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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

School Daze

Music at the Moment: Owusu And Hannibal - Delirium (Morgan Geist Tongues Remix)

So this mid-term thing is a pain in my ass. 9 weeks of info crammed into 5 and teachers that demand a little too much. Joy.

Before a few minutes ago I had a 100 in Success Strategies. Then I got hit with the "You weren't elaborate enough" bomb on my last assignment and dropped to a 95. When a question asks for a certainty or black and white fact, why do I have to pretend to be a in a fakakta creative writing class? Is it really necessary for me to answer "What is your favorite color?" with something like "The color that i love is purple. Purple is my most beloved color. It is not red, nor is it blue. It is not green or brown or even yellow. While lavendar is nice and mauve is interesting, they are not the purple I love. To adore a purple it must be the right mixture of red and blue or i cannot adore it. Not too much red, nor too much blue. Neither too little red nor too little blue will do either. Pink is right out. It must be purple and and purely so." I mean really! If that's what you want from me, you stay here and hold this holy hand grenade while I go search for the meaning of life. Jesus.

Computer Applications is a 99.3 right now thanks to two incorrect answers on last week's quiz. One was an accident of clicking the wrong box rather than the one I was going for and not noticing it soon enough. The other was a bona fide wrong one on my part so I'm not disappointed.

Song switch: Wumpscut - Our Fatal Longing (Thank you Josh for re-igniting my love for Ratzinger!)

I'm actually enjoying the threaded discussions more than I'd expected as they give me a chance to stretch my writing wings. John says my last post sounded like a textbook (He assures me in a positive way) and one of my teachers said one of my many talents must be writing. Yay! Let's just hope that he feels the same after my last post which, after posting, looked immense. There were some larege posts on the thread already, but when mine went up it dwarfed them all. I don't want to look like an overachiever or some teacher kiss-ass. I just tend to take a topic and go when I write. I hope it's okay and not to my detriment.

Now for some entertainment...

The people in my classes are, thus far, very nice. But oh....my...god...

I don't get some of them. Let me share with you a few from the threaded forums.

Our Computer Applications class discussion for this week is very ease-in simple. We simply need to answer the following questions:

1. How do you protect yourself from e-mail-based computer viruses? What programs do you run? What other practices do you follow?

2. How many SPAM messages do you receive each day? How can you reduce SPAM?

3. How do you organize the messages you receive?

4. How do you access your e-mail messages when you are traveling?

5. Do you use multiple e-mail accounts? If so, how do you manage them?

So you just pretty much post the answers to each initially and then as the week progresses, we post twice again with responses and ideas about other's posts. Simple right?

One Ms. Elly Quent responded to the 5 point discussion question with:

"YOU WOULD SHUT DOWN .THREE DAY."

That's it. Her bellowed initial and only post made. If anyone translates this bit of profound logic, please let me know.

There are a LOT more where that one came from, but we'll move over to Success Strategies for another treat!

in SS we were given a scenario where two students are both talking about dropping out of school because of issues with completing assignments. Tracy is a single mother with upteen billion children and works a 659 hour week as well as taking classes. Ricardo is a whiney slacker. Our job was to assess their issues and discuss how to resolve their particular problems. We were also to discuss a time where we had our own problems with time-management and invite others to offer solutions. To round it up we were asked to talk about the pros and cons of a classic classroom situation compared to online learning. Again, simple right? Yeah...right.

Let me point out that the syllabus asks that our posts in the threaded discussions are complete sentences, well thought out with good grammar. Really...I needed to point that out to you.

WARNING: Please be sitting down and remove all sharp instruments from your proximity before continuing.

Marjorie McWutthaphuk posted her splendid answers yesterday:

Tracy who has responsible of 3 kids and house hold. She has to manage her time wisely. She got to remember what a steak. Tracy needs to slow down to 1/2 or 3/4 time because she will give her more time for her study. Or she should look in a degree that meets once week for 2 1/2 years. A example is business at our locate college.

Ricardo is struggling at time management. He needs direction on how to manage his time. On example would be to write out big ca lender for his semester with everything on it. Now he can add social life on it too. The next step is he needs to block out couple hours at time for write his papers.

