Stupid Programs

Hey everyone, it’s been a while.  Judging from the title, you probably think that this is going to be a rant about how bad a certain piece of software is.  Surprise, it’s not.  Well, it is, but still, hang with me.

My school uses this software called Maple.  Maple is a math program that couldn’t be less user friendly if it tried.  Now, if you wanted to put in, two times X to the third power, most people would type 2x^3.  If you type this into Maple, you get an error.  Maple needs you to put it in as 2*x^3.  That’s right, in between every multipled term, you MUST have a * inbetween it.  So, as you can see, I don’t hold this software highly.

Now, one of the more humorous parts of this software, is that every time you get a problem right, it gives you a motivational pharse such as “You Rock!” or “Way to go kid!”.  Which brings me to the picture…

That’s right… Genious.  You’re a GENIOUS.  Wait…  Shouldn’t that be…Genius…?  That’s right. Maple’s programmers couldn’t even run spell check.  Ouch…

College Catch 22s

I’ve noticed two different catch twenty twos today.

The first one was our school’s WPA networks. Originally my school used a wireless VPN network, so when you connected, it would present a splash page saying that you needed a VPN for that network, and then instruct you on how to download the cisco VPN client and how to configure it.

However, my school recently switched over to a WPA network. To connect to it, you have to have a security certificate that the school provides on their website. Only… to get it… you have to be online. So if you go to class now expecting to be able to connect to the network, you won’t be able to get online to get the certificate. You have to get it at home, before you even know that you needed. Totally useless.

The second Catch 22 that I ran into today was with my math class’ online homework. Originally we had our homework due at midnight on Sunday. However, we won’t be able to get any help on the homework, because our teacher’s aid if free on Tuesdays. To fix his problem, they made the math homework due at eight in the morning on Wednesday.

This worked fine for a while, but we had a day where the professor missed class, so we didn’t learn part of our assignement. To fix this, they pushed the homework back to it’s Sunday slot. But when they did that, our school realized that gives us two days to do our next assignment. So, to fix that problem… they pushed it back to Sunday. I personally like the Sunday date better, but it still seems a bit off that they haven’t come up with a better solution. If they keep pushing the assignment back till Sunday, then they’re not going to ever be able to get back to the old Wednesday date. Am I the only one that noticed this? Ah well…

So there you have it, my random rant for the day.