rebuilding!) year?

The chill continues here in the mountains, where we haven’t seen temperatures above freezing since last Friday. The schoolkids have been out three day this week and are on a two hour delay today. And more fun is in the forecast – Accuweather.com has a graphic showing a potential swath of snow coming through early next week.

Perhaps I’m just more brand aware that I was a month ago, but the Caribbean resort we’re planning on visiting this year seems to be advertising everywhere. I’ve seen commercials on several different channels last month, and now I’m seeing banner ads at all my favorite websites. Of course, it makes sense for a resort situated in a lush, tropical area to advertise in frosty North America in the middle of winter. Thanks to a kickass tax scenario, booking should be soon.

In less than two years living here, the market value of our house (based purely on other neighborhood sales) has increased nicely. This doesn’t include an inside review to add in the value of a new roof and new windows. I thank Morgantown for being one of the few quality growth areas in the state and wish her continued prosperity.

Having seen Al’s successful transition to Wordpress, I’m now keeping my eye on how many more times I watch Blogger’s spinning “0%” message before deciding enough is enough.

A call to BOPARC may be on tap soon, just to see what leagues they sponsor for nearly middle-aged, non-athletic desk jockeys like myself.

My short term tech-toy shopping wish list: a notebook wireless networking card, a stand alone external hard drive, and a 3.5 HD enclosure. Through the rest of the year, I’d like to get DirecTV’s HD DVR box, either a new laptop or desktop, and a new digital camera. I know which of the things here are plausible and which ones aren’t, but it never hurts to dream.

Not only did winter finally arrive in town this week, but so did class – at least the challenging stuff. For the record, classes started almost a month ago, but it was only in the last week that we realized that the game was truly on. I’m in the home stretch this semester – three classes left to finish and I’ll be holding a second bachelors degree (this one in management information systems). One is an easy three hours – an internship based on the job I currently do. Our department gets internships that are well beyond the traditional paper filer and coffee fetcher that other disciplines get. Mine, however, is on a different level because I get to write and share the experiences of someone who is well integrated into his company, and our department isn’t a bunch of paper pushing drones. The professor sponsoring me has been able to weave in some of my topics into the regular classes, offering those students a real world perspective from one of their “peers”.

The other two are the silent killers. One is the second semester of the systems design course. We’ve had interim deliverables on our projects (which carried over from last semester), but today our first topic homework deliverable is due. We’re unit testing code from our sample project using tools built into Visual Studio. I might have thought the work was easier had I not been in Charlotte last week. I did get enough of a crash course on Tuesday to get me through the assignment. It’s not like I haven’t tested code before – it’s one of my job functions – but I’ve never done it from a programmers perspective. Another homework in the “I’ll-never-do-this-in-real-life” vein from where I plan to be the analyst, not the coder. Still, understanding how both sides live helps keep me a leg up on my competition. Besides, it’s gotten me were I am now.

The real killer has been Datacom (data communications). Like my systems design, I’ve got some background knowledge of physical networks both from monkeying around with LANs and from working with voice switch technicians as part of my job. However, nothing is preparation for learning about all the different multiplexes, modulations, amplitude shifts, dissecting the seven and five layer network stacks, and other goodies that go on in the windowless rooms that hold our switches, the panel closets on each floor, and the cabling runs above ceilings. I think it’s cool stuff, but it’s the next layer of complexity for me and it makes the tests a real bitch. 20 multiple choices and four essays on material like this don’t fit well into 50 minute time blocks.

So the game is finally back on, and at the end is the finish line. It’s within reach. After that? It’s break time from classes for the rest of this year, while contemplating the start of an MBA run in 2008. I now don’t have to push and go broke trying to get an MBA with technical emphasis – any program short of Carnegie-Mellon or MIT would likely repeat the material I’ve almost completed. I can now stick with a traditional program that emphasizes the business background which keeps me positioned where I want to be – the finance-IT hybrid who understands business needs & concerns for a process AND knows how to manage the technical implementation of that idea.