On our first class day which was January 11, 1996 I had the sudden
feeling of excitement within me. I had heard a lot of good things about
Psy 459 from other students and I was excited that I finally got all the
classes that I wanted. We didn't talk much about traffic psychology but
we were given a sheet of paper which sort of looked like a syllabus but
it had all this computer jargon on it!! My mind was saying "No-please
stop, let's just talk about "traffic psychology"!! I hated computers and
their jargon and suddenly I felt very anxious and scared. The terms on
the paper were something like rm,mv,ls-al,cd,cp,dir,etc... By this time I
was
lost-so lost I thought I was going to drop the class. We were assigned
to go and get a UHUNIX account if we didn't already have one and practice
using the terms on the paper. Well, wouldn't you know I did have a
UHUNIX account when I came to the new student transfer workshop but I
never used it!! Was I mad at myself!! So I had to go and get a new
password for my account. We were told that if we got a new account it
would take 2-3 business days to activate so I thought I was OK.
WRONG!! Because I had to change my password it still needed the
activation time! I had to go on the ground floor of Keller Hall to get
all this stuff where I got lost because there were so many offices. When
the guy that helped me finally have me ny print out the line was out the
door. Atleast I had good timing! Because of the activation time I could
not work on anything so I just had to sit and watch my friends "try" to
do their work.
Ok-now my account is ready to use but do I know how
to use e-mail? NOPE!! That put me back even further because I had to
get my friend to teachme how to use it. Then after I knew how to use it
everytime I would try to send mail the screen would tell me it sent but
then I would receive mail from the "Postmaster" stating that there was no
such person and address and for me to try the address again. By this
time I was so frustrated that I wanted to give up I'm a fighter and do
not give up so easily so I stuck with it.
I was so happy when I received mail for the first time!! Most of my
e-mail is from Dr. James but it doesn't matter because when I see the
words "you have new mail" I still get excited!! Now I felt like I was
ready!! We started getting homework through our e-mail and I was so lost
that sometimes I would just put this class out of my mind which is why
I'm stuck here the day before this is due typing this out! We use to go
to the Mac lab in Keller but they but couldn't help us with a lot of
stuff so we moved to the IBM lab in Keller because the people there could
help us and we figured that if we are using IBM's in lab that it would be
easier for us to do our work on. That was the wisest choice we made
because I feel that IBMs are much easier to work on. I found myself in
the lab writing to people on e-mail more than working on my reports which
put me back even further!! To be honest, since I was so lost I think
that I was just avoiding doing all the work until one day I was going to
sit down and really learn how to do the internet!! The internet is such
an awesome and amazing thing to have now in our lives but it's so
difficult to learn!!
I was getting more comfortable with e-mail only now and then the bomb
dropped!! We got our first homework through e-mail!! It was called
Netsurfer and now I felt even more lost than before! I tried to do it on
my own but had to finally ask for help from my friends.(and lab
monitors). We were in IBM lab in Keller Hall and the lab monitors were
helping us but they did it in a different way that seemed more
difficult. I felt bad because I had to keep asking them for help but
then Sherman said that was their job and to not feel bad so I asked for
help I think a good 5-6 times of being in there for only a couple of
hours. Do you know how hard it is to take notes while they are trying to
explain to you how to do something? Well I violated the main rule of not
letting the lab monitors touch our mouse or our keyboard because it just
got too distracting!! It didn't even help too because once they were
gone we were asking ourselves "Now what did he do again?". Basically, we
were screwed!! Finally, we figured out how to do it by trial and error.
Basically the whole class is learning things by trial and error and by
looking back at people of G1 and G2. Thank you G1 and G2 for doing such
a good job and leaving us a road that we can follow and allow G4 to use
as well!! Also, the e-mail sent by Dr. James helped so we could look
back on other people's files. Thank you Dr. James!!
In this week we also learned how to use telnet. I have memorized the
address like I know my phone number!!The address is "telnet
www.soc.hawaii.edu"!!!! It took me awhile to realize that I needed to
login to UHUNIX in order to get to telnet. That is why when I logged out
I was wondering why I had to do it twice!! Now I know!! We also learned
how to look at other people's files by using View and Source. Talk about
confusing!! HTML format was so confusing in the beginning but now it's
just like saying my ABC's!! Codes such as (p), (a href), (/a), etc..
are nothing to us now! This was the week when we got our first paper
instructions. There was a certain format that we had to follow and we
learned how to make relative links although everyone prefers absolute
links. We also learned or went over how to get from one directory to
another by using "../../" or "../../../" or "../". What fun we had!!
Talk about some difficult stuff!! Have you ever sat in a class and feel
like your head is just going to explode?? In class everyone is asking
eachother "Are you lost?" "Oh good-I thought I was the only one that was
lost!". You know how they say that gossip brings people together??
Well, I am an eye witness to say that being lost all together as a class
also brings people together because everyone just started talking to
eachother about how lost we all were!! It was real hard to picture what
Dr. James was saying about all the codes and commands without being right
there in front of a keyboard.
We got our report 1 and 2 titles that week. Report 1 was "My travels
through G1 and G2". and report 2 was "My Adapting to the Internet". To
be honest, I don't think anyone can fully be adapted to the Internet! No
matter how much time they spend on the computer there's always more to
learn!! Anyway, report 1 was kind of fun because we got to look at G1
and G2 files and we could criticize their work. I feel real bad because
I was putting someone's homepage down about how it's not colorful and
sort of boring but that was before I started working on my own and like I
stated in the latter half of my report 1 to put all those pictures and
colors on the page takes up a lot of time and now I look up to the ones
who do have beautiful homepages!! It takes up a lot of time that I don't
have but like I said before I think quality is more important than
quauntity. In other words, as long as I have everything in my files that
I'm supposed to have then I should get graded the same as someone who
does have a nice homepage and also has everything in their files!! Fair
is fair!!
