Category: General Life

Sigmund Freud, perhaps the most widely known and most criticized psychologist ever, is the subject of my Theories of Personality course next week. To me, Freud has always been a bit like the Einstein of psychology. His theories have yet to be disproven, even if they are a little strange. I am very excited about the topic, but find myself resisting diving in to start reading it immediately, partially because I am afraid that more will be revealed about me than has ever been revealed before.

I have a copy (two actually) of Freud’s Ego and Id, but I have never taken the time to read it because of the depths of the psyche I would need to be able to attempt to understand. This week I will get to find out about all of the theories and information that Freud has given to the field of Psychology.

I suspect this will be an interesting week.

I transmitted my latest transcript from CPCC to Gaston at the end of December, December 14th to be exact, and finally today the transfer of credit has appeared. I feel that the entire process has become over burdened and is not as efficient as it should be. CPCC and Gaston use the same common course library, so therefore, their courses are exactly equal to each other and transfer seamlessly, even if one school doesn’t necessarily teach a course, it is still transferred exact, because the courses apply to the degrees exactly the same anyway. What pisses me off is that it took over a week for admissions to enter my transcript into their records as being “received”, and that’s after they were on vacation for 2 weeks after the transcript arrived (they had time to enter it before the holiday). After admissions entered the transcript, it took 2 more weeks for the registrar to “evaluate” (copy exactly into their records) my transcript and award me transfer credit that applies to the degree that I was supposed to have been awarded in the Fall semester. I guess at least everything is in now, and before the registrar began the process of verifying my degree requirements. The shocking thing for me is how much faster CPCC is, and they have a history of being slow and unreliable. It only took CPCC about 3 days to reciprocate for Gaston.

I am starting to wonder how my C# course (CSC 253) is going to function. First of all, my instructor, who is also the department chair, does not ever respond to my emails unless I send an email to my Computer Programming advisor and ask her to contact him for me, which always gets him to respond, but I feel that intermediate step should not be required.

Additionally, this course is utilizing Visual Studio 2005, whereas in C# Programming (part 1) we used Visual Studio 2008.

Finally, the syllabus description does not match the course description given by the NCCCS Common Course Library. He has listed:

“This course expands the subject of computer programming using the Visual C# and Visual Basic programming languages with object-oriented programming principles. The focus of this course is the foundations of the .NET Framework. Upon completion, students should be able to design, code, test, debug, and implement objects using the appropriate environment at the beginning level. This course will prepare the student for the initial MCTS .NET certification test, 70-536.”

The actual course description in CCL reads:

“This course is a continuation of CSC 153 using the C# programming language with object-oriented programming principles. Emphasis is placed on event-driven programming methods, including creating and manipulating objects, classes, and using object-oriented tools such as the class debugger. Upon completion, students should be able to design, code, test, debug, and implement objects using the appropriate environment.”

So far, no actual assignments have been posted and while I do believe the course schedule will occur as it is listed, this course is coming up a little less interactive than I had originally hoped. Things may have been very independent in CSC 153, but at least Eric would respond to emails.

At this point the lack of involvement and the over-combination of this course with his CSC-293 (Topic in CS: .NET Framework) is starting to annoy me, and I am close to sending an email to the Director of the Division of Information Technology (his only direct supervisor, since he is the department chair) regarding my complaints. I never like taking courses with department chairs or anyone who is good friends with department chairs, it makes the whole student complaint resolution thing more complicated. Usually issues are easier to get worked out if there is a department chair separate from the instructor because they generally know the instructors well and can resolve things quickly and easily without anyone becoming overly bothered by the situation.

I have spent a great amount of time today trying to get a remote X-WIndow session on my Windows PCs (using CygWin) to my Ubuntu system. In WIndows I am used to starting a remote desktop connection and going right to my remote system. Things are a little more complicated at the moment in Ubuntu. First, I had to find the place yesterday to enable an SSH server to begin the process. Today I thought I would spend a small amount of time, discover the magic I need to master and then get it all to work well for me. This didn’t quite happen. I still do not have the ability to open an X-WIndow session remotely and I am having difficulty trying to Google the topic because I am not sure what I am looking for.

