Category: Uncategorized

NEW PET PEEVE

I have a new pet peeve that is annoying. It kinda started last year but I’ve seen enough of it to raise it to the status of “pet peeve”.

Last year, I took an undergrad com sci course. Part of the course tools was an on-line discussion board. It’s a useful place to post questions, discuss homework, and communicate with classmates and the lecturer.

More than once, students were referring to the lecturer as “Proff. SoAndSo”. This went on several times through the semester and more than one student did it. Let me point out what’s wrong with calling the lecturer Proff.

First, the formal abbreviation (at least to me) of Professor is Prof. Where the hell one gets an extra “F” is beyond me. Proff.??? That’s just plain stupid. It makes CS students look dumb.

Second, it is completely wrong to assume a lecturer has the status of a Professor. I don’t think I’m the most anal person in the world, but sometimes you have to understand that certain segments of life consist of hierarchies. If you choose to live in the academic segment you should be aware of what that hierarchy is. Not everyone that teaches a class is a “Professor”. Like any organization, the academic department of any faculty divides their teaching staff into ranks. At the bottom usually are the lecturers, sessionals, or instructors. These people may or may not have job security, are paid less, and may not have a Ph.D. Next up are associate and assistant professors. These people almost always hold a doctorate, are paid more, have job security (usually tenure track), have money to work with, and have power within the department. Next up are full-fledged professors. These people always hold a Ph.D, are making the big bucks (for academics at least), have bigger sums of research money, have a lot of clout, and have been recognized for their academic excellence. If you’re an academic, you’ve done quite good if you can reach this level.

For a student to call any old lecturer or instructor a professor would be like calling a middle manager the CEO or the Chairman of the Board. You can be wrong. A person teaching a class is lecturer, because hey, that’s what he or she is doing… lecturing. You can’t go wrong with that. If you want to afford them a little more respect, you can refer to them based on their education level. If they hold a Ph.D, call them Dr. They have earned that right. If they only have an undergraduate degree or a Masters degree, a Mr. or Ms. is your only option. They are only a professor if they hold that title.

I’ve only been instructed by people holding Ph.Ds, so I’ve refered to them as Dr. SoAndSo when speaking to them or referring to them specifically. I might say, “I have this professor who gives easy exams…”, but only if I knew they held that rank, otherwise, I might say, “I have this instructor or lecturer…”

In all my years at school, I’ve actually never heard anyone say out loud, “Professor…” I think that’s the realm of movies and TV.

So there you go, another little thing that bugs me as I grow older.

FUNNY

Adam, remind me to be around you more when you’re drunk. That’s entertainment.

Hey, have you ever seen someone who’s so messy eating watermelon you had to put a tarp down? Yeah, I haven’t either.

CRAZY EARLY

I actually made it in time for breakfast this morning. Yeah, amazing, I know. Wait, it gets better though. I went to a meeting and came back before breakfast! That’s the most I’ve done in a morning in a long, long time.

I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off.

MORNINGS SUCK

Tuesdays are my bad days for this term. I’m in class for about 4.5 hours and I wake up at 8:30am. That’s early for me. I don’t come home until around 6:30pm and by then I’m usually starving. I was today.

After dinner tonight, I felt beat. I was really tired. It was the kind of day that made me want to be done with school. Next thing I knew, it was already 8pm. Despite having a lot of work to do and being exhausted, I managed to bake some cookies. I did the rounds of delivered them to some fellow residents. No one is unhappy to see a person bearing a fresh batch of cookies.

With that done, I managed to get some work done. I even made a breakthrough on this assignment I’m working on. If I had an extra hour or so tonight, I’d probably be done almost all of it. I had to stop though. Why? I have to be up at 8am to be at this weekly lab meeting. It’s going to suck getting up tomorrow morning.

You might be asking why I’m writing here given I should probably be in bed. Well, it’s because you can’t spend all day doing things for other people and not do a single thing for yourself. I like writing here, so if this is the last thing I do tonight before I go to bed, I’ll go to sleep at least somewhat content.

And with that, I’ll leave you with a “person on the street” type story. Enjoy!

TRAILER PARK

I spent most of my Sunday evening wondering what the hell was wrong with my code that I’m writing for an assignment. The prof gave us some starter code to get us going. I just need to extend it and increase the functionality. It took me several hours before I discovered there wasn’t anything wrong with my code, but the starter code was buggy to begin with. I then spent more time trying to debug it, which isn’t even my responsibility since it was supposed to be working in the first place. All this means I’m no further ahead in my assignment than I was at the start of the evening. Oh well.