Let me also say that in this week, I was so confused because I needed
a diskette. I have never bought a disk of my own so I went to the
library and bought two of them. Anyway, we were not told that MAC
computers could not read a formatted IBM disk so that put more confusion
on top of confusion. I had my disk formatted to MAC first but then
changed it since we were going to be working on the IBMs in class. Since
then I have not touched a MAC.
When I did my work I had looked at Dr. James' files and it said to
save in RTF format so when I was in the 'save as' screen I was looking
under what to save it as and I came across a word called Rich Text
Format. I figured that the first letters of these words spelled RTF so I
saved it under that but come to find out that was wrong!! Wrong, wrong,
wrong things is what I did the first few weeks. Then we went to class
and found out it was supposed to be saved in text only so I had to go
back and save it again under text only. Confusion is all I have to say
that I felt these few weeks.
In these weeks we received a lot of e-mail from the instructor as
well. Some helpful and some just for our own info. I would have liked
to do
all the stuff that Dr. James said to try for fun but there just wasn't
anytime!! After this is done I think I will sit down and try things like
the IRC chats and stuff. Also, it may have looked like I didn't do any
work for this class because only some stuff was ftp'd up to Netscape. I
was doing a lot of my work on my disk and only recently did I send it
up. So no, I was not fully slacking like it probably looked like.
These were the weeks that I really started going to the lab and doing
some work. Since my friend Cynthia is in 499 she came with me a few
times. That night we went to Keller Hall and we were shocked at how junk
their version of Netscape was. It seemed really old but she needed to
use her disk so we couldn't go to Porteus because of the virus so we
wound up there. We were looking at pico and my report 1 had all these
spaces between the lines. We fixed it up on my disk and saved it and
again I had to cut text because there were like 5-6 spaces between
sentences. This was making me mad because I thought that I had already
fixed it up on my disk and on pico so I couldn't understand why it kept
doing that. Now it seems like its OK.
Cynthia and I went to Porteus lab one night and her disk did catch a
virus!! I felt bad because we were there for me and she caught the
virus!! Anyway, it's a good thing that her computer has a virus detector
because if not then that would have screwed up her computer!! Anyway, I
had talked to alot of people and they told me that they caught a virus
from Porteus too and when you ask the workers if they are going to clean
it up they tell you that they don't have the equipment to do it. The
only thing I can say is how stupid that is because they just let it sit
there and it's not going to go away by itself!! I think that is why I
stopped using my disk and just started doing everything in pico. Then
Conrad told me that you can get messed up in pico and to do it from the
ftp screen but I've gotten so use to pico that I can't use anything
else!!Even Cynthia told me that your not supposed to use pico to
do our work in but even she uses it because it's so much easier!! She
came to the conclusion that the spaces on my pico screen were caused by
my uploading it up but she said she was not definate. This is also
another reason why I don't use my disk.Another problem I
encountered was getting to the lab and leaving the lab at night. One
night I had gone to Keller lab and I walked back to the dorms. I got
heat from everyone-friends, family, my boyfriend, etc.. I made sure that
I never walked again because it was scary!! I felt like I had a problem
of getting home because my boyfriend sometimes had to work at night so he
couldn't pick me up although he wanted to. My friends told me to get
Campus Security to escort me home but have you seen some of those
people? They look so scary that I'd rather walk alone than walk with
them!! Finally, my boyfriends schedule changed and he could pick me up
in the evenings.I must admit that without the help of fellow
students such as Cynthia, Sherman, and Conrad I don't think I'd be where
I am today!! Cynthia knew a lot of short cuts using Netscape which some
I passed on to Sherman and he utilized for himself and then taught me a
few things. They were always there to drag me to the lab even if I
didn't feel like going because they knew I had to get work done. How
thoughtful of them yah??
Never again do I wait until the last minute to do things for this
class!! I was panicking and asking Cynthia "Do you really think I'll
finish in time?". She told me not to worry and to do things one at a
time. That was the best advice that anyone could have given me!! My
pages may not be as pretty as others but I put A LOT of work into them!!
Some days I would be in the lab for 6-8 hours straight!! What a headache
I would have when I left there!! Just the other night after spending all
day at the lab my boyfriend Chad and I were driving on Dole Street
heading back to the dorms. I was sure I could see something in the
middle of the road and I was telling him to slow down. I was all
freaking out but he assured me that there was nothing in the road.
See-from looking at the computer all day and doing work on it I guess I
was seeing things!! How scary!! Good thing it wasn't me who was
driving!!
Well, this is the week that we are currently in. Today's date is
March 8,1996. This week has been pure hell for me. Everyday this week I
was in the lab. Every free chance I got I was in the lab. I put
everything off this week just to come to the lab. I felt like this was
the only class I was taking this whole week. It's like everything else for
my other classes just had to wait because I was on a MISSION to finish
this project!! Even when I would go home or be in other classes I would
be thinking about what I wanted to write for my reports so I would pop
out a sheet of paper and jot down my ideas. I don't know if this is
possible or not but when I would spend all day in the lab and go home
and brush mt hair it would be so staticy! Is this really possible due
to the computers!! I think everyone was stressing in their own way
because I
saw a lot of people at the lab when I came. I guess everyone else is a
procrastinator just like me!! Well, I have learned my lesson!! I will
not wait until the last minute to do this work again!!
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My adapting to the
Internet