My example is current issue that us department manager deal with daily. About two weeks age, Lowe's across the board wipe out all overtime for salary employee. At the same of this our new store manager more on our shoulders. Weekly we have cycle counts, daily we IRP, code 3, code 99, code 50 and to fill in the gap in our department. By the way we are short hand to. Now Jim has place checkbook project on our shoulder. This is exactly fun. How do you fill in the blanks of time management issues? Please remember there is only 40 hours to work. I all already cover 1/2 it in coverage.

I find online course time management easier, this is because I'm not driving back and forth. I save about two hours daily great study time. I can study when the kids do their studying also. I take to heart the ca lender idea. I write everything out. I can see how to plan. My kids fill in the blank where there are blank.


*blink*

*blinkityblink*

Okay, so after peeling my nails out of my eyeballs I stopped and gave her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps english was a second language. Or in this case, forty-second. So I investigated her introduction post. Nope. Whitey McWhitebread lives in Whitebreadville in Whitebreadton Falls with little whitebreads running around her whitebread feet. Now read it again knowing that and try not to abuse someone nearby with a blunt instrument.

My personal favorites and the ones that caused me bodily harm? "What a steak" and "ca lender"...twice.

Can things get any more interesting in thread land? We'll see I guess.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Music at the Moment: Van Hunt - Ride, Ride, Ride/Mean Sleep

I completed orientation for school today. I'm getting excited about starting classes next week. Let's hope things go well.

I ordered my Easy Media Suite 8 so I could be more up-to-date on my CD/DVD software and I'm waiting for it to arrive. My Epson All-In-One arrived only 2 days after I ordered it, but I have yet to install it. It's big and pretty though.

Ron, bless his soul, is sending Myshe and me school copies of Office 2003 Pro and XP Pro licensed for multiple student use. That's saving us a good deal of money and it turns out we can get a free copy of XP from school as well, so we're good all around. We can't order our program kits yet, but I'm sure they'll be pricey given all the hard/software we'll be getting.

song switch: Ratatat - Seventeen years (This whole album rocks)

So, I'm totally loving 6 days at the gym and yoga on wednesdays. I admit that's a completely alien statement to me and I can't believe it's coming out of my mouth. My schedule starting on Mondays is LA LA walk LA LA walk. By this, I mean Mondays is Legs, Tuesday is Arms, Wednesday is Cardio (Treadmill for me), Thursday is the off day and the routine starts back up on Friday. Every workout is essentially the same. We stretch on the machines, do our ab work on the bouncy balls then hit our Legs/Arms whichever we're doing and our core stuff (Back extensions and then cardio). Wednesday and Sunday are core only with respect to thye Yoga class on Wednesday night.

Yoga actually sort of rocks. The first week we did it I walked like Tim Conway's old man for two days after, but today I'm not even the slightest bit sore so I guess I worked the kinks out of my "Yoga Muscles". I'm enjoying the Yoga a lot more than I thought I would and I'm going to stick with it as long as I can. The Yoga lady Anna (I think that's her name) is very groovy and totally down on the organic tip so I'll be getting some food info from her and renewing my membership at Everman's health food store.

song switch: House of Pain/Everlast - Black Jesus

I'm actually thinking about taking some time each day to dredge up old routines and go through them with the music cranked. I didn't have a problem with weight and tone or staying active when Snowy and I danced regularly and I miss jookin' on a weekly basis.

*pause for Cat's demanding attention by destroying the homestead.*

song switch: Kelly Clarkson - Walk Away

I think tomorrow my quest for an iPod or something similar begins. I'm finding more and more I'd really like one to have for working out when nothing is on the treadmill televisions or when i'm on the other machines that don't have any entertainment. Listening to music helps me focus by not focusing if that makes any sense. I also tend to do more for longer if I have a beat driving it.

I already decided on the portable drive I'm going to get for picture/document storage for all my art and such. I just have to go ahead and order it. It'll certainly make carrying my art around a lot easier. Evacuations will be a snap!

Okay, enough rambling for today. John's home in less than a week. Hallelujah! I miss him terribly this time out. :-(