- 1. It took me 4 years to finish an Associate in Arts and Sciences degree at Whatcom Community College. Why? I only went part-time (with only a few exceptions) and I changed majors several times: graduated as a History major, but I had enough credits to have graduated as a Administration of Justice (my original major), Sociology, English, and/or Mathematics
- 2. Even with the "2 year" AAS DIRECT transfer degree, it took me 4 years at Western Washington University to finish a Bachelor of Arts as a History major and Computer Science minor. So, degree wise that was 6-years (2 year AAS + 4 year BA). Why? Again, I only went part-time (while only a few exceptions until last year) and I tried to change my major (from History to Computer Science) and when they wouldn't let me do that I tried to double major and when they wouldn't let me do that I ended up where I am now. Oh, and Summer 2010 was the first time I ever got financial aid.
- 3. I am now a post-bachelor student working towards a second bachelors degree. This time as a Computer Science major (no minor, yet...) Why? I want to continue my pursuit of education, but with a focus on Computer Science. I would rather be a graduate student right now, but my GPA is way too low (2.5 IIRC) because I did poorly in (all of?) the lower-division History courses but did well in the upper-division - even though some of the lower-division classes were taken more recently (go figure?) and the grad school here prefers applicants with a GPA of 3.2 (3.0 is "ok"). I decided my best option was to be a post-bac and try to bring up my grades. After last quarter I seem to be sinking, not improving!
Anyway...
So the CS department at WWU created a new (pilot) course on Android software development. As part of the course we were given a loaner Android tablet to do Android development on for the quarter. 
Ten of us got the Asus Transformer, with keyboard dock, and the rest of the class got Motorola Xooms, which look pretty awesome as well. Since there was only 10 Transformers they held a "lottery" to see who got one and I was one of the lucky. 
They are brand new and we have to return them in same condition no later than 5PM on Wednesday, March 14 or we get to pay the full price (like $750 or so). 
I haven't tried a Xoom, but I love the Transformer and wish I had the money to buy my own! It is an awesome tool for development and beats the hell out of an AVD or leaving my phone chained to the computer all day. My only gripe is that while connected to the computer it does NOT charge. Apparently the Transformer uses so much power to charge that even when it's hooked to a USB 3.0 host it can only "break even" with the power (i.e. it neither charges nor significantly drains the battery down). Unfortunately my main dev box, also my main desktop, is only USB 2.0 so the Transformer drains (slowly) while connected. I guess the Xoom doesn't have this problem and my hunch is that it has to do with the fact that the Transformer has two batteries (one in the actual tablet and one in the dock). 
The only "real" problem I've had with all of these gadgets is that I have almost no free desk space left. I'm tempted to move my printer to a different location to free up some more space. However, I don't know where I would put the printer as 1) the office is short on space to begin with; 2) it has to be within USB cable range of my desktop as I use CUPS+Samba for network printing from Linux and Windows machines; 3) it is also my scanner and as such it should remain within reasonable distance of where I sit.. so basically I don't know what the best arrangement is.. it almost feels like a game of tetris that's going badly!
I'm still having issues with the lack of financial aid money because I'm only eligible for federal loans and no grants (which is about 2/3 of what I was getting). I started looking into scholarships, but I haven't found any that I qualify for (mostly because of my poor GPA). Kind of a vicious circle: need money to go full-time and not having to work, but I have no money so I have to work which isn't helping with my less-than-stellar grades... 
Oh, and my BA degree (the actual paper) finally showed up in the mail last week. Pretty close to the 6 week mark, but I guess it doesn't really matter as I haven't even hung it up or taken it out of the envelope (except to look at it). 
