Summer Week 2

Leadership

The 2nd class was interesting. As part of our grade, we are to contribute to the discussion. I've always have had a hard time making a meaninful comment in any class. I'm there to learn ... to receive input. After receiving input, I go home, review and internalize. That's how I learn. At one point in the discussion last week, he called on me and asked me a question. I didn't know what to say. The first thing that popped in my head was the movie Patton. So I said something about that and he stopped me saying that he didn't want to get into the movie yet. Oh well.

Another thing about the comments ... he asks for examples. He wants us to recognize these traits and skills in our working environments and other life experiences. I had a hard time thinking of examples last week. So when I was reading the chapter this week, I tried to think of examples so that I would be prepared to comment.

I think I have my final project planned out. I am going to use the questionaires at the end of each chapter to evaluate my leadership style. I am going to have my team lead, supervisor a co-worker and my wife fill out the same questionaires. Then I am going to compare my answers to their answers and then produce a plan to be better in those areas where I lack. I think it will be interesting.

I've got to start on my ethics paper today. It's due next week.

Database

Last week, we worked a lot with Excel. He showed us all the tricks and neat things Excel can do as a database. We did VLOOKUPs, text replacements, string commands, pivot tables and a few other things. It was a really good class.

He assigned us our first homework assignment. We read the 2nd and 3rd chapters and did some questions from the end of the chapter. We also imported some data from Excel to begin working on our database for the rest of the homework assignments. I finished last night. It's due Sunday night.

Quixote Update

I'm still reading it. I don't think I'll do chapter reviews any more. I'm not going to be posting here every day. Right now, I'm on chapter 47 (according to the on-line version).

Chess Update

I found out that friend from school teaches and plays chess. I told him about FICS and he signed up. If you're reading this, Todd, then you probably found my finger note with a link to this blog. When are we going to play?

I was able to play a few games this weekend. Nothing serious. While I was reading for the database class, I logged on to the Chessmaster site (UBI). I found a game and lost. The server isn't that robust. Plus, there aren't that many people who play there. At night, there are just a handful on-line.