how i graduated

i'm educated... this paper says so!  where do i pick up my check?
We (Anthony and I) completed some more for the Halloween display last night. We finally decided how and where to hang the flying crank ghost motor assembly. We used plumber’s tape and screwed right into the stucco on my porch roof (it will hang in front of the window on the right in this pic, taken when our house was still being built). We also mounted a blacklight so that it’s out of sight and shines on the ghost. The whole idea worked out great, the motor assembly is out of view, and all the trick-or-treater sees is the moving ghost, bathed and glowing in UV light. Now I just have to build the ghost! We also built a fog chiller, which neither of us was too impressed with… so I may change the design; as well as cut PVC and began drilling boards for the graveyard fence. I plan to have all the decorations up by this weekend, so I can at least get a week’s worth of use out of them before Halloween. Sharaun and I also need to get a pumpkin and carve it. Can’t forget that! Owell. In the middle of hanging our FCG, I got a phone call from Zeb. OK… who is Zeb? Rewind to college, my three closest buds are Thanh (10), G.C. (Greasy Cuban), and Chris (image courtesy of G.C., unfortunately Chris isn’t pictured). Zeb is Chris’ friend from way back, and he and I occasionally chat. Anyway, he’s in the Navy and has something to do with the Blue Angels…. which is totally cool to me. I always forget to call people back, sorry Zeb.

I was thinking the other day about college, and how the heck I ever got out of there.. I kinda managed to pull one over on UF…. ummm… or pull a few over, I guess. I got that extra 1 credit for an “independent study” with Dr. Carnes, which was actually nothing – I did absolutely nothing on that, didn’t even move a muscle in effort or fire a synapse in thought. My senior project was an absolute joke, although I spent a good deal of time on it – it was really very simple. (I desinged a Bike Safety course for gradeschool kids, using Macromedia…. with like 5 other people.)

Also, we managed to get that “Navigating the Internet” class accepted as a technical elective. We knew that several technical electives fall under one generic course number, and without actually going back and researching it – there’d be no way for them to tell whether that number on the transcript was “Advanced Data Structures in C++”, or “Navigating the Internet.” (Heard they changed the numbering system the very next semester though!)

Not only that, but I was able to swing getting that COBOL programming course accepted as a tech elective. I mean, writing COBOL programs never took over 10 minutes, no matter how complex, and I got an easy A in that one. And then there was that summer course at UCF, it was a 4000 level course taught under the Mathematics Department, but it was called “History of Mathematics” (actual syllabus from when I took it! I love the internet.) and was mainly for future education majors. Thing is, UF doesn’t see anything but the course number, so it’s their guess as to what class it might have been. Could have been “Galois Theory and Elliptical Curves” for all they know. Got a fast and easy A in that one as well.

Then I also got that 1 credit for my so-called “internship” at Raytheon. Which was really nothing more than me coming in late and leaving early for 5 days (sometimes 4) a week. I wrote one DOS batch file during that “job,” nothing more. What’s more, I got paid good money to sit at that desk and download Grateful Dead mp3s all day (note: most proxies block that link, since you can grab gigs of mp3’s there so easily – not Raytheon!). Also, I managed to “recalculate” my GPA based on BCC and UF courses being weighted equally, giving me a nice round 3.01 overall average… when my UF GPA was a little lower. Looked much better on the resume.

I am glad for that Internet class though, for my final class project – I had to “create” a web page, so I retooled my Beatleg site using CSS and Java, and made it much more accessible and readable. Still using that redesigned page today. And, although I don’t sell them anymore, I wrote my cd sales customer database during my “internship” with Raytheon. So at least I made some money off of all my loafing…

Having just outed myself as a charlatan, I must say in my defense that I worked very hard in school… no… I’m for real… I did. Honest.

Dave out.


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One Reply to “how i graduated”

  1. anyone else notice how much the website for the website-making class sucks? i hope that it´s actually used as a Berenstain Bears -esque "what not to do" example or something….

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