Ugh, my first year was like this as the course leaders decided to assume everyone new nothing and build them up from the basics.
All it meant was we blitzed through the easy stuff in the first year and spent the second year cramming everything you would expect to do in the first two years in.
Actually worked really well for some of the students who didn’t have much of an IT background but made for a really boring first year for me.
Ouch. Glad I joined the military. Tuition assistance covers 2 classes per semester, $190 a credit beyond that (my school gives a hefty military discount). Plus all you can CLEP for free.
First – I feel Amber’s pain – tested out halfway through of a class like that after the teacher got annoyed with me finishing everything and playing games in class.
My Dad only went to advanced Algebra for two weeks. After that, he stood up said “Now I get it” and walked out. At the end of the semester, he aced the exam.
Guys, I don’t want to alarm anyone with this totally original realization, but I think that the character sitting behind Amber and Danny might, just might, be Shaggy from the beloved cartoon we all know and belove.
Amber shouldn’t program an OS. She should write a virus to delete all copies of MSOffice and download Open Office to every computer on campus. Just because she can.
It is a bit awkward, yeah. But the old doc format has been around since 1996, so it had a good run. It just strikes me as a lose-lose situation for Microsoft. They come up with a more robust, smaller and open-source file format and people complain because it’s not compatible with the old version. They do offer a free compatibilty pack to open docx files on 2003, y’know. (Granted, that’s not much use if you don’t have admin access on your work computers).
As to Word 2007 being rubbish… I’ve found that people who are complete novices on computers seem to prefer it. It’s the rest of us who had trouble coping with everything being in a different place.
I was actually surprised when I noticed that my school was nice enough to have Open Office installed in addition to MS Office. Then pissed when I noticed that none of the computers over by the computer science buildings had it installed… I never did quite figure their logic out there.
That was probably a student installing it on computers they used, then. I know I did that. I put Open Office, Gimp, and Chrome on a number of computers when I was in high school–also added a bunch of custom fonts to some.
I think it’ll flow in typical superhero-relationship fashion. He won’t know for a while, but it’s inevitable that one day, he’ll come to learn of her dual identities. (That’s after she saves him multiple times.)
I had one of these classes Hardest thing we had to do was remove the power supply, drives, and RAM from a generic textbook-brand beige PC then reassemble it. Amazingly half the class took forever to do it, one kid blew his motherboard up by not reseating his RAM properly. Most days it took longer for me to drive there and back than actually take the class.
Heck, I’ve had this class. I’ve never been clever enough to program an OS but I still spent the entire period working on other stuff, when I wasn’t helping others (not in this one class. No one needed help in this class).
Look very closely and you’ll see that the light behind him bends rather awkwardly, clearly indicating a cloaked seat of some form or another. Likely that really cool one that has one giant wheel that you can sit on and you lean to turn it.
I’m really not surprised. No one uses a desktop these days (‘cept me), so there’s no reason for him to be sitting constantly.
But then, why should that stop him? Walkyverse!Alex had a fucking bedpan and all his food delivered. I was half-expecting DoA!Alex to be in a wheelchair.
So THIS is what Alex has come to… Going from hacking classified government information… to teaching college students how to use friggin Microsoft Office…
I see it one of two ways. The first possibility is that superhacking was an abductee power, and since there are no abductees in DoA Alex can’t hack. Of course, we’re never told Alex is an abductee and SEMME isn’t particularly concerned with him until he starts going through there stuff, so that’s probably wrong.
The second option is that he’s keeping a low profile. Alternatively, he needs the money. Who is going to pay him to hack into stuff when they could just turn him into the cops for a reward?
If its somehow revealed that he’s at least as talented technologically as he is in the Walkyverse and becomes something of a mentor to Amber, that would be pretty cool.
Alex was a character in Roomies! who was first introduced when Danny needed to vent his feelings on an issue but didn’t feel comfortable going to any of his friends, so he picked a random room and started talking with Alex, whose unique character quirk was staying at his computer every second of the day. This became the subject of a running gag that lasted for a while, but he disappeared after [i]It’s Walky![/i] started up. He was brought back when he hacked into SEMME’s database and got recruited to redesign their security for his trouble.
Seriously? How is this CS? As I recall, in the first lecture of the intro to CS class I took they introduced us to the scheme shell and scheme syntax, and by the fourth lecture we were into cons cells and recursion.
