Category: Academic

Today was about as uninteresting as days at UNCC get for me. I was exactly on schedule this morning (in my carefully timed world I can only do this occasionally without being totally screwed), I had no seconds to spare, but at the same time was in no danger of being late. I was in sight of McEniry when I here this familar voice beside me talking on a cell phone. The voice was Elizibeth Park, a friend of mine from Highland. I poked her in the arm and went on, she concluded her cell phone call and chased me down. I don’t know that a more convienient plot could have been written for her. She needed help preparing for her Unix Proficiency Exam, and there I was. The time it took me to talk to her cost me my schedule, but no big deal. I agreed to help her after my Physics class. I then went to Logic where Dr. Preseler was just starting to unpack her materials. After Logic I went to Physics. In Physics we made an attempt to use the Clicker devices (little green remotes for responding to questions). The attempt failed and Dr. Naeini assures us that he will have them working on Wednesday. After Physics I met Elizibeth at Smith Building to assist her with the preperation for the proficiency exam. The Unix lab was pretty much empty except for a few students. I was expecting purely command line functionality but was pleased that there was an interface availible. I don’t know nearly enough Unix. My function with Elizibeth was mostly as a support role to help her be calm through the material. She is very intelligent, but stresses easily. I helped Elizibeth until 3PM when I went to English. Not much to tell about English for today, we peer reviewed papers and were complemented for being an efficient group, then we were dismissed about 45 minutes early. For homework and stuff I just have to do some logic homework that combines the concepts of the past 2 weeks, Physics has the standard homework due Monday and an English paper is to be completed and ready to turn in as a 2nd draft quality document on Wednesday. Final is due on Monday. None of my other classes really have any outside assignments to be done. I’m a little worried about Western History and Culture, I feel so disconnected from the class.
This evening my focus has been on working with GITI and attempting to develop a better interface for it. That isn’t going too well, and so far I have created more new bugs in GITI than ever before. Most of the problems are related to sessions. For some reason the thing attempts to make multiple sessions or at least multiple copies of the same session run at once. Issues occur mostly in going back in pages. Forward linear navigation works fine. The concept of the new GITI will be tested in a few days as it becomes functional and maybe useful. The next step will be to build a navigation system that doesn’t run in frames and that can float over the interface. I am seeing something in DHTML or JS. For the most part I just want the thing to work and be more efficient than the current version of GITI.

In high school the most dreaded word was “homework”, in college it is a bit different. Homework is a chance to boost your grade and most classes don’t have homework on any grand level. I just completed my 2nd Physics homework assignment, it was challenging, but at the same time I felt like I was actually learning the material. In addition, it was kinda fun. The most dreaded words in college seem to be “pop quiz”. Dr. Preseler just can’t seem to say it enough though.
As for my non-academic world today. One of my high school friends, Matt Cloninger, gave me one of his GMail invites today and I am now hooked up with that. Not sure what I will use the address and associated space (1000MB) for, but I will find some use im sure. I didn’t get too creative with the address, I went with the default of firstname.lastname. This situation gives me an interesting perspective of my own email server though. I have roughly 80,000MB (80GB) availible for my email in actuallity, but I like the idea of having the 1000 MB reserved just for email on GMail. For more about GMail visit GMail.com.
I talked to Jeff a little today from NCSU, I sort of wish I was going to one of the schools in the NC triad area. Matt Creedmore is at Greensboro College, Jeff and Guy at NCSU, Lamb at Duke. There are a lot of HST people in this area too, but none that I want to be around. This current situation feels like I was in port (graduation), but managed to get on the wrong ship (UNCC) and should be on a ship going to the same location as my closest friends (that would be the good ships UNCG, NCSU, Duke and pretty much anything but UNCC or GC. ). If I remember correctly I wanted to be on this ship (UNCC) because it came with familiar quarters (my bedroom, server room and kitchen). I think I want some adventure in my life, I want to be away from all things safe, normal and familar for once in my life. I plan to apply to some of the other schools (including MIT and UC Berkeley) to test viability of my options at this point. I also will be applying for scholarships so I can have more flexibility in my educational options. I would love to go to University of California at Berkeley, it would be fulfilling a dream of mine. Perhaps I will do something that drastic for my graduate school career. My vision of my life is always focused on a single goal that I consider significant, my previous goal of this position was actually going to UNCC. Thats been accomplished, and as such leaves a vacancy for something that needs accomplishing in the academic slot. I am currently working on my fall-back goal of getting GITI completed, but that is a lower priority project that can be extended to being incomplete even if i work on it several hours per day, everyday until my death (lets theorize i will live until like 105 or so). Its nice having a fallback project, but its like having a life goal of making first contact with an alien race, it just isn’t practical. As with most of my hobbies I will one day get bored with GITI and declare it finalized.
