Bloody University

Another one so soon.

I felt it was time for a slightly less intelligible rant than my last. Keep in mind that as I am writing this I am rather tired as I had a smidgen under four hours sleep last night as I had my 18th birthday party last night and we stayed up well into the morning, and I am listening to the music on my iPod which I resurrected after a number of years of abandonment. Thus I am listening to a selection of shit music while writing this. Now I just have to decide what to rant about. So many possibilities: Religion, politics, death, life, people, animals, aliens, small furry creatures from Alpha Centuri, music, sport, software, women, men, those who have not yet decided, transvestites, or obscene, pointless lists which people read because they expect that they wont in fact be obscene, pointless lists.

Alas, It will be none of these things, but will in fact be about the stupidity of the institution called 'The University of Southern Queensland' which I am currently attending. Keep in mind that this is not news, but is in fact a rant which is several months out of date, and I am simply writing this because the factor of it shitting me is increasing exponentially. Namely the destruction of the 'Bachelor of Science - Information Technology', and the formation, in it's place, of the the 'Bachelor of Information Technology'. On paper this sounds like a great idea, you might say "That sounds like a brilliant idea, now the course is more relevant to students who want to study IT without the the interference of the faculty of science." (That was almost worthy of a dramatical reenactment on a current affairs show). However in reality it is utter codswallop (and here comes one of those shit songs that I had to skip). What you will in fact discover (if you don't already know about the situation which chances are if you are reading this you already will) is that they have taken the course and divided it up between the faculty of science and the faculty of business. What this means is that (no offence to any business students or indeed lectures) that we have to study utter crap that has absolutely no relevance to what future career path I wish to undertake. At the moment I have only one subject in the faculty of business called 'Censored so that if this is found by someone who's feelings could be hurt, they may not know what I am talking about' which essentially teaches us what computers are (argh bad music!), along with the basic hardware and software concepts, coupled with how to use Microsoft Office. This causes dilemmas on two levels:

1. I hate Microsoft and the greater majority of their products. At home I use Ubuntu (a GNU/Linux distribution) and thus can not run office on my computer at home (neglecting Wine, I don't want to pollute my beautiful Linux computer with dastardly Microsoft software anyway). To a greater degree we are using Office 2007 which is even worse, so in fact we are using shit software with an even worse interface.
2. I KNOW HOW TO USE IT. I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THE STUFF YOU ARE SHOWING ME, I EITHER ALREADY KNOW IT OR DON'T WANT TO (by that I mean that if I ever have to publish any written thing that requires more than a text editor I will either use OpenOffice.org, or in the case of a professional report I may chose to learn LaTeX, though not too soon).

This is by no means the extent to which they shit me (Wow, a good song), there are many other things that I have issue with including the fortnightly powerpoint presentations that form part of the assessment, the chief lecturers self obsession displayed by using a (shit) text-book that he co-wrote (there was something else that went here, but it ran away from my mind), the obsession with observing things from a business perspective (especially with regards to profits), and the general simplicity of course material. The list goes on, but to spare you, I wont.

I'm not sure if that is what I intended to write when I started this post, but my mind is so all-over-the-place that it doesn't really matter.

Otherwise I'm fine.
Tim Westcott (Necius)

P.S. I had a good birthday, thanks for asking, apart from having to spend three hours of it in the aforementioned class.
P.P.S. Sorry