I passed!

I passed my oral exam today. As my advisor said “As if there was any doubt”. My talk went for about an hour, and happily I was able to answer every question posed to me. I had an audience of about ten, which was much less than I hoped for but much more than I expected (given notices were not put up until a couple of hours prior).

I include here 3 slides from my 38 slide presentation, without commentary:

slide 1.jpg slide 2.jpg slide 4.jpg

And since you’re well-and-truly bored by now, in commemoration of today (Halloween!), here’s some flashback photos to me in 1999:

Halloween 1999 01.jpg Halloween 1999 05.jpg

I trust you can see a change in my ‘outfit’ as the night wore on?

Best gift card ever!

Here’s a gift card I got today at Target:

1.jpg

And here’s what it looks like when you push the power button on the front (just to the left of the Target symbol):

2.jpg

Woah! It has four LEDs built into it and looks amazing. Easily the best gift card I have ever seen. The best thing is that it is more or less free, since there is no limit on how much (ie. how little) you put on it nor how soon you can spend it. So I put $10 on it, and then immediately redeemed it to buy the rest of our order 🙂

Oh yes, and the Wii logo doesn’t hurt. In addition to my game collection I have a fairly large collection of paraphenalia, so this fits nicely. Maybe I should scan and post some of my collection one day…