 | Tita on Windows 7 (M3) Running On A PC… |
 | Miroslav on Windows 7 (M3) Running On A PC… |
 | monkeyboy on Windows 7 (M3) Running On A PC… |
 | ya mahdi on “We are going to win bec… |
 | Sebastien Dube on Windows 7 (M3) Running On A PC… |
An interesting Blog post from Chris Yeh. It is his summary of a book tittled “The Ultimate Question” by Fred Reichheld.
Chris’ summary seems very thorough. He basically talks about understanding, pleasing, and empowering the customer. There is also a brief discussion of team dynamics and how employees should interact with customers.
Very interesting.
Recently I have happened across a series of incredibly interesting blogs rather serendipitously.
It started off while I was researching a particular series of books under the banner of “Head First. ” I had purchased a book about half a year ago titled “Head First Design Patterns.” I didn’t get very far before I realized that this book was a little too advanced for me. However after reading the first chapter I was hooked on the style of the book.
Now that the semester is over and I work for the DMV web development team I decided to purchase the recent release of “Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML,” which ironically turns out to be below my skills! But anyways…
The hook their books have is that the format uses a more interactive style of teaching. Instead of traditional books that are analogous to topical lectures, these books use a very interactive and brain stimulating method of teaching. The intro of both books are very similar, it talk about
the style of the book and use cool words like “Meta Cognition.” It also talks about how your brain tries to prevent you from learning things you think are important so it can focus on things it thinks are important, like being alert for hungry tigers! It then tells you how to “bend your brain into submission” so you can learn the things you think are important.
So I was looking at some of their other books and discovered that they were coming out with a book in September 2006 tittled “Head First Object-oriented Analysis and Design” which is a step bellow Head First Design Patterns. In researching the book I came across a couple of web sites that the creators of the Head First series participate in. First I found the JavaRanch Saloon
and an interesting thread that ended up discussing how Head First was being used in several high ranking colleges. Then I found myself on another thread that talked about motivation and teaching styles, which was something I got turned onto from my MIS 160 class. From there I somehow found the official Head First site, HeadFirstLabs.com, and then found the authors official blog, Creating Passionate Users. My favorite post in there so far (there are a lot of good ones) is titled Crash course in learning theory, which discusses how people learn best. Then somehow i stumbled across this hour long web seminar about learning which I have yet to watch the full thing.
Then I stumbled upon the blog of Ben Casnocha who is an 18 year old entrepreneur that recently graduated high school and is contemplating college. He is quite a remarkable individual, obviously an intellect, but still exploring who he is. Fascinating stuff to read.
Finally I found the blog of Chris Yeh, who is a friend of Ben Casnocha. I haven’t read much of his blog but decided to post it here just to be complete with these blog listings.
BTW, I got the word serendipitously from Ben Casnocha’s blog and had to look it up to figure out what it meant. So don’t feel bad if you didn’t know what it meant either!
You know you are in a bad neighborhood when the ghetto bird is flying over head.
You know you are in a bad neighborhood when the ghetto bird is speaking to the neighborhood on a mega phone.
You know you are in a bad neighborhood when the purple house on the corner is a crack house.
You know you are in a bad neighborhood when you are the only one on your street who owns your own house…
… I need to graduate and get a job so I can move!
The semester is over and I survived…
Like I said in an earlier posting, this was the hardest semester I've ever had.
This wasn't a normal semester, I was planning on taking only 4 classes (MIS 124, 150, 124, and MGMT 182) but in order for me to take MIS 161 in the Fall I needed to complete MIS 140, 150, and 160 THIS semester. MIS 140 was offered for only one session during the day, Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30pm to 2:45pm, which conflicted with my work schedule. But after Dr. Legorreta informed the class that we had to have all the prerequisite completed in order to take 161 I signed up for MIS 140 class, knowing that it was going to cause problems at work. I lost my job after three and a half weeks into the semester and the stress from that fiasco caused me to score poorly on three of my early tests. That was a wakeup call telling me that these classes are going to be hard! However I persevered and studied hard for my second round of midterms (Why do they still call them 'mid' terms?) and scored decently; I also did all my homework and made sure I understood the majority of the material. The final results were better than I was expecting towards the end of the semester.
