New Class, New Hope

So I started class number four at the University of Phoenix yesterday. This time it is MGT 350: Critical Thinking. In this class, I get a crash course in how to examine all the possibilities before making a decision. I'm going to be educated on how to make educated decisions. Yippee!

I do have some excitement for this class. Barbara (our instructor) seems to be a lot like Charlotte, who taught the class on Management Theory two classes ago, except she has a lot more excitable enthusiasm. I say "excitable" enthusiasm because Charlotte did have a lot of enthusiasm for the course she was teaching. She obviously believed very strongly in the principles she was teaching, and she made a very good effort to make sure we were as involved in participating in the class as she was involved in teaching it. Barbara on the other hand has a lot more visible emotion. She is much more animated and just as enthusiastic about the course topic.

I really think I'm going to struggle with the coursework in this class. I've never been one to think critically. I make a lot of decisions based on what I think I've heard or seen rather than actually researching the information. I use a lot of fallacies in my arguments, and despite the book saying that using emotions to think critically is acceptable, I feel that I am way too emotional with most decisions.

So anyway, I'm excited, and I think I'll enjoy the class, even if I struggle with the classwork.

Is Research So Bad?

Yet another pointless rant.

What ever happened to good old fashioned research? If something's wrong, shouldn't you look into all possibilities before running off to someone else to fix it?

Now, I admit, I'm your quintessential stereotypical girl in a lot of aspects, and occasionally (or maybe more than occasionally) I'll run to someone else to find the answer if I don't find it right away. The point is, though, I do try to find the answer first.

We had a client today whose website didn't work quite the way it should have. So the other developers and I pulled our hair out to find the problem, found it, and pulled our hair out to determine if it was our problem, or our client's problem. Of course, the particular employee that we need to speak to at our client's office is out today. Why shouldn't she be? It's a nice, Friday afternoon, and we have a problem with their website.

Later in the afternoon, we got another email forwarded to us from that client. One of their clients who uses the site was getting frustrated with the misrepresentation of their information, and she listed specifically an issue with her account. So we looked at her account, and found out the problem (in this case anyway) wasn't on our end, but on our client's end. And not only did this mistake affect this one person, it just so happened to affect every single person who uses this website. So while we cut off access to the website for this particular account, this particular error affects all the accounts, not just this one.

And you know what? When we identified the problem and called our client, he had already left for the day, too. I do have the access to fix this error, but it was pointed out to me that we just store the data, we don't manipulate the data. If we go manipulating data without the client's permission first (even though we know it to be a gross error), then that is a breach of contract.

What sucks is that our client's clients are going to raise a fuss, and our client is going to say it is our fault that someone on their staff can't input data correctly. And this is a typing error that the site we designed for them can't fix. Well, it could, but it's really unreasonable to ask it to do it.

Are you thoroughly confused yet? Anyway, the whole point is, this particular error could have been resolved rather quickly if our client had done a little research into the problem before responding to his client that the website has some known issues that are being looked into and then forwarding the email on to us. Yes, we do have some known issues, and we are looking into them, but this particular issue is only resolvable by them, not us.

Grr...

Bridal Showers, Bachelorette Parties, and Weddings, Oh My!

Let me start by saying that my friend Marty is a younger version of me. Everything she says and does makes me chuckle because four years ago, I could have been saying or doing the exact same thing. It's uncanny. It's weird to say "when I was her age," but I have literally done so much growing up in the last five years, it feels like a lifetime ago since "I was her age."

Let me point out a few of the similarities:
a) She's thin and blonde. I used to be, when I was her age.
b) She has a know-it-all attitude. I still know it all, but now I recognize other people can know it all, too. Sometimes.
c) She gets immediately humble when it's pointed out to her that she's a know-it-all. (But she really does, I trained her well.)
d) She met her fiance online. I met my current husband online.
e) Her fiance is about six years older than her. My ex-husband is about six years older than me.
f) Her fiance has a very controlling attitude. So does my ex-husband.
g) Her wedding is set for August 13, the day they started dating three years ago. My first wedding was on August 14, four years after the day we had started dating.

I'm really afraid for her. I fell really hard when my ex-husband and I split up. I'm just glad Lars was there to catch me. Not really sure why he stuck around... but he did, and we're happy! :) But that's another story. This story is about Marty. Or actually, Vi. But I'll get to that in a minute.

So anyway, Marty is very... conservative. When she found out that her other two bridesmaids and I were getting together to plan her bridal shower, we were given a list of rules we had to follow. At the top was "No Strippers." Well, duh! It's the shower, not the bachelorette party. I promptly told her that we intended to break all her rules. She hung up on me.

