Ad Astra:

So this week has been somewhat of an interesting one, I suppose. I’d first like to start off with my congratulations to the Pittsburgh Penguins… Way to bring the Stanley Cup back to Pittsburgh! Okay, so I know I’m not exactly a fan of sports or anything, but I do still have pride in my hometown. Despite my apathetic attitude toward our sports teams, it’s nice to have the community come together, as well as give a little spike in the local economy. Next on the list: how my first round of midterm exams went. It took an entire week before my Statics professor even handed back our exams. Before he handed them back, though, he told us that the class average was a 62% (93/150) and that the highest score was an 87% (131/150). I was quite shocked by this, and at this point I began to get quite nervous. But upon receiving my exam, flipping over to the front page, and seeing my score, that nervousness quickly changed to a feeling of ecstasy. So guess who got the highest score in the class? Yep. But despite the class average being a 62%, the professor is still not curving the scores. I guess I shouldn’t expect a curve, but it seems to be standard practice to curve the average to a 70%. Still, the professor did say the final cutoffs for letter-grades would be determined at the end of the session to reflect the class grades, so I’m not too worried about not getting an A. And I’m certainly not worried about Differential Equations. I got another 100% on the quiz which puts my course grade at 100%. And Economics: Well, that’s an interesting one. I studied for about six hours for that exam and felt pretty confident when I took it. When I got my score back, though, I was a little disappointed, with Blackboard showing a score of 28/35, or an 80%. However, going into class the next day, my first assumptions were proved correct — the answer key was wrong. Admittedly, only two of the answers were wrong, but I was able to get a point back for a poorly worded question (two answers were technically correct) as well. So in the end, after two points back from fixing the answer key, a point for a poorly worded question, and a 7% curve, I ended up with a 98%. That might go down as the funniest grade change in my book. So after the first half of the summer session, I must say that I am quite pleased with how things are going.

On to my next topic of interest… the new Facebook usernames. So I have to say, I’m getting quite tired of everyone’s complaining about how Facebook is changing. Okay, so I know the whole “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” saying, but honestly I think people need to realize something: We’re living in a different age. And therein lies the beauty. Despite being ignorant when it comes to politics, I still think Obama got it right when he chose “change” as his platform. That’s exactly what this age is all about. Everyday, we are progressing exponentially, and in case you didn’t realize it, progress is change, and consequently, change is progress. (Even change that is negative provides a bit of progress one way or another.) So I commend Mark Zuckerberg for his desire to progress. And these usernames, I believe, are a good step forward. So what if MySpace uses usernames? This isn’t about MySpace. If Facebook constantly compares itself to MySpace in the pursuit of having it never be similar in any shape or form, then they’re automatically limiting their design space. (Yes, I’m using terms I learned in my engineering courses and applying them.) If usernames are a good addition, then usernames it is! (I admit that I spent the last minute before you could register a username watching the countdown, which you can see from this screenshot I took of the last second.) And in any case, these usernames are simply used so users can access profiles more easily. Other than that, there is no change to how we’ve been using Facebook for the past four or so years. So why is everyone compaining? As long as you don’t choose a username like “ImOnABoat”, you should have no issues with random people viewing your profile. (Which only prompts me to say, don’t choose a username that everyone is going to type in just to see who has that username!) So I hope I’ve made my point clear: This is the age of the internet, and with that comes rapid change and progression, and it’s not going to slow down for anyone, so we’ve got to keep up with it.

Well I think that will do for now. But I would like to leave you with a line I found from a “You know you’re an engineer if…” list, that being: “If you thought the real heroes of ‘Apollo 13′ were the mission controllers.” So true…