Champions!

Congrats to the Green Bay Packers! Admittedly I was anxious throughout the entire game, but in the end they came out on top. What an exciting game to watch.

School is going fine so far. I've turned in my first projects for all of my classes but one already. PHP, ASP.NET, AJAX and C# are all going well. And so far they aren't overwhelming me with their time commitment. This is good considering all my other free time is going into the internship.

I'm enjoying doing the internship. It's fun to put together all the different things I've learned over the past semesters into one large project. It keeps me learning as I gain more experience on how to plan a project and implement it. I keep realizing that only experience can teach me how to avoid certain pitfalls or see a bit further down the path than I currently can. I knew the project would be a large one, even though when describing it, it doesn't seem like there's really that much to it! The planning, coding, presentation, etc, all take a lot of time. And as it's my first real "large" project being done solely by myself, it's taking some time.

I'm also enjoying it because it's for my brother-in-law. Knowing that it will be useful to him and the things I am building will be tools he uses are of motivation as well.

As far as the more techinical side, I've decided to write the project in PHP on a MySQL database. There is also JavaScript involved as well as the standard HTML and CSS aspects. As I learn more throught this final semester, I will surely be implementing those things at the end.

While I'd preferred to have done the project in .NET, since I'd like to work in that environment after graduation, PHP provided me with the best option right now. I decided that if I no longer have the .NET tools available to me that I need after graduation, I won't be able to support this project in the future and I don't find that option acceptable. I can't guarantee that the express (and free) versions of Visual Studio will meet my needs. So that is why I'm going with PHP as everything I need (PHP, MySQL, Apache) should be free to use for the foreseeable future. We also do a lot less hands on coding in the PHP program at MATC, and I find this is a good way to keep my skills sharp there.

Classes are gearing up for their Project 2 topics now. Between working on those, I plan to keep plugging away on the internship (I have nearly 70 of the 216 hours required in already after week 4 of the semester). I hope to stay on track with my grades from past semesters and meet the internship requirements a few weeks before the semester is over (although I will continue to work on it until it is finished if it is not completed).