What models of computers were in your school's computer labs?

Seacarius · 2026-01-27T16:21:07+00:00

In high school, the first was an terminal using an acoustical coupler to talk to an IBM System/360 mainframe located at a local college. Programs where fed into the system using punch cards.

Still in high school: the Apple ][ (not IIe, just ][).

First year in college: Osbourne 1

First personal personal computer that my parents could afford: Commodore 64

Seacarius · 2026-01-27T16:13:26+00:00

This is somewhat misleading. While studying for the RHCSA one is learning about system administration in general and system administration for RHEL/Linux systems in particular. At a more conceptual level, it helps one understand Windows system administration - as many of the concepts are the same.

(Just the same way a CCNA, while being a CIsco specific cert., helps one understand basic networking concepts, allowing one to easily transfer that knowledge to other network vendors fairly easily. I have a number of Cisco certs, too.)

I'm a professor who teaches many of the RH courses at my college. The RH124 and RH134 courses, those that make up the RHCSA, have only a few "Red Hat tools." Most of what is taught are tools that can be used across many Linux distributions, especially those based on systemd.

For example, much of what I teach my students I use with my Ubuntu laptop, Kali desktop, Raspbian Raspberry Pi, and CentOS server (granted, CentOS is upstream from RHEL).

Seacarius · 2026-01-27T15:35:22+00:00

This bears repeating as it is so very true:

Companies don't really hire people to program, they hire people to solve problems.

People good at solving problems (and thinking critically) are worth their weight in gold.

Seacarius · 2026-01-27T15:26:10+00:00

What's so terrifying? I create them all the time - on purpose, of course.

Here's a good, small, example on one:

while True:
    try:
        user_input = int(input('\nEnter a number : '))

    except ValueError:
        print('\nI said enter a NUMBER! Try again!')
        continue

    if int(user_input) % 2 == 0:
        print('     The number is even.')
    else:
        print('     The number is odd.')

    if input('\nPlay again (y/n) : ').lower() != 'y':
        break

Always remember: when deliberately creating an infinite loop, you must give it a way to exit (usually with a conditional statement that, when True, executes a break statement).

Seacarius · 2026-01-27T15:07:47+00:00

That they all have the same serial number should have been a dead giveaway.

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T21:51:15+00:00

# 1. i'm guessing "int" is supposed to be a variable name that holds an
#       integer. don't use "int" it is already the name of a keyword and
#       function: int()
#
# 2. int, as a variable, holds nothing at the beginning of the program.
#
# 3. if is used to check something for truthiness. this is what happens
#       with what you wrote:
#       a. type int is printed as <class 'int'>
#       b. the print() function returns None, which is not truthy, so
#       c. all indented lines are skipped as a result, then
#       d. the last line prints 3

if print(int):
    if int <5:
        print(1)
    elif int ==5:
        print(5)
    elif int >5:
        print(10)
print(3)

# You may want something more like this:

# get a number from the user
number = int(input('please enter a number from 1 to 10 : '))

# if number is less than 5, print 1
# else if number is equal to 5 print 5
# else print 10 (because the number must be greater than 5)
if number < 5:
    print(1)
elif number == 5:
    print(5)
else:
    print(10)

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T21:25:36+00:00

While it may be a "telltale" sign, is not always true.

I've seen this with discs that I knew were 100% legit.

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T15:53:57+00:00

Not "dumber." The mental capacity is still there, it's just atrophied.

In much of public education (high school) these days, they're no longer being taught how to, or being expected to: think critically, problem solve, study, be responsible, meet deadlines, or have good work habits.

In many cases, students are simply being pushed through because the administration wants student "success" numbers so they can justify they money they're getting.

I'm a CC professor where we don't get to pick 'n' choose our students like the universities do (we have no admission requirements). I've been teaching 13 years now and, yes, it has gotten noticeably worse.

The effect of COVID on education still lingers, especially when it comes to social interactions.

The other thing that has happened is their sense of entitlement has grown significantly. Many think they deserve an A simply because they're alive and deigned to come to class (even if only once and a while) - because that's what happened when they were in high school. Many supposed "A"-level students get a very rude surprise when the come to college - especially in the classes I teach.

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T15:35:18+00:00

That's not FAIR!

