Illogical Prerequisites

Course: Introduction to SPSS
Course: SOCI 333 (3)
Description: Introduction to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), a computer software for data processing and statistical analysis, enabling students without knowledge of programming or without programming aspirations to utilize the computer for scientific research

Pre-reqs: SOCI 210 (Introduction to Sociology), SOCI 331 (Social Statistics)

 

Here is my issue. I want to take this course because I like SPSS. I like it because it is useful for generating statistical data in a short amount of time and if I end up doing anything research related in the future, it would be very useful. My department (psychology) doesn’t offer the course, but Sociology does. I want to take the course, but I don’t want to take two redundant courses. My opinion on the matter is that because I have had PSYC 210 (General Psychology) and PSYC 233 (Statistics for Psychology) I should be able to take the course with no problems. I originally thought that perhaps I was missing something from my interpretation of the course description that would require the Sociology course to be able to complete. After reading a syllabus from a previous semester I do not believe this to be the case. See Fall 2009 SOCI 333 Syllabus. Looking at the syllabus, I don’t think any social science course should be required, just a statistics course.

I have emailed the course instructor for a pre-requisite waiver/override, but I don’t know how much luck I will have in getting approval.

Windows 7’s Status Board

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I don’t know if I’m really trying to avoid doing work, or what, but It has occurred to me that Windows 7’s task bar is like a status board for my life. Each major task I do has a different set of icons associated with it. At present I have FireFox, Windows Media Player, Word and OneNote open, that indicates that I am working on a paper. Also, Nikon transfer is open, which all it ever indicates is that I am transferring images, unless of course there is another image app open at the same time, in which case, I am doing a project of some sort. I wonder if I can just save myself some time on this who status update and tweeting thing and just get an app to screenshot my task bar when it changes active apps.

Holding back

I have a hard time at the end of each semester getting things done, mostly because I see them as being stepping stones to the last deadline, and to the final exam. I had a problem with it during my freshman year, and now I have a problem with it that I am approaching graduation. Its true that I still have one normal semester left, but yet I can’t get the thought out of my head that once I finish this semester there is only one left. I am fighting myself on completing a Developmental Psychology quiz at the moment because it is the last one before the final exam. The final exam is nothing more than a formality, its open book, open notes (including the quizzes), and all of the questions have been seen before. So it is like 50 questions that will take about 10 seconds each to answer. I have been more involved this semester than most in the curriculum, and staying ahead of most of my deadlines, so this is a little harder than the semesters where I procrastinate and barely get things done on time. Those semesters I am glad when they are over, but this semester I am going to likely feel a little lost when it has concluded. May 7th is the last day. There are very few things that will wait until the very last day, as I am planning to conclude everything by May 4th. There are still two papers to write, one quiz, one discussion board and several (5) final exams to take. Graduating seniors have to be done and have all of their grades by May 1st, but the rest of us have a few more days.

I guess the best thing for me to do is to go ahead and take the last quiz.

What lies ahead?

With the Spring 2010 semester almost finished, it is probably worth listing what I have planned for the remainder of my degree program.

Summer 2010

Behavior Modification [PSYC380]
Emily R. Cogdell
Behavior Modification: A study of applications of learning theories and laboratory findings to behavior problems in educational, clinical, and social settings, with emphasis on empirical research demonstrating the effectiveness of behavior modification and cognitive/behavioral techniques — 3 hours

Registered

Advance Seminar Sex & Gender [PSYC430]
Dr. Lana A. Riggins
Advanced Seminar: Sex and Gender: This senior seminar will explore how various areas of psychology conceptualize and investigate the relationship between sexuality and gender. The study of gender/sexual relations will be approached from many different perspectives, including individual, social, cultural, historical, and biological. Sources will include journal articles, books, and fictional stories. PREREQ: PSYC 352 — 3 hours

Registered

 

Fall 2010

Service Learning [CSC350]
Bing Wu
Under the supervision of faculty of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, students will provide a service within the Department. — 1 hours

Registered

Social, Ethical and Professional Issues [CSC403]
V.D. House
This course discusses the impact of computers on society including people, business, and government. Topics include historical and social issues, security, privacy, professional responsibilities, risks and liability, and intellectual property. — 1 hours

Registered

Intro to Clinical and Counseling Psychology [PSYC342]
Pius N. Nyutu
A survey of the history, theories, and applications of clinical and counseling psychology, with an emphasis on analyses of the various approaches to counseling and therapy. — 3 hours

Registered

Child Psychopathology [PSYC381]
Stephen T. Gill
A survey of factors affecting psychological development from infancy through adolescence, with emphasis on conceptual models, assessment approaches, and treatment of abnormalities. — 3 hours

Registered

History and Systems of Psychology [PSYC400]
Stephen T. Gill
A survey of the development of psychology in historical and socio-cultural perspective. A review of the major historical and contemporary systems of psychology, and their relation to the philosophy of science and to the selection of problems and methodologies. — 3 hours

Registered

Introduction to Animal Behavior [PSYC443]
Daniel A. Montoya
This course focuses on understanding the evolution, expression, organization, and modification of animal behavior. Behavioral variation as well as the conservative nature of many behavioral responses will be addressed. The course will consider how the study of behavior in animals other than humans may help us to understand human behavior as well as to better conserve threatened or endangered species. — 3 hours

Registered

Another semester almost finished

It is hard to believe that yet another semester is almost over. It feels like it has snuck up on me. This morning GITI popped up with information for my first final exam of the semester. This semester has gone by quite quick, and I feel like it had really just gotten going. I have been more active this semester with a variety of things than I have been in a lot of semesters. I have developed a sense of direction on things, and have begun to embrace the uniquely eclectic nature of my interests. It is interesting to see how so many of them can connect and interact.

