going through the motions

I have unofficially failed my chemistry class (unofficial because it's not on beartracks yet). I am ashamed of this (ashamed like when the Coyote Ugly girl's dad saw the Coyote Ugly girl dancing in the Coyote Ugly bar), but I think there are some positives out of this. So many things have been and are still going through my mind. Things like if my GPA falls below 2.0, I get put on the academic probation. If it falls below 1.6, that's the end of my university career. I did not know about these things before. I didn't think I had to worry about these things before. I've always gotten through school with relative ease. I never had to work too hard, study too late, or stress too much. Up until now, I can say that I slacked though my education. Just going through the motions and that's all it took.
This failure had made me realize that my studying methods are just not adequate enough for post secondary education. I never reviewed or did practice questions that were not part of an assignment. This semester, I had no assignments, which didn't motivate me to do the questions. Not doing these questions seriously hurt my marks. It also didn't help that I had to close the bar the night before my midterm and my final. It just didn't occur to me that I needed to study. This event is seriously life changing. Now I'm not going to say I'm going to be the perfect student now, but I will give a lot more effort to my schooling. Having my university career on the line is the best motivation I can get right now. I don't see myself later on in life without a profession. Not a job, but a profession. And being kicked out of university isn't a good way to become a professional.
I'm retaking this course in the spring. A three week, five days a week, session. I passed the lab portion (60%) but I'm going to redo that as well, because I know I can do better. Wow, it took me two years and a failed course to realize that I couldn't just go through the motions, but better now than later. I just hope that my other classes will keep my GPA above 2.0, and more importantly 1.6.

comandeered

I am commandeering Ed's blog. If Ed is cool, he should post this as a special guest post. I can't even post in my blog anymore. Something is fucking up with blogger or something. I am in major cram mode and this is a break. I am here to offer my take on my first day with OSX 10.4. That's right. I'm one of the lucky ones that, for some reason or another (Jesus loves me most), I got an early shipment. Please note that I am writing this from 10.3.9 as Apple sent me a threatening email that basically said "We fucked up. If you try to install this, we will gut you like a trout." This happened as I tried to register it. So I had 10.4.0 installed for 22 hours and then I contemplated on how much I enjoy my intestines. Needless to say, I am still consuming food. However, I did give it a reasonable thorough preliminary run-through.
I am going to run through a few things and give my take on them.

1. It just looks pretty. I don't know what you kids with lower res screens will think, but on my PB (1280x854), it is like staring into God's eyes and then he smiles and winks at you. Everything looks so crisp due to Core Image. Windows scale BEAUTIFULLY and text is anti-aliased so much you feel like it's made of marble. However, this leads me into my next point.

2. It is a systems hog. More so than 10.3 in some respects. I have not yet installed my 1 gig SO-DIMM so I am still rocking the stock 512 PC2700. For the nerd in the know, this is clearly fast ram for a notebook. But 10.4 runs ADAQUATELY with 512. Everything is fast and reasonably responsive but it lacks the zippiness that 10.3 had. Still, I expect my computer to respond to my actions quickly. If I want Garageband to render 8 audio tracks at once, it better fucking render 8 audio tracks at once. So my report on this may not be the same for the casual user.
I'm positve upping my RAM to 1.5gigs will remedy this.

3. Core Image pwns. If your graphic card isn't supported, upgrade. My Xbench render scores went up 26% due to it. If you are going to be gaming on a Mac, Core Image is the shit. If not, it probably won't be a big hassle for you.

On to the meat and potatoes.

4. Dashboard. While I had 10.4 installed, I had assigned the centre "switch apps" button on my Logitech 510 mouse to open Dashboard. Simply put, you will get lost in how useful they are. At first, you're just like "cool, I might use that often." In five minutes, you realize you are spending as much time in dashboard looking up words, changing iTunes songs, googling, jotting notes checking RSS feeds, checking your email inbox, etc. as much as you are doing whatever else your current task is. And they look great. Downfall of them: "thems likes the memories!" Ya, I tried running ALL the stock widgets at once... not cool. Optimal with 512 RAM is between 6 and 10 depending on the widget. They do make good use of virtual memory, though. So that is nice.

5. Spotlight. I never did transfer all my music, docs, or pictures back to my PB because the gestapo caught me, but spotlight is still nuts. You know when you search for a song in iTunes and it narrows as you type? Ya. It's that for your system. I did do two tests though: it DOES recognize almost all text in PDF's (even overlayed over an image and text as an image itself) and it DOES recognize embedded text in images (that is .txt files hidden inside an image that require extracting to read) It is pretty brilliant. It will nice to see how it performs with a full system.

