this just be random stuff

2003-04-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

Back to the Losers. I suppose it's time to explore the word loser as it applies to my life. I'm a loser, for sure, for sure. I recall middle school, grades 6-8 being the worst as far as being a loser was concerned. I always had at least a few friends, and i got along with most people. But I was a loser, i hung out with a fairly losery group durring school every day, and a few of those people were the ones i hung out with outside of school. I was fortunate in that besides the rare occasion where i was in town and everyone else left or was busy, i generally had something to do, and if not I was busy entertaining myself, in another classic form of loseryness, video games. Of course as with most things you dig your own hole. I recall when I was younger probably 4th or 5th grade, any project or essay where it was appropriate to use video games, i used them. Even with young kids in a small town that contributes to a reputation throughout school to the people that knew you at that time. So for me i was a kid who played too many video games. Which is fine with me, cuz of course i do. Going back to middle school, there's one time in my life where i remember being shy and introverted, that time is middle school. There's a lot of ackwardness at that age for many kids, and I was no exception. If i had a mindset then like i have now i'm sure it wouldn't have been near as ackward. Now i go talk to people i don't know, and make new friends, and sure there's nervous social moments, and nervous social situations, but overall i'm comfortable making new friends and talking to people I don't know. Unfortunatly by the time I woke up and realized what was going on my reputation had long since been set. Of course nothing drastic could change the preconcieved notions people who barely knew me had. I realized the only way to change opinions was to be nice to everyone, and attempt to improve my intrapersonal communication skills, as well as abandon my fear of rejection in social situations, especially social situations with girls. Over time people realized I wasn't as losery as the reputation that procedded me. While I probably wasn't by any means the biggest loser in the school, I must say if being a loser in middle school is the worst thing that ever happens to me, then my life will be extremely terriffic. I'm still a loser, and i'm sure I always will be, the difference is I know it, and above and beyond that I enjoy it. I am the way I am, and I do the things I do on purpose. It's not as fun to be a loser and just want to fit in, but it's a lot more fun to be a self proclaimed loser, and fit in because you're aware of that fact, instead of being outcast because you're clueless.

2003-03-31T22:20:00.000-08:00

I need to work on that paper more, however i also need to create a utopia. so for that i'll just work on the sections i'm assigned to. I have to get about 3 and 1/2 pages on our transportation system, our government, our food, and our housing.

Our city is a mobile city. Mobile as in it moves thereby making our society nomadic. How would such a nomadic society move you might ask? Maybe by horse or by crane, by tricycle or plane? No, mobile homes. A great fleet of moblie homes with which to roam the desert. Utopia is a society that lives in a large mass of mobile homes of all shapes sizes and colors. Now as you may recall from history, some Native American tribes were nomadic, they set up their tipi's and camped out for a while, and then when their food source left, so did they. They just packed up their stuff on a bunch of horses, or draging behind them on travios <-----CHECK SPELLING))). Similarly the Benphiladams pack up their stuff in mobile homes, and go wherever they decide to go. Now if you figure the horses serve a similar purpose to the mobile homes, what serves a similar purpose to tipi's? Inflateable buildings. That's right, inflateable buildings. So when they decide to stop, and set up their town. They get out all their packed up buildings, and blow them up. I'm sure many of you have seen the little blow up places at carnivals and such, where little kids jump around and have fun. Just imagine a brilliant and extravagant city of big and small structures made with in a similar fashoin. Of course the technology of the Benphiladams is quite advanced and such structrures are far more stable and more durable than the kiddie blow up places you see at carnivals.

2003-03-31T19:09:00.000-08:00

Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. Sean Connery from The Rock
A great quote, but i'll have to find a good way to incorperate it. so what does it mean to be a loser? To me there are many factors, and oddly enough fear happens to be one of them.

2003-03-30T22:59:00.000-08:00

hay every1. every1 probably being just me. another weblog, another paper, 2 papers actually, so, guess what my next weblog is going to be about. well anywayz we have 2 do 2 papers for english, one is a paper defining a word, i'm thinkin i'm going to do loser. what is a loser? i don't really know i guess, but i'm going to find out what i think it means. the other project is a group thing, create your own utopia. someplace that is the greates. it has 2 b 10 + pages, but it's split 3 ways so it won't be bad.we set up most of the basics of our society in our group, and split up different parts. so now all we really have 2 do is describe the parts in a lengthy manner and put the crap all together and it'll be all good.
Anywayz, back to the loser thing. well i suppos i should start out with a few definitioins, starting with connotation, and denotation. words have both and they're not always the same. I should also give a dictionary deffinition of the word loser and a commentary on such definition. i should find loser in a thesaurus and list similies and such, i can also go on to describe the contribution of similar words to the connotation of the word loser. also sean connery's quote from the rock about losers and fucking the prom queen would be a good addition.
Loser: 1. one that loses especially consistently 2. one who is incompetent or unable to succeed; also : something doomed to fail or disappoint.

