Blog assignment #9

Now a day you can get cheaper books online then you can get at the campus bookstore. I looked up some of the books that we need for this class and I found that to buy the books new online was just as cheep as buying them form the bookstore used. I got waiting for Godot for $9 and it was $9.60 online, Einstein’s clocks was $11 at the book store and $10 online and house of leaves was $15 at the bookstore and $13 on the internet. Not this doesn’t count S&H so the prices would be higher online if I bought them individually but if you get over $20 on amazon you can get free shipping, and I would say that any school semester you can spend more then $20. When I searched for the books it was incredibly easy and the books came up almost immediately. I think that more and more people use an online book supplier to get their books because it is cheeped and just as quick, in the future I’m sure that the campus bookstore will have to find a way to compete for the sales of online books, especially used ones by lowering prices. The problem comes in that UMKC will not suffer any loss because if they start loosing money in the bookstore they will just raise the price of parking or tuition to make up the difference. The only reason that I could see that someone would chose to buy at the bookstore id if they can get used books that are a better deal or I think the main reason is for ease. Either way you have to go to the book store to find out what books you need and then go online to get them, I think that some people just get them there because it is faster and easier just to buy there then to go home and order it when the book will not come in a couple of weeks and you might need it sooner. I do think that the move to getting books online is headed for more and more of an online approach but in the terms of student services it will take much longer to weed out the feeling of talking to a person. When I have had problems with the university I have always just gone to talk to someone, not that I don’t know that I can call but talking to someone is a lot nicer then over the phone, and even talking to someone is a million times nicer then talking to no one over the internet. In the service department they will always need people because we need that face-to-face contact to communicate, for now at least. If this did ever go completely over then Internet I think that a lot of information is lost in the translation of the typed word. With no tone, pitch or smiles people loose the feeling part of the message and then we live in a cold lifeless world. I’m not saying that is UMKC student services go computerized it would be similar to the apocalypse but it would be close and I’m just not ready to accept that, yet.

Blog assignment #8

Now there are sites on the internet that allow you to look up books and get an entire analysis of them without reading them at all. when I looked up Waiting for Godot I found that the analysis that they talked about was similar to mine in the fact that the play is about waiting for hope, but in the sense of all the other characters this analysis is much similar. Instead of applying a personality to the characters this analysis simply says that each one is there to take up time until what they are waiting for arrives. It also instead of taking a broad world view focussed on suffering and original sin, and also they are waiting for Godot to save them, while as I merle applied Godot to anything one may wait for. Then it gives some other political and religious interpretations. I would imagine that this site could be used as a study tool, I know that when I did my paper I looked up different versions to make sure that my paper was not the general accepted version and also to see what people thought of the boots and hat because it was the only thing that I didn’t relate to anything. however in a site named grade saver it even makes the site sound like it is made for people that need saving. And I would assume saving because of the fact that they didn’t read it. it is like most other sites that simplify the information in that to read their analysis takes a couple of minutes where as the book takes much longer. It is a very simplified version of the book that just gives main themes and disregards the little facts. Personally if I were writing a paper I would need a lot more then this but a site like this could give you enough to start a average paper. Even more so to add to its cheating idea is the fact that the site has a place where you can pay for essay service. Now this to me is not just using your resources but is bluntly put cheating at its easiest, any time you can get an essay without putting any of yourself into it is cheating and is as simple as that.

Blog assignment #7

http://www.umkc.edu is in my opinion an ok representation of our school, I mean in technical terms it doesn’t lye to you it just gives you an overly great representative of how the school is. UMKC is a commuter college although I think that they are trying to get more people to stay on campus by making more dorms, the truth remains that most of the people that go here are here for a couple hours in the day and then drive back to their homes. The web sites show a lot of student fun and organizations but in my opinion you have to go out of your way to get into one of these. The web site is made to make you want to come to the school, it is like a coke advertisement saying that coke is the best, some people will agree and some wont. I personally had never visited the site before except to check my grades and sign up for classes so to me this site is not that beneficial. I don’t believe that there is any problem with posting grades up on the Internet. You need my name and my new fancy student ID number to get to them and I barley know my ID so I would say that the information is pretty safe. If someone could find my ID and look at my grades I would not have too much of a problem because one I wouldn’t know and two that would give me the knowledge that someone know my new ID and maybe I could get it from them. I think that the Internet is a nice thing for the university to have, it makes thing quicker and easier. I don’t however think that the university is dependent on it because it existed before there was internet so unless if in the last years of internet people got a lot stupider, which I’m not saying could have happened, UMKC could function without the internet and be fine.

