never take a class with dr. king

a few of us have attempted to keep each other sane throughout computer architecture. everytime we meet to do our homework, at least 1/2 the time is spent venting. we talk about how to formulate questions that king will answer specifically (no, "i'm flexible on the due date" or "pick the answer that is most correct to you" or "this question may appear to be ambiguous" do not count as sufficient answers, in fact, none of his answers have been and no, i am not exaggerating), how to approach the department head, and how to approapriately warn the poor souls that might have him next year. more than 1/4 of our final this morning was over topics we haven't discussed in class (we only covered MIPS architecture - he barely mentioned 80x86). is the point of a final to determine if the students have studied the material from how the class was taught last year?

i have a really hard time putting lots of effort into my homework when the only type of response i get is "no" if i get a problem wrong. this doesn't help me at all.

on our final we were asked to calculate how long it takes to read or write a disk sector. we needed to add .0012 + .5/(5400/60) + .5K/5M + .002. does this look like a problem that a calculator should be used on? we are supposed to be learning about how computers work in this class and not how to do arithmetic. but we weren't allowed to use our calculators. he was probably scared we would enter the review questions into our text editors on them...but we wouldn't be tempted to do this if we would adequately teach us.

assembly is very useful for writing drivers and probably for other things also. did we look at any of these in class or write any programs that related to this? ha! for our 2nd program, the assignment was to write the software for an ATM machine that can exchange euros for dollars and vice-versa. for our 3rd program we manipulated strings. granted, i learned alot from writing the 3rd program, but i would definitely have liked to see how assembly is used for useful things...not what can simply be written in c++.

2 CS students who i really respect for their intelligence, work ethic, and attitude towards everything have vowed to never take a class with this man. they are both students who put up with not-so-good professors all the time, yet they cannot stand this man as a professor.

this is only the beginning of complaints i have of this class...let it be a warning to all of the LU CS and math majors out there...

have you ever eaten a pudding cup without silverware or even your fingers?

another quiz...


Running away? You yellow . . .


What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

i definitely need to see this movie again sometime soon...

interesting...

in the last 24 hrs, people have reached my blog from search engines 5 times. they searched for "schooby" (i was 7th on the list - msn), "geek mom blog christian" (6th - google), "Hello good morning how ya do" (1st - google), "which dazed and confused character are you test" (6th - yahoo), and "quarter life crisis" (33rd - yahoo).

things i realized i miss

this weekend was the first time since spring break that i have been out of longview (aside from a few trips to the airport for work, but that doesn't really count). i live a sad life......

but anyways...i am happy at school - i really am. i enjoy dorm life and usually don't mind classes too much (although this semester has been a struggle with that). i like not having to report to anyone (unless i really mess up) and not having anyone to look after. i don't have to cook, barely have to clean, the list goes on... but everytime i get away i realize how much i miss things that i don't experience while living in the dorms. this weekend was no exception...so here's my list :)

~being in a home

~sitting at a dining-room table

~eating a meal without a tray

~walking around bare-foot all day

~swings

~watching kids play

~eating real mashed potatoes and meat

~road trips

~sleeping on the floor

~climbing trees

~riding a lawn-mower (they just purchased one - a john deere, zero-turning radius beauty)

~being able to see for miles

~hearing farm stories from the growing-up years (becky's mom was raised on a south dakota farm)

~watching horses run

God wanted us to pray

i had a wonderful weekend! i went with becky, jeanette, and stefanny to becky's house in northern oklahoma.

when we were driving back to longview last night, i was programming (power inverters are wonderful!!) while we were all listening to praise music and talking. the music paused...i assumed the cd had just skipped, but it never came back on. then i noticed my laptop wasn't receiving power anymore. i looked up and the stereo was dark. we're assuming a fuse blew for the stereo and cigarette lighter. after a bit of silence, becky suggested that we pray. so for 1.5 hours, we shared requests and talked with God. it was amazing. it was as if He wanted us to pray so badly that He caused the fuse to blow.

even when it seems like God is putting a road-block (minute as it might be) in our lives, He makes it abundantly clear that He is eager to bless us. we may not see it for awhile, but we'll find it if we look hard enough.

a bit of perspective

i copied this from gardenwife's blog, but she copied it straight from an email, so i figured it was ok. :) i have read this before and when i saw it in her blog, it gave me some much-needed perspective.


