10:18a

Okay, so I’m in the first day of a three day class on ADO.NET, and so far… it’s okay. I think this first day’s going to be pretty much review for me anyway, since I’ve done some ADO.NET stuff before, so I’m enjoying the review while it lasts.

This is the first course the instructor has taught on ADO.NET, so you can tell it’s a learning experience for him, too, while he determines what people will expect to get out of the class. He’s a good guy, though, and I think he’s got it pretty much down.

It’s a different training facility than I usually go to, and while it’s only like 10 minutes from my house, the facility is not as good as the one I usually go to. There are free drinks, like the usual place I go, but it’s your choice of four generic caffeine free drinks, which aren’t helping me at all.

A quick rundown of the weekend: Went to see SWAT, which was a lot of fun that maybe I’ll write a review on later if I’m so inclined. Spent a lot of time studying for my next test and I’m beginning to realize once again why I hated school so much. It’s too much work to learn stuff that you probably won’t use except to pass tests. Went shopping to buy some new clothes because I’ve been watching La Femme Nikita episodes too much and now feel compelled to dress like the Roy Dupuis character, Michael. Went to the comic store and found that a guy I used to go to high school with works there now, so took some time to catch up with him. Went to Krispy Kreme to get some donuts. Went out to eat with my friend Gerb, who just moved back to town, and met a really cool waitress at the place we ate. Other than that… nothing.

My parents are having a huge garage sale next weekend, so Jenn and I are going to try to sell off our dining room set because it’s this huge wood menagerie that really doesn’t fit our current tastes (or space). We’ll take the money from that and get a more stylish wrought-iron-and-glass affair, probably something closer to bistro style. We don’t really eat at the table anyway; it’s used mostly as a place to stash things that need a home. A smaller “stash area” just means we’ll need to be more vigilant in putting things away, which is fine by me.

I should probably do the lab now.

10:44a

Lab’s done. Five minutes, baby. Piece of cake.

11:47a

I’ve been wondering why these machines are so slow, but I went looking at the properties and they’re single-processor, 500MHz machines with 256MB of RAM. Running Visual Studio .NET. And SQL Server 2000.

Let’s just say there’s a lot of waiting going on.

Mmmm. Caffeine-free generic lemon-lime soda. All of the calories, none of the waking up. Love it.

11:58a

Lunchtime.

12:53p

I went to Pizzicato for lunch, thinking, you know, that I’d like some pizza. It’d been a long time since I’d been to Pizzicato, but I remember there being some tasty pizza there. So I went.

I don’t know when they stopped offering conventional pizza flavors like Canadian bacon and pineapple or whatever, but now you have your choice of cheese, pepperoni, or, like, “barbecued chicken and artichoke hearts.” What?! Um, I’d like a slice of Hawaiian, my friend. Where’s Pizza Schmizza when you need it?

I decided to bust out the ol’ iPod while I was eating, which was cool, but I was using some cheap headphones that I got as a promotional giveaway item (they automatically wind themselves up, which is nice for travel). The headphones suck. No bass response, no power (you have to crank the volume to hear them), no left/right markings…

I will bring the iPod stock headphones tomorrow, but I do need those in-the-ear jobs I was looking at.

While I was in town heading for Pizzicato, I think I saw this girl Sarah that I used to go to high school with. I remember her telling me at the reunion that she worked in that area, so it was probably her. I didn’t flag her down or anything, I just thought it interesting that I saw her.

1:15p

There’s this lady in my class who… she means well and all, but she’s kind of annoying.

See, this is a three-day class. There’s probably four or five days’ worth of material, but it’s a three-day class. The teacher has told us that, due to the short time we have, we can either go through the…

OK, now I’m pissed.

She just sent me a little “note” to ask me to stop typing because it’s hard to “concentrate on what the teacher’s saying.” Fuck this shit.

See, the thing is that there’s not enough time to do all of the demos, practices, and labs, but since the labs are the same as the demos, the teacher has said we should do the labs rather than all of the demos. This chick in class thinks we should do both the demos and the labs, so we can sit in here for 10 hours each day instead of the scheduled eight. For a while, I was thinking, “Well, okay, you know, you learn your way and I’ll learn mine, but while you’re learning yours, I’ll type up my blog and whatever.”

Then she passes me this fucking note because she “can’t concentrate” or something. Sounds like a personal problem to me, the inability to multitask or function around - gasp - keys clicking. This bitch has stepped on my last nerve. I really want her to ask me for help now. Just ask, bitch. You’ll be talkin’ to the hand, ‘cuz the ears ain’t listening. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

2:56p

I’m done with the lab, about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Now I’m going to type my ass off to irritate this lady. I don’t even have anything to say, but if it’ll get me to type louder and longer, I’ll type it. I should, like, just find something online or whatever to copy, like some e-book or something. Or I could just do some stream of consciousness style writing, almost like I’m doing right now - just come up with crap off the top of my head to type.

Heh.

I won’t bore you with that. Maybe I’ll just pound keys or something, just mashing the keyboard in a pseudo-random fashion. But not here. (It’s totally random here, not just pseudo-random.)

3:06p

Penny Arcade has a brilliant discussion about the views of the uninformed when it comes to First Amendment rights in relation to video games. Apparently there was a political cartoon released that makes it sound like video games are designed specifically to dement today’s youth. I tend to agree more with the distinct lack of parenting argument. Folks, let’s put it very simply: Your kids will turn out OK if you pay attention to them. It’s not the game’s fault if your child is unable to discern between fantasy and reality.

3:15p

Here’s an interesting thing that I didn’t know was possible - people can have different sets of DNA in different body parts. It’s called “Chimera twins.” Sort of throws a wrench in the works for CSI, doesn’t it?

The Internet connection here is really shitty… or they have a slow proxy server. It takes around 15 seconds just to do a DNS lookup on a server, which doesn’t count the time it takes to load a site.

3:50p

I’ve run out of random stuff to type. Bah. I’ve moved on to drawing in MS Paint: .

4:37p

I think we’ll be running late here. Thanks, bitch.

4:48p

That’s it for today. Onward to tomorrow. Gotta go home and study.