Crazy Grad. School Stories

Not so long ago, I had a chance to meet and listen to a talk from Jorge Cham, the created of PhdComics.  He gave a hilarious talk about his comic strip, suffering through graduate school, and about how to deal with grad. school.

At the talk, I asked him what the craziest grad. student story of suffering or pain was that he had heard during his touring and talks.  He said that amongst the worst he ever heard were about students that went into their final thesis defense without a presentation or slides.

So I began to think of the best "grad. school" story I've heard.  Here's the one I could think of.  It's not about research or grad. school suffering, but it's still a funny story none the less.

My friend was TAing the CS class for business students.  It's the class where you teach Excel, Powerpoint, and some introductory programming in Visual Basic.  Since the class is all business students, and the majority of them do not intend to ever look at code in their life, the programming assignments are not liked.


So he tells me there is a website called hireacoder.com, where you can find programming contract work.  While the website is mostly for small contract work (i.e. design this aspect of a website for me) a fair amount of the contract work posted is apparently homework assignments from students.  While most of the people posting contracts are smart enough to anonymize the assignment, one was not and listed the class name and school in the contract (apparently cut & pasting it from the assignment).

A good samaritan found the class online and e-mailed the Professor and TAs about the cheater.  At first, the Professor said she was irate, but eventually got over it, realizing there was nothing she could do to catch the culprit.  After all, how were you going to catch the cheater out of a class for several hundred students.

Weeks later while grading the assignments, one of the TAs found a very special submission where "Written by Joe Smith @ Hire A Coder" was at the top of the comments.  Clearly, the student didn't even bother to look through the code they had bought and blindly turned it in.

When questioning the student, the Professor and TAs asked how much they paid for the assignment to be done.  The student said about $50 (late 1990s money).  Which the Professor replied, "There are senior CS students that would have done that for a slice of pizza.  So not only did you fail my class, you've also failed finance."

Junior High Career Options

Not so long ago, I somehow recalled my "What you should do for a career" test I took when I was in junior high.  These were the career options the test gave me.

Career Option #1: Puppeteer

Maybe I could have been the next Kevin Clash (puppeteer for Elmo) or Caroll Spinney (puppeteer for Big Bird/Oscar the Grouch), but fate would make me a programmer instead.  I assume my then interest in drawing comic books (i.e. liking art) and my parents forcing me to play piano (i.e. music) lead to the test giving me this result.

Career Option #2: Ferry Boat Captain

This isn't a joke, it literally said "Ferry Boat Captain".  I have no idea why this was given to me.  My best guess is b/c I like to fish.

Career Option #3: Computer Person

I can't remember if the test gave me Computer Engineer or Software Engineer or Computer Tech or Information Technology or some other random random tech position, but option #3 was at least pretty close.

Amazon's Trade-In Service

I don't know about other people, but I got sick of selling things online a long time ago. Selling each and every item online was such a time sink. You have to take photos of the items, list them, pack it up, ship it, etc. Ugh ...

Eventually, I began to sell things on Craigslist, offering collections of goods at a discount. I figured someone out there would want them at the steep discount or the power-eBayer would buy it off me and sell each individual item at a profit. Also, since I'm selling to people who live nearby, I don't have to go through the hassle to packing, shipping, etc.

With video games, I got lazy and eventually just took the cash and/or store credit at Gamestop stores. Gamestop doesn't offer a great deal on trade-ins, but I'm willing to give them the profit margin in exchange for the convenience. I was able to dump the vast majority of my CD collection on Amoeba, Rasputin, and Tower Records before CDs got old.

Today, I decided to give Amazon's Trade In program a whirl. I'm shipping off some DVDs, video games, and one book for (what I believe to be) a pretty good trade in price. Plus, I get credit for all of Amazon, not just video games or music or books. I do have to box up my trade-in items and ship it, but the shipping is free from Amazon. I'll see this works out and if it was a good experience or not.

Update (1/17/11):

Well, my opinion of Amazon's trade in service is mixed. I sent another box of books soon after the above original post. Amazon was quick to give me credit for all of the video games, but they are quite finicky on books.

1) It appears that they want books that are in virtually mint condition. Slightly used textbooks that have highlighting are apparently a no-no. I guess my interpretation of "good" condition was different than theirs.

2) Despite sending in a book that had the exact ISBN listed on their website, they returned an item stating that it was the wrong item. I don't know if different items can have the same ISBN or not, or perhaps their ISBN checker made a mistake, but it is sort of irritating that the mistake was made.

Overall, I'll use them again for trading in items, but I will probably avoid trading in books.