Well, tomorrow I have another lab. You know the one I mean. The one where my dutiful-slave partner turned into a normal human being and ruined all of my plans for greatness. "What are you going to do about the next lab?", lots of people have been asking me, usually with a smirk on their face while they asked (I hate you all).

But I've been giving it a lot of thought. What am I going to do about the partner problem? He wants to help. He wants to do things. He wants to understand. And yet he's absolutely useless and is a worse sabotage on my lab than the people who go in and bend all the chips.

So I've finally come up with a solution. I call it the "Triprep Lab Report" (patent pending). With this solution I hope to accomplish both allowing my partner to touch our wires to a greater degree than just passing them to me, and finish the lab in a miraculous amount of time, like I did before "I want to help" boy grew a spine.

Here's how this genius plan works:

I've created three completely different lab preps, all of which have different information on them and different purposes.

A) The Real Thing - This is what my lab prep would look like if I was working alone. Neat, tidy, very clean, easy to work with, information saturated and all round beautiful. I even used a ruler to draw one of the lines. Ooooo. Ahhhh. This contains a bunch of schematic diagrams and a few sentences, truth tables and charts.

B) Partner Working Copy - This is where my real genius reveals itself. This is the document that I give him to use during the lab. It looks like this:

A1 - C1
A6 - D1
A3 - A10
...etc.
Half of these pairs are written in green and the other half in red. He is going to be responsible for the green writing and will follow this list, in order, while I'm off following The Real Thing lab prep. There are also huge black lines every so often indicating when he should stop, because I'm going to test where we're at so far. Under these pairs is a schematic diagram of all the little logic gates, but with the corresponding letter and numbers on each gate and each wire going into the gate. Then under that is yet another diagram of how our breadboard is going to be set up, this time with the chips labelled appropriately instead of the gates above, and with each pinhole numbered above each pin on every chip. So he can read "A1 - C1" and look down at the bottom diagram, see where "A1" is (oh, okay this "A" chip, and here's where the "1" hole is), and then put a wire between it and the "C1" hole. This makes the whole activity of approximately equal difficulty to connect the dots; if he can't manage to do this, there's no helping him.

C) Partner Take Home Copy - So, that's all well and good Catsy, but he sure as hell isn't going to learn anything! Wrong! That's where the third document comes in and the reason for the tri in the "Triprep Lab Report" (again, patent pending). I've also created a little document just for him explaining what each of the wiring stages he's doing is actually doing, what sort of testing I'm doing at each phase, and how the whole thing is going to fit together. Why am I being so nice? Because this way I can hand both documents to him, say "This is what we're doing, and _this_ is what it does. Let's hurry up on the first one and you can read the second one when you get home. It explains every step that you'll be doing, so we don't need to waste time thinking about it during the lab. Let's just hurry up and do the lab and then the 'why's and 'how's'll be answered later.".

Will it work? I have no idea. We won't find out until tomorrow night. But this is the best idea I've come up with so far, and goddamn it, I'll give it my best shot.

First off, as promised...

Two Towers: part one | part two

"The term is almost over", lots of people have been saying recently.
My response is usually one of:
- Shut up!
- Ahhhh! Don't SAY THAT!
- SHH! Don't even talk about it!
- I don't want to hear that!
- Go away!
- FOAD!
- *cry*

But it's true. Time keeps passing and despite my multiple attempts to assassinate whoever is responsible for time; they must be more clever than I had anticipated because I keep offing people and yet time keeps on going.

So what's left before I turn into a little ball of highly condensed exam (AHH! Don't say that word!) stress (suitable as a replacement for condensed milk in most confectionary recipes) who curls up in a corner somewhere and can be found either whimpering or laughing maniacally, depending on which personality is in charge during that precise second? Well, I'm glad you asked!

Remaining (in order; only the stuff I'm actually doing is listed. For example, there's a logic lecture listed because it's the last one, so I figure I should go, but no logic tutorial listed...because....y'know):

258 Lab 258 Tutorial 258 Assignment 258 lecture 209 lecture Lin lecture Logic lecture Psych lecture 258 lecture 209 lecture Logic test 258 Tutorial 209 Assignment Psych paper

That's it. Then I have exams (AHH! She said it again!) and then this year is over. More than that. Half of my undergrad is over. AHHHHHH! How can half my undergrad be over?? Where's my Pause button? Surely there must be a Pause button. Where's my remote control? Oh, here it is. Pause...pause...pause...no pause button? What's this? 'Stop'. Hmm, maybe this will wo

What's with this losing an hour shit?!

