BSU Scheduling

Ok so all of us have just requested our schedules for the Fall of 2009, and I'm sure most of you either didn't get what you wanted or you got what you wanted just not at the right time. The system doesn't seem very fair to underclassmen, sure for juniors and seniors it works fine because they are going to get what they want no matter what, but for freshman and sophomores it seems very likely that you could miss an important class just because the university doesn't offer enough seats for everyone. The more and more I think about it, I believe there has to be another to remedy this or atleast offer more seats or something.

I know once I'm a junior or a senior i'll realize this is the way to do it since you need certain classes and your nearing graduation so that is justified, but how does screwing the underclassmen work into the equation especially ones that have switched their major around a few times. I know it is a useless rant and I'm sure i'll get over it, but its really aggravating when you've planned out your schedule and when you get it back you get nothing like you wanted, gaps here and there and even some not there at all. It is just ridiculous.

Ok i'm done I had to rant and put my feelings on paper because I didn't get one of the history classes I wanted and I guess there is still a good chance I can still get it, but I don't know how lucky i'm going to get. Hopefully it opens up and i'll be waiting to snatch it up. Other than that I got what I wanted they just couldn't give me the times so I have big gaps in my schedule hopefully I can fill them up =]. Hope the rest of the class had better luck with it than I did, and if you didn't I'm sorry.

Wrapping up

Ok so like many us, I got a sudden realization that I have only 3 days of classes left because I only have school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is amazing at how fast this semester went and overall my whole first year. It has been a great year and it's going to be sorta weird having a 4 month summer as opposed to all those high school summers where you barely eeked in 3 months. I also decided not to take any summer classes this time around, but plan on taking them later because I felt I could use a break, but it is going to be strange not getting a constant feed of history every week and I'll be eager to get back into i'm sure when August rolls around.

Luckily I don't have many actually finals this semester as far as big multiple choice tests go. I only have one of those and two regular exams and then of course our english portfolio and a research paper which I already completed and received an A on. Hopefully it won't be a stressful end, but it seems it will be smooth as long as I just keep ahead and don't let it pile on.

All in all I wish all you good luck with your finals and wrapping up the rest of your semesters.

MY BLOG AND THE BLOGOSPHERE

Ok so at first I didn't know what to expect when we had to start writing on a blog on a weekly basis. So I figured since the presidential inauguration was on the horizon I would talk about it starting off. This also gave me my name for my blog, Obama Mama, I chose this name because I believed that since it was a little weird, yet funny that it would attract people to read it, rather than just naming it Curtis' English Blog. My posts usually follow a theme in that most of them were either book reviews or about a certain part of the world that was having a crisis or something going on in current events. Most of the time it wasn't written as stream of consciousness but a few posts were me ranting about some problem I came across during the day.

I think my best blog posts were about some of my book reviews. They didn't necessarily receive a lot of comments, but to me they are the ones I put the most amount of time into because I wanted to express my views about the most current book that I read. It gave me a way of letting out my feelings on what happened in the book. The most popular posts however were my ranting about problems I faced in my day. I think it is because most people had either ran across that problem either during the day or at some point in their life, or even that they found it comical because the way I told it was told with a somewhat sarcastic tone. Overall my favorite blog posts were definitely the ones that pertained to either current events/issues or about book reviews.

I believe that the blog was an excellent tool for this English class. I'm being totally honest in saying that because I hate writing about boring short excerpts that you have no idea where they came from. Now on the other hand when you can write on a blog about whatever you want as long as there is some thought behind, it makes writing more interesting and enjoyable. I think it depends on how it is done however, but if you have the freedom to write about whatever you want and not something like what I stated above. I think this can be one of the most effective tools for writing. It seems it makes students get more involved with writing when they can write about whatever they want with no restrictions.

Overall, I enjoyed writing on the blog because it allowed me to express my feelings about current events and to tell everyone about what I have read and what I have enjoyed in my history classes. I definitely hope this is a growing trend in English classes because it is an innovative way to practice writing, as well as express your feelings, and it is enjoyable and painless. Eventually I plan on starting my own blog for history because I want to inform people about history and what I have had the privilege to learn.

Somali Pirates...Strike again and again

Ok so we all know all the publicity the US got when Richard Phillips the commander of a freightliner heading through the passage handed himself over to the Somali pirates to prevent harm to his crew. After a daring effort by the US Navy approved by President Barack Obama Phillips was saved and the pirates were subdued. This I would hope would lead to an increase in security against the actions of piracy since we use the passage to India often.

In case you didn't know, today, Tuesday April 14, 2009 the Somali pirates struck again and captured another ship crew and a 35,000 ton Greek carrier. The crew was thought to be unharmed, but once again an effort to save them must be done because negotiating with the pirates is a dangerous option and most countries do not like to deal with terrorists or in this case pirates. As if this wasn't enough to deal with...