It boggles my mind that kids these days would learn any office application in a CS class.
At my college there was a completely separate continuum for this stuff: CIS (Computer Information Systems). Confuse them at your peril: once on a lark I took a 400 level CIS programming class on advanced Visual C++. (I was already an expert, but thought I might learn some new tricks.) On the first day the teacher finds that only two people know basic C (despite knowing some form of it being stated as needed in the class description) and spontaneously changed the class into a basic C++ course, which he taught while utterly not caring about its own content.
I didn’t write an OS during the class, and as far as I know neither did the professor, but neither of us lacked the time or disinterest to do so.
My intro to computer applications was the same way. But my intro to computer science was like binary and machine code. Beats learning what the task bar is and all the exciting things the start menu can do!
I wish the Computer Science people would do what the Mathematicians did — they hived off a separate “this is what we do and how we do it” low-theory content statistics class and had it taught out of the “Social Sciences.” So the poeple who need to learn how to use very valuable tools could take a class on using very valuable tools.
Fun functions of common office applications are valuable in an academic setting — I’m STILL coming across people who “know how to use Excel” but didn’t know they could enter formulas into cells to do the math. That’s right, it’s rarer now that it was, but there are people still punching away on their calculators and depositing the results in the cells….
I remember getting a spreadsheet, word processing program, and a non-relational database running on a computer with a whopping 128 kilobytes of memory. Heck, my “backup” laptop runs GEOS atop DOS. An iPhone should be able to eat both of them for lunch….
Oh, I agree. At least when I went, there was a fair bit of confusion over what exactly “computer science” did. From my point of view, I’d have been better sitting in a load of Microsoft, Cisco and VMWare courses (er, if the latter had existed). But then I often come across job adverts that want a bottom rung first-line helpdesk support guy who’s job it will be to reset passwords and NOTHING ELSE, and they still want him to be fully MSCE qualified.
I’m betting sacrificial/last minute “Visiting Professor/Grad Student tossed in front of a class with zip prep time.” I’ve had some miserable classes like that.
I laughed when I saw Alex. Such a great throwback to Roomies! that I totally didn’t expect. :3 Oh, and I have little idea what you all are talking about. I’m not code savvy at all. Sorry.
Oh, and I think if the guy behind them looks like anyone… he looks like Hooper. But I won’t get my hopes up.
What a long, strange trip it’s been through multiple careers, classes and callings… and now, I have my dream job at last. And the programs I use the most? Word and Excel.
He’s reading instructions directly from the ipad. If he lowered it, he could see what sort of students Danny and Amber are, and they could actually learn.
As someone who was wondering, if not harassingly so, about Alex’s role in this universe, I find it hilarious that Willis has been so hounded by readers to include a character that has NEVER had much more than an occasional presence in his earlier works.
That is because we, as nerds who spend all their time in front of a computer, find him the easiest to relate to, and his brilliance at hacking makes him a wish-fulfillment character.
The reason she’s familiar to him is because she reminds him of Amazi-Girl, remember? He just assumes that she’s reminding him of his ex, because he’s not actively thinking about Amazi-Girl.
Ah, I see it now. I saw the first class statement of “Achievement unlocked” as “I’m playing a game, and I unlocked something but at the same time I get points for being ignored by a dude so it applies both ways.”
As a grad student who TAs at a prominent top-10 university, it is amazing the number of people who are in the second year of college and don’t know how to use a word processor or excel. Its frankly ridiculous.
Teaching it to computer science majors seems to be missing the point, though.
I know a lot of folks are joking about “intro to computers,” and how it is a big joke. But let me tell you something as an English teacher who works at a community college: most of my students don’t know dick about computers. They go into a panic if you ask them to change their margins on MS Word, download Open Office if they don’t have Office, or even attach a file to an email. Granted, I have a mix bag of both old and young students… but a good half of them don’t know the basics. Sad, but true.
I took an “Intro to Social Statistics” GRADUATE level course a year ago. It was stuffed full of 40+ year old mid-life crisisers who had returned to school.
I luckily did not have to take one of these classes. It would’ve been pretty ridiculous if I did, considering I go to one of the best universities for math and computer science in the world (uWaterloo) for Software Engineering (which is just Computer Science with a fancy name and an iron ring).
