Month: October 2004

I’ve got a lot to do still before I go to bed, which in all honesty, I won’t get to, but here’s a short bit of rambling at the keyboard at his hour.

I made Hamburger Helper for dinner today. People start giving me sympathy when I mention that’s what I’m eating. Hey, I actually like the stuff. And it gives me lunch for the next few days. For about $8, I get one dinner and several lunches until Saturday. It’s a good thing.

I let some random guy borrow my pen is class today. He showed up like a month into class. I don’t think he’s even registered. He’s a bit odd. He’s got really long hair that he kinda loosely braids into a single weave. Every class, he brings an old plastic Zeller’s bag that contains a stack of loose leaf paper. He takes sheets out and writes out messy notes with a Bic pen. Anyways, his pen ran out today and like the nice guy I am (by the way, women love bad boys), I offered him the one I wasn’t using. He took it and then like five minutes later, he put the pen up to his mouth. I couldn’t see if he made tongue or lips contact, but still, what the hell dude! I let you borrow my pen so you could write the notes and now you’re going fellate my pen?

At the end of class, he gave me my pen back and I took it like it was a log of feces. I shoved it back into my bag with the plan of dipping it into rubbing alcohol later. I can tell you one thing though, all the weird things this guys does… the plastic bag full of paper, the long braided hair, and the need to blow my pen… it all points towards him being an outright genius. Isn’t it always the case? The weirder the habits, the smarter the person is.

I swear if someone said to me, “Erwin, if you promise to pick your nose in public and put the boogers in a jar, your IQ will go up 80 points”, I’d seriously consider it. Well, maybe I’d go halfway… for an increase of 40 IQ points I’d spit wherever and whenever I desired.

I need to get some rest.

So tonight, I’m looking over the ads that I’ve let Google place on some of my web pages. I get money if someone clicks on them. Anyways, that’s beside the point. I see a web site address on one of the ads, so I decide to go visit the site to see what kind of things they sell.

It turns out it’s an on-line shop that sells swimwear. One of literally hundreds of on-line stores that sell the same thing. As a good web site owner, I decided to investigate the type of swimwear this store was selling. You know, to make sure they were offering quality merchandise, since their ad was gracing my web site.

At first, I saw some fine examples of gorgeous swimwear for women. Then I saw they had swimwear for men. And I’m not talking about surf shorts or board shorts. What I saw caused me to wish I had seen Speedos instead.

Beforeforewarned, the link I’m about to give might be possibly not work-safe depending on the openess of your work environment. If you work in a gay bar, it’ll probably be alright.

Ok, the link is here. Have you ever seen anything like that before?

I’m guessing most of you have read about it, if not seen it, but The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart appeared on CNN’s Crossfire on Friday. That show is among the numerous political/spin/talking points cable TV shows that Stewart often finds humour in. If you watch Stewart’s show at all, you can tell that underneath, he’s actually quite displeased with those type of programs.

Well, Stewart used Friday’s appearance to tell the hosts of Crossfire exactly what he thought of their show. While he was critical of the show in general, he saved his best stuff for Tucker Carlson, a right-wing, conservative Bush supporter. Among the many sparkling exchanges were these gems:

STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one.

—-

CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.

STEWART: No. No. I’m not going to be your monkey.

—-

CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans…

STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

Reading transcripts is one thing, but if you watch the whole thing in video format, it’s a lot more entertaining. Click here for the video (in Windows Media format, 37 Mb).

It’s been a while since I’ve been reminded of some of the dumb things about grad school. This weekend, it all came back to me. I started to look over some of the assignments that are due fairly soon. One of my assignments made me quite perturbed.

