This is coming a little late, as it is now mid-September, but I’ve been busy with school and cross country starting once again. I haven’t blogged in a while, and this was next up in my queue of blog topics.
For the majority of the summer, I resided in Cedar Falls. I subleased a duplex, along with two other random roommates. I didn’t get to know the other roommates much, as none of us were around much during the day. The duplex was very nice and cheap, too. I definitely hit the jackpot! Living in Cedar Falls helped me stay motivated with running as well. With only 5 or so routes at home, all of which involve gravel roads, I tend to lose motivation.
By skipping UNI’s Fall Career Fair, I kind of missed the boat with getting an internship for the summer. The crappy economy did not help either. However, all was not lost. My ResNet connections gave me an opportunity to work full-time for UNI’s ITS-Network Services department doing programming. My summer project was writing code to interact with Active Directory through LDAP to provision users. One of the most important lessons I learned is that Google is a programmer’s best friend. I was not familiar with LDAP or Active Directory going into the summer, other than knowing Active Directory is what is used for the labs on campus. I also learned a couple new programming languages- Perl and PowerShell. I ended up using Perl to implement the project, and really enjoyed the abilities it gave me compared to Java, which was my previous language of choice. Overall, I gained a lot of programming experience from this job. Unfortunately, between my class schedule, cross country, and working for ResNet during the school year, I didn’t have enough time available to continue working on my project through the fall, so Shawn has taken over the project once again.
I also went on vacation to Amarillo, Texas this summer. My sisters once again qualified for national gymnastics, and this year the location was Amarillo. I don’t remember how the girls placed, but they did alright. In my opinion, “nationals” was kind of a joke. It was the most unrepresented national meet I have been to yet. A vast majority of the gymnasts in the USTA (United States Tumbling Assocation) are from the Midwest, and many families are not willing to make the trip to far away locations. Amarillo was… interesting. It was perhaps one of our most laidback vacations because there was so little to do. The highlights of the trip were spending an entire day hiking the Palo Duro Canyon and getting caught up in a dust storm while visiting Cadillac Ranch, ten Cadillacs buried nose-down into a field. We also ate at the Big Texan, which is famous for offering a free 72 oz steak if consumed in 1 hour, or else $72. In addition to the steak, participants must eat the side salad, baked potato, shrimp, roll, etc. Unfortunately no one attempted while we were there.
I also spent several weekends in Des Moines this summer to visit Shawn. I attended my first I-Cubs game with Shawn and his sister’s family. I also attended a wedding in Ames for one of my former teammates. I have really taken a liking to Des Moines, other than the monotonous two-hour drive, which is good because Shawn will be working full-time for Principal starting around January. When I wasn’t in Des Moines, I was back at home visiting my family or staying with my sister in Hiawatha. I spent maybe two weekends in Cedar Falls. Contrary to my initial beliefs, Cedar Falls is actually quite boring in the summer. No one is around!
On a sad note, my summer concluded with my beloved silver dollars dying. While I had lost one or two due to freak accidents (flipping out of the tank, getting stuck in a tank ornament), I had owned the majority of the remaining silver dollars since my freshman year of college. I left them at home for the summer since there wasn’t enough room for the 55 gallon in my duplex. My fish died after my sister cleaned their tank. The cause of death is unknown, but I think it can be attributed to contaminated water of some sort. The only survivor, other than some black skirt tetras I don’t care for, was my plecostamus that I have had for three or so years. On the bright side, I have my 55 gallon tank up and running again at UNI, with a nice assortment of plecostamus (plecostami?), silver dollars, red-tailed sharks, tiger barbs, and a blood parrot cichlid. The circle of life.