Of Mice and Army Men

Here it is Wednesday and I am hoping it is Friday.  Not the most auspicious of beginnings I know.  Trying to get back to what this thing was created for - an outlet so I can vent, talk about my day, talk about my concerns or even just talk about something I have been thinking of and not get judged or drive my wife crazy having to listen to.

My entire lab (well O.K. most of my entire lab) went up to Huntsville today.  Dr. Soni had arranged a tour of the offices of the Army's game design group.  He had originally joked that he did not want us going because he was afraid we would all want to take jobs there and no one would be left at the E.T. Lab.  I guess he decided that was not a threat because there we were, playing on the Army's toys.  They have a set up that is very similar to what we were shooting for at the Lab - they are basically in a really big warehouse, lots of storage room for bigger set pieces and still plenty of room for labs, office space, and storage.  They use the Unreal game engine instead of Unity but really it is not so different from what we do.  Really makes you envious of a place that can afford the kind of space we just dream of.

The day wasn't all giggles though.  I have a homework assignment due tomorrow afternoon for Dr. Johnstone and I have barely scratched the surface of it.  He gave us copies of four really large programs written in C++ and wants us to modify them so they do a couple of extra functions.  It would be so much easier if he had built up to this slowly, but instead he threw us straight to the wolves.  He seems like a very intelligent guy and I like him, but sometimes I wonder about his teaching ability.  He gave out a practice quiz last week - I bombed - and since the majority of the class did poorly on it, his solution was to teach something related to what we were doing, but even harder.  He basically thought if we could figure out THIS, then the stuff we were doing would seem easy.  I don't get it.

Anyway the only good news about the homework is that I am not the only one struggling with it.  I know at least one other guy in the class has not been able to get any farther than I have so I am not alone in my misery.