The Pnebleu Blog

Yesterday, was a great day!  In the morning, I had my 6-month review at work, which went very well.  I got a $0.50 per hour raise!  Then, in the afternoon, I finally got my Aggie ring.  Here’s a picture.

I have been counting down the days/hours to get this, and now I finally have it.  Thanks to my parent for buying it for me as a gift!  Thanks to them, again, and everyone else who has helped me get to this point in my life!  I love you all!

Life is begin to get crazy. I’ve been going to AITP (Association of Technology Professionals) meetings from 7PM to 10PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. School is kicking into gear, finally. Projects, homework, papers, and exams are becoming due. It has been quite busy at work lately. Only a two part time techs are there at the same time each day, so each of our workloads are very high.

Hurricane Ike causes a lot of damage to the Houston area, but it has also affected Central Texas. All of Robertson County is out of power, except for Navasota Valley Electric Co-op, so my parents are one of the few who still have power. The longest estimate for power to be out is 4 weeks, but it could be fixed within a few days. There was a problem with Entergy in Conroe. Ike has disrupted my Netflix mailings, but I’m not upset about it. There’s nothing more that Netflix can do (rerouting my movies to Dallas instead of Houston), and I have used the time to work on school and resume preparation instead of watching a movie.

As I am waiting for my loan application to come in the mail, my laptop has become more and more of a problem. So, fortunately, my parents agreed to temporarily cover the cost of my new PC purchase. As soon as the loan comes in I will write them a big check. I purchased a Dell XPS 630 with the Intel quad-core Q9300 processor, 4GB of RAM, 500GB RAID-1 HDD configuration, ATI HD 3870 graphics card, Vista Ultimate, and a 22-in LCD monitor. It’s estimated delivery date is from 9/29 to 10/1. Aaahh! I’m going to have to work on my patience with this purchase.

I ordered my Aggie ring a few weeks ago. I will arrive on November 14th! I’m excited about that, another test of my patience. Well, I’m off to talk to my adviser to see how my next semester looks.

Today was the first day of class of my senior year at Texas A&M University.  It was a great day!  My classes are going to be difficult, but my schedule is very satisfactory (except for lunch, I have to squeeze it in to the time I drive from work to school).  I’m taking Nutrition, Post-Civil War U.S. History, Web-Enabled Applications, MIS, and ERP (Enterprise Resouce Planning).

I work for 4 hours in the mornings and have class from 12:45PM to 5:25PM in the evenings on Monday through Thursday.  Fridays are my flex-days.  I am scheduled to work only the four hours on Fridays as well, but I don’t have any classes on Friday.  I can use the afternoons to do homework or projects, or I can just stay at work and get more hours.  It is up to me.

After a few chores and homework today, I am going to change my blog’s theme, I have been wanting to for quite a while and now I have a reason.  I have a Smugmug account and I can’t add the photos link to my current pages list.  So it time for a change.  You will soon see.

If you’ve read the sidebar, you should be aware that I’m a junior at Texas A&M University.  TAMU is full of traditions.  Greeting passersby with a “howdy” is one of the most recognizable traditions practiced on- and off-campus.  Every year there is a cyclical decline of the use of “howdy.”  High in August and decline through December.  There is a low spike in January, then it declines to it’s lowest in May.  I’ve notice over the pass three years an overall decline in “howdy’s” use.

I attribute the iPod as a leading reason for the decline in “howdy’s” that I hear.  The popularity of the Apple iPod and other mp3 players lead to people wearing headphones to and from class on campus.  Listening to music, Aggies are less likely to spout a brief “howdy” to the person walk by, and if you walk by someone wearing headphones/earbuds you are less likely to say “howdy,” as not to disturb them.

This is a sad trend here in Aggieland.  I hope the new classes admitted will push to bring back “howdy” to the levels it once was.  I’ll do my part and say “howdy” to everyone I pass.

Today, I had time to take a walk around campus, so I took some pictures. Take a look at them here: http://pnebleu.com/blog/photos/campus-tour-08/

I’m tested out. I had two tests today: History of Landscape Architecture in North America and Finance. I feel moderately satisfied with the LAND test, but I feel really good about the FINC test! Normally, the exam keys are posted online after the test is over, but they are not up yet. I’m anxiously awaiting them. I need to make an A on the finance test to have the chance to get an A in the class. I could make anything better than a C on the LAND test. My brain is a little fried this evening.

Two quizzes, two online lectures, and a paper are due Friday for my lame/boring Marketing class. The material could be presented in a much more engaging manner this it is currently. On Friday’s, we have breakout discussion sessions. These are used for simple group projects and, obviously, discussion of the topics. They are the worst part of this class. They are a waste of my time and don’t increase my understanding of the material in anyway.

Mays Business School will be “experimenting” with differentiated tuition this coming fall semester. One of the main reasons sited for this cash grab is the increase in the number of classes with breakout sessions. Most of the classes offered currently are of a large lecture nature, usually with 150+ students. My largest is about 350 students. The administration wants to reduce this number for the discussion sessions. My questions is why? Every breakout session I’ve had in the business school has been mostly a waste of time when I could have been learning more material in a lecture or just studying on my own. One of the reasons I love Texas A&M University would be the fact that most of the classes required are large lectures with 150+ students. I like the anonymity and unidirectional nature of these classes. I wanted to be a number: ***-00-**** (hidden for my safety).

Update: I just discovered that I made another 88 on my finance test.  This is the third test and the third 88.  I’m a little frustrated.  I’ll talk to the TA to discover the problem with one answer that I’m not sure why it’s incorrect.