Waterbeds are Truly Complex Machines

After breaking a sweat wrestling the frame of my waterbed together, and finally getting it screwed in place, I put the matress bladder in and filled it, only to have it not fill out into the one corner properly. I'm too tired of all this crap to drain it and refill it again though. I figure the worst that happens is I wake up having rolled into the low corner every morning, no big deal really.

As for the rest of the renovation, its more or less done. I had some paint peel on me where there was water damage under the old paint years ago that I'll have to sand and touch up. I'll probably do it when I get around to sanding and painting the trim and doors, that you'll notice in the pictures are nicotine yellow, with some green from a sloppy paint job some years back.

The one wall is extremely bare now, although once I get a wall hanger for my acoustic it won't be so bad. I have a couple posters that I want to get set on some pressboard to hang up, and I have some of my GuitarWorld posters that I could hang up in tacky fashion again. Maybe I should put a big corkboard up, we'll have to see what happens, and what kind of free time I get in the near future.

Long Day...

Got the walls mudded, and mostly sanded smooth tonight...my eyes hurt like hell, and my nose and throat are all plugged despite wearing a dustmask...oh well, c'est la vie.

Renovating

I finally decided that I had the time to take down my wallpaper and properly repaint my room. I now have my crap cluttered all over the house, and I'm sure that that won't be tolerated long, so I'm trying to bust my ass on this project. Well for that reason, and that I have 2 exams next week yet.

The wallpaper came off surprisingly easily, I was impressed, but what I found underneath was remarkable. Apparently two of the walls in my room were used in the set of the original "The Shining".

All its missing is a mirror with 'redrum' written on it. Adding to the gaudiness of the room were the next walls. I have to confess to doing the green myself 3 or 4 years ago while the wallpaper was still up, but the red and pink, with light blue showing through....the 70's must have been good times.

I had to take my computer out of there cause there's no way I was going to let it collect all the paint and drywall mud dust that will accumulate in there over the next few days. So instead, I've got my systems set up in the basement (without a net connection on the PC). I think the jury is out on me being a geek.

I'll post finished room pictures in a few days, hopefully...

Compare and Contrast...

In the past 24 hours I've polished off two more exams, and the difference between them I have to say is remarkable. Both of them were worth 40% of the final grade in the respective courses. Both of them were 3rd year level courses. Both of them are targetted at more or less the same stream of students. And yet, one professor writes his exam as 2 hours worth of writing in a 3 hour period with clearly worded questions, asking for exactly what he wants to see in the answers. And the other designs the exam such that there is 4 hours of writing to be accomplished in 3 hours, with vaguely worded questions, and concepts barely touched upon in lectures, and not touched upon in the course text or handouts. It almost becomes an exercise in metacognition rather than knowing the course material you've supposedly been taught, an exercise in mind-reading.

What is the need for obscure references and vaguely worded inquiries when you're looking for a direct response? I've seen the same out of a couple assignments this term as well, but given the time to prod the prof for their exact meaning you can at least come up with something close to what he or she is looking for. On the other hand, in a strict time managed environment, with no outside resources available, a student shouldn't be forced to sit there and guess at what the hell the professor in question wants to see. For all profs or future profs out there, if you want a direct answer, ask a direct question, don't expect students to be call answerers on a fucking psychic hotline.

3 Down...

4 to go....exams of course. I just had Geotechnical Engineering 1 make me its bitch, but then, as long as I passed I'm happy...I don't need to know the fundamentals of foundation design and dam building. Yet another of those mostly useless courses selected by the faculty as a requisite. Its Friday afternoon, its sunny, its moderately warm, and I don't have another exam til Monday and Tuesday, so I'm gonna relax and try to forget about school for the day.

Woke up this morning to a painful roundtable discussion and analysis of the Pope's funeral. Obvious questions, obvious answers, but at least no passing on of illogical doctrines or preventing the use of condoms to prevent disease or anything, so I guess it was a win for the church.

And how about them Blue Jays! They're leading the American League! Granted, the season's only 3 games in but hey, when you're a fan of a team in the AL East that isn't well hung financially like Boston, New York and Baltimore, you'll take anything you can get. I actually think they have a nice solid line-up...solid defense (at least 2 gold glovers), good contact hitting. The problem is gonna be pitching, particularly from the pen, although there's a little bit of money to work with yet if someone worthwhile comes on the market and the Jays are halfway competitive still at that point. Time will tell, I can't hope for too much, being as I've already been blessed in sports this year with not having to watch, hear or otherwise experience Maple Leafs fans ramble on about how this is the year. There IS no year. And while we're on the hockey topic, not to be overly cocky or anything, but when is the world gonna do something about women's hockey because really, there's not much drama to 13-0, 12-0 and 10-0 victories. At least when the men kick some ass, there's a brief, whiff of something that could possibly be a remote opportunity at an upset.

Daylight Time

Well, time just magically sprung forward in its magical daylight saving kinda way, and wow do I feel relieved....or not. Instead I've just lost an hour of time I can waste/use for studying. I promised myself I was gonna get shit done today, but true to myself I couldn't let that happen, so instead I'll try to squeeze things in tomorrow between waking up late and going out to lunchy/dinner (if breakfast-lunch is brunch, is lunch-supper officially 'lupper'?) I think its an all you can eat, which means I'll be incapacitated for at least 2 hours afterwards, at which point the good Sunday night TV will start...rough life huh? I know I have no place to complain "...but sometimes I still do, life's been good to me so far" (Joe Walsh - "Life's Been Good").

Anyways, being 3am, I should probably decide on a movie to watch and go to sleep. Scarface last night into the morning had me wired. I think I might have to go for a laid back, innuendo laden, Bond movie tonight. The tough call is Connery, Moore, Dalton or Brosnan. Decisions, decisions...

This also marks my first post using my new laptop...yay? I've been impressed so far at least, no serious issues of any kind, at least for the relatively little I paid for a utility laptop. I realize this post is all over the place, and I should probably be going now...the goldfish in the downstairs tank are staring at me unpleasantly...its the time change, it fucks with yor head I swear...

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)