I talked to Kevin (who is studying to be a pilot, for those who don’t know him) tonight and I’ve been reassured that airplanes, even those flown for bankrupt airlines, are safe. Just don’t crash in them. Or at least, plan on dying in the event of a crash, to spare yourself the experience of trying to get out of a crash-landed plane. One travel tip: when the stewardess tells you to locate the nearest exit row, keeping in mind that the nearest exit may be behind you, you are wasting the effort unless you also count the number of rows you have to travel to get there. Trust Kevin on that one, or ask him for the reason. It’s… comforting.

I thought I’d share that with you in light of the recent air travel I’ve been doing, as well as Tim’s trip home tomorrow from Hawaii, and because I like planes.

In other news since two weeks ago, I had an interview trip to Microsoft last week. Getting my homework done so I could fly out last Thursday kept me from posting that week, and general laziness (and a bit of embarassment over a computer issue) kept me from blogging this week. More details and some pictures to come on the interview trip and the computer issue in a future post, when I have time (mid-week?). In summary: It was the hardest interview I’ve ever had or even dreamt possible, but it went well, was actually fun in a cognitively-stimulating way, and, most importantly, resulted in a job offer. By Tuesday I’ll have to be able to tell you whether I’m working for Heartland Business Systems, Intuit, or Microsoft this summer, and consequently where I will be located (Little Chute, WI; Mountain View, CA; or Redmond, WA; respectively), because that’s the deadline on Microsoft’s offer. All three positions sound really cool as summer jobs, and all have some definite advantages, so it’s not a decision I want to make. I hate having to make choices when there’s multiple good, mutually-exclusive options.

Hm. Other than that, this week was Spring Break, which gave me time to do some spring cleaning of my computers and one of Jared’s, though unfortunately I didn’t spend nearly as much time on schoolwork as I had planned. I blame that on the unfortunate decision to start reading Knife of Dreams, the 11th book in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I’ve read about 2/3 of it, and though I’m really enjoying reading it, it is nevertheless consuming my free time. I don’t know how I ever read those books in 4 or 5 days each the first time through (junior year of high school). I also finally bought a copy of The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup, which fortunately I didn’t need for my Microsoft interview. (Though it would have helped had I read it before my Intuit interview… who knew that virtual meant, essentially, “turn on polymorphism”? I sure didn’t.)

I think I need to stop writing now, because I think I’m babbling. Stay tuned for updates on why you should not ask me to clean your computer as well as details on my trip to Seattle.