Back to academics temporarily, I still have a paper to finish in draft form for English by Monday. It is a technical paper of sorts, so I will babble my way through it and try to not make it to polished on the first run through. I tend to write papers and marry myself to the way something is written to the extent that I would be happy with it being written in stone. If I could do that with GITI code we would be making progress. I am looking forward to some of the next papers in the course where we can get really detailed. I anticipate great amounts of fun with Microsoft Word.
On my body structuring project I am getting a little farther, I have been working different components of my abs each day (on a 3 day cycle) and my walks are still occuring. I don’t think I will give up this time. I have a goal in mind that I want too badly to do that. If progress becomes substantial then pics will be posted here.
Still no comments to the blog, I guess I will just have to keep writing to myself. My server shows me that some people are grabbing my RSS feed, so i know someone is out there. Come on, readers of my mindless babble, make yourselves known!

Yesterday was a decent day for me, with the exception of Dr. Noland rejecting my requested article for review. I wanted to review an article about the correlation between the stress caused by being male and math performance. Dr. Noland states that the article doesn’t meet the criteria of being relavent to Abnormal Psychology. Oh well, I guess I will try again with anoher article (or battery of articles) next week.
Last night I stayed up until about 7AM today, then I got up at 10:30AM to get started on my day. Suprisingly I had energy, and I have energy now. I anticipate a premature expiration later this evening, but I probably have a few more good hours to go yet.
Today was Friday, so it was my short day. I went to Logic this morning, Dr. Preseler was late and she was also in a very good mood. Almost to the point of being giddy. I have never seen her as disorganized as she was this morning. Disorganization of other people amuses me, while me being disorganized or having anything out of place completely annoys me. Dr. Preseler gave another quiz this morning. She thew out the grades from the first quiz because she felt that it was flawed and wasn’t a good interpretation of what we know. I wish more of my classes we like hers, I at least know where I stand in there. I know that I am doing OK in her class and at the moment have a good chance at coming out of the course with an A. The next course I had today was Physics, same basic thing as always in there today, took some notes, worked some problems. I am not sure how I will do in physics in the end. There are only homework assignments and 3 tests, then the final exam. Physics is highly mathy, but not as complicated as Biology, so im still glad I am taking the course, but my success isn’t gurananteed. I made a decision today about my seat placement in Physics. Ryan (my lab partner) looks extreamly lonely in class, and there is an open seat beside him, so I am thinking about sitting beside him. The seat couldn’t be any worse than my present one, I have one-on-one direct eye contact with Dr. Naeini. I feel like I am in the teacher’s-pet-seat and it is very uncomfortable.
Since I am reviewing my academic progress lets go for the other classes too. Im not sure how im going to do in “Masterpieces of Western Art”/”Western History and Culture”, it seems very lecture driven, which works for me when I am able to pay attention and not be bored. I am not interested in that course that much. Enlgish 1102 is fine. I am grasping the concepts and the grades are all based on papers! That pretty much says “A” to me. I have this weird ability to write in such a way that instructors love. I have always been a more mature writer than most of my peers, for once it makes me not a freak. Betsy and I are getting along fine, she is a nutcase, she knows it and on top of that she is used to technical writing. Abnormal Psyc is the next course. The material of the course will be psychological disorders. I think I will do ok in the class as long as I am able to pay attention, which so far im doing fine at. It is the type of course where I dont feel propelled to take notes. I feel more like just relaxing and listening to what is being said. I am hoping for an A in the course, but with only 4 tests and 5 journals the fates in control of my grades may have other ideas. My lab class is way too early in the day, but overall it is ok. ok, this concludes my academic report.