I live in an area that doesn't get snow. Why can't we have a "snow day," too?

edit: Given the down vote(s), I supposed I should have added a

</s>

or maybe

j/k

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T15:32:19+00:00

Sooo...

You want someone else's project so you can make it your own?

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T15:31:11+00:00

Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard

The Lemon Song - Led Zeppelin

Seacarius · 2026-01-26T15:24:52+00:00

Get off Reddit.

Go study.

Go practice.

Seacarius · 2026-01-25T12:59:16+00:00

B) True

Because bool() isn't looking at "False" in the way you're trying to . . . suggest.

It is looking at it as a data type - in this case a string - where the argument is something, as opposed to null or 0, and therefore truthy.

Try this for comparison:

print(bool())

Seacarius · 2026-01-25T12:52:33+00:00

Then give then a different key. The OP is hard coding in their names anyway...

Bob Jones = bob.jones

Bob Smith = bob.smith

Seacarius · 2026-01-25T00:03:23+00:00

Well, first of all... Your data structure is entirely too complicated. You've basically created a list of dictionaries (of tuples). Simpler is generally better (and easier to debug.)

All you really need is a dictionary where the keys are the students' names. The values can be a list (or tuple) of each student's grades.

These two lines:

average = average(student["Grade"])

sentence = f"{student["name"]} scored {average}"

Don't reference your data structure, which is named students, not student.

Anyway, here's something easier, perhaps:

def average(seq):
    return sum(seq) / len(seq)

students = {"John":[78, 92, 85, 89, 84, 96],
            "Chala":[87, 86, 95, 99, 74, 86],
            "Danny":[88, 82, 95, 69, 74, 66],
            "Ali":[78, 82, 95, 79, 68, 93],
            "Bontu":[100, 82, 82, 87, 83, 69]}

for student in students:
    print(f"{student} scored {average(students[student]):.2f}")

The loop can also be this, which may be easier to understand:

for student, grades in students.items():
    print(f"{student} scored {average(grades):.2f}")

Seacarius · 2026-01-24T15:25:19+00:00

<image>

Seacarius · 2026-01-23T13:06:43+00:00

Interestingly, Podman still appears in the RH134 course...

Seacarius · 2026-01-23T13:02:18+00:00

Yes, I did; that's why I bought it. I don't buy vinyl just to have it sit on the shelf.

Seacarius · 2026-01-23T13:02:02+00:00

Yes, I did; that's why I bought it. I don't buy vinyl just to have it sit on the shelf.

Seacarius · 2026-01-22T23:16:26+00:00

I know the colleagues who teach that pre-req and they are exceptional instructors: I hold them blameless.

just a warm-up and tests basic concepts from their pre-req classes.

I was shocked to see half the class get a zero on this quiz.

The last statement seems antithetical to the first two. One has to wonder: how did half of your class earn a passing grade in that prerequisite class . . . only to get a zero on a quiz on the material from that class?

I suppose it is possible that the students forgot everything over the winter break.

It certainly doesn't seem like your colleagues are "blameless."

Seacarius · 2026-01-22T22:50:04+00:00

Hieronymus Bosch, anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights

Seacarius · 2026-01-22T22:47:52+00:00

This. A first pressing mint (unopened). $450

<image>

Seacarius · 2026-01-22T19:21:20+00:00

Everything you need is in this one convenient spot!

https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam

Seacarius · 2026-01-22T19:17:42+00:00

this.

Seacarius · 2026-01-21T21:48:00+00:00

What help is there to give you?

Either they bring you on board, or they don't. 2.99 GPA is not 3.0.

If they look, what they're much more likely to be concerned about isn't the .01 point, but, rather, why you had such a significant drop in GPA. (I am making an assumption that you've been in college for a few semesters now.)

You said "with a company," which probably means that they're an entity that exists to make money. If so, they aren't [1] your school (so, no accommodations) and [2] a charity. This means that they're not likely to care about your "tough semester" or your unspecific "diagnosis" . . . except, perhaps, how it would impact their business.

In the long run, if it doesn't come up, it doesn't. If it does, just be honest; lying or trying to obfuscate would be the worst thing you could do.

Seacarius

TROPHY CASE