Category: School Related

Posts relating to school

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Randomness

The summers now over, and classes have started back.  Most of my classes have been okay so far.  There are two classes I am definitely not very excited about right now, but hopefully they will end better than they are beginning.  Business law is one of those class that I could sit through all day, while classes like communication I could rather just not even go to them.  Most of my classes I see as at least a little bit of value for the time and money — but communication class just isn’t one of those classes.  Like I said, I hope it gets better towards the end.

I worked the entire summer, which was great for many reasons.  This year was quite possibly the best summer I have had working over there.  I worked in one spot the entire time, where there were a few mix-ups of staff, so I was able to actually do things that mattered.

A little over a year ago, I started talking to Katharine.  On August 13th we went to a movie, and we’ve met up a few more times over the last two weeks.  We went to the lake this past Saturday and watched a movie — pretty much just made a whole day of getting to better know each other.

That’s all I have for now!

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Updates

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated.  I’ll try to recap a few things and not make this too long …

Registration for spring semester starts Tuesday.  I called to see how I could change my major, and I’ve got to fill out a form.  Right now I’m thinking about changing it to Information Systems.  It’s sounds more like what I’m interested in.  I don’t care for this math major I have now.  I’ll update on how that goes later …

After the major change, I’ll need to see a new advisor and figure out the classes I need to take next semester.

I’ve thought about many things lately.  And learned a bit too.  Or I am learning …

All this stuff I’m doing in school seems down right senseless and useless.  That’s probably one of the things I’m learning thought.  I love all my classes (minus the computer one; math goes by so quick it frustrates me to want to give up).  The literature class is interesting with all the history.  I’ll be thoroughly surprised if I ever need the Shakespeare and Chaucer, though.  Biology is so-so.  All it is is note taking.  I can’t hardly read the instructors cursive though.  Biology lab is all right.  I think I have the smallest group with only one other person.  Sometimes we have to combine, and some of the others we combine with are lazy in answering the questions.  It bugs me.  More work for us later.  The computer one is ultra-boredom.  The way I’ve heard others talk about the class, they aren’t doing good — makes me feel bad (as I don’t even listen to lectures or read anything and get good test-grades).  I guess that’s how people who excel in literature feel when I get the low grade.  Maybe.  Math is just frustrating.

Last Wednesday, Tim got a new server.  Not much downtime.  It was better than the previous server moves.  This site’s speed is so much better than it used to be.

I guess that’s my update for now … I want to post about other things, but I’ve not come to full understanding of them yet.

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Frustration

College and the importance thereof.  Or not.

Why is it that you go to school for half of your life, then you go back to school (college) for another half of your life to learn about crap you could really care less about?  On top of that, half of it is useless, time consuming items that could be well spent doing something else.  This is just part of the confusions and frustrations I’ve been dealing with the past few days.

Over the past several years, I’ve been pretty good at computers.  They come naturally to me.  I’m not good with all aspects of computing, of course, but I can manage to do just about what basic book sense professionals can do (only in about one-fifth of the amount of time it’d take them to run through their book-sense procedures).  I’m just stating the facts of life and how I’ve seen it played out at work and other jobs I’ve done online and such.  If I can’t figure something out I’ll spend literally hours trying to figure it out.  Normally I’ll either do exactly what I wanted to do, or make a work around that would do what I wanted it to do (such as with things I don’t know much about: databases and *nix-based operating systems).

Anyway, I say all that because I’m downright bored with college.  All I’m learning about is how to write a several page essay paper on something I could care less about reading, much less responding to or do research and then respond to an essay.  However, with that said, I do like reading and writing.  I don’t even mind the occasional two-page analytical essay about something I read.  What I do not like is writing several of them per class, not having a clear example of how to write it (to that instructors specifications), and ones requiring me to write pages and pages on end about something that could have been expressed in one to two pages — tops.

Next is math.  I love math.  The thing I don’t like about it is learning the specific formulas and then being taught something in 45 minutes, which should have taken at least 3 hours to discuss.  I don’t learn by watching and doing later.  I learn by watching, trying to do it in class, and then seeing where I screwed up, so I can go back and make the needed corrections.