We’ve been in class for almost two months now. In the lectures, we’ve gone over specific theory and been given lots of equations. So the prof hands out our third assignment. It basically has nothing to do with what we’ve talked about in class. It’s based on a single paper we were supposed to read and summarize. The prof talked about the paper maybe ten minutes and didn’t go over any of the technical details in it. Meanwhile, I have a binder full of lecture notes that aren’t applicable to the assignment. The assignment is worth almost 15% of the class mark. How do you make an assignment worth that much based on 1% of lecture material?

He wants us to recreate what the researchers did in the paper… in two weeks. Researchers sometimes spend months in collaboration with each other to come up with the results of a paper. More often that not, the work is based on the work of others. These papers are almost as technical as a complete thesis.

It would be half bad if the paper laid out what they did down to the minute details, so I could understand their techniques. However, the details are general. They throw out an equation here and there, but I have no idea how to fit that into real code.

It doesn’t end there. The prof gave us some template code to get us started. When I looked at it this weekend, I was immediately confused. He’s done something that I’ve never seen before. It’s so non-standard. I get feeling it’s not a “good practice” technique when it comes to writing code. Thinking maybe I was just dumb, I consulted a friend of mine, an NSERC holder in computer science. I told him how the prof wrote the code. He said he’d never heard of that before and he wasn’t even sure how it working the way he did it.

So not only do I not know how to proceed for this assignment, my hands are tied by this template code, which is supposed to give the class a “head-start”.

This is what I find frustrating about grad school. More often than not, profs give out assignments that are artificially difficult. Sometimes, you immediately understand what concept or theory is being investigated for the assignment, but there’s all these artificial roadblocks in your way. For example, the data for the assignment is not in the ideal format, so you spend half the time formatting the data, when that’s not the point of assignment. Or when you’re given templates to work with, but they are so confusing, you lose focus of what the whole point of the assignment was. You wind up doing work (and lots of it), just so you can start the assignment in earnest.

Some people say grad school is hard, and they are partially right, because of all the BS that is involved. Bah, I’m all ornery now. And that is exactly why I’m going to fry up some bacon and eggs as soon as I hit the post button.

Today, for the first time ever, a scheduled ball hockey game at SJC was cancelled due to the lack of players. Since I sent out the very first e-mail in November of 2003, we’ve played a game every Saturday not including holidays and special occasions. Until today, if an e-mail was sent out, we played on Saturday.

When I showed up this afternoon, it was only myself, Joel, and Darryl. Not enough for a game. Part of the reason was that one guy had his out of town girlfriend come visit and another guy decided to go play golf. The main reason though? Too many of the guys that supported hockey week in and week out have moved away. I’m talking about guys like Phil, Pat, Jamil, and Aseem. They, like me, looked forward to hockey every week. They all knew it was for fun, but they also knew if you weren’t serious about showing up, it would be less fun for others.

Sure they are some holdovers from last year and there are some new residents who seem to be keen on playing, but it’s the old crew that I knew I could depend on. I understand that people are busy, but it was good to know that at every Saturday at 3pm, I could knew I could have some fun with my friends.

As I was walking home, I was disappointed, but I realized that I missed more than just their presence at hockey today, I missed them as friends. That we had to cancel hockey today just highlighted that fact. When you apply to SJC, read through the promo material, you get a sense of the community that exists there. You’re encouraged to make friends. But what no one prepares you for is when all these friends move away. There’s no pamphlet for that.

So, I came home early today, put away my sweat-free equipment and my unopened water bottle. I guess at least I have some extra time to do work.

So, do you walk by the Hennings Building at UBC regularly? Do you know that’s the physics building? Are you like me, do you wonder why there’s a guy outside on a bench on a hunger strike?

Well, wonder no more… sorta… read this odd explanation.

I saw this over at Fark, but I thought I’d post it here too. K-Y is giving away a free bottle of their warming ultra-gel to US residents. According to their web site, this gel: creates a gentle warming sensation on contact, helps enhance intimacy, and is smooth, non-messy.

While this offer doesn’t help any Canadian residents, it might be useful for some our US readers. Dana and Carolyn, I’m looking in your direction.