When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious stories about how hard things were when they were growing up;
What with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year 'round blizzards, carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to keep their family from starving to death!

I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of junk like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've go it!

But....Now that I've reached the ripe old age thirty-nine, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves (In BOOKS!!!)! And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and shoplift it yourself!.... Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up! You want to hear about hardship? Guys couldn't just download porn! They had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11 Store! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! We didn't have fancy Caller ID boxes either. When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was, it could be your boss, your mom, a collections agency, your drug dealer, you didn't know! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, Mister!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Play station video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 260 with games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics stunk! Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens. It was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died! Just like life!

When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were messed up! And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning....D'ya hear what the heck I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little brats! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.You're spoiled!

You guys wouldn't have lasted last five minutes back in 1984!



i've noticed lately how easy some people's lives seem - they are rich enough that they don't worry about money or summer jobs, smart enough that they aren't worried about failing a class, spiritual enough that they must not struggle in their relationships with God and others, the list goes on and on... my roommate reminded me tonight that their lives probably aren't as easy as they seem. if they haven't already dealt with those things, the struggle will be more difficult and intense later in life. i'm going to try harder to think of my life as something God has given me and hopefully won't compare it as much to the lives of others...

wow, visitors of my blog come from all over. :) welcome all!

fyi

"a read transaction transfers data from memory (to either the processor or an I/O device), and a write transaction writes data to the memory. clearly, this terminology is confusing. to avoid this, we'll try to use the terms input and output ... an input operation is inputting data from the device to memory ... and an output operation is outputting data to a device..." --Computer Organization and Design, p 656

tonight while becky was being a good student and reading her computer architecture, she found this. most of the time this book doesn't explain itself near enough for me to understand what it's trying to teach me, but here, as becky said, "they treat us like kindegarteners." i don't understand how a read transaction that reads data and a write transaction that writes data is confusing. and do i need to be told that an input operation inputs and an output operation outputs? i don't know of any students who think this is a good text book even though our [so-called] professor sure thinks it is. but i guess his opinion doesn't count anymore to me - he can't teach worth anything, got his doctorate in philosophy (in other words, he's a "professor" because he couldn't get a job in his field of interest), and uses aol for his primary email account. enough said. well...i should probably get some sleep so i can wake up for this wonderful class...

writing isn't so easy anymore...

while writing my prophets paper last week, i realized i haven't written a real paper for 1.5 years. i had biblical foundations and comp 2 my 1st semester here and have only written lab reports, journals, and proposals since then. i also realized that i can't think in ms word. somehow the ideas come much better when i write it out on paper. and if i can't pull my fingers from my keyboard, notepad works well too. in fact, thinking in notepad works much better than the edit box i'm using now. i don't understand at all... what's the difference if i'm typing in a browser or in a simple window? the only thing i can come up with is that i'm using microsoft internet explorer to post blogs and microsoft word to write my papers. (i couldn't help but throw in a little ms bashing. :) )

this brings up another point...why am i still using windows? i'm sick of feeding the microsoft monopoly. i had the chance to use linux for the 1st time last spring break and fell in love! i haven't really used it since. at first my excuse was that the 4-gig drive in my laptop didn't have any extra room for a linux partition. but now i have a desktop with an 80-gig drive that isn't half full and 2 5-gig's just waiting to be used (i got them in the 2 133's i got for free last semester). what i plan to do when i have time is combine the parts of these ancient beasts to form something that will run decently and then put linux on those. that way i won't have to repartition my 80 gig drive or mess with dual boots (though i realize neither of those would be too tough to deal with). i've also thought about putting it on my laptop... hopefully this summer i'll have a chance to play with linux. i guess we'll see...