Anywho, one of the girls she works with is Vietnamese. Vi (pronounced vee not vye) is an adorable little lady with an accent that I'm only now starting to understand completely. We decided to invite her to the bridal shower, and when getting her address tonight she said that she had never been to an American wedding before. She's lived here for six years now, but all the wedding she's been to since have all been Vietnamese, and they still followed their own traditions. So she says I need to sit next to her to explain everything to her so I don't stand out more than she does. (Yes, I wrote that exactly as she said it--so I don't stand out more than she does!) She's so cute. :)

I can't wait to have her at the party. I may have to call and invite her to some of the planning parties so that she can see what it's all about. I'm sure weddings are a big ordeal everywhere, but in true American fashion, we've blown it up to a huge gift-giving spree. This particular gift-giving session will have a Hawaiian Luau theme, so we're expecting to have a lot of fun with it.

At least our blushing bride has finally registered. Her excuse for not registering before a couple of weeks ago was that she and Kevin already have everything they need. So her bridesmaids took that opportunity to educate her on the things she wants. Whether she wants them to or not, people are going to want to buy them things for their wedding. She might as well get things she likes, rather than Aunt Rosa's chicken-shaped cookie jar that's expected to hold a place of honor in her ultra-modern black and chrome kitchen with tropical accents.

I know, you should appreciate every gift given, and you should appreciate people coming to the wedding whether they bring a gift or not -- after all, you truly want to share that day with the people who are closest to you. (In her case, all 250 of them.) But don't you appreciate the gift more when it's something that you've wanted but never purchased for yourself? And you register for a whole wide array of things so those with smaller budgets can still get you something while those with bigger budgets can spoil you silly, and you have enough choices that all 250 guests can get you something that will have significance to you and them. For example, I'll probably go ahead and buy her those bundt cake forms, even though, like me, she doesn't cook and probably will never use them more than once. But we both like the pans -- they're pretty! I'm such a girl sometimes. :)

I'm Losing Faith

So I had my last session of the Organizational Behavior class today. I'm starting to lose faith in the validity of the degree I'm earning. The only reason I'm learning anything is because I'm making myself apply myself. I'm forcing myself to read the chapters and related articles. I'm forcing myself to support the statements I'm making in my papers. My instructors certainly don't seem to be doing it.

This particular instructor wasn't even in town for the first class, which is held on-campus. So we had a substitute. Then, during the online portion of the class, the instructor who is supposed to facilitate the conversations and engage the students posted things like "I completely agree" or "I had a similar situation." He never really gave us any food to chew, so to speak. So our conversations got beat with a floppy carrot until the horse died.

So, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I waited to fill out the end-of-class survey until after our on-campus end of class meeting. I thought he did a decent job of keeping us engaged, even if his class was a little R-rated... it did make us chuckle now and then. But talking to the other students afterward, they are of the opinion that he didn't read any of our papers, but rather just checked that we did them. They say he also dozed off during our presentations. I didn't notice that, but I admit I wasn't watching him during the presentations.

There is one good thing I do have to say for him, though. One of my teammates didn't show up for class today. Well, actually, two of them didn't, but we knew where the other one was. Anywho, so we were talking about whether or not this teammate would actually show up, and I told him I was of the opinion that she wouldn't because I stepped on her toes yesterday. He said, "Figuratively, you mean?" And I said, "Well, yes." And then I went on to explain:

Our paper for this week was on power and organizational politics. We had to compare and contrast the two ideas and find real life examples. We also had to use our book and two references from the UoP library. So, our missing compatriate posted early in the week an example citing how technology companies funded the presidential campaigns of 2000. It was very dollar-heavy, and it didn't really illustrate the points we were making in the paper. When I asked how it related to the paper because I thought it was more about government funding than it was organizational politics and power, she responded that the government is an organization.

So I conceded, and went in search of the article she listed as a reference. After a few minutes of digging, I found it. And I found that what she submitted was the first two paragraphs of the article, word for word. So I posted that I found the article and read all the way through it. I thought it actually was a very good example, but that it needed to be rewritten for two reasons: 1) copying the article verbatim is plagiarism, and we either needed to paraphrase and cite properly, or blockquote and cite the two paragraphs so it was apparent that they were a direct quote from the article, and 2) we needed to focus more on how the campaign funding was an example of politicking and the acquisition of power. To get the ball rolling, I posted a very hasty paragraph that summed up the article and focused more on our paper's topic and less on the amount of money that was donated.

Two hours later, this same classmate posted her additions to the paper (she was also given the task of writing the intro and conclusion to the paper) with her original copy in it instead of a modified version. So I posted that I still didn't agree with the blatant plagiarism, but if that was what the team wanted to do, then I would support it in order to be a unified team.

Then I proceeded to explain the situtation in emails to my parents to see what they suggested. That conversation led me to understand why I was undecided on my next move: Dad said to let it go, and if the instructor caught it and we all got zero points for the paper, I'd have a leg to stand on next time. Mom, on the other hand, said I should put my foot down and demand that the section be rewritten because plagiarism is not only bad but illegal. You can be fined thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of dollars for plagiarizing copyrighted material. In an education setting, not only could you fail the paper or fail the class, you can get kicked out of school. I am paying too much money for these bullarky classes to get kicked out because I let some poor sap copy a few dozen words from an article.