There is one thing that has gone abandoned this semester… GITI. The Getting It Together Interface has not received any substantial code changes, and I have not even begun planning for its summer maintenance period (those 10 days between Spring and Summer semester, and the month between Summer and Fall). There are some changes that I started on last year that I will try to finish up this year, but otherwise nothing else is yet planned. I feel as though I really need to get GITI finished this summer, since I will likely be graduating soon, and it would be nice to have it finished, even if it will never be used for academic tasks by anyone again. I can’t believe I started working on GITI during the summer of 2003. Its been in development for 7 years, which I guess is good for something that was only supposed to be a temporary solution between professional apps.  This is the longest I have kept any one application for any task (I switch email clients about yearly), and also the longest I have kept up with any one project. I guess GITI has a special place in my life. Central location for most everything in my life. Now that I am struggling with C# programming I am still thinking of GITI, trying to work out ways for everything to go back to that one central point. Even with things like ExIf35 I think of how could it would be if I could make everything roam back to GITI, and just have everything centrally managed. If GITI were to have a 3rd version, it would have to include web, mobile and desktop components, so that all aspects of everything (being quite literal here) could be tracked in GITI.

I can’t say that in general this has been the most productive semester in terms of number of papers written, and other things with a tangible significance, but I do feel that I have made a lot of progress in figuring out who I am, mellowing out my personality a little, and getting to a point where I am comfortable with everything that comes with being me.

Lens Selected: f/2.8 60mm AF-S

image I have selected the Nikkor AF-S f/2.8 60mm lens for this summer. It has been selected from the options because it has an attractive aperture and will work well on an FX body. Additionally, of the macro candidates, it has the best focusing distance. The FX rear element will also allow me the freedom to add an extension tube between the body and lens to shorten the focusing distance even further (perhaps to 4 or 5 inches instead of 8). On a DX lens this extension might not be possible because of angular distance issues.

It was pointed out to me by a friend that 60mm is more correct for my usual summer adventures than a long zoom. Having 15x of zoom, ending at 270mm would be a greatly versatile lens, but wouldn’t add to my photographic range. 60mm isn’t a greatly powerful lens, but its focusing distance will allow me to do macro in a lot higher quality.

A very minor advantage of the lens is that is uses a 62m front filter, which I can buy a simple adapter ring to make my current 67mm filters fit.

World’s Worst Written Manual

http://exif35.pcfire.net/docs.php?doc=manual

There it is. I have looked over it several times and tried to correct on it, but I just don’t know exactly where to begin making this document something that a human (specifically a film photog) would actually be able/want to read. Obviously my skills for writing do not extend to software documentation. This is my first time ever having to actually write out documentation and unfortunately, I don’t have a bunch of trained monkeys working to turn my overly-technical docs into something more usable.

Rate Table Error

I looked at my tuition bill for the Summer semester last night, and I was somewhat surprised by the amount of the bill, $12, 981.25. Now, the interesting thing about that number is that it is larger than what was paid for the entire 2009 year, which included spring, summer and fall courses.  The correct number is somewhere closer to $500 for the entire summer semester. Once noticing the flaw I immediately contacted the Bursar (such lovely title names we have: Bursar, Registrar, Provost; each with their own unique way of screwing you). This morning I got a response from the Bursar and was told there was a “rate table error”. Some error! I can’t imagine what type of error that could be accidental would cause this situation, as the error seems to affect out of state tuition. The reason my rate is so high is because I was billed in-state tuition ($384), as well as out of state tuition ($12,000), but the rate for out of state is incorrect. It is interesting the flaws that my institution seems to create. First mysterious holds for course evaluations placed in the middle of the night, and now this.

Writing Destructive Code Is Fun

I don’t know why, but writing code that is somewhat destructive is really fun. I was thinking earlier that there is no way in ExIf35 itself to fully remove the configuration file and remove personally-identifying information from the application. This seemed like it could be a bad things, so I set out to make a simple feature addition to ExIf35, a kill switch. It’s probably a little childish to make it this dramatic or to enjoy writing the code this much, but how often do you get to tell an application to go through and individually remove every file in a (system) folder? I didn’t do the really annoying application kill thing where there are 5 nested boxes asking variations of “Are you sure?”.

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Red is always a fun color for a button, makes it look important and mysterious.

Text-file Addiction?

For the last few weeks a great amount of things that I have written have been written in plain text files, most of it in the release notes for each release of ExIf35. Now I find that instead of writing HTML documents for the exif35 web pages, I am writing things out in text files that are 80 characters wide. At first this made sense, for things like the list of fields that ExIf 35 uses, which is considered to be a release note itself. Additionally, I have begun recording the features list and basic instructions in text files as well. I suppose that with applications, I just don’t see the point of writing things in Word or some equally bizarre format. If I had to I could always convert the documents to PDF, but somehow I don’t imagine that being something that would be required with the general user base of my application. Now for some reason I am thinking about papers that I need to write for some of my classes, and I don’t really love the idea of having to use a Word processor, they seem so horrid and clunky. I just want to write a paper, not plan the construction of an ocean liner, why all the little buttons and shit? I guess I’m just a geek and always will be. Plain text files are really cool. XML files aren’t bad, but they do add some complication to things. I don’t know why anyone would have their application write to a binary file format, except for compression.

Anyway, I really like text files, they are so incredibly simple and so universal.