Report 2: How Am I Doing With My Files by Garrett Chun

Introduction

This report is to tell all about my progress (or lack therof) in Psychology 409. This report tells all about my mistakes, frustrations, and experiences with the Internet and technology. I would like to have put specific dates for my report entries (like a journal), but unfortunately, I procrastinated waaaaay too much. I did not really take notes on how I was doing. In fact, I hardly was doing anything constructive until the last couple of weeks. Yup, I know -- it was pretty stupid of me waiting til the last minute to do this. But I couldn't help it. That's just how I am.

I'm not sure if we'll still have to continue this report after it is due, but if we do, I'll make sure to keep up and take good notes along the way. I'll try my best to recall these past 8 frustrating weeks and to convey my feelings and thoughts. Here we go.....

Week 1

The first day of class is always a bit strange. New surroundings. New professor. New students. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I only remembered last semester when I received the psychology pre-registration packet and read about this Psychology 409 class. I thought, "WOW -- computers and psychology, two subjects that I actually like, put together in one class. It should be fun." But the class filled up sooooo fast that I was not able to register for it. Gee, I was feeling this frustration about this class even before it started.

Anyway, the first day of class I was taking notes on how to use PINE and UNIX even though I was not sure if I was going to get into this class. This made me feel a bit uneasy. Was I taking notes for nothing? Well during our break in class (because we couldn't go to the computer lab -- so we actually had to spend the 2.5 hours in class) Dr. James signed my add/drop form so I could officially add the class to my schedule. This put me more at ease and I was pretty happy that I got in (little did I know that this class would cause me much stress, frustration, and anger in the coming weeks).

Well in class we went over exporting messages from pine and other UNIX commands. I had some (but very little) experience with UNIX commands because I was majoring in engineering my first semester (and it was HELL). But that was a long time ago and I pretty much forgot all the commands. But after listening to Dr. James' instructions, I felt pretty confident about this class. Most of the things he talked about I sort of remembered.

A couple of new commands that I learned was Pico and the Chmod command. I think I understood the PICO command, but was still confused about the purpose of the chmod. I mean I know what it does, but just not how to apply it and how it works. For pico, our instructor explained how to make a signature file (usually the person's name, e-mail address and location located at the end of each e-mail message they send out). I always wondered how other people did that and now I know, so it was kind of neat.

Our homework for this class was to send e-mail through PINE , but I already had some experience with PINE and it sucks! Our other homework was to surf the net for a couple of hours, but I already had used it before, so I didn't really have much to do.

I remembered Dr. James telling us how to get to use UNIX and Netscape from home, so I decided to go and do that. I brought a blank disk to the Keller Help Desk on the first floor and in return, they gave me a disk with the communications software to connect to UH. I was really excited because I had just gotten my modem about a month ago and I hardly used it. So as soon as I got home, I followed all the directions and installed the program. Then I tried to connect to UH, but the modem was dailing in tone, and my poor pathetic phones still used pulse. I tried to figure out how to solve this problem because I had the same problem with my other communications software. I looked around, but couldn't find the solution. So, the next day I went back to the Help Desk and they easily told me how to solve it. All I had to do was to go into the options menu and click on "edit scripts" and to look into the login file and to enter "atdp" instead of the "atdt." So I followed his instructions, and it worked. Pretty simple. But when I tried to login, it didn't work. It would dial UH and I could hear all those sounds the modem makes and it would say "Enter your login name:" and I did. But it did nothing (and yes I did press return after my login name). I tried it over and over again and it would just freeze after the login name prompt. I read the instructions and then re-read them. But to no avail. I was all irritated and so I just gave up. I mean I had better things to do than to sit by my computer and wait for it to hook up.

