# back to school for me.

Category: Cram Session

## Post 1 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 10:23:04

Okay, I signed up for school. I haven't been in like 10 years. crazy I know. why? No clue except I figure I might try and get in to this cs thing. I spend so much time on the computer I might as well right?
Anyway, I got 2 classes this semester I still got my job so can't over load myself to much. The classes are Programming fundamentals and fundamentals of networking. I all ready see what will probably be an ongoing problem. Books RFBD has one of them but it's the third edition. I just thought I'd post here and see if for some strange reasons someone had this laying around.
programming logic and design
4th Ed
by: Joyce Farrell
cw 2006
and
problem solving abstraction and design using c++
4th ed
frank L. Friedman
elliot B. Koffman
cw 2004
any sudgestions on this are welcome too.

## Post 2 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 14:38:31

You might try www.bookshare.org as well. I got you beat. I'm auditing a graduate class in technology starting Tuesday. In some ways I'm glad they did what they did about the book. It has a 1996 copywright, and there's a newer edition available, but they are using the older one, which happily I ordered from RFB&D.
You might see if the publisher has them on CD-ROM, also. You might try going through the college disability services office, too.
Last time I was in school, we didn't use computers, and my slate and stylus got me through grad and undergrad school, so this will be an experience for me. Good luck!
Lou

## Post 3 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 15:04:02

Good luck to both of you. I don't have those books Shawn, but I just wanted to give you a cyber slap on the back for being brave enough to go back to school after all this time. And I'll give you a cyber slap on the back too, Lou. Hope both of you enjjoy and do well.

## Post 4 by Nage (Your father's friend's daughter's roommate's niece) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 15:06:18

Good luck to the both of you!
Can't help with the books, but I'm sure you'll find them somewhere, it's too much of a popular field not to. So yeah, good luck, buena suerte, bonne chance!

## Post 5 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 23:16:14

So, what do you all do if you can't get your books on tape? scann them? get someone to read them to ya?

## Post 6 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 23:44:19

The short answers are yes and yes, Shawn. My wife used to work in special services at a local community college. The college would sometimes scan materials for students and save them in a format that was compatible with the students' software. I private mailed you on this topic, so I can talk to you more inteligently. Finding a reader in your field of study could be kinda fun, but if you find your own, ask your instructor, and see if the college or the Texas Commision for the Blind would pay for reader service for you if needed. In some ways, I'm not the best person to talk to about this, because while I worked for disabled student services when I was in grad and undergrad school, things have changed a lot since then, and I don't necessarilly think for the better in some ways. Sorry. I digress.
Lou

## Post 7 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Saturday, 26-Aug-2006 23:45:35

I meant to thank those of you for your good wishes. Yogi can probably count on his youthful charm, but I'll need them.
Lou

## Post 8 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Sunday, 27-Aug-2006 0:35:07

Yogi
First of all, good call. But here's more of some general CS tips that you need to act on/take into consideration. Take it from a CS graduate who went into the program with no knowledge of computer science and suffered sleepless nights and panic and bad grades in his two first comp sci classes, due to lack of or incorrect preperations.
If you do not know the programming language at all (or nothing about programming) your text books are not your biggest problem. Technology will, however be.
My advice is:
Get in touch with the professors asap and ask them what Operating System will be used, what c++ editor and if you will be doing a lot of graphics stuff (my guess is no, since this seems more of a theoretical course). Then get yourself a c++ IDE and start practicing on your own. Visual Studio has free command-line debuggers and compilers, so does Borland, for Unix you will most likely beusing GCC, you may need to download a Unix simulator for Windows if you end up using Unix/Linux compilers, or you need to get yourself UltraEdit so you can write your code on Windows before ftp-ing it over to Unix. I'd recoomend Cygwin. Yes, lots of lingo in this, I know, and it's a bit tricky at first, steting up your work environment, but if you do that successfully you're a third of the way to success.
You can ask me more specifically when they tell you what programming editors/environment they'll be using and I'll try to help you set it up. Jared (our infamous battle mask) is also good at this stuff, you can also go to www.blindprogramming.com and sign up for the programmers mailing list and there's also another list you might want to subscribe to.
Then you must, (ideally the day you read this) download a book like "teach yourself c++ in 21 days" .. www.blindprogrammin.com surely has it, if not www.bookshare.org does (I recommend a BookShare membership, it's $50 a year but tons of programming books in text format) .. then start reading it, do one day at a time, do all the exercises, get them to compile and produce an output. You'll probably have a hard time to begin with but just getting a "hello world" program to compile is a small but significant achievement. Work hard in your first weeks and use the aforesaid book to learn, learn a day at a time, in addition to your classes. Don't worry, the book will cover the material you need to be successful, way better than your professor will (unless CS is much better taught there).
In terms of getting the same books, ask your professors if they can recommend another title/author that covers similar material (lots of good books out there, RFB&D has some). Try to get the disability services to also get you a reader, ideally someone from science/computer science, not a psych major (no offense to those good people but they generally make lousy math/comp sci readers, take it from me).
Get a scanner and good software like Omnipage and scan as much as you can yourself. Also ask disability services to check with the publisher. I got one of my two books this semester from the publisher directly.
So, feel free to PM me once you know the more specific details and I'll try to help you get settled in. Be warned, it's not easy, but if you get over the initial hurdles and get coding, you'll never go back.
I'm going to MBA myself, started last week and I like it. :)
Now to bed with my princess and then for studying tomorrow.
Cheers and good luck, and to all a good night.
-B
p.s. since I made this just fine, rest assured good spelling is not required.