2003-02-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

alright, new day new problems, but life goes on. unfortunatly both the rough draft for my paper, and my group project are due 2morrow, but o well i guess, not much i can do about it. i'm figurin the rough draft iz gonna suck, but o well. I suppose i'll just try and copy in as much stuff as i can, and add my own stuff along the way, and see how it goes.

apparently there's a book or 2, quotes would be a good thing from such a source.

good links:
http://www.tinytim.org/
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/default.asp?oid=3210
http://www.cmgww.com/music/tim/
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/music/mu1136.php
http://www.hipsurgerymusic.com/TinyTim/

Tiny Tim will always be remembered singing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" in his falsetto voice, strumming his ukulele. With his dyed red hair and clashing outfits, he embodied all that was goofy about the late '60s.
Born Herbert Khaury on April 12, 1933, Tiny Tim began his music career as Larry Love in the early '50s, touring clubs and playing his ukulele to generally disinterested audiences. It wasn't until the mid-1960's that Tim became a household name. His debut album, God Bless Tiny Tim, sold 200,000 copies and Tiny Tim became a regular on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." Forty million viewers tuned in to watch him marry Miss Vicki on the show December 17, 1969.
Although Tiny Tim's fame waned in the '70s and '80s, he never stopped singing, playing small clubs and releasing albums on indie labels, often released on 45 rpm records. Tim worked on expanding his style, including more of his natural baritone voice and covering a range of popular songs including "Another Brick in the Wall" and "Stairway to Heaven."
In the 1990s, Tiny Tim began to mount a comeback. He resurfaced on TV making appearances on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," and Howard Stern's TV show. The comeback was stopped short, however, in November 1996 when Tiny Tim suffered a heart attack on stage and died shortly after.
- Rolling Stone web page
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=3210&cf=3210

list some tiny tim appearances:
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Tonight Show
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In
The Arsenio Hall Show

Pictures:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/7152/tinytim.html
and to be found on various good tiny tim sites.

next a few thoughts by me on tiny tim.
Tiny Tim, was an outrageous, silly man. His crazy ways, and outlandish style helped make music what it is today. Tiny Tim hit it big in the late 60's with a falsetto version of a song called Tiptoe Through the Tulips. If you were to hear a normal version of Tiptoe Through the Tulips, you probably wouldn't think to much of it. However if you were to hear a big guy with long unnaturally colored hair, strange clashing clothes, and a ukulele (the really really small guitar looking instruments) sing it with a falsetto voice (that fake high voice way out of your real vocal range), that would be a horse of a different color. Tiny Tim reveled in his uniqueness, it's something that really made him stand out among the many popular musicians of the time. Tiny tim was a crazy guy who had a crazy voice, but somehow managed to hit it big with a silly little song at a time where bands like Steppenwolf, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Iron Butterfly, and Creedance Clearwater Revival were hitting the charts.

2003-02-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

hay, suprise suprise, another blog, another paper. paper 2. this time is supposed to be more fun, so i'm doing an equally more fun topic, tiny tim. I also plan to do somethin multimedia, probably a web page of some sort, and for several reasons. first, it's more fun, and second, the paper has to be pretty long, and i figure, as long as i have a bunch of info, and do a bunch of stuff as far as multimedia goes, length won't be much of an issue. Tiny tim had that great falsetto song tiptoe through the tulips. He was a big guy that dressed funny, and played a ukulele. He did covers of some other great songs too, such as stairway to heaven. (i would like to note somewhere, that not all of his singing is falsetto)(also note, define falsetto, i wouldn't expect everyone knows the term) Tiny tim, great guy, died young, (needs a good source). good quotes would be nice as well. strange man, give examples of wierdness. of course give biographical and musical information and history with sources. Pictures and music aka multimedia. Providing some good links and stuff to different good tiny tim web sites and information would be good. along with a couple links to ukulele info. I suppose a little piece about the ukulele wouldn't be out of line by any means.

2003-01-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

long time no speak. anywayz, on to english 120 with the same teacher. now i get to write a 3-5 about a myth. I'm gonna write about myths concerning computer viruses. and i do believe i'll start with a personal experience. I'm sittin at home on vacation, talkin on MSN Messenger, just hangin out and relaxing over vacation. I'm talkin 2 a couple friends and stuff, and one of the people i'm talkin to goes, do you have a file on your computer called jdbgmgr.exe? She sounded kind of concerned, so i checked, and of course there it is, on my computer jdbgmgr.exe, the nerve. Of course the next line i get, is somethin about you need to delete it immidiatly and tell all your friends and contacts and anyone you can think of about it. I thought to myself, ok well i suppose i could stand to delete it, but while i'm at it I believe i'll find out what it did/has done/is doing to my computer, just to make sure deleting the file will eliminate all problems associated with a virus of such a name. So i took the finle name and searched for it in google. I didn't have to look far to find what i was looking for, the first result was something about it from an antivirus site, how nice. So i read on this antivirus site, it's a hoax. Apparently someone decided to mess with peoples heads (and oh boy does it work) and told them to delete this file cuz it was a virus, and told them to tell everyone else about it. Well that's all fine and dandy, except it gets better, in order to help convince those not quite as ignorant, this hoax included something about a bear and it's significance, the bear just happens to be the icon used for jdbgmgr.exe and has no correlation to viruses whatsoever. It happens that this program is some java development debugger type thing, and most people wouldn't use it unless they were developing applications in java, therefore those who deleted it are in no trouble, and those who need it back can easily get it off the web. To continue the story i informed my friend of her ignorance, pointing out reality in the process. She, of course, felt dumb for being taken, but no harm done, but as you can see the misconceptions about computers and computer viruses are unbelievably large and widespread. well that's all for that, good start for my paper, and anywayz, of to physics soon, bye bye.

2002-11-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

Just workin on my paper, writin about life, and doin laundry. I came up with another quote, though it's not as good as good as my other one, i think i'll take the time to put it on the left anywayz. Life's got stuff. that's just how it iz. but it's more fun that way. well back to homewirk i guess.

