Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged school
Three Down, One To Go
Apr 11th 2008
I had my third test last night in my statistics class. I think I did OK on it, but it was one of those situations where I finished the test approximately 30 minutes before everyone else. Normally, I'm a fast test taker anyway, so I'm probably the first person done. I just don't like being the first person to hand something in, so I usually hang out and recheck my work to make sure everything looks good. This time though, I kept checking and checking and checking and checking…so I'm really hoping everyone else was just slow and I didn't totally miss a question or 6.
One more to go and I'll be done with that class and, hopefully, classroom instruction as a whole. However, this project thing is another matter entirely. I e-mailed my advisor/project sponsor again requesting when his office hours were so that we could meet up and I can show him what I have done. But despite suggesting that we meet up early last week, he's yet to respond to ANY of my e-mails since then. Warning…mini-rant incoming. Take cover.
I think he's intentionally trying to make this as hard as he possibly can for me and it's starting to piss me off royally. I'm getting awfully tired of being jerked around by professors here. Even when I started working on this project and asked him how it generally worked, he didn't tell me anything as far as what was expected of me. I'm just flying blind here and hoping that whatever I get done with will meet his expectations, which it probably won't and then I'll be forced to stay back another semester here so I can do it the right way. If that happens I can assure you I'll be marching straight to the deans office because I'm getting tired of this red tape crap. I want out.
It's Friday! Yay?
Mar 21st 2008
Well, it's Friday, and that's gotta count for something right?
I've been feeling kinda blah lately (not physically blah. Mentally blah). There's a lot of stuff going on at work and school which is weighing on me a bit right now, so I'm not feeling terribly peppy at the moment. Well, actually with work it's the lack of things going on that's the problem. I've been stuck on this one issue for a while now. One of our customers is having a problem I can't reproduce no matter how hard I try, even if I duplicate their setup exactly. I'm not sure what's wrong, how to fix it or how to even work around it because of the restrictions in place with their particular setup. And they're starting to get a little impatient. I also can't really ask anyone else because I'm the only person who deals with this sort of stuff here.
So I'm stuck. Which is really frustrating for me because I should know the answer and I should be able to fix it, but I can't. This doesn't really help my issue that I discussed earlier about feeling like this isn't what I'm really supposed to be doing. I feel like I'm in over my head or something, I guess would be the best way to describe it.
School is being a pain too because I'm still behind a bit on my project but I'm going to spend more time this weekend to get it going again. I find it really hard to get home from work and jump right into working on another thing I really don't want to do. And my frustration with all of this has caused me to deviate a bit from my weight loss plan, which is totally my fault and I'm jumping back on as of today, but I haven't done any exercise this week at all because I haven't felt that I had the energy.
Oh well…onwards to happier news. Syracuse won their game last night in the NIT Tournament which means they get to play one more home game on Tuesday before they head out to Madison Square Garden (if they win anyway). I'm going to this one alone because my dad has a doctors appointment thingy and I had assumed since the only other people I'd consider asking (Wassy and Jay) don't like sports that they wouldn't be interested. As it turns out I was wrong on that last count after I bought my ticket because Wassy said she would have gone with me. Bah! Noted for the next time this comes up.
This weekend isn't looking terribly fun for me though. I need to spend a lot of time working on my project for school to prevent myself from becoming pushed farther behind. I basically have 4 weeks to finish up the whole deal now and I want to get back on top of things before they totally spiral out of control. I'll be very glad when all of this is over.
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Bah To School (With Bonus Personal Reflection)
Mar 14th 2008
I've probably mentioned this previously but just to quickly recap…as part getting my degree in Computer Science, the school I attend requires that I complete a semester long, large project of some sort. Considering I hope to graduate soon(ish) I'm doing that project this semester. Or, trying to do that project this semester anyway. I'm basically doing a content management system that could be used for say, a Computer Science Department website.
The problem is I'm a bit behind schedule. Although I guess that's no surprise considering I have nearly 0 motivation to actually code this thing. I have a problem in that when I do programming, unless it's something I really care about, I have a very hard time working up the energy to actually do anything with it. And again, this has bit me in the butt. So now I'm a couple weeks behind where I thought I would be when I was planning out timeframes. But I've determined that if I can get what I need to get done this weekend (pretty much half of the upcoming events calander section, plus some of the user profile stuff like changing passwords and such) I'll be back on track as far as my expected completion date. So I'm planning on spending a signifigant portion of Sunday working on crap that I'd rather not work on. Fun!
This leads me back to something I think I posted up here about not being sure if I really wanted to spend my life developing software. I really enjoy working on stuff…for my own use, or to help out friends. But, if I don't care about a project it just becomes a chore. And more often than not, I end up not really caring. I keep getting this feeling that what I'm doing right now isn't what I should be spending my life on, but this feeling isn't telling me what it is that I should be doing. Just that it feels…wrong somehow. This came out talking to a friend the other night as well. I've really grown annoyed at just sitting in a chair all day in the same spot, day in and day out, doing the exact same things. It just really drags me down imaging that I'm going to be spending the rest of my working life doing pretty much just that. I'm having a very hard time looking into the future and seeing myself still doing this all the way down the road. I dunno. Maybe I'll figure it out sometime. There's gotta be something better out there.
The Wonder Of Statistics
Jan 18th 2008
Last night was the first night of hopefully my last semester of college classes. Nothing like a 3 hour statistics course after work to pass the time. Or something. At least the professor is an interesting guy. He's got a quirky sense of humor and knows how to make things interesting.
