sup guys

i know it's been a while, and i do apologize. if i'm being honest, i kind of forgot that i had a blog and also hit a bit of a stall for writing, but i'm
gonna get back into it i think.

i tried gingerale for the first time today, i don't know what i was expecting, but it was definitely a drink. carbonated. don't remember what it tastes
like, but it was fine. non suggested drinking it with pink lemonade so we tried that, it was arguably better than just the gingerale alone, but nonetheless
could be described as carbonated pink lemonade.

then, bro was like, "maybe there was a third ingredient, like gatorade." so we tried that, and he was definitely right that the mix of the three was better
than each drink alone, but i digress.

carbonated drinks are so silly, i understand why people like them, i just don't.

would definitely drink the gingerale/gatorade/pink lemonade mixture again though, i'd put it at an 8/10.

now is the part where i make this post really (probably) long because i haven't posted in a while!

progress on the ccst exam has pretty much stalled, because hwsnbn can't stick to plans, so instead of doing the lessons he made us do, we tried to do a
ddos attack?

i really hated that assignment, specifically because he gave literally no instructions and would just change how the whole thing was working randomly. at
first, the goal was to ddos the network, then he said to work only within our teams and not as a class, then he decided to make it a grade, but still
didn't actually tell us how to do what he wanted.

so when we got to class yesterday, bro had us spend the entire period doing a graded assignment (delaying our lessons for ccst even further), and i had
absolutely no clue what was going on with that.

all i've been learning in his class is just how much i don't enjoy cybersecurity- which to be fair, could also be a completely incorrect takeaway from the
whole thing. i don't have issues with cybersecurity, my bigger issue is the way he has us learn about the stuff makes me really hate it so i lose all interest in learning more or getting better at what we're doing.

maybe i'm the issue here? i thought i liked packet tracers before, but maybe what i liked was just the fact that they had structure and instructions. kahler's lessons have no structure, no instruction, and the expectation is that you just figure out what to do along the way or go into it knowing what to do. i don't know what to do, that's why i'm taking a class to learn how to do stuff.

i just love the way that if i were to skip his class every single time and spend that one hour of my life studying alone in the media center or something, i would genuinely learn a lot more and be better prepared for everything that hwsnbn claims he's preparing us for.

i also really don't like the way he focuses on future prep. why are we doing x? because it'll look good on a resume! why are we doing y? because colleges will love to see that on an application! how else can someone get into UMD's computer science program?

i appreciate some of the things we do, like the maryland cyber challenge was a lot of fun. but my resume is fine now, currently. i'm not trying to go to some fancy ivy league on a full ride, and yeah, a full ride to literally anywhere would be nice, but there's a really simple option for if i don't get a full ride:

the community college. wow.
i'm going to be very picky with where i go to college, i know that already, but seriously, not everything we do in high school has to be about the future.

what's so wrong with living in the present? doing stuff for the sake of doing it now? why not learn something that i can use at this point in time? i don't need to know how to ddos a network unless i'm going to either a) ddos a network, or b) stop someone else from ddos'ing a network. i do not see that type of crime in my future. i also don't see that type of job in my future.

we could learn python or a programming language that people routinely use, we could learn how to actually use programs like wireshark for reading pcap files instead of him just saying, "hey here's a program, good luck," and then leaving us to our own devices.

hell, he could do nothing and just let us do our own thing, and the class would be infinitely better than it currently is.

i literally cried in his class yesterday because of how stressed out i was in generally and also because of his assignment. shoutout to xolo for being just a lovely person and fixing my packet tracer file for me while i sat there confused out of my mind. honestly would've accepted the 0/100 if they hadn't helped me.

yeah, i'm gonna stop now. for as easy as it is to go on tangents (calculus???) about hwsnbn's class, it's almost always just me complaining, and while i do enjoy complaining as well as being dramatic, i don't. i hate the fact that one of the things this week that has stood out the most has been kahler's shitty class.

i'm going to go back to playing celeste, currently in chapter 4 but i'm getting through it, albeit slowly.

cheers everyone, enjoy the three day weekend

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| meverett |.
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