have you ever seen a man stumble and fallen
all due to his pride
i don't want to be another one
fallen due to my pride

take my pride away, pride away
take my pride away

....

standing here amidst this point of definition
pushing for position as i battle opposition
am i on a mission or is it all in vain
do you notice a difference or is it all the same

and who do i blame when my vision gets blurry i
get in a hurry frustrated and feeling fury
faith is endruring to stand the test of time
answers are plain we make them hard to define

but pull from divine when problems arise
but pride denies and my stand never survives
in every one of our lives in every single day
we need to lay down our pride as God takes it away --kutless, "pride away"


yeah, so God's been teaching me alot about pride lately... it has always bothered me when people do things for me that i'm perfectly capable of doing on my own. i grew up on the farm and i was the hired man for 6 years. i lifted weights for 8 years, worked construction for 2, and at a lumberyard for 2. i am strong enough to lift computers (even 19" monitors, contrary to popular belief...), capable of driving my own car, have enough money to pay for my own meals...the list goes on and on. i realize that people don't to do these things for me because they think i can't do them on my own - often they just want to be nice and help me out.

another pride struggle i've noticed lately is that little makes my day more than having a guy tell me, "wow, you're really good at ______." i look forward to competing against guys at certain things, merely for the satisfaction that they might see that a girl can beat them.

i'm kinda nervous because God has been pointing these things out to me so much lately that i have a feeling He's preparing me for an experience where i'll need alot of humbleness. but recently God has shown me that i'm not alone in this. a week ago and then again last night, one of my friends just randomly started telling me about her struggles with pride. then it happened again tonight with another one of my friends. we talked for over 3 hours about it! i don't like it that my friends are struggling with these things, but it sure is nice to know that i'm not alone in the things that i deal with.

the trip back from indiana over spring break was wonderful! for the 1st hr or 2, we read 1 macabees outloud. tis a very interesting book - deception and death was all that happened over and over and over and... one general would deceive another and would kill most of the opposing troops. then they would move on and do this to another army. for 16 chapters.

the rest of the trip was full of theological discussions - whether baptism is purely symbolic and if every christian should be required to be baptized, whether we can pray without talking out loud to God (and if not, whether the deaf and mute are able to "confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord"), whether 1 corinthians 11:4-10 (about women praying with their heads covered) should be taken literally or considered a cultural command, the trinity, the importance of christians having fruits, speaking in tongues, war, and probably many more topics that i have forgotten since then.

i realized during these talks that i knew what i believed on these all, but couldn't back it up with Scripture or barely any reasoning for that matter. i have a sense of what i think the Bible says about these issues, but i can't locate or quote the verses where they are discussed. sometimes when someone shared a viewpoint that i strongly disagreed with, i didn't have an answer for them. i had never considered that a christian would have views that differed so much from mine. it made me wonder how many of my beliefs are still based on what my family or community believes. there is so much that i haven't thought through on my own. i was really ashamed after we finished discussing. i thought it was absurd that some people believed as they did. but they could explain their beliefs and the reasons behind them while i was speechless.

whatever...i'll sleep when i'm dead. --shoey

my body is really hating me this week...

hours of sleep per night:
saturday - 7
sunday - 0
monday - 6
tuesday - 4.5
tonight - 3.5

the good news is that i finished everything this week that absolutely needed to be done. like stu's, my blog suffered a bit, but the rest of me has come out all right (except for the whole lack-of-sleep thing). joking around with my amazing roommate, random suite pics, laughing with the mullets, and ice cream have helped me out a ton this week. there has definitely been some fun times amidst (i'm not sure if that's a word or not, but you get the idea) the absurd amount of hw!