I admire this pompous man. Let me tell you something: I would completely rage if I got this email from a  professor who sucked. But I think this is hilarious. Guy straight up batch emails all of his students and former students asking for our vote. Man’s got balls of steel. How confident is this guy – just dropping lines about his previous awards at other schools and how he believes he is a good teacher. Guy even gives you specific instructions on how to nominate him.

Seriously, isn’t the point of this award to be surprised and voted without asking?  Cut the bullshit, Dr. Oz, we all know he’s just looking out for his own resume so he can move on to more prestigious schools. And you knwo what? I don’t blame the man. Nothing against him though, I actually had him and he was pretty decent, so I’d vote for him if I was still in school. Better than that other Drupal obsessed joker or 100% of the accounting professors up in that bitch. (Abusers, if you read this, I expect a full comment on this situation).

PS – Anyone who cancels their final exam and replaces it with a paper due on the last day of class is a winner in my book.

PS Again – You ever see this guy’s pictures? Guy’s a straight up baller. My fav is “Drink aggressively” TOUCHE!

So a week ago, I get an email from one of my professors before class starts. “I will be buying your books. Bring me $100″ Well gee, thanks a lot, that’s a lot of money. I’ll take care of buying my own books, not you, and here’s why:

So I get to class tonight and he brings us 6 different books. Me being an OCD control freak, come back and do some magical Excel calculations. First, I add up the retail price on the books. The professor claimed to have purchased these books at a 50% discount from a local mom and pop bookstore. So first I add up the retail prices on all 6 books: ($15.00 + $18.00 + $15.00 + $14.95 + $14.95 + $14.95 = $92.75). Add in about 7% sales tax and you’re around $100. Okay so this guy was completely bullshitting us about his discount, but at least the figures add up and he’s not stealing my money.

But here’s what pisses me off. I usually buy books on Amazon.com. So I do two more calculations. First, I calculate the cost of buying them new from Amazon, with free shipping if they were all combined: $21.15 + $9.75 + $9.85 + $10.17 + $10.17 + $10.17 = 71.26. Add some tax and you’re around $76.

But F that. I don’t need new pristine books. As long as I can read them, I will get them used – who cares. Normal professors list their books before the course starts, along with the authors and editions so I can grab them off Amazon, which is how I normally buy my books. So I added up buying them used on Amazon from various sellers. Including shipping, we’ve got: $8.94 + $6.98 + $7.98 + $8.18 + $8.54 + $8.17 = $48.79

Someone tell this mother fucker he owes me $51.21. This greedy bitch makes over $100,000 per year. I am poor. Cut me some slack, Jack. By the way, thank Christ this is the last semester I need to buy books. It’s all one huge sham.

Moral of the story: This “management professor” is a terrible manager because he can’t cut costs. Everyone knows you need to save money. Under my system, I would have saved $51.21. This is why this jokeface is only a professor of management and doesn’t actually manage anything in real life. Okay, this is only like $50, but in corporations, we’re talking millions. It’s the same concept though. People like him break this economy and drive companies to the ground.

So I’m buying my books for next semester and I can tell you right now, I want to bash my history professor’s skull in and I haven’t even met the man yet. Rather than assigning normal textbooks, I look on the booklist and see the following:

First of all, give me an ISBN, a real title (not the course title) and a real author. It’s doubtful these two books have the same title. The info above tells me nothing. Now I have no choice but to buy these two books from the bookstore because it doesn’t give me enough info to shop elsewhere. I absolutely hate when professors write their own books for the class. I hate it even more when it’s sent to Kinko’s and consists of spiral bound printer paper that they make the bookstore sell for $50. Morons.

Features include: a 1998 styled webpage, boring text links and a joke Asian guy in a wifebeater.

As usual, when my school attempts to do anything regarding technology, they get it completely wrong. Rather than wasting precious resources developing this rubbish, they should spend some time fixing the completely flawed school website, that was just recently redesigned into a broken linked, visually horrifying disasterpiece. They should be fixing our failure Luminis portal, which  was down all “weekend” (meaning it was down from Friday to Tuesday) for an upgrade. But forget about that, we need to focus on a social networking site for students and staff, because that’s of utmost importance.

“The success of Facebook and MySpace show that users want a forum to socialize,
engage, and learn – their way,” says Scott Barnett, director of Web Communications at Fairfield. “Fairfield LIVE was built on a robust platform and channels the best of the social media experience into one space – with the privacy and toolset needed on the backend that does this very wisely.”

Let me tell you something, Mr. Barnett: You are a moron. The success of Facebook and MySpace show that users want to use Facebook and MySpace – not garbage being developed by KickApps (anyone ever hear of KickApps?) My ass looks better than the school website, and you’re partnering with some crappy, fly by night social media company that pretty much sold you a version of MySpace. What are you guys blind? Can’t you see that it looks absolutely awful in comparison to Facebook and other modern web 2.o social media sites? Who is on the committee that worked on it and approved it. Apparently, it’s probably a bunch of freshmen that were brainwashed by the administration and think IE 5.5 is blazing technology! Apparently, if you are employed at this school and are involved with anything web related, the requirements include: complete blindness to modern web styles and design, a keen eye for 1998 text based websites, the ability to create text links and the ability to paste corny JavaScript effects into the HTML code of a page.

God knows how much this cost. The school is cutting staff, firing professors and doing everything possible to save a buck in this recession, but we’re rolling out garbage sites that no one will use. Get over yourselves. Save money and the embarrassment of releasing a site that might have been cool in 1998 on my 33.6k dial-up modem. Idiots.