6. Safari RSS. Safari is still Safari. But now it has RSS built in. I use RSS. A lot. I use Safari for browsing and Firefox for RSS feeds. I have almost 100 sites I get feeds from and it is the greatest revolution in news delivery since the internet really went mainstream. I only tried about 15 in Safari, but I'm not sure if I like it. I may still use FF for my RSS. Basically, you save RSS feeds just like bookmarks. They go into the bookmarks bar or menu (whateveryou choose) and then when there is new RSS feeds from the site it notifies you in the form of a bracketed number next to the feed name. Akin to new messages in an email inbox. You can group feeds together etc. It just isnt as intuitive as FF RSS. It seems like Apple took the easiest way out. I don't know. I need more time with it to come to a real conclusion.

7. Automator. Only looked at it. Didn't try. Basically looks like a way to build apple scripts without programming in BASIC. Not sure how useful it will be.

8. Office X is barely compatible with 10.4. This is MS's fault. I say barely because it will install and run, but the amount of crashing is reminiscent of 9/11. (Ya, I went there. Suck it up, white bread) "Oh! You want to save? Nope! Crash!" "You want to paste something longer than 10 characters? Fuck you! Crash!"

9. Mail went from shit to wicked in 18 months. You just need to use it. Mail sucks. Plain and simple. Mail2 is brilliant.

10. Quicktime 7. I have no H.264 content to test. I'll make something up. "OMG!1!!!!11!1~~``1!!!!!! KW1KT1M3 7 iz sOoOoO t3h 1337 shi3t!!1! 1t m@d3 me p00 mie pantZzZzZ!!111111!!!!!ONETWO!!111!!!" But seriously. It still looks like quicktime.

Ok, I think I got most of that stuff out of the way. Now the bad. It is buggy. I did a full clean install (backed up my old system on an external HD, formatted, installed fresh) and I would suggest it to everyone. Especially Lauren if she reads this. I don't know if you have re-installed 10.3 in your iBook's lifetime, but regardless, your library is going to be huge and messy. This is simply because you've had it for over a year and use it regularily. A clean start will give you a much snappier system. Back to the point though, bugs. While it has to be expected, everynow and then it hiccups and sputters and something odd will happen and applications will quit. There are also some dashboard glitches. They have been posted a lot on the net so far. I have only come across the ghost widget. Basically the widget's transparent layer stays on the desktop for awhile before going away. Not system breaking, but annoying. It only happened a few times, but still. There are other bugs slowly surfacing online that I never came across, but even in my short time with it, It just didn't feel as solid as 10.3. Needless to say, 10.4.1 can't come soon enough. (I'm predicting mid May)

To close this and go back to studying, if I am a jury, I am hung on X.4's quality. I need more time with it to make a real judgement. I will still install come Friday when Apple unfreezes the register accounts, but that is only because I have nothing important on the horizon that I will definitely need my computer for. If you do, I would advise against it. I also saved my old system on an external HD so I can revert back at any time in about 5 minutes.

That's my initial take on it. Pretty, RAM hungry, innovative, glitchy. Come Friday, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Ok. Marathon test time. Five in a row. Lets do this, bitch.

checking in

So, I've spruced up the side bar a little. Added a link to my flickr site, look, it's so sweet. There aren't many (read: any) new pics on there, but when I do put some up, you'll be able to check them out.


Some of you may have already seen this from email forwards, but I think it's funny enough to put up on here. It's some lip synching, which is always good. And I don't mind the song, so enjoy! Here.


Ahhh, my clubs.


Aren't they sexy? I know, don't look at the woods, I'm working on them. They are the final piece to my set. I think I'm going to get a 3 wood and a hybrid club, that'll make 14. You can see my little Rossa peaking through in the back. I've only used my irons once at the Golf Dome in the winter, so they are still very new. I remember that I was hitting so fresh and so clean though! I want to go right now (so nice outside), but it's study time. If I go, I know that all I'll think about is how to improve on my next shot. So, learning from CALM class, abstinence is the only way to go. And no, that's not some ugly wallpaper, it's an old mattress (in my old room, which is kind of a storage room now).

social dance

First of all, the last post probably looks weird to all you IE users. Go check it out at Travis' site where it's all fixed. I'm too lazy to fix it.


Today was my testing day of the social dance portion of my dance class. It was probably the best dance class of the year. We didn't have to "pas de bourré" or make shapes. It was just plain old social dancing. We did the waltz, tango, cha cha, and swing. I think I did well in all of them. Of course it depepended greatly on who my partner was. I was fortunate to have some very competent dancers test with me. There were a few who were bugging me though.

First there was the girl who was "leading" me. She seriously verbally told me what to do. I'm not too worried about this, but points would be deducted if the teacher saw a problem with "leading." So my mark was being controlled by her, I didn't like this. Other guys I talked to also noticed this unauthorized, "pants-of-the-family," action.

