Obsessed with tea
For Berta's birthday on Friday night we went out to this Southwestern fast food place called Desert Moon. The food was slightly better than mediocre, but that could have been because we were expecting Mexican and got Southwest.
But I had this cup of iced currant black tea, and I haven't been able to think of much anything else since then. It has been invading my thoughts every few minutes or so since Friday. I've been trying to scheme ways to get out of the house just to go over to Exton to get another cup of that iced tea. 
So I ordered about $35 of tea supplies from a web site yesterday morning that should allow me to make my own currant-flavored black tea. I don't remember the last time I was so obsessed about something.
My tea order has arrived, and it's beautiful. The tea is actual shriveled tea leaves. It's not that ground up stuff they put in tea bags. I wonder if tea drinker Jen is aware of this. I'm sure she is since she drinks hot tea so often, but one never knows.
I put the cow kettle on the stove and boiled up some tea water. The pot that came with my order is glass and has a glass infuser. This is different from using ordinary paper filters, which can change the flavor of the tea. It holds just more than 2 cups of tea, and is designed to keep the bitter bottom of the pot from pouring into a cup.
The tea was smooth and flavorful - Just the kind of tea that doesn't need sweetener. The currants add a flavor that is not as ditzy as berry.
The order was actually very complete. Instructions for the tea were included along with an invitation to their mailing list and a complimentary sample of a berry herbal tea. They even offered a $5 discount to friends that I refer to their site to order tea. All-in-all one of my best online purchasing experiences from a small merchant.
School Sign-up
I signed up for classes last week or so, and found myself trying to justify why I would take computer courses. I wanted to write down some of the reasons before they slipped my mind.
First off, I have never taken a formal college-level programming course long enough to do any actual programming. Sure, there were a couple of classes like Modula-2 and Business Pascal, but I dropped them shortly into them. In Modula-2 I mostly wrote spaghetti flowcharts for programs written in this procedural language. And Business Pascal turned out to be more of a class on the merits of WordPerfect than pascal. So everything I know about programming comes from self-teaching. It might be useful to obtain some discipline in this discipline.
Another reason for taking classes even though I presumably know all of this information is so that I can get a feel for the style of teaching in the Computer Science department at WCU. If I were to try to test out of a class but I did not know some of the basic conventions of their test requirements (where to put comments, what style of indentations the teacher prefers, how much garbage collection they like to see, etc.) then I might not do as well. By taking one class, I might become familiar enough with those conventions to do better at testing out of other classes.
It might also be useful to get a refresher on basic concepts. It's been a long time since I've written anything in C++, which is the primary language at WCU. Refreshing my memory of syntax and structure would probably be useful for higher level courses.
There are many things that I avoided in my self-teaching that I didn't want to use or had no need to use that might be useful to learn. Namespaces in ANSI C and templates being among the things I know that I don't know. These topics will probably not be taught in an early class, but there might be other details that I glossed over in my learning that would be more thoroughly discussed in a full-on elementary course. At that point, I could determine if testing out is even a good option for me.
It's a trivial issue, but learning how to use the school's computers in a beginner's class would probably be less embarrassing than admitting ignorance in a higher-level class.
Anyway...
I signed up for an additional class today. That makes my schedule like so:
First Summer:
CSW 131 - Introduction to Web Design
Tuesday & Thursday 6-10P
Room A 025
Professor Johnsto
Yeah, so you ask why am I taking this course if I have this lovely web site already? Because it's a fundamental part of the web technologies minor. This is a common theme among the classes that follow.
I tried to look up this professor at Rate My Professors, but they didn't seem to have a listing for a computer science teacher with a name starting "Johnsto". I guess we'll see.
Second Summer:
ART 111 - Introduction to Computer Art
Tuesday & Thursday 6-10P
Room F 206
No teacher is assigned to this one yet. But I'm looking forward to it. I just hope that there is not a heavy requirement in artistic skill, because I just don't have that.
Fall:
CSC 141 - Computer Science I
Tuesday 7:15P-10P
A 109
Another class without an assigned teacher. I wonder how they can do this. I wonder if I'll end up with another adjunct teacher like for my macroeconomics class. Then again, my micro class started out unassigned and I had my best professor so far in that class.
MAT 151 - Introduction to Discrete Math
Tuesday & Thursday 5:45-7P
Room A 120
Moser J
Uh, oh. I need to take this class. I think these logic classes are fundamental to math study. But the ratings at Rate My Professors say "DROP DROP DROP". I guess I'll just have to see how bad he really is. I get the feeling that most of the peopl who rate only go there to say bad things. That's fine, but there aren't enough good ratings to counter this effect.
I'm going to have to give serious thought to what to do about a major very soon. I want to select some higher level courses. I was hoping to get some kind of business/economics degree, something I could use in a management position in a development company like the position I have now. But WCU doesn't seem to offer that kind of thing. A degree in business administration just doesn't seem the same as what I'm thinking of. Maybe I need to look into that degree program a little more. I loathe to take accounting courses, though. Ick.