Today when I finished Physics I exited the campus and came right home. Much to my delight the ugly plastic owl that I got into a fight with last night has been put in the garage and I dont have to look at it. I haven’t done much since I have been home in the way of actual doing of things that need to be done (read as: I didn’t tell GITI I did anything). I have had a large number of phone calls today, none of which were truely personal. Everyone who called seemed to need technical assistance in some form or another. Anyone know how to get a 900 number set up? Nothing hit voice mail today while I was gone, so no calls to return, YIPPEE!
Between taking phone calls I added some minor changes to GITI’s schedule system for how it handles class scheduling with the normal scheduling and I prepped the database table of scheduler to handle multiple occurance types of schedules. I will probably add Class Schedule to it also at some point (merging tables, yes i have a free weekend). the principal aspects of the two schedule systems are virtually the same now that the primary schedule tool will be doing occurance based things. I will still have to add a check and update script to the education scheduler for correcting things after a user has screwed with the dates. Another aspect that will have to be taken care of is the lack of a method for dismissing a reoccuring schedule item. Schedule is the oldest GITI component and it shows it. I am almost tempted to rewrite the whole thing for convienience. With all of the things I am using to reference across the GITI system I might eventually end up having to ask Chris to teach me how to do table joins in SQL. Sometimes I feel so inferior to him. He knows so much more than I ever will about certain things. Of the two of us he is the more likely to be depressed it seems, but yet he is more ambitious than I ever would dream of being. He for some reason is blind to his own accomplishments though. Talented people like him shouldn’t feel the need to be confined by the restrictions of society. Society is “Normal”, or “average” or “[insert favorite euphamism for the middle 68% here]”. People who go above and beyond shouldn’t be restricted to the same rules of normal as the rest of the societal drones. Whats weird is that by my own self assesment I can’t determine where I fit in. As my overall self am I normal or different? Am I below everyone else? I guess these are questions that I can’t validly ask myself.
Norms are very unusual things in the universal context. Humans are supposed to be organized, anything below is unorganized and anything above is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, why? I myself am starting to worry that I may be approaching being overly organized with all of the stuff I am doing to GITI. I fear breaking GITI because I fear breaking my ability to track events of my life and have every detail scheduled.
Why does no one ever comment in my blog? Does it suck that bad?
I will now return my fine readers to their normal full functioning lives and away from my depressed pit of despair that is my blog….
“Live Long and Prosper” – Wise Vulcan Philosopher

Pop quizes, placement tests and Credit Exams…College sure is fun. I don’t know of a time in my life when I have had so many tests to take at about the same time. At the present time it looks like I will be taking the UNCC Math Department’s Placement Test in an attempt to qualify for Calculus, then I will be taking a few exams for credit/excemption. I plan to take the exams for INFO2130 and ITCS1214. I just can’t see myself seriously registering for a course called “Intro to Business Computing” or “Intro to Computer Science”. The biggest benefit to doing these courses by examination is the ability to have additional elective slots to utilize. Currently I only have 1 elective remaining in my 120 hour plan. Another benefit to taking credit exams is the feeling at the end if you pass. It is a feeling of accomplishment, unlike when you finish an exam at the end of the semester for a normal course. That is closer to “woohoo, im glad thats over!”. While I am thinking about these exams it also comes into concious thought that I am still lacking 2 exams from my MCSE. Those are 2 exams I should seriously consider taking ASAP to complete my requirements before Microsoft decides to no longer offer MCSE on Windows 2000.
If anyone is interested in the pop-quiz (which seems less significant now than it did before), it was in Deductive Logic, and I think I scored pretty well on it, but I can’t be certain until Dr. Pressler grades them.

When I was a high school student I observed the confusion and difficulty that many college students had, I never really understood why they had problems with things that seemed so logical to me. I am still not understanding many of their issues, but I am now developing some of my own. As I am getting settled in to UNCC I am trying to prepare for next semester so that I can make sure that all of my chickens are accounted for when it is time to register for Spring courses. I am planning to register for one course from the Charlotte Area Academic Consortium, but am finding some very unusual circumstances with it. UNCC’s registrar states that I must get the approval of my advisor to register for the course, but I have not been assigned an advisor, therefore I am a little lost as to where to turn for that. Another thing that I find purely annoying is that there is only 1 paragraph in UNCC’s entire site that covers Consortium registration. Because of this I don’t know if I have to perform registration for the course manually as I usually would for CPCC (The member instition that I intend to take the course with), or if the registrar will be organizing the registration for me.