Then there was the girl who could do the movements, but not with a partner. We were doing the cha cha and she stopped. What's going on? She told me she couldn't do the dance anymore because I was moving my body too much. You all (y'all) must know that the cha cha is all in the hips. But I stiffened up and we never spoke again.

I had some good partners as well. I had a great time with an Asian counterpart who knew what she was doing. People were like: "whoa, those Asians know how to dance."

Next was this girl I was trying to woo. We cut some rug during the swing testing. She was spending a noticeably large amount of time with this other fellow though, so I didn't push further. Maybe she was just too nice to say no to him? Meh, I get the point.

Lastly was this girl with some bboy moves I remembered from the jazz and modern dances. She's a cute looking girl, especially today. She was wearing this Lululemon top, which would make any girl look good, let alone a girl who was already gifted up top. Lululemon shit is irresistible to me. Anyways, she's going to be a phys. ed. teacher too.


My sister left me 1 1/2 sub club cards, sweet.

103 things

Inspired by many things, I came up with my own. Enjoy.

1) I am the youngest of three children.

2) I have two older sisters.

3) I eat strawberries with a knife and cutting board.

4) When I was small, I occasionally ate lettuce with ketchup.

5) Three is my favourite number.

6) When I was little, I added a “ch” sound to the end of my sister's and my own name.

7) I still call my biggest sister "Gotch."

8) I take showers that are probably bad for my skin because of the heat.

9) I’ve mainly used 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioners for my whole life.

10) Loreal Kids works great.

11) I like the Watermelon flavoured one the best.

12) If I ever get my own dog, I’m going to name him or her Leica.

13) I started MSNing in grade 10.

14) I’ve been hooked ever since.

15) When I was small, my sisters would try to convince me that our parents were going to name me “Guy.”

16) My oldest sister and I would try to convince my middle sister that she was adopted.

17) My middle sister and I would take the head off a Barbie and hide it places to scare my oldest sister.

18) I had seasonal asthma as a child.

19) This meant that every winter and fall I’d have trouble breathing when I was exercising.

20) It is not as bad anymore now that I have aged.

21) My parents used this as an excuse to limit my athletic pursuits when I was a kid.

22) Whenever I get slightly interested in something, I research the hell out of it (thanks internet).

23) I requested lots of catalogues as a kid because of this info searching.

24) To this day I am still a catalogue collector.

25) My favourite “Windows” game is Minesweeper.

26) I don’t think I have ever taken a cab before.

27) This means I drive to bars a lot whenever I go out.

28) This means I rarely drink when I go out.

29) I don’t like to have even one drink if I’m driving.

30) If I do drive and decide to have a drink, the most I’ve ever had was one drink.

31) I like coupons.

32) There are often coupons found in my wallet.

33) Having coupons doesn’t mean I am cheap.

34) I actually spend lots of money (e.g. tuition).

35) My biggest purchase to date (besides my education) is a $1500 camera/lens combo.

36) It was a Canon EOS 3 camera and Canon 135mm f2.0L lens.

37) I like photography.

38) My first camera was (and is) a Canon Rebel Ti that I bought from Best Buy.

39) I bought the PSP (Performance Service Plan) for it.

40) I bought it at Best Buy because I won a $500 Best Buy gift card.

41) I won it by doing a survey from a receipt I got when I bought 2 Fast 2 Furious from Best Buy.

42) My EOS 3 is a buy from eBay.

43) I am a volunteer photographer for The Gateway (U of A biweekly newspaper).

44) As of right now, I have not had a picture published yet.

45) I’ve always liked to dance in some form or another.

46) I started dancing in junior high dances.

47) My first slow dance was to “All My Life” by K-Ci and JoJo.

48) It was with my elementary crush, Sarah Keats.

49) Then in high school, the only dances were the “Touch of Class” dances.

50) I grew up watching Wayne’s World and the Mighty Ducks series.

51) Mighty Ducks 2 is my favourite of the three.

52) I really love to eat candy.

53) I prefer candy to chocolate.

54) The yellow flavour is my least favourite flavour in multi-flavoured candies.

55) The green Skittles is my favourite Skittles flavour.

56) I really liked Punkys candy, but I don’t think you can buy them anymore.

57) I drink boiled water at home.

58) My mom has gone to a Brita filter, then boil because the hard water would leave stains on the pot.

59) I don’t like to drink plain tap water.

60) I prefer Coke to Pepsi.

61) I can’t stand a dirty windshield.

62) I probably go through an above average amount of windshield wiper fluid.

63) My van once had non-working windshield wipers and I had to use paper towel to wipe the rain off.

64) I’m anal about symmetry.

65) I take a long time sizing up things to make sure that they are symmetrical.

66) I get nosebleeds very easily.

67) It is the worst during the winter because of the dry air.

68) One winter, I averaged about two nosebleeds per day.