2002-11-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

been a long time. I've been doing work, then procrastinating, and going back and forth, so it's either really busy or really not busy. well i got a start on a couple things that aren't due for a while, like the english paper, which is supposed to be a broken narrative about me, and the write up on the senior design project i went and observed. well i don't know what to do next for the paper, so far i started with, 'i have a mullet' and i rambled about how society needs to get out of it's old patterns and stuff. and i know i want to include my quote, 'I'm a one shirt guy living in a three shirt world.' but i just don't know what else to talk about, i'm sure i'll think of somthing though. i suppose along with the quote i'll have to talk about the conversation that brought on the quote, but i'll still need more. i'm kind of glad i don't have anything due tomorrow, but i do have 3 tests next week i'll have to be studying for, and some papers due later on sometime. i suppose i'll go check and see if the washer is open yet, and then i'll try and work on something that's homewirk like.

2002-10-28T21:29:00.000-08:00

alright well i've worked on my project a little more. i'm tryin 2 get the program i got working to work as an applet instead of an executable, cuz that'd be a cooler thing and it'd work online. but applets and applications seem to be alot different, for now i put an exe online, and hopefully i'll be able to show that in class i'll put a link to it, so this is my program. anywayz, sleepy time soon, so that's it for now.

2002-10-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

i's back, and my weekend was ok. the time changed so that waz cool. i watched the shawshank redemption, great movie. and now to finally update the quote on the left side of the screen. My roommate and i were talking about shirts, cuz he was wearin three shirts, and then he showed me people in his yearbook that were wearing three shirts. he's from maple grove, and so we're talkin about three shirts vs. one shirt, and i came up with one of my greates quotes of all time. I'm a one shirt guy living in a three shirt world. alright well that's all i'm doin for now. later.

2002-10-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

ok, well today after i gave my speech was more fun, i'm not worried about a whole bunch of stuff being due, therefore i got some time to work on my project again. I looked around to try and find out how to make the button so you can hit it by just hitting enter, i looked around and i was looking at actionlisteners or somethin, and eventually i figured out that the default button was a property of the window, so i found it, it's called acceptButton, and you just set that value to the name of your button, and it gets a darker button, and gets the functionality. so this was easier than i was trying 2 make it. anywayz, now that i'm not busy i'm going 2 go out into the loung and work on some calculus.

2002-10-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

ok, so now that i haven't slept in somewheres near 28 hours, and i've spent a good long time on that last blog 2day wirkin on the 3-4 page, i should put some independant stuff for the 2-3 page one. alright first let's have a look at what i need to writ about, the assignment sayz "describe the correlation of text material, seminar information and related research." ok well the course material talks about many things like how to manage your time, how to take good notes, and how to take exams amung other things. The seminar was a very informative preview of college, covering in depth some of the topics of the course reading material. Lecture on various topics was given as well as examples of types of classwork likely to be encountered. For example, we took notes on a lecture Patty Corwin gave called 'Be Alert & Stay Safe', we had to take notes on this speech, and later take an essay exam over the information presented. I did my research on learning styles, and learned of many thoughts and descriptioins on the topic. So, if This is a class, and theres some reading material, and some lecture with a teacher, and an assignment or two, they must have something to do with each other. Well that's just the kind of stuff my research paper talks about, learning styles, that's why we have all this stuff. Whoever got this class ready must have known a little bit about what they were doing in that respect. So i get a booklet with all this info in it, somethin i can read, and somthin i can have to refer to later. ok well i don't have a lot of time to read, so i've skimmed the booklet, but not my main source of learning from the class, as i would expect judging by what i consider to be my learning style. So then you add a lecture which works well for some people, does ok for me most of the time, depending on the teacher. This helps, it encompasses more people's learning styles, get's information across in more than one way, so what else is there? Note taking, ya write somethin down, it can help you to learn it, some people have to see things to learn them, or remember them better if they process the information and write it down themselves. And as we keep building, we move on to an exam, and have an essay exam over material that has been presented, the big thing about exams is how you study for them, the way you study may be different from the way someone else studies, but do what works fro you. Exams do something else, they give both the student and the teacher an idea of how well the student knows the material. Another thing about the exam we had durring this class, good practice for essay exams to come. Alright, so finally down to the research, you research to learn about something, and we had to research articles related to learning. I do see the point of research, however i'm not a big fan of formal research paper, i don't generally do too bad at them, but they're certainly not fun. Another problem with research, is for the most part i end up doin research on subjects i don't care about. I see the point of this research, to teach me how to do research, so that way when i want to find out about something, i know how to do it myself. Now that i know how to do it myself, i don't really care to do it on subjects that are unimportant to me anymore. The format of formal research papers throws me off as well, i certainly understand the plagarism side of it, but if i'm doin my own research for my own interest, am i going to write a paper about it, i think not. I could write somethin down so i can refer to it later, but why waste the time to write a paper when i've already found out what i'm looking for. well i guess that's it for now, i've been awake for approaching 30 hours and i really hope to wake up for class in the morning. so i'm calling it good for now. i hope all this that i wrote just about works out so i can just fix it and rearrange it and then it'll be 2 papers, cause i think what i have done here is quite the deal for rough drafts.

