Congratulations Sang. I hope you enjoyed your stay in America, we will miss you.

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We are at Sang's graduation from Canisius which is being held at UB North Campus. We got here 10 minutes after it started nd there are no seats. So we went up to the top and I took some pictures, then security said we couldn't be there, so we moved the another larger open area where lots of families who didn't find seats were standing.



Then the secuirty came and told us we all had to leave and that they were putting a TV in the hallway for us to watch it on. argh. I hate every minute of being at UB North Campus. I can't wait till the day I never have to visit it again.

Last night we went with sang and his aunt and uncle to Korea houe. I had this firey hot squid dish. It was one of the best squid meals I ever had. The squid was big and meaty.

Squid at Korea House

I am at (e:robins)'s house and according to the commencement pamphlet I graduated. Maybe I can just hang that on my wall.



The house on prospect needed mowing. One tenant hasn't paid the rent yet and she is out of town now.



The sky was beautiful on Prospect for a minute.

Before the pink (e:robin,518) there was (e:robin)'s thesis show. It was at Hallwalls in the basement of Church di Franco.

Here she is looking quite romulan

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You can see lots of her videos on her website

I was thinking about (e:decoyisryan)'s journal [inlink]decoyisryan,1[/inlink] where he mentioned that he went to school for Public Communication but doesn't have a lot of experience. It kind of sounds like my brother (e:mike) who is also working retail in his post degree period. In order to take the next step you really need to just go ahead and do it.

For a long time I was addicted to school. I think it was because I was convinced that working was not interesting, judging by the ridiculous jobs I had in the past. I went so far as thinking that I wanted to be a professor.

Eventually, I decided that if I couldn't have the job doing what I liked, that I would just pretend I did and dedicate my life to a project I could prove myself with. What a good idea that was. At some point it developed in this site. So ya, it and other related projects took up a lot of my personal time but honestly, it was worth every minute as I advanced my skillset a 1000% more than I ever did in school. Then I found the job I have now which made it all worth it.

I would say, take on a couple resume builders in whatever it is you like to do. If you get good at what you do, you eventually will start to be knownfor it and make a place for yourself.

Speaking of which, (e:decoyisryan), if you ever want to do some Public Communication stuff for this site I would be happy to get some help. What kid of stuff do you do?

So today, I did so many things at work. I got much further on my discussion application, I receieved and installed Visual Studio.NET and built a Pocket PC Phone app(lame one), rebuilt a flash movie for the Roswell Site, and built the splash page for the new wirless network coming to Roswell in conjunction with Verizon. I really do love SQLite. I think I am swearing off MSSQL for now. Although, its not very hard to switch back and forth.

Here is the verizon splash screen after I redeigned it a little bit.


Here it was originally.


For dinner we tried to go to Jimmy Macs. Although, not even though not one table was filled they told us it would take 15 minutes. As we were not in the mood to wait, even for the yummy bacon Cheese Burger [inlink]paul,3944[/inlink], we went to Saharagrill. I am a big fan of fatoosh. I guess (e:terry) and (e:lilho) do to , judging by the size of their trough sized fatoosh bowl.

I am really debating the necessity my graduation at this point. I definately learned almost nothing while at UB. Maybe I just learned too much during my undergradute years, or I expected too much but I really didn't learn anything that could not have been condensed into a "small" pamphlet. I guess I learned what beaurocracy was.

I will use this form as an example. This form was due last december. I have had it online since then. Does anyone else see the irony that I got a degree in media studies, where I studied online communication and this form isn't acceptable. It needs to be handed in, hard copy. Same with my notification that I quit my job at UB. Why can't they just take my word for it. I quit, I quit, I quit - I am not returning. I have filled out over 50 of these types of forms. Before, when I was able to go to UB during business hours it was possible to be a form slave. Now I just can't leave work to take the subway to wqalk to the CFA in the middle of a business day.

It's my own fault for not realizing that it was all so unimportant earlier. Like if I had quit at credit 10 it would have been much easier to write it off. But now I owe about 40,000 for it. I am 75 credits into my 60 credit nightmare degree and the digustng part is that I had a 4.0 until this point because I was really serious about always doing lots of work and being on top of it all - that is until this part.

Frankly, I might as well just get another job and pay off the whole thing in the next couple years and then bury this whole fake art crap thing behind me. I am so not feeling the vibe of most of the other art students and I think I was just in the wrong place. I wish I had just never been pressured into going back to school.

I hate schools, I hate academics. It is all so pretentious. I think I was just allured by the summers off. I think that is what it really came down too. How lame is that.

I rememeber one time when I was in spain I looked at this giant miro sculpture and was like what is all this art crap that everyone is talking about. They should just melt it all down and make productive stuff out of it. I think that is where this all started. That day in spain. Somehow I got all wound up into it until one day recently I started to really consider what it was.

So the problem is this. To graduate in spring I need to enroll in a one credit course because the rule is that you have to be enrolled for one credit the semester you graduate. If I don't then I have to do it all over again later. This has been going on for so long. I don't want the one credit. The one credit doesn't want me and I deifnately will not learn anything.

I had to update the monkat model for josephine [search]josephine[/search] <-- why does no one else use these search links. Maybe I need a new person to help me figure out how to help people figure out how to use stuff . I like it best in green as I mentioned before.

And what about the google maps tag (MAP TO: 444%20LINWOOD%20AVENUE)

Or the wikipedia tag (WIKIPEDIA - virtual reality)

It's nice to say goodbye to this waiting area. I am tired of sitting in it and looking at the totally unecessary giant flat panel.

I can't understand why during the last week of school some of my students are grappling with the most basic features of web design. I can't believe that in Advanced Programming DMA 480, week 14 - I would have to teach anyone how to write basic HTML like a select list for a form. I can't even believe that I had to address such basic stuff at this point in their learning cycles. I would be embarassed to ask such trivial stuf at this point.

Have they not heard of google! Only a small handful of students ever looks anything up. No one buys books, and when they have a problem - such as a form not working - they simply wait a whole week until they see me instead of trying to figure it out.

I never got to any of the really cool stuff about advanced web deisgn because I spent the whole first half of the class dealing with fixing all the fossilized errors they learned in the past. It was the most disspointing teaching experience I ever had after tempreal. They basically came from a copy and paste mentality where they didn't really understand anything they were writing, just how to copy and paste stuff from other places. It led to all kinds of namespace errors and insanity. I still have students that are obsessed with procedural programming - they will never go anywhere with that.

I am glad I am moving on to a new place as I am so sick of living in the land of the remedial. Maybe I am just cranky in my old age but I worked a hell of a lot more as a student and a good half of my students don't try at all.

This one student Elizabeth is so great. So really knew almost nothing when she started and she tries very hard and learns very thoroughly. I think if she keeps practicing that she could really be good at it some day.

I met with Tony Conrad today about my thesis finalization decisions. It was surpisingly pleasant. He liked my ideas and seemed keen on seeing it.

I have started using the chalkboard. It forces them to type. I can't believe how so many students just copy and paste chunks of code without understanding them. It's in the typing that the learning happens.