I've been spending the past three weeks preparing to take my written exams. Yerp. Three solid weeks of studying, with breaks for some of the reasearch that I'm doing and programming a bit on the side. It will be nice when I get these tests behind me on wednesday, and can concentrate on everything else that I am doing.\n\n[gal://5045kensington/backyard_09012003/001_messy_backyard_09012003.jpg]In the time that I haven't been studying, I've been trying to clean up the backyard here at the house. Seems that it was left to the dogs rather literally, and weeds have built up in the back, as well as a few problems with the sprinkler lines. I'll get around to cleaning that up sometime next week, so we'll see how it all looks in a month or so once the grass has had a chance to sprout and regrow in place of the weeds and everything else that is there now.\n\nMy research is progressing slowly, and I've also been spending a fair amount of time looking for contract work so I can pay for yet another year of grad school. Anyone who is looking for contract mod_perl programmers, or expert system administrators, I'm all ears.