the air

As you might already know, I am a teaching assistant (TA) for a course at Northern Illinois University. Although I am not a graduate student, my professor felt that I had enough qualifications to be a TA for his operations research class. Last week, there was a project due and yesterday my professor finally got around to grading them. It turns out that three groups had very similar project reports. Since each group had the same case study, the solutions were expected to be similar. However, the actual writing part (e.g. introduction, conclusion, etc.) were verbatim and even had ditto formatting.

To no surprise, my professor was very upset and sat down all three groups to discuss the situation. It turns out that group A had done all the original work. In fact, Group B “accidentally” stole their information and used it as their own. In Group B, it was only one student who did it without the knowledge of her peers. A student in group C obtained assistance from the culprit in group B and submitted an equally verbatim report. To make a long story short, each culprit received a 0 on the project.

I am very surprised at the culprits because they are the last people I would suspect of cheating. At least if you are going to cheat, change the wording and formatting around so that it is hard to tell you copied. In fact, if you get caught, just admit your mistake because that way, you have a chance of getting off lightly. Or better yet, just don’t cheat.

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I was randomly surfing the web and reading a variety of stories and I came across this website.  I have never written for a newspaper or any journal.  However, I did recently submit an abstract for a national IIE (Institute of Industrial Engineers) conference.  I’m not sure what to expect from 451 Press and I have never heard of them.  I figured this is a great opportunity to maybe perhaps gain some more experience in writing and hope that 451 Press will give me the chance to write for them.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have used John Chow’s website as a motivating tool to encourage me to continually update this blog and work hard to make sure it is much more admirable than my older blogs.  I’ll be sure to keep update more as I hear from 451 Press.  Keep your fingers crossed.

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I just got done listening to Corinne Bailey Rae’s self-titled debut album. I’m a huge fan of ambient/chillout music. I first heard about Corinne Bailey Rae on Monday night’s episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I went out today and bought the album after sampling a few tracks. I have to admit this is one stellar album. Her voice reminds me of the soul artists of the sixties and seventies with modern beats. Her songs are definitely soothing and quite addictive.

My favorite tracks are (in no particular order):

• Like A Star
• Enchantment
• Trouble Sleeping
• Put Your Records On

If you get a chance, I highly recommend you listen to a few of her tracks. I think she’s another great artist to come out of the UK.

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I can’t believe it is already November 28, 2006. It feels like just yesterday I started my fall semester and here I am already wrapping up projects and preparing for my final exams. Luckily for me, there are only two more weeks of school left. Finals begin on Monday, December 11, 2006. I find it amusing knowing that I only have to go for three more weeks to school and get four weeks off. My goal during the break is to work on my Master’s application and have it ready to submit by the start of the spring semester.

I apologize in advance if I cannot blog consistently since I will be busy with school projects and final exam preparation. My goal for this blog is to stick with posting about one post a day. That translates to roughly a minimum of 30 posts per month. So far, including this post, I will have written 27 posts in total. Given that there are only 30 days in November and I started blogging on November 5, 2006, I think I have done pretty good. I was reading Ed Lau’s interview of John Chow and John had this to say for bloggers, “make a commitment to do a certain number of posts each day/week and stick to it.” This is perhaps the single most useful advice any successful blogger can give to another blogger. To be honest, I completely agree with John. I feel that if I am to run a successful blog (in terms of readers), I should continually and consistently keep updating. Hence, it is my goal to average at least one post per day.

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I was just surfing the web while celebrating USC’s win over Notre Dame, I came across this car. Man oh man is this car sexy or what?

This is the 2008 Audi R8, Audi’s new offering to compete with the likes of Lamborghini and Ferrari. This Car & Driver article doesn’t mention pricing for this awesome supercar yet, but you can expect this vehicle to start around US$100,000.

I know the concept of an Audi supercar is somewhat demeaning, but it’s about time that Audi released a car that can compete with Ferrari, Bugatti, and most of all, Mercedes. Interestingly, Porsche has a large stake Volkswagen, the parent company of Audi. If you want this car, sit back and relax as it isn’t available yet. It should be arriving in showrooms sometime around the fall of 2007.

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