Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

This week has seen the passing of an achievement in my life so many post-graduates aspire to. I finally paid off my student loans in full. It has been six long years with thousands of dollars in interest, and finally the burden has been lifted. This time next week when I get a pay check will bring with it the first time my education has had a positive ROI.

For the last year or so I’ve been taking a vested interest in the design and development of some electronics kits. Nothing super fancy just trying to understand how to program and understand electronics. After two degrees I’ve come to understand that I really like the community environment of a classroom to pall around with other people doing like minded things. I’ve bought a few off-the-shelf learning kits here and there, but I really wanted to get serious with learning more about electronics.

That got me started looking into the local community colleges to get into a basic robotics class or even a pre-engineering setup where I’d get exposure to circuit design and analytic with lab focus. Little did I know apparently NO local community college in the area even comes close to offering anything computer or electronics related. The closest I could get would be computer support specialist (glorified tech support), or a few classes in networking or graphics.

My options were between UC Raymond Walters College, Brown Mackie, Wilmington, and Thomas More College. There were a few other ‘online’ only programs, but they’re all repeats of the same lame program offerings of these other colleges. There are tons of criminal justice, office automation, medical billing, and other degrees like ‘websites’. I just don’t even know what to think, but all those stories I see popping up on Hacker News about college being a waste is suddenly making a whole lot of sense.

The problem is I am not close to the major institutions, I am not a day student anymore, and I’d be doing this for fun instead of college kid needs a job sacrificial mindset. I have to admit I was really hoping to find a college program because while I am in it for the passion I also want to make sure I align myself for the paper backing in case it becomes a career calling. Still makes me wonder what the job market can handle with all the influx of these criminal justice and computer support specialists.

The one important thing i'll take away from managerial economics is this.

Marginal Revenue = Marginal Costs

I just saved you $2,000 and 10 weeks of your time.

I hate to say it but I announce I officially quit graduate school.

I can’t help but consider the overwhelming cost that would be out of pocket to complete the degrees. I’m looking at another 56,000 to complete another two years of the degree. My current employer doesn’t find any value in continuing education, and puts more emphasis on internal groups/communities than continuing education. For that matter my company doesn’t even count gaining certifications towards my contribution towards the company.

I’ve taken a relatively staunch stance on the subject. The company wants to use my Microsoft certifications towards the Microsoft Gold partnership, yet won’t count them towards my internal contributions for the year. For that matter the company never paid for them in the first place while working there. I don’t think I should be required to provide my ID for association to the company for something the company did not count to my benefit on the review. Perhaps I’m being too hard line on the subject. I’d be open to hear other opinions on the subject.

I have another certification coming soon that I’ve taken on my shoulders. It sometimes feels like all the years I’ve gone to school/college have conditioned me so that learning doesn’t amount to anything until I’ve taken a standardized test to validate my having learned the subject. It’s strange how we can look at our own behavior after such a long period of formal education. I sometimes compare myself with another associate who went an entirely different education route. The contrasts are sharp, but at least we’ve both the bandwidth to understand one another.

The end of school also carries with it a beginning to something new. There has been a new company formed that I’ll be putting my energy into getting off the ground. I’ve devoted all my spare time, my weekends, and anything in-between in order to help. If it takes 100 hours a week I’ll gladly give it up to support the new venture. That is the one good thing I can say I’ve gained from having been a consultant. While working as a consultant you tend to lose focus on exactly what company you’re working for, you can develop an attachment to clients, and it’s too easy to become vested. I can see a lot of older consultants in the field have managed to master the idea that a consultant is just a wrench that works on many different machines. The wrench may belong to many different toolboxes during the period they’re useful, and eventually the consultant knows they are belong to nothing. Silly pun intended.

It should be an eventful summer what with having the client, parent company, and new venture all going together. I’m going to be very tired but I can say I’m energized by the prospects. If it works it works, if it doesn’t work, I can always try again, but either way it will be more income coming in. I think we’ll be able to do a lot of neat new things, no attachments, and there is so much opportunity it’s incredible. I’m looking forward to this new step. I’m a little sad to see school leaving my life, maybe if I get enough money in the future I’ll take a PhD program for fun, but until then I’m walking away with my two degrees.

Some of you may know this, and some of you may not. I guess it depends on who actually reads this blog other than me. I tell you, whoever is writing this blog has no concept of proof-reading or verifying the correct use of grammar. I will say in my defense that on my GRE I scored higher than 78% of all graduate students in the writing portion of the test. So of all doctors, lawyers, and English professors I beat the majority of you. We won’t discuss my math score because that has no relevance in my industry of computer technology. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, I just want to tell you that operation make it happen has happened. In the matter of a month it’s gone into full swing, in two weeks it will be registered in the state, and there is the beginning of a list of people to use the service. In addition there is a full list of potential people whom I’ll be hitting up shortly. It’s fantastic, it’s starting quickly, and hopefully in the next few months it’ll be self-sustaining. I’m excited, heck we’re all excited, and I’m sure this will be a very profitable venture.

