It is now week 3 into my final quarter at OSU as a CS major. Interestingly enough, I never pursued a technical degree. My first degree was in accounting and I never went on to be a CPA. My last job was what got me into taking this program.

I was an Implementation Specialist and I would help integrate the customer’s data into the platform. I learned some basic Python and SQL on the job and this interested me enough to pursue this degree. The engineers at work taught me enough to get the data integrated, but I never fully grasped the concept. This is why I took the program.

My CS 467 team began implementing the chess game. I worked on a simple chess engine that allows pieces to move according to the rules of chess. For example, a bishop moves diagonally as many rows and columns as possible, a knight moves in an L shape and can move over pieces, a king can only move one square at a time in all directions. I will begin implementing a way to valid checks, checkmates, and stalemates, special moves like castling, and an AI in the next couple of weeks.

Back in CS 344, we learned about dynamic programming and Longest Common Subsequence Problem. For our homework, we implemented an algorithm to determine how similar two DNA sequences are. This is known as bioinformatics. My wife is a biology major and works in lab where she does bioinformatics. It was cool that my wife and I had something to talk about that was related to both our work.

One night, she was working late at the lab and she asked me to bring food. I got to the lab, but didn’t tell her I arrived. I saw her working and tried to take a picture, but she caught me and gave me a look. I have to put her on blast for this.