Donzo

    This is my final blog and I don't have much to say other than I'm glad it's done. Every semester of school becomes increasingly harder to manage with the amount of assignments given. This course was not that difficult in terms of learning the material, but the amount of time it took to complete it was absurd. I'm glad it finished and I passed. Time is like this, I'm really glad that I was able to persevere throughout the semester despite wanting to stop.

    Whenever I decide to read or I'm not sure I'll maybe delete this whole post in the future, I hope I'm able to accomplish some of my big goals. Then look back to this moment and think maybe it was worth it.

The Final Stretch

    School is essentially over, and I'm feeling a bit of relief knowing that all the burden that school brings will soon be over. The amount of time school takes from me could be draining, but I know it will be worth it in the end. Personally, I always love to learn, curiosity will never leave my soul, but school itself sometimes feels like it's more busy work that consumes my time. Which I value more than money because it genuinely has no price.

    For this section or chapter of PowerPoint, I decided on 6.8.3 Media Formatting Facts. This section of the course itself was self-explanatory but nonetheless, the tool itself is useful. I've used PowerPoint very few times, and I've actually never seen this tool. It's been a helpful shortcut instead of doing it manually like I would've originally thought. This was just the start, however, from adjusting the crop size of the video to formatting the picture style, effects and borders. There are endless possibilities that you can adjust in PowerPoint to make your presentation unique. With that being said with all of these adjustments your slides could be more pleasing to your audience too.

2 step forward & 1 step back

    Okay, so I've been in a lingo of work, school, and life. With my class work and test scores in general, I've caught up and then fallen behind again. I understand it's essentially the last stretch and shouldn't have an excuse to fall behind. Maybe it's just the way I like to complete my assignments, and I overthink them, causing me to put in more work than needed.

    For this week's post, I chose 5.8.6 "Chart Tips." Again, again like I mentioned, I don't really use Microsoft applications. This was all new to me; the whole software was a bit confusing to me at the beginning, but I started to get used to it. I really liked that you could adjust and practically design the whole chart. For me, at least the metallicity at times with color coding really helps, and it looks more appealing and easy to read too.

Meet Me halfway

    The school semester is a little over halfway done, and I'm glad and relieved that that has happened. The good thing about this class is that 99% of the work can honestly be done outside of class. 100%, actually, because all the material in reality is software online, with material covering essentially everything. Classes have been a bit difficult to handle in the first half, especially with other issues going on in my life. I've been able to negotiate some classes and assignments, so I can basically do them online for the most part without having to go to class, which is amazing. As time goes by, I keep thinking about school—is it even worth it? A lot of people ask themselves that, and if it weren't for the military paying for it, I doubt I'd be in school right now.

    I chose Page Formatting Facts 4.5.4 for this week's post. I've hated Microsoft applications, extremely expensive, and Microsoft Office software. I'm not going to pay $100+ for software that I barely use. The Google application is kind of being instilled in students, at least in the Clark County district. I give them props, to be honest, because I prefer their software over Microsoft's. Microsoft Word has a lot of little tools and fixes to adjust practically everything. This section taught me a lot that I didn't even know existed. This page formatting fact really showed me how I was essentially able to design the whole page front, giving my document a fresh look.

Discussion 9 | Juggling School & Time

    Spring Break as a kid was the most enjoyable time every student could wish for right after winter break and before summer now it's just like another other week... at least for me. With work and assignments to finish in reality this so-called week of "Spring Break" just sounds like cooperate lingo to sell and incentive travel and young teens and people in their early 20s to spend money. I don't go out much if I'm honest and I wish I could before I'm too old to enjoy that youth however I have dreams and ambitions I'd rather dedicate my time to. I was able to catch up in some classes and others go ahead which was relaxing. To my luck and unfortunate chain of events I went through a lot ending Spring Break including getting sick and I'm still writing this post. Going to the quick care I can see what's wrong with me which is fine and I'm alive, trying to be optimistic and see through the light at the end of the tunnel.

    I chose 3.4.3 Navigation Facts out of all of Chapter 3 it was one of the things I found personally the most intriguing to me. With a lot of the information included in the facts I didn't even know existed, I learned and using it right now. Facts listed such as "Word Navigation Pane, Find and Replace Dialog" is a great tool especially when writing long essays for other classes. I was brought up on Google software with docs and slides so all this Microsoft application has been a learning process.