## Post 9 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Sunday, 27-Aug-2006 3:01:40

thanks B. I have my work cutt out for me. Good. I am gladd you gave me some direction. got to get to work. grin

## Post 10 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Sunday, 27-Aug-2006 11:23:27

I usually just don't get the book. In my experience for something like an intro c++ class it isn't necessary to have the exact same book, the third adition should do fine. I'd be glad to help with any c++ questions you have, as I know the language fairly well.

## Post 11 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Sunday, 27-Aug-2006 15:49:54

B, I couldn't agree with you more about the need for readers familiar with the subject matter. It was the same for me when I was a music major and when I took foreign languages at times. If it isn't straight text, using someone without the necessary expertise is almost worthless.
Lou

## Post 12 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Sunday, 27-Aug-2006 19:53:47

You can get some kind of readers to work depending on there backround. For example the best computer science reader I had was a chemical engineering major, but she was smart, had done math before, and just picked up the discrete math easily.

## Post 13 by Twinklestar09 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Tuesday, 29-Aug-2006 3:58:44

Yogi, that is cool you've decided to attend college after 10 years. My mom is in her 50's and has also recently been attending college for a couple of years already. I think it's cool when people want to go to college after a long time of having been there or having not been there at all. As for the books, motifated and others have good ideas about how to get them. As for me, in my first semester of college, I listened to RFB-taped textbooks and some of my books wich DSS scanned, as well as getting to have my tests and handouts in Braille and recording my notes. Then I went to a different college (and have been there since), and now I either get my books from the publisher or Bookshare or I scan them myself, and my tests are read and my notes are written by DSS as well as me sometimes scanning my tests and recording/typing my notes. However, for my math, I have talked to DSS and they are going to try to get a similar book in Braile if the math department aproves, or they will order that book in Braille. Although hiring readers is also an option, I personally think it would be more time-consuming as you have to interview as well as depending on the person to keep his/her part of the agreement for him/her to read. What I have been thinking of hiring a reader for is to read class notes, although I don't know if I will because of the concerns I just mentioned. I believe DSS also has readers though, so if I do decide to use readers, I'll ask about that first. Although scanning is also time-consuming, I feel like doing that and trying to get my books from publishers/Bookshare makes me feel like I have more control over how soon I can read my books. The only hard thing then is getting someone to help me edit my scanned material, and if I could hire a reader for that, that would be nice. *smile* Family members sometimes do it, but usually they're too busy.

## Post 14 by motifated (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Tuesday, 29-Aug-2006 6:26:18

Tinkerbell, you have some good suggestions here. Thanks. I bought Victor Reader Soft for my textbook, but as luck wouldhave it, tonight is the first class and the book hasn't shown up yet, so it may be Kurzweil to the rescue for awhile. As for notes, I generaly didn't trust others to take noes for me, as different people have different views as to what's important. If they're handwritten, your reader is at the mercy of the individual who took the notes. I'm not saying that approach is wrong, just voicing an opinion. Indeed, many coleges hire notetakers and readers for blind/vi/learning disabled students. Colleges also will hire readers, but again, you may be at the mercy of the reader's knowledge base or lack thereof.
Lou

## Post 15 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Tuesday, 29-Aug-2006 6:51:04

Hey,
thanks for all of your suggestions. so far I've just been on the online course I am taking. I go for my on-campus class this evening. I got in this game so late "last Friday" I am going to just evaluate the 2 courses I am taking and figure out which one is going to be more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. I can all ways retake it. I figured out last night from the online course that the 2 books I thought were fr the 2 classes I am taking weren't. the 2 books I was told about are actually for my programming course. I have to find out this morning what book is for the networking class. Dss set up a 3 hour slot for me on Fridays for reading along with that my wife can read some as well. I'm just going to have to play along for a month and see what is going to work out the best. aside from the book issue I still think the programming class is going to be less difficult. From what I've learned over the years code is code. the method of teaching it might be different from teacher to teacher but the commands aren't changed.
who knows. I guess I'll know more tonight after fundamentals of networking.
Don't worry Jared and B I'll be calling on you if I need some help

## Post 16 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2006 10:57:35

okay, the networking fundamentals is going to be easy!! RFBD has the book as well. I got the book and player ordered should be here in a few days. Had to upgrade it to ups second day but that was just 10 bucks extra.
the class is just lecture, the 2 tests are open book open notes. the class is 8 weeks then there is a 8 week lab that you can take. I am not signed up for the lab. it might be more challenging. basicly in there is where you do the hands on. install server software on windows server 2003. Does jaws pro work on that sort of thing? Any of you taken courses like that, hard core network installs?
It's probably one thing to do what I've done so far on my own, installed network cards, set up routers, etc. Peer to peer networking at home and at work.
I know I could do it left to my own devices and if there willing to install the software I need.
oh well so far so good!

## Post 17 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Wednesday, 30-Aug-2006 14:36:29

Jaws on windows server 2003 si always an adventure, and ka massave crap shoot. I've had it to where it wouldn't even boot the computer after installing jaws on server 2003. Right now I'm running a 2003 server machine with jaws though, I'd say your best bet is install 7.1 and I'd give it a 80% chance of not fucking up the system.