Blog assignment #6

There is a new craze on the Internet with the advent of online poker. Three are so many sites devoted to this fun like http://www.mybookie.com http://www.pokerroom.com http://www.partypoker.com and http://www.monacogoldcasino.com/index2.php. All of these sites make you pay some sory of money to play poker online and eventually in the long run loose you money. To find these sites just search for anything that you want to play and you get a list of like a million hits. As far as I know of theses sites are legal because they are based out of the country where the laws don’t apply as strongly. Simply base the company out of country and let the internet connect people everywhere. Most of these sites seem, like most gambling associations, that they just want to drain your money, which of course is the only reason to start one. Most of them play fancy games like flashing graphics of saying how much people have won in the past but my favorite way is how they all show that millions of people are in the system which almost promises that there will always be people to play with. There are some warning in these sites mostly I say things like links to gambling problem web pages. I’m sure this in only for liability reasons like when you hear advertisements for real casinos they always refer to 1-800 bets off. These always make me laugh because it is just a stupid ploy used so they don’t get sued, the people who run business like these don’t really care about how much money you loose if anything I’m sure they are thrilled when people spend all their money, but I cant really be mad at companies like that because to be honest the players are giving them money. Some people say that it is an addiction, but to be completely honest I don’t care, its not a physical addiction like cigarettes its just a mental one and I think that if people wanted to get over it they could but they have decided that gambling their life away is more important then anything. some could say that these place just prey on the week but in that logic it doesn’t make them any worse then any other land based casino just that they are easier to got to. and then I guess I’m back to talking about Americans are lazy and overweight. Well now that I’m back to the same old rant I will just conclude by saying that there is no problem with online gambling as long as you don’t cheat and you play responsibly.

Blog assignment #5

Ok ebay is an amazing company, did you know that you can order cardboard boxes on ebay and I bet they come in a cardboard box. You can also get decorative hole punchers, a habit 12 panel pro sand filled hacky sack, a kid rock candle, a used tooth brush, or any pez dispenser known. I didn’t find it but I have also heard of people selling their soul on ebay or even selling everything they own. Lord know why people would want to sell these things but even more troubling is why people would want to buy some of this weird stuff. Especially when you could go to any store located within 5 minutes of you house to get it. ebay is an interesting idea in the sense that you can sell anything. It holds a new market for people everywhere. Instead of being business driven it is more people driven. I think that the bidding system is nice because you can get top dollar for what you are selling, and it I’m sure can be fun to out bid people like an actual auction house. I do think that the new wave of online buying does present a problem in the fact that you really don’t have to leave your house for anything anymore, it helps the already lazy American that sits in form of his computer to be just a little bit lazier, after it not like we have an obesity problem in America, personally I don’t have a real problem with ebay or other establishments that make things easier I thinks its amazing the capabilities that we have to get anything we want at the touch of a button, but I do think that it does start a problem in the fact that people just sit at home and buy what they need and never need to move or even more importantly get up and talk to another human being.

Blog assignment #4

Cheep music is great, personally when I looked on the internet for a non sharing site that looked to be legal I decided just to go the source of the original problem the new http://www.napster.com/ as we all know this site used to share music freely and sense has been destroyed and built back up to sell music for a price, now for only 9.95 a month you can download an unlimited amount of songs on your computer and listen to them all you want as long as you are still a member, I don’t know how it is possible that once your membership is over you cant listen to the music but you also have the option to buy a song for $.80 a song which is better then apples $.99 a song. But of course you can always get music for free I hear and that is a much better deal. I personally don’t understand how these businesses that make you pay for the music make any money at all because anyone with a computer and the internet can find a place to get music for free and maybe there is enough law abiding citizens out there that want to pay for their music but I don’t see the point. I imagine that these businesses have to pay a certain amount to get the rights to sell these songs and some of the money goes to the artist but it just doesn’t seem like it should make a lot of money. I personally say if these businesses have the rights to the music and see it for cheep then at least if not everyone wins, not everyone looses. We don’t have to pay as much for the music and everyone makes a little bit of money. It might not be as fair as buying a CD but I’m not going to go out and buy an entire CD when now most people make only one or two good songs anyway. I’m not going to say that getting cheep music is really bad for anyone, and getting music off the internet is wrong but in my opinion the people that make the music are not suffering too much and I think that they will move on in their $100,000 car.