Click here for this totally unbelievable offer.

“Alright Rupert, why don’t you turn around and show Allison your bulge.”

I spent half of Sunday and half of Monday at my parents’ place out in Port Moody. Before dinner on Sunday night, I hit Wal-Mart to get some things. I know I’ve campaigned against Wal-Mart before (mainly about its less than classy patrons) but one thing I could never argue against are their low, low prices. Everything is so cheap at Wal-Mart. During the week, I bought a toothbrush and some toothpaste at the drug store. I saw the same items for nearly half the price at Wal-Mart. Even though I had already bought said items earlier, I had to buy them again at Wal-Mart. It was too good to resist.

I also picked up an ironing board and broom (with dustpan!). The ironing board will allow me to do away with wrinkles in the privacy of my own apartment now. The broom is for my kitchen area and entryway which is surrounded by linoleum.

Thanksgiving dinner was pretty good. I didn’t get food poisoning from my Mom’s cooking, which is the most you can ask for. Tee-hee. Seriously though, there were enough leftovers for me to take home. After dinner, my sister took off with her boyfriend and my parents went to play mahjong. This left me with a perfect opportunity to study, which I promptly threw away by wasting most of the evening.

On Monday, I had dim sum with my parents before heading back to my apartment on campus. I immediately put my broom and dustpan to good use. I sweep the whole downstairs floor, picking up all manner of dirt and crap. All I need to do is to Swiffer it.

I also brought home Picky, my fish, from my parents’ home. I was half expecting him to be dead, but somehow he made it through the three weeks away from me. I put him on top of my bookshelf, where I hope he can find happiness and fulfillment once again. Don’t tell anyone this, but I left a whole package of frozen blood worms in one of the freezers at SJC. I’m going to try to pick it up sometime this week. Picky loves eating those.

Well, I’m going to try to be productive again. Later.

I slept for ten hours last night. I really needed that. I didn’t sleep all that well last week. Feeling refreshed for the first time in many days, I had a late lunch with my friend Patrick at the Village. We decided to go for Japanese. I had a hearty lunch to prepare for hockey later. I hate it when my blood sugar drops halfway through hockey. Anyways, Patrick had some sake to go with his meal. I’ve never seen him drink so early in the day. Then again, he’s been busy lately. He’s packing for a three week trip. He’s off to Toronto and then to Chicago for a wedding. After bidding Patrick a safe trip, we departed for our respective abodes.

I immediately had to get ready for hockey. Our numbers were thin today because so many former participants have moved out. Still, we had enough for 3 vs. 3. We had a scary moment when Tomo took a ball near the eye. I think he’ll be alright, but he’s gonna have black eye for sure tomorrow. He left the game and we continued on for another hour or so. At the end, it was a sad moment as today was Jamil’s last game with us for at least several months. He is leaving for an internship in the Philippines. I must point out that Jamil turned out for ball hockey from the first day that I sent out the e-mail. I could always count on him to show up even when he moved out. He’s a good man. Good luck Jamil!

After hockey, we showered (not together mind you, not that there’s anything wrong with that) and Tyson drove Tom and I to Safeway. I’m still adjusting to a full-size fridge, so I keep forgetting I can buy big things for my freezer. I bought a tub of sorbet to start things off. I also bought some eggs and bacon. Sweet Sauron, is there anything better for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner than bacon and eggs? Ya fry that bacon up to get the grease and then ya fry the eggs in the grease to spread that bacon flavour around. Bacon tastes guuud… pork chops taste…

Though I was invited to BBQ on the SJC patio, I decided to have dinner back at my place and chill out. I’ve spent some of the evening cleaning and re-arranging here, so my apartment is slowly but surely moving from “squatter” to “dump” status. The rest of the evening I’ve used to read a textbook for my neural networks class. It’s gone quite well, except I started writing this.

So, I’m going to get back to that. Enjoy your evening.