Navigation Problems Allayed

"Four point seven, numbskull!" Moe says as he sticks the business end of his keyboard cleaning device in Curly's ear and depresses the button.
"But Moe," Curly says as a puff of dust blooms out the opposite ear. "I downloaded the Navigator last week."
"You downloaded the most recent version of the software porcupine." Moe admonishes with a fist to Curly's bristled dome creating a effervescent popping sound. "And for over a month you have been working in four point seven at school."
"Hey, leave him alone!" Interjects Larry. "He didn't know."
"Pick two." Moe replies holding up his hand fingers spread. Larry smiles and points at the index finger and the pinky.
"One . . . Two." Immediately Moe plunges the chosen fingers into Larry's eyes creating the twanging sound of a plucked violin string.
"Get Out." Moe growls.
"Hey Moe!" Curly erupts, pointing at the computer screen they have gathered around.
"Whadda you want?" Moe says turning and slapping Curly on the forehead with a resounding smack. Curly clutches his head and cries.
"Oh-wo-hho-wo-ho-ho-hoholoook!" He points at the screen.
Moe and Larry look. They smile excitedly. "Why that's the web-page we created at school" Larry says.
"And look," enthuses Moe, "those tools at the top are the ones we learned how to use. Now this thing makes some kind of sense we can do alot of work here at home. Curly you're a genius!" Both Moe and Larry kiss Curly on the head. He smiles turning on his toes and clasping his hands to one hip.
"And they say home is where the heart is . . .it's where the 'start' is. Nnyuk-nyuk-nyuk!"
"Get out!" Says Moe to the sound of a bass drum being struck when his fist bounces off Curly's belly. . . . (Repeat as necessary)

Link, ahlinkalee, ahlinkaloo

A miracle happened. I went to the computerlab aftre class tonight to take one more shot at uplaoding my newsletter. When I checked my webpage to see if I should rebuild it from the bottom up I noticed that my damnable newsletter link was still there. I clicked it as much out of frustration as anything else and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a newsletter right where it should be dears. It must have worked the last time I tried it from home last week. Now I need to figure out what the next assignment is. I was concerned that the hard copies of the newsletter were not collected in class but now I hardy care. I don't give a crap. I am just glad all that work did not go for naught. What a horribly frustrating experience. He got walrus gumboots he need Mojofilter.

Pieces for Peace

I have written the core of the newsletter, later today at about noon I will head over to school to lay it into Publisher and make it work. I have my clip-art and each article on my memory stick and saved on my computer. Hopefully doing the lay-out will be simple cut and paste. Simple, unimpeded, no implosion, no unwarranted disappearances or appearances, just a little fucking newsletter for Christ's sake . . . "for the love of God, Montressor, Please!!!!"
I have to admit after dealing with some of the articles for weeks the write went fairly smoothly. The articles which showed up in the last few days really knocked things into place. Right now I fear it is probably disjointed but I will be massaging things making them fit and juicing the rhetoric a tad. Whereever James Paul Gee is I am sending out a thank you for his endless stream of ideas about how to drag in-school learning into the 21st Century. Could anything slow that process down more than George W. Bush and William Bennett? The clown factor in government these days is absolutely brutal.

One Way or Another

Okay. So I've been noodling around with the different parts of this project for about a month now. From the first general search the night it was assigned to the peaks and pitfalls of gathering the articles and experimenting with Publisher. I am very annoyed that I cannot use Publisher at home and especially that it is not included in my office works 2003 that came with my computer. So I will shlub it to NEIU later today to get the format right. I hope. Will it matter in the end? Doubtful. I am losing my enthusiasm for the class.
I finally got an article I have been trying to get since the initial Firstsearch in Eric I did the night I went to Video Games rather than Virtual Reality as keywords. It turns out the citation in Eric was incorrect. The Reference librarian said she had never seen anything like it and asked to keep my printout. We discovered the error while trying to track down a hard copy in the periodicals section on the second floor of the library. I mentioned to her that I had seen the article in other databases, in particular ebsco, She suggested we check that database for more clues as the volume number and the date in The Journal of Higher Education citation did not seem to correspond. We did a search at a computer station nearby and low and behold in ebsco the citation was for the Chronicle of Higher Learning and there was a full text link. Of course the printers on campus were all down (hopefully not tonight) but I e-mailed it to myself and was able to print it out at home. It is a "red thread" article as I suspected. I will write more about that later but the cafe near my apartment is about to open and I am doing much of the parsing and planning there this morning. Adding this new article to the mix I am feeling good about my material (one of my other articles is an interview with the professor featured in the seminal article) and am confident I have a comprehensive grouping for my review of literature.

Out Here in the Desert of Fear

In a week there will be a modicum of celebration for either completing the assignments or the relief of dropping the class. (I do not intend to do that!) So here I am at 4:30 in the morning making sure I have all the articles for my journal review.
Went early to school yesterday to work on my web page (I haven't figured out how to work on it at home) and ended up trying to put the first of my reviews in the newsletter format. I ran into the usual snafus. I was hoping I could just plug my text into the newsletter template. Alas no, and no surprise! Having not mastered the newsletter editing suite I quickly found myself in a helluva fix. Failure and f**king-up couldn't slow me down though, oh, nononooooooo! I clipped a photo of one of my experts from some website into the image portion of the first article of my chosen template and ended up with several overlays of mirrored text running over the photo. A grand expressionistic art project but a piss poor newsletter. I saved it all to my memory stick and went to class. I got no idea if any of it is salvageable.
Not good practice to follow a frustrating out of class session with a frustrating in class session. By the time we got to groups Jon and Ivan could tell I was pulling my hair out and eating it in a near total meltdown. Repeatedly the noble Professor P warned us to simply complete the assignment, get the "A", without complicating things. Yeah sure. Every week it seems there is another elaborately time consuming project that goes on the woodpile of things I may get to when I get a third of the things I have to do out of the way first. I wonder if I will ever complete a single assignment for this class. I have learned a boodle but what good is it if I can't get the things done which get the credit? Story of my life actually.