apparently, i am riding the special bus.
on the advice of my career coach (yes, i have a career coach) to add more "hard" skills to my CV, i am taking an intensive course (12 weeks condensed into two) in HTML and web design at a local college. as it turns out, livejournal is based on html! who knew that this whole time i was posting links to movies, bands and random sites, that i was actually writing in code?
i was a little bit curious to see who else would be in the class, and it has wildly exceeded my expectations.
[1]
The Sommeliere (female), when introducing herself to the class, made a point of saying that she is a level two sommelier (whatever faculty with wine that implies) but is also taking the technical writing program at said college. i think we will either get along famously, or send each other the stink eye over computer monitors.
[2]
The Hippie is also in the technical writing program, and wears faded tie-dyed shirts and birkenstocks to class.
[3]
Halitosis sits next to me and eats yogurt for breakfast, and then breathes through her mouth for the next three hours. apparently she is a graphic designer, but she doesn't understand what the term "file structure" means, nor does she understand the "login for dummies" picture that is on the workstations.
when we published our first webpage, she uploaded her information to the server in a different way than it was organized on her computer. the consequence, of course, is that her file references were incorrect, and her webpages didn't display. i told her that her file structures needed to be the same, and she didn't understand. so i explained what i meant by file structure, pointed out the line in her code, and tried to explain again. she didn't understand. so i just shrugged and said "i don't know" and she seemed okay with that.
also, she forgot her student number on the first day of class and needed to ask the instructor. fine. however, she also didn't know it on the second day of class, and when the instructor politely suggested she might want to write it down, she shrugged and said "oh, but i don't have a pen."
finally, in order to login to the workstations in the lab, you need to press ctrl+alt+delete, and there is a very helpful diagram depicting those keys, with buttons indicating that you should press down on them simultaneously. however, she didn't seem to understand this, and tried mashing the keyboard with her palm instead.
she's a graphic designer! she brings a laptop to class! shouldn't she know how to use ctrl+alt+delete, or at the very least, a pen?
[4] and [5]
i have a rousing game of moron/keener bingo going. the moron is Ambiguously Gay and likes to joke with the instructor, but not in any remotely humourous way. he also likes to make really loud comments, apparently to himself but loud enough that i suspect they are for the benefit of the entire class.
the keener looks remarkably like Comic Book Guy from the simpsons, and drinks slurpee for breakfast. not just a small one, either: he drinks the super-sized slurpee. oh, and it's not just any flavour: it's the blue one. you heard me. comic book guy drinks super-sized blue slurpee for breakfast.
as of four days into the class, Ambiguously Gay is beating Comic Book Guy by one round of BINGO.
[6]
Loud Shirt Man is enrolled in some sort of computer program at this college, and is all buddy-buddy with the instructor. i strongly suspect, however, that this is a one-way buddy-buddy (just buddy, perhaps?) because the instructor is just not that into Loud Shirt Man.
LSM actually borrowed $10 from the instructor yesterday, because he forgot his wallet but needed to pay for parking. i want to know where he lives, because i would be hard-pressed to pay $10 for parking - let along for a 3 hour class. at first, he actually asked the instructor for some swipeable medium (i.e., credit card) to pay the parking attendant, and i wasn't all that surprised when the instructor wasn't comfortable with that arrangement.
i was a little bit curious to see who else would be in the class, and it has wildly exceeded my expectations.
[1]
The Sommeliere (female), when introducing herself to the class, made a point of saying that she is a level two sommelier (whatever faculty with wine that implies) but is also taking the technical writing program at said college. i think we will either get along famously, or send each other the stink eye over computer monitors.
[2]
The Hippie is also in the technical writing program, and wears faded tie-dyed shirts and birkenstocks to class.
[3]
Halitosis sits next to me and eats yogurt for breakfast, and then breathes through her mouth for the next three hours. apparently she is a graphic designer, but she doesn't understand what the term "file structure" means, nor does she understand the "login for dummies" picture that is on the workstations.
when we published our first webpage, she uploaded her information to the server in a different way than it was organized on her computer. the consequence, of course, is that her file references were incorrect, and her webpages didn't display. i told her that her file structures needed to be the same, and she didn't understand. so i explained what i meant by file structure, pointed out the line in her code, and tried to explain again. she didn't understand. so i just shrugged and said "i don't know" and she seemed okay with that.
also, she forgot her student number on the first day of class and needed to ask the instructor. fine. however, she also didn't know it on the second day of class, and when the instructor politely suggested she might want to write it down, she shrugged and said "oh, but i don't have a pen."
finally, in order to login to the workstations in the lab, you need to press ctrl+alt+delete, and there is a very helpful diagram depicting those keys, with buttons indicating that you should press down on them simultaneously. however, she didn't seem to understand this, and tried mashing the keyboard with her palm instead.
she's a graphic designer! she brings a laptop to class! shouldn't she know how to use ctrl+alt+delete, or at the very least, a pen?
[4] and [5]
i have a rousing game of moron/keener bingo going. the moron is Ambiguously Gay and likes to joke with the instructor, but not in any remotely humourous way. he also likes to make really loud comments, apparently to himself but loud enough that i suspect they are for the benefit of the entire class.
the keener looks remarkably like Comic Book Guy from the simpsons, and drinks slurpee for breakfast. not just a small one, either: he drinks the super-sized slurpee. oh, and it's not just any flavour: it's the blue one. you heard me. comic book guy drinks super-sized blue slurpee for breakfast.
as of four days into the class, Ambiguously Gay is beating Comic Book Guy by one round of BINGO.
[6]
Loud Shirt Man is enrolled in some sort of computer program at this college, and is all buddy-buddy with the instructor. i strongly suspect, however, that this is a one-way buddy-buddy (just buddy, perhaps?) because the instructor is just not that into Loud Shirt Man.
LSM actually borrowed $10 from the instructor yesterday, because he forgot his wallet but needed to pay for parking. i want to know where he lives, because i would be hard-pressed to pay $10 for parking - let along for a 3 hour class. at first, he actually asked the instructor for some swipeable medium (i.e., credit card) to pay the parking attendant, and i wasn't all that surprised when the instructor wasn't comfortable with that arrangement.