A Geeks Ramblings

I’ve been trying to sum up all the highlights of my life throughout the year 2007, i ‘ve already mentioned my “graduation”, the release of my favorite Linux distro and that i’ve changed jobs but there were other things happening in my life that i forgot to mention:

High School:

Finishing high school was an interesting experience for someone with my age because i felt it was the right time to do it, i felt more responsible and more aware of what i want to do with my life.

It was great because, apart from the standard stuff that i had to study, ex: Portuguese, Philosophy, Physics and Chemistry, etc, i studied a lot about my true passion: computers.
For 3 years i studied programming: Pascal , Visual Basic and C++ as well as Networking and several applications and operating systems including GNU/Linux.
In the end we had to present a project which was developed throughout the 12th grade using a presentation software (in this case PowerPoint) with a report and all that is required. We had a choice of developing a network infrastructure or doing a project in which we had to develop an application. Me and 4 other guys formed up a group and decided that we were going to develop a web based application, the intent was to provide an application that the school campus would benefit from it with the target of facilitating communications between students, teachers and other school campus personnel, and for that purpose we integrate the following communications protocols: SMS’s, e-mail and IM(Jabber, Jivesoftware), this was done using PHP, Java,  XHTML and CSS, the site was running with the help of a WAMP (Windows XP, Apache Webserver, MySQL and PHP integrated application) called EasyPHP. In the end it was finished and it was presented in front of a jury, it was a great experience and i learned a lot, i had a classification of 19 out of 20.

A Great Concert:

2007 was also the year in which i went to see Dream Theater live for the first time. It’s was the “Chaos In Motion – European Summer Tour” which was a follow up to the release of their 9th studio album “Systematic Chaos” which was release on the 5th of June. The event took place in Portugal (of course!!!!!) in a place called “Coliseu do Porto” on the 20th of June 2007, 25,00€ was the price of the ticket and it was worth every cent, since Porto (Oporto) is in the north of Portugal and Lisboa (Lisbon) is in the south, the trip was a 600Km(+/-) adventure back and forth. Unfortunately i don’t remember all the songs that were played nor the correct order they were played but it was a great show and I’m looking forward to see them again, next time, if possible, in Lisboa .

Speaking of Dream Theater, there was also an official biography comprised of two books ( a text base book with a lot of info that i didn’t read of before, a second book with their story exclusively told with photos) and a CD with  some remastered, unreleased and differently arranged songs that were release before. The bio is called “Lifting Shadows” and was released around Christmas but it had to be pre-ordered(and pre-paid  by the end of the Summer) and it had to had a certain number of “subscribers” so that it could be done the way the band wanted, the coolest thing was that those that made the order until a certain date had the possibility to have their names on the “Roll of Honour” as contributers for a bio that could only be done if it was paid by the fans in advance, of course my name is on page 371 .

Building Condominium Administration:

This year that has passed was also the year in which i had to take part on the condominium administration, along with 2 other people, which has been passed to others yesterday (don’t ask).

In a nutshell, it was the worst of times as one can imagine but to compensate the last meeting wasn’t so bad as the ones i witness before we were in charge .

New Job:

As i mention before i found a new job and i changed departments in November, only now i’m feeling that i’m doing it right (or almost!). I’ve learn a lot about finance and a bit more of it’s inherent logic, at this moment i’m feeling more comfortable doing it but not so much with the people with i’m working with yet, but since i’m a very reserved person, my guess is that eventually things will change in time as it always has been this way.

We had a Christmas party and, as it’s always the company’s policy, because it’s a British company, we had a week to enjoy the holidays which started around Christmas time and the 2nd of Jan, very nice, we don’t get this kind of stuff here in Portugal though we have more holidays!!!!!

DVD Release of a great performer:

It may sound strange but besides my likes of heavy music i enjoy several types of music and there is one artist in particular who released an expected DVD after all this time, that plays a unique type of music: “Music of the World”. Her name is Loreena McKennitt and her website is at Quilan Road, the DVD was recorded in 2006 in a city called Alhambra in Spain.

IEEE Subscription:

To finish up the year i renew my subscription as a student with IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc). For those who don’t know what it is you can check it out ,if your a g33k as well of course -> IEEE.

Conclusion: 

All in all 2007 was a great year, one can only hope 2008 to be better.