2002-10-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

alright, well this weekend has been pretty normal in all areas except sleep, i kind of shifted my schedule, and i'm still not sure if it was a good idea or not, but i changed it up so i could just sleep once this weekend instead of twice, making my days extra long, well, the days sure have been extra long, and i don't know, i might take a nap later depends on how much stuff i get done. Ok well i had another article for my paper that's due tuesday, but after evaluating the contents more thoroughly i realized that it wasn't quite the kind of thing i wanted for my paper, so i went and found another article, so now i'm goin 2 write some stuff about that starting with bibliographical information. Ediger, Marlow, Assessing methods of teaching in the school setting. Education, Fall 2001 v122 il p123(5). This article basically goes over some of the different ways materials are presented in class, analyzes these ways, and points out some ways for teachers to apply these methods effectively. The main methods discussed are lectures, memorization, discussion, problem solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking. After reading this article i realize that though i've never thought about it, teaching methods themselves have preconcieved notions. Especially in high school, you may have classes that are composed of 1/4 lecture, and 3/4 homwirk on a daily basis, and you may have others classes where you are lectured right up to the bell, which one is different, well that just depends on the student, and the teacher, and their respective learning and teaching styles. As this article pointed out, boring lecture classes, though they may not work for everyone, and some such teachers get categorized as "bad", can be the greatest to some people. Individual teachers may be good and bad lecturers, and students may or may not learn best by lecture. A teacher lecturing may help their students to learn the material by watching the students nonverbal communciation and adapting their method of teaching accordingly. Memorization, some people can memorize stuff, some can't, some can memorize things like equations and formulas, and some can memorize poems and quotes, and some can memorize pictures, or words. Memorization is one method teachers can use to make sure their students are learning, for example foreign languages would requre that u memorize certain basic words, and know these words for some sort of quiz or exam. Though everyone needs to memorize some things at some point, such as their mailing address, memorization is not a preferred learning style for everyone. Memorizing is useful for many things, but for many memorizing is easier when it is fun, or is made to be fun. Memorization also occurs automatically for many by both repetition of the quantity to be memorized , and of the repetition of the use of such a quantity. Discussion can be quite a tool when it comes to teaching, having a class talk to each other and develop ideas as a class as opposed to a one minded narration. When people are encouraged to keep an open mind, and are in a non-intimidating situation that allows them to be more outspoken, the collective class may bring foreward thoughts that may have eluded the instructor, or skipped his or her mind. Discussions have their downfalls as well, discussions may be easily sidetracked from their original topics, and short discussions of multiple topics may leave slower thinkinkers in the dust, when in fact they may have important ideas to contribute to the group. Those less outspoken and less comfortable with the social situation may also be at a disadvantage with respect to their contributions to the conversation. Solving problems is usually effective way for students to learn, those that learn not by example, but by experience are generally more conductive to solving problems themselves, as opposed to merely having others show them. Critical thinking, is thinking below the surface, finding out and learning how instead of what, why instead of when and where, ideas instead of the systematic mechanical perception and in turn disposal of spoken language. Critical thinking is necessary not only for learning, but for life as well. Those who use critical thinking in their daily life comprehend not only what is happening around them, but also why it is happening, and sometimes predict what will happen. i'll give you a simple example, what is going to happen if you throw a ball into the air? Well if you've observed such a phenomenon, you know that it goes up and comes back down. Applying critical thinking, you realize the cause of this penomenon is gravity, gravity is why the ball came back down. Now if you had thought it out ahead of time, which you probably did before you even read on, you realized this and predicted that because of gravity the ball went up and came back down. So you now realize that critical thinking can be pretty simple such as the example i gave, and if you think critically you will see that you could also apply critical thinking to more complicated situations and get more complicated results. Creative thinking may also be a valueable tool for learning, though creative thinking seems to be applied to the classroom in a more indirect way. You may have times in the classroom where you are required to come up with ideas, and figure out what to do by taking stabs in the dark. Most of the time however your creative thinking skills will be required for brainstorming ideas for papers, and assignments, and research, and art. Creative learning is more of a random abstract process than for example problem solving which tends to be more concrete and sequential. Being creative means thinking of things, getting ideas, even the most rediculous of such, ideas thought up while brainstorming shouldn't be dismissed as stupid, on the contrary each should be considered, because you never know when one of the ones you automatically dismiss will be something quite useful or valueable. Well it's lookin like that's it for this blog, it's been a long long day, it's hard enough to do things when you're awake, much harder when you're tired. but i guess i'm going to go now, take a little break, and eat some dinner, and then i suppose back to the wirk.

