Assignment 2 (English for Business & Science II)

I am going to dedicate this free topic blog post to present love/hate relationship with computers. This may sound strange as I currently is studying my final semester to be an IT-designer but there is nothing that can make me as happy as when something I have created on the computer works as it should and also nothing that can make me as angry as when it doesn’t work as it should.

Today I had an experience that made me furious. I came down to the living room, turned on the computer and sat down to check my e-mail but the only problem was that the only thing I could see on my screen was the mouse-pointer, nothing else. After a couple of minutes of cursing and swearing I got my installation-dvd into the computer and ran the repair program but that didn’t help at all. The screen was still black and I had to cook some food for my girlfriend for her lunch so I put the computer aside for maybe about an hour. Then, when I returned to the computer it suddenly just worked! Stupid computers!

On the other hand I truly realized that I am both addicted to and dependent of my computer and especially the internet. During the almost four hours without my computer working I felt totally isolated from the world. I also realized that this is not all good. Maybe even no good at all…

Keep computing!

Assignment 1 (English for Business & Science II)

This blog assignment is going to present my view on how things in my life will change both in the next five years and in the next fifty years. I will start off this assignment with the next five years.

This summer I will graduate from the university of Karlstad with a bachelor degree in information systems. Due to this fact my first thought on the next five years will be:

Will I get a job that I am going to be happy with?

With the finacial storm just passing the job market doesn't look to bright but as someone close to me said "there are always jobs available to those who are reilly good at what their doing". With that in mind I hope to show some employer just that. So that is the first thing I see in the near future, getting a job I like.

The next thing I see in the near future might be proposing to my girlfriend and getting married with her. Maybe. I have nothing planned or anything, just thinking about it. Nothing definitely.:-)

If these two parts of my life turns out the way I planned then I would like to build my own house. Not completely on my own of course but I would like to do as much as possible by my self. This part may belong to the second part of the assignment, the part that deals with the next six to 50 years.

I must say when looking at what I have written so far, it feels a little like a game of domino. If the first piece falls the rest will also fall or at least be pushed away a bit in time. Maybe that's how life is supposed to be but the "getting-a-work-anxiety" isn't getting any less significant by writing it down...

Blog assignment 3, Contact

I will start this post with some questions that came to me while reading the book Contact by Carl Sagan.

Why must the scientific believe be the opposite of the religious believe?

Why can´t God foreseen our will to find something more in the universe and put it there for us to find?

How come the alienation (coincidence?) in our society today only keeps getting bigger and bigger although we know much more about almost everything then a hundred years ago?

Is the life that I am living now “it” or is there something more?

My purpose is not to try to answer all of these questions but maybe you as a reader will start to reflect over this.

I do not think that the two ways of describing the world and its evolution has to be opposite of each other, just two different ways of telling the story. For example the scientists describe the creation of the universe like a big bang where everything was created within. The Christian church and the bible tell us a story about a God creating the universe in seven days. The bible doesn´t say anything about big bang on the seventh day but who knows, maybe he snapped his fingers and that was in fact the big bang.

I believe that the greatest source of alienation in our society today is the lack of affinity and communion. If we don´t have anything that connects us people together the feeling of loneliness will tear us apart even more.

My final question is the most difficult to answer in my opinion, maybe the toughest question that I come to face in my life. This question splits me so much that I sometimes feel schizophrenic. One part of me believes that I will come to another place or maybe the same place re-born and start a new life. My other half is much darker in a way and that half believes that this really is it. This part of me often comes when I am feeling depressed and having difficulty finding the meaning with my life. What if that would be the case, would I really live my life the way I do?

Maybe… or maybe not.

Blog assignment 2

My reaction to the film on how our consuming effects the enviorment is first of all this: I get nauseous by these american simplifications of everything just to make it sound as they are right and everyone else are wrong and just stupid of even thinking in another way. The keystones in the film probably right but I think it´s to easy to just say that if we stop consuming then everything will be top notch. If we stop consuming the hole worlds economy will break down and I wonder if that is what the lady in the film wants? I do not think so...

My suggestion is instead of just not buying stuff at all, buy stuff that is made as enviorment-freindly as possible. My believe is that we are not able to change the hole worlds way of shopping and consuming so instead of giving people like you and me bad conscience because we like having the newest and coolest things, force the manufacturers and businesses to create enviromental-freindly products by legislate laws for this.

I really hope we and by we I mean the hole worlds population will do something about this problem because I would not like to see my children and maybe even childrens children grow up in a world that previous generations messed up so bad that it is impossible to fix.

Hope it´s not to late...

Blog assignment 1

This is my reaction of the article that Andy presented for us:

This is really the way to get to all employees that do things they shouldn't in their work enviroment! While working this summer I learned that the only way to get things done on the job is to actually do them, not to surf around on a number of not workrelated websites, play games or chatt with a friend. Why do we (the employees) even have the privilege of having access to the internet at all, if the work we perform do not require this?

I can understand that this seems a little conservative but as presented in the article, 45% of all employees favorite time waster is to surf the web. To even have a "favorite" time waster seems to me almost absurd. My abolute opinion is that when you work, you work and if it is necessary to have all this software to keep it that way, i say: Install, install, install!

Thanks for now!

First post

Hello Eveybody! Just trying to learn how this will work! I'm hoping that at the end of the day my first assignment will be posted!

Cheers!