Where the thoughts, opinions, and rants of Seth Nenstiel are free to roam. Graze at your own risk!

Carving Out a Path

Posted: September 25th, 2008 | Author: Seth | Filed under: College, Idea, School, Thought | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

I’ve been doing some thinking–which is probably a bad thing knowing me.  I think I may have written off Drexel and what it had to offer to hastily.  Maybe I just wasn’t mature enough to handle it at the time?  I don’t know–but I am glad that I left for various reasons, but in reflection, there are things that I definitley would want to be a part of if I were still in Philly–maybe not much having to do with Drexel, but the opportunities around it.

In the past six and a half months or so that I have been “home” and have had time to evaluate what I want to do with myself, I have been able to come up with some fields that I would like to learn more about.  These fields or topics or whatever you would like to lable them as are as follows: Business, Digital Media, Photography, and Language.  Specifically:

Business

I want to learn about owning and own property–soon.  I am talking about investment properties.  Multifamily buildings that I can rent units in.  I am looking at this as a steady, less risky way of investing.  Sure the economy is really bad right now, and getting a mortgage is going to be a trick.  But I think this is a good idea so I am investing my time by taking general business classes.

What does this have to do with owning realestate?  Well I think it is good to have an idea what the accountant I will eventually hire, is doing.  So I am in a financial accounting class.  In general this field has a lot to do with the economy, so I have a macro economics class.  And I haven’t ruled out other business investments, so I am in a marketing class.

I still need to learn more–maybe some classes on tax accounting or tax law?

Digital Media

Perhaps my biggest loss leaving Drexel–I don’t know yet.  I really love the web so I really want to learn more about developing and designing for it.  But I was also kicking around an application idea yesterday for the Project 10 to the 100 that Google is running.  However, my idea requires massive amounts of coding which I sort of left behind, but not out of mind, when leaving Drexel.

I need to migrate back to that because it seems that whenever I am faced with a problem, I always start thinking about how a program could make my life so much easier.  Structurally, organizationally, and visually–if the program was written how my mind works.  Which is a problem since I don’t know how to code (at least not much, my formal C++ training came to an abrupt stop).

But I am also interested in the design aspect and would like to do more with that also.  I can come up with some pretty good ideas if given the chance and right knowledge.

Photography

This is really a broad concept for me right now because it contains not only still photography but also film.  I took a film class at Drexel and loved it.  I would really love doing more of it.  Right now I am focusing most of my photographic efforts on the black and white class I am currently taking.  Transition your mind back to still cameras so when I say I am using film, you realize it is 35mm and in a little roll that you insert into the back of a camera and rewind when you are done. Yep, I am currently doing photography as an “art” and not those cell phone pictures you call photos.

I want to continue with still photography and am (going to) really intending, to if at all possible, take color photography next semester.  I don’t think the college I am currently at offers classes in motion picture?

Languages

I say languages because I want to learn and be fluent in as many as possible.  I think it is almost disgraceful to be monolingual today.  I only know English, but I am studying Spanish for my 6th year? formally.  But can I really count all those years of high school Spanish as a year each?  I am still pretty pathetic at Spanish–I could probably survive, but roughly at best.

I really want to be fluent in Spanish by the time I graduate college.  There, I need to update that goal because I have added a time objective.  After I learn Spanish, I would like to quickly expand to Portugese and Italian.  From there maybe a new endeavor of German?  Only time will tell.

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So there you have it, that is what I want to study.  I may mention that I feel the need to be persuing three of these if not all four at a time because they are all important to where I am going and who I want to be.  If someone cool is reading this and wants to fund my education or has some awesome program that I should take advantage of–please contact me.  pyrosarco [at] gmail [dot] com


Learn Microsoft Word 2007

Posted: September 4th, 2008 | Author: Seth | Filed under: Hacks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Originally I was very upset that my school had me install some weird ActiveX controls and download some files in order to teach me something I already knew.  I am still upset.  But because the content isn’t protected, I am going to share it with you.  Here are flash video tutorials to use the new Microsoft Word 2007.  Share them if you like.

Part 1 - Chapter 5: Creating Documents with Microsoft Word 2007

Part 2 - Chapter 5: Creating Documents with Microsoft Word 2007

Part 3 - Chapter 6: Formatting and Organizing Text

Part 4 - Chapter 6: Formatting and Organizing Text

Part 5 - Chapter 7: Using Graphics and Tables

Part 6 - Chapter 7: Using Graphics and Tables