My Assignment And The Ns Forums
stingavandal
Join Date: 2004-07-17 Member: 29952Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2004-07-17 Member: 29952Members, Constellation
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Requesting some responses</div> Hey I have an assignment where I basically need to ask some people to read a story and to explain what the story means to them or to tell a story of their own in response. I basically need to document the people's responses and then evaluate your reactions and how you "understood" my story...since people understand the same story differently.
Anyways, since my story has to do with a dorm internet fiasco i figured i'd make one of my test subjects internet gamers on the NS FORUMS!!! since i love ns and couldn't play it for like 2 weeks cuz of some f** in my dorm blocking the internet for anyone...but thats something you can read about in the story...anyways.
I'd greatly appreciate it if some of you could respond by tomorrow night so that i may complete this assignment. Thanks ahead of time to the NS community members who respond.
My memoir will be posted below =D. Thanks.
some background info: Haygood is one of the dormitories and the campus is actually a small campus away from the main Emory campus which is kinda ghetto and needs to get everything approved by emory for internet stuff. Learnlink is a program that is used for email and conferences and messages and forums and basically everything at the school from academic assignments to extracurriculars.
Wired on Wireless: A Personal Memoir and Reflection
Another day passed and still apparently the wireless rogue had not responded to the signs. By the fifth day of the internet crisis, residents of Haygood began to dance on the very fine line separating sanity and insanity. The internet was so slow that by the time I loaded weather.com to check on hurricane Frances, trees had already nearly crushed the dining hall, my dorm room, and my car. Learnlink would rarely log in, let alone open assignment messages in class conferences. The source of the slow internet crisis was believed to be a wireless router hidden somewhere in Haygood. A hunt for the router was organized by Max Powers, the sophomore living across the hall from me. Using a Windows program that can track the strength of a wireless signal in real-time, Max Powers and I walked all around Haygood with his laptop until we found where the wireless signal was strongest: two doors down from the end of our hall. Although the room was in our hall, we had never noticed its existence or, for that matter, any signs of life from its residents. We never saw anyone walk out of the room, even for classes; no wonder they hadn’t seen the signs: “If you are using a wireless device to access the internet please stop. You are slowing down the hall’s cable connections.” The name tag on the door claimed that someone named “Chester” lived in the room. I thought I heard noises from inside, so I knocked. After a few seconds the door creaked open and Chester stuck half his face through the door to grunt, “Yea?”
Curious, I asked him, “Excuse me but do you have a wireless router? Because there is a router messing up the cable internet for all of Haygood.”
Chester replied like he was pleading not guilty to a court of law: “No I do not have a wireless router nor do I know anyone who might have one.”
Somehow convinced he was being honest, I politely tried to mutter “Ok sorry we bothered you” as he quickly shut the door in my face. As soon as Chester closed his door, another strange person walked out of a room down the hall. I inquired him if he had a wireless router and he answered with, “No but my roommate from last year, Chester, used one a lot last year.” Consumed by some vague yet passionate motive and not sure of what I hoped to accomplish, I rapidly knocked on Chester’s door and shouted accusingly, “are you sure you don’t have a wireless router? Because the signal is pretty damn close to 100% all along the border of your room.” The door swung wide open this time and a beet red, extremely defensive, and angry Chester burst out of his room screaming profanities and excuses such as, “I just [gosh darn it] told you that I don’t have a [gosh darn it] router! I can’t help that there is a [gosh darn it] strong signal outside my door! Go away.” Immediately I felt bad for accusing him a second time with such a ridiculous question and after Chester stopped “flipping out” I made an effort to express my sincere apologetic feelings. Chester warmed up in response to my apology and told me, “its ok. I didn’t mean to flip out…I was just doing work and got a little annoyed.”
I then walked back to my room relieved that the conflict with Chester was finally over; however, as soon as I entered my room I was informed by a reliable person that Chester had given the password to his wireless router to a girl somewhere else in Haygood, and therefore he must have a wireless router somewhere in his room. I was in disbelief that, first of all, I just apologized for being lied to twice, and, second of all, that someone was selfish enough to continue using a wireless router when they knew the router was inconveniencing over 200 peers that lived in the same building. Enraged that such a human existed and that it was impossible for the admissions staff to weed out such scum through just a word processed application, I rushed out of my room to notify my RA and RLC about Chester, but I then realized it was 3 am and everyone was dead asleep.