2002-10-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

ok well even though i'm not doing anything, and i'm just kinda sittin in my room, i'm tryin to pay attention to several things on the computer, so i'm hopin to get a lot more stuff about those papers written, so it'll be that much easier later. I'm sorta hopin to find somethin real fun to do, but i don't know, we'll see, it doesn't matter as much as the paper i'm workin on. One of the articles i have is by these four, three are doctoral students, and one is an assistant professor of education, people that did some research on learning styles by talking to teachers that are considered "good teachers", so they went through and defined learning styles as, "Individual differences in the way information is perceived, processed, and communicated." and then they asked questions related to learning styles, the main question being, "How do teachers instruct students with different learning styles?" Several basic themes showed up within the responses of the teachers. First, the language and terminoligy used to categorize learning styles, though it seems the language and terminoligy wasn't the important part, the important part was teachers being able to figure out the learning styles of individuals both for their own knowledge, and for the knowledge of their fellow teachers. Second, the assesment of learning styles formally by quizes and exams etc. and informally by intuition and observation, and the teachers response to this assesment. It is also interestin to note the researchers observation that, "The teachers did not get caught up in covering a certain amount of material. Instead, they sought to teach in a manner that assisted students in gaining a deeper understanding of the content presented." Third, these teachers recognised the responsibility they take for both their education, and the education of thier students. These teachers didn't teach merely with their own learning styles, but with many learning styles, appealing to the learning styles of individuals, so that the whole class has an opportunity to gain an education despite their diverse learning styles. The researchers have a few post-research recomendations for the idea of learning styles. First, it needs to be researched more thoroughly, especailly average and mediocre teachers use of learning styles, and the correlation (if any) between good teaching and the knowledge and use of learning styles. Second, more research should be done on how teachers got thier current knowledge of learning styles, weather from meetings or previous education, or from things like personal experiences, or by teaching in a classroom themselves. Third, that more emphasis be placed on learning styles in both preservice and inservice education for teachers. Lastly, that both students and teachers be taught about learning styles, and how to assess themselves with respect to their learning styles. and oddly enough it's 6:10 in the morning, which means i best be goin 2 sleep here soonlike, so i'm just going to wrap this up by putting a bunch of citation like stuff for the article i've been blogging about. Jean Haar, Gretchen Hall, PaulSchoepp, David H. Smith. How teachers teach to students with different learning styles. The Clearing House, Jan 2002 v75 i3 p142(4). well that's all i have for now good night, or good morning or something.

2002-10-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

no project this time, sometime soon i hope, but for today it's back to other homewirk. I took a class for 1 credit, it was 2 sessions just before school started, and it was called how to study and succeed in college. well now i'm studying, and so far i'm succeeding, but i suppose the final outcome remains to be seen. Anywayz, of course being the procrastinator that i am, and being as this was assigned durring that 2 days and due tuesday 10/22, i'm unfortunatly doing the bulk of the work this weekend, don't get me all wrong, i did some research and got some good info for my paper and that was like a month ago, but of course i've been too busy doing homewirk that was immidiatly due, or busy having fun, and what get's pushed back? of course the thing that isn't due for a long time. but oh well, it's getting done now. so i'm going to write as much in here as i can, especially cuz i've just found that the library iz only open for another half hour. Last time i was in getting research for this i printed of a couple things from infotrac, and so i can get citations off of there, and if i can't i can look online back in my room. but i found an alright quote i should be able to use from the great books. I found it in Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, Though i'd never read any of it before, and the way it's written is pretty weird, it seems to be an amazing intellectual work, i think i've heard the title before, in association with smart books, and books that make you think, and that kind of stuff. ok to start off the quote is, "Experience shows that some understand more deeply than do others, as one who carries a conclusion to its first principles and ultimate causes understands it more deeply than the one who reduces it only to its proximate causes." Seems to me to be a wonderful quote, I'm not sure how i'll work it in, but i'm a smart boy (not to be cocky or anything) and i'm sure i'll find a way. Ok now as much info from the book as i can muster. Great Books of the Western World, V.19, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part Q. 85. ART. 7. p.459-460, Copyright 1952, Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. Chicago. Ok well that's all i got on that, i guess i'll go put the book back and get off this computer before the library closes, and then i'm thinkin it's gettin close to dinner time. ok, well i hope this helps me as much as i think it will.

2002-10-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

quickly. i worked on the project some more today, i didn't got a whole lot done, but i spent some time looking at the properties and event properties of a couple objects to try and figure out my troubles. i got it to stop automatically putting up the text before i did anything at all, i had an extra event defined that didn't need to be there. I also found the same thing with the tab thing, i had an extra event defined that didn't need to be there, i still can't get it to put up the text when i hit enter. it's like you do on all sorts of online stuff especially search engines, you just hit enter instead of going and clicking on search, but i can't figure out how to implement that functionality. well maybe i'll be able to research it more at some other time, for now, dinner.

2002-10-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

alright so i worked on my project some more tonight, it's been a long day, i've been doing a lot of homewirk to make up for my extreme lazyness this weekend. I was in the library workin on a speech for like 5 hours today, so anyways after dinner i went back to learning java. i didn't quite figure out why my other program didn't work quite right, so i made a new one, started over, just to see if i could get it right the second time. the only thing i can figure that i was doing wrong is i let the program build more of the code for me this time, i just typed in for example in the event properties, for click i just typed button3_click and hit enter, and it typed the code for me. and it ended up working. so in this new program i have text and i have two buttons, and there's a starting text, and there's a text that shows up when you hit either button. and i got that to work out all good. so i decided to go to the next step, keep the original part of the program and add a box to type in and another button, so that way you can type somethin cool into the edit box, and hit the button and there ya go, whatever you type appears in the static text. ok so i got it to work but it does some stuff i don't like, and i'm working on trying to fix that. i would like to be able to type some text and just hit enter, and have the text appear. but somehow i can't figure that out. and the other thing is as i tab through as soon as i tab to the button that puts the text you type up, it just does it, i don't want it to put the text up until i tab to the button then hit enter, or tab to the edit box and then hit enter, but no it puts up the text as soon as you tab to the button. anywayz, i guess i'll have to work on this next time. anywayz, time to go. g'night

