Duc Duong's Weblog

Its that time of year to spring foward ! an hour ahead on Monday March 10th, at 2:00am. Many will lose an hour of sleep but gain an extra hour of daylight. The sun will now set later which means it will be darker in the morning shifting the sunrise a bit later. Daylights savings was recently changed from its orginal dates to accomdate the changes of attempting to conserve more power by allowing more daylight during the day to reduce the usage of lighting in homes and street lamps on the roads. Many people woke up this morning feeling rushed or out of sync and tired, that occured to me today as i woke up and my clocked was not changed for daylights savings. I rushed to get ready for work on sunday morning and ended up skipping breakfast to avoid getting yelled at by a supervisor or manager. The day eventually got better as i chewed energy bubble gum a fellow co-worker gave me to wake me up. The next daylight savings in fall where we fall back an hour are my favorites since everyone gains an hour of sleep or an hour to complete a task while gaining more daylight.

I think the movie is good so far, Stephen Glass seems like a good writer and works for a highly influential magazine. He interacts with his co-workers nicely and likes his editor that always stood up for him. When his editor was fired for a new editor, Stephen Glass created a fake story called Hacker Heaven. At that point, Stephen faces a ethical delima. Stephen has to support all his information that he wrote in the article because a competing writing company checked his sources. Stephen is very persuasive, he has his notes to support his argument and also provides phone numbers, email address, web addresses, and also locations of his sources and information which makes him seem credible.

As i was leaving campus friday morning after math class, i saw a sign that said engineering expo Free ! I did a U-turn on fowler and headed back to campus. Im majoring in engineering so I wanted to check out what they had to offer at USF’s engineering expo. They had differnt companies appear in the engineering building such as lockheed martin, raytheon, teco power, baxtor, and also a couple of engineering societies and clubs. It was a pretty interesting asking each company what is out there and then watching robots fly all over the floor as the students played with them. What I found most informative at engineering expo was at the IEEE-CS society where they explained to me what engineering is and the possibilities of my major along with tips that would help me later on.

I think its interesting how work changes. When we were children, we were told to become doctors and lawyers and I heard over the radio that something like 40% of lawyers wouldnt recommend their job to younger people and a lawyer goes through at least one breakdown in their life. Doctors also are attempting to leave their job force due to the patients and how trust in doctors have gone down. Patients use websites such as WebMD to diagnose themselves rather then trust the doctor. I think its amazing how people on TV are billionaires for just being creative rather then working hard.

I think its interesting that there is many reasons why and why not to give a dollar to a homeless person. Personally i think it all depends on the mood and like many students said you dont know whats wrong with them, how they became homeless, or if they are faking it to make money. If you give it to a homeless person, you give them a moral boost but just like someone said in class. If they get to many dollars then they start becoming lazy and it becomes a habit of doing nothing to get free money. I think the government should handle the homeless people or a non-profit organization. Every once and a while giving a dollar away wont hurt and it makes both people feel good.

Computers have been advancing quickly and doubling in speed about every other year according to Moore’s law. Computers and technology has also become more fustrating as it advances, for instance installing simple optical drives and having it not be detected. Technical support is not very good for many manufactor’s since alot of them are now outsourced and hard to understand. People with old technology like what they have since its not broken yet and when it is everything is not compatible with everything. For example, switching from windows 98 to windows XP or even vista. Another problem with technology is that companies tend to produce their product too fast that quality control is low and usually is defective such as the Xbox 360′s red ring of death or ipod touch’s screen that shows differnt colors. Repairing these devices has also become expensive, like a basic diagnostic can cost up to 200 dollars or when buying new computers it wont include a word document.

claim – A claim is apart of an argument; it is a statement that needs proof to be accepted as true.
support – support is evidence and reasons that helps prove the claim to be reasonable.
evidence – evidence is the facts and information presented to support the claim.
explanation – explanation is the breakdown of the evidence and support to tie them into the claim.

1. I think is argument is true in the 1st page but the rest didnt work out as well. Crichton speaks about secondhand smoking being unharmful and banning DDT was disgraceful along with all efforts to stop the carbon dioxide release into the air is a waste of time. It made me feel like he was trying to stop conservation and just continue pollution because its a waste of time.

2. Crichton’s tone is argumentative, he states that he feels how people live their lives to be “sympathetic to the biosphere”. He tries to make the reader feel like their time is wasted as they live their lives to try to prevent global warming and other enviromental problems.

3. Crichton’s main claim is to decide what perceptions are gunine and what is false. Crichton then uses enviromentalism as an example to show mankind’s mistakes.

4. Crichton supports his claims with facts, articles, and his own experiences. His evidence supports his claims well but theres no citations.

5. I do not accept his reason for not citing his sources. It will hurt his argument for not offering citations which would validate his facts and evidence he used to support his claim.

6. His arguement is strong but it is not strong enough because of lack of citation.