So cheers pickle it’s begun. To all who thought it couldn’t/wouldn’t happen jog off mates.

The one word I could use to describe UC would be bureaucratic. I have never, even in the Army, had so much trouble dealing with a group of individuals that hold an office or title. The paperwork system at UC, while somehow managing to be functional, given any situation deviating from norm requiring even the slightest more effort will single handedly double the irritation for the requester. It seems that in the going on six years that I’ve somehow managed to tolerate the bureaucracy of the system my tolerance has reached its peak. If you’re not familiar with the system I can give you a quick introduction to how things seem to work. Given a situation where a given person has a document that must be quickly processed in order to take affect, then you might as well advise them to sit on the document for about three weeks hoping it will grow into a golden egg. Paperwork does not move quickly through UC, hell I know an individual that had to wait over one year just to receive their degree due to a professor haphazardly forgetting to input final grades for an entire class. I do have names to back this up should someone from UC like to argue this point I’d be happy to name drop the professor as well. Considering defamation lawsuits I’ll leave this point made, but without identification of the individuals.

Let us concentrate on even the system used to register students, and UCs wonderful policy of course availability. Should you, the student, need to take four required classes during the quarter, well, good luck. The UC planning committees can seem to think of nothing but money, and depending on the number of suckers…. I mean students (sorry all start with ‘s’ anyway) they can put in a seat determines the course availability. So considering the number of students pursuing the same classes as you, during the same quarter, you’ve got only about a 50/50 shot at having the course available. Then there is what I call the UC class paradox. Should the course be available to you during the quarter you require, well, then a nice little time availability overlapping occurs. This same class, that you require mind you, will be offered at both the same time and days as other required classes. As if to somehow drag out your graduation longer these classes tend to be exactly as the same times (day or night) or they will share an overlapping day at least. Typically UC courses are either Tuesday or Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. Unless you don’t work you can always opt for the four days a week class that is offered during the morning, and afternoon. For them anything is possible, but for evening students you may plan to extend your school engagement by at least another year.

The most fantastic part of the course registration system is the separation provided to make sure that you are truly taking advantage of having multiple web browsers open, or using those new multiple tab pages from within your browser of choice. I’d stick with IE myself when dealing with anything UC on the web. UC is particular about engaging web development from students trained at the school, whom have no concept of document object models, nor the differences between IE and non-IE browsers.

Anyway, so once you go to check out those nifty courses, make sure you’ve printed out the required class listing, and are prepared for at least a half hour battle to get your next quarter courses just right. You’ll need to first have your transcript ready (or knowledge of completed classes), listing of remaining required courses, a calendar, then you’ll need to open One Stop’s website to go to a page to search for your courses. At this point you could argue that you could open another web browser to perform a degree audit instead of using a transcript, but clearly you’ve never used the degree audit before. But I digress, from there you’ll want to open another browser, log into One Stop to register for classes so the registration screen is viewable. At this point you’ll want to start skimming through the online listing of courses, be sure to copy and paste them into Notepad so you can have the call number, dates, and times ready. Then you’ll want to search for more classes, copy and paste them into Notepad from the displayed page.

(I need to interject at this point in time. UC haven’t you heard of online shopping carts? Amazon.com can single handedly manage hundreds of thousands of concurrent registrations, and purchasing of product by placement in a digital cart. Why can’t you freaking create a digital cart to add classes too so you can just sign-in to course registration with classes that are available, and then just checkout. You’re still raping us on price so you might as well start modeling your system after an e-commerce system. )

Once you’ve gathered a good amount (if any courses are available that is) of courses that you need to take you’ll have to start sifting through to the ones that don’t overlap. In the end from a list that may contain, say five classes, you’ll probably end up with at least two. You may even get lucky to find three available courses. At this point close the class availability page, then switch over to the registration page. Cross your fingers and start registering for the classes by inputting the information from your Notepad document into the required fields on the registration page. Hit submit when you’re done, then wait for the message that the class is unavailable. You’ll get either unavailable, course has been closed, or maybe registering pending administrative approval. Congratulations five layers of irritation later you’re now a guaranteed student of the defunct system. That is, of course, unless you receive a letter, yes mailed letter, that your class has been closed due to lack of enrollment about one week before the class was set to begin. The powers that be will close your class one week before the quarter begins, then complains that students still wait till the last minute to register. Given you’ve just received only a weeks notice I can see why there may be an influx of last minute registrations taking place in some situations.

Oh, there is much, much more I could complain about, but I’m out of time. Stay tuned to future warnings of UC.

Thursday was my first day of financial analysis tools a level 700 finance class, and all I can say is wow. I learned so much in the four hour period that my head felt like it would pop. I can now tell you how to calculate future value or present value of money given a period of time, interest rate, and any combination thereof. It was so much information I felt like my head would pop, but I did meet a very nice lady from China who talked to me for a little bit. Pretty nice girl, finishing her masters in statistics, but I won’t hold that against her.

