It's barely been a week since the previous post, but I thought that a short update would be appropriate. Megane and I have been working on the most recent MSTing through the last couple weeks, and we've come up with some decent stuff. The process has been a bit slower, and it is due to the length, but on the other hand I'm still happy with what we've done so far and I think that it shouldn't take many months, only a few.
I mentioned to Megane, and I am happy to post on the blog, that Azumanga Daioh has absolutely grown on me as a series. I needed somewhere around four or five episodes to get acquainted with the characters. There are a few good moments in the first couple episodes, such as Chiyo and Osaka "practicing" volleyball together. However, it seems that the show kind of picks up for me around the tenth episode or so, when you've got a decent idea of all of the characters. The show has zany humor, uncomfortable humor (mostly Kimura, though the cracks about Yukari's driving are a bit unsettling too), and character-driven humor, mostly Osaka and Tomo.
The problem I had with this show was that I only enjoyed the zany humor, and even then I'm not crazy about a lot of it. However, once I started seeing the character-driven humor along with the zany humor, and understanding it, I really started enjoying the series. I will have a more complete write-up of Azumanga Daioh when I finish, which will likely be in a couple days. Just like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, I get the distinct feeling that this series is ending a few episodes too soon, which is a bit depressing.
For me, I'm able to get into these shows lately due to the fact that I'm seeing myself in some of the characters. For Haruhi, it was as Kyon. For Azumanga, it's as Yomi. Of course, it seems that many series need a character that represents a status-quo, someone who is moved by some of the zanier characters so that you can see the impact of what these zany characters do. At any rate, I know that I will definitely enjoy delving into some of the fanfic for these shows because these are characters that I enjoy. If not for the enjoyment of characters and situations in shows, would there be any call for fanfiction after all?
Still no traction on the job front, though I have my classes for next semester laid out. Another micro-econ class, which I tend to enjoy... and then econometrics for winter, featuring the professor I'd been talking about through the beginning of the year. Man, I definitely did not want to see more of that professor, but I suppose that I have no choice if I want to be able to get through with a masters' degree. Such are the challenges of life, I suppose, though I feel somewhat fed up with the same challenges. I really feel as if I'd already stepped up and done what was necessary and needed, yet there's never really a positive result. (Hence, the statement about wanting a "win" for a change.) Hopefully, opportunity will come knocking on my door shortly.
No real opportunity to review Rifftrax lately, there's HP4 but I haven't had a chance to get a copy of it. I hope that Mike and the crew will pick up the output soon, and yeah it's me asking for it while telling you guys "a few months". At any rate, stay frosty folks!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
14 June 2010
06 May 2010
Real Life / School and website maintenance
For a week now, ever since the final exam on the 29th of April, I resisted checking my final grade for my macroeconomics class. I truly felt that my efforts in the class absolutely did not pay off in terms of grades. While I understood the majority of the material that I was being presented, I was graded on whether or not I was able to take exceptions to the material and explain/understand them.
I took the test Thursday thinking that I had ground to make up due to past grades and thinking that all the past grades would probably damn me to a failure (for a $2000 class). I needed to perform almost perfectly. The test I was given was nothing more than Groundhog day--testing on material that was beyond the material covered. At this point, we were into realms of "what happens with X when Y, Z, alpha, and Superfly are changed?"
My mindset was, "I don't need to rehash all of the reasons that I've been semi-depressed for the past four months, and relive all the problems of this class." I'm not a strong person in any sense of the word. I did seventeen-hour days, twice a week for four months to take the class. At least for me, they sapped my energy. Granted, it wasn't all the fault of the class. It was compounded by the fact that work, which takes up eight of the seventeen hours, was and still is highly unsatisfactory.
Since grades have been posted for two days, I steeled my nerve and decided to check online. I received a C+ for the course, to my surprise. It is tied for the lowest grade I had ever received in a college course. On the other hand, I didn't remember any high-school calculus over twelve years later and I definitely didn't know much of macroeconomics, so I consider this somewhat of a victory. I think that the grade can be attributed as much to participation and effort as to scores on assignments. Of course, it could also be partly due to the rather bad class evaluation that I submitted too. Whichever reason, I don't care.
