Okay... CAPELLA! I need you. I have that interview thing to do, and I decided to use you, since you're the only person I know who's even been remotely officially stationed in a technician environment. (A help desk job is actually exactly what I want to discuss.) The only problem is... I don't have any questions yet and I don't even have your email address to contact you when you're off IMs. So, uhm... Yeah. If you read this, get in contact with me! Or you can just email me, too... germanshepherd@ that nice Google emailing place.

Er, and for the rest of you 2 readers completely in the dark about what's going on... I started college again. I pretty much killed myself a little with the huge load of classes last semester, and this time I've only taken 4 classes: Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Server 2003, English Composition, and Pre-Civil War American History. Yes, I know... English and History isn't exactly what I would be using in a computer technician environment, but colleges are stupid about prerequisites, and History was an elective out of a lovely group of things like sociology, psychology and philosophy. Granted, I could have also picked American Literature or British Literature, but then I would have had the brilliant luck of having to give an in-depth review on His Dark Materials or Harry Potter or something.

The Vista class? Well... laughably light. You know me! Microsoft fanatic. I bought Vista the day it came out, so I know the ins and outs as much as anyone else on this fair planet. Chapter 1 was installing and listing features. Blah-blah-blah. Did you know that the Aero Glass interface requires a video card with a GPU? Holy gosh, man, I totally did not! Oops, wait. I lied. I had to take screenshots of amazing things like switching users and installing the thing. Except... I don't think the instructor exactly realized that you can't take screenshots of the Vista log-on screen, and you can't take screenshots of the installation process... Like durr. They say use a Virtual Machine only as a last resort, and I don't need or want one, so there was no way to get a screenshot of this stuff. So I had to do a little creative thinking.

The Windows Server 2003 class is pretty much stagnated at the moment. We don't have the academic server download keys, yet, and that's kind of important to have before we continue very far in the book. Luckily, I have a purely theoretical knowledge of how Server 2003 works, and coupled with my extensive knowledge of all other Windows systems, I think (no, I know) that this class will be a breeze, too. Most of the harder stuff like Active Directory and such were already covered in my Network+ class, so this is just to prove that I know how to actually use it. (Technically, the Vista and Server classes are Microsoft certifications, not A+. Easy to do, essential to have.)

English... Oh, where do I begin? Massive amounts of reading that turn out to be nothing more than professional insights in to how to do National Novel Writing Month, so I skip over a lot of it. Especially when they decide to give you 75 pages of examples of other people's writing. It's interesting for the first 25 pages, but then gets insanely boring and repetitive. It's supposed to "enlighten" you as to how to write, but I've been told by countless people that I can write as well as anyone, so I'm taking a little leeway with this, too. I have the first draft of a paper due in a couple weeks, so we'll see how this approach works. This is where I need Capella or anyone else with professional computer technician background. (By which I mean anyone who's held a real job in the field, dealing with people.) I think my paper's going to be on the multitudes of people who simply plop their computer down and say "it's busted" and expect us to fix it. Not that I don't appreciate a challenge, but it'd be better for everyone involved if the users would document the problem they're having before they come to us. That'll be the subject...

History. Ultimately pointless in a technical situation, but it was better than psychology, and my school (technically homeschooled) was intensely focused on history, and I've developed a sort of liking to it, so I decided to take it. I already know most of this stuff, now that I read it again, but I wanted to see what it was like and how much of history has been screwed around with. (You know it happens, don't give me that look.) It's interesting to read things from a secular perspective, although it is obviously incorrect. Native Americans coming over a land bridge at 20,000 "B.C.E"? What is that? Before Current Era? We couldn't have just stayed with BC "Before Christ" could we? Nooo... Too religious, I guess. Can't have that anymore in our enlightened society (that's spiraling the drain of moral corruption). Yes, they came over a land bridge, but I'm going to have to say that it was after that great global flood, where everything was fundamentally different and the water levels were all askew. Yeah. Also, they made absolutely sure to mention that the evil Christians were traveling to America, saw the peace-loving Natives and how they were worshipping spirits and using shamans, and decided to either convert or destroy them. (Excuse me? Convert or destroy? I think you're getting use confused with, oh, I don't know... MUSLIMS?) At least learn to differentiate between Christians. Come on, you're a HISTORIAN for crying out loud. The Catholics are the conquering zealots. That was the entire point of the Protestant Reformation! The Catholics were going insane with power (still are) and were burning heretics at the stake for challenging their authority. Yes, I already know I'm going to enjoy this history book. Lots of reading, little writing... Although I have to write a class paper on this, too. You know who it's going to be about? I just came up with it last reading session!