With Leslie teaching Gender Studies, Alex teaching Comp-sci, and Jason teaching Math (All fitting subjects) we’ll probably see Ninja Rick teaching every sport, and Faz teaching psychology.
A110 is an actual course offered at IU; good on David for sweating the details and getting the course number right. The name of the course is “Introduction to Computers and Computing”, though, and it’s not really intended for students who intend to go on to major in CS. Prospective majors typically start with C211, “Introduction to Computer Science”. It would be more realistic if Amber and Danny transferred out of this course and into C211! It’s not too late! (Source: I’m a CS grad student at IU.)
in my university “introduction to computer scince” involeved actaul programming. it was just basic C programming thogh (but hey they need to make sure everione have the basics covered).
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Yep, just like my course.
Ugh, my first year was like this as the course leaders decided to assume everyone new nothing and build them up from the basics.
All it meant was we blitzed through the easy stuff in the first year and spent the second year cramming everything you would expect to do in the first two years in.
Actually worked really well for some of the students who didn’t have much of an IT background but made for a really boring first year for me.
“Hundreds of dollars” for school? If only.
Per class, doofus!
About half a grand does sound right per class.
Yep. 4 credit classes = your first born.
try $372.50/credit, in state, at a state college. Thats $1117.50 for your typical 3 credit class. PAINFUL!
This is why the Gods invented CLEP tests. $79.00 a pop, for 3-6 credits, IF you have the knowledge.
This is also why the Gods invented CLEP test administrators (Hi!)
This is why I love Portugal. 1000€ (give or take) a year for college.
This is why I hate the UK £9000 a year. (Roughly $14,000 at the moment.
Ouch. Glad I joined the military. Tuition assistance covers 2 classes per semester, $190 a credit beyond that (my school gives a hefty military discount). Plus all you can CLEP for free.
Danny has a cruuuuuuush.
These are only the beginnings of a crush.
How Joebo can have that picture and NOT put an exclamation mark at the end of each sentence baffles me.
He has a crush….
…. on her FAAAAAAAAACE
Hurray!
First – I feel Amber’s pain – tested out halfway through of a class like that after the teacher got annoyed with me finishing everything and playing games in class.
Second – I miss Hooper.
I miss me too.
My Dad only went to advanced Algebra for two weeks. After that, he stood up said “Now I get it” and walked out. At the end of the semester, he aced the exam.
Just like community college twelve years ago. (I doubt it changed) At least they threw in Access as a freebie.
Yeah, same with mine. I took it online over the winter semester so I only had to spend two weeks on it, though. ^_^
It seems sad that they feel they need to teach these courses, whereas they won’t teach cross platform knowledge between oft used OSs.
Guys, I don’t want to alarm anyone with this totally original realization, but I think that the character sitting behind Amber and Danny might, just might, be Shaggy from the beloved cartoon we all know and belove.
I think you are right
I hated that cartoon : |
why??
Amber shouldn’t program an OS. She should write a virus to delete all copies of MSOffice and download Open Office to every computer on campus. Just because she can.
That would certainly make classes easier, not having to worry about reformatting my docs.
They’re both resource hogs.
Save the university from the horror that is .docx, Amber!
Apart from being “new”, what exactly is wrong with docx? Isn’t is open-source? Isn’t that what hippy Computer Science people love?
It’s a compatibility nightmare with people not using Word 2007 for no real benefit. And Word 2007 is a complete pile of toss anyway.
It is a bit awkward, yeah. But the old doc format has been around since 1996, so it had a good run. It just strikes me as a lose-lose situation for Microsoft. They come up with a more robust, smaller and open-source file format and people complain because it’s not compatible with the old version. They do offer a free compatibilty pack to open docx files on 2003, y’know. (Granted, that’s not much use if you don’t have admin access on your work computers).
As to Word 2007 being rubbish… I’ve found that people who are complete novices on computers seem to prefer it. It’s the rest of us who had trouble coping with everything being in a different place.
I actually love word 2007, it’s so much better than the older ones.
You can’t really expect new file formats to magically work on older programs, we wouldn’t have png if that was the case.
I was actually surprised when I noticed that my school was nice enough to have Open Office installed in addition to MS Office. Then pissed when I noticed that none of the computers over by the computer science buildings had it installed… I never did quite figure their logic out there.
