And So It Begins...

My first final of the term was this aft. Given the limited studying I put in I'd venture to say it went pretty well, much better than I see for the next 6 exams over the next 3 weeks, but at least the weather is shaping up such that I can study out on my balcony with a beer or two, and take the monotonous edge of the process away.

Today was a busy day in the news too with the Pope receiving his Sacrament of the Sick, and the inevitable passing of Terri Schiavo. I found the hypocrisy in the regard quite strong, but not at all surprising:

President George W Bush, who offered his sympathies to her parents Bob and Mary Schindler, said he was attached to a "culture of life".

Mr Bush urged those who backed the Schindlers to "continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others".

I suppose he meant a "culture of [North American] life". I guess he clarifies later though in his assurance that Americans are "valued and protected", which is an important distinction since obviously non-American innocent people at the "mercy of others" are far less 'valuable'.

Micro$oft

I've spent a lot of the past 24 hours going through reformat hell, and otherwise being ridiculously unproductive. I came home from shopping yesterday afternoon to find my CD and DVD drives not working because of some driver issue with Windows. However, obviously you cannot run set-up from a CD if neither CD-Drive is working properly. I managed to go back to a restore point earlier in the week and have the drives work again, but in the process I found a whole other pile of crap going on in Windows that I was sick of trying to fix, so decided it was time to reformat. I backed up all my important documents and pictures to another drive, and went for it. The whole thing went relatively smoothly, I cut and pasted my documents back into the main drive, and kept going with my updates and installing software, only to somehow get a virus/spyware thing 10 minutes later opening windows all over the place. In my pissed off haste, I immediately formatted, forgetting to backup the documents the second time around, losing, so I thought for most of the night, 5 years worth of my relevent shit. I gave up, and came back to it this morning remembering that those files had been deleted, but not formatted off of the second drive, and went in search of a program that would look at the remnant files and maybe bring em back. I got lucky with the first program I found. I had to sit and ignore a bunch of read errors on sectors I assume got overwritten, but I got most of my stuff back. And now a few hours later I'm almost done setting up the rest of my software, and even more disappointed by the quality of Micro$oft products...Firefox, Thunderbird, and Miranda Instant Messenger for all! (see sidebar)

The Life Debate

Apparently 50% of all activity in the world right now is held down by the Schindlers versus the Supreme Court, and Jacko, with another 20% devoted to steroids in baseball, leaving give or take 30% for all the 'lesser' news. The unbalanced coverage aside, I felt I'd weigh in with my opinion on the right to live/die debate.

Cutting straight to the point, I think that anyone, in the case of some form of mental incapacitation, should have the ability to state in some legal document like a will, or themselves where the circumstance may permit, their intent to end their life, and be able to have that wish carried out. Now I know this paints a murky line, because things like depression are also regarded as mental ailments, although I do not believe they affect the human quality of the ability to think. I guess in the end, anyone should have the freedom to do what they wish with their own life, as long as it does not directly affect the wellbeing of another person, and this does not include the pain that comes with losing a loved one. This said, it is my personal opinion that suicide is a cowardly way out for those with depression, but otherwise capable mental ability. On the other hand, I feel that if one loses the ability to function mentally, and so enter a 'vegetative' state, they should be allowed to have their life ended, hopefully by some humane means.

Now, in the Schiavo case, there are two main sticking points that I find. First that I have not seen anything stating that at any point Terri Schiavo formally stated that she would no longer want to live if she entered a state like she currently finds herself. In this case, I do not believe that anyone should have the right to intervene and prematurely end her life, good intentions or no. Secondly, and most disturbingly, is the way in which she is now being left to die of starvation. Although I imagine it no more painful than some kind of injection, it seems like a rather grotesque way to let someone go. While it has prolonged her life, and so given her family time to make appeal after appeal, there's something about it that strikes a sour chord, although its curious that more attention is being payed to one woman starving to death in America, in a case in which it might be her own wish, than to the 25 to 30 thousand people that die daily worldwide of starvation.

