Talking about data structures today. Attendance still dwindling. (more…)
July 16, 2008
July 14, 2008
Back porch drawing
I’m still excited about the drawing class I started this morning, so I took my little sketch pad and a pencil out on the back porch to do a little bit of practicing.
I scanned the results in to my computer with Grandpa’s printer/scanner/copier thingy. It doesn’t seem to be a wildly great scanner, but I really don’t need much for pencil sketches. Really, given that I’ve been at this for one day, I can only attribute quality problems to the artist, not to the equipment. (more…)
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Visual Basic, July 14 2008
Talking about arrays today. Maybe I’ll finally learn how to make an actual array of controls automatically.
Sleepy again. Not sure why I keep coming to this class. I don’t actually pay any attention to the professor, so I’m clearly wasting my time. I could just as easily stay home and work on my homework.
The next homework assignment involves making a Tic-Tac-Toe game. That should be a fun one.
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Drawing, July 14 2008
Getting started in this drawing class. I’m really looking forward to this class. Two women have showed up early, along with me.
Class starts at 9:00 AM. I actually showed up at 8:30, because I thought 8:30 was the correct start time. No harm done.
Class was overall fun. Did a few rough drawings. We did the upside-down drawing exercise from the book. I was way too slow completing it. Made sure I was faster on the later drawings.
Drawing can be very frustrating. I draw a line, and look at it, and it’s clearly wrong. All too often, however, I when I see it wrong I still don’t know how to fix it. Seems to be mostly a perspective issue. I’m OK with messing up; that’s normal. It’s very strange not to have any idea how to fix it, though.
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July 9, 2008
Visual Basic, July 9 2008
Very low attendance today. Six people. Maybe a few more will show up, but attendance has been steadily dwindling as the class progressed. Probably because most of us have some programming experience and aren’t getting much out of the class. To be honest, I’ve considered not showing up. I just think that’s a bad habit to get into. More on functions and procedures today.
Got my second program turned in. 100 on it, although I probably missed a few points and made them up on extra credit. New homework assignment was put up on WebCT. Due next week.
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July 7, 2008
Visual Basic, July 7 2008
Latest program is due tomorrow night. Talking about strings today.
Went to Fry’s to get some stuff to help me fix Brandyburg’s and the Chamberlains’ computers. Should make the process a bit easier. I found a cheap HD enclosure for laptop drives, which will hopefully allow me to pull the data from Brandyburg’s old machine without having to install it in my machine and get it to a bootable state. Dealing with the Chamberlains’ PC is going to be a matter of backing up and reformatting, same as before. I have a few more CDRs in case I need them. I may cheat and use Brandyburg’s hard drive as a temporary storage location after saving his data, so that I can move their giant media files. Depends on how large his drive is, and how much space he has free.
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July 2, 2008
Visual Basic, July 2 2008
Got our tests from last class back. 88. Not bad, and it was a fair test. There are a few questions I didn’t like, but I missed them honestly. One stupid math error, one definition I didn’t know. Half the points lost were true/false questions, which I hate and have griped about before, but at least these ones weren’t stupid trick questions. Some of the answers are things I’m inclined to argue, but they aren’t unambiguously wrong. And the grade is high enough not to justify arguing.
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July 1, 2008
Organizational Behavior, July 1 2008
We got our tests from last class back. I did quite poorly. 67, including about twelve points that were clearly just freebies on the “discussion” question. This whole thing makes me fairly angry.
The test itself was very poorly constructed. Clearly a test bank put together by the textbook maker. Opara flatly said they were a test bank and he didn’t make the test or grade it. Lots of True/False questions, which are almost inevitably trick questions, and these were no exception. The rest were multiple choice, but typically multiple choice where none of the answers made sense, or all seemed equally correct. In several cases, the answer marked as “correct” was in flat disagreement with the textbook. The most egregious example of this was four consecutive questions that more than 50% of the class answered identically, and got wrong. That sort of thing indicates a problem with the teaching or the testing, not the learning. To put in in OB terms, that indicates external causation. High consensus, high consistency, high distinctiveness.
The essay is just as bad. A woman in my group answered amazingly better than me. Had all five points asked for correct. Got either 8 or 18 points. I got one of those points correct, and received 15 points on the essay. Didn’t even use complete sentences.
I’m dropping this class, and taking it over in the fall. Already did the registration.
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