That was probably a student installing it on computers they used, then. I know I did that. I put Open Office, Gimp, and Chrome on a number of computers when I was in high school–also added a bunch of custom fonts to some.
I bet your IT department loved you.
Just do what I do, be smarter than your teacher in the subject and then half ass all your work and leave with a b and do almost no real work
I did that once. Got a D. Vengeful bastard. 😛
If you got a D, it means you didn’t half-ass it properly.
You probably only quarter-assed it.
*applauds*
Went to get a hat to tip it towards you
Shaggy has a look like “Like, what have I gotten myself into?”
I am highly intrigued by the idea of a Danny-Amber relatiosnhip.
As am I. Might even be kinda healthy for a while.
I think it’ll flow in typical superhero-relationship fashion. He won’t know for a while, but it’s inevitable that one day, he’ll come to learn of her dual identities. (That’s after she saves him multiple times.)
Maybe… Amazi-Girl, Nerd Defender?
I’m not sure what kind of tablet that is, but I think it’s the only reason he’s mobile.
Might be a Kindle.
Its an iPad.
iPad 2 even… lucky
It just occurred to me that every time we see a tablet it’s being operated with a pen rather than a finger…didn’t know people still did that.
But yes, nice to see Alex can walk now. Tech marches on.
But Willis hates all Macs.
I had one of these classes Hardest thing we had to do was remove the power supply, drives, and RAM from a generic textbook-brand beige PC then reassemble it. Amazingly half the class took forever to do it, one kid blew his motherboard up by not reseating his RAM properly. Most days it took longer for me to drive there and back than actually take the class.
Heck, I’ve had this class. I’ve never been clever enough to program an OS but I still spent the entire period working on other stuff, when I wasn’t helping others (not in this one class. No one needed help in this class).
Wow I never took a class and know how to do all that stuff properly!
wow. got him off his computer.
sort of.
What?! Alex . . . STANDING?!
Inconceivable!
The iPad wrought many miracles.
Look very closely and you’ll see that the light behind him bends rather awkwardly, clearly indicating a cloaked seat of some form or another. Likely that really cool one that has one giant wheel that you can sit on and you lean to turn it.
You keep using that wordI’m really not surprised. No one uses a desktop these days (‘cept me), so there’s no reason for him to be sitting constantly.
But then, why should that stop him? Walkyverse!Alex had a fucking bedpan and all his food delivered. I was half-expecting DoA!Alex to be in a wheelchair.
So THIS is what Alex has come to… Going from hacking classified government information… to teaching college students how to use friggin Microsoft Office…
Man this Alex is a burnout in comparison…
I see it one of two ways. The first possibility is that superhacking was an abductee power, and since there are no abductees in DoA Alex can’t hack. Of course, we’re never told Alex is an abductee and SEMME isn’t particularly concerned with him until he starts going through there stuff, so that’s probably wrong.
The second option is that he’s keeping a low profile. Alternatively, he needs the money. Who is going to pay him to hack into stuff when they could just turn him into the cops for a reward?
Also, he’s probably the guy behind WikiLinks.
If its somehow revealed that he’s at least as talented technologically as he is in the Walkyverse and becomes something of a mentor to Amber, that would be pretty cool.
Willis won’t do that, but still.
That’d be cool, if WikiLeaks was involved in any actual hacking.
(Sorry, it’s a misrepresentation that’s beginning to bug me.)
Who?
Alex was a character in Roomies! who was first introduced when Danny needed to vent his feelings on an issue but didn’t feel comfortable going to any of his friends, so he picked a random room and started talking with Alex, whose unique character quirk was staying at his computer every second of the day. This became the subject of a running gag that lasted for a while, but he disappeared after [i]It’s Walky![/i] started up. He was brought back when he hacked into SEMME’s database and got recruited to redesign their security for his trouble.
And was seated in front of his computer all the way till the very end. 😛
When Joe stole it?
I took classes on Word and Excell in elementary school, I’m pretty sure a class like that would be painful.
Not ‘would’, ‘is very’.
And this is from someone who had typing on an Apple IIe in elementary school.
