Another week done

The course week is now over, goes by fast, tomorrow i look forward to another sleep in, this morning was rather painful in terms of tiredness, but the rest of the day was mostly interesting. We had written soldering assessment in the morning and in the afternoon we found out that we all passed (mine 80% which was much higher than i expected to get) I also got to try my goggles on the way, disappointingly foggable but I also used them as safety goggles in soldering which was amusing. Otherwise had maths with new teachers (2 different ones; Neil who is awesomely Scottish and Andrew who takes us for soldering) I list what happens as I remember it so not in order today, we also had a barbecue for lunch which had a huuuge line by the time we got out, but good burgers. and at the end of the day I showed Andrew the tutor my bike because he sounded really interested in seeing it and possibly buying some for polytech. So Morgan might have a bit of extra business (all from me, have to start a commission scheme)
Also just remembered I almost got my soldering practical stud finder to work until it was sabotaged by an evil evil man, he knows who he is and so do some of the class. Anyway overall good week and good motivation to find out which other assessments Andrew will be taking us for as he likes rewards and the 3 people in class who got 100% in the test got chocolate fish!

Sorry thought I posted this last night, thank goodness it saved it as draft.

Slip of the tongue

Another day, another post. Today was somewhat eventful, we had an assessment in the afternoon on the employment rights thing as expected even when we haven't done any work on it, did a little bit of study on it during the day as it was mostly stuff we did yesterday. Volts and resistance stuff, well exactly the same, Rob even had a bit of a nasty slip up (something along the lines of: "You guys did this yesterday?".... "All of it?"...."Can't have been Wal teaching.") It would seem the uselessness of our teacher is widely known so that was amusing but also highly inappropriate.

So a few of us spent the day with a bit of messing around and a bit of skipping ahead in the books and then there was some more strike action or a meeting or something, apparantly more strike stuff on thursday/friday but we wont be around at that point. Sounds like the polytech are refusing to be reasonable as Rob briefly explained the tutors position and how it is fighting for our learning which is always good.

Otherwise hopefully get test results soon and pass, the marks are quite straight forward and PC: either C for "Competent" or N for "Not yet competent." I hope and expect I am "Competent". I believe we also have an assessment for soldering tomorrow so I will be hopefully spending the rest of the night studying for that.

That's all for now except to state that my goggles I bought on trademe arrived and I can't wait to try them out tomorrow, I will add photos when I can be bothered which at the rate it is currently going looks like never but may be sooner if we are all lucky.

Until next time, I hope my teachers aren't on strike tomorrow. :)

Clever title here

Another week, today we started some new stuff, some resistance calculations with weird boards working out resistances for various circuits (the ones with series and parallel aspects were kind of annoying.) Then some safety practices stuff which was kind of boring but we sped through it and spent the last quarter of the day watching videos, well.. I say watching videos, there were videos playing mostly boring (good old aussie educational videos teachers love) so we were mostly playing games on phones and talking.

That pretty much sums up the day as I want to sleep fairly shortly and my brain is turning into the programmable flesh slime i just watched in doctor who stuff so I thought I would get that down while it still exists in my head.

I think we are doing some assessments this week both tomorrow and Wednesday so should be more to tell then.

Apologies

Sorry, no new post yesterday or today, only just got home and wound down really, we had a good evening straight after course of drinking and gambling. Otherwise not much happening lately. Did soldering this morning, was a whole day session behind most of the class but managed to essentially get finished (one component left to solder on, the IC :D ) otherwise it was maths with Wal, rather unexciting except for when we were zapping each other with a hand powered generator.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was good, Rob day but the fact that it was a whole day mostly in the lecture theatre was more evident this week, while we were doing silly employment law stuff. Otherwise was good, did some revision from 2 weeks ago (no class due to snow last week) and more talking about conductors and insulators and started talking about resistors and fancy types like thermistors.

Anyway now to sleep, for about the next 4 days.

Cuts and bangs

Well, today was eventful, not in the best ways however. For a start I noticed my bike making funny noises through the park on my way to course, then i noticed it was a flat tire so i quickly made it to the nearest petrol station, long story short: with an attendant who did not seem to understand or speak any discernible english, my inner tube ended up exploded. At this point it was 7:30 am and not really anyone awake to help. Was told to try the local tyre shop which didnt open until 8am so was waiting around for a bit until it opened only to find the tyre shop didn't sell bike tyres... Did give me information regarding bike shops that there were none nearby.

I then managed to get a hold of one helpful family member, James (sometimes known as my dad) who gave me and my bike a lift to course, I was only an hour late and I had texted ahead (texted is not a word according to this spell check) also, in the evening Nigel helped me fix up the bike. Much appreciated.

Didn't seem to miss much, got the booklet for maths that I missed out on last wednesday and we did some more on flexi cables and things, I think it was an assessment but hard to tell with Wal's teaching, speaking of which we did a performance review thing for him today too. no news as to the result.

