2.09.2006

School Daze

Yeah, it's been awhile. Nothing eats your leisure time like school work, immigration & tax forms, and job hunting.

School is going well so far. I'm about halfway through the semester which usually means lots of midterm exams and projects will be due soon. For some reason, that has not been the case this time. Most of my classes already had mini-exams, with two or three more scheduled in later weeks.

More professors have begun to dabble in using online learning products like WebCT, Blackboard, and Aplia, though to questionable effect. I particularly hate the odd selection of due times for online assignments. For example, my Macroeconomics class meets only once every Wednesday, but several small assignments are due throughout the week. So I have assignments due for this class on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday Nights, at 11:45pm. Why on those days and at that particular time? No reason I know of; and that's what makes it so frustrating. You may say "The prof needs time to correct the assignments so they can be returned to you on Wednesday." Well, no. The computer corrects the assignments for him. And even if it didn't, do you really think he's sitting at his computer at 11:45pm every night, waiting for us to finish our assignments? I think not. So, if you're gonna set a due time other than class time, why not make it something more meaningful like 8:00am. Then I have all night to work on it (as I like to do sometimes) and the prof would have all the results ready for him when he gets to his office in the morning.

An update for my A+ Certification: I passed the first part of my exam, Hardware, and will take the second part, OS Technologies, as soon as I've finished brushing up on my Windows 95 DOS commands. I did fairly well on the hardware part, and I expect to do even better with the OS.

There's your update. Time to get back to my school work. I think I have one of those Econ assignments due in a couple of hours...

1.12.2006

Blowing Dust

Yeah, I haven't posted for a few days. Time to blow off the dust and post once more.

My wife hates it when I blow dust off of things. She says I should use a rag to wipe the dust, but I find that much less satisfying. Blowing dust is an important step in going forward with numerous facets of life; from something as small as finishing a furniture project, to an important milestone like beginning a lifetime career.

Some recent dust-related occurances:

  • Saw Dust - I got a cool, new toy at Sears last weekend; a rotary tool. It can cut, grind, sand, etch, trim, plane, drill, cut, polish, carve, and cut. So far I used it to drill screw holes into two old, triangular desk parts. I then combined them to form a simple corner shelf.

  • Dusty Books - With my holiday vacation over, it's time to dust off the school books and get back to my studies. This quarter I'll be facing another C++ programming course, food science (mmm...science), a 4-hour evening macroeconomics class, and two Information Science classes. The first of those is a continuation of a class I took last quarter. I'm working with a group of 5 other students to develop a system to remind medical patients of their appointments via phone, email, or SMS text messages. The second is a class focusing on Competitive Intelligence (CI). Through CI techniques, a company can legally and ethically gather information about its competitors and the marketplace in general. This intelligence is then used to make better strategic business decisions.

  • Dusty Resumé - As I complete my academic obligations and prepare to return to the real world, I must chronicle what I have learned and experienced, on an 8½-11" sheet of paper, so that someone might see it and be willing to pay me money for the use of my abilities. I haven't adjusted my resumé since I was hired for my second co-op back in the summer of 2002. I've been putting it off until I complete my A+ certification, just so I have something else to add to my marketability. I'll be taking the hardware part of the test tomorrow, and the OS part sometime next week. Wish me luck!
  • 1.03.2006

    Computer #4, Update

    I finally got the case, motherboard and power supply for my wife's computer. After four hours of assembly in the tight space of this cute, little case, it's not much closer to being a computer than when I started. I booted it up and it went through the normal POST and such. I thought I was in the clear. But then there was Windows. The hard drive I am using is salvaged from a non-functional Compaq Presario. When it was time for Windows to start, I got the F8 pre-start screen because the last computer was not shutdown correctly. Ok, that's not so bad. But when I selected the "Start Normally" option, the computer rebooted. When I selected "Safe Mode", the computer rebooted. I guess I've got more work to do...