Who decided this was a good idea? Give me my goddamn hour back! I agreed to 24 hours in a day, it's not fair to pull this "lose an hour" crap on me. And what's worse? It's going to be still be goddamn dark out later in the morning!

"What time do you want to go out tomorrow?", I'm asked today.
"Uh, 10:30 am? 11?"
"You know that that's 9:30, 10, right?"
"Huh?"
"It's the Spring Forward thing."
"Is that the one where I lose sleep or gain sleep?"
"Lose."
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

I refuse to play this game. I'm taking my hour back. I'm not changing any clock in my room, nor any of my computers. That's right, we're all staying on NORMAL time, where I don't have to sleep less. Spring forward my ass.

I'm not losing an hour. These are precious hours! Do you know what I could do in an hour? I could sit on my butt and watch two whole Simpsons episodes, or I could make 40 seconds of flash video, or I could sleep. How about that? Huh? Has the "Spring Forward Is A Good Idea" committee never heard of sleep?

They can try to take my hour from me, but I hope they're wearing flame-thrower-proof clothing.

So because we're very politically conscious, Mud, Brandon and I went to Chinatown for breakfast this morning, because they've been losing a lot of money due to the SARS scare, and we felt like showing them our support.

..........

Alright, alright. I admit it. We just wanted Dim Sum.

But we were also showing them our support while we were there. That counts, doesn't it?!

For those of you who live in an opaque tube on my shelf, SARS is the stupidest war counter-story since...well, the last war. This airborne disease (henceforth referred to as "SARS: DISEASE OF DEATH!") has killed seven people in Ontario in the last little while. The result?

I think that Christie Blatchford of the National Post says it best when she says: "If it's a thin line between love and hate, as the Pretenders famously sang, it's the bleeding Champs Elysées compared to the one between SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, and SARSis, which I arbitrarily have come to call SARS neurosis."

Dundas and Queen (in the heart of Chinatown) has become a scary wasteland. I'm used to having to push and shove to get through the crowds on a late Sunday morning in this area; instead I could probably count the number of people walking around. And many of them are wearing goofy SARS masks. Because SARS: DISEASE OF DEATH! originated in Asia, Toronto's Chinatown has become absolutely abandoned by everyone fearing the disease.

But as a handful of my media-conscious compadres pointed out, it's no wonder that SARS: DISEASE OF DEATH! has become such a scare. We're being fed this fear like terror-hungry babies.

Selected Leading Causes of Death in Canada
Cause	Number of Deaths
Cancer	58,703
Heart Disease	57,417
Cerebrovascular Disease	16,051
Pulmonary Disease	9,618
Unintentional Injuries	8,626
Pneumonia and influenza	8,032
Diabetes mellitus	5,699
Disease of the central nervous system	5,049
Diseases of the arteries, arterioles and capillaries	4,767
Psychoses	4,645
Suicide	3,681
Liver Disease	2,030
HIV Infection	626
Total Number of Deaths	215,669
Selected Uncommon Causes of Death in Canada
Cause	Number of Deaths
Lightning	11
Drowning	318
Motor Vehicle Accident involving collision with train	43
Motor Vehicle Accident involving collision with pedestrian	389
Malnutrition	206
Drug or Alcohol Dependence	612
Complications of pregnancy or childbirth	14
Accidents involving firearms	38
Homicides involving firearms	170
Total homicides (including firearms)	503
Injury resulting from operations of war	1

"FOUR MORE KILLED BY MYSTERY SUPER BUG" (caps included) states the Sunday Mirror in the UK.

"The disease is now firmly entrenched in more than 100 countries, and 40 per cent of the world's population is at risk from it!" says the local Toronto Star.

I'm not going to bother getting all quotey on you, but just look up SARS on google's news search engine and you'll find more than enough evidence.

So is this something that we should be worried about?
"Would you like some SARS with your dim sum?"