Later today, yes the same day another ship was captured, this time a vessel from Lebanon. Its crew and a 5000 ton Togo ship was captured. This is beginning to become a trend as though it looks. The country of Somalia has been a harbor for terrorism and piracy for years since they have no government. The public has not heard much about these acts until now, but it has been going on for years and millions of dollars have been stolen.

As of now NATO has anti piracy mission called Operation Allied Protector where US ships are planning to patrol the coastline, but little is known about this. Regardless of that, it seems that something needs to be done about this. By no means am I suggesting a war or even a conflict, no no no that would be ludicrous. To me it seems that a simple tightening in security policy would make matters difficult for the pirates.

I know as I'm saying this someone is going to come along and immediately critcize this idea, but if we just had some Navy seals on these ships sailing through these harsh areas, then maybe it would deter these acts of piracy. I know this will not stop it by any means, but it would slow it down and increase the chance of the crew defending themselves against the pirates.

This issue is similar to terrorism, but we cannot take military action against them, in my opinion a simple deterrance would slow the rate of occurence of these actions. It seems all to simple but these will continue to happen until some country shows they are tired of this shit and put an end to it, otherwise it won't stop because it is far too easy for them to make millions at our expense.

BSU E-mails from students regarding missed notes

Ok so i'm sure all of us have gotten atleast one email from someone that is in a class with you that needs notes from a day they either were "sick" or they were just off dicking around. I know it seems a little harsh, but it is so frustrating to me because I want to help the ones I can out but i've got enough to do as is. It's really frustrating to me also because most of the time it is emails from the same people, which makes me think they don't care or want to learn anyways. It is aggravating because i'm a social studies education major, which I guess account for me getting mad with all the emails from students not attending.
This probably seems like a useless rant to everybody, but it is just ridiculous when you pay for college you better go to the classes. No one cares if you don't show up because it is your responsibilty to make up for it. It is a deterrence for skipping class. Don't get me wrong I have missed a class before, but I don't send emails out begging people to help me when I just skipped a class for no reason. I understand that is my decision and I am accountable for it.
One last thing, when people need help with homework of any subject I try to lend a helping hand because if I was in that situation I would want help from a student as well. It does become a bothersome nuisance when the person you help doesn't show initiative to even try to learn it. I am by no means a teacher yet. I still say to everyone if you have a problem, question or query take it up with the professor and don't send a forward email to the class because more than likely it will be selected with other BSU spam and deleted!

Sorry for the Rant, by no means am I specifically targetting anyone in this rant.

Verizon Store Continued:Online Edition:Dare or Voyager

Ok, so my dad lost his phone a week ago and he has no idea where it went. So we decided to go to the Verizon store and get him a new one. Our plan was ending in two months so we decided that all of us were going to get new phones.

Im still debating whether to get a dare or a voyager. Anyways we were going to do it on the internet because for some odd reason the store doesn't have the same deals as the internet. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, so after we decided that later that night me and my mom sat down to work on it. We tried and tried to order them, but we weren't getting the discounts we were told we were supposed to get, not to mention we were getting charged an extra 80 dollars in activation fees that were not suppose to be there. Needless to say we gave up frustrated. After trying everything customer support phone line, chat online, etc. 

This morning I tried again and still to this moment have no idea what I'm suppose to do, hopefully my mom can figure it out when she gets home. My point however is that, these stores make it so difficult to make an order its ridiculous. Not to mention even in person you can easily spend hours in the store. It doesn't seem to be a very good business tactic when most of your customers are leaving pissed off. Regardless if anyone has opinions on which phone I should get the Dare or the Voyager...I'd appreciate it, i'm not sure what i want.

The Stock Market: Bear or Bull

Ok, so this week I decided since the stock market seems to be going on the uptrend, (knock on wood) I felt obligated to talk about it.

Recently I just started a Roth IRA, an individual retirement account, yeah super early I know. Since the market has been at all time lows in the past month, I decided it was time because in my opinion the market is so low how could it get any worse. I know as soon as I say that someone is going to get on here and say of course it can get worse. Well anyways you know what I mean. I'm being optimistic in that I hope by the end of this year or the beginning of 2010 the stock market will be going strong again, and after yesterday's 500 point raise in the DOW, things are looking good.

Anyways, I was listening to the radio this morning and heard that some are arg

uing that the bull market is in and could encourage the market to rise even more day by day. The difference between bear and bull markets are the bull is good that means that the buyers are optimistic and buying, the bear on the other hand is pessimistic and thats what some same we are still in and could be in with the current "recession".

Regardless of what people are saying in my opinion, things can't be any worse now than they were in the depression. I'm a firm believer in the fact that the depression was a one time slip up and we could stop another one from happening after FDR enacted that the market will close before it crashes. Ok I'm done ranting on. No malicious comments please haha.