Week 2

This week Dr. James explained what we had to do as a class. We each had to manage a seperate database that together makes up the "World Ideas Bank" or WIB. I must say that I didn't really understand what we had to do. All I know was that we were "managers" of some topic and had to collect data from other people. The only thing that made me happy was seeing that my topic was "Daily Hassles that Drive Me Crazy." I think that my topic is fairly easy to understand compared to other students in my class. I felt kind of lucky. Dr. James told us that we could trade topics with other people but I had no intention. My topic was easy to write about and I could relate to it. I have so much to say about it that I could've wrote an entire novel about it.

We went to the College of Social Science (CSS) computer lab for the first time this week. I sat down at my computer and tried to login to my UNIX account. But when I tried, nothing happened. I tried again and again and nothing happened. I gave up trying and decided to get into Netscape. But that also didn't work. I was really irritated then. I didn't know what to do. So I just sat there looking like a stupid idiot and not doing anything. I just looked around to see what others were doing. I saw everybody busily typing away and I felt left out. So I finally decided to ask for help. But the lab moniter didn't know what was wrong either. He wasn't much help. At least I know that it wasn't me that couldn't get the computer to work. So for the rest of the day, I just sat there and occasionally looked to see what others were doing.

The next couple of days I tried to login in from home, but I got the same stupid no response problem. Then finally on Monday, January 29, I actually got in and you wouldn't believe how happy I was!!! I was so surprised -- I didn't know what to do. My happiness didn't last long. I tried to get into Netscape by clicking on the icon, but all I got was a stupid error message. This made me really mad. After I spent all that time trying to login, when I actually got connected, something else didn't work. Well, I kept trying to click on the icon and got the same results. After I got over my initial anger, I tried to solve the problem. I read what the error said about an "invalid path" so I went into file manager and tried clicking on the executable Netscape in there and it finally worked. Again I felt happy. I actually solved a problem by calming down and thinking it through. Well I surfed the internet for a while and then decided to check my e-mail. Getting into UHIX using the WinQvt thing was simple. I had no trouble at all. So now everything was going alright until I check my e-mail messages from my professor, Dr. James.

Now I started to feel stress. I also felt anger toward my professor. I mean how can he just send us homework through e-mail. I just thought it was unfair, especially since I only got to check it the night before class. The first homework assignment was to create a wibx.html file and to type instructions for that page. Now I had no idea what we had to do and I was thinking "How the hell am I going to make a home page?" Well, I just decided to try and make that wibx.html file. I wasn't sure how to make a new file and nothing in my notes told me how. So I just tried using pico and it actually worked. I was truly excited! I just typed anything in this file because I wasn't sure what it was for. Then I checked to see if the link to my database worked from Dr. James' home page. I clicked on my database, and to my surprise, what I had typed was right there in front of my face in Netscape. I was shocked. I didn't think it be so easy to put something up on the WWW. I was thinking to myself, I acually got my own home page that anybody in the entire world could see. I was feeling pretty good then.

Then our next homework that he e-mailed us was this huge file called Netsurfer. I did what he told us to do, export it and ftp it over to my CSS account. But after that, I had no idea what to do. He told us to view it in Netscape, but I didn't know how to do that. I tried to make a link to in in my wib file by just typing in "netsurfer" without any of the necessary tags (a href="....."). I thought that was all I had to do, so I viewed my wib file through Netscape, but my Netsurfer link did not work. I was confused so I gave up.

Week 3

In class today, Dr. James talked about the requirements that we needed to have by March 5. He gave us 5 different files that we needed to have. All I was thinking was "March 5 is so far from now. I have plenty of time to do all of this." (This is a bad attitude to have. I should have started earlier so I could do a better job.) He explained the files to us and I was confused (as usual) but I wasn't worried -- I thought I had plenty of time. Boy was I wrong!

