Arlon's CSUMB ProSeminar CST300 Module 4 Learning Journal for the week Wed 1/27-Tues 2/2, year 2021

 Arlon's CSUMB ProSeminar CST300 Module 4 Learning Journal for the week Wed 1/27-Tues 2/2, year 2021

My educational goals are specific but also broad reaching. I am an expert programmer and would like to gain system and network administration knowledge and maybe robotics building knowledge too, and definitely more mathematics knowledge. 

I started off in life, as a kid, with interest in puzzles, programming, math, science, mechanical and aesthetic design and architecture, going the direction of a mechanically inclined chemist, and wound up finding more math and interesting problems in physics, so began my higher educational path specifically toward physics and math knowledge, with programming as a very consistent hobby throughout. As more of a pure scientist, degrees, titles, certifications and the like were never my goal, but I think my projection of my persona to the world was viewed in high contrast. On one hand I had math and science teachers telling me I was one of the smartest students, with good life potential, while on the other hand I had a Spanish teacher failing me for supposedly not paying attention and other problems. Later in college, early life excitement, issues, events, misconceptions, misperceptions, misunderstandings and big mistakes landed me distracted from college the first time around, and I did not finish, winding up straying down the path of an independent real estate appraiser, but always with programming in my back pocket, and with good math skills. Since I was about 12 I could bust out whatever computer desktop application I needed, for whatever purpose I needed. For the past 23 years I've been able to do it in a commercially popular language, Java, and since the past eighteen or so years, I've been creating applications in several languages and several paradigms, many of which I invent. I use a full LAMP stack with my own inner frameworks for web development, Java+Swing with JNLP and Applets for desktop application development, and I've made Python+Tk board game as a Python example, many Perl example programs, a quick Perl+Tk example. I've made an unrivaled online tournament game framework, an unrivaled appraisal software suite, unrivaled accounting software concept and web application, even a JavaScript with PHP comet framework that I think rivals Angular and React. My interfaces are always both interesting and common sense. I've even made a few robo-solvers for puzzle type games. I've delved into marketing just enough to have a fully loaded, ready to burst pyramidal financial income system built around my accounting software, AccountBlaster. Graphics creation, to me, goes along side programming and has also been in my back pocket for probably the same time scale. My programming skills are far reaching, but my system and network administration skills on the other hand, as I am finding now, as an experienced programmer, are actually quite crippled!

What I'm trying to say is that I need the bachelor's degree to impress everyone and make more money hopefully, because being an appraiser, programming as a hobby has put me in the poor house - but I have real actual educational goals as well - real things I would like to learn. In general, discrete mathematics, and as much mathematics as I can absorb, set theory, most maths I get my hands on I really enjoy learning and being able to dive into. But that's mostly a hobby too, really.

What I think I really need right now, educationally, is to:

Gain knowledge of how to:

System and Network Administration:

• Configure my Cloudflare account to point to my router, configure my router to allow secure incoming http/https connections, and be able to use that as a LAMP hosting setup for websites.
• Configure my Cloudflare account to point to my router, configure my router to allow secure incoming SSH connections, and be able to use that as a remote SSH/VPN so I can administer the system remotely.

Those two items seem closely related, and - I mean - in Knoppix - not in Windows, not in RedHat, not in CentOS - in Knoppix, specifically in Knoppix.

• Build and back-build Knoppix, and be able to work around publicly available software dependency problems. I have been stuck for a few years now on 'installing that package will break bladebladebla whatever dependency software...'
• Tunnel PulseAudio output with socat over SSH - for sound with VNC, among other applications. In Knoppix.

Security:

• Check and verify the security implications of the first two items, hosting and VPN.

Robotics:

• Programming those little chips you can buy, making them connect to servos and then . . . . !!!! (Making an army of little Robots that does everything we need them to, and robotify everything mechanical around me....)

Marketing:

• I have four or five large, working, production software suites, in operation, that are several years old. I work as an independent real estate appraiser making probably less than minimum wage overall. How to connect these two dots, with a big $ sign in the middle of them.

Side Interests:

• Chips: I'm curious how chip design works. I highly doubt if I'd ever be able to contribute in this field, but I'm curious how the design process works, and how chips work.
• Math: Discrete math, set theory, Mathematica, programming math, all mathematics. Again, I doubt if I could ever contribute to this field, but I am fascinated by it.
• Physics, Chemistry: Physics and chemistry problems are fun.
• Mechanical Design and Mechanical Systems Design: Sort of comes natural to me as well, but physical materials are harder to come by than text characters, so it's financially easier to write software than try and build robots, as an independent experimenter.

The purpose of the bachelor's degree goal is then, I guess, multi-faceted, since I am already an expert software designer and engineer by talent, history and portfolio, I suppose the bachelor's degree is to officially designate me as such, and to hopefully help me gain real, actual knowledge along the way, in the areas listed. If I need to keep impressing people then I will keep trying for higher and higher educational certifications or degrees, but as I said, that would just be to impress other people, and for getting money, I guess.

I could probably be helpful to a company making robots, especially with Java, or, analyzing and improving mechanical or software systems for efficiency, or designing new mechanical or software systems, or inventing things. I also can do lots of other things, from fixing boats to solving rubix cubes, to climbing palm trees. I'm a humble person and am not above simple tasks like sweeping, cleaning, maintenance, plumbing, car repair, cat comfort, and whatever needs to get done. I do everything I can.

My Educational goals are: hosting access, VPN, software dependency resolution in Linux, tunnelling PulseAudio over SSH with socat, basic security knowledge, programming chips, connecting servos, and discrete math and mathematics in general as I can absorb.

I would be more helpful to myself if I had the specific pieces of knowledge listed: hosting access, VPN, software dependency resolution in Linux, tunnelling PulseAudio over SSH with socat, basic security knowledge, programming chips, connecting servos, and maybe somehow gaining investors or some kind of financial or other interest. The closest I've come so far are the locked and loaded financial pyramid in my accounting software, and the online tournament game I made which at one point had a pretty good world-wide Othello-playing user base. I have a client-needs based web-photo album building program with its own React-rivaling framework built-in that I could potentially use to build websites for hundreds or thousands of people, or companies with. My real estate appraisal software suite, AppraisalBlaster also makes the commercially available and widely used 'DataMaster' look like garbage, and not just for the cooler name it has, it actually does more than what you can buy, commercially, from a real actual software corporation, selling software to people in the real world - and not only does it do more, it does it better, more easily and in a more visually exciting way than what is commercially available.

My career goals are to make as much money as I can, either in robotics, or desktop application development, or web application development or game development, or independently employed as one or all of the above.

ETS Computer Science Test: I will likely score extremely high on this test, for several reasons: I have a natural inclination for most of the topics I saw, for absorbing new material, for solving puzzles and math problems, for preparing for tests, and for seeing right through test questions, as well as a history of scoring high on tests in general.

What I have learned this week: This week the focus of class was ethics and argumentation, with the introduction of what are known as claims - an argumentation terminology label for the different types of potentially debatable statements one could make. Several types of claims are discussed such as claims of fact, claims of policy, claims of value, claims of definition, and claims of cause. There is also discussion of what stakeholders are, further discussion on time management and setting goals to focus on for achievement, as discussed here, review of a future computer science assessment test, discussion on bias and motivated reasoning and the difference between soundness and validity. I am still working on truly understanding the difference between soundness and validity, but I see what it says about them. There is also discussion of persuasion argumentation and conditionals in argumentation which are related to soundness and validity. Recommended goals for goal setting are specified to be: specificity, measurability, attainability, relevancy, and temporal attainability.