"...Ain't Nothin' Better in the World You Know, Than Layin' in the Sun With Your Radio"

Finally the weather outlook around here is starting to look more tolerable. This snow and ice lost its novelty about 4 months ago. It'll ge good to get out on the bike regularly again, and give me an extra 20 minutes of sleep in the morning too. Looking around though, there's a lot of stuff I've gotta handle inside before I look to cleaning up my bike this weekend, not the least of which is doing something about the dust in my computer. I never expected to keep it dust free, but I do have a dust screen on my case intake fan, and just cleaned things up a month ago when I opened it up to change my CPU fan. This is why I was shocked to find the board covered in dust last night when I opened it up, this house is ridiuclous that way sometimes; I need to invest in a good dust filter to at least handle my room, and hopefully add some life to my electronics. Then I have to decide whether I want to invest in upgrading this machine right now, or investing in a laptop so I have a bit more mobility, particularly on campus which is now pretty thoroughly covered by wireless connections. I could probably help myself out by getting rid of some old textbooks that I'll never reference again (that is, until the day after I sell them probably) to clear some shelfspace, and give me a bit more freedom with the money.

I've gotten only a little further in America, but what more I have read has been laugh out loud funny. The tabular comparison of Plato, John Locke, Niccolo Machiavelli and Jesus Christ was particularly amusing.

A Day in The Life...

00:01 Started burning a mix MP3 disc for the next week or two of walkin my ass to school.

00:05 Changed from Leno...wait no, Queen Latifah was on Leno after headlines so I switched cause she annoys me. Probably changed from Sportsnet to The Daily Show. Watched Jon Stewart cut up the state of affairs in the U.S. again, in particular a comment on how Bush cut a vacation short for the first time in his presidency to come back and sign a bill to allow Supreme Court injunction or something on the fate of Terri Schiavo, but how he also in his years as Governer of Texas signed a bill allowing hospitals to pull life support on someone after 6 months, and hinting at the economic relationships as such. I think its only funny at this point because its so sad, the hypocrisy of it all.

00:35 Channel surfed around, fell asleep watching a soccer highlight show on the Italian channel.

00:35-07:15 Had some of those dreams that you remember lucidly for about 2 minutes after you wake up, and then they fade. The one that stuck was me deciding to go on a road trip out west, and then drawing graphs in the sand on some beach on the Pacific (like I said, details fade, and I've never really been to the Pacific, so I couldn't tell if it related to anything)

07:30(-15 minutes) Woke up to smack the snooze on my clock radio tuned to the one awful station I receive on it (damnit KoolFM, you used to spin Classic Rock gold, and now I'm lucky if I hear some 80's Springsteen intermixed with the newest Michelle Branch jingle). I have to change the time on it again, cause I have had it set forward 15 minutes for a while and I remember to take it away...the key is to mix things up so you don't remember just how fast it is in your grogginess, forcing you to get up.

08:04 Finally dragged myself outta my nice warm bed, although I was greeted by a nice dose of sunshine when I opened my blinds, and the smell of spring trying to break through. Stumbled to the shower, used more hot water than was probably necessary, what are you gonna do? Grabbed some breakfast, my little brother finished off the Fruit Loops on me...bastard. Settled for a healthy cereal mix of almonds, oatmeal and raisins (I can't verify whether it contained 2 scoops or not), not that I am honestly complaining, when it comes to cereal, I love just about all of it.

08:30 Threw some fresh batteries in my discman, stuffed my bag with some reference textbooks for a project for my Metamorphic Petrology class. Cleaned my sunglasses, and put my feet to the pavement

09:03 Got to school, and decided I would read the news instead of going to my Soil Mechanics class.

