New News

It's getting nigh the end (as in it's the last week) of the quarter. One class totally finished, Intro to PCs and locked down with a 100% (99.95 approximately). Now I need to buckle down and finish my paper for comp I tomorrow so that I have some time before sunday to edit it and get a minimum of an 85% on it. If I lock that down with an 85+, I think I'm guaranteed at least a 90%. Then Math I I'm currently shooting a 98%, which I should maintain with this weeks quiz/homework. The final is only 5% of the grade so that's pretty much a lock for an A as well. So, I just need to finish a paper in such a fashion that it doesn't totally suck and I should be through 20 credits with a 4.0!

Next Quarter I'm cutting back to 2 classes, Math II (Trigonometry), which I'll be taking online with my sister, as well as... Intro to Programming. That second one is kinda making me nervous, as I have not done any programming ever, unless you count some really basic html (which I don't). Well, it shouldn't be TOO hard I guess, so long as I make sure to keep up with everything. Then I'll get to help my sister when it's her turn to take it... yay...

Now, as for the reason that I'll be cutting back to 2 classes instead of 3... you may have guessed it already. I picked up a job. I will admit to not being SUPER gung ho about it, as it involves getting up at 5ish am, and assembly work on circuit boards. But, it is full time, which after the past year and especially the past 7 months, I REALLY need, even if it isn't the highest pay rate in the world. Combining it with still working a night or two a week at the retail store I work at, I should have a minimum of 45 hours every week which will go a long way towards getting me caught up, back on my feet and out of the mental hospital. Well, I guess I've always been crazy so it may not help that last one. ;)

Last week I read the last harry potter book, as well as the full Lord of the Rings 'trilogy' (it's not really a trilogy you know) all in about 4 days, instead of working on the paper like I should have been. Bad me!

I think that's all I've got for now, since I should really stop staying up late NOW so that I can hopefully get a new sleep pattern started before crunch time. (Kind of too late for starting that today I guess... Ooops)

Approximate Midpoint

Well, I'm approximately 1/2 done with this quarter of school, so I figure I'll give a little progress report. In Intro to Computers, I've been doing good, but we're having a debate on AMD vs. Intel next week. Current grade 99%. I'm also doing well in Math I, with a 98%. With Comp I, I should be doing better than a 91%, but I had a big 'slacker week' last week, so I still have one more assignment to catch up on yet, and also to do this weeks stuff.

In other news, I'm nearly done with The Story of Britain From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History by Rebecca Fraser. Yes, I've been reading it for about a month and a half. It's quite interesting, but not the kind of book that I read 'straight through'. Not that I skip around in it or anything. I just set it down for a few days here, a couple there, and read/do something else. That's all I've got.

True Prosperity

True Prosperity- the ability to liberally apply the fluid of life on grass without thinking about it.

I:NJAC Special

Well, something I just did is work up a bit of an outline finally. First I outlined what's taken place so far, then I've outlined up through Chapter 8, though I'm not going to force myself to lock in 100% to the future lineups. Here's through Chapter 6, since I'm pretty sure I'll keep it right on through there:

Prologue - Introduction
Chapter 1 - A Combat Mission
The Mission
The Plan
Patrol
Scramble
Aftermath
Chapter 2 - Hide...
Meeting
Fight
Depression
Chapter 3 - ...and Seek
Where to?
Not Alone
The Lumpy Stew
Chapter 4 - On the Lam
Fight to the Elevator
Mystery Man
Escape
Chapter 5 - Invasions and Conversations
Call
Harmony
Invasion
Surrender
Rescue
Chapter 6 - The Undercover Cover Band
The Low Down
Get the Gear
Practice?

Well, I still have to come up with some poetry or something special like that for after Chapter 4. I've written through the second episode of Chapter 5. Look for more to come!

A Picture

This is a picture I colored. It was originally drawn by Diane of Final Fantasy Vault. I think they still have her FFXI comics and art archived there. If not, it's quite a pity.

Restructuring

Well, I've reorganized the computers and paraphenalia (sp?) yet again! I now have the PC back out in the living room, sharing Keyboard, Video and Mouse with the laptop via a KVM switch. I can now perform the eqivalent of alt-tabbing while playing FFXI. (If I were playing, I'll log in with my sisters chars more often). I also broke out my USB hub that I bought awhile back, but never hooked up, so now I've got the wireless network, my JS, a printer, a scanner and a cord for a digi cam all hooked up now. Also, I have an old VCR hooked up to the monitor, cuz it's a special LCD flatpanel screen, so it has 3 AV hookups and a monitor hookup slot. So, now I can watch my old fave videotape, This Week In Baseball's Greatest Plays. Joy!

