it's times like these you learn to live again
The Foo Fighters are blasting and I'm in a good mood. The lyrics from their song "Times Like These" that is currently playing are the topic of today's post.
I just made one of the easiest dinners
ever. I bought one of those microwavable pouches of rice, you just rip
the top open and cook it for 90 seconds. Then I cooked a can of corn
while I defrosted some shrimp under water. Then I mixed it all up and
added soy sauce. As Emeril might say, BAM! I even have some leftovers.
So I am all set up for school to start tomorrow. I am enrolled at University of Phoenix in the Bachelor of Science in Business Management program. My first class is "Skills for Professional Development" which seems to be a welcome back to school, here is what you forgot and here is how to go to school on the Internet class. I've been online this evening reading the syllabus and assignments while adding the applicable due dates in to my palm. None of the work looks that tough, there just seems to be quite a bit of it. We'll see once I actually get in to it.
For the geeks among you, you're pretty much stuck with Windows here. The class discussion/interaction seem to be mostly done in news groups which look completely NNTP compliant, so no Windows needs there. For writing papers and using their website you need MS Office and some Internet Explorer specific javascript requiring you to sport some MS OS.
While looking at some stuff earlier today I downloaded the OpenOffice 2.0 RC3. wow. This looks like a very viable drop-in for Microsoft Office. This thing has come a long way since it was first made open source. The State of Massachusetts (and multiple European countries) recently announced they were getting rid of Microsoft Windows in favor of the completely free Linux and OpenOffice. I thought they were being a little overzealous with the OpenOffice, but I take it all back. I am really impressed. Unfortunately the MacOS Release Candidates aren't out for 2.0 yet so I can't take full advantage over there. I don't have MS Office on that machine, so I'll plan on using OpenOffice on that machine now.
It's good to see free software make an impact like this.