Martin Luther. The guy behind aforementioned Protestant Reformation. He had a tiny little snippet about how he was defying the Pope, and then they moved on. Way to skip over the good stuff. This should be interesting...

I passed Network+! And Linux+, and A+ Essentials/IT Technician.

I can now officially be hired to work on your Windows/Novell/Unix network or work at your help desk, or fix the broken computers laying around your office, or maybe be the guy in the back who does all the fun work while you deal with the people. Yep, that's me!

As soon as CompTIA's website goes back online, I can submit all the last minute technicalities and get my As. (Of which I now have in Math. That means I have a 4.0 grade point average again this semester.) But, man, how ironic is it that CompTIA's website is down? Maybe they should hire some Network+ engineers, har har.

So not only is a book labeled "REQUIRED" also labeled "currently not available online", but the books that I can get are going to cost over 500 dollars...

Thank you Ivy Tech, for consolidating all the books into a location nearly 2 hours away, and thank you, State of Indiana, for not giving me nearly enough money to pay for all this overpriced crap. You just barely gave me enough to cover tuition... A lot of help you provide when I can afford zero of these abominable prices.

No wonder Indiana is the dumbest state in the country. Prices are high because people get government aid anyway, but when the aid you get is still not quite enough, it doesn't matter, does it? Woohoo!

It's college time again, woohoo... (Real enthusiastic there, eh?)

Classes start on August 20th and end December 15th. For anyone trying to do anything with me during those weeks (all one of you... hi, Iaian!), be warned that we'll need to work around my schedule. Actually, it shouldn't be too hard, considering I only have one class on Tuesday that I'm supposed to be in a classroom for... The others are all internet classes, but I'm not sure how tough they're going to be.

Officially, I'm still taking a 2-year Microsoft Network specialization, and will run an extra semester of light classes to get my Cisco Network and Network Security specializations. Afterwards, I might focus on computer programming, but I'm not sure.

I'm currently signed up for:

• Network Fundamentals (Internet Class)
• Adv. Operating Systems: Linux (Internet Class)
• Essentials of PC Support & Tech (Internet Class, technically A+ Certification)
• IT Technician (Internet Class, technically A+ Certification)
• Intermediate Algebra (Tuesdays, 6:00p to 8:50p)

I don't know the schedule for the internet classes, yet. Last time, they were all on Tuesdays, too... At least for when you had to submit your information. I usually got all the work done on the weekend and submitted everything on Monday.

So there you have it! Hopefully these classes will be more challenging than the last ones... They were so incredibly boring that it pretty much killed my interest in taking further classes, but I'm giving it another shot. (If Dad would ever finish filling out the Financial Aid papers... Geez... Taking his precious time.)

I also took liberty to switch my mathematics class to the professor I had last time! I had some weird guy who I'd never heard of, and my advisor said I could switch classes once the names of the teachers were published for the classes... So they were, and I did! Gotta love Professor Caldwell... He'll give you quite the verbal thrashing for being lazy and stupid in his class. It's awesome! I envision myself as a teacher to be exactly like him... It's almost... Creepy... But at the same time, very awesome.

The results are in! Mostly... I still have one more class tomorrow, and that professor's really weird and not very planned out and I wouldn't be surprised if I was never told what my grade was and had to check my official transcript.

