...I'm done with that class.

I had a hell of a time this semester with my Information Architecture II class. It's one of the classes that is for the major I am in currently and it is something that I do for a living. So, I thought it should be a snap. Did I ever think wrong. Information Architecture I was all about HTML, so I figured II would be much of the same. I was wrong. It was all about Systems Analysis and Design. Otherwise known in the IT and Business worlds as SDLC. I put the book we used for the class over to the left. I am not selling it back either. It's actually got quite a bit of useful information in it that I can transfer over to the current job.

The worst part about this class was that it was all group work. Weekly group assignments, and a term group project. Getting five people with five different schedules together is not the easiest thing to do. One of our group members missed so many classes he was dropped from the class. He didn't do a whole lot anyway, so it wasn't anything all that major. But it just pissed us off that we were doing all the work at the time while he was just riding along. I will say this, thank god for Google Docs. Without it we would have been dead in the water on all of our assignments. We were able to work miles away from each other and all be editing and collaborating on the documents in real time. The class wanted us to use Visio, we used Google's Draw. There was a learning curve, but in the end it worked out well. We even noticed a couple other groups starting to use Google Docs after we told them that we never actually "meet" up. We just did everything over the internet and that it was working out well for us.

But, today was better because I turned in our final group project for L&I Sci 340... and because I'm done with that class.

...I was reminded of some fun I had many years back.

On the way to work, I got sick of the usual blabber on the radio that I have been listening to for many years. I plugged in the iPod as I am known to do from time to time and let it go to shuffle mode. I have a lot of music, it's a 120 gig iPod and it's over half full. I can go for quite a while without hearing the same song twice.

Tony, Terry, and Cal

This morning I was reminded of a time that was a lot of fun for me when a song called "Over my dead body" happened to play. A few years back, a local band out of Racine called "Snooky" needed a guitar player. They were committed to 3 or four shows still and didn't want to have to pull out of them and let their fans down. I knew these guys for years. Opened up for them when I was still in Lithic for MANY shows and the guys became good friends of mine. So, when Tony, Cal, and Terry were down on their luck and needed someone to step in... I did. I learned a set of about 8 or 9 songs and helped them out. In the end, Bill (amazing guitar player) ended up taking over and they kept on rolling.

While they are not playing together anymore, I still consider their music some of the most influential on my playing in am.psych. John has mentioned that he can still hear it in things I play from time to time.