Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged school
Coming Up For Air
Dec 6th 2007
I'm smack dab in the middle of the end of the semester crunch week, which is why my posting has gotten a little sparse. Things are going along pretty much as scheduled though which is, obviously a good thing.
I'm all done with actual "classes" now, having gone to my last World Religions class which focused on Islam. We had a Muslim student in the class who was very helpful in explaining about the various daily prayers and even giving us a demonstration of the morning prayer (in Arabic and then translated into English)
Work continues tonight on the Software Engineering Project. This weekend will be partially devoted to research and paper writing for creation stories of various religions.
Zooming backwards a bit, it seems that winter has actually arrived in full force around here. The past couple days the weather has been fairly nasty. I'm happy to report that my Nissan Rogue performs perfectly in the snow. I've had a lot of chances to test it out recently and once I got used to how it drives as opposed to how my civic drove in the snow, I can say it feels a lot more solid. My civic felt like it was at the edge of disaster every time I tried to take a curve, no matter how slow I was going (I once spun it going around a corner at ~5 miles per hour. I just had to sit there and laugh at that one)
So in short, all is good, although it's busy. One more week to go…
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End of Semester Crush: An Update
Nov 30th 2007
As I mentioned previously, there's 2 weeks left in this semester and as such, I'm currently buried in schoolwork. Most pressing on my mind at this point is my Software Engineering project which is going to be a tremendous amount of work to do in the two weeks I have left. Yesterday though, the professor told us the due date which is the day after the final (December 12th) which was about a week later than I thought the due date was going to be. I'm a bit more relaxed about that project now.
Moving into World Religions, I have an essay test due next week on Judaism/Christianity/Islam all combined because she ran out of time to talk about them. I think it's the two classes we spent on the introduction and the 2 we used on indigenous/native american religion. Whatever the case is, I need to write 4 essays, although the topics are fairly easy this time out. For example…name the 10 commandments and describe them. My theory is since we only had 4 exams and we were supposed to have 6, she wants another grade before the end of the semester.
And after that, the week after my 8 page paper on the various creation stories is due. Fun fun fun!
Tired
Nov 27th 2007
I'm exhausted this morning even though I went to bed early last night. I thought I had slept well too.
It's amazing how quickly one's mood can change. Last week I was reasonably happy, and suddenly this week I'm back to feeling crushed. End of the semester and all, lots of work to do. But I don't really feel like doing any of it. I still will of course, I'm just really tired of dealing with, well…everything.
Tonight I need to visit with my partner after class so we can work on our Software Engineering project, and I need to write a couple essays for World Religions somewhere in here. I really hate the end of the semester.
Very Busy…
Nov 8th 2007
It's been a busy couple days so I haven't had time to post much. I've been running around to school and busy writing papers for my World Religion class, trying to finish Software Engineering assignments that I can see taking up way too much of my time in the near future. Tonight is the first chance I've had to really relax since Monday night. A friend of mine is coming over to hang out for a while.
The Software Engineering thing is worthy of a little rant. The professor for this course is a little Indian guy. At least I think he's from India. He speaks with a very heavy accent and says an awful lot of "Umm…ahhh…err" when he's talking. He also tries to get lecture done as fast as possible. I think I've mentioned this before, but for the past couple weeks we've been getting out of class after about 30-40 minutes of lecture. Not that I'm complaining of course…but he's practically out the door before the students realize the class is over.
He's also incredibly annoying when it comes to homework assignments. They have to be named specifically, submitted in a specific way and if one thing is done wrong in regards to how the assignment was submitted, even if it's minor, he won't grade the assignment, period. He is so incredibly annoying with this. He rejected one of our assignments becasue it wasn't in a folder on the cd. So make a folder and stick it in there! Ughh. I've had just about as much as I can stand from this guy.
A quick car update: Still loving it. The stereo system, as I think I've mentioned before, is all kinds of awesome and I'm getting a handle on how it drives. It's a bit bigger than my Civic and I'm sitting higher up, so I'm still getting the feel of how I need to be situated when I park, but I'm getting a lot better at it now. Still no pictures since I haven't had time and it's dark out at night now due to daylight savings time. I'll probably post some up on the weekend.
At the moment I'm trying to figure out what the best way to mount my iPod is. The cupholder configuration isn't quite as useful for this purpose as it was in my Civic. For now I'm just happy with CDs though. All in all, very happy with my choice. Very happy.
The Void
Oct 2nd 2007
Well, I know I've slowed down posting around here, but…really, there's not much to talk about. Even the Question of The Day's recently have been uninteresting to me.
I went over to my friends last night to watch Heroes (and pick up some yummy chocolate chip cookies) but I can't really talk about that much except to say it's entertaining. It's far too early for me to try to develop any sort of theory as to what's going on. I'm just happy I can watch it this season due to my school schedule.
Oh, there's another thing I can talk about! For my Software Engineering class, we're paired up into groups to do the final pair project. Our group got perhaps the dumbest project I've ever heard of. We have to make a system that will diagnose and repair home problems, like appliances breaking down and such. It's your classic internet enabled toaster scenario. I had to write up a 2 page problem description/specification sheet for this problem I don't have and can't see any reason of having. I managed to BS up about a page of crap before the well went dry. I sent it off to my partner to see if he can come up with anything I may have missed.