1. Basic Algebra - A
2. Information Systems Fundamentals - A
3. Programming Logic and Design- A
   90% to 100% is an A, and I have 91% even with 30 points not graded, yet.
4. Critical Thinking - A
5. Micro Operating Systems - To Be Announced

Micro Operating Systems is what I finish tomorrow night... With the stupid presentations. But four As on my very first semester? I'm going to treat myself to a session of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Okay, first off... My Programming Logic and Design class! It's pretty fun. I enjoy learning about the concepts of programming. I've learned a few things that will help me in future writing. (What little I do.) The painful part of the class are the assignments... Especially when they want you to draw a flowchart. There's just no easy way to do it in Word, and it's really slow and time consuming when you have to draw each shape separately and draw each arrow separately.

Luckily, this assignment, there were no flowcharts assigned! We just had to do pseudocode, which I'm a whiz at! I can be done with pseudocode in about 20 minutes. But I'm not here to brag! I wanted to say that I found something... Interesting. Each assignment has two parts. A discussion board assignment where we write a pseudocode and post it and have people critique it and look it over for bugs and get suggestions and all that jazz. The other assignment part is to submit stuff to the instructor and she grades it. Anyway, the discussion board suddenly took a turn to weirdness...

There are about seven people who post in the discussion board, including me. There's one fellow who always posts first, and then I follow in his footsteps, and then everyone posts in a throng after us. The first guy really knows his stuff and sometimes it's nice for him to break the ground first so I have somewhat of an idea what program they want us to write. Most of the time, they ask us to choose one of about four problems to work out.

So he posted his, I posted mine... Then I waited for the others so I could make my required comments on them, which I was able to do today. I noticed a couple of people didn't have comments, yet, so I visited them! I opened their posted file and... Hmm... Something looked... Awfully familiar about this code. Different document format, and some slight modifications, but it looks VERY familiar. I scrolled down to the more complex parts of the code and it all fell into place! It was MY code. I had even put in a few unnecessary carriage returns/line feeds to help me read some parts better... And they were there. I had a nice error warning message that they had modified just enough to change it, but it was still clearly mine. The variables were the same and there was even a small bug in a couple of module calls that I never corrected that they copied, too. I debated leaving a comment that simply said "The code looks perfectly flawless!" with a little winky emote, but I left a slightly more serious one instead.

Okay, so one comment down, another one to go. I browse some more posts and come to another one with a low amount of comments, so I open their file and start reading the code... Uh oh. This code looks familiar, too. I scroll down to the module calls and yep! My bug was there. I scrolled down to the error notification code and yep! Slightly changed, but still my basic idea.

(Okay, see, it basically says "Warning! (number) does not exist! Please check TRANSACTION FILE RECORDS. Advancing record." The first person took out the "(number) does not exist" part and the "advancing record" part and left my capital "check TRANSACTION FILE RECORDS" part. Clearly mine. The second person cut out the last two sentences and left "Warning! (number) does not exist!" Now, there's an extra bit of code that allows it to print the proper number, and that's the same. Clearly mine.)

I scrolled down to the complex code of the program and yep! My unneccesary carriage returns/line feeds were there to separate some IF THEN statements. Blah! Someone ELSE copied my code, too! This time, I just ignored them and moved it. Then I read someone elses post and it was pretty much a 1:1 copy of the guy who always posts first! Right down to the little bug he had on one of his sanity checks. Incredible. I go to read someone ELSES code and they copied the first guy, too!

Four of Seven people copied previous posts... Over half. Amazing.

I am now officially unimpressed with the quality of my internet classes. Don't get me wrong, I wish most of them were like this so I didn't have to drive into town everday, but the instructors are either completely ignorant of how things works, or they simply fail to explain how exactly they want you to do something.

Just this morning our instructor tried to grade our work and she even made a class announcement to tell us that we had all nearly submitted our homework incorrectly. I was included. This time I knew exactly what she wanted, but it was so confusing and contradictory before. See, this is a class where you actually read the book on the computer and then fill in the tests at the end. Simple, right? Well, your test reports are saved to a "tracking file" which logs your progress. The assignment submission form said "attach your tracking file". That meant attach the file the book saved your tracking information to, right? WRONG. That meant take a screenshot of the results of the tracking file, paste it into a Word document, and then submit it.

The fact that she said nearly everyone submitted the problem wrong tells me that someone royally screwed up in the explanation department. At least we know how to do it NOW.