I'm glad to close the book on this stressful period. This was my hardest university course ever, which makes plenty of sense as it is in the graduate level. I had a far easier time with Chinese and Japanese than I did with macroeconomics.
Thankfully, this means that my university education continues, and with hopefully far less difficulty. I am more confident that I can continue and pass the remaining courses I need to pass. It may mean that I have to take tests and possibly write a thesis in order to earn a Master's degree, but I think I will be up to the task. I did entertain thoughts of withdrawing, and almost did in February. However, it worked out in the end and I am extremely glad for it.
Yeah, this is nothing but a self-congratulary post while I'm still sitting on the non-publishing of the most recent Megane 6.7 MSTing (which by the way is pretty funny if I may express my opinion). On the other hand, ten years of writing MSTings has been a good hobby, while my Master's degree will hopefully allow me to choose my employment and my compensation for the remainder of my life. I love you guys, and I definitely want to keep writing MSTings for you, but unfortunately this stuff comes before. The positive is that if I get to the point that I don't have to keep struggling to make ends meet, hobbies will definitely be allocated more time, including this writing habit I picked up more than ten years ago.
I've rambled long enough. New MSTing will be posted by this weekend, hope everyone enjoys it, and thanks for the support!
I took the test Thursday thinking that I had ground to make up due to past grades and thinking that all the past grades would probably damn me to a failure (for a $2000 class). I needed to perform almost perfectly. The test I was given was nothing more than Groundhog day--testing on material that was beyond the material covered. At this point, we were into realms of "what happens with X when Y, Z, alpha, and Superfly are changed?"
My mindset was, "I don't need to rehash all of the reasons that I've been semi-depressed for the past four months, and relive all the problems of this class." I'm not a strong person in any sense of the word. I did seventeen-hour days, twice a week for four months to take the class. At least for me, they sapped my energy. Granted, it wasn't all the fault of the class. It was compounded by the fact that work, which takes up eight of the seventeen hours, was and still is highly unsatisfactory.
Since grades have been posted for two days, I steeled my nerve and decided to check online. I received a C+ for the course, to my surprise. It is tied for the lowest grade I had ever received in a college course. On the other hand, I didn't remember any high-school calculus over twelve years later and I definitely didn't know much of macroeconomics, so I consider this somewhat of a victory. I think that the grade can be attributed as much to participation and effort as to scores on assignments. Of course, it could also be partly due to the rather bad class evaluation that I submitted too. Whichever reason, I don't care.
I'm glad to close the book on this stressful period. This was my hardest university course ever, which makes plenty of sense as it is in the graduate level. I had a far easier time with Chinese and Japanese than I did with macroeconomics.
Thankfully, this means that my university education continues, and with hopefully far less difficulty. I am more confident that I can continue and pass the remaining courses I need to pass. It may mean that I have to take tests and possibly write a thesis in order to earn a Master's degree, but I think I will be up to the task. I did entertain thoughts of withdrawing, and almost did in February. However, it worked out in the end and I am extremely glad for it.
Yeah, this is nothing but a self-congratulary post while I'm still sitting on the non-publishing of the most recent Megane 6.7 MSTing (which by the way is pretty funny if I may express my opinion). On the other hand, ten years of writing MSTings has been a good hobby, while my Master's degree will hopefully allow me to choose my employment and my compensation for the remainder of my life. I love you guys, and I definitely want to keep writing MSTings for you, but unfortunately this stuff comes before. The positive is that if I get to the point that I don't have to keep struggling to make ends meet, hobbies will definitely be allocated more time, including this writing habit I picked up more than ten years ago.
I've rambled long enough. New MSTing will be posted by this weekend, hope everyone enjoys it, and thanks for the support!
03 February 2010
Short games review, school, and AMFAS update.
Not much new or interesting to report through the last couple months... the latest MSTing is still going through a painstaking editing process, and we're pretty close to completion. Thankfully, Megane and I had hammered out a consistent time to get together to write these MSTings on a regular basis, which is better than it has been. It's a good thing we did too, because school and work and family is already a huge chunk of my life, and I just started playing three new games too: Dragon Age, Tropico 3, and Sim City 4 (the old-school $6 bargain game).
