So what's up with DiBona, you ask

So what's up with DiBona, you ask.....

By Chris DiBona

January 11, 2006

Okay, so maybe you aren't asking. But I'm telling.. You might have been thinking to yourself: Man, Chris has been pretty flippin scarce lately, hasn't he? Maybe you haven't been asking yourself this, but I'm going to tell you why anyway.

But first: I really like saying the word "Flippin'" lately. Unknown as to why.

Anyhow...so, I've been going to school. When I was hired by Google, I did not have a college degree. I had left my CS program with one class left (Artificial Intelligence, natch) and....well....I meant to take it at San Jose State or Stanford at some point and hadn't been able to do it. Life (startups, marriage, child) all conspired with my procrastinators soul to make me skip AI.

Anyhow, I was hired by Google and I realized that I was probably the least educated person ever employed there. So I immediately called my old school [ http://www.gmu.edu/ ] to see if there was some way I could take it remotely. They agreed and I got an A and graduated. Yay me.

The book [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0137903952/103-0854412-2197466?n=283155 ] was the one you think it was too, co-written by a Googler and someone I personally admire, Peter Norvig [ http://www.norvig.com/ ]. In fact, it was in a meeting with Peter that I thought it was kind of stupid that I hadn't taken the course when the author of the courses textbook was sitting across the conference table from me.

So that got me thinking. If I can pull that off, maybe I could consider trying for an advanced degree. So I looked into CMU's [ http://west.cmu.edu/west ] coast campus on Ames [ http://maps.google.com/?ll=37.410681,-122.058299&spn=0.006195,0.009216&t=k ] and, well, to make a long story short applied and started last August. I should get my masters in software engineering after another year and a half of work. This is all, of course, the same time as my very full load at work and so that, my dear readers, is why I haven't been posting as much. The degree is a lot of work on top of a lot of work and since my family is very important to me, so I'd rather spend what very little free time I have with them and not posting on my blog. That's also why I skipped doing Nanowrimo [ http://nanowrimo.org/ ] in November and have been laying off the writing a bit for O'Reilly [ http://ora.com/ ].

My, I'm in a sharing mood today.

11:07 PM