So what to post tonight?

I can't think of much to post... Any suggestions?

So, today I was sitting in the local library today working on getting my English assignment read – The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Luckily for me a few days earlier I found an open license audio version of the book online. So I set all up with my laptop, headphones, and the book… queued the files up and hit play. About 1 minute in, I’m starting to pick up on the weird cadence in the woman’s voice. She intonates words in the middle of the sentence as if it were the end of the sentence. Also, she randomly makes the pause after a sentence extremely long, suggesting to one not reading along that it is the end of a paragraph. About 5 minutes in, I’m having a hard time picking up on what’s going on (which I don’t think is so much the fault of the faulty orator as it is the author who likes to be descriptive with everything). About 10 minutes in I am beginning to lose it. I message my wife about how bad things are, and chat about nonsense. I muscle to 30 minutes. After realizing that I was simply not able to pay attention (not for a lack of trying) because of overload of non-necessary information (or at least what I deem necessary) I finally relinquish the audio copy and dart for sparknotes (online free version of cliff-notes). Also, luckily for me at this time my wife called and said that I needed to come home to help her with something (yaaaaaay, no more torture).

Do English teachers really pick out the worst books that they know of? Is it like some sort of sick revenge for the crappy novels that they were forced to stomach during their college years? Or maybe it’s that I just lucked out and got the guy who reads this kind of crap because he likes it and has a strong feeling that everyone else should love it too (8 novels worth of pain). That last argument I understand a little. I mean, I love techno, so much that I want other to listen to it. Even when prompted with the chance, I share it with whomever I can; however I have a feeling that this is different. You see, I don’t force people to listen to 9 hours of trance CD’s if I can tell within the first 10 minutes that they don’t like it. English is not my major, and ancient American literature is definitely not something I am seeking to develop an appreciation for. Sure it was pivotal stuff for its time, but that was eons ago, no one cares now (lemme rephrase: very few people care now).

Alas I digress.

Did I ever tell you about the time that I failed keyboarding class? Well, lemme tell you about it (can you tell that I just thought of it while I was writing?). So the year was 1997 (high school sophomore, first semester about to become the second), I was talking to my friends at lunch about what to take next semester. We talked about different things, and one of my friends pipes up and says “You know what you need to do, take an easy class. You know something that will get you an easy A to get that GPA up, you know stuff like keyboarding. I took it last semester and it was a breeze. All you do is type all day.” So, on that recommendation I opted to take keyboarding. Sadly, for the sake of trying to be accurate, I cannot remember the teachers name; all I know is that it started with a W.
The first day of class we sat at assigned seats, but the computers were off. On the board was written “What is your name? How experienced are you with typing? What are your goals to improve? What do you hope to get out of this class?” You know, the getting-to-assess you kinda thing (not quite as good as getting-to-know-you). So I fill out my answers and hand it in. The next day, she had us fill out a worksheet (I can’t remember what it was about, but I do remember saying to myself “this is lame”). The next day (still not on the computer) she has us fill out another worksheet (probably some kind of assessment to see how well you would do in a position as a typist, gross). So I decide to write the teacher a note. I don’t put my name on it, but I basically say that this is an incredibly lame class that the computers aren’t even on, and that we aren’t even typing. The next day, she starts us on the computers… but at the end of class she calls me over to her desk. She said that she could tell it was me who wrote the note by my handwriting. I think she did that because she wanted more to respond to the cockiness that was in the letter.
Just to let you know the computers we were on were old pieces of dirt that were running Windows 3.11 (yup, that’s windows for workgroups); a great product for its day, but not so much when the computer lab across the hall had Windows 95, and my computer at home had Windows 98 (talk about all the other computers just taunting you because you were using old school junk). Fast forward to a few weeks later and you arrive at a pivotal moment in my experience with this class. This was a special day, because the teacher went on vacation and there was a sub. At this point I had made friends with a few people in class. I’m going to break for a moment and tell you about something that a famous hacker said. His name was Kevin Mitnick, he is probably the most well known hacker out there. He eluded the FBI for 10 or so years and was able to pull a bunch of crazy stuff. I watched an interview with him after he was released from prison (probably around 2002 or so). He said that the real trick to how he was able to pull all that he did and elude being caught was something he called “Social Networking” (which in this context, means to take advantage of the trusting nature of others for your own purposes). That being said, I do not say that what I did (as I will tell you shortly) is my finest hour. So I made friends with people in class, and there was a sub. I convinced the sub that my computer was broken and that I needed to move to a different computer (right next to one of the girls I had befriended). So, I got on the computer and instead of doing my work, I poked around (remember, these are Win 3.11 machines, whoopee). Well, I have never worked with the networking features of windows 3.1 before, but I soon found them, and also found that I could access several computers. So I looked through the list and found the computer for the girl next to me. I clicked on that and was shown all the files on her floppy drive (the place where we stored our files that we typed to turn in). Now, this had taken a majority of the class period, so I needed to have the current days work done (as I had been playing instead of typing), so I asked the girl next to me if I could copy her file (like any gentleman would) so that I had something to show for. I copied the files and put my name at the top of the file, and turned in my disk. It was a weekend, so when I came back that Monday I was met by Mrs. W. and one of the other school officials. He took me to his office which was conveniently across the hall. She accused me of cheating, and like a good boy I admitted to it. He asked me why I did it, and I just said that I did it out of curiosity, explaining how I did it. It wasn’t until later that I found out that she used a program and found that I had copied my friends work. I was sentenced to one day in ISS (in school suspension). Now one day may not seem much to some of you, but for someone who had never been in ISS before, this was horrible. You have to sit in there doing your schoolwork completely silent, staring at the wall, in a poorly lit room that looked like it used to be part of the locker rooms (and smelled like it too). Lucky for me, the day I went in, they had a pep-rally, which meant that I only had to be in half the day.
So, summing things up, I went to the final exam for the class, walking in with a 46%, and knowing that all hopes of even passing were blasted, I tried my best anyways. You know, this is one of those experiences that have taught me something about myself: I hate keyboarding, and I should be taking a computer class. So the next year I took AP computer science and passed with a 5 (which is the best you can score).
Lesson learned: go for what you really want, but try to be ethical getting there.

Wow, I guess this was a long post after all.