Anyways, if you’re like me, you find great pleasure in the most simple and free things in life. One of those things is watching movie trailers on the Internet. When I was a kid, the only place you could see full-length trailers was in the theatres. You couldn’t download them, burn them onto a CD, e-mail them to your friends, or put them up for Kazaa. Instead, you had to go to local Singlo-plex ™, pay your $4.25, buy popcorn (no Burger King!), and watch the trailers. If you were extremely lucky, you might even have a theatre where they had Dolby Stereo ™, meaning they had two, count them, two speakers out front where the sound would come out of.

Nowadays, you can practically be a movie expert without even going to the movies. All you need to do is have a computer connected to the Internet.

A simple joy for me is to just watch a two minute trailer of a movie I might want to see.

So… what trailers have come out recently that I’ve liked….

Well, there’s Van Helsing, which is based on the literary character from the mind of Bram Stoker. I like Hugh Jackman and I think he’ll be able to pull this off. I also like the appeal of a character that fights supernatural evil. Creepy.

After all this talk, I finally saw the trailer for Jersey Girl. With the maelstrom of gossip surrounding Bennifer, you’d think this movie was Gigli 2. Much to my pleasant surprise, the movie only has J.Lo in it for a short time, the main female lead is Liv Tyler, who is an actress I like a million times more. From Clerks on in, I’ve enjoyed all of Kevin Smith’s movies. Let’s hope his movie survives the gossip.

Now, for some strange reason that I can’t put my finger on, I thought the trailer for Ella Enchanted was pretty good. Maybe I was hungry at the time or something. Anyways, it kinda made me think if I had to go see it, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Though, I wouldn’t go alone… or with another guy… possibly with a female though… that wasn’t my mom… or my sister…

SOON ENOUGH

Yeah, I know you want something new to read for the evening, but I got some work to do. I’ll be back later with a new entry. No promises that it’ll be fun to read though.

RAMBLING ON

We’ll be going into the third week of the term on Monday. Up until this point, I really don’t feel like I’ve done a lot of work yet. I’d like to look back upon a day and say, “Yeah, I got a lot of stuff done today.”

It’s clear to me that I’m less disciplined compared to when I was in undergrad. It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to live with now. The only negative is that I don’t get as much work done and I’m less efficient.

I’m going to try to use most of my Saturday to work. With the exception of playing a little ball hockey, I’ll be working my ass off. I’m concerned that I might falter when the Canucks game is on, but I guess that’s where my commitment will be tested. I remember last year I was in my room 26 consecutive hours. If I wasn’t sleeping I was working. I hope that guy returns soon.

Yeah, it was a really good idea for me to audit that Animation Physics class. I read through the second assignment and it’s probably the hardest assignment I’ve seen in my entire life. No joke. It involves making thousands and thousands of particles, and then modeling their behaviour. As they fall due to gravity, you have to simulate how they would react if they collided with a solid object. The math behind collision detection is pretty daunting. I never realized that until now. It will take me several weeks to fully understand it.

I’ve been having trouble napping all week. I just can’t seem to fall asleep in the afternoons. I feel too tired to work, but I’m not tired enough to fall asleep. I’m caught in this zombie state. It’s very unproductive. I’ve never had this problem before. The next time this happens, I’m tempted to power through it with some Coke or something.

Ok, I’ll leave you with a sorta of request. How many of you have seen the movie Old School?. Hey me too! Bed, Bath, and Beyond!!! Um, anyways, so there’s this band that plays during the wedding scene. You know what I’m talking about. They’re called The Dan Band. All they play are covers of women’s songs. They recently released a CD with a few of their songs. I’ll be honest and say that I can’t find these tracks on file-sharing. Does anyone have their cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart? I mean the cover version from the CD, not some crappy clip from the movie. If you could help me out, I’d really appreciate it.

Good night!

THE SEARCH IS OVER

First, I’d like to say how nice it was to see Greg Williams and Erin at the Village today. It’s always a pleasure to see either of them. Thank you Erin for your interest in my blog.

So now onto our regularly scheduled post…

Many of you out there have been following my long-standing quest to replace the three-quarter length black nylon Banana Republic coat I lost almost a year ago. I wrote about my loss in my post entitled “Lament for a Coat“. You might even know that I tried to find a similar coat on Ebay. My search lasted for weeks before I stumbled upon one that was my size.

When it came up, I was determined to win the auction. I told everyone I knew that I was going to get my coat back. When the time came for the auction to end, the price went up astronomically. It was way beyond what I was willing to pay, even given my obsession. I let the coat slip past me. I was bummed for days.

After a while, I got back on my horse and kept looking. A few days later I found another coat, same style and size. The only problem was that the seller had taken it off the auction with no explanation.

