Random School/Work-Venting Post

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^ I believe it to be a governmental conspiracy to cripple us all through the insiduous advance of ass-numb-ness.

 

I WAS RIGHT!

We had a problem with our system last week and I suggested a possible cause that should be investigated, only to be blown off and told that it was "User error." Well, lo and behold, the same error crops up again this week, only now we're able to replicate it in-house and it turns out that the suggestion I made last week was on the right path after all!

 

I hate cancer, we seem to have so many cancer pts up, and so many of them don't survive, I would take a bullet for the guy/girl that finds a cure.

 

I found out that I have completely wrong studying techniques. I have to retake a couple of my exams to get a decent grade from them. It's not that I'd be after grades, but I know that I can do a lot better.

I've been way too lazy and managing the exams poorly is a proof for that. I'm so mad at myself because of that.

No worries Brallrock, you don't have to take a bullet for me for a while, I'm just a freshman on biology and maybe someone else finds a decent cure before I graduate.

 

/me casts Resurrect Thread to vent a little...

So here's a little something from the "People are sheep that don't like to think for themselves" file:

During the supper rush at the supermarket where I work, I was rushing to get some more roast chickens out on the display, pushing a cart loaded down with them past the front door to the hot case...

...and I am accosted by a woman who's just stepped into the store. I figure it's because she wants a chicken, so I smile and pick one container off the top of the pile and say some greeting...

...whereupon she asks "Where would I go to get a plant?".

Oh. Nonplussed, I take a moment to look behind her at the floral department between us and the front door, with its display of flowers, potted plants and colourful balloons. Then I look back at her, and back to to floral display.

Instead of saying one of the several snarky things that are running through my head, I politely direct her to the appropriate area...

 

Exams are comeing up and I begin to worry about what I should know, what I think I should know, and what I know I don't know.

Nerves never helped anyone study I can tell you now.

 

They do for me...the adrenaline rush greatly improves my productivity...I'm a deadline kinda girl.

Not too much to complain about here, just that I'll have to work hard in the next 2 weeks. But well, by now, I know the end of the exam period is there sooner than expected.

 

Ah, you're piezoelectric as well, eh? I.E. you produce more effort when stress is applied.

But today was MUCH better than yesterday - everything seemed to be Sod's Law on Saturday, including an infuriating customer which I don't encounter much.

The sunny weather may have helped my mood, even if it increased the customer traffic and subsequent demand for the food I cooked (I was literally running around near the end of my shift trying to simultaneously get the last load of roast chickens packaged and out to the hot case for my colleagues to sell AND clean everything up and shut everything down since we close early).

I don't envy whoever is working tomorrow morning - we used up ALL our stock of whole birds AND chicken pieces, as well as almost all our fries - he'll have almost nothing to put in the serving case in the morning until the delivery comes in, THEN there'll be an almighty rush to get it all cooked and out for the lunch crowd.

 

Work venting:
My boss used to get everyone treats at least once every other week...usually on our long weeks. But for the past 6 months the cheap bastard hasn't gotten us anything! Between him and his wife, he's got over $11 million...and he can't afford to buy ice cream and cookies?

Ok, that's all I have to vent about work. On to school...

First off, I go to a private college. Those of you in the US know it as ITT Technical Institute. It is extremely expensive, but has its perks for that high cost. I won't bore you with those... It also has its drawbacks...which are biting me in the butt as of late.

As I just learned last week, ITT's accreditation isn't on par with any of the major state universities...there are only 2 other colleges in the area that will accept credits from ITT. Neither of them have an Electronics Engineering degree program. My recruiter guy failed to mention the credit transfer situation to me before I started.

Next, ITT is a "Technical Institute", and prides itself on being up-to-date on technology. But 90% of all the computers at the school are 1.8GHz Intel Celeron based Dell systems with 256MB of RAM that are several years old. (Yes, *one* of the labs for the Game Design geeks have fancy new(ish) computers for running the latest in 3D utilities.) All those old/slow PCs also have several years worth of dirt and randome goo on the mouse/keyboard. It's so bad that some keyboards seem to be a living organism at this point!
Oh yeah...the *entire* school is connected to the internet through a single shared T1 line (A normal T1 line is 1.544 Mbit/s). So when everyone is at school, the internet seriously drops to the speed of dial-up.

Next up is the turn over rate of the instructors and administrators. I've only been going to ITT for the past 3 quarters, and we had 3 different Deans, and I've seen 4 good instructors leave for a better paying job. The school is very small, and has a small staff as well. One of the instructors who recently quit was a staple in the electronics engineering degree program. He taught 8 different classes (not all in the same quarter), including intro to PCs, PC tech, AC and DC electronics, digital electronics, electronic devices 1 and 2, and a remedial match class. With him leaving, that leaves 2 instructors that can only teach about 4-6 of those classes, so suddenly my *flexible* schedule is going to be really tight.

Anyway...that's all I have to vent about right now. I'm sure more will come after I start the upcomming quarter next week.

 

Great.... Our French teacher gives us four times more homework than the others (eg. "8 pages of bulls*** for tomorrow, oh and don't forget the other thingy") every - single - day. Exams coming up and these homework have nothing to do with them.

Normally, we could tell the principal or our main teacher about this and have him reduce the workload we're getting.
But we can't. Guess why? Because our French teacher is the principal's wife

 

For my project at school I've been elected project leader, which I am not really happy with but I think the experience will be needed. 2 of the blokes are hard workers, working as hard as I do, the other 2... *******s

We have a document, due last friday, we are working on our own schedule and that one left us a week of spare time, so we're not really into trouble, but it has to be finished ASAP.