Technically, the only way I know I may be able to get an okay job is to put up with this nonsense for another few years.  I’m not sure that I’ll get a good job then though.  I’ve seriously been considering going through the process of changing my major here lately too.  I like programming, but I like doing it alone (in other words, I hate looking at others code and hacking it).  I like server and database administration.  I like web-based computing (as that’s really what all of my experience thus far has been in).

The dream I have with a career involves a little bit of computers and a little bit of church.  I want to be involved in the church someway.  I also want to be involved in this community in someway.  I wish something could come up where I could work around here — contract — with various computer needs of local area businesses.  There must be someone that needs some help, somehow.  I really don’t know how to do that though.  Advertising is not my speciality.  Not in the least.

It often seems that the hope I have for that is just utterly hopeless.  I’m not sure anyone really thinks it can happen.  It might be true.  I’m trying to trust God.  I’m just worried about not passing my core classes …

… and that’s rarely ever a joyful place to be.

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Lessons

The first week of school is now over.  Most of the classes seem to be decent.  The only class that I don’t think I’ll like at all is a computer class.  I don’t think she (the instructor) likes Google.  It’s basically the same class I took last semester, which is lame.

Someone hit my car yesterday.  I’ll have to take it to a body show.  It was at the dangerous intersection of Taylor Road and the I-85-west off ramp.  We were both okay.  I just want to get my car fixed.  I don’t like having anything wrong with it.

Prayer in the Darkness is tomorrow night at 10.  I hope people come.  Something I’ve had to learn is that there may not be a lot of people, but never to be discouraged.  It’s easy to get discouraged, though.

This past week has been busy with the release of a new version of E-Blah.  It’s been a little bit of a pain this time, as there were several problems at the start.  I’ve fixed just about all of them right away, though.  I just didn’t have enough people to beta test before release.

I’ve really been enjoying my Urge music subscription.  I’ve found so many new CD’s and artists that I would have otherwise never listened to.  Ten dollars a month may seem like a lot, but when compared with buying several CD’s every month that costs the same amount, it’s well worth it.  Currently I’ve been enjoying Jessie Daniels, Decypher Down, and Fireflight, among others.  One of my favorite songs right now has to be “You Decide” by Fireflight.  The music video made me fall in love with it all over again.

Someone told me not so long ago that one of the reasons why it’s good to get out of Tallassee sometimes, is to see joy.  I guess I wasn’t so sure what was meant by that … until this week.  Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.  Maybe I was overlooking it.  I’m not really sure, but I’m beginning to see that what this person said was true.  Maybe everyone’s just hopeless (or feels that way, I should say).  I went to several places in Tallassee this week and the people were just so down.  I went to Wal-Mart today, for instances, and the lady checking me out literally looked like a zombie.  I’m not sure what needs to be prayed for first — things broken (such as drugs and religion) or fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, etc).

Something I have been learning recently is attitude and how I look at things.  When I first walked into English class (late, I might add) and realized it was British Literature, I could have turned off and just said I’m going to hate this, or I could go in with the mind set that it’s going to be interesting.  So far it has been interesting.  It’s attitude though.  I wonder if I just have a bad attitude about a lot of things, so that’s something I’m going to try to work on getting out of. I don’t want to make pre-judgements about anything — people, things, places, ideas, etc.

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Class, Phone, Church, Food, and Holiness

My classes are all set.  I guess.  I'd really like to change the Lit II class to Lit I, but I'll keep trying.  Perhaps one of the 26 people will drop the class.  Perhaps.

I got a cell phone yesterday.  One step closer, I 'spose.

I start work on Monday, 15 May.  Ah, I can't wait to hear all those wonderful discussions like I did last year.  Those always gave me something to write about.  They did last year anyway.  Hopefully I'll tag along more this year.

I've got to go to the church tomorrow and … do something?  I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do just yet.  We laid carpet yesterday and put an air vent in the nursery today (ok, I watched more).  I'm technical.