So far, Dragon Age is shaping up well, though I must admit that I'm completely unfamiliar with the interface. I'm used to console RPGs like the Final Fantasy type, rather than pointing and clicking on which enemy to deal with. (I'm so horribly out-of-it at times...) I'm enjoying the graphics and the game though, even if I can only install it on one computer (my laptop is the only one good enough to run it).
Tropico 3 is an updating of the original Tropico, which I still have. It's not a bad update, though I just started playing it and haven't really entered into the changes as of yet. The biggest one that I am glad of is a transportation setup; in the original game, people had to *WALK* to the various locations which always took forever. This was a problem because if you wanted to build tourist buildings, you either had to do it immediately or forget it, as builders would take months or years to get their lazy little electronic butts to the worksite, work for a few seconds, and leave. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier.
Sim City 4 is actually not too bad. The biggest issue I'm not impressed with is the fact that there's only a few regions loaded onto the game, and only two random ones. This, combined with the fact that building your own region would be a six- to ten-hour undertaking, is a major drawback. The gameplay is interesting though, even if it seems that this Sims is just as bad at times with simulating the actual game... I've had people tell me that traffic is bad even though they live one block away from their destination (in this case, their commute).
School is another matter, though... I can see why professionals get into the specially-designed degree mills, even if I think they're loads of crap. I had to skip a level in macroeconomics due to the fact that they did not have either an afternoon OR an evening division open. And now that I'm in advanced macroeconomics, I'm really finding a hard go of it. I'm using calculus that is either 12 years old or that I didn't have in the first place, and the professor is not helping matters much at all. Therefore, studying has been difficult at best too, because it seems that there's just no flow to the processes being introduced. I understand that college isn't the place to spoon-feed knowledge and information, but having a professor skip around haphazardly and call it "teaching" is incorrect as well.
Soon: A review of Cinematic Titanic's new(ish) offering, "East Meets Watts". Joel and the gang tackle the combined HK Action/Blaxploitation offering, but live!
So far, Dragon Age is shaping up well, though I must admit that I'm completely unfamiliar with the interface. I'm used to console RPGs like the Final Fantasy type, rather than pointing and clicking on which enemy to deal with. (I'm so horribly out-of-it at times...) I'm enjoying the graphics and the game though, even if I can only install it on one computer (my laptop is the only one good enough to run it).
Tropico 3 is an updating of the original Tropico, which I still have. It's not a bad update, though I just started playing it and haven't really entered into the changes as of yet. The biggest one that I am glad of is a transportation setup; in the original game, people had to *WALK* to the various locations which always took forever. This was a problem because if you wanted to build tourist buildings, you either had to do it immediately or forget it, as builders would take months or years to get their lazy little electronic butts to the worksite, work for a few seconds, and leave. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier.
Sim City 4 is actually not too bad. The biggest issue I'm not impressed with is the fact that there's only a few regions loaded onto the game, and only two random ones. This, combined with the fact that building your own region would be a six- to ten-hour undertaking, is a major drawback. The gameplay is interesting though, even if it seems that this Sims is just as bad at times with simulating the actual game... I've had people tell me that traffic is bad even though they live one block away from their destination (in this case, their commute).
School is another matter, though... I can see why professionals get into the specially-designed degree mills, even if I think they're loads of crap. I had to skip a level in macroeconomics due to the fact that they did not have either an afternoon OR an evening division open. And now that I'm in advanced macroeconomics, I'm really finding a hard go of it. I'm using calculus that is either 12 years old or that I didn't have in the first place, and the professor is not helping matters much at all. Therefore, studying has been difficult at best too, because it seems that there's just no flow to the processes being introduced. I understand that college isn't the place to spoon-feed knowledge and information, but having a professor skip around haphazardly and call it "teaching" is incorrect as well.
Soon: A review of Cinematic Titanic's new(ish) offering, "East Meets Watts". Joel and the gang tackle the combined HK Action/Blaxploitation offering, but live!
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