Day 4: Catching Up

I decided to take yesterday (Wednesday) off because of all the frustrations I had with the software on Tuesday. The fact that the course CONTENT is so incredibly appealing only made the software frustration worse! But I took a day off and am ready to get back into things. I will update this post throughout the evening as I proceed.

Organizing. I decided to separate out my actual assignments from these records of my interaction with the software, so I created a separate assignments label and diary label for posts, and also an email label to record observations about the great emails that Kerry is sending out. Yes, NextThought has a pseudo-sort-of-blogging tool ("Thoughts"), but I have zero desire to try to use that. I want something permanent, something public, and something that I can organize in a useful way. Blogs work for me. I cannot figure out what Janux is supposed to do for me as a journaling tool. What I have seen so far does not impress me.

Email. I wrote up a post about Kerry's EXCELLENT email of today. It really revived my spirits and made me feel ready to start studying again!

Video Timing Out. Terrible video time-outs. I am getting time-outs as I try to watch the video. Very frustrating. About every five seconds or so it is having to stop and buffer. Is there a way to download the videos (I don't care how long it takes), and then I could view them without being interrupted every few seconds...? At least now I have the transcript, but I really want to WATCH the video too.  (pause) Time-outs lasting longer now. This one is lasting for about a minute...  Sigh.  I will go read the transcript while I wait; I have that open in a different window. (pause) WOW, the transcript was fascinating and I did take notes. I feel very badly not to have seen the video. It is still buffering even now after I finished reading the transcript and taking notes. Buffering ad infinitum apparently; here's where it timed out and just kept buffering non-stop:

Discussion Board. I find it impossible to compose anything of real length in the discussion board because the editing screen is HUGE - it must 1000 pixels wide on my screen (if I make the browser window smaller it just scrolls off the screen). Can I make it a more normal size somehow? Well, I just compose in my blog, and then copy and paste. But for the replies, I type in the editing box, and then something really strange happens. After I add my reply, I still see the editing box, and it still has my text in it. I don't understand: why do I see my reply, which I think (???) is published, but also see the text in the editing box...? Screenshot below. I am trying to use Chrome on a Mac. My published reply (is it published?) can be seen below the editing box... which still has my reply in it!

I want to leave a reply for someone else, so I click reply, but no new box comes up, just the box with my existing reply. Argh!

So, I navigate completely away from the page; I go to lessons, then choose 1.3 Stonehenge, and enter the discussion area again, and the reply box with my reply to Annie is STILL floating on the screen (now it has moved position) - so how can I even leave a reply for someone else...? Screenshot:

I give up. There is someone else I really do want to reply to, but I cannot figure out how to do that and I don't want my reply to Annie to disappear because I type over it in the only reply box I see on the screen. This is BEYOND FRUSTRATING. I agree with Kerry: the life of this course should be our interactions with each other, but the discussion board does not work. 

I was going to spend some serious time on the course tonight, but I give up. I will try again this weekend. The problem here is the software; I am really disappointed. So much for good intentions to spend a lot of time interacting with people in the course tonight. Sigh.