BOHICA

Right now I don't know if I'm more disappointed or outraged, but seeing how one emotion is essentially a depressant and the other a stimulant I'm guessing that I'm close to an even keel between the two extremes.

It isn't a secret that I've been pretty much unemployed for a couple of years now. During this time I managed to finish my Human Resources Degree, get the appropriate level of certification, and I went back to a local community college to earn an Associate's Degree in Library and Information Science.

Now this brings me to a total of four degrees: 2 Associate's (Information Systems Management & Library and Information Science) as well as 2 Bachelor's (General Business Management and Human Resources Management). A reasonably smart person would wonder why I would be dumb enough to go back for a fricken Associate's degree when I already had two more (relatively) advanced degrees. If you've already got a BA and a BS, the normal next step is to work on a Master's, not an Associate's.

CSI Graduating Class of 2013

Today is my graduation from college.

At 7 PM tonight in the College of Southern Idaho's gymnasium I could be walking across the stage as part of CSI's 40th graduating class.

Could be.....but I'm not. I don't see the point in driving 2 hours one-way to get my 2nd Associate's Degree, 4th overall college degree. I think it is great that CSI has an actual commencement ceremony and the folks attending to get those diplomas should be congratulated.

I hope those getting their Associates Degrees move on to earn their Bachelor's and those getting Technical Certificates find the type of employment they are looking for.

I just don't feel the same pride for this accomplishment than what many others would. I'm just looking forward to the next step of the VRAP program which is help getting a job. If it wasn't for this unemployment I hope I would have been working on an MBA instead of an Associates. I'm hoping that is still in my future, but only time will tell.

Finally, a Good Use For My Old Graphing Calculator

One of the things I hate most about going to/being in school are some of the exorbitant expenses for items I'm not getting much use out of.  A couple hundred bucks for a textbook barely used in class or a fancy graphic calculator is overkill.

I have a couple of graphic calculators I had to buy for math courses that are now relatively cheap, but then it was spending a week's pay for something I won't use outside of class....

Portal by Builderboy

...until now.

I ended up syncing my bookmarks and found some links I had deleted some time ago.  One was to this video about Portal being installed on a graphing calculator.  You can download the game here if you want.

One of the Best Animated Shorts I'd Ever Seen: Voile Noir

I realize that I have a tendency to share short videos I've found online, either on YouTube or Gawker Media sites, but damn if this isn't one of the best shorts I recall ever seeing.

Voile Noir is an animated art student film that doesn't look like it was animated.  This short video beats the pants of of quite a few blockbuster films CGI.


If you aren't a big fan of watching shorts, especially the ones I have put up, please do yourself a favor and set that aside to watch this video.
Thank you Gizmodo for letting me find this!

Got My Grades

I was able to look up my grades today and I'm a little disappointed.

Up until last week I was getting A's in every course.  In one of my classes I had a final project due that was worth 1/3 of my grade and I pretty much bombed a portion of the assignment.

On the plus side I managed to figure out the thing I didn't realize I was screwing up and fixed it for the final "exam", but the damage was done.  I ended up getting 89% in the course which was a B.

In looking up my grades I see that I ended up with a 3.769 as my grade point average.  I hate the 4.0 grade point.  Class grades are tracked as raw points and obviously the grades are figured out using a percentage, but those percentages get shoved over to a simple 4 point scale.  The difference between me just barely not getting an A and just barely getting a B just doesn't exist.

Done with School....for Now.

I have just finished uploading my final school project for the semester. Although I'm just taking courses at a community college some of the workload has easily rivaled that of my upper-level classes.

For most of the last week I've been swamped with schoolwork and with getting Christmas gifts off to friends and family.

Some of the assignments have been unnecessarily hard.  An assignment handed out Monday at 8 AM and Due Tuesday by 5 PM might not seem like much.  If it takes four or five hours of work that kicks it up a difficulty level.  It is isn't the only assignment your are given with those parameters it is downright stressful.

Banned Books Week

This week is Banned Books Week.

Hopefully that sinks in a bit.  Here we have a country that celebrates its 1st Amendment right to free speech, but also has to have a week to bring attention to the fact that our libraries like to ban books.

Am I the only one who finds this a little oxymoronic?

Now, I'm not saying that just because someone had some ideas to express and put those ideas into book form that means everyone should read those expressions.  I'm certain there are a lot of idiots writing drivel, crap, and things that I find morally reprehensible.  I would hope that my local libraries don't purchase those types of materials, but at the same time I don't expect these same libraries to cater to my particular whims.