Seriously? How is this CS? As I recall, in the first lecture of the intro to CS class I took they introduced us to the scheme shell and scheme syntax, and by the fourth lecture we were into cons cells and recursion.
It boggles my mind that kids these days would learn any office application in a CS class.
At my college there was a completely separate continuum for this stuff: CIS (Computer Information Systems). Confuse them at your peril: once on a lark I took a 400 level CIS programming class on advanced Visual C++. (I was already an expert, but thought I might learn some new tricks.) On the first day the teacher finds that only two people know basic C (despite knowing some form of it being stated as needed in the class description) and spontaneously changed the class into a basic C++ course, which he taught while utterly not caring about its own content.
I didn’t write an OS during the class, and as far as I know neither did the professor, but neither of us lacked the time or disinterest to do so.
shaggy and his unmoving stare have pierced my soul. Never have a been so moved by a webcomic background
Oh, Willis! If you didn’t want readers hounding you at every turn, you shouldn’t have expressed yourself creatively. Rookie mistake.
Shows how much I’ve been paying attention, this whole time I thought Danny and Amber were on a bus. O_o
Noooo… it’s way too soon for characters to be put on a bus!
A bus with stadium seating, no less.
LEAVE WILLIS ALOOONE!!! I’M SEEERIIIOOOUUUS!!!
(if anybody actually gets this joke, let alone actually finds it funny, I will be amazed)
Britney wasn’t that long ago, y’know…
britney spears thing?
anyway, hope to see where this ship goes,
I petition that the next person to call the guy behind them ‘Shaggy’ be banned.
The person behind Danny and Amber is Shagy.
Note: Since you put the name in quotations, it means that if I deviate even slightly from the spelling, I do not count towards being banned.
The guy sitting behind them looks like Norville Rogers.
Nah, it looks more like Matthew Lillard.
“Nah, it looks more like your mom.”
Fixed it for you.
My intro to computer applications was the same way. But my intro to computer science was like binary and machine code. Beats learning what the task bar is and all the exciting things the start menu can do!
I wish the Computer Science people would do what the Mathematicians did — they hived off a separate “this is what we do and how we do it” low-theory content statistics class and had it taught out of the “Social Sciences.” So the poeple who need to learn how to use very valuable tools could take a class on using very valuable tools.
Fun functions of common office applications are valuable in an academic setting — I’m STILL coming across people who “know how to use Excel” but didn’t know they could enter formulas into cells to do the math. That’s right, it’s rarer now that it was, but there are people still punching away on their calculators and depositing the results in the cells….
I remember getting a spreadsheet, word processing program, and a non-relational database running on a computer with a whopping 128 kilobytes of memory. Heck, my “backup” laptop runs GEOS atop DOS. An iPhone should be able to eat both of them for lunch….
Oh, I agree. At least when I went, there was a fair bit of confusion over what exactly “computer science” did. From my point of view, I’d have been better sitting in a load of Microsoft, Cisco and VMWare courses (er, if the latter had existed). But then I often come across job adverts that want a bottom rung first-line helpdesk support guy who’s job it will be to reset passwords and NOTHING ELSE, and they still want him to be fully MSCE qualified.
OK, Alex is reading his script off a pad.
I’m betting sacrificial/last minute “Visiting Professor/Grad Student tossed in front of a class with zip prep time.” I’ve had some miserable classes like that.
Actually, he’s trying to see how much of an operating system he can program in an hour to take his mind off this stupid class 🙂
You’re kidding, right? He’s seeing how much data he can steal from the government in an hour to take his mind off this stupid class.
I just realized that, in all seriousness, Amazi-Girl turning out to be Dorothy in a brown wig would be a pretty good twist.
I know everyone is calling the guy behind them Shaggy, but my brain just suggested he has a double hair lip, and now I can’t see anything else.
I laughed when I saw Alex. Such a great throwback to Roomies! that I totally didn’t expect. :3 Oh, and I have little idea what you all are talking about. I’m not code savvy at all. Sorry.
Oh, and I think if the guy behind them looks like anyone… he looks like Hooper. But I won’t get my hopes up.
BUT, it would be awesome. 😉
Oh, and they showed up in the same comic once before. 🙂
http://www.itswalky.com/d/20001231.html
What a long, strange trip it’s been through multiple careers, classes and callings… and now, I have my dream job at last. And the programs I use the most? Word and Excel.