I'm having trouble getting exact figures on the ages of the seven people who died in Toronto, but here's what I've been able to pull from the "Dallas Morning News", "London Free Press", Canada.com, and the "Toronto Star" over the past little while:

Of the seven deaths in Ontario, the ages I've been able to find are: 76, 73, two 70 year-olds, and a 57 year-old (who "had other health problems", says an Australian Newspaper "The Age").

But Catsy, seven people in Ontario alone died in just ten days!

Wow, that is pretty scary. Unless, of course, we looked at the fact that Health Canada states that 600 people from Ontario die every "winter season" from the normal, everyday flu. Let's be generous and assume that the "winter season" is from November until April (including both). That's 23 deaths a week. From the flu. Wow, the flu is knocking out more people than SARS: DISEASE OF DEATH!.

In fact, not even that can fully put this into perspective. So I went looking for what tends to kill of Canadians and grabbed some figures back from a 1997 Statistics Canada study, which is the big table that you see here.

Schools are closing and people are staying home for fear that someone might cough on them and they'll catch SARS: DISEASE OF DEATH!. They're not exactly sure what it is, but they seem very positive that this just might be the disease that ends the human race. Why oh why oh why are there so many wackos out there?

Of course, this certainly explains where the 8,626 "Unintentional Injuries" deaths come from every year.

It was going to come down to this eventually: an entry on caffeine. This was inevitable and we all knew that it was coming. So let me just spew out a few words of praise, you can all leave your "me too!" comments, and then we'll move on.

Caffeine and I are best friends. It keeps me on a slightly active addictive high, and in exchange I give its providers lots of money every year. Yes, the secret to every great friendship: mutually screwing each other over. Even the blanket on my bed has the picture of a caffeine molecule on it (merci encore!). But no one is born addicted to coffee, it comes gradually. So let's examine my personal history with respect to this lovely drug.

Tea

History: I never touched a cup of tea until Grade 10, when Mud and Slogs are responsible for corrupting me. Mud brought thermoses full of tea to school every day (because fLufFy drove her to school way back then, so she didn't have to take the damn subway like the rest of us). Soon she started bringing some for Slogs and I, too. And then every time we hung out, it usually involved tea of some kind. Yes, very rapidly we became tea-injesting addicts.

Modern consumption: I'm not tea's number one fan, but it's still not bad. As tobie and Mud can attest to, I tend to go for those "fruity teas", which is more like warm juice than actual tea, and I'm not even sure if they contain caffeine. Probably not. Tea is great for getting warm, or eating with breakfast if there's no hot chocolate, apple cider, or english toffee mix around. But it really doesn't provide that kick that I'm looking for out of a great caffeine beverage.

Chocolate

History: Yes, I know, chocolate barely contains any caffeine, blahblahblah. Anyway, my parents decided that when I was a baby, they were going to keep me away from chocolate for as long as possible (you know that you're a first born child when...). This lasted up until when I was three years old, and some guy in the mall was handing out chocolates to all the kids. Yes, I lived for three whole years without eating any chocolate. Well, that was the end of that.

Modern consumption: I prefer a little of excellent quality chocolate to a lot of sucky chocolate. Mud has amazing dark chocolate in her room...well, she probably doesn't now because I keep going in and eating it. But I'm not a crazed chocolate addict like I was as a kid. That said, you all saw the huge Toblerone bar. I think those photos say all that I could possibly say about me and chocolate.

Coffee

History: So my mother absolutely hates the taste of coffee, but she also hates the taste of dark chocolate and the smell of coffee. So in my bad-logic kind of young mind way, when I was really little I'd already decided that this must mean that I (who thought that coffee smelled divine) was going to like it. But I didn't go near it for a long time. Then Grade 10ish fLufFy, Mud and I would sometimes stop at the Tim Hortons to get one of those goo-center apple muffins (what were those called?) and an English Toffee Cappuccino (aka: "girly coffee"). Mmm. Of course you can only drink those things for so long before the temptation of real coffee starts pulling you in. Then the fact that I worked at a Second Cup for two or three months didn't help (free coffee). And of course the fact that I'd been sucked in my chocolate covered coffee beans (mmm...yummy awakeness in edible form) didn't help either. Coffee addict waiting to happen.