Astrid To-Do List Manager

I know I posted about The Perfect To-Do List back in June, but I was wrong.  I'm man enough to admit it.

For a while I was enamored with ToDo.ly, but over time it just didn't hold up.  I loved the idea of using it as my browser homepage, but the execution just didn't hold up to the expectation.  Usually....seriously, like nine times out of ten, I never saw my to-do list.  When I opened my Chrome browser, my to-do list homepage would just sit there, attempting to load.  Invariably I'd just open another blank tab and go to the page I needed.

The whole idea of a to-do list that would be "in my face" ended up being a big fail.  Not and EPIC FAIL, just a "meh....move on" fail.  I didn't shed any tears for the death of my beloved to-do list.  Instead I just opened my list one last time, logged out, and moved on. It was important to move on.

Blogging as Homework

Today I have it rough....I have to blog as part of a homework assignment.

Seriously, writing a couple of posts this week is (unfortunately only part of) my homework for one of my classes at CSI.  Instead of screwing around now on the interwebs I can say I'm doing schoolwork.  Yeah me!

I guess technically I could finish up now since I'm already putting up some posts and I have another related topic I want to blog about.

Maybe I should have posted this on Twitter?  A lot of people call that a micro-blogging site......

CSI EPIC FAIL

I've blogged a couple of times now about my attending the College of Southern Idaho.  I've been to school a few times now and I know there is this weird bureaucratic "thing" that often just has to be endured, but there are some things that should not have to be endured, and crappy teachers is one of them.

As of this morning I was taking 16 credit hours this semester, which means I had to pay extra over and above full-time tuition.  I was OK with that since it meant I got to take a course I really wanted to, which was CISW 111: Web Authoring.  I was excited about this course...and even more so for the next class which was CISW 113: Website Design & Management.

As of this afternoon, however, I'm at 13 credits because I was forced to drop CISW 111 while I could still do so for full refund.  The reason?  My instructor's EPIC FAIL.

Busy as a Bee

I'm busy as a bee for the beginning of this week, but I'll get some proper posts up once I have my feet underneath me.

School started Monday and while my course load isn't terrible, it is always an extra PITA at the onset.  I have to start my reading assignments, pour through the syllabus, figure out how I'm going to track homework and assignments, etc.  For now I'm entering my assignments into Outlook and keeping calendar items for weekly assignments and any other special dates.

I've also updated my Dropbox account so I can keep all of my school paperwork synced across all my computers.  I find it useful to do that so I can hop around between platforms.  Yesterday I was simply tired sitting at the kitchen table all day and was able to finish up a couple of reading assignments with my iPad on the couch.

Today I have a demonstration speech to give at my lunchtime Toastmasters meeting and I'm running a speech competition at my dinner Toastmaster meeting.  I know, I probably should be "double-fisting" Toastmaster meetings on Tuesdays, but one is my home club and the other is a club I'm sponsoring.  The new club is struggling a bit to get chartered, but I think it'll get there once the summer is over.  It is fun to see a new club forming their own traditions and working in a completely different format than my home club.

Add to this wonderful mix some consulting work from one of my clients.  Nothing major, but it is a few hours of work I want and could really use right now.  Even though the client is willing to wait a bit for the work to be done, I really owe it to them to do a good job as quickly as possible.  I'll probably stay up tonight to finish it up instead of waiting until Wednesday morning.

Well, my "break" is over and I should be getting back to prepping things for the Boise Club 61 Evaluation and Humorous Speech contest tonight.

Frustrating Trip to the College of Southern Idaho

I've blogged before about me going back to college thanks to the Veteran's Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP).  Monday my wife and I traveled to Twin Falls so I could get my ID card and pick up my school books for the upcoming semester.  While I was there I thought I'd try to take the computer equivalency test so I wouldn't have to take an entry-level computer course.

It is a two hour drive down to Twin and I figured an hour or two tops for the ID and books and the same for the testing.

Of course "everything" was Tango-Uniform and our time there was doubled thanks to a bunch of utter BS.

Chegg for School Books

This morning I was poking around the College of Southern Idaho's student portal to see if I had any advance notice of what books I would need.  Only one of my classes has a syllabus up already and it was dated for the spring of this year...not the fall.  I guess the professor is reusing the syllabus and forgot to update the term information.

No worries.....the syllabus was well written, aside from the typo, which tells me a lot about the professor and the class.

I really want to know what my books might be so I can decide if I want to purchase them at the bookstore or through Chegg.

Dealing with textbooks can really be a pain in the wallet.  You generally have to buy all our books and hope that you can sell them back at the end of the year without getting totally screwed....and there are a lot of ways to get screwed.