The worst is when they phrase the response as if there was just some slight, funny misunderstanding on the part of the machine; "Sorry, I didn't quite catch that! Did you want to..."
For some reason that one really drives my ire.
mrspaz
joined 2 years ago
Being able to bring my own formula sheet (or notes) definitely helped. Two full pages of notes would be great, though I would still get some bad nerves even in those cases (the very idea that the next 60 minutes of class time decides a full 30% of the course grade just rattled me bad).
For me the ideal type of course would be the Thermodynamics of Mechanical Systems course I took. The exams were in-person but open-note and straightforward with relatively simple conceptual questions. Credit was split between the exams and bi-monthly "mini projects." These would ask you to apply the class concepts to some larger set of related problems; parameters were provided and you would have to determine the answers using what was learned in class (for example, one project was to design a steam turbine power plant with a target output of 50MW, ambient temperature was 30C, cooling water is available at 25C. Determine the heat input needed from the boiler, choose an appropriate number of turbine stages with reheat if possible, size the condenser appropriately and add economizers if they can be used. You'd lay it all out and indicate the temperatures, pressures, power inputs and outputs, exergy of the system, etc.)
I did stellar in that class. I would have loved that format everywhere (simple concept exams + application projects).
Sure; it was Mechanical Engineering. The class was "Vibrations & Controls;" the first half of the course was vibrations / oscillatory systems, and then the second half was theory of feedback & control systems (classic "PID" controllers for the most part). The exams were pencil-and-paper, in-person, time-limited.
The first attempt we were allowed nothing except the exam and paper for answers; honestly I'm not sure what that professor was expecting.
In my second attempt the professor provided a formula sheet, but he was of the mindset of "If you know F=ma, you can derive anything you need!" so the formula sheets were sparse to put it mildly. It was just enough to keep me from fully collapsing in panic and bombing, but it was close.
I recently finished my degree, and exam-heavy courses were the bane of my existence. I could sit down with the homework, work out every problem completely with everything documented, and then sit to an exam and suddenly it's "what's a fluid? What's energy? Is this a pencil?"
The worst example was a course with three exams worth 30% of the grade, attendance 5% and homework 5%. I had to take the course twice; 100% on HW each time, but barely scraped by with a 70.4% after exams on the second attempt. Courses like that took years off my life in stress. :(
Man I miss land yachts. Modern luxury brands / models are all built as "luxury performance;" no one builds a rolling sofa anymore and that is a disappointment.
According to this, Texas has ~7% of their prison population in private facilities. The national rate is ~8%.
I had one recently that (when changing / creating the password) would allow you paste into the "new password" field but not the "confirm password" field. Super annoying.
I just opened dev tools, pasted it into the "value" property for the control, and kept on truckin'. Just nuts that had to be done though.
As an aside, the guy that runs the mynoise site is really nice, and very passionate about the entire project. He's been doing it for years and it's one of the few sites I've felt compelled to donate to as it is well designed, not festooned with ads, and the dedication to the project really shows.
It probably ventures way too far into the "exactly wtf is happening" territory, but Mr. Carlson's Lab covers tons of tube electronics, mostly radios and amplifiers, but occasionally other equipment like oscilloscopes and function generators, etc.
Again, very in depth, but still really cool to see all the old equipment and some of the clever solutions the original engineers found to make it all work.
I have several Tampermonkey scripts to keep Youtube useable:
Additionally uBlock, and a plugin to alter the number of results per row (so I don't wind up with gigantic tiles/icons on a large monitor).
It's a complete disaster without these. :/