I took my last two finals today. I am done with classes, and I must say I rocked this semester. My classes were definitely not easy, especially Modern Physics which kicked my butt more than once. Despite this, I pwned my finals, and should have A- as my lowest grade.

I will be packing tonight, eating breakfast with Allie in the morning, and then I'm off to Connecticut.

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This is the view from my apartment today. East Coast, I know you're jealous. I had my Physics 222 final yesterday, it was not pretty. 5 questions, 3 hours... no one finished. I have 3 finals left. CS470 tomorrow. Then CS345 and Rel C 324 whenever, I'll probably take them both on Tuesday. On Wednesday I fly back to Connecticut.... and I still have to do all of my Christmas shopping....

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We ran the tournament today for the Final Project in CS470. It was run in World Cup style where teams were divided up in pools, and then played each person in the pool from both sides of the map. I won 5/6 games in my pool, and moved onto the 2nd round. Unfortunately, I lost a few games in round 2 because my damping code was primitive, and my tanks ended up in orbits around the enemy flag before finally getting. This delay cost me the match at least twice. But the 2nd round was such that we had a circular winning cycle (think rock, paper scissors). I could beat 1 guy, but he could beat the 3rd guy, but the 3rd guy could beat me. So after a 1st place winner was decided the remaining teams were played again to determine 2nd place. There were 3 teams, and we played on the Pacman world, so good path-planning was absolutely necessary. I won 5/6 games and took 2nd place. So I'm pretty happy with that.

Come to find out the guy that won is actually a grad student, and this is his only class. So it was a bit of an unfair advantage since he was taking 3-credits total, and I'm taking 16. If I had that much time, I probably could have beaten him. Oh well. I did well. I'm happy.

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So the semester is just about over. I had my final for History of Creativity today, so that class is completely over now. I have the rest of my finals starting on Saturday. By tomorrow at midnight I have a group Physics paper due, and my artificial intelligence capture the flag agents are due. I have a little fine-tuning to do on them still, but they're working pretty nicely at the moment, I'm happy with them. Given a map that looks like the Pacman map they can successfully find and follow a path to the enemy flag, pick it up and bring it home.

For you Connecticans that read this, I'll be home the evening of the 20th. I will be in Cromwell until Jan 2, when I will be flying to Maryland to visit Allie and her family until the 5th. On the 6th I will be flying back to Utah. So if you have any intention of seeing me, for I have intentions of seeing you, then we will need to figure out when during that time frame it will happen.

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Last night was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. Erin and Bryce got tickets for free from Bryce's work. When they said they were going I decided to buy tickets. I've been wanting to go to one of their concerts for a long time now, but never had the chance. So I bought two tickets for directly in line with the stage, and 18 rows up in the stadium seating; and told Allie that she was busy on the 9th, which she seemed to be fine with.

It was ABSOLUTELY A-MAZING! So in their show they have all sorts of lights, lasers, strobe lights, fire (colors include: red, green, blue, purple, orange...). They performed a pre-arranged Christmas program, as expected, where their narrator tells a story between sets, and the music reflects the current section of the story. That was my favorite, particularly since it included my favorite song (Christmas Eve / Sarajevo), which I am now listening to as well. I think I enjoyed this more than any other concert I've been to for three main reasons:

1. I knew all the music they played, because I own all their Christmas albums, and have listened to them extensively.
2. The lights/pyrotechnics were amazingly well done, the timing of everything was dead-on, and the work was extensive.
3. The performers had clean language... it would be a little strange for them to be up there talking about Christmas, Christ and God, and then be swearing....

One thing that I didn't expect was that a lot of people apparently needed beer to watch the show, which the E-Center was happy to sell them. So by the end there were a number of, as the TSO guy said, "Freebird-yelling drunkards." (Because when he mentioned Lynyrd Skynyrd they promptly yelled 'Freebird').

All in all, it was awesome, and I really enjoyed it. A dollar from every ticket was given to a local charity, and Doba (the company Bryce works for) matched that contribution.

I had a blast. It was a great distraction from the ridiculous amounts of things I still have to get done before classes end on Thursday.

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