I e-mailed him my story and asked him to re-consider selling the coat. One entire month went by before he responded. In the meantime, I had resigned myself to having lost the coat for good. His e-mail gave me hope. He told me that he had been wearing the coat until he found a replacement. Now that he had another coat, he was ready to sell. Unfortunately, others had sent him similar e-mails inquiring about the coat. He told me that I should make him an offer.

I gave him a very reasonable offer, but nothing crazy. After a week or so, he contacted me again. He had chosen me to sell the coat to. Now, I could have easily been jumping for joy, but I knew it’d stupid to be that happy way before I had the coat in my hands. This purchase was going to occur outside the auspices of Ebay and I would not fall under any of their protection schemes. Anything could happen before I got my coat.

I agreed to purchase the coat after making sure the collar was the right type. By now I was getting the impression that the seller was a stand-up type of guy. His e-mails were always courteous and professional. I think he might have even understood how much this coat meant to me.

Meanwhile, I told not a soul about this. No one. Everyone I knew understood I was always looking for my coat. They’d ask me if I’d have any luck. I’d always say no. I didn’t even tell my closest friends whom I usually tell anything about my life. I didn’t want to jinx it. Eventually, one person did find out… Sarah. One night she came to my room lamenting the poor and fraudulent ways of Ebay purchasing. She had just begun to use Ebay and a mailing snag delayed her first purchase. I told her not to worry because it usually worked out and that’s when I told her my secret. I swore her to total secrecy. Of course the next day at dinner she starting blabbing about it and I had to swiftly kick her underneath the table. I wasn’t very subtle about it because Rhonda asked me, “Are you trying to kick Sarah under the table?”

Privately, I chastised Sarah for talking and I made her feel shame. Ha ha ha… anyways, I sent the payment via Paypal and waited for confirmation. The next day, the seller told me he sent the package via USPS Airmail. This was November 16th.

I waited about one week before I got antsy. I checked my mailbox everyday after that, usually several times a day. Sarah would ask me about it and I would have to tell nothing had come. After two weeks I started to get worried. I e-mailed the seller and asked him to re-confirm the address. It was bang on. I phoned Customs Canada. They told me there was a huge backlog of mail items to be processed. Bummer. Nearly four weeks in I phoned Customs Canada again. They told me whatever backlog existed had been cleared. I was referred to Canada Post. So I phoned them. I was told that any item mailed from Indiana to Vancouver would have arrived by then. I started checking the on-campus mail depot on a daily basis.

I was feeling very dejected about this. I e-mailed the seller again. Wisely, he had sent it with insurance. I told him that we’d probably have to start a claim and that he should get the receipts ready. He replied he would but that he was dismayed it had turned out like this.

By this time my exams had ended and people were leaving for the holidays. On December 16th a ton of people left. The next morning I checked my mail. There was a note in my box, “There is a special package waiting for you at Mailing Services. Please present this card when you arrive.”

It had to be it. I nearly ran over to the mail depot. I kept my joy in check since anything still could happen. It could be the wrong size, colour, or style. I gave them the card and I was handed a medium-sized box. There was a Customs Canada sheet on it. It read, “Processed on December 16th”. Either Canada Post took a month to deliver it or Customs took a month to process it. Mofos.

I took the box home and placed it on my bed. I took off my Taiga jacket and put it aside. I grabbed a pair of scissors and took the pointy end to the pieces of tape on the box. For a moment there, I felt like Det. Sommerset at the end of Se7en when the box gets delivered. Anyways, I took a deep breath and then opened the flaps. Whatever it was it was wrapped in a plastic see-through Gap garment bag. It was black.

I pulled the garment bag out. Inside it was a black, three-quarter length nylon Banana Republic coat. I quickly looked the things that would make or break this deal… the buttons, the collar, the stitching, the lining, the pockets… it all passed inspection. This was the coat I had been looking for.

Almost cautiously, I slipped it on for the first time. It felt like an old friend had come back to see me. For the next twenty minutes I sat and walked in my room with it on. It was all good. I went on a short walk with it to the SUB and returned. I then took it off and hung it in my closet.

I returned home for the holidays soon afterwards and I wore it maybe a handful of times there. I returned to UBC and then it got extremely cold. Everyone came back from holidays and I waited for the right time to debut my coat. The cold pushed that day back several times until Tuesday night.

It was Bryan’s birthday outing for dinner and the weather was warm enough for me to bring out old Betsy. Some people noticed the coat while others did not. I tried to be low-key about it because after all, it’s just a coat. Albeit a coat that I’ve been looking for for months.

There’s no doubt I am glad I have it back and to be honest, it’s a nice looking coat.