******* nr. 1 has been doing nothing for two days, TWO days!!!! I've been quite busy with that document myself so I'm not in the mood to watch after him (this guy is 4 years older than me), he has been sitting on his ****ing thumbs for 2 days, not even telling me that he is finished with his current task and is ready for a new one, not even checking the current version of the document for errors or TODOs, hell no, he was waiting for a task and he is blaming me for the fact that he hasn't done ****.

Today we had a Cisco lab, I dislike those things, but I go anyway because a) They are mandatory and b) The course is *paid* for by the client. This ******* doesn't show up, because.... get ready.... "he doesn't want to " Very mature attitude there *******, I'm sure your future boss will accept these excuses as well.
Neither did he attend to the teamwork session we held after, because he doesn't want to come to school for 3 hours of work and he "can work better at home", even though that has been disproven for over 5 times.
He has been showing for the last 2 weeks that a) he is incompetent, b) he is lazy (and even proud of it) c) doesn't give a **** about what he is doing to our grades, as long as HE gets a D.
Well **** him, he is not getting a task, even if he is he ****ing demanding one.

Now we are on to ******* nr. 2, I have given him 3 days to finish a baseline document for the network, which was due 3.5 hours ago. He started... 5 hours ago.... For 2 and 3/4 day, he has been sitting on his ****ing thumbs as well!
Maybe I should bring a blade to school, anyone caught doing nothing loses both his thumbs!

What have I learned from all of this, remember the experience I talked about at the start of this post?
1) I now know why almost every IT project in the 'real world' is doomed. They employ these types of *******s! And as long as schools continue to give grades to these peoples and label them professional, the industry will continue to be doomed.
2) Don't trust anyone with any task, they'll screw up and you'll have to take the blame.
3) Which leads to: If something important needs to be done, and done well, do it yourself.

Good thing that I only need to go one year before I graduate, and none of the coming semesters are networking related.

Edit:
Hey... this venting really is helping, no need for a psychiatrist anymore and the homicidal urges have passed!

 

Work.........
All I can say is that I have been with my company in the same position now for seven years. I would like to change careers and move into a Project Management role. I have the experience from school, personal life and work to manage small to medium size projects; however, since I don't have my degree or the PMP certification I tend to be viewed as a non-qualified candidate. I am first completing my degree and than I am going for a PMP or CAPM certification. After I complete school and certification as a PM if someone says I am unqualified, I will hit them upside the head.

School....
I hate group projects. I don't mind being the team leader, in fact I enjoy leading; however, I don't like a team that does meet. To me it is hard to form a group with people who don't meet up and don't want to put the effort forth. This has an impact on my grade, so I complete most if not the full assignment, as I don't want my grade to go down in points. I do have a standard to keep which is a 3.7 GPA average. I will be happy when I am done with my undergrad degree within a year.

I just hope grad school has more competent students.

 

Doesn't it piss you off when you're smarter than some dumb ass in a higher position and on much more money than you are? It gets right on my John Thomas. I could piss 2nd line work at my company, there are some proper numpties on the 2nd line, whilst I'm still 1st line helpdesk.

 

A-LEVELS OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

 

I've done so much venting about uni over the past few days that I'm rather over it.

The assignment: build a Flash game.
The problem: My group consists of RPG geeks who are incredibly ambitious and seek to make something that they like.
The problem part 2: That's really, really hard to do in Flash.
The problem part 3: We don't realise this until about four days ago.
The solution: Two all-nighters plus absolutely raping the original vision.

I handed it in with the other coder of our group at about 7:30 this morning, went home, and slept from about 8:30 to 6pm. Still feeling mentally exhausted.

Edit: Just read Morgoth's post. Yeah, we had one of those sorts of people in our group. Three people who put in ridiculous amounts of effort and one who put in as little as he could. Fortunately we made a decision early in development to assume that he wasn't going to do anything at all and were able to mostly compensate for his being a totally useless moron.

Fortunately there is a peer review component for this assignment. I gave him a 3 - out of 60.

[ June 17, 2007, 14:32: Message edited by: Aikanaro ]

 

We need our regular boss back at work. As she's gone for another month, the Area Manager has stepped in. And appears to be doing her best to turn everything on its head, even to the point of having a member of staff from another shop to come in and 'show us how it is supposed to be done'.

This wouldn't be so bad if she hadn't totally messed up the work rota for the week and put me starting at 6.30 AM an additional 3 days of this week. Including yesterday, when I already work in the evening. Can she not read?

Worst of all, she never even bothered to ask me whether I was able to work those extra hours. So, because I didn't know what she had done, I didn't go yesterday morning and got an irritated phone call inquiring where I was. *sigh*

 

Bleh, only German left. And since I'm more and more focusing on English and taking only a minor in German next year, it kind of feels...unnecessary.

Poor you people in group assignments. When you're one of those people that want to do it well, you always end up being screwed by the less ambitious people. I avoid those assignments at all costs.

 

After collectively missing a deadline two weeks ago we're all still irritated with one another at the ol' sweatshop. We had the date wrong - involved a third party printer's deadline and layout time and all sorts of complications.

I'm afraid I'm one of those people who'd rather work on my own but has to work with others. Alas, if I'm honest, I have to say that working on my own wouldn't have helped in this situation since I, too, was mistaken about when we had to have the stuff in. But at least I would only be unhappy with myself.

New deadlines looming next week. Maybe after July 1 I can take a deeper breath. And I'm theoretically getting some vacation time later in the month.

Almost makes me long to be back in school - until I read all the posts about exams and group projects and required irrelevant courses and then it all comes back to me.