The next day I did not have time to notify Haygood’s RLC and RA’s because of my classes, but I did have plenty of time during classes to complain bitterly to my classmates about Chester, his lies, and his router. In my blind passion, however, I did not realize the sheer number of people I had preached my complaints to, and by the end of the day all of Haygood and most of Branham and East knew about Chester’s responsibility for the crisis. Chester’s door soon became plastered with signs about wireless not being allowed, signs with the equation “wireless = death,” and graphs displaying the wireless signal strength around his room. That night, while I was studying in the upper Haygood lobby, the entire population of south Haygood gushed through the door and marched towards Chester’s hall screaming, “we’re going to find that router and throw it and that [illegitimate child] out the window!” Interested, I followed the mob to Chester’s room to see if an Oxford College version of Lord of the Flies was about to take place. Of course, however, the mob got no answer from Chester’s room because either he was intelligent enough not to open the door or he wasn’t in the room.
The next day I went to the ****** College IT department and asked them what they planned to do about the internet situation in Haygood. They told me that they had already received information about the situation from students and the Haygood RLC; and that they had called Emory and asked for help to fix the internet in Haygood, but Emory still had not returned their call. Also, the department said that they would search certain rooms in Haygood for wireless routers sometime during the week. After a couple more days of frustration the internet miraculously was repaired, although, it remained a mystery how Emory managed to repair it.
*reflection omitted but it basically said how i made up some things like how he didn't actually hide from the mob but how he actually lied blatantly to the mob and how he actually had the wireless router hidden in his ceiling*
Anyways, since my story has to do with a dorm internet fiasco i figured i'd make one of my test subjects internet gamers on the NS FORUMS!!! since i love ns and couldn't play it for like 2 weeks cuz of some f** in my dorm blocking the internet for anyone...but thats something you can read about in the story...anyways.
I'd greatly appreciate it if some of you could respond by tomorrow night so that i may complete this assignment. Thanks ahead of time to the NS community members who respond.
My memoir will be posted below =D. Thanks.
some background info: Haygood is one of the dormitories and the campus is actually a small campus away from the main Emory campus which is kinda ghetto and needs to get everything approved by emory for internet stuff. Learnlink is a program that is used for email and conferences and messages and forums and basically everything at the school from academic assignments to extracurriculars.
Wired on Wireless: A Personal Memoir and Reflection
Another day passed and still apparently the wireless rogue had not responded to the signs. By the fifth day of the internet crisis, residents of Haygood began to dance on the very fine line separating sanity and insanity. The internet was so slow that by the time I loaded weather.com to check on hurricane Frances, trees had already nearly crushed the dining hall, my dorm room, and my car. Learnlink would rarely log in, let alone open assignment messages in class conferences. The source of the slow internet crisis was believed to be a wireless router hidden somewhere in Haygood. A hunt for the router was organized by Max Powers, the sophomore living across the hall from me. Using a Windows program that can track the strength of a wireless signal in real-time, Max Powers and I walked all around Haygood with his laptop until we found where the wireless signal was strongest: two doors down from the end of our hall. Although the room was in our hall, we had never noticed its existence or, for that matter, any signs of life from its residents. We never saw anyone walk out of the room, even for classes; no wonder they hadn’t seen the signs: “If you are using a wireless device to access the internet please stop. You are slowing down the hall’s cable connections.” The name tag on the door claimed that someone named “Chester” lived in the room. I thought I heard noises from inside, so I knocked. After a few seconds the door creaked open and Chester stuck half his face through the door to grunt, “Yea?”
Curious, I asked him, “Excuse me but do you have a wireless router? Because there is a router messing up the cable internet for all of Haygood.”
Chester replied like he was pleading not guilty to a court of law: “No I do not have a wireless router nor do I know anyone who might have one.”
Somehow convinced he was being honest, I politely tried to mutter “Ok sorry we bothered you” as he quickly shut the door in my face. As soon as Chester closed his door, another strange person walked out of a room down the hall. I inquired him if he had a wireless router and he answered with, “No but my roommate from last year, Chester, used one a lot last year.” Consumed by some vague yet passionate motive and not sure of what I hoped to accomplish, I rapidly knocked on Chester’s door and shouted accusingly, “are you sure you don’t have a wireless router? Because the signal is pretty damn close to 100% all along the border of your room.” The door swung wide open this time and a beet red, extremely defensive, and angry Chester burst out of his room screaming profanities and excuses such as, “I just [gosh darn it] told you that I don’t have a [gosh darn it] router! I can’t help that there is a [gosh darn it] strong signal outside my door! Go away.” Immediately I felt bad for accusing him a second time with such a ridiculous question and after Chester stopped “flipping out” I made an effort to express my sincere apologetic feelings. Chester warmed up in response to my apology and told me, “its ok. I didn’t mean to flip out…I was just doing work and got a little annoyed.”