I was really confused about all this home page making. I mean I thought that Dr. James was going to give us step by step instructions for making a home page. I remembered that his course description said this class was aimed at novices. I just wondered how he'd expect us to know how to write in HTML. I just didn't understand anything. Luckily I was taking this ICS class that I thought I had to make home page for. (Actually, he was talking to this other ICS class. It is kind of strange, we have two different ICS classes in the same classroom . Thus, I thought he was talking to my class when he said we had to make a home page, but he was talking to the other class. I know your confused, but so was I. But that is another story.) Well, my ICS professor gave me a book to read about HTML writing and I had been reading it every night before I went to sleep these past few days. I learned alot from that book, but not enough. I read the book but was still not quite sure of myself. You can't just read it from a book and understand everything. That's what I learned. I think you have to have hands on experience to fully understand HTML.

Again we went to the CSS lab. Thankfully the computer I was on worked today. We were suppossed to complete all the instructions for week 3 that he gave us in the beginning of class. I did not understand one word from it. I asked other people around me and they did not know what we had to do. I asked Dr. James what we had to do and he just told me to follow the directions because he explained everything in class. This made me more upset because I didn't remember any of this in class. I was totally confused and frustrated. I did accomplish one thing. Instead of following those directions, I just worked on my wib file. I added a title and a couple of sentences about how I would be updating this site shortly and about e-mailing me. I even made a

Week 4

I learned something new in class today. I learned what the difference between uploading and downloading is. Actually, I don't think I ever heard of the term uploading, which is the process of transfering data from your disk to your computer. Dr. James also went over what our wibx.html file had to have. We needed a mailto link, links to instructor's home page, links to report 1 and report 2 and a link to our data file. I finally now know what to do with my one lonely contribution. I must put it in the data.html file and link it to my wibx.html file. That shouldn't be too hard. What I don't have are links to my report 1 and 2. How can I have a link to it when it doesn't exist?

Another thing that we have to do is to submit our database file to various search engines so people from around the world can find it. I don't think I could do that now because my files are pathetic. There is nothing on them.

In the lab today, I was able to make the data.html file and sucessfully linked it to my wib file. It was pretty easy to do. I think I'm getting the hang of making files and writing in HTML. I also sucessfully exported my one contribution and used FTP to transfer it from my UNIX account to my CSS account. So now you can see my contribution. I also was able to make a mailing list of all the people in Psychology 409 class. This will make it easier if I every have to send a message to everyone. Another accomplishment I did was I edited my .signature file to include my database's address, so whenever I send e-mail to people, they'll see my home page address and will hopefully visit it.

Week 5

I learned a new hint today in class. I learned that when your loading a home page in Netscape and it is taking forever, all you have to do is click "stop" and all the text will appear without the images (which takes forever to load). I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Now this will save me lots of time. Pretty cool hint to know! Dr. James talked about report 1 and report 2. I haven't even started on either one of these. But do I worry? Nope -- I'm just stupid!!!

I didn't do much in lab today. I didn't know what to do. What's even more frustrating was looking around the room and seeing everybody typing fanatically away. Everybody seems to know what to do. I think that that is the worst feeling. You know, when your the only person that is lost. It's not so bad if everybody else was just as lost as I am, but they're not.

I now realize that I'm falling way back. I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was ahead of most people and I felt pretty good. Alot of people looked lost and didn't know what the heck HTML was. I knew back then and it is a good feeling. But now, I think I'm the one that is lost and everybody else is ahead of me. I'm truly surprised how fast my fellow students figured this home page thing out. I'm really happy for them. The problem with me was that I was not spending enough time for this class. I asked around and other students in the class practically spend all their free time doing homework for this class. Unfortunatly for me, I did not spend enough time. My database file has been the same for the past two weeks. I haven't even touched it. It's interesting seeing how other student's pages are progressing. But it also makes me a bit jealous seeing how far ahead they are from me. But they deserve it because they put in the time and I didn't.

