I graduated from the University of Houston with a B.S in Computer Science and minor in Math. I finished my degree in an all-to-soon 3.5 years (7 semesters) with a GPA ~3.4 (Cum Laude), and University Honors (Honors College).

During my college tenure, I was involved in so many aspects of student life. I lived on campus the entire time with my rommate Eric Siebeneich, a guy who at first I hardly knew became one of my best friends. I was President of the UH ACM Student Chapter “CougarCS” and brought many great programs and traditions during my time as a student leader. My last semester of college I also was in the marching band, a terrific experience. Academically, as my skills, knowledge, and talent improved, I had 3 awesome internships during school as a software developer: Air Liquide, JPMorgan Chase, and Intel.

Finally, life moves on. I started work at Intel in Santa Clara, California (The heart of Silicon Valley!) in January 2012. I already have many new friends and I haven’t wasted any time enjoying my new life.

It is difficult, moving from one stage of life to another. I miss my college life, and deeply miss the friends I made there. I am thankful that I will grow up and be able to look back at my youth and remember how awesome it was. I am going to miss my family, who are now scattered all over the place in different phases of their own lives. Lastly, I am most grateful for my mom, who helped me get through college without needing any student loans.

For those who don’t like reading:

I will be working in C/C++/Fortran compiler support with a focus on High Performance Computing. I am also (hopefully) going to get a chance to tackle some stuff on Intel’s MeeGo initiative, as I have pretty extensive experience with Java.

I have just arrive in Hillsboro, OR where I am renting a room from some pretty nice people I found on craigslist. I’m just barely 3 miles south of the Intel campus so my commute will be a refreshing bike ride to and from work. I have to admit that I’m already feeling slightly homesick, as I left behind a lot of friends and a beautiful girlfriend for the summer while I advance my career. It is a pretty crazy feeling to just fly to the other side of the country, live with some strangers and work in a high-profile internship. However, I can already tell the experience is going to be very rewarding and I am ready for a challenge.

I plan to venture into the exciting city of Portland whenever I can, as I have heard it is somewhat like the “Austin of the west coast”. I do know there is a large beer micro-brewery culture that goes on in the area so I will definitely be checking out the local taps on the weekends.

Some exciting news is that UH has achieved Tier 1 status which is a pretty big deal. Basically it acknowledges that the University has very high research activity. UH received more than $100 million in grants which was a big factor in receiving the status. This puts UH on par with the University of Texas and Texas A&M University which were previously the only Texas tier 1 schools. UH can now be even more competitive in research grants and hire on even more talented faculty.

I will be taking 13 hours of classes this semester. Couldn’t fit in any electives but I am finishing up most of the Computer Science core classes, a core math class that computer science requires and my final political science requirement for the Honors college. Wind Ensemble is only 1 hour but it will count towards the 3 total hours required for University Core in Fine Arts.

• Fundamentals of Operating Systems – sequential processes, concurrent processes, deadlock, mutual exclusion, semaphores; memory management, processor management, peripheral device management. There will definitely be POSIX C programming!
• Introduction to Automata and Computability – automata theory, formal systems, computability, Church-Turing thesis
• Women in Politics – Does this require an explanation?
• Statistics for the Sciences – Your basic statistics class but in certain parts we will be programming with R!
• Wind Ensemble – Concert Band for non-music majors, I play the Clarinet!

I had planned on doing a Senior Honors Thesis. But I have decided not to graduate early so I will be starting my thesis next fall. I am still not sure what I want to do but I will be talking to professors on possible topics throughout this semester.

I am still President of CougarCS, the Computer Science club at UH. I am already busy planning events, making big decisions, and dishing out assignments to the other officers.

So here is to another semester of college, hopefully I can keep up the good grades.