Check it out:
| Course Description | Course ID | Grade | Earned Hours | Quality Hours | Quality Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT | MGMT-182 -11 | A- | 3.00 | 3.00 | 11.10 |
| WEB PROG APPL VISL BASIC | MIS -124 -02 | A- | 3.00 | 3.00 | 11.10 |
| BUS TELECOMMUNICATIONS | MIS -140 -01 | B | 3.00 | 3.00 | 9.00 |
| DATABASE SYSTEMS BUSINESS | MIS -150 -02 | B | 3.00 | 3.00 | 9.00 |
| SYS DEV LIFE CYCL PART I | MIS -160 -02 | A | 3.00 | 3.00 | 12.00 |
| Period | Earned Hours | Quality Hours | Quality Points | GPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This Term | 15.00 | 15.00 | 52.20 | 3.480 |
| CSUS | 82.00 | 85.00 | 253.90 | 2.987 |
| Overall | 144.00 | 147.00 | 467.90 | 3.183 |
MGMT 182
Despite everything that I mentioned in my last blog post about this class our final deliverable got 170/170! That was pretty impressive, he even stated that our Executive Summary was good! Our presentation that sucked ass IMHO got a 40/50, so thats not too bad.
MIS 124
I got the highest grade in the final for this class! That was a surprise considering that I hardly studied for the test. Immediately after the final the class gathered in the hallway and started pissing and moaning that the class was too hard; and apparently a lot of the students were graduating seniors who weren't going to be graduating since they failed this class.
I will admit that the final was ridiculously hard, but I only needed to get a 40 on the Final to pass the class. I don't see how these people failed the class unless they didn't do squat on the project. The project was our hands on experience that actually taught us stuff about ASP.NET. The teacher was horrible and didn't 'teach' anything. She just read from her power point slides. Hard class, bad teacher, but the class was passable with mid to moderate effort.
MIS 150
This class was a surprise. Professor Tsai must have curved the class by at least 7% because somehow I earned a "B" in her class. I sweated blood in her class, lost sleep from her tests, and skipped other classes just to keep up with her material. Thank God I don't have to take her class again. The lesson I learned from her class was that "You have to please the people that can give you what you want."
MIS 140
The class that I "quit" my job over was hard. I'm sure the class was curved, I would have had to probably of gotten a 80 on the final to get an A. However, since I had so many other things going on I had no time to study. Plus the final in this class was cumulative so I would have had to set aside at least 2 to 3 four hour study sessions to prepare for it. I was in the top 5 of the class going into the final so I would have had to suck balls to get a C in the class. I got a 51 on the final, the class average was 52. I ended up getting 421 points, a B in the class.
MIS 160
This class was my favorite class of the semester, professor Legorreta was informative and inspirational. I'm glad he doesn't pound on a narrow curriculum but has a broad subject of teachings, including Kouzes & Posner's The Leadership Challenge, benefits of knowing English well, Project Management, System Development Lifecycle, and group forming. Lots of stuff to learn. I don't know why, but some of my classmates didn't like the course because there wasn't a narrow set of material to study for. They were afraid they were going to get a low grade since his grading scheme was so strict. His grading was strict, but also it wasn't. I think the most important thing to get from the class was to not only understand what he was teaching, but embrace it. If you buy into what he is teaching you'll get a good grade. The ideas the professor was teaching were broad, his focus was on turning his pupils from "students to professionals."
If you understood this you got a good grade in the class. I got an A.
I think Dr. Legorreta did a good job with the class, I plan on blogging more about what I learned from that class.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo:
“Win first, fight later.”
I recal a good quote but can't find the person who first said it.
"Win first, fight later."
It was a samuri/philosopher dude.
Quote Details: Frank Tibolt: We should be taught… – The Quotations Page:
“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
Frank Tibolt”
Watch this if you need some motivation and insparation!
Rocky Training Spoof