AWoC: D08 Discussion

    After another week of class, it was not going too bad. Unfortunately, I lost my wallet sometime after the first week, and I couldn't purchase the software for the class. Luckily for me, I was able to get some done in advance. The class felt slower because I could not do some of the work in class. However, a thing to mention is that I arrived early to take the Bonus Quiz, and I did horribly. Next week, the professor is offering the same thing, and personally, I'm going to be okay without bothering again. He was a bit late but had a valid excuse; another reason for me to go was to fix some formatting issues on discussion points. I wanted to fix it during class, but there was no time. Just yesterday, though, I finally purchased the software to finish the assignments. It's getting frustrating, however, with random discussion assignments posted randomly. I just finished one of them, and as I was writing this, another one got posted.... oh well, that's for the next week. 

    For this week's discussion post, I chose 2.5.9 Network Server Facts. I always enjoyed the idea of one day hosting a server and building a website. The servers behind every favorite website are huge and massive, considering the amount of traffic they can get daily. The patience and knowledge of these basic facts can help me understand client-server models. Before this I couldn't tell what would suit best for my ideal website. How a company manages and chooses its servers is important and even more important for me when these basic principles can prevent the website from crashing, run more smoothly, and have a better experience scrolling through in general. I started to look around, and with this understanding now I personally believe making the right choice when I decide to launch my site will be a lot more easy.

Week 1 of Class

    Now, I don't know if I am doing this correctly. I messed up following the instructions clearly. However, I am pretty confident it stated if you don't post in 2 weeks, it will result in a zero. Week 1 of school is over, and boy, was it overwhelming. There are a lot of technical difficulties with Canvas and the various applications the professors are making us use. That's the thing about the school I loathe: the amount of extra software needed per class, and to make it worse, it's not even the same, so you have to purchase different software at different prices. There should be a university one. Or at least a universal one for each subject. I wouldn't say never, but I don't like to procrastinate. In fact, I kinda like to go ahead with the classwork since I have a busy schedule. It's all busy work, in my opinion, but it's still for a grade.

    IS101 course/class is interesting since it's on a Saturday. Everything is a bit calmer and abandoned as far as the school. The class went by real quick; Professor Wu was just going over the syllabus with the class while other students multitask with the work given in class and homework too. Well, that's at least what I was trying to do. I understand it is called homework for a reason, but if there is time in class, it would be smarter of me to use that time effectively than not to. The class itself was interesting, too, I think. If I heard and remembered correctly, we had about 5 or 6 students missing. For the first day, 70% plus or minus was not too bad; felt a bit crowded even though not everyone showed up, plus people are bound to drop the class for whatever personal reason. Also, the professor sounded to have something against McDonald's employees...

    Alright, another day, I started this assignment late, a lot later than I would've liked to due to work commitments, but I did not expect the class to have this kind of assignment due throughout the week. Moving on, I chose 1.1.17 "Activity: Compare Digital Media", which is perhaps one of the more startling things I read while doing those mini-labs. Most of the information up to that point was already subjects that I had knowledge of previously, but this was new. Compression types through lossless and lossy visual compression of the photos previously. Listening to audio was night and day. I can only imagine larger files and the importance of these facts then because now, well, everything is taken for granted, honestly. Before companies like Mega Upload was a thing. The video and pictures probably took forever to receive and send, plus, like I said, many of them look like potato quality. Through this, despite how simple it is, I was able to have some files compress differently and appropriately so they can be viewed in higher quality. For instance, audio kHz files sounded good in my computer, but it was formatted weirdly in the message that lowered the quality... so I fixed it, and now it sounds just as good.

IS101 First Impression

     IS101, where to start, the first impression of this class... Well, this class is by far the most interactive regarding professor and student communication compared to others. Honestly, that was my first impression of how much communication is needed for this class. Back in December, when it was announced that the times were changing, I was glad because I preferred to get it out of the way more early so I could go to work after.  Following up on the new year, I was startled by how again communicative Professor Wu was about his class and work. I knew my schedule would be tight trying to get started soon, but nonetheless, I could commit and was lucky to finish Bonus Quiz 1 before school started.

    Now that school has started, every class has its syllabus and assignments assigned. I was surprised to see this class already had an assignment, and I hadn't even attended the first day of class. A bit overwhelmed, as usual, for the first day of every semester, reading and writing for each class. I worked in the morning and went to the gym straight after but was startled to find out how much work I needed to do already. A bit frustrated, if I'm honest, it's around 11:00pm, and I'm finishing this up. This would be only a short-term thing, I am sure, so I get to know the lingo of class, and I am sure it will work out moving forward.