So a bit of bads today but was good to get to try out tools. (lots of borrowing of my new strippers and knives, although managed to cut myself straight away, 1-2mm gash in my thumb, still hurts a lot and bleeding occasionally) Tomorrow with Rob should be fun. looking forward to it then should be soldering on wednesday.

Hopefully no  more injuries or breakdowns in the near future (or ever ideally but that's unlikely).

PS: Another big thank you to James and Nigel for helping me out. :)

nothing going on

Sorry for no new posts, the truth is (as most of you should know) we have had a lot of snow these last couple of days so I have had time off my classes. Going in today was optional as it is no longer snowing but only go if it is 'safe' to travel there, I decided not to; partially because I don't want to crash my bike from black ice and partially because it was too cold/early and I didn't have much time to get ready, and TBH I think I can learn more without Wal. So for today I will study at home in the warmth and continue to watch Doctor Who (even just made myself a TARDIS ringtone :D, also tried to make a Dalek snowman yesterday.)

So a dull week for my part in the blogosphere, hopefully more back to course with my tools next week. (reminds me I will post pics of tools at some point, I have taken them)

Third, up and down

Not too much to say at this point, similar to monday with slightly less boringness as the first half of the day was spent soldering (well power cut and talking about soldering, but still more interesting than the later class) then during the boring afternoon we got our toolkits and boots :D I was going to take pictures of them and post but that will have to wait for the weekend as that's when I will have them all properly in my possession. so for now look forward to that post.

until then I'll just feel good that I've already got more value in free stuff than was paid in course fees, and still more free gadgets to take home later / at end of course.

PS: Also damn cold this morning, here's a picture of the 'snow' that grows on me when i ride on frosty days.(once i work out how to add pics)

Second day, improvement!

Well as you probably guessed from the title, today was a LOT better than yesterday, even though I spent all day apart from breaks in a lecture theater with over 50 other people (rather warm). The reason: Rob!
Tutor for the other main group, he managed to talk for over 6 hours about the basics including things we did in high school, along with some laws and safety things and managed to keep it very interesting and fun. Seriously this guy could make dirt interesting, crazily energetic.
Otherwise lots of learning, including seeing the Tesla coil (sadly forgot to take my phone camera).
Can't remember anything else for now, spent the whole evening getting distracted from this and now very tired, might have to be an earlier night to get a reasonable amount of sleep until the next 6am. More tomorrow, but until then, an important lesson in electrical safety and I guess life

There is always a safe way to do it, just needs some creative thinking sometimes.

ps: soldering tomorrow should be fun. \o/ Also just remembered, we also started a glossary of electric terms today, very good idea, I might drop some in these posts every now and then but too tired for it tonight.

First real day, hope later ones improve.

First day of real classes done, let's just say i really hope it gets better, or this tutor does anyway.

Firstly: the pace was way slow, started off with some basic stuff in the book, then after well long enough for any monkey to do the problems about 3 times he might start the next one, or continue talking to induvidual people while the rest of us have nothing to do..(Edit: also forgot, he is not actually an electrician.)

Except strip wire. While we understand (having been told this with emphasis 3 or 4 times) that electricians do a lot of wire stripping and need to be good at it, that does not mean that we will want to do all of that practice in the first few days of course.

All day just in the same room with the same tutor, otherwise just did some testing with multimeters and vibrating stick meters, someone blew a fuse and broke one of the meters which was kind of an amusing highlight.

Otherwise just a full day of a full class (all 3 streams) in the lecture theater tomorrow which should hopefully be more interesting, has 2 different topics on the timetable for it, i think maths and magnetism so should give more of a range and less time doing nothing hopefully. Then Wednesday is half a day of soldering and another half day of continuing what we did today (hopefully less sitting around)

For now I am going to relax and not think about stripping wires.

PS: I'll try to get more photos to put up here to make it more interesting in future.

Suddenly Blog!

Ok here we are. I was going to post updates about my course through Facebook (for those of you unaware, I am now doing an electrician course) but then realized that most of the family etc that will be wanting the updates on my course and so on are not on there and there are some on there that may not appreciate being bombarded with pointless information as I sometimes do.

So i thought I might do a blog about it instead, that way whoever wants to can follow it as they please and we can all see how i progress through the course afterwards. (Also it gives me a great source of procrastination hehe.)

So here it is I will be sending a link to this to all the family etc and posting it on facebook so those who want to can follow my progress but chances are if you are reading this you already know how to find it.

I will try to update it regularly which shouldn't be a problem as there should be a lot of interesting stuff to learn that I will want to share constantly.

This week nothing particularly interesting happened. First week so mainly admin stuff, tutors being on strike, finding out my hours and First Aid course.
My days for course are Monday-Wednesday 8:00am until about 5:00pm so if you want me for anything else try to make it outside of those times.
Otherwise I should have more interesting stuff to update you with on Monday.

Happy Reading.

Beren.