Next week marks the last days of the Spring semester.  One year of college is gone.  It went by incredibly fast.  I think this was just a breeze year.  Next year just looks hard, maybe it won't be.

I went to the commissarry yesterday and helped pick out groceries.  It's not too bad, because I get to pick what I like.

I found this really good quote tonight:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. – C.S. Lewis

"Destruction is certain for those who say that evil is good and good is evil; that dark is light and light is dark…" – Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)

I added the last quote 'cause I like it.  I heard it on the radio on Wednesday and really liked it.  The sad part is this: if we're making evil moral and moral evil, there's coming destruction because we're doing exactly what this verse says.  Ah, we've got to get back to holiness.  Psalm 93:5 says, "your statutes stand firm; holiness adorns your house for endless days, O LORD." (NIV)  We've got to "worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness" (Psalm 96:9 NIV).  We've got to understand what Isaiah spoke:

And a main road will go through that once deserted land. It will be named the Highway of Holiness. Evil-hearted people will never travel on it. It will be only for those who walk in God's ways; fools will never walk there. Lions will not lurk along its course, and there will be no other dangers. Only the redeemed will follow it. – Isaiah 35:8-9 (NLT, emphasis added)

We've got to get on that Highway of Holiness. All other ways are traveled in vain. This doesn't mean that roads already traveled that are void of God are sometimes used by God for something good though …

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Registering

This is lame.  I go and register for my classes and they're closed.  What's up with that?!  It's only been a week (week today) after registration started.  I didn't know fall registration started until someone told me.  So far I'm taking Biology, Literature (a part II of a class — not sure I can do that?), Calculus 1 (not fully registered with that yet …), and some Information Systems class.  I'm not sure how it's going to work yet …

I went to the Tallassee Spring Show last night.  It was about as good as watching a 3 star made for TV movie.  Not bad, but not great either.  I think the best one I went to was about two years ago.  Too many slow songs about how they gotta have a girl or guy (very little change there too).  Typical, though.

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Life Update

The next version of E-Blah has been going okay.  Not near as fast as I’d like, but I’ve been doing several other things at once.  I’ve got a few things even within the project still open (I normally try to finish one section before starting on the next).  Recently, I’ve been working on the calendar portion.  A complete recode of the calendar.  It’s a major pain.  I like the end result so far though.  I’ve got a little clean up work and then distribution to the other sections of the code and I should be done.  It’s tedious work.  Not a lot of people use the calendar, but those that do find that it’s the feature that draws them to the software — thus making it worth it.

In the meantime, I’ve been learning a new language — C#.  I’m learning the very basic concepts of everything.  I may need to get a book so I can actually create a good piece of software.  I’m using the .NET Framework (Microsoft is releasing Visual Studio Express free of charge — forever — now).  It’s different.  I’m following a video tutorial from the Microsoft website.  It’s helping me to learn the interface a little while I go.

School is going just great.  I’ve got the majority of my essays either completed or near completion.  I’ve got one more two page essay to write and I’ll be done with all my essays (minus the final essays).  I need to finish one more lab in the computer class (I don’t have Microsoft Access here, so I have to use it there).  I have one more assignment for the Economics class.  Other than that, I’m done I believe.  The computer essay was easier than I thought.

I shot my rocket twice today.  We was afraid the wind was going to knock it off onto a roof.  It did fine though, the wind wasn’t too bad.  I’ve got three more rocket engines, they should be pretty fun to shoot on another day.

I hate bugs.  There’s some sort of jumping insect wandering around my room (it looks so much like a mix between a spider and a grasshopper, but I don’t think it is one).  I’ve killed several of them this year already.  This is the only one that’s jumped away though.  Earlier tonight I killed another 1-2 inch spider.  He was crawling on the wall.  Was.

I’ve not listened to as much ChristianRock.net here lately (been listening to the Night Watch or some other worship station).  I’ve heard a new artist on ChristianRock.net the other day though, called “Red”.  The song, “Breath Into Me” is a very good.  Check them out.

I guess that’s enough over viewing for tonight.