I seem to have exhausted all benefits of having one class over already. I have spent all day so far (till 4:30 PM) on Marked Exercise 2 for Allen. Unit 2 is on Data-oriented modeling: Relation-based systems. This is the 2nd entire unit that I “missed” most of; luckily it is the last to be missed now.

I am answering questions on data independence, defining and explaining relations, schemas, instances, keys, etc. Then there are questions on relational algebra and some definitional stuff on tuple relational and domain relational calculi. There are a few relational algebra operations to explain and show a row or more that results from the operations. There is one optional tuple relational calculus question that I think is just going to have to stay optional.

It is due at 6 AM tomorrow and I pretty much “left” it for today. Luckily, I got far further than I expected. I only have one last question to answer about completeness in respect to relational languages. It is certainly not my best work, but we are only getting a passing acquaintance with most of this anyway. Seeing as that is what I seem to be gleaning, I guess I’ll try to be a bit more satisfied with it all.

I’m heading back towards exhaustion soon too. Been up late lately. Doing a lot, pretty much nonstop. I have been doing lots of things that I would like to comment on here, but there is no time (generally, nor at the moment). I have found some time to relax over the last few weeks, though, which seems evident. If I hadn’t relaxed for just a bit after Pauline’s class ended I wouldn’t have survived as well as I have. I was actually pretty “up” for a while there.

As for relaxing, I’ve been to four live music shows lately. I saw:

The Wailin’ Jennys at Krannert Auditorium on 11 Oct, Ani DiFranco at the Chicago Theatre on 13 Oct, Jolie Holland at the Highdive on 26 Oct and then my friend Kurt had a spare ticket to Jeff Tweedy at Foellinger Auditorium on Friday evening. I chose to go and was glad I did. He played various acoustic guitars and such, solo. It was very nice, and very relaxing, to say the least.

Yesterday was the Beta Phi Mu induction and meeting. Last night was the Halloween Party at Basil Estates. I didn’t get enough pictures because I failed in the battery department, although I had a new 8-pack of Duracell Ultra Digitals at home. *sigh* I adjusted quickly and had a good time anyway. Our friends, Angela and Chris, who recently moved to Michigan State surprised us all by showing up. As Miss E said, there was a lot of squealing.

I am getting really excited because this time next week I’ll be at ASIS&T in Austin listening to this: Theoretical Topics in FRBR, Allen Renear (moderator), Jonathan Furner, Jerome McDonough, Carl Lagoze.

I added a comment form page to my blog (see the Contact Me! tab above) and also pointed the Contact tab at my domain to point to this one for now. I tested it and the resulting message was flagged as possible spam by my ISP. Hope to get that issue worked out easily. So if you have something to say and don’t want to leave a comment, or want to say more than in the public comment, or whatever, feel free to contact me this way.

Damn! Trying to crank out a “comprehensive” update quickly is an issue when your internets are not responding!

I also noticed that there is another upgrade to WordPress out. Damn! When will we get some stable tools? Or is that a stupid question in today’s world?

Anyway, I wanted this to be a bit more and contain a lot more links, but most of my outgoing (not all) internets seem to be broken. Can’t get to flickr (multiple accounts), other blogs, etc. But I need to stop fighting because it isn’t working. On to other things….