Maybe I am worrying too much for the first week of the semester. I suppose that I am worried because I am in what I now consider to be the actual working time of earning my degree. I want everything to go perfectly. Before this semester I could relax and enjoy college courses, take things slow and work at things I loved learning about, such as psychology, sociology, and art. I hate the idea of being sent to an advisor for registering for classes, I feel like I am being led by the hand into something that I have a great deal of judgement in. I like being considered mature enough to make my own decisions about my education, especially course selection. Many people question some of the things I have done for course registration, but I have my reasons for every course. I don’t choose my curriculum haphazardly (exception: Logic, i just felt like taking it). I intend to enjoy my college years, as such I will be taking courses that interest me while I am completing stuff for my major. As a result of this self declaration I will be taking CSC134 (C++ Programming) at CPCC in the spring as part of the Charlotte Area Educational Consortium.
On a non-complaining topic, I finished all of my homework for tomorrow already and am sort of looking for stuff to do until it is time for bed.

This evening I completed my first week of classes at UNCC. I survived! Emotionally I am adapting a lot better than I thought I would to the situation of being at UNCC every day. I am getting myself settled very gradually. I love the campus now that I know how to get around it. For all of you non-believers in my navigational ability (myself included): I survived week 1 with no malnavigation or inccorect arrival. I opted out of posting last night’s post (basicly i was tired and didn’t feel like it), but I had a good day yesterday with my Psychology class. I didn’t go to my Physics lab because I was told by Dr. Naeini that it wasn’t being held until week 2 of class. Abnormal Psyc was kind of interesting, although, I am the only MIS or related major in the whole class. I am alone in my field and general age group. Several of the members of the class have already earned one degree and are working on another. Today went by fast because I don’t have Engligh 1102 on Friday.
Since this week has concluded I am now thinking a little more about my selection of university. I’m not fully sure that I want to remain at UNCC for my degree. I have been called a “College Hopper” by many, including my hair stylist. It is true that UNCC is my 3rd college, but I have had different reasons for being at each college I have attended. UNCC was the one I had originally designated as being my “degree college”. It still might be, I will just have to determine from the availible data at the end of the semester if i really want to remind. In the mean time I will be applying to various other colleges that I think I could enjoy being enrolled at. I intend to live on campus at my next selection from the begining. The whole resident student thing is still pending for me as far as UNCC though, im not sure it is really worth it, especially if I am able to keep myself socially engaged enough to develop my independance and begin to imitate the other “young adults” I am surrounded by.
After I finished my classes today I went to Chris’s house to visit with him for a while. I visited with him and we went out shopping for a while, then we went back to his house to relax for a bit afterward. Somehow that type of thing seems to fit my personality more than something like partying. On the topic of partying, Matt Lamb, the person who is most logical and most responsible of all people I know, actually went to a party and had several alcoholic beverages this evening. This fact shocked me. I never thought of him as that type of person at all. In this event occuring I am forced to question my own level of self control, am I tuned a little too tight in that department? Maybe I am just scared that my self control will weaken and I will be suceptable to all of the evils of college life.
Another thing that occured this evening is I discovered that my parents are by no means ready to let me out of their lives. My father called me several times tonight while I was out to check on me. In my opinion this was acceptable for 4 months ago when I was still in high school, but I am 19, I am a college student and it is time for me to opperate independantly of my father’s dictatorship. I intend to have a discussion with him tomorrow about his lack of trust in me.
I have a lot of reading to do this weekend, but not an excessive amount of other work to do, so it should be a fairly relaxed weekend and I should be well rested on Monday for starting Week #2.

Today I had the same schedule as Monday, but I was a lot more comfortable. Shortly after going to my first class I noticed that I was a little too comfortable, I had made a fairly bad mistake when putting things into my bags last night. My English notebook, containing my assignment that was due, was not in the bag. This would be cause for major alarm for most students, but for me it was just a moment of stupidity. Because my personality tends to be fault tollerent for my mistakes, there was already a plan in place to handle such an occurance. After Physics I proceded to Barnard Computer Lab, from there I logged in to CMK4 through FTP and grabbed a copy of the assignment, printed it and then breathed a sigh of relief. Moments like today remind me how important it is that I keep up with my current ways as far as maintaining my server for stuff like keeping my assignments backed up. Today I rediscoverd my hate for Novell in the lab. One of the nicest things about the lab is that there a lot of people similar to me in there, techies and people who procrastinate. After being in the lab for a while it was time for ENGL1102. I went to the class on time, waited with the rest of the students in the hall until the slow class that has the room before us finally left. After a short time Betsy arrived and we began class. The assignment I had printed shortly before was collected, redistrubuted and we did an interesting activity with it. The assignment was a letter of introduction, we read the letter of one other member of the class and told the class a little about the person. Sort of a unique way for us to learn some stuff about each other and become a little closer. That was pretty much my day, kinda boring, but if you are reading this then you are at least as bored as I am.

