Month: February 2005

I’m not sure if I’m coming down with something or it’s just my hectic schedule catching up with me, but I was tired all day (more so than usual).

After waking up at 11am to meet the boys for lunch at the Pit, I came home at 1pm. After resisting the urge to sleep until 2pm, I finally surrendered to fatigue and crawled back into bed again. Thinking I was in for a half hour nap, I awoke dazed and confused at 4pm. When I realized what time it was, it became clear that I was more tired than usual.

It took me about half an hour to wake up, after which I put in an hour’s worth of work. I was planning to do work all day, but hadn’t planned on the fatigue. Dinner plans consisted of Woba and I going to One More Sushi at the Village.

When I returned home at 8pm, I again felt the fatigue. I tried to stave it off for about an hour before again rolling into bed at 9pm. Two hours later I woke up at 11pm, just in time to catch the late local news.

In total, I spent four hours napping today when I had planned on doing a solid day’s worth of work. Instead, I got very little done, though I’m feeling fine now.

I hope I feel better tomorrow.

Just to let everyone know, there will be a Mythbusters marathon on the Discovery Channel this Sunday (at least in Canada).

The fun will start at 3pm PST and six episodes will be aired in a row until 9pm. The same six episodes will then be aired again from the 9pm-3am time slot.

The episode list is as follows:

Ancient Death Ray/Skunk Cleaning

Chicken Gun

Lightning Strikes

Explosive Decompression

Penny Drop

Myths Revisited

This is a great opportunity to check out Mythbusters if you never seen the show. Several of my friends have recently joined the ranks of Mythbusters fans, I suggest you check it out this Sunday on the Discovery Channel!

The video I linked to recently comes from truthout.org, which is currently taking a camera with them while they go on a road trip of some red states. You can see the video they’ve collected thus far on the trip here. I invite you in particular to view footage from day three, quite a revealing look at the Bible Belt of the US south.

Every year UBC students vote on several referendum issues. This year, in my opinion, students are voting on two issues that are more important than anything UBC has seen in decades.

The first issue is to whether or not to continue the wildly successful U-Pass program. Currently, it costs students $20 a month for eight months a year for unlimited access to the Translink system. Students only have to take 9 bus rides a month to make it pay for itself. For students who take the bus every day, it’s the greatest deal UBC has ever given them. The program has been in place two years now and if you go to the U-Pass site, you’ll read how many people have got on-board with this. The first issue specifically asks if students are willing to support the continuation of the program at a new cost of $22 a month. This price will be fixed until 2008. It’s in everyone’s interest to vote yes.

If less than 4000 people vote “YES” on this issue, the U-Pass program will die. This will leave students no reduced-fare option for using Translink.

The second issue asks if students support a summer U-Pass program. This will cost $20 a month for the summer months. Even if students have enough votes on this issue, if issue one doesn’t pass, issue two will be rendered moot.

Despite the fact I’ll graduate by the end of May (fingers crossed), I’ve voted yes on both issues. The U-Pass program is the best deal UBC and the AMS has ever negotiated for the students. In light of this, I challenge every eligible UBC student to vote yes on this issue. Follow the instructions on this link:

http://www.ams.ubc.ca/elections

Once you vote yes, find another eligible voter and make them vote yes as well. Just don’t mention it to them, make them vote yes in front of you. Then get them to find another person to vote yes, and so on…

I cannot stress how important it is for these issues to pass. Though 4000 votes out of 35000 (or so) full-time students seems minor, voter apathy is infamous on-campus. I suspect that the vote will be very close.

Do what you can. Vote yes and get others to vote yes as well!

In this clip (Quicktime, WMV), watch this moron tell the interviewer how he supports Bush in the White House. Then listen to his own personal views on taxation and universal health care. Multiply this idiot by 60 million and you’ll start to understand the mess the US is in now.

I use the alarm on my calculator to wake me up when I need to be somewhere on time in the mornings. It’s the same calculator alarm I’ve used since undergrad to wake me up. Since sleep was a much more precious commodity back then, I’ve come to dread the distinctive beeping it makes. I actually developed a very negative reaction to that alarm. This year, however, I’ve learned to ignore my alarm.

It was exactly this newly developed skill that caused me to finally wake up fifteen minutes before class this morning. Though I can’t prove it, I am almost certain that time accelerates when you’re late for something. To me, it seemed like that after I realized what time it was, I immediately got up, but when I checked my watch, five minutes had passed. I now had ten minutes to get to class.

In the remaining ten minutes, I somehow managed to brush my teeth, get dressed, paw at my hair, check my e-mail, grab my crap, and get to class. I was only a minute late.

The late start however, caused my entire day to be composed of running from one thing to another without having a chance to catch my breath. It finally ended after 6pm when I finished invigilating a two hour exam for the course I’m TAing.

Despite sleeping in, I was extremely tired during the invigilation. I briefly weighed the consequences of falling asleep in front of my students. I decided that it would have been a not-so-good situation.

I am looking forward to tomorrow when I don’t have to set my alarm for anything. And for those keeping score, lunch today consisted of lasagne Hamburger Helper.