I sucked at ‘taking notes’ for so long. 
I thought the point was to write down things that you didn’t already know, might not remember, and which seemed relevant. Very few things fit those categories in high school so note-taking for me (when it wasn’t just a blank page) was mostly doodling with rare occasions of writing down something the teacher said that wasn’t in or contradicted the book. It took awhile in college before I got the hang of it.
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I still suck.
I think I understand how to take notes, because I can start off a meeting, a course, what-ever-note-taking-event and have great notes for the first half-hour if I girded my mind for TAKE NOTES
After that half-hour…not so much.
I honestly think some of it is how bad my handwriting is. I have atrocious part-cursive, part-printed, part-scribble that is just shameful to look at…so I never want to look at it again.
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Wait, that’s not the point?
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When reading something you’ll need to check later, it’s useful to take notes to keep track of the page numbers of important events.
Using “r” not to indicate a rhotic consonant, or a vowel in non-rhotic dialects colored by a lost consonant, but a vowel in non-rhotic dialects that sounds kinda like that to non-rhotic speakers.
Classic examples include “er,” “Burma,” and “Myanmar,”…
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Yeah, and I’m aware of that, too (with regards to the students, I mean, not you specifically, of course). I’m hoping that this exercise will be part of helping them learn how to do that. I’d rather see terrible notes, then no engagement whatsoever, honestly. Seeing them writing down what their classmates (and me) say shows that they are at least making a good faith effort to listen to others and to try and think critically about the material. I honestly don’t expect them to be perfect at this, but to make a good faith effort at it, ya know. I mean, that’s why their there, yeah?
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Usually, yeah. But what I learned was that the triple-reinforcement of writing and reading what you’ve heard/seen, combined with having everything, both made it more impactful and allowed me to replay the class in my head, sometimes finding connections that I’d not noticed the first time.
It was most noticeable for me in history, where I’d always been A+ but was suddenly looking at a C or D. College history was completely different than any history class in high school or before. Some people thought our professor was awful but really he was great. It was just the first time that we’d ever been challenged. They were looking for an easier professor for the next semester and I instead suggested setting up a study group and signing up for his next class. That actually surprisingly went well. And our class discussions rose to a new level.
ETA: One of my fun college memories is all of us lounging in the hall outside the classroom when the professor arrived, running late, in a hurry, and he started into the “Get up, let’s go, time for class!” speech when he heard what was actually going on. A passionate discussion/debate of the topic material with one person citing a book and another reading from their notes while others chimed in with their thoughts on both sides. He stopped at the door and smiled and said something along the lines of “Okay, I’ll give you a few minutes, but try to wrap it up and move it into the classroom.”
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Now that is an awesome professor!
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My AC is STILL broken (repair visit provided a diagnosis but not a repair), Toronto had yet another weekend heat wave, and now that the weather is finally kinda sorta breaking, it’s time to go back to work.
Wah.
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Tl;Dr rant ahead, feel free to skip.
I enjoy my Kindle Fire, but it can be a real pain sometimes. For months now it occasionally and seemingly randomly drops book titles out of their sorted categories (a.k.a. “Collections.”) I’ve got a ton of ebooks, mostly free ones, so that sorting system’s important to me. Previous calls to Customer Service haven’t gone well, with the end result being me deciding to live with the problem.
It still keeps glitching, and now I’m noticing the Kindle’s losing books I’ve previously downloaded. They show up in the Library as available-but-not-on-device and I have to download them again. Re-downloading them can be tricky, sometimes requiring multiple attempts. The WiFi signal is strong enough, and I’ve checked the integrity of the microSD card that they’re stored on-- it appears fine.
The Kindle UnHelpful Desk insists that they can’t help unless we do a Factory Reset; this will ensure all component apps are up-to-date and error-free. That would be fine, except for three of my apps that have user-generated data I’d lose in the process. One is a notepad app, one is my Sketchbook app, and one’s a game. Amazon says tough luck, basically.
The notebook app’s files can be exported, and I’ve finally got that function working, so that’s settled. I’ll email the game developers tonight, but I’m not expecting much from them, as they haven’t been helpful on previous questions. The Sketchbook help desk informed me that they no longer sell their app in Amazon’s Appstore, so I’d better back that up myself. They were kind enough to point out a Backup option on my Fire-- one Amazon’s own Helpless Desk didn’t mention!-- but as my Kindle’s a 2015 model, it doesn’t seem to have all the bells and whistles the newer models do, so I don’t know if it will work.
This would be so much simpler if it was Windows. At least then I’d likely be able to find and copy configuration and user-generated files myself, or run some kind of disk-image program. But this is Android, and I don’t know it that OS too well, and it’s Amazon-flavored on top of that. So without running a major system hack on an already wonky machine, I can’t just grab a backup app from Google Play and use that. (And guess what type of program the Appstore doesn’t have? 
) I’m not sure if I can copy enough files to my PC to properly back up on my own.
I’m no longer sure it’s worth going through a Reset with all this hassle. But the problem’s not going away. And I was annoyed enough to ask for a supervisor last night, who is actually explaining things to me and sending emails with (some) instructions, so if I’m going to get any help, it’s now.
At this point, the only thing I’m halfway sure of is that the next tablet/e-reader will likely not be a Kindle. They’re a really great deal when they’re on sale, but the Appstore’s restrictive and more and more developers are turning their backs on it (and all their Kindle customers in the process, of course, but that’s another rant.)
Sorry for the long complaint. Tl;dr: Help desks aren’t always helpful, tech devices are tricksy, and it’s a silly thing for me to bitch about given there are far worse problems in the world. But it’s a relief to rant.
