Skraut's Journal: Gotta Keep Going

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Had a great swim at the gym. Bounced wrong on the diving board and my right knee and ankle buckled and somehow I scraped the top of my foot on the top of the diving board. Don't ask me how I did it. Just a minor scrape, but still odd how I did it. I came home and did some work on programming, had dinner and worked some more after dinner. Gretchen was watching Trading Spaces, and kept calling me in to see what they were doing. I didn't mind that much but I wanted to keep going. I finally finished that chapter and am ready to move on.

At 11:00 Gretchen and I went to bed. In bed Gretchen asked "Can we talk for a little bit?" She was really getting afraid about the idea of leaving her work and working for ourselves when we didn't have a proven business. I did my best to comport her and tell her things were going to be ok. Working for ourselves has been our dream since we were first engaged, and now we have the opportunity. Yes it's scary, but we've got enough money saved up to be able to survive a few months if money does not come in right away. Obviously the goal is to have money come in, to you know do those important things like pay bills and whatnot. But I think if we both focus and work hard for ourselves there's nothing we can't do. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I don't think so. I've just been mired in mediocrity for so long that I'm just ready to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum. And whaddia know, I'm all out of Bubblegum.

We planned and talked for quite a bit, and didn't get to bed until 2:00. This morning I helped Gwen with some scanner trouble, and I'm writing this while installing 2k on the new Web Server. I know that just makes people here at Slashdot wince in pain as I'm not installing Linux and Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Well the honest truth is I would love to, I really would. But I won a copy of 2k Server a while ago at the User's Group meeting, and I'd rather focus my time on developing apps and making money. With no income that's the best way for me to spend my time right now, in addition to all our other business ventures. While I'd love to learn Linux and run our business on entirely open source software, the time investment is what I don't have right now. I can't afford to spend the next month getting the server up and learning all I need to know. I've got to get it up this weekend and be ready for Monday.

Not suprising

[tgv]

I'm not surprised. Most schools take away a few hours of math or physics to teach computer "science", so that would account for the effect.

I was a victim of technology ....

[mustangdavis]

I was encouraged in high school to use calculators since my H.S. was trying to go "high tech". In fact, we were REQUIRED to use them on tests .... if you didn't, you were going to fail due to a lack of time to complete the exam.

Then I got to college ...

Now keep in mind, I was a pretty good math student (scored perfect on the SATs in Math ... English was another issue ... and why I didn't get into a good school), so this is a good example in my opinion.

I took my first college Calc II exam, and of course, used my calculator for it. In all fairness, it was a difficult exam, but a fair exam. I thought I would be "joe slick" and finish quickly by using the latest and greatest graphing calc. available ... and I finished WAY before the other students in the course. HOWEVER, when I got my exam back, I got a 54%!!! Every answer was correct, but in big, red letters at the top of the paper, the prof wrote "This is what you get for looking at your calculator so much!" ... then he wrote "I need to see a few more steps and where you got some of these answers".

Needless to say, that was the last time I used that calculator for anything but to check answers (or to get answers and reverse engineer them) :)

My prof was right though ... kids today need to learn to think for themselves BEFORE they begin to use technology as a crutch ....

.... but at the same time, we live in a technology laced society ... so which is more evil ... to force kids to learn, but not teach them technology, or to teach then technology, but make them helpless without it ....

It is an evil world we live in ....

It looks like technology is like women ... can't live with it, can't live without it ...

Just my 2 cents ...