I have indured many problems during the past couple of weeks that hindered my ability to do the work for Psychology 409. The first problem was time. I did not have much time due to other classes and their exams. I had several exams these past coupl e of weeks and I studied a lot for these tests, but totally ignored this class. Also a certain friend of mines was having these HUGE personal problems. Helping this person out has been taking a huge amount of time. I mean really huge amou nt of time which unfortunately took time away from working on my database files. Another problem of mines was that I was too concerned with making my page look nice. I know its important for a page to attract somebody's attention, but Dr. James brought up a good point today. He told us that if your page has lots of images and other things to make it appealing and it takes too long to load, people are impatient and will not wait for your page to load. He said that it should take a max of 10 seconds to load. Well, for the past 2 or 3 weeks, all I've been doing is looking at other people's pages and "stealing" their backgrounds and images. I also told my friend to draw me a picture of a guy stressed out. I was planning to put it on top of my database file to attract people's attention, but it probably would have taken too long to load. I already wasted some of my time scanning the picture and fixing it up using a graphics editor. Not only did it take a long time, but I always got sidetracked. I wou ld start looking for pictures, but end up reading the pages' content. Then I would see more interesting links and go there and it would never end. I just wasted so much time just surfing the net.

One more problem that I encountered was when I was looking for nice images and pictures and backgrounds to make my page look more pleasing. Not only did I waste my time looking for images that would take too long to load, I copied their source down w rong. Like an idiot, I just copied their relative paths for the URL and not the absolute paths. For example if I saw a nice picture, I would view the page's source and just copy the picture's source as "img src=/icons/cat.gif" That would totally not he lp me at all. I would have needed to copy the entire location and not just the location relative to the current directory. It took me about 1-2 weeks to figure this one out. After I learned how dumb I was, I started to copy the image onto my disc. Thi s seemed the easiest way to get a certain picture or background. But the problem occured when I had to transfer it to my CSS account. I wasn't sure how to do this so I asked Dr. James for help. I was tired of waiting around trying to figure things out for myself (for pride) and just decided to immediately ask for help. The results were very positive. As soon as I asked him for help, he showed me how to use FTP (in windows). It's pretty simple. Before, I tried to transfer files using FTP in the UNIX and I couldn't figure it out. I had read in my book that I had to change the file type to binary before transfering it, but I didn't know how to change it. The FTP in windows is way easier. All you have to do is click on "binary" and it automatically changes the file type to binary. Very simple.

Week 6

In class today Dr. James described how he wanted our files to be set up. He also told us that he wanted our heading to be the same as our title. It took me about a week to figure out where the title actually went. I don't think I ever looked up th ere before. We also met in our groups for our database to discuss how we were doing and just to help each other out.

I changed my heading and title in my wib database to conform with Dr. James' format today in lab. It only took a couple of minutes to do this. Didn't do much else today becasue I had to leave early to go do a doctor's appointment.

I got a lot of work done this week. I am trying to put more time and effort into this class in a desperate attempt to catch up with everybody else. I spend a lot of time seeing how everybody else is doing. I check everybody's page at least once or twice a week just to see how they are doing. I finally made progress on my wib database file. I changed the instructions and added some examples to help others make their contribution. I tried to make it short and simple and easy to read so that the vi ewers will have an easier time reading it and hopefully be more willing to submit things. I tried telling my friends to submit to my database because I think the more contributions I have, the more people will be willing to submit their own story. Its l ike how a street performer will put his own money in the jar so other people will think, "hmmmm, I see other people gave him money, I should also." Same principle. I also fixed up my data.html file to look more pleasing. I added a nice simple backgroun d that in my opinion doesn't interfer with the readability of the page. I also put a couple of other small items to make my page look more pleasing, yet be simple and fast enough to load.

A problem that I noticed is that depending on where I go to use a computer, the pages all look different. This is quite surprising to me because on all the computers that I use (home, work, College of Business, CSS, and ICS) they all use Netscape. I thought that on all computers that use Netscape as a viewer, the pages will look the same, but I guess not. The problem is probably worse using other viewers. Or maybe the screen may be smaller or in black and white. There are so many problems viewing the pages. For example, on my computer, the images do not come in clearly. They look more like negatives than like real pictures. I think the problem is with my video driver card. I 'm not sure though. Also, it is hard to judge the appearance of peo ple's pages because my version of Netscape cannot support backgrounds. I tried loading Netscape 2.0, but it takes too long. I only have an 1.5 hours on UNIX and it takes longer to download Netscape, so I can't do it. I still haven't found a solution to this delema.

