Stupid Course Rant
This past weekend brought about a fridge replacement for the ailing one controlled via cron job. That one also had a failing compressor. The new one is a huge stainless steel Kitchenaid monstrosity. But it works.

While working outside on Sunday I came across this little green guy. Actually, it's the largest insect of this type I've ever seen. Though not apparent from the photo, it was about 8cm in length, it basically had the same dimensions as my index finger. Happy little fellow... even has a little tail.

The weekend also saw me getting Multi Theft Auto, a client-server system that uses the already-present network hooks in GTA: Vice City to make network play possible. It's quite unstable and scoring is very unfair. Bullets that should hit do not. It's still fun, but it's too bad that Rockstar Games could not make an official version that is better integrated with the game.

Now the rant. My university program requires me to take a Software Engineering class. The professor (with a heavy French accent) won't shot up about the Unified Modeling Language, including its subset, Object Constraint Language. He sounds like he truly believes it's the best thing in the world (next to Java, of course!). Today, he introduced us to how the labs will be run in the course. It will be a week-by-week exercise in micromanagement. Basically, every lab will be a stack of short answer questions that have to be entered into a retardedly designed online form. We are not allowed to listen to music or participate in online chatting while we work; that will cost us marks. Coming in a few minutes late will also deduct marks. We cannot close the browser in which said script is running, or hit the back button. After questions are answered, a special button has to be hit so that the database is left in a consistent state, or we lose hours of work. There is no session management whatsoever. For a software engineering course where "professionalism" is equated with marks, this system looks like it requires a few more Use Cases. The professor blames the fact that the back-end is "a free database, MySQL, so there is no session management." Like that has anything to do with it. A friend who took it last year summarized this man very nicely: "You know that saying: '...those who cannot, teach.' He's a living example of that." I am beginning to agree.