Where the heck have YOU been?

Lots to talk about since my last entry.

Needless to say, once again I have fallen off the wagon as far as posting goes.  I just can't seem to will myself to post on any set of schedule other than "when I feel like it".  That is not the intent of this thing and does not bode well for my future.   Not sure what is better - lots of little posts or a few REALLY big ones like the one this one promises to be.  My guess is the former, but since we are stuck with the latter lets just move on shall we?

School
Let's see the oldest news is I dropped my first class.  I was having absolutely no luck with understanding my Shape Design class and so I decided to just drop it and take it again later.  I do not know if it was a problem with me, the professor, a little bit of both or what but it might as well have been taught in Russian for all I was comprehending.  I should probably explain the problem I had with the class.

The first problem I had with the class was that it was basically a "theory" class.  This is not usually a problem if the teacher can help you with some visualizations of what the theory is working to express.  As a child, when you first study math it is basically a "theory" class, but the teachers all work very hard to show practical issues (hello word problems and Johnny having 10 apples).  These issues help you visualize the theory and you can grow from there.  The more...esoteric the math, the harder it is to get these practical examples..but by then you have a firmer understanding of what is being taught and the lack of an example, while missed, is not a deal breaker.  In this class we hit the ground running and spent no time with the basics and even with pictures of what the curves we were building, I just could not see how we got from one to the other.

The second problems was that Dr. Johnstone assumed a basic level of competence and I was not there, so while everyone else was learning, I was scrambling to get the basics under control, and the whole thing snowballed from there.  This is not an uncommon problem - it has been 20 years since I took computer courses and things have really changed a lot in that time period.  Usually I can buckle down and work through it but this time I just did not sense me getting any closer to the rest of the class as far as understanding.

I probably could have stayed in the class and passed.  It is not so big secret that teachers do not tend to fail graduate students.  They will scale tests and work with you so that you end up with at least a C, and probably a B.  But I had the conceit that I actually wanted to learn this stuff, not just get a grade saying I knew it so I thought it would be better to drop, study up and take it again the next time Dr. Johnstone offered it.  Hopefully by then I can be better situated.

Future Semesters
Registration for Summer and Spring terms opens up tomorrow so I have been looking through the course offerings.  I found a course in Parallel computing being offered by the CS department this summer that Corey thinks will be a very "useful" course for me to have.  He also says it will probably be a heavy "theory" class and I have better be ready cause it could be ugly.

This fall my schedule is set as well.  Dr. Sloan is offering a course in 3-D shapes and printing that I will be signing up for, I really like Dr. Sloan's classes - especially if we can keep them under 10 people enrolled so he is not so gruff.   My other class will be an Engineering Math class being taught by Dr. Littlefield.  That course is a requirement of the PhD. so I don't really have much of a choice except to sign up for it.  I also know that these are only offered every other year so no dropping out of either of them if I want to get done with my coursework anytime soon.

I think I will do a separate post for work and personal things that have happened in the last couple of months.  This post is already getting to be too long for a blog anyway.