Blog assignment #3

Googling people. It is an interesting new concept that does put an interesting spin on privacy. When I did this assignment I knew that some people you can find easily like people with weird names where as people with the first name like chris and the last name of edwards gets about 14 million hits without quotes and with them gets only 283K so it is a little bit harder sifting through those to find yourself. I personally have never thought that this is an invasion of privacy because like I said unless you know something about me you would have no idea which one of the 200K+ people are me. And when you do finally find someone that you are looking for the most I ever get is anything when their name is in the newspaper for sports or academic reasons. There is not a lot of information you can access by just googling people so personally I got incredibly bored doing it. I personally don’t see any benefit to this new technology unless you are slightly crazy and knowing that I was on the honor role in 2002 for blue springs south high school is the type of information that makes you happy, or maybe you might be trying to stalk someone with useless information. Now I know that the internet does have some security and privacy issues but you would have to be a lot smarted then I am to take advantage of that. And just as I see no real benefits to the google search I see very little negative side affects. If there were major problems with it you would hear people complaining of it more and well I don’t. googling people in an interesting thing that I hear is really cool except for the fact that I haven’t ever really found this holy grail of awesomness that exists somewhere within the vas network of the google search

Chris’ rant # 176

Ok so I went deer hunting this last weekend and well here’s the thing. I didn’t see anything, so I didn’t shoot anything, so I didn’t kill anything, but I did get a 8 hour car ride; 12 hours of sitting in a tree, sometimes it was raining; enough free time to read Fahrenheit 451; I got to go to a place where you can actually look up at night and see the stars, which I did often, and it was beautiful; and spend time with a bunch of fun people. I might not have actually got a deer this year, or ever, but I had a great time and it just goes to show you that you can fail your main goal miserably and still have fun, if you let yourself.

Chris’ rant # 175

Well this weekend I will go out and in the practice of population control I aim to kill me a deer, now killing a deer is a lot like getting the ladies, you might be saying that I’m crazy about now but just read more and I will hopefully explain myself better. See you go out into the woods and you can either sit and wait for a deer to come your way, you can sneak around in order to spook one up so you can get it or you can even put sent out and try to draw them to you. Now everyone wants that trophy buck, and I don’t mean male just the best deer. You do what you think you need to do to get this buck and wait, now this is when it gets interesting. You will see other deer along your journey, some will be way to far away and out of your guns range and some come too close that they are not even a challenge. Now to be honest in the search for the thirty point buck you will come across other deer, but you have to choose whether you want to shoot or wait more for the deer that might not come. Many deer you wait and don’t shoot for one reason or another, not good enough, too far away, too young and you then have to wonder if you could have shot the deer that was too far away and did you just miss your chance. Soon enough a deer comes by that you think that you have a good shot to get, and you realize that this is the best that your going to get and you try to take the shot. Simply said you either hit or miss, if you miss you wonder why, were you not patient enough and should have waited until it got closer, were you not skilled enough because of you lack of shooting experience, you can always blame it on something stupid like the gun or was it just fate and you never had a chance. But if you hit then, well... yay!

I don’t think that I have to explain the comparison, or the outcome of yay.

Chris’ rant # 174

Ok so I just have to say that harvesters is amazing. Because they help give food to needy people that can’t afford to eat, well that too. But Sunday I went to the chiefs game and raised money for 2 and 1/2 hours and then got a free ticket to the game, which was won with 5 seconds left when a field goal would have tied it, a risky play that way great to bee there for. Then yesterday I got to go to Dave and Busters which is like a Chucky Cheeses for big kids. It was 25 dollars to get in for the opening, which was done through harvesters, and once in there was an all you can eat buffet, free open bar, that I took advantage of, and ten dollars worth of games, that I used the ticket winnings to get me some fun toys. And that’s why harvesters is great, why cant more organizations that help the needy be as cool

Chris’ rant # 173

Every once in a while you have those moments where everything just is awesome. Well I had one tonight, I went to Applebee’s tonight with Billy, Brian, and Lauren to get ice-cream. We get there and order our desserts and about 5 minutes later a manager comes to tell us that they don’t have ice-cream, which both of our desserts had ice-cream incorporated into it. So we say that we will take out desert without the ice cream and he will decrease the bill. Then the orders come and they get mine wrong and I get to keep it and then they bring the original one I ordered, so I got 2 desserts for the price of ½. Already a great time, so can it get better, it can and did. As we were leaving I picked up a mint that looked like a normal peppermint flavored mint but turned out to be cherry which is my favorite candy cane flavor. It was amazing. This can mean one of three things:

1. A sign that things are looking up, and will get better.
2. A sign that life is preparing me for a big fall.
3. A sign that I got a wisp of good fortune and it means nothing more.

