OK, never believe the name of a course. Ever. A course titled “Life Fitness” sounds like it involves assigned activity and, well, physical stuff. Dream on; it does nothing but talk about the virtues of fitness and assign essays and research papers on the subject (and very obscure portions of it at that). Is this an indication that physical education is no more physical than writing?
The teacher in one of my classes (taught in Moodle, but that’s for another post; maybe next week) uploaded a series of videos to his class that provide pretty useful information. They also don’t play if you’re using Mozilla Firefox, my primary browser. They might be ASF files, and Firefox knows how to open them, but Windows Media Player coughs. The browser must have to download something first, and Firefox doesn’t know that, and WMP spits the file back out like sour milk. This isn’t the first time my school has given Mozilla Firefox the Micro$haft, however indirectly. The way…
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I take AP classes at my school through an online portal from Apex Learning. That said, I am less than satisfied with their software. First of all, in the complete opposite functionality of Blackboard Academic Suite (the portal for the regular classes), the discussions in Apex have no threads. Navigating conversations is very difficult, since there is no threading, indenting, nesting, or any other helpful feature. Second, the course window times out after a certain period (I haven’t timed it, but it’s pretty short). It gives a very annoying error if…
I have been working on my AP Biology course the past few days, and have noticed something. There are only five Labs in the entire year, and they’re only worth 30 points each, but they take much longer than the tests, which are worth 100 points and take only about 45 minutes. Something is definitely wrong with the way this course is structured… Also, I have been going back and forth with my teacher on a lab that was due last week. I’ve been in a conversation (at an average of one email per party per day) for nearly a…
I suppose technology just can’t be relied upon anymore. I have two websites hosted at a college, and neither of them works right now. This is happening way too often. The servers at said college are running Linux, too! I thought Windows was the unstable one, but Linux seems to crash a lot. Granted, the websites are nothing important, but the sites double as FTP storage for my homework (backup), so not having access for hours at a time is irritating. And, since they went offline after midnight, forget repairs until morning. At least I have a consolation prize: the…
I’ve been away for a while because I’ve been struggling with bunches of technological issues. First, I lost an SD card containing all of my music (nearly 2GB). Now the hard disk in my computer is threatening to crash. So I’ve been forced to use public computers and had almost no time away from my homework to post anything. So I’ve dumped it all into this entry. How about that? Now I can start storing other things to post about.
I am taking an American History class at my school, and the assignments are starting to get on my nerves. This course has “Crossover Assignments” that make you answer questions about supposed Crossover points. These are parts of history which can be expressed from multiple points of view (i.e. both Economic and Military history). The course sometimes has me read the same two or three pages many times in the course of a unit. Enough! Come up with better assignments or just don’t come up with them at all.
Dell just ignored my email request for support. Oh, well. I did fix (I hope) another issue having to do with a BAD_POOL_CALLER stop error, caused by SynTP.sys, one of the files used in the Synaptics Touchpad in my laptop. This time, I used Dell chat. Much faster. I’ll post updates as to whether or not I receive the STOP error again.
Call me crazy, but installing new hardware (on USB, no less) shouldn’t disable one of your PC’s best features: the Welcome Screen and Fast User Switching. Well, the Linksys WUSB54GC USB Wireless-G adaptor does so with its software. Not what I had in mind. I’m going to have to go back on the market for a new wireless card that supports 802.11g. And the “This device can perform better” balloons that popped up every time I inserted the adaptor didn’t help. My laptop is non-upgradeable, OK? I can’t install USB 2.0 compatible controllers, so leave me alone and go soak…
Well, I think my History teacher is a bit crazy. I skipped just a small bit of information on my project and she flipped out and took off 10 points (well over 10% of the total). I think I might have to talk about that one. Update: I checked the grades for my class; full credit is posted in the gradebook. Mum’s the word…