Keep up the kickass work, David. 🙂
We will never leave you alone Willis. You’re stuck with us forever and ever and ever and ever…
Alex is a blonde? And fat?
DAMN YOU WILLIS~!
He’s an older CS guy. Pretty much goes with the territory. (Being blonde, I mean.)
What a drastic change! http://www.itswalky.com/d/20001231.html
We’ve got a more recent picture than that!
http://www.walkypedia.com/index.php/Image:Alex.jpg
…What hurst right here though is that he’s OK with wearing a black T-shirt now. I think even oAlex knew that some lines were not meant to be crossed.
At least he’s not wearing a fedora.
I wonder how Alex is going to teach that class without ever lowering that ipad…
He’s reading instructions directly from the ipad. If he lowered it, he could see what sort of students Danny and Amber are, and they could actually learn.
As someone who was wondering, if not harassingly so, about Alex’s role in this universe, I find it hilarious that Willis has been so hounded by readers to include a character that has NEVER had much more than an occasional presence in his earlier works.
That is because we, as nerds who spend all their time in front of a computer, find him the easiest to relate to, and his brilliance at hacking makes him a wish-fulfillment character.
Well… a refresher course is always nice…I guess…
Aww… Danny’s having fun. Look at that little smile. Yay for Amber!
Not healthy going for a girl that reminds you of your ex.
Way to be glass half empty there…
The reason she’s familiar to him is because she reminds him of Amazi-Girl, remember? He just assumes that she’s reminding him of his ex, because he’s not actively thinking about Amazi-Girl.
I’d take that if Amber didn’t look almost exactly like Dorothy. Besides:
<Billie
i remember taking that class. just to see if i could get back in to taking classes after a several-year hiatus…
i ended up fielding all the questions from my fellow students on my side of the classroom while the AI handled the rest. waste of time and money.
…writing an OS on a Nintendo DS?
Amber, Danny should get down with you right there on the desk if you can do that.
(unless she has a really tiny netbook, I can’t really tell what she’s playing)
Willis may have to have to add a tag for Amber’s phone so people keep mistaking it for a DS. =)
He states its her phone a few comics back, and she was texting on it last comic.
Ah, I see it now. I saw the first class statement of “Achievement unlocked” as “I’m playing a game, and I unlocked something but at the same time I get points for being ignored by a dude so it applies both ways.”
As a grad student who TAs at a prominent top-10 university, it is amazing the number of people who are in the second year of college and don’t know how to use a word processor or excel. Its frankly ridiculous.
Teaching it to computer science majors seems to be missing the point, though.
I know a lot of folks are joking about “intro to computers,” and how it is a big joke. But let me tell you something as an English teacher who works at a community college: most of my students don’t know dick about computers. They go into a panic if you ask them to change their margins on MS Word, download Open Office if they don’t have Office, or even attach a file to an email. Granted, I have a mix bag of both old and young students… but a good half of them don’t know the basics. Sad, but true.
I took an “Intro to Social Statistics” GRADUATE level course a year ago. It was stuffed full of 40+ year old mid-life crisisers who had returned to school.
We had to spend the first week reviewing algebra.
I luckily did not have to take one of these classes. It would’ve been pretty ridiculous if I did, considering I go to one of the best universities for math and computer science in the world (uWaterloo) for Software Engineering (which is just Computer Science with a fancy name and an iron ring).
For once I’m glad to have graduated before Excel existed.
That’s pretty brilliant. ^_^ Alex VS Amber! The old VS new! 😀
DannyXAmber…I can see it.
With Leslie teaching Gender Studies, Alex teaching Comp-sci, and Jason teaching Math (All fitting subjects) we’ll probably see Ninja Rick teaching every sport, and Faz teaching psychology.
A110 is an actual course offered at IU; good on David for sweating the details and getting the course number right. The name of the course is “Introduction to Computers and Computing”, though, and it’s not really intended for students who intend to go on to major in CS. Prospective majors typically start with C211, “Introduction to Computer Science”. It would be more realistic if Amber and Danny transferred out of this course and into C211! It’s not too late! (Source: I’m a CS grad student at IU.)
in my university “introduction to computer scince” involeved actaul programming. it was just basic C programming thogh (but hey they need to make sure everione have the basics covered).