Not one minute of study time and it is 11:30 at night. Glenn called this morning and we went to the Thrift store on Taft that is going out of business. No bargains there although I did pick up some patch cables for $10. The lady running the place was incredibly stupid, although not as stupid as the Cuban woman over at Jerry’s. The one that would sell the cash register if you didn’t watch her. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t dislike stupid people personally, because I don’t personally hang around with any of them. They are a separate sub-species of humanity, less evolved from apes than people who are not stupid. You see, the major difference between animals and humans is that humans are supposed to be smarter. [Author’s note: I’m sure I didn’t mean any of that. Ha.]Which brings up the topic of school tonight. Oh, wait. First we went over to the Hippies’s where it took close to three hours to salvage his hard drive. This operation was successful but like all computer repairs, one thing leads to another. The problem was that he did not make any backup copies before re-installing Windows XP to get rid of a virus. Couple that with Windows XP statement that doing so “may” destroy you files and you have a gamble that did not pay off. All I promised the Hippie is that I would, if possible, recover all the files on that hard drive. This I did, and left. At some later point, which I specified may be months in the future, I may try to restore that drive as his master. For now, he has a 1 gigabyte hard drive with XP on it, and instructions on how to backup the files he nearly lost. He is having trouble doing this, but he is having even worse trouble understanding that his computer problems are not my priority right now.
School is becoming a major concern. The instructor is cramming. From talking to the other students, I missed one evening where they took a computer apart and put it back together and a few hours of talk concerning computer basics and numbering systems. Tearing computers apart and reassembling is a no-brainer, considering all the pieces generally fit only one way in one location. The anxiety is that since Monday last week, we have covered 250+ pages of intense technical material in 24 class hours. This includes, besides reading and study, the memorization of 9 major diagrams, 36 lists of cryptic items, 3 charts and slightly over 350 abbreviations, technical terms and acronyms. Nobody in the class has even begun to memorize this mass of material.
We have talked about configuring and installing modems, IDE controllers, hard drives, network cards and memory chips, but two weeks have gone by and we have not yet configured or installed even one thing. We’ve talked about different brands of wire and connectors, but we have not put any connectors on wire. We wedged in 8 extra hours of complicated network material into this week along, but we have not hooked up one thing to a network. This is a computer repair course, so why are we studying modems, bridges, routers, hubs and gateways? If they are part of computer repair, then why are we skimming over them far too fast and without any practical? We have already covered far too much book material for any normal person to retain in so short a time. Furthermore, I hope this network material is not supposed to sink in without some actual lab time. I studied the subject years ago and I know we are not going about learning it in a meaningful way.
Several people said again, during break, that the practical is coming up. Even if the rest of the course is practical, this is the wrong way to present the material. Here is an example of a list that was briefly mentioned once last Tuesday. We were told only that they were different standards without any further explanation, no clarification of any kind, and no instruction as to how important it would be on the exam. Today this list was used in examples and apparently we were supposed to instantly recall, without confusion, not only the terms and matching definitions, but were somehow supposed to have figured out every implication of these terms in real life and mysteriously use it as a foundation for today’s class to make decisions on obscure installation scenarios. Here is the list:
You are expected to read this list once and grasp every facet of what it means instantly. No, none of the terms are defined, such as 802.1 Internetworking, but I’ll hint that it has nothing to do with the Internet. The text indicates these are a model that is broken down, but does not explain what that means. Model A Fords break down. It further states these broken down models are ‘mostly concerned’ with the bottom three layers of the OSI ISO model. I think they mean definitions or descriptions of different types of network configurations. However, I am not happy that I have to guess at this. If it is so important that we have to memorize it, why are we not going over them one by one with intensive examples and detail?
If it turns out the lab and lecture times are not better interspersed than so far, I may get a little miffed. There has been no proper balance of the two so far. Even though I started late, there has been no hands-on of anything covered since I got here nearly two weeks ago. It is unreasonable to think anybody is going to remember the finer details of what was said a week ago last Monday should we suddenly start building computers. Each segment of study on a trade course has to be back to back with practice, rarely more than one topic or one hour apart. I also found something else out. Other students are only paying about half what I am for the same course. Why should that bother me if the government is paying for the shot? Because, my funding has a cap and if I am over-charged, I can’t get any more.
Rumor has it we ‘get’ a computer tomorrow. That is hardly going to make me happy at this point. The reason is that so much other material has been force-fed to us since early last week that I cannot even remember how many pins there are on a DIMM card. I thought I had it memorized, but it was never reinforced by installing any of these cards, and now it has been blurred by the sheer volume of what else I’ve had to memorize since then. And I’ve had all day to study this material. What if I was working full time? Something here is just not adding up.
Wish me luck. We were quizzed on the above chart today in class, and I was the only one who had the list down pat. Let’s hope it is not another case of use it or lose it. To end the day on a lighter note, I read the mail. In Hollywood, this consists of a constant barrage of ads for cable TV (or its derivatives), outright false offers of $499 laser eye surgery and coupons for “the first $75 off”. (It can be confidently predicted some marketing genius will eventually be deemed original by changing this to $100.)
Pardon me if I’ve missed something, but I see an ad for 24 hour emergency service. I would envision a hospital, or national defense, or at the least hurricane warnings. Here is a place that will, around the clock, dispatch a van to clean your tile grout. That is correct. The discolored grundge in between your ceramic tiles. Come to think of it, I had better run down the hallway to see if I am in any danger. Hasta manana.