09:45 Pulled out my notes for the project, downloaded the data file I'd e-mailed myself, opened the program to analyze the data, which immediately crashed. Opened the program again to see an error dialogue come up. Rinsed and repeated as needed. Still no success, oh, did I mention the part about the assignment being due at 14:30? No? My partner for the project and I decide we can PROBABLY get an extension and work on it at my place, and if not, the 10% per day late won't kill us. We then proceeded to play darts and kill time otherwise until our 11:30 lecture.

12:25 Got back to our student lounge where I was going to work on a group presentation on "Alternative Energy Sources: A Pro-Con Outline", but once again felt the news was more important. Food and darts were then found to be more important also.

14:30 Went to my metamorphic lab (where that project was due) and found out that I was the only one to get the program running on a computer outside of the lab instructor's (yes, I would like a cookie) and so attempted to endear myself to the prof and instructor by telling them I'd let them know what the versions of all my software were in hopes of not getting docked late marks on the project. It probably worked. Also got my lab midterm back, and for the effort I put in, and my feelings coming out of the exam, I did better than expected, not great, but better than expected.

15:05 FINALLY got to work on my part of that group project and worked straight through until our group meeting at 17:30, with a quick break for a slice and some caffeine to keep me going. I am not too concerned over this project after I carried our group through our first presentation for this course, I feel they can pick up the slack this time. I know its not the most helpful or responsible thinking, but like I've posted before, I'm not exactly well motivated this term.

18:35 Put my feet to the pavement to come home again, only to find some of that pavement covered by ice already from the day's melt. It still smelled like spring though, and it wasn't horribly cold after all, so I dealt with it.

19:05 Got home to a warm meal, and a cold beer, and the books I ordered from Amazon last week. Cracked open America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by the writers of The Daily Show, and started laughing out loud at what I was reading, with Chapter 1 opening:

It is often said that America "invented" democracy. This view is, of course, an understatement; America invented not only democracy, but freedom, justice, liberty, and "time-sharing."

I personally can't wait to read the rest. I also finally got myself a copy of 1984 which I'll probably take for reading on my field trip to Sudbury after exams in April.

21:16 Finished my post, and went to play with Miranda IM, an open-source, plugin based program that allows you to combine MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, and just about any other chat protocol into one program, using much less in terms of system resources, and costing nothing but some time in set-up and customization. Another alternative to Micro$oft products; see sidebar.

Disenchanted

I have had enough of school for the next while. This term has been a struggle for me right from day one, simply because most of the courses are not interesting to me, and compounded by poor teaching of most of them. Now granted, the poor teaching isn't a valid excuse as part of the university experience is refining how to learn on your own, and find the necessary material to teach yourself new concepts, but when the material is uninteresting, and you are still expected to meet the knowledge requirements that any given professor expects, it becomes a bitch of a task. There's a meeting next week in which the students can voice their appraisal of the department. We've had these kind of things before, usually with limited actual change, but I'm going to try to make some points on changing the program to be more relevant to any given specialization so that in any term there are at least a couple worthwhile, interesting courses interspersed with the other requisites. At least then it won't seem like entire terms are total write-offs like this one has been thus far.

I've had one term like this before, the second term of first year which, not by coincidence I'm sure, fell during the winter term as well. But the material that term still had concepts in it that I realized would be important down the road so I plugged on....I just don't have the stamina or motivation to keep that up this term with material I'll never see again. I really wish I could afford the $12.5M US for this gem, and live the rest of my life eating crabs, fish and coconut:

Who's coming with me?

20 Questions

I've added a link to a 20 Questions online game against a computer. It is amazingly accurate at times, although there are things it misses, when you challenge it with more obscure items. Most recently it guessed 'beer can' in 19 questions, but took 25 questions to guess 'porcelain doll' when I was going after 'bobblehead', but I figure that's pretty close all things considered. There's plenty of humour to be found too.