2002-10-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

alright, well i generally start projects late, cuz i'm a real good procrastinator, but i'm interested in this project, though i'm not interested in writing a paper about it at the end. well i figure the more i write in here as i go along, the easier it will be to write the paper when i'm done. ok, to start of i just started messing with things, there's a software in the computer clusters in the IACC called blue Jay, and i've played around with java a little so i tried that out for a bit, though i didn't really accomplish anything, it was interesting to see how it differed from the software i have here in my room. i have visual J++ 6.0 from microsoft, so it was interesting to see the difference between the two. well my next mission is to try and do something that works, so i figure i'll make a window, with a button and some text, and i'll try and make it so when you press the button the text changes, soundz easy enough. so, making the window and the text and the button is the easy part, i can do that and i can get it to work. well the hard part is gettin the button to change the text, i have a book to help me with this and though it doesn't explain this exactly theres some similar stuff, so i figure i can get it to work. not happening. i get it all together and i don't see any reason for it not to work, but i get these errors. i have it so it should allow onclick events and then i go and explain what it should do when i click. well it seems like it knows where i'm putting this stuff, and then when i try and compile it i get errors, and it seems like they tell me it really can't find where i explain this. i'm sure this probably doesn't make sense to anyone, but i guess i know what i'm talkin about, i just figure it should work and it doesn't, so i guess i've encountered problems in my project already, but i suppose that's part of what this project should be, well i hope i figure out what's up soon, but for now i got to get goin. bye bye.

2002-10-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, been busy as can be expected, and as evidenced by the ravine like gap between the dates written. I had tests in four classes so i spent my homewirk time studying for those, not writing on here. and of course the first first necessity that goes to the wind is sleep, so i didn't get enough as usual, but i didn't do too bad. i've had a minor amount of homewirk that that i really need to get done between 2 days ago and 2 days from now, but of course i haven't done it yet. i have to write a funny story for english, so i'll have to think of some stuff for that, and i have to write a short thing about personality types for university 189, which is just an easy little class that freshmen have to take. So i have to write a story that's something funny. how am i going to do this? i don't know. i'm thinkin suprise ending would be the best, but it's easier for me to do it this way with a different medium such as video. reading is kind of too slow for extremely sudden changes, but maybe i can work somethin out. anywayz, now it's sleepy time, so g'night.

2002-09-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

ok, another day, another chance to procrastinate, welcome back to procrastination central, i'm your host phil grimsrud, and today i'm just going to blurt some ideas for the english paper i really need to get a lot done on very soon. so i guess now i get to reflect on the usefulness of blogging. blogging has been great so far, it was very useful yesterday, i spent a while staring at a blank outline form, telling me i needed this here and that there, and it just wasn't workin out, that's not the way i go about things. so i got on here, and look at the book i spurted out about that, i've sinced used this to at least get me started on the formal outline. so there ya go that's how the usefullness of blogging goes, i guess i don't conform well to standards, and outlines and rules, so this blogging thing is rather nice. in fact i don't even conform to the traditional blogging thing, as you may have seen, i've gone through the html and added a spot for my own random thoughts that i try and update a lot of times when i write a new blog. so, i guess standards and forms and staying in the lines and doing things normal just doesnt fit for me, and i sure hope that's a good thing, i think it has been so far. the purpose for the paper asks, did it further brainstorming? well it sure did. as you can see by my last blog, and i'm guessing by this one as well, it's given me quite the brainstorming advantage i'd say. and now considerin how well this has been workin out for stuff i really need to get done, i think i might continue to use this, if not only for it's creative and idea logging value. next, did it aid in clarifying the material being read and discussed in class? well sort of. i can't say that's a direct thing, but i think that's just cuz of my attitude towards the class, i'm really glad i'm in the english section i'm in, but i think if i were to discuss info for a class i was really interested, it would really clarify material, especailly by reading others ideas about material that's been read. did it foster collaboration? not yet, but i definitly see how it could collaboration through weblogs could be a tremendous aid in learning. did it encourage sharing ideas or did it inhibit writing and thinking because of the public nature of the writing? well it seems to me that it has encouraged sharing ideas, though i suppose we haven't been doing them for long enough for that to have made too much of a difference. and though not to me personally i can see where it could inhibit writing for some people. some people are insecure about their writing, or are afraid of acceptance by the community, i just think it's nice that my ideas are getting out there, even if nobody reads them but me, at least there's a possiblitly, a hope, a dream. Are weblogs something that shouldn't be "assigned", do they lose their appeal and become just another school task? well the answer to this goes many ways i guess. i suppose if you hat computers and technology and english, it's just a bad deal all around. and i guess having something assigned to you almost always makes it less fun. I for example am starting to quite like this weblog idea, and though i'm not real impressed with english, i really like computers and stuff. if you liked computers and english, i suppose this would just be a phenominal opportunity. but then again look at the alternative, if we weren't assigned and we didn't have to do all this weblog stuff, i'm sure we would have more and longer writing assignments about very dull and boring topics.therefore i am quite enjoying the experience of a technology based english section.are students motivated to write in weblogs? well, i guess it depends on the student and the motivating factor. some people could work out their own problems venting on their weblogs, or they can just have fun putting their ideas online. i am personally motivated to write on my weblog by the thought of getting a passing grade, and not just in english. when this class blows over, will i keep going with the weblogs, well i'm not so sure, but i guess we'll find out, at the moment i'm thinkin i will. do they become more confident as writers? well i suppose they either become more confident as writers, or they hate the experience so much they force themselves to become more introverted with their writing, though it seems to me that this would happent to quite a minority of people. are students motivated to read when weblogs are assigned as the course reading material? well, that's kind of a question that could go either way also. well reading stuff you're interested in inspired you to read more, so if you read this stuff by force, and it interests you, that's good, if you read it by force and you hate it, you won't read any more of it and that's that. i haven't read too much more personally, but sometimes it seems that i'm too busy to breathe, much less read stuff i want to read. do students become better writers? well that definitly remains to be seen. maybe it'll help us to become better writers, or maybe force us to become better writers, or not, i'm not really sure about that, but i guess we'll find out. anywayz, i'll call that good, that of course took a really really long time to write, and i have other stuff i need to be doing. so i'm just going to go now. bye bye every1.

