Brinens and Things

Me in January: It's nice that I was able to get that course done in two months--that much closer to a diploma!--but I'm pretty sure it was a fluke caused by having so much prior computer experience.

Me, one month later, submitting a midterm assignment: ??? :)???

---

(There *is* a final exam on this course, so that'll be an extra couple weeks at the end, but still.)

---

(On the one hand, the first unit was a review of micro that *didn't assume you had already taken microeconomics*. On the other hand, I also completed units 2 and 3 a lot faster than scheduled.

Maybe, after seven years and twenty-one courses, freshman-level courses (especially freshman-level courses with no essays) just aren't a big deal anymore? Both of my other remaining courses are mid-level, so we'll see.)

(previously on)

Submitted my final assignment of the semester today, about eight weeks after I started.

Three more courses/semesters to go. Next stop: macroeconomics.

I had vaguely gotten the impression that 7-zip was newfangled and not widely supported, and then my university gave me a bunch of 7-zipped practice-data files for a course intended to be taken by tech-illiterate people using Windows.

(also it turns out it's 20 years old)

"Wait," I thought, "if manipulating .7z files on Windows is so easy that someone who's never so much as used a word processor can do it, why has it not replaced .zip? What's the *actual* catch?"

It seems that the *actual* tradeoff for the smaller file size is that it takes longer to compress. (The one I have going right now estimates it'll take a total time of 4 - 5 hours, for a folder that normally takes about 40 minutes.) Probably not worth it for things like my Thunderbird backup where I'm making fresh zips a couple times a month, but worth switching to for long-term storage.

A couple hours later, my personal archives take up ~1.8GB less space. 7-zipping seems to be particularly good (relative to ordinary .zips) on wget scrapes and other HTML files.

This freshman-level university course on using Microsoft Office (specifically: Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, in that order) in a business environment appears to be operating under the assumption that I have never used a word processor in my life.

I suspected it would (computer classes aimed at non-technical people tend to be like that), yet it's still kind of weirding me out. Well, there's no minimum semester length: if I do indeed breeze through this mandatory course quickly, I'll reach my diploma that much faster. And to be fair, I *have* gained two (2) pieces of information in my first day: what a ribbon is called, and how to make headings directly rather than mimicking them with bolding and font size and such.

Since I've never put much deliberate effort into learning all the ins and outs of what a word processor is capable of--just the stuff I've picked up over 20 years of ordinary use--I do expect there'll be a bunch of little things like the headings. And I've never made a slideshow, so the PowerPoint stuff will all be new.

I got 86.5% on my final. This gives me an average grade for the course of 90%, just over the border into the highest grade category.

Had to postpone last week's backups because my laptop had enough on its plate, so here is a somewhat larger roundup.


Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

---

Comments on other people's posts:

(Note: this post is subject to a formatting glitch. The last post is still last, but all *other* posts in the thread are in reversed order.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by icarian-arts) Today in "memes that came to people in visions": accidental tips on phone customisation.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by femmenietzsche) The social acceptability of the word "bitch".

[Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden OP apparently later turned crawlability on] (OP by yvannairie) The complicatedness of musical taste. [three comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by yvannairie) Pokemon Go identity logistics.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by thisismycursed3rdblog; addressing itsmaledict (Halloween alt of itsbenedict)) Just how many twists can we put into enemies-to-friends-to-lovers?

---

Links:

[FiveThirtyEight; Wayback] (by Ben Casselman; h/t Scott Alexander) As a 25-year-old part-time student in a certificate program at a school that prides itself on its *high* acceptance rate and who has never lived on-campus, I really feel this article.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by doctorbeth) Adorable stuffed-animal clothing.

[mild cw: war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by the-battle-lesbian; h/t consumptive-sphinx) Shaun Keenan does some excellent art of dinosaurs in (relatively) modern contexts.

[BBC News; Wayback] (can't find a byline; h/t Matt Levine) The best roundabouts in the United Kingdom.

[cw: abuse] [The Outline; Wayback] (by Joanna Mang; h/t Scott Alexander) I remember Shakesville, though I was never a regular reader: it was too intense for even 2011!me to handle. (And I say this as someone who was once among the top 5 most prolific commenters on Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.) I disagree with Scott's assessment, though: to the extent that Shakesville strikes me as less terrifying than it did before, it is only because I have since met people whose goodwill is not conditional on staying in the good graces of Shakesville's ilk.

