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livingdebAfter continuing ordinary summer heat (highs in the mid-nineties), yesterday we finally had decent weather: a bit warm, but with a cool breeze.
And today it's in the fifties all day. With a cool breeze. And sometimes a drizzly rain. Normally the first day of weather like this is October 31, give or take a day. Really. Every year it looks like you don't need a warm, snuggly Halloween costume, but then you do.
So I get temperatures in the nineties or in the fifties? Those are my choices? Hey! Where is my beautiful fall weather?
(Actually, we probably get some this weekend. Whew!)
In other thrilling news, I've gotten to spend all week long at work doing what we euphemistically call "data entry." What I'm actually doing is boring and time-consuming like real data entry, but also frustrating, because first you have to figure out the data.
[Warning: skip to the last paragraph now for a brief and painless summary. You do not have to yield to my sick desire to suck you into my misery.]
We have this kind of class that "May be repeated when topics vary." How do you know if it's a different topic? If the course title is different (the course number will be the same). But what if you want to change the topic title, like you want to make it more politically correct, or you want it to include some cutting-edge lingo, or you want to shrink it to make room for some suffixes, or you've figured out a better way to abbreviate it? Now the computer can't tell if it's the same topic. That's where I come in.
I get a list of "new" topics. I check to see if they're actually new. So I look for similar titles with the same number. And I look for the same title with different numbers, in case the course numbers have been changed. Trust me, people are changing things all the time. And they always have some kind of good reason. And there's usually a note of the change somewhere, from which I can generally make a pretty good guess about whether the content changed or just the title or number.
Then there are the cross-listings relations. If a course is multi-disciplinary, it can be taught by several different departments. If the courses are being taught at the same place and the same time by the same instructor, I can use my knowledge of the laws of physics to tell me that the courses have the same content. However, there are exceptions. One class might be on how to do a sport and another class might be on how to teach the sport. Different content. Or people might be learning to paint, but the higher-level students have to meet different standards. So I'm also looking at all the courses that are meeting together and trying to guess which ones have the same content.
Whenever I train people on how to use this system, I like to tell them "there are at least six different ways courses can be the same." At first my students laugh.
This straight week of "data entry" happens three times a year (the third time being more like half a week). I'll survive. But I am soooooo glad it's Friday.
And today it's in the fifties all day. With a cool breeze. And sometimes a drizzly rain. Normally the first day of weather like this is October 31, give or take a day. Really. Every year it looks like you don't need a warm, snuggly Halloween costume, but then you do.
So I get temperatures in the nineties or in the fifties? Those are my choices? Hey! Where is my beautiful fall weather?
(Actually, we probably get some this weekend. Whew!)
In other thrilling news, I've gotten to spend all week long at work doing what we euphemistically call "data entry." What I'm actually doing is boring and time-consuming like real data entry, but also frustrating, because first you have to figure out the data.
[Warning: skip to the last paragraph now for a brief and painless summary. You do not have to yield to my sick desire to suck you into my misery.]
We have this kind of class that "May be repeated when topics vary." How do you know if it's a different topic? If the course title is different (the course number will be the same). But what if you want to change the topic title, like you want to make it more politically correct, or you want it to include some cutting-edge lingo, or you want to shrink it to make room for some suffixes, or you've figured out a better way to abbreviate it? Now the computer can't tell if it's the same topic. That's where I come in.
I get a list of "new" topics. I check to see if they're actually new. So I look for similar titles with the same number. And I look for the same title with different numbers, in case the course numbers have been changed. Trust me, people are changing things all the time. And they always have some kind of good reason. And there's usually a note of the change somewhere, from which I can generally make a pretty good guess about whether the content changed or just the title or number.
Then there are the cross-listings relations. If a course is multi-disciplinary, it can be taught by several different departments. If the courses are being taught at the same place and the same time by the same instructor, I can use my knowledge of the laws of physics to tell me that the courses have the same content. However, there are exceptions. One class might be on how to do a sport and another class might be on how to teach the sport. Different content. Or people might be learning to paint, but the higher-level students have to meet different standards. So I'm also looking at all the courses that are meeting together and trying to guess which ones have the same content.
Whenever I train people on how to use this system, I like to tell them "there are at least six different ways courses can be the same." At first my students laugh.
This straight week of "data entry" happens three times a year (the third time being more like half a week). I'll survive. But I am soooooo glad it's Friday.