Current and Recent Reading

I've been doing a fair amount of reading with my spare time lately.

This is what I've chopped off:

I Was A Kamikaze
Ryuji Nagatsuka

The Threadbare Buzzard
Thomas M. Tomlinson

Currently Reading, interspersed with other stuff:

The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present Day
Rebecca Fraser

School To Begin Again, and More

Monday I start my second semester in the Digital Entertainment and Game Design program of ITT Tech. I'll be taking Comp I, Math I, and Intro to PCs. Luckily, these classes shouldn't be a huge challenge as I am concurrently seeking a final (for a couple years at least I hope) end to my job problem, and will most likely be learning a new FT job working possibly 60 hours a week (one of the jobs I got a first interview with, waiting on a possible second).

I checked out the official Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days. As some may recall, I have a story/novel/book idea on the back burner that I'd like to do, Around the Galaxy in 80 Days. After reading the book (which I hadn't read in sever years), I've noticed how much more liberty the producers of the movie (TV movie I think) took than I first realized. Also, I think that I'd be able to write a sci-fi version that balances the spirit of the book and the movie in an acceptable fashion, though I think I'd try to bring it in closer to Jules' original feel a bit more so than the movie. First, I gotta get I:NJAC finished. Maybe if I push really hard I can finish it in a year. I have moderate hopes of finishing the next chapter by the end of the week before school starts back up again and I have supreme business to look forward too.

~Mophia Out

P.S. If I can get a FT Job that pays $10 or more, I'll be back in FFXI in a month. If not... it could be a loooooong time.

Latest Episode Availabe

Of Istanbul: Not Just a City. Click on the link on the right to read. :)

Dys Functions!

You may or may not find this insightful.

Removing the ‘Dys’ From Function

By Philip Morey

The key to overcoming the Five Dysfunctions, whether in an online or a traditional business setting, is having the right people, especially the leadership. Here are some strategies that will help a leader succeed.

Absence of Trust is the biggest issue facing a team. If the team members don’t trust each other, it leads to a Lack of Communication, which then turns into the remaining three dysfunctions. The key to having trust between team members is to… have trustworthy, responsible team members in the first place. If you’re team is full of slothful liars, all the teambuilding exercises in the world will do nothing for you.

If you do have good team members, Lack of Communication may come down to technological difficulties in an online setting. However, with a good IT department, that should be of little concerned and it remains on the leader’s shoulders to foster good communication throughout the team. The leader does this by setting an example of open, honest communication to all the members. There should also be plenty of opportunities made for communication to take place, yet not call an over abundance of meetings or flooding the correspondence channels with ‘babble’, which impedes the progress of the actual work.

A good team leader heads off Fear of Conflict with good communication and impartial judgment of the results. The leader needs to be the front runner in paying attention to the status of the project. If the leader is paying attention to the results, the good communication ensures that the rest of the team can’t fall prey to Inattention to Results.

Following the above principles, the leader will be aware of any problems in the project and have the ability to follow through with the necessary means to keep on track. Firm, consistent follow through, as well as the leader showing personal accountability to the rest of the team, will keep the rest of the team from Avoidance of Accountability.

The thing to note through all of this, is that having the right people is really the most important factor. A good leader with bad, or just the wrong, people will be no better off than a good team with poor leadership. Sadly, most failed groups actually have bad leadership AND members. In that case you can pretty much throw all these ideas out the window and have a corporate merger.

Sigh

I need to look for work still...

I need to get more than 20-25 hours a week out of 2 jobs...

I need to be able to pay my sister back... 4 months of rent she's covered so far without any of my part.

Gas is ridiculously expensive... it costs me somewhere between $16-18 to go back and forth to school once a week. $44 to fill up the tank from empty. And my car sucks. The brakes are in sorry shape, which caused me to have to really pull out some 1337 driving skills to avoid getting into an accident when a bad one happened a few cars ahead of me on my way to school last week.

But... I do have a CDL and work experience in another field... yet one more thing to put on my resume.