I then walked back to my room relieved that the conflict with Chester was finally over; however, as soon as I entered my room I was informed by a reliable person that Chester had given the password to his wireless router to a girl somewhere else in Haygood, and therefore he must have a wireless router somewhere in his room. I was in disbelief that, first of all, I just apologized for being lied to twice, and, second of all, that someone was selfish enough to continue using a wireless router when they knew the router was inconveniencing over 200 peers that lived in the same building. Enraged that such a human existed and that it was impossible for the admissions staff to weed out such scum through just a word processed application, I rushed out of my room to notify my RA and RLC about Chester, but I then realized it was 3 am and everyone was dead asleep.
The next day I did not have time to notify Haygood’s RLC and RA’s because of my classes, but I did have plenty of time during classes to complain bitterly to my classmates about Chester, his lies, and his router. In my blind passion, however, I did not realize the sheer number of people I had preached my complaints to, and by the end of the day all of Haygood and most of Branham and East knew about Chester’s responsibility for the crisis. Chester’s door soon became plastered with signs about wireless not being allowed, signs with the equation “wireless = death,” and graphs displaying the wireless signal strength around his room. That night, while I was studying in the upper Haygood lobby, the entire population of south Haygood gushed through the door and marched towards Chester’s hall screaming, “we’re going to find that router and throw it and that [illegitimate child] out the window!” Interested, I followed the mob to Chester’s room to see if an Oxford College version of Lord of the Flies was about to take place. Of course, however, the mob got no answer from Chester’s room because either he was intelligent enough not to open the door or he wasn’t in the room.
The next day I went to the ****** College IT department and asked them what they planned to do about the internet situation in Haygood. They told me that they had already received information about the situation from students and the Haygood RLC; and that they had called Emory and asked for help to fix the internet in Haygood, but Emory still had not returned their call. Also, the department said that they would search certain rooms in Haygood for wireless routers sometime during the week. After a couple more days of frustration the internet miraculously was repaired, although, it remained a mystery how Emory managed to repair it.
*reflection omitted but it basically said how i made up some things like how he didn't actually hide from the mob but how he actually lied blatantly to the mob and how he actually had the wireless router hidden in his ceiling*
Comments
Just poor out whatever comes to your mind. anything. just let it flow. If its a story of a similar experience then let that come out. if its that and analyzing it yourself...then let that come out...just let a stream of consciousness come out. don't think to hard about it. pretend i am your best friend sittin around chillin on a lazy afternoon.
your response could take the form of
what the story means to you or what you think the point of the story is
or a story of yours that it reminded you of
or your reaction in general to it
i don't know if that helps =/
The hypothesis being tested has to do with how every person who responds will have a unique interpretation of the story. Some people may concentrate on the moral aspect of it while others may concentrate on another aspect. Or some people may just focus in on a minute part of the story like how its a shame the main campus didn't do much for the college and ignore the chester issue entirely.
I guess i'll be looking for differences in how a gamer looked at the internet situation from a student here who is not a gamer who went thru the ordeal and a student who goes here and is not a gamer but didn't go thru the ordeal.
Not sure if thats the sort of response you're after or not =\
It's obvious that what Chester did should not have been done.
The problem with the main campus being slow is standard in an environment like that, I've dealt with far worse.
Is what everyone did a little over the top? maybe. But at the same time it can be expected. You have one person inconveniencing many others. Those other people are going to express their feelings on the matter.
Should he have been confronted? yes
did you look like an idiot when you apologized? no, of course I don't have a full detailed account of that matter so I can't judge perfectly.
Why in the world would a single protected wireless connection cause such a slow down? What is the nature of the cable network you mentioned? Does everyone have access to the Internet through an in-room port? If not, was this guy possibly selling off connections at a reduced price?
In the end, too little data to provide a full judgement on any individual issue.
Overall:
bad guy: chester.
annoying guys: main campus
heroes: support staff
Not great guys: everyone else
Technology isn't bad in itself, but rather the true evil is the people who misuse technology.
Chester sounds simply like another evil person who would put their own personal desires and will over others.
I'm glad you had tried to resolve the situation in a civil manner, but, as evil people have a tendency to do, he deceived you, and you had every right to be angry.