Anyway, after another grueling 15+ hour day I was unloaded on from my main boss when the clock struck four and I started to head out. Turns out the program he’d told me earlier in the day that ‘he’d like it soon’, well he actually meant the next day by 8am, and I don’t get in till 6:40amish. I have to tell you the program I’ve been revamping (program 2 or 3) was in horrid condition. It was totally linked to older servers with old data tables, and absolutely no comments as to what did what. All the methods, variables, and everything you could possibly imagine was some sort of abbreviation that meant absolutely nothing to me. I had to literally read line by line and refractor everything. So after a full day of working on what I’d assume was months worth of work by this guy I was asked to have it ready the next day by 8am. Sadly that was beyond my means so my main boss was not exactly pleased.

Be sure I’ll expand on my experiences with school in more detail, but for now I’m off to get more work accomplished.

Well I started graduate school. Who would have thought? I started graduate school with one heck of a bad week. First my tire blew out on my truck leaving me stuck with trying to change the spare tire. Unfortunately Ford thought it would be a fantastic idea to make getting the full size spare tire off the truck damned near impossible by requiring a spare tire lock key that is inserted through a hole in the bumper with a four foot long crank. Then you have to crank counterclockwise until your arms fall off to drop the spare tire down to where you can even get it. If that seems easy enough, well, if you’re missing the spare tire lock key (due to used truck purchase) you might as well lube your thumb up because you’re going to be thumbing for a ride. I even tried two calls to AAA over a two day period amounted to the first day getting the wrong type of tow truck sent out (I have a 4x4 that requires full flat bed.) Even on the second attempt took over four hours so I just canceled it because the tire stores were all closed. So that left me trying to crank on the spare tire to get it off, but thankfully the braided steel wire would not decent, the cranking amounted to an hour of wasted time, and the only thing left was to get up under there to losen the line up. So I got up under the truck bed with a wrench and started turning on the end of the tire retaining bar. Next thing I know I hear a loud pop and feel a crushing pain on my wrist as the tire litterally drops straight down onto my then rotating wrist. Ouch to say the least. A few choice words later I was able to finally (after three days) change my spare tire. Thank you Ford. So that started my week off with a bang.

The first day started out as such, drive to work, get to my desk at 6:50am, work with no lunch until 3:40pm (usually here till 5pm but left early to scope out the school), drive downtown get there close to or at 5pm. I get out of the truck to find a weird feeling like my undershirt fell down around my waste. I started walking out of the parking garage (cost 7 dollars to park how unbelievable!) and it feels like my shirt is getting bunched up and falling lower. It wasn’t until that point that I realized that it was not my shirt but my underoos! With each step I took the farther they fell. How unlikely is it that your underwear would fell off while you had pants on?! So I’m walking around in a strange new school having no idea where the bathrooms are with what I’d only imagine was a growing band of underwear line growing down around my hips. Women complain about panty lines they should try having this happen to them, but anyway I’m walking around looking for a bathroom and notice a few odd looks my way. It was the most embarrassing thing that could happen barring that the pants entirely should drop, but I sure did make an interesting impression with my hands in my pockets trying to hold my drawers up. Ended up having to make two trips to the bathroom in order to get the situation somewhat manageable by tucking the rim over and around my belt to keep them from dropping again during class.

I think that had to be the best part of the whole experience right there because four hours later I had a new appreciation for how normal people never had to wrap microeconomics in their heads. I’ll expand on that concept a little later on, but for now graduate school is starting off nicely… sarcasm and all.

Anxiety is growing over the upcoming beginning of graduate school. I remember when I first started the bachelors degree about three and a half years ago and how nervous I was. I’m getting that whole nervous feeling all over again except this time I’m getting it mixed with feelings of not wanting to go back. I suppose it’s good in a way that I’m going back because if the feeling is this strong only eight months after graduating, then I can only imagine what it would be like after waiting five years like everyone keeps telling me. Even at work some of the managers warning me against going were saying they too wish they could go back, but don’t seem to have the time.

The problem is I’m taking this program and I’m not really sure whether this is what I want to do. I suppose the discipline that I’m taking gets me geared up for management, but I want to learn how and why electronics work. I have a robot kit that I’ve been playing with, books on embedded programming, and I’ve been in a constant state of study of programming languages. However, I’m going to school to learn business concepts such as economics, finance, and enterprise level information systems. There are 22 classes required for the degree, and while they seem to be informative I just am not interested. I think I’ll give graduate school a chance as I may come around. I hate to start something and not finish it. I started two degrees and carried each through, but this one may be the exception. Time will tell.

Today I’ve just completed my registration for my first two graduate level classes. Thus I embark on my new journey to secure a Masters of Information Systems. Hopefully this path will net me both the MSIS and MBA degrees completing my goal of getting four degrees. Unfortunately my arse is a bit sore as it’s going to cost me a whopping $4500 to take two classes as a part-time student. My god, no wonder our educational system is so goofed up. It is free for students from primary to high school (during a time kids don’t realize they need schooling), and then to continue on you basically have to become homeless to afford schooling through government grants. I have a well paying job and I’m going to suffer dearly for being single, white, and upper middle class! I need to move to China…