How difficult was this week's task (lumping all the sub-tasks together)? Circle one.
Very Easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very hard
This week's rating= 3A quote that has changed my Shop-till-You-Crawl Life:
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-Steven Wright
How difficult was this week's task (lumping all the sub-tasks together)? Circle one.
Very Easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very hard
This week's rating= 3
How much negative emotions did it cost you, in all?
Very Little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very much
This week's rating=2
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very useful
This week's rating=10
How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?
Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Quite likely
This week's rating=10
How satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?
Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very satisfied
This week's rating=9
How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Refused to give up
This week's rating=10
It was one of those great weeks, so magnificent it didn't seem real. Hence my complete and utter paranoia about having completed the task correctly. It was arguably the easiest assignment yet. (Here I knocked on the pressed-board, contact-papered, processed-wood-product. Hey, it appeased my superstitious Third-World tendencies.) Task 5 was completed in less than thirty minutes. You can see why I am completely freaked out, no?
After searching through Dr. J's home page, diving into his Topical Index page, and test-driving several Generation 1, Psy 409 student homepages, I found the joy and wonder of...THIS HOME PAGE!
Yes, this is my favorite of the Gen 1 homepages, which YOU KNOW means
saving it to my diskette. Through the magic of FTP, I connected
to remote host /home/3/lmorita, changed to [-a-] directory, then
connected to my p12 account and typed in my password, and transferred the file over with the
oh-so-convenient right arrow. Ba-boom-bah! CSS account activated. After checking the directory, and typing pico (file here), I
modified Diane's home page to my...ahem, liking. Anybody interested in
the final product (and to confirm that I did indeed get a result), can
see the theft and mutilation of this Decent
Citizen's Home Page, and thereby ensure my abandonment of this
particular Commandment. WARNING! WARNING!
For the first time in two weeks, I feel good about things. The
difficulty was minimal. I went back to week 4 and worked on it for quite
some time till the task was done. I believe this helped me complete task
5...It feels great, which seems out of proportion somehow. It's one
task, one week, one report. I attribute this to feelings of competency
compounded by relief about overcoming last week's difficulty. In recent
weeks, I have gotten accustomed to feeling as though I could "get the job
done" on deadline, in full blown detail. Having lost that sense, it is
more of a rush to recover it than it was to achieve a feeling of
competency from the start. Learning-motivational theory, anyone? I now
feel more of a rat than when I traverse Gartley's basement.
The negative emotions were kept at an all-time low as well, although
the rating is one increment lower than the difficulty rating. This is
due to feeling pretty negative about myself and any possible success when
I sat down at a terminal this week. Let's face it, I felt terminal.
Strangely enough, this beginning negative feeling wasn't only eradicated by
success, but was still present, adding to positive feelings. It was as
if reminding myself of what I could not do a week or so ago made
accomplishing this week's task all the more important. Interesting that
this kind of motivation worked for me.
This skill of downloading another's Home Page and modifying it will be
something I'ma gonna use. It's stealing in a sense, but it is the best
way to get the desired results with minimal time. The best part is
getting an idea of what you want. It's shopping. Okay, kind of. I'm going to get really good at this week's task, primarily because it
will be something I can see myself using next week, and the week after
that. I am now interested in keeping up my home page, and doing all the
extras so it's not as boring as I suspect. This way, I can download
other, blindingly stunning home pages and learn from them, as well as
modify to suit my needs.
Satisfied? This rating seems to waver for me. I still associate
feelings about the Internet with feelings about my own competency on the
Internet. Will this always be the way for me? I honestly can't say.
What I can tell you is this: I am learning how to make the Internet work
for ME, instead of me slaving away at a terminal, trying to pick at the
great brick wall of Cyberspace, just dying to get inside. It is...how do
they say? Getting in-hand. I can control the Internet more, which
excites me. Here I come, bay-bee, ready or not.
This man is one of our
most wanted. Do not be fooled by his charm. We consider him armed and
dangerous; proceed with caution. His code name has far-reaching
mythological roots. Repeat: proceed with caution.
This week's task was going to be finished, come hell or highwater.
Lucky for me it was finished quickly, with minimal pain.
Fossilized errors were nonexistant this week, knock on pressed-board
wood substitute. I have no record of them in my notes. And as for
repeated lapses, sometimes I forgot how to FTP, but only once or twice.
Lacunae? What's that word? I like it so much, I decided this week it
will not apply to me, and I can appreciate it objectively, in its
literary glory. (Man, that felt good to say. Type. Whatever.) What am I going to do about next week? I'm headed for the computer
lab early. I still move from my assigned tasks because some of the
Internet I'm unearthing is too good to pass by.
But in the meantime, I'm one happy Cybercamper. See you next week
with more angst and kvetching, no doubt, but tonight, I feel good. OWW!