So... even though i'm rather depressed (considering i'm an optimist) the optimism is still there. Now to go get my homework done for my class tonight and to finish catching up in my online class that I fell a bit behind in over the last 2 weeks.

VisualDNA

I saw this on MM:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

The Church of Baseball '07 I

The Brewers made it through the first week 3-3. Ben Sheets had a complete game 2-hitter in the opener, but had a less than stellar game 5 days later. The offense scored as little as 1 run and as much as 9. They had games of perfect defense with amazing plays, as well as games with head scratching moves. All in all, a first week of the season type of week. So long as they keep up playing .500 baseball while they work out some of the kinks, they should stay in good position to make a run for the playoffs. I hope. In other news, the Cleveland Indians are borrowing Miller Park to play their home games in this week, due to the atrocious weather. I wish I could get down to one of them, because $10 for field level seats is a deal I'll probably never see again in my life. Pictured above is JJ Hardy, being congratulated by Prince Fielder on his home run on Wednesday.

I Passed

I Passed the road test to become a school bus driver. Hide your children.

A Post

My busy-ness factor has increased dramatically this week. I'm interested in doing lots of stuff, but, short of doing something like requesting a day off of work, there's no way I could say with any certainity that I'd be able to do something at a given time. That's with only working 5 hours last week too... I'm scheduled a lot of on-call shifts that I get used for just enough to not be able to plan anything during them. I've also started CDL B&C /P /S training this week, and was studying books and taking the written tests for an instruction permit last week. This is on top of starting school, 8 credits worth, just two weeks ago. I haven't even checked my chocobo since the weekend. Well, I got more long-winded than I intended, but, that's wassup. (Also had a couple music practices last week.)

-This is what I posted on the linkshell forum, saying what's goin on.

God Save the Trees

The trees of the world are thankful for the online revolution. Sure, from 1995-2000, Canada doubled it’s paper production, and paper usage has been estimated to have increased by 40% since the popularization of e-mail[1], but just think of the amount of knowledge out there on the World Wide Web; tree-friendly information. A major advantage of online communication is the availability of knowledge without sacrificing our environment.



It’s impossible to say exactly how many web sites there are on the World Wide Web, due to it’s dynamic nature, but, according to Thomas Boutell’s calculations based on there being over 108 million individual websites counted by the Netcraft Web Server Survey in February, there are at least 19.2 billion individual web pages[2]. A ream of paper weighs about 6 lbs, so 19.2 billion pages is the equivalent of 115,200 tons of paper just to print off every site once. That’s a lot of information available without harming a single being of deciduous or coniferous ancestry.



Granted, the accuracy of a lot of the information on the web is suspect, but, having such a huge amount of information at my fingertips, with out defoliating our world is a strong advantage of online communication. Now we just have to get people to stop printing off all of their e-mails.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The ePaper Revolution; Geographical; Aug2005, Vol. 77 Issue 8, p36-37, 2p, 1c Ebsco Host, Acedemic Search Elite, kwd: paper usage

[2] WWW FAQs: How Many Websites Are There?. Boutell.com, 2-15-2007 Thomas Boutell. http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/sizeofweb.html

That pic

Hmm

I guess I need to stretch out the image a bit to cope with these modern resolutions. But, iirc I made this graphic all by myself way back in the mid 90s (well, except for the X-Wings.) Also, now my font colors seem to be messed up. Don't worry, i'll be going back to the look right before this in a little bit.

My Career Stats

As we're gearing up for the baseball season, I thought it might be fun to post my 'career' softball stats :) Unfortunately, I didn't get 2004 into my database, and I played in a different type of softball league in '05, so the stats don't really compare. Anyways..., let's see if I get this coded alright:

G  AB  H  2b 3b HR BB SO AVG  OB%  SLG   OPS  Year
6  15  9  2  1  1  4  1 .600 .684 1.067 1.751 2002
10 35  23 4  1  1  1  1 .657 .667  .914 1.581 2003
18 60  39 11 3  1  1  0 .650 .656  .983 1.639 2006
34 110 71 17 5  3  6  2 .645 .664  .991 1.655 Career

I think I hit the jackpot with the pre tag :)

It really stinks that I can't find 2004, since that was probably my best year that I can recall. Had a batting average of almost .750 in ten games that I had stats for. Didn't have tournament stats, though. Oh well. :)

While I'm At It

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 9 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?