Relaxing Weekend

Well, after finally getting finals done, and getting everything moved last Friday, I've taken the bus down to Tucson and I'm here with Megan, watching her write a comment on one of Eric's notes.

I'm mostly confident about my grades, I think I got mostly Bs but I'm concerned about my grade in World History, because I'm not sure that I did so well on the exam, and if I did very poorly, it'll reflect pretty badly in my GPA.

Other than that, on Saturday morning I took the trip down to Tucson, meeting a nice older woman named Norma. She and I made our way down to Tucson where I met Megan and her little brother Donald, who took me to an interesting Mexican restaurant whose name I've forgotten. Afterward we went to her house and watched some Avatar. I've found out that her whole family seems to love DDR, although it's only been a few days yet, so I'm not sure how long that'll last.

The real highlight of the trip was Rent on Sunday though. The trip to Phoenix wasn't too relaxing, as we started to run a little late, which drove Megan completely crazy. Other than missing the first song or two, Rent was awesome. Although I've got to admit that the stage show is a very draining experience, emotionally as well as physically, especially in the second act. I cried during the movie, but during the stage show, I completely bawled, and wasn't able to speak normally for about a half hour afterward. If anyone remembers how I reacted to Fullmetal Alchemist, it was basically the same for Rent.

After Rent, Megan and I had some Ruby Tuesdays and I got on the FlagExpress van and came back up to the new room where Glenn, who is living with me this summer, and I set up the room to our liking. More on the arrangement of the room later.

Frenzy

If you're reading this -- Blogger's scheduled posting still works. If everything has gone down properly, I should either be in Tucson right now, or should be on my way. I'm pretty excited about having some time to just sit around and not do anything, and seeing Rent this weekend.

I'm sorry for all of the pre-written posts, but all I can do is just attempt to express how insane the past few days have been. After covering an overnight Monday evening, then sleeping in the office until noon, a bit of studying and procrastinating on actually packing up until I was done with all of my finals yesterday.

Speaking of finals -- they went pretty well. I'm pretty sure I'm ending this semester with a record number of Bs, and probably a few Cs, but as far as I know I haven't failed anything, and I'm certainly not doing online courses again.

Packing went okay -- I packed some, moved a few things into Megan's storage unit, and then packed some more. As of this writing, the only thing I have left to pack is my food stuff in the top of the closet, then I need to clean up and get everything moved.

I'm at work right now because the prospect of more packing seems pretty terrible. It's things like this that make me consider a life of minimalism, fewer clothes, and only one computer. But would I really be able to stay a minimalist? probably not.

More Finals

Well this year I only had three "finals" per se. German was yesterday, and today I've got History and  CIS120. I don't yet know how I did on the German final, nor am I 100% sure on how well I studied for History or CIS120, because I'm writing this post on Tuesday night, instead of studying.

So with luck, this'll be the end of generic pre-written posts for awhile, but just in case, I think I may dig up something from the archives of pre-written junk for Friday, so I don't have to worry about what I'm doing instead of packing.

Finals

I'm pre-writing this so I don't get tempted to write more blog entries, but when you read this I will be taking my German final.

Home Stretch

I know this is just about all I've written about in the past few weeks, but I'm excited to say that I'm nearly done with everything. Including the VC251 project about which I was so unhappy. It was one of those things that in the end wasn't too terribly difficult, I just needed to actually get started on it. I also ended up using a lot of Megan's advice about how to make a vectorized human face look good.

From this point forward, I just need to finish the website stuff for VC251, pray that I'm not kicked out of the class from my Unit 11 shenanigans, then finish up on my finals and projects for my German, History and Computer Information Systems classes.

In other news, I'm just now finishing out my last overnight shift of the semester. Having my macaroni and cheese, and chatting with my WonderTwin. Megan's around too actually, but she fell asleep at about 2 a.m. on the couch, so I then pursued some of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos I've got hanging around until at about 4:45, my WonderTwin Meaghan showed up, with a case of the insomnias.

On another Megan-related note, we finished the first season of Avatar today. I'm borrowing her set of "Book 2" to rip into the iMac so I can watch it, and then I suppose it'll be online videos for me, and Megan and I were talking about watching the show finale at the same time, and voice/video-chatting on the Internet at the same time, or seeing if she could come visit Flag sometime around then.

Winding Down

It's really starting to feel like the end of the semester. It's just like last year, as I walk around, I notice that there's a calm that has begun to settle over the campus. As reading week drew to it's close, classes stopped meeting and the people I did observe walking around were keeping to themselves, quieter and it almost seemed slower than usual.

