CrookedHouse

The College of Continuing Education Sucks. I paid them thousands of dollars for a course on UNIX system administration and C/C++ programming. I was out of work at the time and wanted a certificate telling potential employers that I knew at least a little about the work I was applying for. The class was half administration and half programming. The administration portion was competently taught, but on obsolete (SCO) software. Ok, UNIX is UNIX, even if it is a few years out of date. The programming half of the class, however, was taught by a math professor from the University of St. Cloud who barely knew C and knew less about C++. And UNIX completely baffled him. After an initial attempt to work with UNIX, he tried to teach the class UNIX programming on Microsoft Windows. This made me unhappy. I complained to the program administrator and asked for a refund. He refused. He did offer to let me repeat the course, but by then I had gotten a job (no thanks to that program) and didn't have two months to devote to what may too have been a waste of time.

Oh, did I mention that the cce.umn.edu Sucks?

Posted by Hokan at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Years ago I was in line to check out at a department store and a man came up to me and said "Hi! We used to go to junior high school together. We were inseparable. Best Friends! I lost track of you when you moved away. Tell me everything."

His face rapidly moved from joy to confusion to anguish as he realized that I didn't recognize him.

In fact, I had no idea who he was. He obviously did know me. I believed him that we were buddies in junior high. Realizing that made me a bit sad that my weird memory had cost me a part of my past, but what really got me was the pain in that man's face.

I discovered a few years ago that I have a ... well a neurological difference. One manifestation of that difference is a weird memory. I can remember some things, I can't remember others. It doesn't seem to matter how important the remembered events, things, people were. Maybe I remember, maybe I don't. It doesn't really hurt me, except for a vague sense of loss. But it obviously can hurt others.

Posted by Hokan at 7:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)