69) I had a severe acne problem when I was in junior high and high school.

70) I still have an acne problem, but it’s not as bad.

71) It could be less severe because I was on Accutane for almost a year.

72) I have pictures from when I started and how I progressed throughout the weeks of my Accutane program.

73) Accutane is the drug that was being promoted with the guy who said: “people think I eat too many chocolate bars, or I don’t wash my face. My brother says I’ll grow out of it, but I don’t think so.”

74) I too thought that I would grow out of it, but here I am still waiting.

75) I had to take monthly blood tests because of the side effects associated with Accutane.

76) I think I’m a little shyer than other people because I am still self-conscious about my acne.

77) Maybe that’s the reason why I’ve never had a girlfriend.

78) Yup. I’ve had lots of good friends who are girls, but not a so-called “girlfriend.”

79) The girls I choose aren’t interested in being more than friends with me, and I’m not interested in being more than friends with the (few) girls who choose me.

80) Yes, am straight and I like girls.

81) Sports are a big part of my life.

82) It really started with volleyball in junior high.

83) I tried out for the senior team in grade seven and I was cut.

84) The coach, Bruce MacLeod, told me to work on my skills and to get in better shape (I was a little Asian boy).

85) I paid my dues with a year in juniors and worked out at our wonderful gym every morning at 7 (wake at 6).

86) I made the team next year and MacLeod seriously shaped me to be the guy I am today.

87) I got my mad hops from doing plyometrics once a week in addition to my weight training.

88) I could touch the rim by grade nine.

89) I had about a 36” vertical in high school.

90) I love to jump!

91) Making the Harry Ainlay volleyball teams was probably one of the best things to happen to me.

92) In terms of high level of competition and a good group of friends, you can’t beat being on the volleyball team at Ainlay.

93) That’s part of the reason why I decided to travel further for high school (who wants to go to Page?).

94) That’s also why I started assisting in coaching at Ainlay.

95) I hope to teach the kids what I was taught while I was an athlete.

96) The coaching will also help me get a job as a physical education teacher in the future.

97) I am in the BPE/BEd combined degree programs so that I get both degrees in five years.

98) I don’t know what I could do with just a BPE, so I went into the combined program.

99) I want to be a teacher.

100) My minor is general sciences.

101) I do nerdy labs, just like the science students do it.

102) I hate labs to the max

103) I’m going to finish this at 103, yippeeee!

chemistry sucks

Remember last semester when I had a sweet lab partner, Holly? I do, and I wish she was my lab partner again. This semester, my lab partner is kind of slow. Good thing that a lot of the labs are individual. Today was the last lab and it was a partner one. I'm a titration expert, seriously. Deptuck taught me well. I did IB chem you fucks. My partner is ridiculous: not using the stopcock properly, not using a funnel to put stuff in the buret, over shooting by at least 1.00mL between trials, and taking the reading from "the middle of the meniscus." What!? Whatever, I let her do the titrations and take the readings so that they were at least consistent. Then, in the island beside mine is this stupid goth chick. She's all about the tattoo, eyebrow ring, and dyed black hair. She looks like Kane from the WWE. She has no lab etiquette either. First-years are dumbasses.

david usher style

I really like the David Usher song "Love Will Save the Day." Not because I'm so emo and I looove love. It's mad chill music. It's no "Resurrection," but it hasn't been Moist in many a year.

While I was going through my old music, I found some old Nickelback. Not "How You Remind Me" old, but more like "Breathe" old. I'm not afraid to say I liked Nickelback back then. They put on some good shows. I haven't gone to a concert in so long though. I don't even remember what my last concert was. Damn.

redo

Okay, so here we go on round two.

I originally had a blog purely about my new car audio experience, but I'll put some more stuff just because. Listening to music in my car is an aural pleasure now (big shout out to Brock, who helped me install everything). I am honestly proud of it and am very surprised that my car is a notch sweeter now. Next time you see me, ask me if you can sit in the back seat and we can "park."

School is ending soon. My drive has seriously declined exponentially. I think I should invent a Viagra, but for people who have trouble finishing the school year. I'd be a millionaire and have big parties like Hugh Hefner (I just saw his faboulous life on Much More Music).

I'm enrolled in a spring class. For the first time ever, I am taking a school course over the summer. It is my swimming class. Go ahead, call me a slacker because I'm in phys. ed. I've taken 11 classes each year so far and next year I'm taking 12 classes. After next year, I'll have two years left in my program. I also have a job. So chomp on that, bitch.

Right now, I'm making up various cds from my archives so I have sweet tunes in my car. The stuff from my techno phase is sweet. Inspector Gadget techno remix all the way, hahahaha.

fuck you blogger

I just wrote a nice long blog about my new ICE (in car entertainment), but Blogger fucked up when it was publishing. I'll repost it later.