Aug 31
Classes are going well so far. I’ve had all of them at least once now, though we haven’t done anything interesting yet, of course. They all still seem interesting at least. I’m hoping for a good semester. Mayhaps I can make that happen. On an interesting note, I have a class on databases and the [...] [...more]
Posted: under General, School.
Classes are going well so far. I’ve had all of them at least once now, though we haven’t done anything interesting yet, of course. They all still seem interesting at least. I’m hoping for a good semester. Mayhaps I can make that happen. On an interesting note, I have a class on databases and the professor used an interesting explanation as to why he’s going to be so anal about our programs actually working right, all the time. He went into some spiel about how mistakes can realistically cause loss of money or death. That’s a fair enough reason I suppose. On the other hand, I’ve had him before and i know that he’s inclined to be that way anyways. 
Since I’m going to actually try to do well, I’ll have less time to blog, unfortunately. With any luck, I’ll really mean that too… At least I can grab feeds and just read on the weekends if need be.
On an unrelated note, I had fully planned about lodging a complaint about how gas had hit $3.00 for the first time ever. Today, I see it’s gone up again to $3.19, which means it’s gone up $0.50 in the last 2 days. I hope it goes down to the normal rip-off of < $2.70 or so soon. My cars have enough to last this week anyways.
Aug 27
Naturally, I’ve mentioned this before, but I hate college students. They’re like a swarm of locusts (I guess anyways…. never actually seen that come to think of it..). They’re like a pack of dogs. They’re like…..tourists. They clog up the stores and roadways and it impossible to get around.
Mind you, I don’t have nothing against [...] [...more]
Posted: under Rants, School.
Naturally, I’ve mentioned this before, but I hate college students. They’re like a swarm of locusts (I guess anyways…. never actually seen that come to think of it..). They’re like a pack of dogs. They’re like…..tourists. They clog up the stores and roadways and it impossible to get around.
Mind you, I don’t have nothing against any particular student, or 2, or 3, or 20 even. It’s the 20,000 that’s the problem. I don’t know how many exactly stay around all year, but I’m guessing at least 75% are of the mirgrational type. When they show up in town, the population roughly doubles. On the up side, they don’t all have cars, but then on the down side, on those certain roads that lead to hundreds of apartment units, traffic will be up closer to 500%. Unfortunately, I work down one of those roads. There’s a little bridge over some railroad tracks that they tore out in the spring and it’s taking them a full year to replace (this I don’t get…they had the old bridge gone in the first few days the road was closed….why does it take 12 months to build a 20 foot bridge?) that would be one of the main routes for what amounts to about 500 apartments to get into town. Now, they’re taking the shorter of the two remaining routes which just so happens to be where my work is located. When I got out last night at 11:30 you wouldn’t have known it. Traffic was as bad or worse than you’d expect it to be in the middle of the day.
And the stores…The students swarm through the stores, once again making them several times more busy than they would be otherwise. Seeing as though I don’t particularly like people that much, this is extra annoying. Of course, they buy everything as well, so shelves tend to run on the empty side. These items are primarily a problem of the last couple of days and will last through this next week. You see, they all show back up and start buying things for their dorms/apartments and clear everyone out. I remember last year we were out on the weekend before classes started and we saw about 50 cars waiting at a light to turn towards walmart and target. Normally there would be closer to 10 or 15.
Aug 26
The end is near. My classes start on Monday. This wouldn’t be terribly bad, but I feel that I’m not ready. I dropped all my classes last semester. I was having some problems, to say the least. The plan was to take my 5 months off and take care of those problems. I didn’t really [...] [...more]
Posted: under School.
The end is near. My classes start on Monday. This wouldn’t be terribly bad, but I feel that I’m not ready. I dropped all my classes last semester. I was having some problems, to say the least. The plan was to take my 5 months off and take care of those problems. I didn’t really though. Oops. Things in general have been better, I’m not sure what will happen when put under a load. That is, once I’m spending 12 hours of my day on work and school, before homework. I get this feeling it won’t really work quite properly. It never does exactly.