Staring at Beta 1 of Windows 7 I am also looking over GITI’s Education module and thinking about the comments I have been given recently about it. It would seem that while in general the assignment portion of the module is complete, except for a few process tweaks and a new feature for bulk edits. However, the course management side of things is not as happy. This is where the parallels are drawn between Windows 7 and GITI’s Education module. Things are done the way that they are because they have always been done that way. A few months ago I put in a few changes to the GITI code to allow for adding complete semesters and following the course process (registration through grading) in a rough fashion. This is what I think of as the “Vista” phase of the new generation of the Education module, things have been changed to move in a new direction, but everything isn’t completely baked and there are a lot of problems that must be resolved before it is ready to meet the world. The biggest thing I am running into is the lack of consistency between pages. One page allows for quality points, one doesn’t. One page takes instructor email, another doesn’t. And the biggest oversight in GITI ever, one of my pages will take a course section number, and the new one does not, but then records to the database as though it does, oops! In general, the new parts of Education are strong, but they are also not as tested as their older (6 years in June) counterparts because they make database modifications in bulk, and at present there is no division between the test GITI and the production GITI. Currently, everything just feels like a giant mess that I haven’t figured out how to sort yet. This semester could make or break the GITI Education module.

This photo course (ART 288DH) is going to start off just like my other course, with an assignment involving stop-motion and blur. I remember really hating that assignment, there are so few things that move around me, my life is very static. Perhaps I should go out on some type of adventure and find motion. My only problem with that thought… it has suddenly become like 30° F outside.

I just discovered the term paper topic for my “Theories of Personality” class, and it is a bit of a shocker: “WHO ARE YOU and WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?”.

My first reaction to this is to run away from the topic screaming “I don’t want to know myself!” or some other overly dramatic action. I am a highly variable person, so this will likely be hard for me. I have to manage to lock myself into one state of mind for this paper.

The general idea of the paper is to answer the question of who we are and why we do what we do, defining ourselves by personality theories, then we must defend the theory used. This could be an interesting paper, but at the start my first reaction to it is shock and horror.

This is the buttermilk white bread…

I have 18 credit hours live and everything still seems great. Lets take a look at what this 18 hours is composed of.

ART 114
Self-paced course until February 2nd, at which time there will be a weekly unit due, this involves discussion boards and quizzes. Blackboard @ Gaston

ART 288 DH
This course meets optionally on Tuesdays and Thursdays for like half an hour or so. Most of the assignments will be given and submitted online, utilizing Flickr (just like Digital Photo @ UNC). All assignments will be photographs, including final exam. Flickr @ Gaston

BIO 155
This course is mostly reading.  It is fully online and  has stuff due about once every two weeks. Blackboard @ Gaston

CSC 253
Self-paced with a few deadlines. There is a very small  set of assignments, which makes this course very much like the first one. Blackboard @ CPCC

PSYC 310
Fully online, running on a module system with modules running about 2 weeks. Its pretty much quizzes, discussion boards, a research project and a final exam. Blackboard @ UNCFSU

PSYC 421
About the same as 310, except modules run for about 3 weeks each and assignments may be completed any time during the module. This course includes  a research paper, quizzes and discussion. Blackboard @ UNCFSU

This is what my Nikon D60 will do in the dark with very little light (one tiny outdoor bulb), while being handheld. This is ISO-1600 @ F/4.8 for 1/6 sec @ 68mm (72mm in 135 equiv). There was no flash or anything in use for this shot. Between Active D-Lighting, Active Noise Reduction and the Vibration Reduction system, this image came out very nice (and I like the warmth the grain gives to the image).