It’s that time of the quarter to register again. I am personally not a fan of the UW’s registration system but what can you do but play the game and figure out how to win. I have had several quarters where I don’t get the classes I want, which is followed by the most stressful morning scrambling to fill in a decent schedule. I have found a way to register that has gotten me into the classes I want every time (4?) and I thought I’d share.

Step 1: ’twas the night before registration

Get all your classes into the Schedule Finder. Even if you found all your classes by hand without using the schedule finder, do it anyways.

Step 2: get your clock ready

Pull up the Official US Time in another browser window.

Step 3: pull the trigger

When the official time passes 5:55am (I usually wait for 5:55:05 to be safe), press the “Register for this schedule” button in the Schedule Finder next to the schedule you want.Dunzo. It is important to use the official time because I have trusted my computer’s clock to be accurate in the past and that assumption screwed me over.

Why it works

The UW Registration page opens up at 5:55. But if you preload your schedule into the Schedule Finder, you can simply push the register button instead of having to enter your SLNs into the registration page. 10 seconds saved could mean the difference of getting into a class or not. In addition, I have had the server time-out on me while trying to load the registration page and did not respond for over a minute. This is the best system I have found for registering for classes at UW. Have you found a better way?

Yesterday as I walked to campus to give a presentation, I was thinking about what I need in my life to be more successful.  I decided I should make a living document of my wish list for future reference for me and the generous gift givers in my life (read: mom+dad). Here we go.

• Bag.

Just about every week I find myself walking to campus with a suit on and wearing a backpack. This is an awkward combination as the suit gets rumpled by the back pack but I don’t have any other ways to carry my computer and a notebook.  I don’t want a Timbuk2 bag like half of Seattle uses (and my sister).  Although the functionality would serve my purpose, I think I would need a fixed-gear bike and large, black-rimmed glasses to rock the Timbuk2.  But I don’t know where that leaves me. I don’t want a full blown brief case because I am not ready to concede to that level of grownup-ness.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

• Suit.

As I mentioned above, I wear a suit often to events at school.  I have one suit and one sport coat, but I need (read: want) a couple more.  If I need to wear a suit two days in a  row and it gets dirty on the first day, I’m pretty much out of luck

• Shoes.

I could always use more dress shoes.  Also, I need to get some regular shoes to wear to school. It’s been a while since the last time I went shoe shopping

• Computer.

This one has much less precedence than the items listed above but I will include it for the sake of completeness.  I love my Dell, but I really want a 15″ Mac Book Pro to complement it.  1.they’re sexy,2.I want to learn to program in Objective-C for the iPhone this summer and I need an Intel-powered Mac to do so and 3.I enjoy learning new systems and have been sheltered from Apple computers my entire life

I taught my first section of CSE 142 today and I was trying to come up with a creative ice breaker to start the class. Micah and I searched Google but didn’t really find anything out of the ordinary. Then I came up with a killer idea. Try it out and let me know how it goes!

1. Pass out sticky notes, index cards or something similar.
2. Participants write a question on the card, then hand them in.
3. Facilitator shuffles the cards, then passes them back out to the participants.
4. Go around the room, each person says their name and answers the question on the card.

I thought it went really well, although the questions the students wrote were pretty tame and appropriate.