Right now it's the weekend before finals, which means most people are studying, packing and finishing up projects. I've got my own projects and studying.  Unfortunately Illustrator didn't seem to want to install on the ThinkPad R61i, and while I could go grab the Pismo, I'm going to leave that for a bit later in the morning, maybe switch 'em out in a few hours.

Other than that, I'm installing Solaris today. That will probably become a fairly regular occurrence, just as a warning.

I'm not going to lie, freaky and unnatural as it seems, I actually don't mind -- nay -- I even like the times where it's quiet. It seems like it becomes a time of reflection, reading, studying, among other things. It's also quite relaxing, which helps a lot because it's finals week.

I have nothing but contempt for VC251

I really don't love writing excessively negative things, but I feel the urgent need to express my disdain for one of the classes I've had the "joy" of taking this semester, VC251. It took me two or three semesters to even get into the class, and as a result of EMF252 (the UTV62 class), I was unable to take it in-person, so this semester I was finally able to get into (and therefore even able to consider settling for) an online section of the class.

To put it lightly, Online VC251 is a special kind of hell that I would never wish upon anyone, unless they didn't have other classes. The entire course, which is conducted via WebCT Vista, is very poorly organized, and the bulk of the instructional material comes from these two books we were told to buy, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book and Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book.

So we work through the lessons in these books, which in a way, are very remedial and basic lessons, which serve almost more as an introduction to the very concept of "photoshop" and "illustrator." And immediately thereafter we're expected to do a complicated project involving type, compositing multiple photographs and a poem. A poem! For the Illustrator section, we learn selections, layers, LiveTrace, creating some simple shapes, and a few other little things, and immediately thereafter we're expected to trace a comic book cover.

A few very fortunate people were able to find very, very simple comic books, with no shading of any sort, no background to speak of, and only one or two characters with maybe one prop. Unfortuantely, after three or four pages of google image results, all I was able to find were hellaciously difficult comic covers. Add to that a lack of any real text other than the title, and you've got a manageable assignment. Unfortunately, since we were told to find our own comics, and I didn't want to spend three hours looking for that simple comic, I ended up using a quite difficult comic to trace. Hilariously enough, one involving fair use. The original image can be seen here.

And this was just a few hours before it was due, because I'd forgotten it in favor of completing projects for my in-person classes, taking calls, and other miscellaneous shenanigans. So I started looking at the image, and realized that the assignment involved tracing with Illustrator's pen tool. "oops."

A lot of this was my own shortsightedness, needless to say I really should have skipped out on both weekend overnights, and classes/work on Monday and Tuesday in order to work through the project and get everything done. I think that with that much time, working straight through, I might have gotten a simple version of the image completed. I ended up using Illustrator's Live Trace tool, which we were "kind of" told not to use. I got the image done and it looks great, but I'm not sure what kind of grade I'll get on it.

The project in and of itself is not too bad an idea, although I think it's totally inappropriate for a Freshman VC class, and almost more importantly, I'm fairly certain that the class itself is totally inappropriate for freshman Photo majors. In a pre-PHO382/199/282 era, I bet it's main purpose was to introduce Freshman/Sophomore photo majors to the idea of Photoshop, but between what we learned in my 382 class, and the fact that I've already worked through several incarnations of the Photoshop CIB during high school, the Photoshop part of the class was really easy.

I think the projects for Illustrator have been hellacious, unnecessary and completely out of line, as far as the actual skill set of someone meeting the prerequisites for this class are concerned, and a more appropriate tutorial, like something involving an actual comic, and something being an actual tutorial, would have been very much appreciated.

Purely for the purpose of making sure I know how to use Illustrator, I may this summer go back through the CIB on it, although as a result of my contempt for and disappointment with VC251, I may just trash all of my files related to the class and pack the books away somewhere.

I really am disappointed that this is how I end the semester... with such strong contempt for this class, but I feel cheated, having paid the tuition and lab fees for this class, when about 90% of the learning materials were a pair of $50 books from the vendor of the apps in question. The class itself was very poorly organized, so if the instructor did provide any information, I never found it until it was too late. That, and I've always thought the entire point of an online class was the ability to work at your own pace, and see everything coming up in advance. I don't even think this class had a syllabus, and if it did, there was no warning at all about the assignments coming up.

Don't take Online VC251. Trust me, and if you don't trust me, trust Brandy. If you have to take VC251, do everything in your power to take it in-person, even if it costs you more in supplies, or in printing.