Projects, projects, projects

Projects I am working on:

• C++ programming: I picked this up at the beginning of the summer after I built my new desktop (Ubuntu Linux). Had been using Juan Soulie's C++ tutorial and got about half-way through that, switched over to C++ for Dummies recently (not something I'm especially proud of) and have been going through both recently, kind of re-teaching myself stuff I had learned earlier in the summer. It's really only the second time around that I read something that I am able to really use it. I am pretty much finished with learning how classes work, though I am apprehensive about using them.
• SQL/MySQL: I got offered a job through my advisor to come up with a database on Animal Care request forms (and follow-up forms). He says buying the software for the university would be about $50,000, so I'm (ideally) saving PSU some money. SQL was pretty easy to get into, it's all about making a properly architectured (is that a word?) database and then knowing how to requisition data from it. Maybe 'request' is a better word. Anyway, I like it because it's so much more visual than C++ and that's really how I think. Diagrams, diagrams, diagrams.
• Books: Recently read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which was okay. Good, but not the best book I've ever read. Nothing can replace the Star Wars universe in terms of creating a, well, universe. The Rogue Squadron series, Dark Force trilogy, the I, Jedi series... God. I couldn't name on both my hands and toes all the heroes from that saga. Aside from Snow Crash, what else have I read? I think I went back to Despair by Nabakov and once again couldn't get through it. Same with Pnin. He must have really just hit a vein with Lolita (and Pale Fire). On my desk are The Plague and A Brief History of Time. I think I'll go back and try to finish The Plague (got about halfway through before losing my library's copy.)
• Finally, mandolin. I've been playing for the past hour or so and my fingers are killing me. I got my girlfriend's mandolin all tuned up, took out a book from the library on how to use it, and I can read tablature (that can't be right...). Tablet-music, whatever. Herpaderp!