[Enigmail] how long does it take to get activated on the forum and rss feeds question

[Robert J. Hansen]

John W. Moore III wrote:
> BTW; Please don't take Robert's Reply as 'Hurt Feelings' or 'Flaming' as
> once You've read a few of His Postings You'll quickly recognize His
> unique brand of Sarcasm.  *LOL*  [I was taken aback in the beginning
> too, but now We correspond regularly]

Well, in my defense, I don't think it's sarcasm.  I try to keep my
writing style as dry as a bone.  When someone says they don't care about
their own personal forums and wonders if Enigmail is the same way, my
natural (dry) response is to tell them I'm sorry they don't care about
their forum, but we care about ours.

=====

When I was an undergraduate, I'd already been working as a freelance C++
and Pascal programmer for a couple of years before I walked into my
CS101 course.  The instructor, Leon Tabak, gave us the entire block's
[1] programming assignments on the first day of class.  I ignored
Professor Tabak, skipped out on class after our first quiz, and by the
end of the day had the entire block's assignments done.  It was a long
day, mind you, but I had them all done.

The next day we got our quizzes back.  I picked up a 6/10.  The guy
sitting next to me picked up a 9/10.  It was absurd!  My answers were
better than his, more correct!  Cheese Boy himself agreed!  So we talked
to Professor Tabak after class and I asked what was up with my grade.

"Oh," he told me.  "It's simple.  You already know how to program, Rob.
 I graded you more harshly because you know better."

I was apopleptic with rage.  When our first programming assignment came
back, I got a D while Cheese Boy got a C+, and his program didn't even
compile.  I got red-penned on everything from variable names that
weren't descriptive to poorly organized source text to passing variables
on the stack when the data structures would be faster as references...
all things that were far, far beyond the scope of CS101.

Every time we got a program back and I discovered I'd been red-penned
into oblivion, I'd rewrite all the remaining programs for the block to
address Professor Tabak's critiques.  But there was /always/ more
red-penning.  And my grade was /always/ slipping.  By the end of the
block I was fighting to hold onto a D, despite the fact I was writing
better code than most of the seniors.

The end of the block came.  Grades were posted.  This is in December
1994, before the web became so commonplace, back when professors printed
out grades by Social Security Number and tacked them to their office
door.  I walked up expecting to see a D-, which was the grade I'd earned
so far.  I was furious.  Spitting mad.  I had a complaint letter to the
dean and I was going to get my grade and then walk down and deliver the
letter and ...

... what the hell?  I got an A+?

I knocked on the office door.  Professor Tabak opened it, invited me in.
 We talked for a while.  I asked him what was up with my grade... I
hadn't received anything higher than a C+ the entire block.

"A grade is meant to represent how well a student has learned the
material.  The rest of the class was learning how to program, and they
were graded according to how well they learned.  You were learning how
to program /well/.  You were graded according to how well you learned.
What's the problem?"

I walked out of that class utterly shell-shocked.  I couldn't believe
that the CS department actually allowed him to grade like that.  I was
angry.  I was furious.  I was outraged.

But.  I got an A+.  I decided I could get over my outrage.

My next course with Professor Tabak, I asked him to not even put grades
on my work, just red-pen it.  He'd red-pen it, I'd talk to him about the
red-penning, I'd fix the problems and make it a point never to make the
same mistake twice.  I never got less than an A- from him, and I got a
genuinely first-class undergraduate CS education in the bargain.

I left Cornell a firm believer in the power of red pens.  I always keep
a red pen on my desk, for historical and symbolic reasons.  It's not
there to criticize others.  It's there to remind me that excellence is
achieved only by withering criticism--and that excellence is worth it.






[1] I attended Cornell College, which is a block institution.  We take
one course at a time for several hours a day, five days a week, for a
month.  This gives us considerably more classroom time than most
students receive on a typical semester plan.