Week 7

What was frustrating in class today is that Dr. James changed the rules again. Before he told us to put all our Report 1 and 2 links and stuff on our wibx.html page. But now he is telling us that only that data, mailto, my home page, and my professo r's home page links should be on it. He tells us that all others should be in our home page and topical index. It is only today that I finally understand what that topical index thing is. I was always confused about what it should contain. This class is very confusing. Dr. James always changes his mind about certain requirements. And sometimes he thinks he told us something, but in actuality, he only told his Psychology 459 class and not us. So we are left in the dark and he expects us to do someth ing that he didn't tell us to do.

Yeah, I got more contributions today. The bad thing was that when I exported the file out of PINE and transfered it using FTP into my CSS account as data.html, it automatically rewrote my original data.html file. This really pissed me off! All of m y hard work was gone. It really sucked! Well, at least Dr. James helped me to solve this problem. All we have to do was to highlight the message and copy it and then paste it onto our data.html file. I did not know that you could cut and copy things i n UNIX. Very good trick to know. So I spent this lab period redoing my data.html file and putting my new contributions in that page. I also erased my "Under Construction" sign in my wib.html file because Dr. James thinks apologies are unnecessary. He made a good point about it beind unncessary because a home page is never completed. But I still think that in the early stages of a home page needs some type of construction page. For example, if I visited a poorly made page and it didn't have a constru ction sign, I would leave and not come back. But if that page were to have a construction sign, I might decided to come back later to see the improvements.

This week I started to use the CSS lab. I never really went in there other than during class periods. Now I'm starting to go there to do my work because doing it from home is way to irritating. There are so many problems with trying to connect from home. The first is that it takes forever to connect to UH. So usually I would have to do it late at night, but my parents' bedroom is right next to my computer and the light and noise irritates my dad , so I can't do it late at night. So usually, I tr y to get on around 9:30 at night, but it takes me close to 2 hours to get on. Sometimes the connection isn't working correctly. It just rings and rings forever. If that happens, I get out of it and start all over. Then at other times all I get is garb arge and so again I turn off my computer and start all over. Another thing that really irritates me is that I don' t know if I got disconnected from the system. When I do, nothing drastic happens. The screen doesn't get all black or anything. It justs freezes and I think that it's just taking a long time to load -- so I waste more time just sitting there. I wish a message would just come out saying that I got disconnected. Plus if you get cut off, all your work goes down the drain. And this is real ly, really, irritating. I get really pissed off when this happens. Call waiting doesn't help much either. A couple of times I would take about 1 hour to get connected and right when I enter my login name, the phone rings and I get cut off. That sucks! !!

Now I'm starting to feel the pressure. Time is running out and I have to get moving. I still hardly started my report 1 or 2. I mean I wrote a few notes and have lots of ideas, but it will take a long time to actually finish those reports. I reall y should've started all this earlier. Now I regret procrastinating. One thing good is that my wib.html and data.html pages are fairly complete. I have all the necessary links in it. Now all I have to do is fully concentrate on my homepage and my two r eports.

Week 8

Well, well, well. It's finally week 8 and everything is due this week. I remember a few weeks ago that this due date was so far from now. I don't think that anymore. I wish I had more time. I don't think I'll finish everything. In class we talke d about strategies to promote our databases. I don't even want to think about anything else until I finish my reports 1 and 2.

Stress. Pressure. This sucks! I wish I had more time. Too many complications in all this technology things that slow me down. I thought that since I got my modem, it'll be faster and easier to do my homework. Nope. Just the opposite. It just ta kes longer and more frustrating. More things can go wrong. I just hope I'll finish on time and at least do a half decent job! Pray for me!!!

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