Monday was my first day of class. It was a bit much for me to experience, but it went better than I expected. The drive to the campus was filled with nervous thoughts, but went smoothly. Finding parking wasn’t as much of a nightmare as I imagined it to be, but it wasn’t the easiest task I had ever performed either. I was early for class and ended up waiting in one of the lounge areas of the McEniry building, while waiting I was still kinda nervous and wasn’t sure how to act. The first course of the day was Deductive Logic. The course is instructed by an unusual white-haired old lady by the name Dr. Judith Presler. I haven’t completely decided my opinion about her yet. After the short introduction to that course I moved on to Physics. The first impression of the physics instructor was a little more distinct and a little better than for Dr. Presler. Dr. Naeini seems to like the advantages of technology in teaching his course, this is something I appreciate in an instructor. I believe that Dr. Naeini will probably conduct a class that I can easily understand (as long as I can understand what he is saying behind that thick French Canadian accent). After Physics I have no more classes for an hour. Typically I would use this time to eat lunch or something logical, but on Monday I decided to just take the time as a time for reflection and analysis of the situation. I spent the time in Colvard building, it is an open building that is used as a tunnel between the academic area and the other side of the campus near Cone center. I sat at a table between the components of the building and watched students and staff travel on their way to various places on campus. Most of the people had cell phones talking to people, or were with a friend. I felt alone at the time because I had no one to talk to nor anyone to call (it was 2:00PM, everyone I know was asleep). I also wrote some notes to myself during the time. I thought a lot about my future and things like the future of my GITI utility (since this is a public blog i should probably discuss that at some point so everyone knows what it is). After my silent time I went to my English class in Winningham. I was expecting an old instructor for this course, sort of your ideal George Finney character. I was shocked when this person I thought was a student stood at the front of the room, said good afternoon and began putting her stuff down on the desk at the front. Mrs. Sara E. Miller Newman is the instructor, shortly after making this announcement she informed us that we were never to call her that, only to call her Betsy. In minutes this extreamly talkative and excited instructor began passing out the syllabis. There was a discussion of one of the points of the syllabis that I remember clearly, the talk about no talking about things off topic. This is another thing that will set Betsy off, according to the syllabis, Betsy cant deal with a situation where she looses her train of thought because she looses her temper when she “looses my choochoo and cant find it again”. I expect a colorful and not-so-quiet semester with her. She is the one instructor that I have seriously started to enjoy already in the one day I have known her. After a short session of English we were released to go. I went home and began cooking. An inquiry was made to whether or not I actually left when my parents arrived.
Tuesday was a very short day, I woke up at about 1PM for my 6:30PM class. I left the house at about 5:30PM. Traffic on I-85 was fine, until I was 1 mile from my exit, then it got bad. The Hwy 49 exit sucked, everyone was going slow and attempting to pass each other, that was a good waste of 10 minutes. Then I eventually arrived on campus only to find a nice line of traffic lined out of the road I needed to access. Few minutes wasted there, but finding a parking spot was actually easy. I then went to my class location and waited with my classmates, some of which are really attractive, until the instructor arrived. Professor Jim Frakes is the instructor, he is an ok guy it seems. He appears to be very passionate about art, which since the course is art focused I assume it is a good thing. The class was very short, only an hour, then we were released to go. I came home, ate dinner and began doing various things around my home, including working on GITI and talking to a friend on the phone. This brings us to my life at present which is filled with concern about the coming days and my future. I have been told by many that I need to calm down about it all. I have to agree, I dont know when I have ever been this stressed out about something so small before.
2 days completed, 114 (including weekends) to go. And life in the Curtis universe continues in a way that only I, Curtis, can live it.