Fumigated

Well it's late tonight (past 10:00 already) so I'd better be off to bed soon. I'll "try" to keep this short.

Actually not tons happened today, this morning I worked on a couple of things, e-mailed people and such and generally got a lot of stuff done that I'd been meaning to for a while. I even had time to read the commentary I'm going through!

My only class on Tuesdays is at 12:30 so at that time I went to class. The teacher often lets sly little comments slide as he's giving his lecture such as "well, if you didn't like your grade on the last test.... you have my sympathy." or something like that. Today he said that for the final we'd be allowed to use calculators if we wished, for all of the "advanced mathematical operations" we'd be doing, like 27/4 and such, which is hilarious because in Java, those being integers, the result would be truncated so 27/4 would be 6. I haven't had a need for a calculator in the class because the math is so simple, one of the students claimed that he didn't get a perfect on the last exam because someone else hadn't lent him their calculator (he's a show-off smart-aleck anyway). I hardly think that is true though. Anyway, when the teacher said that slyly, the lady next to me leaned over and said "was he being sarcastic?" I said yes. Unless you think that 27/4 IS difficult math.......

Then he said that there would be an hour and fifty minutes allotted for the test time though he figured almost everybody would be out of there by the end of one hour, though there is always a few who hang in to the last minute and they have to manually extract the test from their hands. It seems they sit there waiting for inspiration to hit at any moment and enable them to fill in the last lines they need. I had to laugh because generally I am one of the last people out of the test area, but not because I don't know the answers, but if I have time I feel like I might as well go over everything a bit more carefully.

And yet AGAIN he was talking about Selection Sorts and how while it does sort things, if you have a large list of objects it's really inefficient because it takes too long and too much processing power and we should never use it in a real situation, just as an introductory thing for this next lab. He said you would NEVER make something like this if your employer asked you to make a sorting algorithm for him. And if you did, then tell your employer that you graduated from OU. The students did laugh at that one and I thought it was very funny. Generally he lets funny things like that slip out from time to time but he's so stone-faced that you'd never guess by looking at him that he had a sense of humour. Some people have compared his looks to that of Dr. Death and honestly, there is a resemblance!

I came home and prepared my projectile for the launch this afternoon. When the time came, I left to go to where we were supposed to meet, on the green (or brown this time of year) in front of the Library. It was very chilly, the sun had gone down behind the buildings so we were in the shade and the wind was blowing and it was already below freezing I believe. I had my blue, light coat on and just my short-sleeved shirt underneath. Everyone was cold, I was cold. We stood out there for right around an hour, shooting off projectile after projectile. There were VERY few that had parachutes, most people just launched it as high as they could and tried to get a good time that way. When I tried mine everything should have gone well but the lid came off prematurely as it came out of the barrel and ripped the parachute out, the projectile kept going while the parachute floated away. No one seemed to have seen where the projectile went, which is odd because I saw where all theirs went. I didn't see because I was already chasing after the floating parachute (which was rapidly being blown away), vaulting the hedge in my race to grab it. Anyway, I was very, very disappointed and sad that I'd let my instructor down, since his students were competing against another's students essentially. I tried for about 10 minutes to find the projectile but couldn't, I tried again a while later and finally found it but since the attaching string had been torn, it was worthless to try launching again. There was not enough to tie it on back to the main body. I feel it would have done really well, possibly the best there if only that lid hadn't fallen off in the barrel as it came out. But the parachute DID deploy, and that was good at least.... The best time was about 8 seconds.

Afterwards, most of us (that were left) went inside. Apparently the Tuesday class still had to do evaluations, the teacher asked if I would stay and hand them out and then collect them so I said I would. I didn't know any of the students there however. So I passed them out and collected them. Only two students had left comments (which I er.... happened to see as they turned the sheets in). One said that the teacher was great, the other said that he wasn't devoted to teaching at all (probably from one of the guys who didn't know the teacher's name and had to ask for it, there were a couple of those). Now I thought that he did a great job, the course is supposed to challenge you to think and to strive to excel on your own, not being baby-sat but how you would be in the real world, it's trainging you to become an engineer! With that in mind, the professor would always urge us to e-mail him, come to his office, over and over, let's discuss this, but most didn't want to take the time. When we were given assignments, he didn't hand out much material on how to build something, we were expected to research on our own as though we were designing something that we would turn into him so he could decide whether to produce it or not. We were the engineers trying to design our own things, not being "cookie-cutter students who all turn in the same answers to all the papers and there is only one way to do the problem," sort of thing. I thought he was very devoted to the students, he tried to get them motivated. You got as much out of the class as you put into it basically, and most didn't put anything into it and blame it on the professor. Very sad.

Oh, I forgot to mention that since today is Tuesday, I received a lot of messages to deal with in tech support, though today was pretty easy honestly. I didn't get any exceptionally interesting ones, except for one who in response to the tip of the week said "I could care less!!!!!!!!" Only he had abotu a hundred exclamation marks after that..... Um... you CAN unsubscribe by clicking that little link there sir, thank you for your edifying comments.

After getting back form launching, I only had about 10 minutes before I went to Mr. Y's house. I was going to help him start painting at the new house but I had apparently misunderstood and didn't realize that he had invited me to dinner. But that was fine since I had only choked down a tiny burrito really quickly. Mrs. Y gave an excellent dinner, I appreciated it very, very much! Afterwards (and after many delays) we finally left, picked up a huge roll of carpet on the way and went to the house.

The carpet was 16 feet long apparently (I think....) so it didn't fit in the back of the truck all that well...... it hung over the back and we couldn't fold it up because it was in a long roll. So we put one end in a corner and left the other end hanging (and beginning to droop) while we drove to the house. Mr. Y commented on how he must look ridiculous. The carpet dropped lower and lower and finally started brushing the ground (I could see it out the side mirror) so we pulled over, rotated it, and continued on hurriedly before it drooped down that way! But all was fine (and funny) and we finally got there, much later than planned. But the painting went very quickly and we were out of there within an hour and a half I think, having moved the carpet in and torn up the old carpet AND painted all in that time period, which wasn't too bad!

We cleaned up and headed back to his house where I was treated to dessert and given a chunk of banana bread. I sure appreciate that a lot, I don't ever expect anything and I already feel like I'm mooching off of other people when I go to their house and don't bring anything myself. At least I bring some chips on Sunday but that isn't much at all. I don't want to be always eating and never bringing, but I honestly don't have much myself and it's not like I'm making casseroles even for myself. But anyway, I really do appreciate "real" food which others have very kindly given me.

Well, I must away ere break of day.
Here's something to possibly entertain slightly.
http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail78.html
LGamer out.