Category: General Life

All of my instructors have images of themselves available online this semester.

ART 114 Art History 1 Mr. Richard Gilbert
	ART 288DH Studio – Digital Photography Mr. Michael K. Hensdill
BIO 155 Nutrition Mrs. Paula H. Dedmon
	CSC 253 Advanced C# Programming Mr. Alberto Botero
PSYC 310 Theories of Personality Dr. Vivian Dzokoto
	PSYC 421 Cognitive Psychology Dr. James Hogan

OK, so, everybody remember that academic schedule I sent out last week? Well… apparently my instructors are not obeying those dates.

This course, ART-114, is obviously and clearly set to start on February 2, 2009. I was refreshing my Nutrition course in Blackboard, and came across “Art History Survey 1” being active. I clicked  into the course, thinking it was just a template that was activated accidentally, or in a test mode or something, but the instructor has populated the information in the course,  including a 16 week schedule, beginning tomorrow morning. I now wonder, did the instructor misread the course manifest, or was he misinformed by his department?

Nutrition on the other hand, will not be functional until Wednesday.

For all of my college years I became familiar with the standard 10-point grading scale, 90 – 100 = A, 80-89=B, 70-79 = C, etc, but now at Fayetteville State University, I have to get adjusted to a new grading system. The FSU system is a little more difficult to get an A in. I have to be careful of each and every assignment and protect my points. The grading system is shown below:

A =    92%-100%
B =    83%-91% 
C =    73%-82%
D=     64%-72%
F=     Below 63%

and one day, it will have a friend….

Today I was thinking about my Status web page and realize that it and its underlying system sucks. This morning I just wanted to make the thing not show a status for my “Message” area and just be blank for a while until I got around to feeling motivated to do something (its the weekend, do I need a purpose?).

Now I’m looking at the page itself and realizing that I don’t like the way things are displayed. It was designed to be very crude, but its a little more crude than I want it to be. The academic block could  be so much better, like maybe contain my classes or the type of assignments I have due or something. I guess that block was designed to be vague and not give too much information to just anyone that strolled in. My server logs confirm, there isn’t that much random strolling in going on.

I am giving a lot of consideration to making the page morph into my idea for my portal site, giving statuses, blog entries, bookmarks, recent art/photos, etc in an easy to use format that adapts itself on the content level based on who is looking at it. I think the main fear stopping the portal thing is that once I build it, the individual sites will have no purpose, which in general bugs me. I am starting to think that the portal will need to be a lot more like a summary of sites than a replacement of them.

The Spring 2009 semester is just a few days old and already I have had to select a topic for a research project in Cognitive Psychology. Not having had a lot of interaction with psychology curriculum in a while, so I had difficulty selecting a topic from the list. Originally I selected “Gender differences in decision making”, but then decided it was a little boring to me. I finally ended up selecting “Perception and Artificial Intelligence”, something a little more appropriate to both my psychology and technology interests.

This should be an interesting semester.

For Chris, since he asked… this is my schedule (not just a course list).

January 8, 2009 – May 8, 2009

Fayetteville State University

January 12, 2009 – May 12, 2009

Gaston College

Central Piedmont Community College

February 2, 2009 – May 12, 2009

Gaston College

“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.”

I was recently informed that the Advanced C# course I have been wanting to take (it or Advanced C++, and well, lets face it, isn’t likely any time soon) is available as an online course. I originally avoided registering for the section because it was only offered on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and I don’t want to drive into Charlotte at night (would be different if I was already there) and it conflicts with Digital Photography. I have not had any opportunity to take a course that is at the advanced level for any language I currently know/use. I don’t often get to use courses I have taken as pre-requisites to things, so I savor these opportunities, as well as any opportunity to build on what I already know without having to dive into something totally new.

This semester should be really interesting. I have 2 courses in a field that I am a little rusty in that are at a school that I am very new to; I have 3 courses at a familiar institution that should be similar to things I’ve had before, except the Digital Photography studio, which should be a refreshing guided study, and then there is CSC-253, a continuation of something I’ve done before. Nice little mix of things this semester.

I have found a new favorite recipe, this is for something really simple though, white bread!

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,194,157185-234194,00.html

I substituted sugar for the honey and I amended the directions to include baking at 350 degrees for about 30 to 35 minutes.

My first try with this recipe today came out as two soft, delicious loaves of bread. Gave me a chance to use my new electric knife as well to cut it.

This is a test post of the MovableType installation on server CMK6.