Two Slashes

Once again, events have left me trying to crank out a post in less than a half hour.  Whether this post makes it before midnight remains to be seen.  And yes, this little blurb counts towards my four hundred words.

Rather than come up with a regular post, I decided that I might try something different here.  Instead of ranting about one or two specific topics, I’m going to try to micro-rant about some of the things I managed to microblog about throughout the day.  If I think this works out, perhaps I’ll do it once in a while when I think my tweets are amusing and/or confusing enough to warrant more than Twitter’s 140 character limit.  (Today’s tweet selection isn’t particularly interesting, but I promise to be more selective in the future.)

Here’s a hint: A link to a password reset page is useless if it’s in the realm you authenticate to WITH that password. Common sense. (link)

Attending a college where almost every educator is expected to maintain at least some portion of their course online is one thing.  When the professor doesn’t realize that parts of his website require student authentication, then tries to be helpful by providing a password reset link inside the authenticated area of the website, you realize that someone forgot their common sense at home today.

In all honesty, while the password required can be reset elsewhere (it’s one of a few campus-wide passwords, after all), it goes to show that even the most helpful people can be made to look like the stupidest given the right circumstances.

Did I mention how much I hate public speaking? (link)

As some of you might now, this semester is my first as the chair of the campus Linux Users Group.  One of the requirements of this fun position is that I take part in any ACM events.

Today, ACM held an open house in an attempt to get at least a few new members for the organization and for the underlying special interest groups (like LUG).  Each of the SIG chairs had to give a short talk on their group discussing what it focused on and why people would be interested in joining.

Public speaking is not my thing, and this time was no exception.  Not only did I rush through my (“borrowed”, but that’s another story) slides as quickly as I possibly could, I also forgot to mention a few things.  Like my name, for instance.

My math discussion has degenerated into math jokes, terrible pickup lines, and a class discussion about gaming. Hmm. (link)

You know you’re in for a good semester when a discussion section for your math class turns from vectors to video games.  I think my partners and I spent more time discussing the merits of Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War than we did discussing anything particularly relevant to the course content.  Of course, this quickly turned into a few math jokes with the discussion TA (somewhat linked to the games) as well as a few lame pickup lines nobody should ever use.

*shrug*  Hopefully this post makes some sense.  Must…click…Publish!