Misc. Ramblings

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October 22, 2003

Wednesday Wool-Gathering

The second annual Dilbert weasel awards are out (see them here). The usual suspects "win" so maybe it's not as interesting as it could be but I did download a couple of kewl wallpapers so maybe all is not lost.

Speaking of which, the President of the United States is arriving in our town tomorrow. Due to security concerns, his itinerary is not being released by the Secret Service. However, yesterday's TV newscast had a programming note saying they would go live at 8:00am tomorrow to show the arrival of an un-named personage. Said personage would then be viewed at the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor around mid-morning and later in the afternoon, be seen at a $1,000 to $2,000 a plate Republican political fund raiser at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The personage would then be leaving for the mainland, in his custom painted Boeing 747, around 7:00 or 8:00 pm that night.

Of course, due to security concerns, it would be inappropriate to release his name or itinerary.

My back has been acting up lately and kicked into full gear last night. It started with a muscle spasm and next thing I knew I could barely walk.

I think it even affected my sleep as I had the Student's Nightmare. You know the one where you forget about your final test in a class until it's already started so you come tearing into the classroom totally unprepared. Well, mine had a slight twist to it, not only did I come in late, but because I did, I didn't get the professor's instructions. Said instructions were that each person had been assigned a different topic to write on. Not knowing that, I did not write on the correct topic.

Speaking of school remembrances, I may have talked about this one before but it seems kind of appropriate so bare with me while I whip it out again. In undergrad school I had to take an introductory class in history. Since it was a introductory level class, and the professor understood it was required of all students, the difficultly meter was set more to the left than the right. In fact, tests were simple regurgitations of as much stuff that you could remember. No analysis. No showing you understood the underlying concepts. Just straight, wrote writing of what you had memorized. The more stuff you wrote, the higher the grade. You didn't even need to write in sentences and paragraphs - bullets or outlines were okay.

As it so happened, I had something like three or four finals in one day and, since I was not the best of undergraduate students, there was no way I could cram for that many classes in such a short time. I mean, there just wasn't enough room in short term memory for that much information so it would just sort of drain out before the end of the day. Fortunately, the history professor had given us a list of five topics that would be covered on the test. Three of the five would actually be chosen by the professor but he would not tell us which five until we were in class. Since I was trying to minimize studying working on assignments that did not return high value for my investment of time, I looked at the list of five, chose the three I thought were the ones the professor would choose, and studied those three. Fortunately for me and my future career, such that it is, I guessed right because if I hadn't, I would not have been prepared to answer any of the others. [Kids, don't do this at home. Go to your friends house instead - Ed.]

I'll be at work today but who knows if I'll make it in tomorrow. If I don't, I probably won't post as I'll be flat on my back in bed.

Aloha!

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Comments

Posted by: sjon at October 26, 2003 10:53 PM