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Screwed over by MCC

Background: I’m in the 2+2 program with MCC and RIT in an Information Technology major. Basically what this means is that I go to MCC (a community college) and pay much less tuition for the first two years of my college education, and then am automatically transfered to RIT (a very expensive private college) for the other 2nd two years - no application necessary. I’m currently in my 3rd semester at MCC, which should mean that next semester would be my last - and then I’d move on to RIT.

Situation: Registration started a couple days ago, so, because I’m the good student that I am, I started making out my schedule. I only need 4 classes: CIS 209, CSC 206, Statistics, and Advanced Java… none of which I was thrilled about having to take. (more…)

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Living at MCC now

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I’ve officially moved into the dorm at MCC (Pioneer).

I’ve got my own suite, next to Spencer’s. Our roommates are cool.

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Books and Such

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I went to MCC today and got my books. I decided not to get the one for the networking class I’m auditing unless I talk to the professor and he says I need it. There was also one other that I wasn’t able to get (they were out?). Even without those two, the total bill came to like $3XX.

I also ordered prescription sun glasses.  They’re pretty sweet, I can’t wait until they come in.

And then when I got home I put my new work and class schedule into iCal… it’s scary. If I were to put in time to study (class time x2), time to eat, and time to sleep…. I would have no time left. So there goes what little social life I had. haha. I may have to tell Hurricane that I can’t work on Saturdays. Hopefully if I do have to go that route Jeremiah won’t mind too much. He pretty much works 6 days a week as it is, at least then he’d get paid for it.

Off to school (LCS) and Angio bright and early tomorrow, so good night.

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Wow, crazyness (graduation)

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So I’m done.

It’s strange and wonderful and I love being done and hate being done all at the same time.
Senior fun night was sweet, and the actual ceremony went well.

Thanks everyone for making senior year, and my entire high school career what it was.
Shouts go out to  the class of ‘07 and all of the awesome teachers I’ve had over the years.

Pictures will be up on Flickr soon (DIG! WHAT IS YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS?). If anyone wants higher res pics that I might have, email me (ben @ benw dot us).
If anyone has pics from senior fun night, email them to me! I forgot my camera. :(

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Awesome Opportunity

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Wow, so this goes under a lot of categories.
This summer my school is going to be looking for a network engineering intern.
They want to add their mini-Mac lab to their Novell network.
So I’m really excited. I’d love to be able to do that and work at Hurricane.

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It’s finally finished!

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Recorded, edited, rendered, re-rendered, burned, encoded, and uploaded.

Finally.

I proudly present “Economics 101″:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

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Economics…

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Last night I was at Maxwell’s from 4:30 - 11:45 (7 hours and 15 minutes for the math impaired) filming a video for Economics class. And I still haven’t even started editing it.

I have this very strange problem with Sony Vegas every time we film a movie with his camera. I can copy+paste the AVI files off his camera, and play them in any of the numerous players that I have installed. I can even edit it in Windows Movie Maker. But whenever I import it into Vegas I lose the video (last time we did this I think we lost the audio).

I remember last time we solved that by downloading something from Sony’s website, but I have no idea what it was, or where on Sony’s site to get it. If anyone has some suggestions… IM me.

We better get an A+, Mr. Bellis. -_-

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Re: Teaching Again

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As I posted here, Jordan and I taught IT Essentials again on Friday (yesterday). It went pretty smoothly. We didn’t have any technical glitches this time, thankfully. We used the overhead speaker with no problems.
Mrs. Villone wrote the lesson plan for this class. She created an “interactive activity,” where she wanted kids to come to the middle of the room (we sit in a semi-square) and pretend to be hardware that was trying to talk in a computer. For example, we had a keyboard that wanted to get something to show on the display. So the keyboard would tell the external data bus, who would tell the CPU, who would tell the memory, and so on. Unfortunately it didn’t go exactly as she had planned, and over all I’m not really sure anyone got anything out of it.
We showed another LabRats.tv video, this time on BIOS. I think that the class actually learned a lot from it, but it was slightly off topic, and not everyone paid attention.
My offer still stands to anyone who is thinking about dropping the class because you aren’t learning the material. Come see me, and I will make sure you understand the stuff.

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Teaching Again

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Jordan and I will be teaching IT again on Friday.
This time Mrs. Villone is writing the lesson plan.
We’re going to show another labrats video (on BIOS), so that should be interesting.
I’ll write more tomorrow. :)

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Teaching IT

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Today Jordan and I taught our IT Essentials class.

It was quite the experience. We only had one glitch. Jordan had edited an episode of LabRats on CDs, DVDs, and how they work (burning and such). I tried playing it through my laptop speakers first, which didn’t work so well. No one could hear it. So then we tried to use the overhead speaker that is connected to the projector, but that had too much static… By this point we’re really having fun. Jordan went to one of the computer labs and snagged some USB desktop speakers. Guess what? The didn’t work. So he had to go to another room and get some really crappy regular old speakers. But they worked. Just goes to show the biggest and best, and the latest and greatest aren’t always the best for the job (that overhead speaker in the room cost a pretty penny ;) ).

Anyway, we also talked about memory (RAM), video, and storage (tape drives, external hard drives, etc). It was a pretty fun time other than the above mentioned incident. I had no idea what it was like to have to be up there teaching. I mean I’ve done public speaking before, but to actually be responsible for teaching material to your peers, that they will be tested on later… scary stuff. I have to admit I was pretty nervous.

If anyone from the class would like a copy of my notes, or some extra help, feel free to see me or send me an email. I’d be happy to help. I know some people are seriously thinking about dropping the class, and I’d hate to see that happen. If it’s really just not for you, I get that. But if it’s just because the stuff is a bit difficult, please see me and I will help you.

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