Well, I suppose one of the places to start with the move to New Mexico is one of the main reasons I moved here: the Opportunity Scholarship, going back to college, and working at the same time. I chose computer science because that’s basically what I’ve been doing since my associate’s degree, and before that, actually.
“Oh, well, your computer science degree is going to be a paperweight soon enough.”
It’s funny, because right when I started back, AI blew up. Gen AI, everywhere, all at once. Everyone was like, “Oh, well, your computer science degree is going to be a paperweight soon enough.” That got to me for a little bit. Except, unlike new graduates, I have a long work history, so I just stayed the course.
Back to School
It’s a little weird going back to college at this age. I’m not the only one, but the majority of students are traditional college students at the right age, so there’s not many people to meet and have stuff in common with. I probably have more in common with the professors. That wasn’t outside the realm of my expectations.
What was, though, is that different colleges have different degree plans. It took a while just to get from my associate’s into the School of Engineering; cause, a lot of my transfer credits didn’t go towards it, so I had to clean that up. Going part-time, that took a while all on its own.
All the while, it’s hard to commit the same amount of commitment I normally do for work, so I had this feeling I was falling behind. That worries me, and the worry spirals, and I get more behind. Then I did a summer class one time. Awful. Just the amount of time I dedicated to that. I felt landlocked in Albuquerque, like, “Well, I can’t go anywhere, I’m in school,” so it was hard to do anything long-term other than during the breaks.
Meanwhile, at Work
But honestly, work has been more interesting than college over the years, especially with all the work we’ve done with Colorado. I’m actually not sure what I can talk about here other than the surface of what it is.
COTAK is a shared map for Colorado’s first responders. Cops, firefighters, search and rescue, emergency managers, all looking at the same screen so they can see where their people and their gear are and what’s going on while an emergency is going on. Before, that was radio. “Where are you?” “What are you seeing?” Now everybody gets the same picture, which is the whole point when a bunch of different agencies show up to the same incident.
Working on that website and its back-end dashboard has been really satisfying. Through the whole process I’ve been learning to program a bit more confidently, though I’m not the lead programmer on the new project right now.
So generally, work’s been really good, and recently it’s been interesting with all the Gen AI stuff. It’s certainly changed how I do all my work now. At first I thought not for the better, but that was because it wasn’t good enough, I suppose. With the recent models, it’s pretty impressive, and I’m able to hand off a lot more to a more agentic process. Which saves a lot of time, and you oddly end up with more work.
That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I took a break from the scholarship because the New Mexico school lets you do that, and I’m focusing on work and some other stuff. Just not having to deal with semesters has freed up a lot of mental space to hit things hard. Not sure how interested people are in me talking about what I’ve got the clankers doing, but you’ll get a blog post about that later down the road. For now, just know it’s been good, and it looks like it’s just getting better.
So, you all caught up, right? Five year gap in a few paragraphs. Got everything? Good.
