The tour of NMSU went really well; I really like the way the school is laid out and all the buildings look well maintained. While I was there I picked up all the required forums for admissions and now I actually have most of them filled out. Here’s where the bad part comes; they want copies of all my university transcripts (high school can be omitted if I am transferring 30+ credits). But I have a degree from ITT Tech, this shouldn’t be a problem should it? Well, actually … yes. I need to have an average of a 2.0 between all of my university transcripts. At ITT Tech I had a 3.3 ish … Germanna Community College … 1.7. Well crap. 3.3+1.7=5 5/2=2.5. I just barely make it. If they wanted my high school ones too I’d be pretty much doomed. Hopefully they will look at ITT Tech more than Germanna; otherwise I may not get the classes / degree I want. Oh! Actually retrieving the transcripts from the two schools is a pain too; especially when they work from like 9 to 4 every day.

Just in case you were wondering (if anyone actually ever reads this); I put down two majors of study: Philosophy and Physics. All of my elective / free choice / extra classes will be in computer science. From the looks of it Harris will pay for all of the physics and computer science classes which leaves just a few for me to pay for; I can live with that I guess. Some free money > no free money.

That’s all I suppose, the pizza delivery guy is here so I should probably go let him in.

o/

Against all common sense and better judgement; I’ve decided that this fall I’m going to go back to school. Instead of going back to ITT Tech (which is a 4 hour drive each way) or the University of Phoenix Online, I’m actually going to go to a real college; New Mexico State University (NMSU). A couple weeks ago I filled out some form on their website and had them send me the basic information and then last Sunday I filled out a form for a campus tour. Great lot of good that did. I called today since I never got a confirmation that a campus tour was set up … they never got it, AWESOME! During lunch I ditched work for 15 minutes or so and set up a tour for this coming Monday.

At this point in time I’m really considering a double major in physics and philosophy with a minor in computer science. After talking with admissions and taking the tour etc. on Monday I may change my mind and chose a different major but I’d really rather keep the ones I have.

The least intelligent (more stupid, stupider, stupidest, less smart?) part of this whole thing is that I plan on working full time while going to school full time. Since NMSU generally only offers weekday daytime classes, this means working nights and weekends for the next two to four years.

From talking to the administrative assistants and managers at work it looks like my company will probably pay for the physics and computer science classes but not the rest. Hopefully they will but if not, some money is better than nothing. If the company doesn’t pay for anything it will take me around six months to save up for a year of school.

Here’s a probably crazy idea; but I think I’m going to go to Colorado for Thanksgiving this year. Yea, I know it’s still a few months off but if I don’t start planning now then I’ll be sitting on my couch, eating chicken and watching movies for Thanksgiving. Not that I have actually talked to anyone who lives in Colorado about this yet, so no place to stay and I may end up in a hotel or something lol. But! I’m really hoping my Aunt and Uncle in Louisville will be around and I can stay with them. Maybe I can get down to Highlands Ranch / Littleton at some point and harass some of the people I used to know and now miss.

So, if anyone in / around that area wants to hook up around Thanksgiving let me know; not sure exactly how long I’ll be up there or where exactly I’ll be but if you want to get together I’ll do what I can.

Also, I’ve been in class for these last two weeks, and for the rest of this week I’ll be in class. Just when I thought i was done with school and learning and all that after graduating ITT in March; I’m already back in school. You can never get away; it always comes back to haunt you … though these classes are really bloody awesome and I’m glad that I got the chance to take them.

For anyone who didn’t know, I actually managed to graduate from ITT Technical Institute. Last Saturday, the 14th of March was the ceremony. Somehow I managed to graduate with a 3.35 GPA; guess it’s official now…I’m smart AND I have a piece of paper (diploma) saying that I can doom the world! muahahahaha.

I ordered myself a couple of books with some money I received for graduating. Not that I don’t have enough books to read already … think there’s three or four on my bookshelf I haven’t read all the way through yet and probably one or two I haven’t even opened. These two books looked really interesting and if they are what I hope; will help me with everything else.

The first The Book of Tea was a book recommended by a blog post that was about perfectionism. This book led the author to another book; Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. After going through the 200th or so rendition of my website without ever actually getting a UI started; this seemed like a good book to read.

Hopefully I’ll actually get both of these read and can start putting up reviews like I promised ages ago. No I didn’t forget, it’s written in Outlook, my palm Z22, at least one sticky note and off and on it’s written on my white board. Maybe after I move I’ll have some time to get them done … we’ll see.

IT302 Linux System Administration – Thusday 6:00 PM to 10:20 PM
IT331 Network Development Capstone Project – Saturday 2:00 PM to 6:20 PM
TB332 Professional Procedures & Portfolio Development – Saturday 9:00 AM to 12:24 PM
GE347 Group Dynamics – Friday 9:00 AM to 12:24 PM

Aside from those last two classes…I think I should do really well. xD I don’t do so well in “group project” classes, and Portfolio sounds boring. Hopefully this will be my last quarter at ITT Tech for my AA in Computer Network Systems; assuming I pass everything

I’ve been a little slack in posting this, partly because I’m not quite sure what to write and partly because I feel what I do write won’t be adequate. One of my favorite teachers, Mr. De La Rosa passed away on last Monday morning, the 13th. He was my instructor for nearly every class involving Microsoft Windows and I really learned a lot from him. A great teacher who always took the time to make sure you understood what he was talking about and enjoyed learning in his classrooms; I will never forget to be wary of the hackers, crackers and cyber-punks. You will be greatly missed Mr. D. and I hope that you find comfort in the afterlife knowing that you had a huge impact on my life and many many others.