I also added a link to 10x10 which is an engine that I heard about recently and remembered to add. Basically it searches the stories at the top online news sources, and tallies the most commonly occurring words, and picks images from the articles as well, and places them in a 10x10 grid, with each picture associated to one of the top 100 occurring words. The idea being that the most common world events are identified for a given time period, I like the idea. Its very visually appealing at the least, although I still find it much more convenient to go to my favourite news source pages to actually read the news then to go through a third party. I really don't think the major goal was functionality. It too has its own little quirks about it, as I look at it currently, the word "Hong" is the 11th most popular word, while "Kong" sits at 31. Perhaps the opposite would make sense with a King Kong movie in the works, but is "Hong" really ever seen without "Kong"? It seems as weird as Cheech without Chong....alright, that's it for now.

Next Week on COPS: Canada

This past week has been quite the series of events across this country. 4 RCMP officers shot on a farm in Alberta before the gunman turned the barrel on himself. A man in Toronto throws his 5 year old daughter off the Don Mills bridge onto the 401, the busiest highway in Canada, and if I'm not mistaken, all of North America, and then jumps himself. The girl's outcome is as yet undetermined as she lays in intensive care. A guy in downtown Toronto wielding knives in the street is run down by the police, and pinned between a cruiser and a street sign. A gas attendant in Maple Ridge BC is rundown trying to chase down two kids stealing $12 worth of gas. And to top it off, a protester sets himself on fire in a rental van infront of the Provincial Legislature buildings in Toronto. I don't know what's so special about this week, but this seems abnormal, at least for Canada.

Hopefully all this isn't a sign of things to come, or I think I might just run off and live in the woods for the rest of my life, and live off those crazy white and blue berries, and whatever wild rodents I can catch. Or maybe I'll make friends with a pack of wolves and they'll take me in as one of their own, and teach me how to hunt by scent and howl like nobody's business. Then they can make a multi-million dollar Hollywood action adventure about me with no real meaning, a fairly weak plot, but lots and lots of blood, and guts, and claws, and growling....and new wacky, tacky explosive weapons, every good action movie HAS to have explosions after all.

Timed Out

I wish I could get away with my connection with school work 'timing out' as often as my router and ISP have been lately. I wouldn't have anything to complain about if I was actually learning anything even halfway significant to the field I plan on going into, but instead 4 of my 5 courses are loaded with material I'll never see again, its very frustrating. On the bright side, at least I'm not a reporter held captive for a month, released, and shot within hours by 'friendly fire'.

Lord Stanley's TV Cup

I sure do wish there was more coverage of the bickering between the millionaire NHL players and the billionaire owners. And strike those players down who might consider going around their organization to try to actually be reasonable with the league. Sportscenter, Sportsnet News, Hockey Central, The Business of Sports, CBC National News, its just not enough coverage of the squabbling over money for me. I want more! I want to see these guys, paid millions to go out and play a game that I only wish I had time enough to play regularly, fight over dollar figures and "cost certainty" and "salary caps" and yadda yadda yadda. I mean, god forbid in the downtime, any attention be given to the amateur sports in Canada that we only hear about suffering at Olympic time when we underperform (at least in terms of total quantity, there were some interesting per capita figures for the last Olympics that I made but never managed to publish) as a country. Disregarding the fact that a salary cap has significantly changed the dynamics of the NBA and NFL, and made them interesting leagues to follow year to year because the teams actually change, one would think these guys (read, the NHLPA, and the NHL) could realize that at this point they are shooting each other in the foot...actually, at this point, they are starting to move their sights upward towards critical arteries in the thigh.

Every night I see the same old shit, with Nick Kypreos and company on Sportsnet and Bob Mackenzie and friends on TSN making predictions and passing on their infinite wisdom, all of which never seem to be accurate, nor productive in anything but eating up air time. Granted, noticeably more attention has been given to minor hockey (which is good in and of itself), and European football (read soccer) which I can't complain about...one still has to sit through 15 minutes of NHL speculation over a bunch of bullshit first. From another frustrated hockey fan: guys, get your shit together, or people are going to really start appreciate what other venues of entertainment are available to them, and that certainly isn't going to help maintain your millionaire lifestyles.