2002-09-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

ok, i'm back already, i'm not really getting anywhere on the homework part, though the laundry is doin just fine. I have to write a personal significance speech, and i have to talk about Music Copyright Laws and the Internet, and give personal experiences that relate how the topic is personally significant to me. by the way, if you're not at all interested, you might as well skip this entry, cuz i think i'm just usin it mostly to get my ideas down, just as a place to start, mostly i've been staring at a piece of paper for a while, and that doesn't seem to be working. I've downloaded my share of music in my time, and i didn't even really get into it until after Napster was shut down. I used Audiogalaxy for a while, and after that was shut down, i started using iMesh, and though much, but not all, of the stuff transacted is probably fairly illigal, i guess it's just another obsticle for the online and technology community, as well as the music industry. file sharing has it's advantages, such as it's a lot easier to just search for a file by name, rather than searching hopelessly for a web page, and hoping that web page has what you're looking for. And sometimes you could find exactly what you're looking for and find a dead link, or find out that whoever made the web page has what you're looking for, but you have no way of getting it from him. but then i would guess the ratio of legal to illigal files downloaded every day leans very heavily towards being quite illigal. One problem however for musicians, and record labels, and those attemting to force these laws, is how do you know what's legal and what isn't. Say you own a cd, and you lose that cd, you know you left it somewhere, or forgot it somewhere or something, you all know how that goes, then you decide rather than taking the time and imagination to find it, and since you're on your computer continuously anyways, you download the songs, and burn a new cd. is this illigal? no. you paid for the cd you own it, you're not ripping off the owner and the artist and the music stores. and as you can see, if you didn't own the cd already, you just screwed a lot of people out of their money, we don't like getting screwed out of our money, and niether do they. It is very difficult for those getting ripped off, to seek compensation for those ripping them off, therefore, if and when they are able to sue somebody, they don't sue for just a little bit. I definitly know how irritated people get when they get screwed out of their money, i had a teacher who taught photography and AP English, and he got quite fired up when he talked about his photography, and his work, and what he would like to do, and would do, to people that try and take his hard work and effort for free. so why not just get rid of all the file sharing, and cd burning, and copying that's going on, of course that's been thought of too, but it doesn't work that way because there are legal as well as illigal uses for these things, and you can't get rid of the illigal without getting rid of the legal. Though it's games instead of music, it's still on the copyright topic, there are games for the sony playstation, a console gaming system that hooks up to a tv, that have been made to help prevent piracy, when you burn a copy of these games it burns just fine, but if you try to play the burned game, it won't start up. of course there are people as smart at ripping people off, as there are people that are smart at preventing it, therefore just sodder an extra chip you can by onto one of the circuit boards, and it'll play the burned copies as well as the real games.

2002-09-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

well, it's definitly been a few days, but i've been pretty busy procrastinating, and of course me being the biggest idiot in the world i have a lot of fun, and then there comes a day like today, where i pretty much have today and tomorrow to write a speech, and do a rough draft for a 4-6 page paper. and not only that, but i'm still attempting to procrastinate. so i guess now i'm just going to sit here and do laundry and homewirk, and hopefully i get a lot of it done by the time i get caught up doing things with friends. I think my real problem is just getting started, if i get started and get into it, it goes fast, and if i have an amount of motivaition, such as the posibility of lateness. anywayz, i suppose i better get goin, things to see, and people to do.

2002-09-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Well, today be sunday, i have some relatives stopping by soon, but i suppose that'll only effect the writing, and not the reading of todays blog. I've played a lot of ping pong since i've been here, just about every day in fact. so of course i have friends that play all the time, and it's alwayz fun. anywayz i found a website that's a national ping pong organization USA Table Tennis me being big into ping pong, i just though it was interesting to check out this national organization. on a completely unrelated topic, there's kind of an interesting website, and though the website sounds like it should be very gross, it's actually a website for a company that makes video games, and i've played and liked some of their game, the company is Naughtydog.

2002-09-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

the article by Jo Ann Oravec pointed out something about weblogs that i hadn't thought of before, it said something about being able to keep research sources striaght. It just never occured you could type your thoughts on a weblog, and where you got the idea or link to the source or however you want to do it, it could be quite helpful in writing reports, and research papers. anywayz, i guess this time instead of typing a lot i typed a little, and last time instead of typing a little i typed a lot. well guess i better get goin, lots 2 do, with not lots of time.

2002-09-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

well, instead of spending a bunch of time sitting and writing about nothing, i figured i'd spend some time drawing another picture, and i know the class i'm taking is english, meaning i have to do some writing, but i think the whole point of this weblogging thing we're doing is expression, and even though i'm no good at drawin or writing, i can do both. one thing that kind of amazes me, is the process, of either one really. you start out with an idea or a few ideas, things you've mad up, or things you've thought of, something that flashes through your head or something you wrote down or something you've seen before and have ideas about, it's just kinda strange how things are. Then you expand upon that idea, draw something, or write a line, then you review your work so far, and either scratch it and start over, or keep going, or take what you got so far and go a different direction. that's what makes drawing and writing more of an art, is you can change what you're doing mid paragraph, or mid sentance, or mid line, or mid picture or whatever you're doing. I know this paragraph is poor as far as writing goes, cuz i had a lot of stuff trying to come out of my head at the same time, and there's about fifteen different things in each sentance, but oh well i guess. this is the product of my writing this morning, and here is the product of my drawing.

