This last weekend I was able to get down to Kansas City, MO to watch the Kansas City Roller Warriors take on the Texas Rollergirls “Texecutioners”. It was a very fun time and a close score most of the bout. Kansas pulled out a win by 1 point at the very last second. I’m glad Kansas is so close. Maybe I can do that again.
My Monday evening marked my return to education. I was all ready to begin my new class Intro to Visual Basic at the local community college. One week ago I went and bought my books, got my student ID and my parking permit. I went to the campus where I believed my class would be held. The girl behind the student center counter had not made a student ID, so I got to be the guinea pig and my ID took about 4 times as long as normal. This wasn’t an issue since I had plenty of time to do my appointments. I left knowing I was ready and wouldn’t have any issues on my first day of class. If only I had known just how wrong I was. Monday about the time I was supposed to leave work to head to my class, the floodgates opened and I ended up needing to stay a little later than I planned. I managed to leave with 20 minutes to get to my class. I had intended to give myself about 40 minutes. Traffic at 5:10 PM on Maple street was not suprisingly heavy, but it was busy enough to make it a little bit more stressful. I got to the Sarpy campus and went inside to try to find my classroom. I was about 5 minutes late. I wasn’t sure of my instructors name and didn’t know what classroom it was to be held in. No matter I was prepared to quickly walk the halls and find my class based on the printous at each door. I quickly roamed the halls downstairs and not finding the correct one, stopped into the office to find out where the computer lab was. They pointed me upstairs and my search began anew. I repeated the same process, quickly scan the card printouts showing the schedule and class names. I completed a circuit and ended up in the Computer Lab. One of the staff members asked if she could assist me and together we began to search for my classroom. It wasn’t until we went downstairs to check with the Student Center staff that I discovered my advisor had really screwed up. The classroom was not at this campus. It was at the South Omaha campus about 12 miles away. After explaining to them that the reason I chose Sarpy and insisted on that location, was I didn’t want to try to drive all the way across town with only 30 minutes between work and school. They advised me to make a phone call to the scheduling hotline and explain that I wanted to drop a class. After waiting for 10 or more minutes for them to answer I hung up the phone and headed to the other campus. After driving there ( and changing my route 2 times due to construction) it was now 6:15. My class started at 5:30 PM. I ran into the nearest building and told them I needed to find rm 912. I didn’t consult my paperwork because I had just looked at it and how could I screw that up. 
I followed his directions and took the map he gave me. He directed me to the building all the way across the courtyard. I ran over and began once again my search for the right classroom. I had a map and the room was circled. It was pretty easy to find and so I went in and began to look for an open seat. The instructor asked me to grab a syllabus from the table near the door. I did so and went to sit down. Since I had been running about 5 minutes passed before I began to start paying much attention to my surroundings as I was still catching my breath. I flipped through the Syllabus without really reading it and tried to find where he was. He wasn’t. It was just a powerpoint slideshow. I flipped back to the front cover and realized I was sitting in the wrong class. This was computers 101. I set down the syllabus and headed out the door. It was then that I looked at my schedule and the map and found the room I was seeking. The lights were all off and the door was locked. The only sign of activity was the default windows screen saver running on several monitors. It was about this time that I began to look around for the camera crew. I didn’t see one and so I kept on. I turned and completed a circuit of the building on my way back to the gentleman seated at a table that I had passed upon entering this building. I explained my situation to him and how the classroom was presently dark. He consulted the stack of papers on his table and agreed that I did indeed have the correct classroom. He made a call to scheduling and they had no knowledge of any class time or location changes. I then asked him what he suggested I do. He said he wanted to look at the board and see if someone had written something down about a classroom change or date change. That sounded illogical but I accompanied him to the class to confirm this. The wipe off board was completely blank and I noticed that the projector screen was not pulled down either.
He closed the door and doused the lights and we walked back to his table. He took down my information so he could tell the instructor that I had shown up so I didn’t get into trouble for missing the class. I then decided to make a quick stop at Student Services at this campus to see if they had any updated information on my fiasco. It turns out they did not. in fact their only advice was to try to contact the instructor and see if he could shed any light on the situation. I borrowed a computer there and wrote a quick email to him asking him to let me know what might have happened. It is now about 24 hours since I sent that email and I have yet to receive a response. about 8:00 last night I dropped the class at the South campus and tried to get the class at the campus I wanted it at. It was then I realized I had to talk to another advisor since I didn’t have the required pre-req’s and needed their help in getting the appropriate override. This would have to keep until morning. Just what I wanted. Anyway, the situation all seems cleared up now, I have the same class, a new instructor a different evening and different location. I have emailed my new instructor and gotten a reply back within 3 hours of having sent it. Hopefully things go better from here on out.
After you finish watching the Husker game today, get over to the SkateDaze building at 132nd and B St (South of 132 and Center) and get your skate fix. It starts at 8PM and It’s gonna be one heck of a game!
January 26th! Plan to attend!
Update: The Low Down Lucy’s eeked out a win over the Victorias Secret Service, 99-98.
Lately I’ve started cleaning up my computer of unnecessary files and collected junk. I found a script on Microsofts’ website to allow me to print the contents of a folder. What it does is to dump it into notepad as text and then it outputs it to your printer. I didn’t want to waste all that paper so I removed the print switch. It also doesn’t have the switch included to show the contents of all the subfolders, so I have discovered that and felt that I should share my results. Here is the link to the steps for the batch from Microsoft. And here I have the link to an alternative site which shows you dumping it into Excel. I find excel to be a huge improvement, especially if you have a large folder with lots of content.
my modified .bat file:
@echo off
dir %1/-p/o:gn /s > "%temp%\Listing"
start/w excel "%temp%\Listing"
del "%temp%\Listing"
exit
Hope this helps you to keep your PC better organized…
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After months of bitter legal wrangling, Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc have agreed to make two movies based on the book “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien.
In a statement Tuesday, the companies said Jackson, the director of the smash hit “Lord of the Rings” movies, and producer Fran Walsh will executive produce both a “Hobbit” movie and a sequel, but Jackson was not named as the director.
“We don’t have a director yet,” said a New Line spokeswoman.
