Author: ssegraves

First Week of School; First Impressions

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With the first week of school over I am surprised to say that I may actually enjoy this semester more than last. All of my classes are relatively interesting with the exception of Public Policy.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have Ethics and the professor seems cool and the class, so far at least, is very interesting. On Tuesday and Thursday I have Enterprise Applications, Special Topics in ISQS, and Public Policy. The Enterprise Applications class is going to deal mostly with ASP.NET and C# while the Special Topics class is all Jakarta Struts (exciting!). The Public Policy class is the only class that worries me because the teacher was overly rude on the first day of the class and the size of the class is around 300.

So I am off to a good start for the spring semester. I have a doctor’s appointment Monday afternoon which will hopefully clear up some more of my health issues.

New Mac Toys

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With the Macworld Conference taking place in San Francisco this week Apple has released some very cool products.

Their newest MP3 player is the iPod shuffle. It is a flash media player that connects through a USB port and the 1GB model can hold up to 240 songs, perfect for those trips to the gym. There is no screen to view the current song or playlists on the shuffle, so you will need to upload a playlist that you want to listen to and know its order (if you want to skip songs).

The next piece of news, and probably biggest, is Apple’s announcement of the Mac mini. At $499 the mini is a great alternative to a Dell or Gateway.

To me, the mini looks like a great entry solution for those who are looking to get started with a Mac but do not want to spend the money. $499 is cheap and a decent monitor does not cost too much. You’d basically be paying the same for a lower end Dell.

Anyway, it is just some exciting news out of Cupertino, California.

Returning E-mail

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I probably become annoyed and frustrated too easily by small things but professors not replying to somewhat urgent e-mails really gets me. Granted, school is not in session yet but I know the professor is in his office, all I need is a short little e-mail answering a few questions. How long does that take? 5 minutes, maybe, if he types slowly.

I try to reply to e-mails as soon as possible or if there are a lot, set aside some time to reply. It is just the courteous thing to do.

The U.N.

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After reading some of the audits that were done on the U.N’s Oil-for-Food program by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker I do not understand why were are still a part of the organization. Oh, that’s right, we were one of the founding countries. It still boggles my mind that an organization that scolds the U.S. for invading Iraq, claiming we were in it for the oil, while they sit there and put money in their own pockets instead of helping the Iraqi people long before a war was necessary.

So who is responsible? Well, the obvious answer is Kofi Annan but I think that it goes deeper than that to the point where everyone who had an idea of what was going on with the program and how money was being moved from one pocket to the next is responsible. How the U.S. handles this and what they decide to do with their place in the U.N. is a huge issue at this point and I am interested to see what steps President Bush takes. I am guessing that he will welcome whoever is appointed the new Secretary General but be firm in his handshake to where people get the message.

Education Department in hot water?

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According to USA Today, the Department of Education paid a commentator to promote “No Child Left Behind”. This is definitely not good for the Department of Education or Bush. If Bush knew about the payments taking place and supported them then technically this is an impeachable offense.

However, I do not like to jump to conclusions on these things. For one, it is not exactly known what part of the Department of Education the money came from and there are no specifics on who exactly made the payment.

Trent Duffy, the Whitehouse spokesman, had no comment on the issue stating that they (the White House) are not involved in the Education Department’s contracts.

It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes and what the investigation turns up.

Countdown to school startup

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There are 5 days until classes for the spring semester at Texas Tech University start back up. Am I excited? No, not really but I am ready to get back in the groove of having a clear schedule and having people back in Lubbock.

I was looking through my books (if you can really call them that) for Ethics and they are more philosophical entries on why people lie more than anything. If I have to write a paper on any of this stuff there may be some, if not a lot, made up. I think that is a pet peeve of mine, having people write papers over opinions and not facts. Then people get their grade back and some made C’s and others made A’s. Why? Was one person’s BS better than someone else? It’s an opinion paper, there is no right or wrong answer! Just give us the ‘A’ and move on.

Why I Hate Halftime

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I truly hate halftime shows and last night’s performance by Ashlee Simpson really sealed the deal. First of all, she cannot sing, everyone knows this, well, except her. Second, the song she sang was crude and poorly written.

Who chooses these people to sing?! Kelly Clarkson is bearable because at least she has a voice and her music is “rockish” but Simpson is not a rocker, no matter how hard she tries. I guess my biggest problem is that this is not what football is about. It is not about the teenie bopper kids who want to listen to the new “sounds”.