FAIRFIELD, Conn. — The ball trickled slowly, creeping inch by inch beyond home plate. The catcher picked up the ball and fired it to first for the out.

In retrospect, centerfielder Keith Connors feeble attempt at a base hit on the first at-bat of the season was a micro chasm for the Fairfield Mirrors disastrous, mercy-rule 11-1 loss to Townhouse 13: they just weren’t that good.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” manager Tom Cleary yelled at reporters following the game. “We work our butts off all off-season and then have this happen. I’m at a loss of words, to be honest. I’m doing the best I can with what I’m given.”

“Today it was boys versus men out there,” he added.

Despite the lopsided result, the first inning was competitive. Starting pitcher Anthony Nardo worked into and out of a bases loaded jam that ended with two consecutive fly outs – a pop out to catcher Jacqueline Stanley and a can of corn to centerfield.

The scoreless first inning, however, was as close as the Mirrors would come. TH13 opened the second inning with consecutive hits to the outfield, capped by a line drive passed shortstop Chris Simmons that inexplicably found the hole in leftfielder Joe’s mitt and rolled all the way to the wall.

“I’m not sure what was going on,” Joe said. “I guess it comes from too many years watching Hideki Matsui. I knew I should’ve had a catch before this game.”

Simmons left the clubhouse without speaking to reporters after the game.

That miscue was only a sign of things to come. The Mirrors misplayed several balls in play to lead to unearned runs. Most notably, Connors and second baseman Tom Cleary both lost fly balls in the sun that ultimately resulted in big innings. Connors had further troubles on mid-height line drives that showed both teams his abject fear of diving headfirst.

“Those were hard plays, give me a break,” Connors said. “I’m out here hustling my (expletive) off every play while (right fielder Chris) Haliskoe is over in right telling me that my girlfriend has better hands. It’s absurd. That is not in our business plan – I can tell you that much.”

Offensively, the Mirrors were lead by third baseman Mikaela Tierney, who reached base in all three plate appearances. However, the ‘Boys of Spring’ left the bases loaded thrice – first, on a pop fly to the pitcher off the bat of Haliskoe; again on a base running mistake by Simmons caused by third base coach Keith Connors; and a third time when Tom Cleary refused to test Rory Bernier’s arm and did not tag up for the mercy-breaking run.

“Tom’s typically the first to go in that situation,” Cleary said. “You know Tom. Tom looks at himself as a hybrid between Rickey (Henderson) and Pedro Cerrano. But it’d be naive of Tom to test someone’s arm with the game on the line. You can’t take the bat out of (Michelle) Morrison’s hands.”

The Mirrors, which likely face potential postseason elimination next weekend, return to the field next Saturday at Barlow Field. Check local listings for time and channel.

Professor 1 teaches an international human resource management course. She has no clue about history. On two occasions, this woman stated that three atomic bombs were dropped in Japan to end WWII. Please refresh my memory as to what the third one was, I’d like to know. Second, we were talking about imperialism and she asked us which areas in the present day US were territories of Spain. A student replied with Florida and she immediately dismissed that fact and called on someone else, who said Texas. Um, moron – they’re both correct – don’t say that a student (she was pretty hot actually, I’m surprised she was smart) is wrong when he/she is not. This fool gave us nine assignments and graded one of them. How are we supposed to know how we’re doing?

Professor 2 teaches history. She never uses a subject when she sends email. Use a subject – that’s what it’s for. I am OCD with sorting things and don’t want to guess what each of your poorly written messages are about. Second, when you write an email the following bullets demonstrate improper grammar and are unacceptable:

• To prepare your middle-term exam, you need to familiar yourself with [...]“
• “Why did the Jesuits to to Asia to covert people into Christianity?”
• “We studies global interactions during the 16th and 17th centuries.”

These people have PhDs dammit. They’re supposedly brilliant. Proofread your shit and check your facts before you make yourself sound like dumb. I wouldn’t hand in a paper like that. Don’t get me wrong, these are lovely, wonderful people and are really nice. But I have no patience for stupidity.

First off, as far as I’m concerned, it’s 2006 (But she did catch that error and apologized). However, what really struck me was: If you do not know the name of your date, write Date” Ummm. I don’t know about you people but I think it’s kind of bad if you don’t know the name of the person you’re taking to the prom. Heh – a blind prom.. Lollers.

Yes, I understand that it was worded badly. What it really meant to say was (since it was asking for a list of people at the table): “If you don’t know the name of someone else’s date (At your table), please write date…” Or, it could have meant that you didn’t presently have a date yet and would be getting one soon. See what happens when things are worded vaguely?

After the LEO concert was over, Jess and I decided that we weren’t leaving the school until we “visited” the juniors and went on the jumping castle. So anyway, we got permission to enter and completely crashed the party. It was funny because we really stood out – all dressed up and the only seniors there (except Tom who visited for a bit). Here I am in a shirt and tie playing like a little kid on the jumping castle! w00t! After that I proceeded to play DDR (and sucked majorly), followed by some volleyball (woot because – I didn’t suck) and badminton (I didn’t suck either!). Then I and stuffed my face with all the food there. The awesome part was that all of the chaperones were very nice to us and even said let us stay the whole night (I had to go anyway, so it didn’t really matter). Actually, there was one person trying to throw Jess and I out but I don’t mention names here, but s/he left before we did and higher authority had no problem with us staying. I even donated money to the junior class because it isn’t right to just crash and be a freeloader… But yeah, I spoke to a lot of juniors and teachers, chilled there for a while and just had a good old time. If I didn’t have to get up early the next morning, I would have stayed. But I got to talk to a lot of cool people and it by the time I said bye to everyone it took me like 20 minutes to get out the door.

Good times…