So after my little tirade about how I stepped on our teammate's toes, our instructor replied, "Pam! That's not stepping on toes! That's plagiarism! I guess she's failing the class then if she had no interest in helping you rewrite that section." So that made me feel better. He said some instructors would penalize the entire team, but he feels that it's not our place to determine if one of the team members is plagiarizing. That's the instructor's job. Since that conversation happened early in the class, I really felt a huge weight off my shoulders and thought the rest of the class went well. Maybe it was the rose-colored glasses I wore when I walked into the building today. Who knows?

In summary, PLAGIARISM SUCKS!!! Do us all a favor, and don't do it.

Everything I Need to Know

Hmm.. I've heard a few times now that my very first blog here (When in Doubt, Move Next) has inspired people to do something with their lives. It's nice to know that I can do my part to help people help themselves. Even at my young age of just over a quarter century, I have been through quite a lot, and I've done a tremendous amount of growing up in the last few years. I think it's only appropriate that I share my wealth of knowledge about growing up with the rest of the world.

So I think I'm going to go back to this book concept that started while I was at ITT, with a slight twist. I think instead, it will be "Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned While Programming." Obviously, Move Next will be a very prominent chapter. It might even be a whole section to itself with subchapters of the other loopy functions (Do While, Foreach, and of course, we can't forget Break).

So I'm curious if anyone else has learned Important Life Lessons from the standard programming languages. When I finally publish my book 37 years from now, I'll certainly give you credit on my dedication pages!

At the Request of My Fans..

All two of them! :)

Yet another trivial rant. Actually I'm not really sure what to write about. Things have been going relatively well these days. The bank account is not only in the black, it's well above the line and only in danger of my incredibly impuslive spending habits. My husband is still incredibly amazing. My one client that I dread hearing from has been relatively quiet. Except for the 75 page fax I received with minor corrections to nearly every page of the website we're writing for them. By "we" I mean "me"... Wait. I'm Princess Pami, so that was the Royal We. Got it.

So anyway, I think this project may actually be drawing to a close sometime in the next decade. It's actually been really interesting working on it. The company is a manufacturer of a medical testing product, and I now know more about how to test for cholesterol, ketones, triglycerides, and other blood lipids in less than two minutes (unless it's creatinine, then it's 8 minutes, requires refrigeration, and is not CLIA-Waived) than I ever wanted to know.

Let's see.. Oh, my darling sister went and finally quit working at her dead-end stupid ass job. The only bad thing is that she didn't have another job lined up for her. And her ex-husband-turned-boyfriend-turned-fiance is having issues leaving his ex-girlfriend-mother-of-his-second-child. I think. I can't keep up with her these days. She seems to be doing well, in any case, and her son is just thrilled that Mommy and Daddy are back together. Or in any case that Daddy is not with the psycho-freak who likes to have babies and live on welfare at the ripe ol' age of 19. (She's up to 3 children now).

Speaking of my sister, she and our mom are suspicious that my niece may be slightly psychic. Apparently, Adrianne (affectionately, Adia) has really good perception skills according to my darling husband. They suspect she's psychic because she always knows who is speaking on the other end of the phone, and if the person changes, she starts talking about the new person.. all without the person she's with making any identifying comments about the speaker. It's all very strange. But psychic ability does run in my family. And Shan is just convinced that her short-lived child that was born in April and passed on 45 minutes later is "visiting" her daughter. Which of course explains why the two-year-old psychic prodigy still remembers her younger brother and constantly reminds Shan about it. Of course, knowing her father, I'm not incredibly surprised that her perception skills are so profound (as my amazing husband continues to insist that she is not psychic). Dan is an interesting, intelligent fellow who has made some really bad decisions in life. At least he did get himself motivated to go back to school and get a degree in .. programming I think.

I just wish Shan would pick up on that clue and go back herself. Even her ex-husband-turned-boyfriend-turned-fiance is going to school, and he has kids all over the place, so that's not a very good excuse. (Well, he only has two that can claim a biological link to him, but if you count the other two his ex-girlfriend have hanging around, and my sister's daughter, he certainly has his hands full managing all the little feets.) Anyway, school is not a HUGE ordeal, once you get past the initial welcome-back phase. Yep, it interrupts your routine, but you find ways to work around it. Just like the house I live in. Our expenses increased dramatically, but lo and behold, we've managed to survive. Mostly.

As a matter of fact, right now we have someone putting in insulation and drywall in the garage. Then Lars and I get the daunting task of painting it. That'll be fun. In a perfect world, we'd epoxy the floor, too, but I don't think that will happen for some time. We also had a landscaper come out last week, and we have an appointment for tomorrow evening to see what kinds of plants would look good in our spacious park-like backyard (believe it or not, it's not a CP Morgan home where you get lost in the closets, so we actually have a backyard). I think we'll start with trees to give us some shade and insulation. Should be fun.

Anywho, not much really to rant about, so I hope you enjoyed this little diatribe. I really should go pay attention to my Troy's Travels site. Hmmm...