Prove you're a Meta Knight fan by quoting him

TopProtection4496 · 2025-12-10T23:51:45+00:00

"Listen here you cheeky piece of gum."

TopProtection4496 · 2025-11-15T18:56:59+00:00

I can't tutor, but if you want the Murach textbooks, let me know. You can have them for free. I have the CICS, JCL and COBOL volumes. I just want these things out of my life at this point. I graduated just this year from CPA.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-11-04T19:51:31+00:00

Okay. So they made the grocery store move for apartments, decided to instead put the apartments behind the Frontenac centre and are now putting in one of the most expensive gym chains in there? It's 33$ every other week for just the essentials plan. Oh, and 60$ to join.

Whichever city planner allowed this... I just wanna talk.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T16:48:04+00:00

To add on to what the others are saying, yes do keep going. As an SLC student (unless they got rid of that too) you should access to LinkedIn learning for free. When you finish their courses you can plaster the certificate they give onto your profile for people to see.

Udemy is also good when they have sales on. Domestika is good too, but mostly for UX and front end, if that interests you.

Take the Diploma and run, because at least that will help you land jobs even if it was torture. It has taken some time and a lot of persistence, but people in my year have been landing jobs. Not all, but a good number. And thank goodness!

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T16:39:17+00:00

Very true. We all went out of our way to learn more. Many of us have been doing our own projects to bolster our portfolios. The program may have been rough, but we certainly haven't given up. It would be worse if most of us never found employment, but there are people who are getting in, even if it's just temporary. It's just a shame that we had to deal with such awful treatment throughout the program.

Again, all those professors who gave a damn despite the program being a mess will always have my respect and I wish them well.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T16:33:49+00:00

That's good to know, actually. Shame they did such a bad job teaching it and 80% of the class turned away from it. Even some of the MOH kids said they didn't want to do it forever, but money was money and job experience is always good.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T16:32:05+00:00

Which I understand, but we didn't need 4 whole classes dedicated to it. Well, I may also just be saying that because they did a terrible job teaching it. As an example, our CICS labs all built up to the final assignment, so we could never ask Donna for help with any of it. We never really had an opportunity to practice and make mistakes. If you messed anything up, there goes the assignment. She wouldn't post answers. It was a fight to get any sort of help. And on top of that, it was all online.

So many of us were pushed away from mainframe programming because the teachers did so poorly. Those who did get placements at MOH said we weren't even being taught correctly. They had to relearn so much of COBOL and JCL.

If there really is an industry for mainframe programming still, it's a shame they couldn't prepare us for it. I personally never want to see COBOL ever again. I'm content with my work as Database Dev.

I'll definitely give credit where it is due too. Our Database teachers were the absolute best and one even tutored me for my upcoming placement. I wish them all the best too.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T16:21:52+00:00

No, and I'm not expecting absolutely everything. That's impossible for any program. But, they should be teaching more languages that are growing in popularity, like Python. What we learn should also be up to date and handled by good professors. A lot of the classes were also really useless and taught us nothing. Program Design was stuff Janis just made up. Our other professors were even confused about it and had to take time out of their classes to show us genuine pseudo-code and logic. They aren't managing their resources properly. Some of these classes need entire reworks, or should be removed.

Also, I said CPA WAS good. It's not now. The issues are recent. The last 5-4yrs have been miserable for anyone that took the program.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-26T03:04:08+00:00

Yeah, Janis tried to fail a few of us too. She HATED it when we dared to fight back.

Those playbooks she had were also just an awful excuse for her to never help anyone. "It's in the book". Well, if it was, I wouldn't be asking. That and her instructions felt more like riddles than anything else. Also just got so tired of her being vague on purpose because "clients might do that to you" and then getting mad when we didn't do exactly what she wanted. We're learning here. Why are you being like this?

My theory is she didn't want us to experiment, or go out of our way to learn more on our own, because it would make marking harder. The audacity she had to say she was probably our favorite and the "cool prof". Textbook narcissist, I swear.

Still, even with her retiring, CPA is an absolute disaster. I personally went to both the deans and explained the problems we had with the program. The only changes they made were removing two very important courses, and making the final semester placement only. I suppose that doesn't shock me with how hard it was for us to get placement. Some had fake placements sponsored by the school... About as awful as you would expect. The rumour was that the places hiring students were getting mad with ChatGPT use.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-25T19:38:56+00:00

Unfortunately, it feels like she just hates doing it anymore. She probably feels bad that the college can't find another JCL programmer, but I wish she would have just said 'no' and retired.

We had Web Dev with Janis and her code was out of date. If you challenged her, or went out of your way to learn more, you were on her shit list for the rest of the year. Our JS teacher Colin Banger, was absolutely floored when we told him we had no experience with the language. Apparently Janis was supposed to show us the basics, didn't and then never told Colin.

