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Mar. 31st, 2004 09:08 amOwel, yesterday was a fun day at work. Got to rack some machines. I won't bore you with the details. But I like grunt tasks like that. For one, I get to play with tools. Secondly, its pretty fairly obvious if I got it right or not. I mean, if its punch an X-dimensions hole Y far from the edge, if you make the correct sized hole the correct distance away, you did it right. Or mounting something, if it securely hanging from the wall or whatever mount point you mounted it on, then you're good.
Issues at work, I'm not so confident about. I mean, I'm not a CS or CompE or even an EE. I don't even own a computer. Everything I know is stuff I picked up from friends or every day experience. I'm not a confident guy, even with stuff I do know, so how much more am I gonna question myself when its something I think I'm only fair at? I mean, even I'm doing everything exactly right, I often second guess myself every step of the way. Like when I'm diagnosing the problem and triaging it out to one of the support techs, I'll be all "Am I sure I'm right? Is there some other, totally obvious thing going on here?" I don't wanna end up looking like an idiot. Of course, I think at times I do underrate myself.
But I digress. Thirdly, if I'm busy hammering and screwing and drilling, then someone gets to deal with the irate customer instead. Its like, if everyone is off fixing something else, what can I do about it? Shouting in my ear ins't gonna magically make a tech available. And when did professors stop being able to teach without a computer? I mean, they did it for years before. And I know the roomie often disagrees with me in this situation, and I can see his point, they expect equipment to be available, things that they've come to incorporate in their teaching method. I understand that. Now, when they call and complain, "I can't do this special presentation I need to get to the web for", or that "I need power-point to display these notes", I can understand their disappointment. But when they just say, "How am I supposed to teach?" that just aggravates me. I know often times they have one of the former problems and are just not elaborating, but when I hear it phrased in that way, all I can think is "People used to teach without electricity, when did you become so helpless?" And I know its a pain in the ass to prepare two lectures, one if the A/V equipment is working and one if not, so there's nothing wrong with just preparing the former and rightfully expect stuff to be working. But surely there's something they can do so the class period isn't a waste when such stuff isn't available. I don't know, I'm not a teacher. I just figured if they're smart enough to teach the stuff, they know it well enough that they can at least give the class a bare bones introduction off the top of their head and then just dig deeper into the subject next time when stuff works.
It also had me thinking, in this world where the youth know more about 'puters than the old professors, if things start becoming more like this, where computers are so integral to the lecture, what's to stop the kids from screwing around with things if they know it'll cause class to be cancelled?
Oh, I've gotten the hang of that target shooting game in the student center. Its the first game where I can consistently beat it on one play (and in this case, not even losing a chance.) And I'm partially blind!
Issues at work, I'm not so confident about. I mean, I'm not a CS or CompE or even an EE. I don't even own a computer. Everything I know is stuff I picked up from friends or every day experience. I'm not a confident guy, even with stuff I do know, so how much more am I gonna question myself when its something I think I'm only fair at? I mean, even I'm doing everything exactly right, I often second guess myself every step of the way. Like when I'm diagnosing the problem and triaging it out to one of the support techs, I'll be all "Am I sure I'm right? Is there some other, totally obvious thing going on here?" I don't wanna end up looking like an idiot. Of course, I think at times I do underrate myself.
But I digress. Thirdly, if I'm busy hammering and screwing and drilling, then someone gets to deal with the irate customer instead. Its like, if everyone is off fixing something else, what can I do about it? Shouting in my ear ins't gonna magically make a tech available. And when did professors stop being able to teach without a computer? I mean, they did it for years before. And I know the roomie often disagrees with me in this situation, and I can see his point, they expect equipment to be available, things that they've come to incorporate in their teaching method. I understand that. Now, when they call and complain, "I can't do this special presentation I need to get to the web for", or that "I need power-point to display these notes", I can understand their disappointment. But when they just say, "How am I supposed to teach?" that just aggravates me. I know often times they have one of the former problems and are just not elaborating, but when I hear it phrased in that way, all I can think is "People used to teach without electricity, when did you become so helpless?" And I know its a pain in the ass to prepare two lectures, one if the A/V equipment is working and one if not, so there's nothing wrong with just preparing the former and rightfully expect stuff to be working. But surely there's something they can do so the class period isn't a waste when such stuff isn't available. I don't know, I'm not a teacher. I just figured if they're smart enough to teach the stuff, they know it well enough that they can at least give the class a bare bones introduction off the top of their head and then just dig deeper into the subject next time when stuff works.
It also had me thinking, in this world where the youth know more about 'puters than the old professors, if things start becoming more like this, where computers are so integral to the lecture, what's to stop the kids from screwing around with things if they know it'll cause class to be cancelled?
Oh, I've gotten the hang of that target shooting game in the student center. Its the first game where I can consistently beat it on one play (and in this case, not even losing a chance.) And I'm partially blind!
