My first E115 class was today. Oh boy…. this T.A. needs some serious help. He lapses into about five minutes of silence just kinda watching us play games in between each of his eleven important sentences that he manages to get out during class. He is a really nice guy, but not really knowledgeable about computers. The really funny thing is, he is a Computer Science major in his junior year, and I know more than he does about the Linuz systems we use. I read the next letter in Letters to a Young Activist. Man, is Todd Gritlin crazy. He would get along great with my Sociology teacher. My Soc teacher missed the Hippie Bus and decided to come teach instead. I don’t really have any extremely hard classes this semester, they are all just early. AFROTC LLab was fine. Just a bunch of talking about what will be expected of us in this coming year and semester and the simple things like that. I finally got the whole idea behind Maple, and ended up with a 96.14 on the assignment that when I first submitted came back an 11.11. I am looking forward to Springboard Diving tomorrow, we are actually going to go off the board! More tomorrow…
nrfirth | 
26 August 2004 1515 | 
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Well, today is the first Leadership Lab of the year for AFROTC. I am not really all that sure what to expect, but everyone I have talked to seems to like them as an “easy” class, so I can assume I will not be any different, I will update everyone tonight. I have been having quite a time with Calculus. The homework that is written is supposed to take an hour a night, so two hours per class. I, however, finished the first THREE assignments in 28 minutes. And from what I have heard, not a single person has spent over 50 minutes on all the assignments total. I guess my teacher was covering all his bases with the whole time thing. Hypothetically, it COULD take you two hours for the first assignment, but that would only be the case if you just had an abacus. The Maple takes a lot longer, but still, two hours?!?! The teacher is kind of odd and likes to prove every single equation and formula he uses… but does not expect us to do so… ever. Most of the 50 joyous minutes we spend together every other day is spent proving and reproving simple things like the Pythagorean Theorem and other such nonsence. Also, “junk” seems to be an acceptable math term to him. “So, if we integrate I times this junk, and divide by three times this junk…” Maybe on the next test I will use that in some of the proven identities for integrations… it seems a lot easier than actually doing the work.
nrfirth | 25 August 2004 1743 | Comments Off
Laundry, you have to do it, the college WANTS you to do it, YOU want to do it, but the University sure does not want to make it easy on you. When you go into the laundry room, if there is a machine open, you jauntily step up to it and start loading your dirty clothes. You happily continue to separate the whites, colors, and miscellaneous items, then you close the door. You pay the money, and start the washer. You sit and read or chat while the washer does its thing, then…IT starts. At this point you have to go to the dark abyss of hatred that surrounds the dryers. You put in the load of laundry and pay to start the machine knowing full well that the quarter you just put in will only dry exactly half of the items you put in there. And the quantity does not matter. You put in twenty things, ten will come out dry, and ten will be soaked. You put in one sock, and when it comes out, the left half will be dry as a bone, the right half will be dripping. You place in four items, and…well, you get the picture. I would GLADLY pay for a longer drying cycle if I could be guaranteed I would not have to drape clothes all over my room after I was finished to be able to wear them again. I know they are trying to move you through the laundry area as fast as possible, but at what cost, AT WHAT COST?!!?!
Almost everything can be brought into the millennium if you simply add an e to the beginning. Some of the eThings are good. For example, emacs have revolutionized education as a whole for the K-8th grade. Ebay has become the most viewed website in the world. However, a grand majority of these eObjects are simply the old, slow version that is failing that has been repackaged, renamed, resold at a “NEW AND EXCITING” price. eBooks, eLockers (presumably for all the eBooks), and even so much as an eCompass (maybe for if your are lost on the information superhighway). The eInstruction Clicker is no different. In a lecture class of 200 something kids, all of whom have purchased and registered the clicker, only about 40 kids will be able to get their answer in. This is simply because the people at eInstruction are trying to run an outdated source code on their program. They came up with the idea, bandaged an old program with the bare minimum to make it “work””, and put it in the classroom. Also, salesmen (bless their hearts) convinced the school we only needed TWO sensors. Take a lecture hall with stadium seating and fill it with 200+ kids, then have them all point IR transmitters at two little balls the size of a grapefruit, and try to convince ME that you won’t have any problems. Then, they have the audacity to blame it on the… FLUORESCENT LIGHTS!!! I have had eNough!
nrfirth | 23 August 2004 1747 | Comments Off