So…that's about it as far as interesting "stuff" goes.
3 Hour Classes Should Be Illegal
Sep 27th 2007
Ughh…Last night's World Religion class was fun! We're just starting Hinduism (or what's classified as Hinduism anyway, considering it's a whole lot of more fractured religions under one banner..but I digress) and, as much as I enjoy my professor, she has a problem in that she knows too much.
You might be thinking that this really isn't a problem at all…but, consider also the fact that she also gets off track easily, so she tends to be all over the place during her lecture, going off the specific topic quite often. It's usually pretty interesting offtopic-ness but it inflates her lectures like you wouldn't believe.
It really starts to get annoying when she keeps talking for two and a half hours. With no breaks. Every 20 minutes last night she said "Just a few more slides then I'll give you guys a break.." And eventually, at near 9pm, she did. She was going to give us 20 minutes but she only had 3 more slides of her powerpoint presentation to go through, so we bargined her down to a 5 minute break because, at this point, what the heck is the difference anyway?
But still. Two and a half hours. That's entirely too long. She normally goes for somewhere along the realm of just under 2 hours, which is still too long for my tastes. I dunno about anyone else, but after listening and absorbing stuff for that long, I'm in need of a little break to space things out. I'd learn more if she, say, gave us two ten minute breaks, spaced about an hour apart each for some breathing room. Arrgh!
Random Dump O' Stuff
Sep 5th 2007
I'm still alive! Honest!
I just really haven't had much to talk about since the state fair. Or much that I'd like to throw up on the internet anyway. There have been a few things going on but nothing that I could make a full post out of, but now that there's enough collected random stuff…
- I got sunburned at the state fair, just below my eyes. That was annoying. I guess I forgot to put sunscreen there.
- I've determined my Dad should purchase all concert tickets for me from here on out. First 2nd row at the Porcupine Tree show, now we've got 4th row center seats to see the Blue Man Group in October, a week or two after seeing Porcupine Tree. Next up, Trans Siberian Orchestra tomorrow.
- Apple is going to be releasing new iPods today based on popular speculation. Several of my friends are on strict orders to knock me unconscious if I even imply that I'm putting my credit card into any web forms.
- My apartment has a new green screen door and will be receiving a brand new front door at some point in the future. Also green.
- My software engineering professor is really hard to understand, and he says "ummmm…ah….errrrrr…" every 2-5 words.
- I met up with a friend from my high school who was also taking software engineering. Which is handy because the course requires group work.
- I'm currently in the process of eBaying the more expensive cards in my Magic:The Gathering collection. I used to be big into it but they've sat in a closet for a couple years and I figure I should sell them before people stop playing the game. Looking back at my last 31 days of eBay history, I've sold $768.53 total worth of magic cards so far, bringing me to the realization that I spent wayyyy too much money on that hobby.
- My Belkin iPod car adapter (charger + line out) has been on it's last legs for a while after the casing got broken on the dock connector part, leaving just the bare connector and the wires. Yesterday wires started falling off, until finally, it killed the sound, so I need to get a replacement at some point.
- Another one of my Zebra Danio's vanished. This time it wasn't in the filter. I have no idea what happened to this one. Vanished like ol' one eye.
And there we go. Random facts related. Now to tag that mess…
People With No Common Sense
Aug 30th 2007
I don't believe I've mentioned this, but I'm back at school for another fun semester. Two classes this time…Software Engineering (my last programming related requirement) and World Religions (a course just for the credits). World Religions was tonight.
During the break in the course, I was wandering around campus and saw this sign for the college anime club…
I would like to draw your attention to the first bullet point listed here. Now…I dunno about you, but I'm not sure I'd be advertising the fact that your club has over 750 Gigs of pirated Japanese animation movies/shows just sitting on a hard drive someplace. Especially not on a campus that's patrolled by actual police officers.
Just doesn't seem the smartest thing to do…
QotD: My 15 Minutes
Aug 2nd 2007
What would you consider to be your 15 minutes of fame so far in life?
Well, you can see me in the audience at the end of Mike Portnoy's newest instructional DVD, In Constant Motion. I'm wearing an orange shirt and clapping. That should narrow things down!
I guess that really doesn't count though. Ok, how about this one…When I was in middle school a project we were doing for the National History Day competition showed up on the local news. I believe this was about the Stanley Theater, which is a local landmark around these parts. Or maybe it was about Trenton Falls. Anyway, we were shooting a video documentary for a contest.
The local news heard about it and decided to come down to the school and do a story about it. I show up in some B roll footage showing somebody something on the computer. I was the camera/video/computer guy and did a lot of the video editing, video taping and scanning of stuff. Anyway, my name actually appeared in the final piece during the early nightly news…but attached to another one of my groupmates. They made a mistake (as this local news channel does) and put the wrong name up. It was corrected before they ran it at 11 though.
Finally, Free Time!!
Jul 11th 2007
I haven't posted in a couple days since I've been too busy working on a backlog of Astronomy homework. And by backlog, I mean every single assignment in the entire course. Hey, the last class just kinda snuck up on me. I managed to do it.
No more procrastination for me though. I'm done procrastinating! Starting tomorrow…
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