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I suggest downloading to your computer, using the “download and transfer via usb” option.
Then setting up Calibre or another ebook management application, with a Kindle Collections plug-in. If you have the books on your computer, they’re less likely to disappear. If you import the books into Calibre, it can handle the collections. Only problem is that you’ll gradually need to phase out the directly-downloaded copies in favor of the sideloaded-via-Calibre ones.
Note that I use a Kindle dx so it has tighter format limitations, and I usually avoid dmmed books.
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This is Android’s major problem. In my house, we have multiple Android devices, and they’re all quite different. Too different for a solution that works on one to work for any of the others. I don’t think it’s because Android is bad, but every device manufacturer just has to do their own unique customizations, presumably for marketing reasons?
Second this. Calibre on the PC is the way to handle ebooks. In addition, with the right plugins, it can strip DRM out for you, so you can keep the books you’ve bought when Amazon decides to delete them.
I have a kindle somewhere, but also a Pandigital Novel, one of the old e-ink ones. As a generic, it’s not tied to amazon or any other system that could delete stuff off it. I don’t know what would be a current good generic e-reading tablet, but if I was in the market I would absolutely look for something like that before one of the branded locked-in ones. Kindle is good quality, but the price you pay is that they can (and will) screw with your data at any time.
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My current setup involves:
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Changing preferences to prevent save-on-quit. Apple’s Preview has the nasty habit of reformatting pdfs if you look at it funny, and then saving on quit, without reformatting jpeg-2000 images into more widely-compatible ones. Using Clearview instead of Preview. I don’t like Skim because of it’s lack of command-f search and lack of tabs.
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Keeping important originals on an external hard drive (backed up to my Time Machine drive).
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Processing pdfs using either Ghostscript in Automator or K2pdfopt to ensure Kindle readability and speed up Mac readability. (Requires learning appropriate settings for each.)
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Sometimes also running Ocrmypdf and/or Promt. (Requires learning appropriate settings for the former.)
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Keeping processed versions on that external hard drive, and tagging them for status.
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Importing processed versions into Calibre, or logging them if low priority, or skipping them if extras.
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Creating a status column in Calibre to keep track of things such as free, incompatible, read, wait, and extra.
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Creating a full title column in Calibre so I can use shortened titles to work around some bugs.
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Creating a genre column and a projects column in Calibre, so I can create appropriate Kindle collections.
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Creating a “To Export” virtual library excluding empty books, as well as incompatible, read, wait, and extra books.
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Using the Kindle Collections plug-in.
Now a lot of that involves working around the limits of the pdf format, the fact that Kindle 2 uses an older version of pdf, and the fact that Clearview, my preferred software, freezes or fails to display some newer versions. It’s easier with epub and mobi formats.
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How many times do I actually need to say “put your day and time in your emails to me” to get them to put the day and time in their emails to me? I’ve said it literally every class and people are still not doing it…
Also, I keep asking for them to send me emails through the regular email instead of through the crappy iCollege interface…
Sigh…
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My uni had a homebrewed email solution when I first went there in 2008, which they didn’t get rid of until 2011 or so. It was clearly someone’s pet project and had been in place since at least the early 90s.
One of the joys of using such old code was that it didn’t support double-spaced characters, so the entire Oriental Institute (and every foreign student whose native language required Unicode support) could basically go fuck themselves.
OWA is a pretty terrible solution for email but when they finally rolled it out, I almost cried with happiness. I have no idea what iCollege is but I feel your pain.
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it’s sort of an online system to let students keep track of grades, upload work, have access to readings, take online quizzes, etc. It tends to be glitchy, and it has a pretty bad internal email system thingie, which is why I prefer the regular school email (which isn’t great, since it’s Microsoft…).
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For the Cont Ed courses I’m taking right now, we’re using Quercus. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either – the navigation is almost completely opaque. We’ve had people be late for webonars because they thought they’d launched the right instance – the link right at the top that says “Launch” – but really they were supposed to select the link with today’s date on it.
I’m taking UI/UX Design, so we keep joking the system is an example for us.
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Today, wechat insisted that it had to update before it would work anymore. So, I tried to update, but it refuses to download the fucking thing. That is a major way that I communicate with everyone here including work. Also, it’s become a way to accept payment from people. I get paid for my tutoring with WeChat wallet. There’s more than 5000 RMB locked up in my account.
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Trello auto-updated itself to a version that’s incompatible with my phone and there’s no way to downgrade it back (without sideloading an old (and hopefully not infected) apk from wherever I can find it when back at a PC). So I spent 2 hours yesterday having work conversations where I couldn’t see what we were talking about or add comments but just going off the top of my head, with what I could remember and guesses. The worst part is, Trello knows this version is incompatible, it says so when I try to use it, so why did it update to a version that it knew wouldn’t work?!
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My communication issues can resolve themselves over time. I’m mostly concerned over the money. Many would argue I shouldn’t have kept so much on there, but I’m not very trusting of the banks, so I keep some reserve out in cash and on WeChat, just in case my bank account suddenly disappears.
(A while back, I got a call from my Chinese bank telling me that since I hadn’t been using my account for some time, I needed to close it out. I told them I deposit once per month, and probably withdraw weekly. They responded, “Oh, you must have gotten on the list by accident.” I’ve done some checking and as far as I can tell, even foreigners get to just park their money in their bank account and then just ignore it, just like everyone else.
My best guess is they have a list of foreigner held bank accounts that are lately inactive, and they were trying to verify which ones they could just quietly take all the money from.)
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