2002-09-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Not much text for today, just playin around with stuff, so all that's new is the stuff in the bar on the left, and this random drawing.

2002-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

well as an assignment we're supposed to read blogs from other people in our class and comment on them, and reading through many of them, i've found them quite interesting, everyone has their own unique viewpoint. I suppose that's one of the greatest things about blogs though. I think Kayla Ewoniuk made a good point stating, "I think that a blog is whatever you make it . . ." after hearing many opinions of what a blog is in many different articles, once you get the basic idea, i think this is one of the best descriptions i've heard. Jenni makes a good point about the overuse of calculators, i personally haven't had too much of a problem, though i'm not sure if that was a personal thing or from the school system i grew up in, but it seems to me that calculators are definitely overused. However i disagree with Megan Olson who says straight lectures don't work on kids because they're used to entertainment, I contend that straight lecures never worked in the first place. One thing that stuck out at me when reading through others blogs was on Randy Miller's September 3rd entry he starts with the line, "Sentence structure is killing creative thought." I agree with this statement totally, in fact it's one of the main ideas my AP English teacher tried to get across to us is that english isn't all about grammar, and in fact it shouldn't even be much about grammar at all. Yeah i guess you have to have it, but it's the ideas that make the writing not the punctuation. Moving on I don't see eye to eye with Amber McNeal, she felt that Cameron Barrett was just complaining about his job, and while i must admit she's right, i think it's probably for the better. I would certainly rather complain about a job in an article than to a boss, who would then have a tendancy to fire me. Therefore I have plenty of sympathy for him.
:Philthy

2002-09-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Cameron Barrett's article "More About Weblogs" has some great points about the possible tremendously helpful uses of weblogs, but in general it seems to me the article just rambles about weblogs. The article "A Day-by-Day In the Life." bye Leslie Walker was also kind of a rambling about weblogs, but was more concerned with telling you about a few specific things about them, and telling you about what information many blogs contain. Meg Hourihan's article "What we're doing when we blog" is a more current artlicle about weblogging. It tells of the common ground between all webloggers and about the format and anatomy of weblogs. Well, anyways, that's all for now.
:Philthy

2002-09-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

well looks like today be september 3rd, and it's back to english class, today we have some questions we need to freewrite about, so, i guess now is the time to freewrite about questions. the first, why are you here? I'm here because i checked out this school NDSU and liked it, it was still kind of a toss up between here and MSU in Bozeman Montana, but here one out, and i'm not sure why. next why did you choose more education? because i want to make more money just like everyone else. and if i don't end up making more money i at least hope to end up in a job i enjoy, and getting higher education should help me greatly to do so. Next what is not taught in our public school systems that should be? Well, special education programs for underpriveleged and disabled students has gotten better and better over the years or so it seems, but special education for the gifted and talented amung us has gone down the pooper. I was priveleged enough to participate in such a program in grade school, and that program no longer exists as far as i know. and i took advantage of some of the AP courses at my high school, which they are trying to phase out i might add. so i guess if some people are special enough on one end of the spectrum to deserve help, i believe the special people on the other end of the spectrum deserve help too. next, what doesn't work in the classroom anymore? straight boring lectures just don't work, and they probably never did, people learn more when they're seeing something or working something out or doing something, not just hearing something and attempting to write it down. next, what does work? well i just told you. next, think back to your greatest teachers, why were the great ones so great? because they made you learn, or helped you to learn, or at least let you learn. I had one teacher who's style was up front and to the point and to bump heads and argue with people, and he made quite a few people mad at him some of the time, but his students did learn. I had another teacher who's style was relaxing and humorous, and you'd ask his students what they did in class and they'd say "nothing", but somehow that worked to, his students learned tons without really even knowing it. anyways, i suppose that ends the questions, therefore that ends the blog before i find something else to rant and rave about.
:Philthy

2002-08-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to my small world. Todays topic is writing through non-traditional media. As of right now I am writing in a non-traditional media, the Internet. Many people have chosen to express themselves through the internet as opposed to traditional publishing, mostly because nobody would be interested enough in their junk to publish them anywayz. I don't have much of a chance at being published and don't really care to, however that doesn't make my writing any more interesting.
Rebecca Blood wrote "Weblogs: A History and Perspective" on a particular form of non-traditional writing on the Internet, weblogging. This is a weblog. These are my opinions. if you don't like them go somewhere else, that's the great thing about this or any media, you don't have to look at them if you don't want to. Rebecca Blood's article was interesting and I now understand the need for many to be heard, even if their audience is small. Weblogging, i've found, can be a great way to learn a different perspective, and to create and destroy idea's, an just to let out frustration.
Melvin E. Nelson wrte an article for The Humanist entitled "Needed: A New Literacy" that explains quite extensively the advantages of non-traditional media, Melvin has three main Propositions, I: Open wide the doors and let the senses into the classroom, II: Identify and teach reading as a process applicable not only to print but to the messages in the visual, aural, olfactory--indeed, in all--media, and III: Identify and teach writing as a process applicable not only to the verbal but to expression in all media. The idea is interesting to me that writing, while a valuable skill, may be more valueable than you think, for you may be able to apply your writing skills to say speeches or powerpoint presentations, or even body language. Just somethin interesting to think about i guess, well i suppose i'll call it quits for now.

:Philthy