4 posts tagged “classes”

I'm wondering right now what posessed me to believe that this late in my life I could learn how to program.  I mean seriously, I wrote some BASIC programs back in, I don't know, 6th grade or something.  Granted, things in my HTML/CSS class during the summer went reasonably well.  I more or less got it.

But now we're hitting the hard stuff (at least for me) with PHP and MySQL.  And try as a I might, I just can't get my head around it.  Virtually every exercise I try to complete does not work.  It does not help, of course, that I really can't devote a lot of time to the subject.  I tend to do it in big blocks at a time with way too much time in between.  It also doesn't help, however, that the instructor is basically AWOL on my requests for help.  Thanks, bud, I'll remember that when it comes time to submit evaluations of the instructors.

Meanwhile, I've now gotten excited about the idea of a "utility bicycle".  Basically, these are bikes specifically designed to serve your main transportation needs, including carrying other people and stuff.  In other words, a replacement for your car.  There seem to be two biggies on the market right now:  xtracycle and mundo.  Check these puppies out.  I have visions in my head of taking Little One on the back to school and then riding the rest of the way to work.  Great for grocery shopping too. Finding a safe place to keep it would be an issue.  And I need to find someone who has one so I can try before I buy.

Every little bit helps.  Today I was awarded an $800 scholarship from the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium to go towards library school tuition, and I also received tuition reimbursement from the College to tune of $1300 for my upcoming fall semester classes.  Sweet.

Can I just say that having to plug up holes in kitchen cabinetry with steel wool is not fun?  In fact, one reason people rent is so that don't have to do that sort of stuff.  Unfortunately, our landlord has not caught on to this insight.  Anyway, it's time to get aggressive about the mouse problem we've been having. Steel wool is going in every nook and cranny I can find, sheet metal to cover the gaping hole in one of the cabinets, and I'm gonna set tons of traps - TONS!! You hear me, mice?  Your days are numbered, vermin!

The semester officially starts tomorrow.  I am not ready.  (serious understatement)

New projects at work.  Haven't even come close to finishing my other projects (most notably revising existing finding aids (aka pathfinders) and writing new ones), and now we are on to a whole new mega-project: re-designing the website.  I'm in charge of running some focus groups to figure out what students/faculty want (end of Feb.), followed by usability testing of our prototype redesign in early May.  Looking forward to digging into this stuff, and it dovetails well with a class I'm taking on web usability.  Also feeling sort of overwhelmed by everything I've got to do.

Got through Day 2 of cataloging and all is well.  The good thing is, I now don't have to go out to Fullerton again until December, when I will do two all-day sessions for the other class I'm taking on Reference services.  All the rest is online.  Unfortunately, the live online lectures for cataloging will be during my shift, so I probably will only be able to view the recordings rather than participate.  But, on the whole, I feel comfortable that I will be able to handle cataloging now.  Also, we ended about 2 hrs early today, so I actually made it back in time to have dinner with the fam, and then we took a nice walk around the neighborhood admiring all the houses we can't afford.

Successfully upgraded the "new" desktop from a paltry 128 MB RAM to 512 MB.  Now it's humming.  Thanks to Radio Junkie, who had extra RAM chips floating about since 2002.

B.H. has two job interviews.  One on Friday is for a gig in LB, which would be nice just b/c it's close by.  But, the pay is apparently pretty bad.  The other is not firm yet.  It's for Jewish Social Services in Fairfax, and they only want someone for 4 hrs. a day.  That's a long commute for so few hours.  But it would be working with people who speak her native language.  Still, it's encouraging to get some interviews.

Union Station, btw, is pretty cool inside.  Beautiful Art Deco (Jugendstil) interior.  At the other end of the terminal is a nice aquarium with what looked like tiger sharks in it.  Up at the street level where the bus terminal is, I killed some time reading about the history of the place.  Apparently it was built on the site where an old giant Sycamore tree used to be that was particularly important to the indigenous tribe.  Talked a lot about how the Indians got screwed by the European settlers, to the point that they were essentially all wiped out.