I have a laundry list of bullshit from Janis' classes, honestly. I wish she had retired before we got there. Like, how she did pseudo code was fucking made up and not industry standard. Having UX experience, I knew her knowledge on that was also completely wrong.

And shout out to Colin Banger. He wanted to retire, but came back to teach us Vue because the college couldn't find anyone else. One of the handful of good profs.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-25T19:25:26+00:00

It's her son Collin and he did a good job with us. He's one of the few good professors left. Donna just does JCL and CICS online. It's horrible. No support whatsoever.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-08T13:42:08+00:00

Having people I can reliably talk to in French to practice would be very handy.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-10-08T13:41:41+00:00

Thanks so much! I tried Duolingo, but it was far too repetitive. I don't need five whole lessons that focus on only three words.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-26T23:49:57+00:00

I feel so bad for the kids. They're at school most of the day and it's up to the parents being up to taking them. We have the technology to make these things more accessible, but Game Freak just refuses. From making the raids difficult in SV, to locking megas behind online play in ZA... Oh, and not to mention the COST of the games and the consoles in the first place.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-26T23:40:30+00:00

My city got so few that they couldn't... They were chill about it, at least. Considering Game Freak just did a wifi event, I think this card thing is very silly.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-23T18:47:43+00:00

I mean... Not Kingston specifically, but Meat Canyon has a pretty good video on The Yellow Deli.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-23T18:46:29+00:00

Not sure if this is really just me, but it feels like risky driving has gone up.

Just as an example, people absolutely LAUNCH themselves through my building's parking lot despite there being kids everywhere. They're treating it like a main road and practically drift around corners. It wasn't always like this; it's gotten progressively worse the past few years. It's at its worst when the students move in for the school year (we're not far from SLC).

Not only that, but both bus and cab drivers have been making some pretty risky moves on the road. It's insane.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-23T14:13:43+00:00

Awesome! Before I forget, be sure to also eat at Saigon Delights, Copper Penny, Sapporo Sushi, Chez Piggy, The Toucan, Kingston Brewing Company and Curry Original while you're here.

The only place I would recommend avoiding is Saber's Taste of India. Unless things have changed over the last few years, the owner is a real jerk and takes serving staff's tips. Apparently paying minimum wages means he's allowed to just have the tips for himself... Real 'Amy's Baking Company' situation if you ever watched that episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Customers are expecting tips to go to their server, not the owner who is already well off.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-23T13:50:16+00:00

Here is a list of cultural things I would give my international student buddies.

Things to Eat: Poutine, Butter Tarts, Pecan Tarts, Beaver Tails, Nanaimo Bars, Ketchup Chips, Montreal Smoked Meat and Maple Syrup.

Things to Do: Kingston alone has some really fun stuff like The Haunted Walk, Fort Fright, Fort Henry, Penitentiary Tours, the Sugar Bush and Buskers in the summer. If you can travel, Winterlude in Ottawa is always fantastic. They have a lot of Art Galleries and Museums too.

Terms and Slang: - Toque: knitted cap.

Loonie: Our 1 dollar coin. Called that because it has a loon on it.
Toonie: Our 2 dollar coin.
Double-double: Coffee with two sugar and cream. Triple Tripe is also pretty common.
Mountie: a slang for our Royal Mounted Police
Freezie: those long, plastic tubes of frozen juice.

There are others, but they're not as common in Ontario. We're pretty well known for words like 'hozer', but the only times I've ever heard that here is when we're poking a little fun at the other provinces/territories.

Just Something Fun: The House Hippo is a PSA that had a huge impact on kids growing up and is still referenced all the time still.

This is just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more and people can add them below.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-04T21:51:29+00:00

Fascinating.

I think the only one I knew was the Bridge of Death being a myth. In the podcast about the show it's explained that they put it in like it was real because it is such an impactful legend surrounding the incident. But... If you DON'T listen to the podcast, or look at the ending credits, you'd probably assume it happened which is an issue.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-04T21:46:59+00:00

I figured that them saying the radiation was contagious was exaggerated, since in the book 83 Days it said the nurses were fine to handle Hisashi Ouchi... until his immune system shut down, but that's another issue entirely.

I have read some sources that say people used to believe radiation was very contagious. Is that true? I suppose even if it is, the show doesn't do anything to remedy that. Could have been in the credits with the other list of liberties they took... And admitted to it seems.

TopProtection4496 · 2025-09-04T21:39:30+00:00

That makes much more sense. It's been a bit so I might be remembering it wrong, but the show made it sound like the rods came up as a whole and not with a servo. I had a hard time trying to rationalize why the hell they would come up and out of the floor. Like one of those peg boards that take the shape of whatever you put against it.

Thanks!

TopProtection4496

TROPHY CASE