The first thing he said to the class was that he was annoyed at the school because they don't know how to do anything right and nobody will actually pick up the phone if you're trying to get a problem fixed. He basically went on a 5 minute mini-rant about how annoying working with the school was. It was at this point that I realized that this is my kind of teacher. He also seemed to know how to teach people too, which is kinda a rarity. Although he does also teach at Herkimer County Community College which might explain it. I've found that most of the teachers at community colleges actually know how to teach.
And as far as the big project goes, I'm beginning to wonder if my faculty advisor guy knows what he's doing at all. I'm trying to get some guidance about how the project is generally run and the guy isn't telling me anything. I have a feeling I'm just going to have to stumble through this blindly and hope for the best at the end. Fun.
Let's see here…in other non school related news, I discovered that something ate my Guitar Hero 3 saved game on my memory card, so now I need to replay the game from scratch to unlock everything again. Not that I really mind doing it, exactly, but it's just a pain to have to. I have no idea how my saved game got corrupted either as I don't recall turning the game off while it was saving or something along those lines.
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Just Tying Things Up
Jan 5th 2008
So there's a couple of loose threads that I've left hanging over the past week or so. Specifically the last paragraph in this post. I figured I should post an update because both of those have been resolved.
My car went into the dealer Wednesday night and came back to me on Thursday with working airbags, which is a giant plus in my book. Hopefully it was just an isolated thing and It's not going to keep being a problem…We shall see. They also fixed the squeak from the center console, but I have a feeling it will be back because of reports from various internet sources. On the plus side there, somebody posted that you can do a homemade fix by prying the part off and using some felt on the clips that hold it down to get rid of the noise which seems to take care of it for good.
For school, I was able to get into contact with the secretary which allowed me to register for my final project thingy. So I think we're good there. Something has got to come up though, because with my luck, there's no way I'll be able to graduate this semester. No way at all.
It Must Be The Middle Of The Week
Dec 20th 2007
I'm experiencing a feeling of general blah and disinterest today, for unknown reasons. Not sure why, I just don't feel like getting anything accomplished.
First off, an update about my car. Took it into the dealer on Tuesday and they said that the airbag control computer is busted, so they had to overnight a new one in. Apparently overnight in car mechanic speak means something different from what it means in other circles. They called me yesterday and left a message on my cell phone to call them back, but I guess it was just a survey to see how my visit went and not the fact that the parts were in. I only discovered this after calling back the service department (because nobody was ever at the number they left on my voice mail) and asking. Really hoping I didn't annoy the guy. I can understand parts taking longer due to the fact it's a brand new car and things aren't quite as widely available yet.
Then onwards to school talk. I'm trying to coordinate my final project with my professor/sponsor guy and he seems to be as clueless about the whole process as I am. I need to get his authorization to sign up for the course and I asked him about it and he basically told me to ask the department secretary (???) without actually telling me how to contact her. I'm not terribly surprised since this guy was (still is actually although I try to avoid him if at all possible) my advisor and, in the words of ratemyprofessors.com, "It's obvious he has tenure"
Added to that, things didn't go terribly well with my planned activities last night (and I'll refer you to Wassy's blog post here on that) and I'm just feeling exhausted again.
Hopefully the long weekend will offer some recharging potential.
I Didn't Fail!! (With Bonus Car Related Item)
Dec 17th 2007
Today was the day I got my grades back for this semester of school. My horrible, horrible software engineering course (which I've complained about before) resulted in a C- which I'm happy to take since I won't need to take the stupid course ever again. I got a B+ in world religions which is about how I expected to do.
I actually contacted the dean of the school about Software Engineering because of how the course was taught. Mostly because of the fact that with roughly 4 hours of class scheduled per week, we only met about an hour and a half of that. The instructor pretty much gave off a vibe that he didn't want to be there. He'd give his lecture, mumble something about seeing us next week and then rush out of the room in 40-50 minutes. It was getting totally ridiculous.
The dean actually called me back and told me that something was going to be done about it after final grades because 2-3 people had complained about it. I also complained that I thought the course was much too centered on Java, to the point where it felt like it was a Java programming language course. That one didn't go over quite so well, but…we'll have to see I guess. Hopefully future students don't find the course as much of a waste of time as I found it to be.
Moving onward to next semester, I found out I need to take one more course just so I have enough credits to graduate in addition to my project. So when school starts up again I'll be taking a Statistics course, plus doing my final project which is all set up and squared away as far as having an instructor and a project. I just need to do it now.
I'm almost free…
As far as the bonus item goes, my new car has developed a severe case of non-working-airbag syndrome. I was driving home from my friends house on Saturday and my airbag warning light started flashing. I called the dealer up today and it's being brought in tomorrow for service. Hopefully it's just a little kink and won't develop into a major long term issue. That would be…annoying. I'm also having them check out a squeak that's developed from the center console area that occurs when I'm going through corners. Sounds like the little silver trim around the gear shifter is loose, so it rubs against the plastic and causes it to make a noise. So hopefully I can take care of both things.
I'm Done I'm Done I'm Done! (For Now…)
Dec 12th 2007
It's over with! The week of crushing homework has been completed. I finished everything I needed to do today and thus ends this semester of school. It's not something I'd care to repeat again and hopefully, I won't have to.
I also got into contact with some people at the school to confirm that I only have one final thing left to do before I can graduate from college and finally move on with my life. Can you tell I'm anxious to get out?
Ahh…loving that stress free feeling.
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Cold Update: Status Good
Dec 8th 2007
Just figured I'd update my posting from last night. I woke up this morning with no fever which is a plus. Unfortunately, I also woke up with a splitting headache. The Motrin is working on that right now and it's not that bad at the moment.
Looks like everything is going to be fine for doing my massive amounts of homework this weekend. Sigh.
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