July 16, 2006: Driving Around South Bound Brook

We both slept in way too much this morning. It was after nine thirty when I finally pulled myself out of bed and Dominica was probably half an hour after me. We were up for about an hour when Andy and I got on the phone to do some work and Dominica decided to go to sleep on the futon in the living room with Oreo and the two of them slept for another two hours while Andy and I talked on the phone. So Dominica got plenty of sleep today.

When Andy and I got off of the phone it was after one in the afternoon and Dominica was still asleep. I woke her up and we got ready to face the day and around two we went out to the Omega for some breakfast, lunch or whatever. Our plan had been to work on her homework while we were there as she has a major assignment due tonight but instead we spent the whole time talking about the condo that we are interested in. We are really upset about the whole situation and really love the condo but are really scared of the direputable builders and the potentially poor community that is developing there. There are too many unknowns around the whole Canal Crossings development with the potential for a really bad commercial space to be put in right in the middle of the condos, it is all ready not in the best of neighbourhoods and apparently the people living there are not very afluent which could mean that the complex is headed for rapid deterioration. It is such a huge decision that it is really taking up a lot of mental energy.

After lunch we decided to take the 330 out and drive up to the Somerset and South Bound Brook areas and drive around to get a feel for the region to find out what we think of the surroundings. We tried calling both of our parents to see if any of them would be able to come down to take a look at the condo to get an outside opinion on the whole thing. It is really tough only having a first person perspective and being as isolated as we are down here makes it really tough to get any outside perspective. Dominica thought of calling Bob so she called him and he, miraculously, is able to come down tomorrow to look at the place with Dominica while I am at work. He is just in the process of closing on his own house in Ithaca in about a week and is getting married in about seven weeks so he is really busy this summer but is taking the time out of his schedule to come down and give us an opinion on the condo.

We spent a couple of hours driving around getting to know the area around South Bound Brook. Overall it isn’t had but the area right around the condos is not the best. It gets pretty poor right there and Bound Brook itself is exceptionally poor and run down. That is not encouraging. So really the excursion was a break even, I think.

We came home and Dominica spent the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening working on her major assignment for her data and network communications class. She is really frustrated and disappointed in this class as they are covering almost nothing about data and networking which is why she is paying for the class but instead is using some generic networking topics as the basis for some really random business stuff but not in depth like you would expect from a business class nor is any of the business stuff being taught – they are just assuming that she will know how to do a bunch of this stuff that she has never even heard of before which is making this extrememly tough. I know how hard of a time I always have whenever I have to do really abstract assignments for classes. But the worst part is that this class is taking a huge amount of her mental energies when she is getting very little value out of it. It isn’t meeting her need to understand computer networking and she will have to do a ton of work on her own now because she is not prepared for what she will have to do in the workplace nor is she prepared for future classes. This is a perfect example of where the collegiate system so easily completely fails. Worthless. At least her database class is really good and she is learning a lot and being encouraged to learn more and is getting interested in the topic. The upside to the bad class is that the stuff that they are making Dominica do, even tough it is completely outside of the scope of the class, is material that Dominica really does need to learn and it is good that she has to do it. But considering that she has me as a resource it is amazing that other students who are on their own are able to do this stuff with no one to turn to for guidance.

Dominica got her project completed just before midnight, when it was due, and turned it in. Once she had turned it in it automatically unlocks the area so that she can see what other students have turned in so that she can compare her work. The good news is that she was the only students who was able to complete the project. I guess we were right wondering how anyone is supposed to do this who doesn’t have me as a resource (or some other IT business professional – not and IT technical professional but someone with business experience.) The only people who can get through this class are people with outside assistance or enough knowledge to make the class useless anyway. We are pretty sure that they got a professor for cheap from a different discipline and he is not aware of the subject matter and is skirting the issue trying to get the class to resemble a networking class as much as possible. This has become a really common occurrance in academia these days.

While Dominica was wrapping up her homework I managed to squeak out a new SGL Podcast. Check it out.

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