Database development is a class that I was hoping would be really cool and actually helpful for things that I’m doing…it’s not. I’m still not quite sure what the teacher is teaching, he doesn’t seem to know either. After four weeks our quiz was mostly about things you need to consider when designing a database; which is important, don’t get me wrong, but I really don’t think it should take four weeks to teach. One of the questions was even “how many rows are in the table in the picture”, I can remember doing questions like that in…what was it..3rd grade? Couting rows is fun. ^.^

It took almost three hours of work, and a very large headache, but finally I have a schedule for my second to last quarter at ITT Tech. The schedule could look better, a lot better really, I’m in two night classes and the morning classes really are working better for me; however, this is the only time either class is offered and if I want to graduate in March then I have to take both of them this quarter. All of the classes this quarter actually look interesting and for once I don’t have any classes that involve a lot of writing or out of class work which will give me more time to spend with Ana and to work on the FooGam site. The classes for this quarter are:

IT203 – Database Development (Thursday AM)
IT260 – Network Security (Monday PM)
IT302 – Linux Administration (DIS)
IT320 – WAN Technology and Application (Friday PM)

Leaving these classes for the last quarter:

GE347 – Group Dynamics
TB332 – Professional Procedures and Portfolio Development
IT321 – Network Technology and Service Integraion
IT331 – Network Dev Capstone Project

The test to test out of IT320 (WAN Technology and Application) was 50 questions, and I needed a 70% to pass. Any guess what I got? Yup, a 68%, one question short of testing out; now I have to take the class…yay! It really does not seem like it will be that bad, after having taken the CCNA in high school it should be an easy class. Unfortunately now I have to take it and can’t get away with what I know; which is most of the class, the test just didn’t cover a lot of the stuff I already knew. ><

I’ve also been thinking about this thing recently, and in all honesty I want nearly the exact opposite thing to happen. What is going to happen will happen, there is no way to stop it, but it’s also not a permenant thing and I want to undo it as soon as possible. Everything probably goes the way it does for a reason and so this will also come to pass abit painfully, but it will. The number of words it would take to change the entire course of everything that is to come in the near future can be counted on one hand, if worded propperly, otherwise it might take two. With five words things wouldn’t change in the short term, and in the long term..six months, maybe a year…things could not possibly be better. In my life now I need to be dragged, pointed and pushed towards the right direction; there are no answers that I need or want besides one and it is going to be one of the most difficult questions I will ever ask even though I already know exactly what the answer will be.

ITT Technical Institute, a technical school which is renowned for their high tech classrooms and advanced teaching techniques to prepare students for the information world of today. For a school which is supposed to be so technologically advanced and preparing students for a career in cutting edge technology, they are really bad at communicating. It isn’t exactly small things either that they don’t communicate, like teacher changes, classes canceled for the day, or the school closing early. I showed up to class on Tuesday morning at 8:20am or so, class started at 8:00am and around 9:00 to 9:15 am the Director finally came into the class and informed us that the class was too small and so no instructor had been assigned. Well, that’s bloody wonderful news, I just spend 90+ minutes driving up to the school to be told that I paid $1500+ for a class that doesn’t exist anymore. So what do we do about this new development? Am I going to get the money credited to my account? Nope, instead at 9:30 am I am told that I can either work out another class to take or I can hang around and go to the class that night at 6:00pm. With gas prices the way they are, there is no way I’m going to drive home, and sitting around for 8 and a half hours at the school is quite a large waste of time. While we are all figuring out what to do about this, the Assistant Director comes in and informs us that the class is going to be offered online since a few of the students are in their last quarter and can not attend the Tuesday night session. This is actually not a bad thing, I would love to take the class online; something that I haven’t done before and always thought might be kind of fun. Now it’s Wednesday and once again, they have changed their minds about this particular course; the Tuesday morning session is back on if we want to take it, which for once there was actually a phone call this time! Hopefully when I get home it will be on the message machine. Through all of this I have been checking the “Student Portal” to make sure that my courses are properly updated in the schools systems, not. Today it finally changed and shows me in the online class, which I still can not log into the “Distance Learning” website which tells me the assignments, due dates and reading assignments. So, I’ve paid $1500+ for a class that I’m not sure if it’s Tuesday morning, online or even if it’s offered at all. Seeing as I can’t log into the “Distance Learning” I would guess it’s not online, but the “Student Portal” tells me that it is online, and the Assistant Director confirms that I’m set for Tuesday mornings.

At this point, I really just want to get out of this school with a decently good grade point average (3.5+) and get on to a job where the information provided from all sources is consistent and correct. Maybe I’ll get out without a headache large enough to split a small planet into several pieces.