[Raph's Website; Wayback] (by Raph Koster) A postmortem of the MMO Star Wars: Galaxies. I never played it and am not sure I've even heard of it before, but the series is interesting nonetheless.

(although why one would deliberately create a world in which everything decays I do not know; decay is the worst part of the real world and I for one would rather not have it in my escapism, especially not in such a...well, *inescapable* manner)

Laugh rule:
[Sputnikmusic; Wayback] (by SowingSeason)

traits not necessarily suitable for a band that regularly references animals and shouts hey! an average of nine time per song.

(I finally got around to listening to this 2015 album recently. Very solid album, only a couple of duds. (Whereas with My Head Is an Animal I only liked about the first half.) My favourite was "We Sink", because I am predictable and also it is pretty.)


Bonus: a few selections from my recent bookmark-tidying.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by deird1) The Vegemite Effect. (A memory: "This food tastes of lies," I say, waving around a piece of food from the Chinese buffet when I'd been *told* we were going to a steakhouse.)

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by thatsnotwatyourmomsaid) Hello, you must have found my camera!

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Chris Witham) Welcoming new zombies to the collective.

[K.B. Owen Mysteries; Wayback] (by James Thurber) Viewing Macbeth through the lens of murder mysteries.

Laugh rule:
[Bandcamp; Wayback (while for *best* results you'll need the audio, Wayback *will* at least get you the lyrics)] (by Brooke Abbey) Let me tell you the story, as sad as it's true...

(previous post)

"[T]he company declared a property dividend. Each share was to receive eight units of the Atomic Accountant action figure."

Currently in the process of forcing my sleep schedule back. For now I'm doing 45 minutes: 11:45 - 8:15 instead of 12:30 - 9.

I want to stop having to negotiate with the exam centre every time I take an exam (they normally do external exams at 9:30 AM, and I can't do a 9:30 AM exam that far away without being too sleep-deprived to exam properly). I want to take a step closer to availability for 9 - 5 internships. And I'm pretty sure that somewhere in my brain, half-buried under a lifetime of habit, is a love of mornings, and it would probably be good to embrace that even if it *weren't* practically useful.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual sleep part of it worked pretty much immediately but *everything else* is a struggle. There's a whole web of associations and routines that needs to be re-done. What times should I eat? Study? Exercise?

I can't just uniformly shift everything back 45 minutes, since some aspects of my schedule are dependant on other people's schedules and those haven't changed. Do I need to add an extra snacktime to account for dinner being 45 minutes later relative to most other things? Or rather, I guess I should move one of the later snacks up, since the total amount of waking time in the day is the same. Where do I move it to? And should I eat dinner 45 minutes earlier on days where everyone else is at work and there's nobody to coordinate with, or would that instability just make things worse? (It would probably just make things worse.)

I've been in a bad mood the past couple of days, and while it's mostly manifesting as to-do-list anxiety I suspect this is the root cause (or at least a major factor; the awkward period where [it's a bit too early to start studying for the exam, but if I move on to the first post-midterm chapter I'll have to take weeks off from it for the exam studying, so there's not really a point in doing any schoolwork at all right now] can't be helping). Can't wait to have a routine again, and one with room for fun.

I was supposed to have my midterm this morning, but the exam centre is having a snow day. (*looks out window* ...admittedly, I can see why.)

I...don't actually know what happens in this case, and of course since they're closed it's not like I can call them up and ask. I don't know if I'll be able to do it this same week, or if I'll have to wait until next week.

(I do know that my university is not going to mind, at least. When I told them I was having my exam ""on February 12th"", this actually means promising to have the exam on February 12th *or the 10 business days thereafter*, and exactly when within this period I have the exam is between me and the exam centre. As long as I stay within those bounds, they don't even want me to bother telling them if I'm late.)

((Fun fact: as long as the *beginning* of your exam window is before the semester deadline, the exam is officially not late even if you don't actually take the exam until after the deadline. Yes, I *did* once exploit this loophole at the end of a particularly rough semester to effectively get a free three-day exam-only extension. I asked first to clarify that this was in fact allowed.))

I'm not even really worried about the exam itself: I did the practice exam yesterday, and I got 95%, and it felt *easy*. But I *would* still like to get it over with, and failing that I would at least have liked to go to bed tonight *knowing* whether or not I have an exam tomorrow.