Rejected Chicken Soup for the Soul Books

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11. Chicken Soup for the Man Boy Lover's Soul
10. Human Soup for the Cannibal's Soul
9. Chicken Soup for the Vegan's Soul
8. Chicken Soup for White People with No Soul
7. Scalding Chicken Soup to Pour on that Bastard Who Just Cut Me Off
6. Chicken Soup for the Illiterate Soul
5. Kitchen Sopu for the Dyslexic Soul
4. Chicken Soup Enema: It's Not Just for the Soul Anymore
3. Chicken Soup for the Deposed Dictator's Soul
2. Chick Soup for Dudes with Soul
1. I Can Eat this Bowl of Chicken Soup in Less than 30 Seconds for the Inveterate Gambler's Soul

What a Great Day

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Ok so first off I finished my last final today. Yeah. No more school for me for a while. Now even though ordinarily school ending is enough to make me scream and jump for joy, but to make things even better AGEIA'S Physx processing Unit PPU is now available for purchasing. I have been waiting for this thing for a year (I even wrote a paper about it if you remember).
Ok so its official as of three hours ago you could buy the PPU. First to get the card on the shelves is BFG Tech. Asus the other manu. Of the card says its models will be coming shortly. If anyone is still wondering about buying one of these babies after reading my paper, head on over here (Make sure you read the whole article). Man this thing is amazing even in games it’s not really designed for. The price tag is up there at three hundred smackers. Good thing I have been saving for this baby. Oh man Cube computer is going to be one badass little machine.


In case you want to see what it can do or even buy it.

Welcome to Duty II

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Well today I received my summer orders…. This summer I will be traveling to the infamous Bangor Washington, while I dont know the name of my boat yet, I can say that Bangor Washington is a Ballistic Submarine base. So more then likely I'll be spending two months aboard the most destructive force the earth has ever known. The SSBN. So Washington no biggie right. Well my cruise ends in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. So Ill be chilling there until my plane leaves back for Wisconsin, (not a bad way to end two months spending time with nothing other then men). Anyway back to studying only two tests left. And in case anyone is stil confused about the submarine that I will probly be on rememer the movie Crimson Tide MOVIE HERE.



Teaching Engineers to Write ?

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$hecky asks:

"I teach several sections of a first-year writing course at a small, private college where most of the students are, or plan to be, some flavor of engineer. Right now, I'm planning next year's courses and wondering what has (and hasn't) helped Slashdot readers become better writers. Also, I'm wondering which writing skills you, in your roles as workers and teachers, would most like to see emphasized in first year writing courses. Put another way, where do you see people who have completed first-year writing courses screwing up their writing, and which experiences, practices, and pressures you think have made you a better writer?"
"First, let's head a couple wagons off at the pass. Let's avoid the vulgar confusion of good writing and good grammar. Horrifying grammar is a common problem, but its not a problem I can fix in a semester-long class. About a century of research tells us that native English speakers aren't rule-based parsers, so teaching grammatical rules (like when to use the subjunctive or where to put commas) doesn't improve compliance. The best strategy on those fronts is a habitual reading of clearly-formatted texts and scrupulous multi-stage review of everything you write, both of which are somewhat outside the scope of a semester-long class.

Second, let's say that the chief virtue of good writing is clarity. While some kinds of writing prize being strategically elliptical, and others prize brisk and clever metaphor, most of my students aren't writing grant applications, patents, or poems. So metaphor, however brisk or clever, is out of place if it obscures its subject.

Third, this course is a cultural studies type, rather than a workshop. This means that the course has a topic of inquiry about which all of the students read and write for a semester and that, while being reasonably complex, the topic should accommodate students who are going to become accountants, math teachers, and advertisers. It's common for engineering students to wash out into the business school, and there's a significant contingent of humanities students as well. Anything other than a general interest topic (like the 1960s, ideas about the American West, or fairy tales) isn't an option.

So think back to your writing. What has made you more comfortable with your writing, or eager to improve what you've written? What inspires you to read outside of a classroom or mandated context? Was has impressed on you the importance of revision, or at least of reviewing your writing at intervals? Which parts of which college (or high school) curricula have helped you write better? Finally, which aspects of your students' or co-workers' writing do you find most troublesome?"

50 WAYS TO CONFUSE, WORRY, OR JUST SCARE THE PEOPLE IN THE COMPUTER LAB

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1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream "Oh my God! They've found me!" and bolt.
2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes & then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.
3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you can't get the darn thing to work. After he/she's turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, & repeat the process for a good half hour.
4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly.
5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to different screen than the one it's set up with.
6. Write a program that plays the "Smurfs" theme song and play it at the highest volume possible over & over again.
7. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look amazingly startled by something on the screen and crawl underneath the desk.
8. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files.
9. Use Interactive Send to make passes at people you don't know.
10. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on.
11. Bring a chainsaw, but don't use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say "Just in case..." mysteriously.
12. Type on VAX for a while. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes at everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing.
13. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if they're crazy while typing.
14. Light candles around your terminal before starting.
15. Ask around for a spare disk. Offer $2. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, "Oops, I forgot."
16. Every time you press Return and there is processing time required, pray "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease," and scream "YES!" when it finishes.
17. "DISK FIGHT!!!"
18. Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you (It helps if you know them, but this is also a great way to make new friends).
19. Put a straw in your mouth and put your hands in your pockets. Type by hitting the keys with the straw.