I try to live my life as a good person, helping others , and forgiving those who have wronged me, rather than hold resentment against them. I haven't been seriously angry with anyone for a very long time, but if I met a person like Chester, someone who is so selfish and unwilling to reconcile differences and conflicts, then I'd be just as angry and vengeful as your peers had become. (especially when concerning something so important to me as my internet <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> )
Chester is obviously an arsehole. Nothing more to add there.
The narrator of the story is an idjit, first for taking Chester's word for it (twice!), and second for talking to everyone about it before going through the proper channels. Before he took the case to the guys in charge, he had no <i>solid proof</i> that Chester did in fact have the router in his room, and if he didn't he'd have turned the whole campus against some poor schmuck for no reason. But, more importantly, blabbering to everyone about it before going to the guys in charge was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and irresponsible.
Finally, the behaviour of the mob is not surprising - it's a mob. Of course it's "not right" for them to besiege Chester's door like that, but that's pretty much irrelevant because mob mentality overrides people's normal behaviour, and giving them a stern talking to after the fact isn't going to somehow reduce the liklihood of it happening again.
I didn't like the story. It was a bit boring, to be frank. I didn't feel that I gave a damn about any of the characters, it didn't move me in anyway what-so-ever. Obviously Chester is the bad guy, but you can see that from the plot rather than anything else.
I'm not asking for in-depth characterisation, I just feel I didn't care about your plight - maybe its the way the story is written or something.
Thats my opinion.
Chester seemed to get judged quite quickly on the evidence of hearsay and "Using a Windows program that can track the strength of a wireless signal in real-time".
Use of the name Max Powers made me chuckle.
I would have liked (possibly the geek in me coming to the fore) justification as to how and why it was a wireless router causing the problem. I'm assuming each dorm is part of a larger network, with limited bandwidth - why would an unsecured wireless router have such a big impact? It could only use the same as a wired router with the same line coming into it.
Further, the problem seems to clear after Emory got involved - we don't hear that they even speak to Chester, yet the problem is "mysteriously" fixed. This sounds to me more like a network specific problem and nothing to do with Chester.
Haygood sounds a pretty easy place to stir up a mob too.
Not sure of meaning of: *reflection omitted but it basically said how i made up some things like how he didn't actually hide from the mob but how he actually lied blatantly to the mob and how he actually had the wireless router hidden in his ceiling* clarification needed.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Not sure of meaning of: *reflection omitted...*<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
if you look at the title you should see that it says "a memoir and reflection" this is because i took this story from a previous assignment i had to write. the assignment was to write a memoir with just pouring things out and not particularly caring about whether you are actually telling the truth =/. Afterwards, you reflect and analyze why you said the things you did or lied about the things you did. I invented/modified several parts for various reasons...mostly because i was lazy and felt writing the story one way was easier than another way. For example, the mob scene was a little different than what actually happened but it took less time to just say he never opened the door...plus i re-enforced one of my previous and perhaps unfair biases (that chester was a coward as well as a douche) to my reader by inserting this fabrication. At the end i also sorta "jipped" the reader since i didn't give enuff details on how the situation ended. I justified this in my reflection by saying that i didn't feel like i should go into further details about what happened with chester's wireless router because i had finally got my internet back and thats all i wanted in the first place...so chester could have danced in the hall with his router screaming "yes i **** you all up" and i wouldn't care cuz i'd be playing NS...on all the crappy servers since the campus blocks port 27015. I also did in fact go to the proper authorities well before bitching to everyone, but it was more convenient for me to tell the story the way i told it.
Im losing track of what i am saying so i'll think i'll stop now
But thank you so much for the responses thus far. They have given me quite a bit of ammo to tackle this section of my paper (analyzing your responses)
I had actually included details and more parts of the story in my original rough draft of my memoir, but i was advised to take those parts out. One of those parts was an explanation of why the wireless router messed things up =/. Water down version the tech ppl told us was this: the wireless router is assigning ip addresses to the computers in range before those computers can get their ip addresses from the emory campus. The ip addresses the wireless router give the computers are imcompatible with the campus's cable protocol ...or something...so the computers are using bad/invalid ip addresses from the router to get internet from emory, but the emory can't give internet back. and of course the wireless router was not shared...instead it had 26-bit encryption or something? You can tell i am not exactly the comp expert. edit: also this happens only when the router is setup incorrectly...and it was found that he indeed did have a router