Lets hope for 1, or 3, but not 2

Chris’ rant # 172

Want to know what a not-good-idea is. Working out after clinic on Friday which involved running for 20min, then going ice skating for 3 hours at night, then waking up at like 7 to go clean up tires and honey suckle from a wooded area that happens to be on a cliff, a.k.a. steep hill. Point being, my leg have had a rough two days, and they are feeling it. but on a good note I didn’t work this weekend and it is great, I have so much time to do all the things that I want to, like… nothing, or… anyway I could have done a lot of fun things.

Chris’ rant # 171

There are always people that you meet that seem invincible, but once in a while you notice a crack in their armor and you realize that they are just as human as you but just have had a shit load more practice. Well today I admitted my first patient,

Pt is a 70yo AAM who ptc today for abd pain for the last 10 days. Pt states that the pain is constant stabbing pain that radiates to his back. Pt doesn’t remember anything that could have happened to his stomach. Pt does complain of chest pain that occurs about 2 times a week wit associated SOA and nausea, which is about the norm for him.

Pt does have a history of uncontrolled HTN, 2 months ago BP was 146/90, when he was on 4 HTN meds, and has been up to at least 190/95. Today pts BP was 104/65, checked by nurses and 95/60 when checked by Dr Reisz. And pt has not taken any of his meds in the last month.
That’s right a chronically uncontroled HTN pt came in on no meds and was hypotensive. He had a completely negative ROS, other then problems listed above. he has had normal bowl movements, no blood in stool, normal diet, and best of all the guy was completely ok. He was talking and seemed fine except for his abdominal pain.

After we admitted him I asked Dr Reisz what he thought was wrong and he said "either he was cured of his HTN within the last month or... I don’t know" I said, "what could it be" he said, " I don’t know"

That’s all I just thought it was intresting

Chris rant # 170

Time spent taking my logic midterm: 35 min

Time spent finishing up my English paper: 5min

Time spent in religion: 0 min

Time spent in English: 5 min

Realizing that you just completed an entire day of classes and only spent 45 minutes thinking: priceless...

Chris’ rant # 169

Every day within everyone struggles are being constantly waged. It can be the struggle between good and evil, persistence and surrender, or perhaps the decision to do nothing versus to move on. It is these dualities in people that make us unique. We all have aspects of various personalities within us. Based upon a combination of experience and genetics, the end result is that some facets of our personality are suppressed while others, due to this constant state of inner conflict, prevail. This concept of dualism means that when faced with a decision, any given person will go about the process differently. Even after reaching the same conclusion, getting there doesn’t mean that everyone who has arrived at the same place got there using the same road. Duality is not a bad thing at all. People seem to need to have conflicting pieces in them so they can stay sane. If people didn’t have this internal struggle, they would either stay in one place forever or never commit to anything. The trouble with internal duality comes when one part of the psyche completely suppresses the other. Waiting for Godot reminds me of the movie, Ground Hog Day, where Bill Murray’s character is forced to relive the same day over and over again. The only difference between the movie and the play is that the play is a more like real life where people are the ones that seem to get into patterns and forced to do the same things over and over again. I guess that is what Waiting for Godot tries to do: examine the duality of man and expose to how absurd it can be to just sit around in the same spot every day and wait for something that one is are not too sure about. Opening one’s eyes to the patterns that one gets caught in every day is what this play means to me. Showing that the duality people have inside is a great thing as long as one listens to both sides within. In this way people can live their lives day by day, not just day after day.

Right now I have the feeling to do something so not me, but the hard thing is to figure out what that is?

Chris’ rant # 168

91, that’s right a new personal best, not 92 but 91 second expert minesweeper. And on a side note, I’m amazing.

Chris’ rant # 167

I hate to say it but I know it happens once a year and it is a great time to celebrate many good things, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I woke up happy fearing that I would have a problem finding something to rant about when all it took was to turn on my radio and there it was... Christmas. That’s right Christmas songs on November first, OMG, its like every year they start earlier and earlier. Soon they will start after the 4th of July if we don’t stop them now. I remember when it started the day after thanksgiving and that was ok but the day after Halloween is just crazy, don’t get me wrong I love Christmas music but I just think that 2 months of it will more put me out of the holiday spirit then into it. Bah humbug already