Then again, I’m just going to try to enjoy my classes. If I can make them into something that’s more like recreation than work then I should be fine. And I will actually enjoy the classes if I let myself. Particularly this semester. All my classes are 500 level courses that are CS electives for me that will undoubtedly have lots of grad students in them as well. My most interesting looking course is called introduction to biocomputation and evolutionary computing. Well, it looks interesting to me anways…
So I’m just going to start the semester with a positive outlook and try to have fun with it all. That’s the plan. We’ll see if it works.
Mar 22
I dropped all of my classes for the semester.
In a way, this is a huge relief. I have enough going on without having to deal with school as well and with it out of the way maybe I can focus on getting my shit together. At least I know that I stand a much better [...] [...more]
Posted: under Personal, School.
I dropped all of my classes for the semester.
In a way, this is a huge relief. I have enough going on without having to deal with school as well and with it out of the way maybe I can focus on getting my shit together. At least I know that I stand a much better chance of being able to do so. Also, the situation I was in for most of my classes was that I would need to do quite well for the remainder of the semester in order to pass. If I were able to apply myself I know that I’d be more than capable of doing so, but I don’t really see myself being able to do that. I’d much rather not deal with it.
On the down side, I really hate to fail at anything (not that you’d know from how much I do it…). In a way I hate giving up on it. I really just want to be done with it all. I’m so close and this of course just sets me back that much more.
On the all and all though, I know that I’ve chosen the best option. Now I just need to slay those demons or whatnot, get back to it in the fall and live happily ever after. Or rather, as Stephen King points out, no one ever does, but rather I will live and there will be happiness. That’s the plan anyways.
Jan 10
My first day went pretty decent except for my second class. The course itself is supposed to be just programming in various languages, but the language itself depends on the class itself. One class will focus on Java, another on Ada, etc. This one apparently focuses on C++. I thought it would be C. Because [...] [...more]
Posted: under School.
My first day went pretty decent except for my second class. The course itself is supposed to be just programming in various languages, but the language itself depends on the class itself. One class will focus on Java, another on Ada, etc. This one apparently focuses on C++. I thought it would be C. Because the course can be different thigns the course description is generic and it says to look at the schedule listings for the specific language. The course listings of course didn’t say anything but “c” which I assumed to be C, and not C++, because who there wouldn’t know C++ already…there are tons of other courses dedicated to it. Silly me. I have had some exposure to C, but not much and I thought it would be good for that. The one thing I certainly don’t need is a introductory/intermediate course in C++…C++ is the “primary” language, if you will, used by the computer science department. Many other classes use it. I believe this class is designed for Information Technology students who apparently start off using VB. Anyways, I got up and walked out of class as it seemed a bit beneath me, not to sound pretentious or anything… 
I tried to change classes just then but I couldn’t get to the online registration system…it had reached it’s maximum of 1000 users and wasn’t acepting more connections. I think it was actually just broken. I tried again later when I got home and still couldn’t get on, so I changed my classes using my handheld voice transmitter phone instead. This also worked out well because when I got home I could actually tell what classes I needed…a minor detail. I also saw afterwards that they had taken down the online system…I think it had some issues. I ended up with a different class at the same time that should work out better than the actual class for the value of the class at least. It’s about systems programming (which ironically is probably done in C anyways.. ). The only drawback is that the professor who’s teaching it sucks terribly. I’ll live though. Now I just have to go straighten out my books tomorrow.
Beyond that situation, my last class feels really odd. I noticed that I didn’t really recognize anyone in it and then I found out that except one other person, they’re all grad students. The prereqs are junior level undergrad classes though, so I have no idea why it worked out this besides the fact that the class isn’t offered frequently. It’s on design patterns and should prove to be interesting. I had planned on studying that topic more on my own at some point anyways.
