I’m entering the home stretch as I graduate with an associate degree in computer programming from San Jose City College in two weeks.

• Ceramics I (Arts 046A) is pretty much finished as all I need to do is glaze my final four pieces—a self-portrait bust, a large water jar, a square bowl, and a Egyptian figurine—this week, and get ready for the potluck and critique next week.
• A Directed Study (CIS 098) course substituted for Object Oriented Programming (CIS 059) that hasn’t been offered this semester or next got done in ten hours. I previously completed an online HTML in six hours on the last day of school, as I’ve been writing HTML code since 1997.
• Data Structures (CIS 055) is proving problematic. I want to do anything else but figure out how to link data nodes this way and that. I might wait until the very last day to finish the assignments for that class.

Although I’m still planning to take Ceramics II (Arts 046B) and Ceramics III (Arts 047C) for fun next year, this is the last semester I can qualify for academic pricing on certain software packages. I bought Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Lightroom for $600 USD (retail is ~$1,800 USD), and I got Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional on order for $99 USD (retail is ~$800 USD). If you’re going to have a career as a web developer and programmer, these heavy-duty and very expensive applications are must have tools.