Modern Consumption: Alright, I'm a university student. I can't not drink any coffee. But I am definitely trying to prevent myself from becoming a raging addict, at least for another year or two. Because, damnit, once I hit grad school, I might as well open up a bank account at Chez Starbucks. People who are influencing me to drink coffee: flaps (:P), fLufFy CPwr Mud and Brandon (taking me to Starbucks makes it your fault :)), my brother ("I'm already addicted. It's in our genes. Just do it."), my father ("let's go for a coffee!"), and all my profs ("here's an assignment, it should only take a minute or two...if by "a minute or two" I mean "all week" midnight work). People who are influencing me not to drink coffee: Lou ("No! No more coffee! Give that to me! No! Stop it! No coffee! Bad Catsy!") and Mud ("[Catsy]....no coffee. It's bad for you."). Of course I'm going to have to buy another supply of chocolate covered coffee beans for this exam season. So that's coffee and I.

Coke

History: I don't remember when I first tried coke, so it was probably unreasonably young. Young enough that I used to say "caffeine-free sugar-free low-in-calories nutrasweet diet coke with aspartame" as a party trick. "Listen to what she says", my parents would say, "[Catsy], can you tell us what you're drinking?" This didn't seem so humiliating at the time. Anyway, I'm one of the few people I know who is basically indiscriminate about the type of coke that they drink. I can taste the difference, but they're all on approximately the same playing field for me. Coke, Pepsi, whatever. I tend to go for Coke, but I think it was a fairly arbitrary decision on my part, and I certainly won't _refuse_ a Pepsi. Anyway, my point is: I don't remember when I started drinking coke, because it just feels like I always have. Everyone who reads this and was around for my residence Coke-free days last year remembers the few weeks before I gave up coke for an entire month starting in December. With physics problem sets and calculus problem sets (which were taking me ten and five hours every week, respectively) ontop of all the normal assignments which were piling up very heavily, I started having to pull a large number of sequential all-nighters. The Calculus flash video with the dozens of coke (pepsi) cans strewn about my room...this was accurate. I figured out that I could stay awake enough to do my work, despite every sleep reflex, if I consumed one can every 45 mins or so, and this is what I did, and it worked. Between 10 pm and 7 am, I'd go through about thirteen cans. Of course, even once I hit December and the work blissfully ended, my body was screaming for caffeine...that whole little addictive thing. I'd wake up at 3 am and couldn't go back to sleep unless I got a mouthful of coke from my fridge; ironic, no? Anyway, the point is that I had to forcefully pry myself off of coke. This amused me. But I'm easily amused :)

Modern Consumption: This year, coke is still my stimulant of choice, and responsible for a number of successful essays, reports, papers and programs. A bottle of coke disappears pretty quickly from the time when it enters the house. And of course I'd spent all of my extra residence food money last year (several hundred dollars) on whole cases of coke. However these disappeared...probably within the first two months of moving here. Yes, coke is a wonderful thing. And though I'm not drinking thirteen cans per night anymore, I still insist that I can honestly feel its absence when I'm trying to work on something late without it.

So UofT has this rule that every student has to take one Science and one Social Science and one Humanities course. As an interdisciplinary kind of person, I think this is a great rule, because it makes everyone else suffer where I don't have to. The Science kids hate their Humanities course as much as the Humanities hate their Social Science. They all take 199 courses of the other type, get As like the average tends to be, learn nothing, hate everything, end of story.

Oh course, nothing in my life is that simple, because apparently the world hates me. This is no surprise by now.

In the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 course calendars at UofT, if one were to look up Cog Sci & AI Specialist program (ie: mine) one would see the following quote:
"JLP courses are Social Science courses; students who take two JLP half-courses will have satisfied their Social Science distribution requirement."

Awesome, I said to myself. I was taking a History at the time, and would probably take one or two more Humanities thereafter, so that section was covered; I had to take two JLPs (they're language/psychology stuff), so my Social Science was covered; I was taking a billion Sciences, so that was covered too. I was all covered. La la la, dance dance dance.

So this fall I'm probably taking a JLP, so I looked up its description. At the bottom of the description it says:
This is a Science course.

Now wait a flingflanging minute! I thought this was a Social Science course.

Sure enough, there appeared to be some kind of error. The question was: in what direction? So I e-mailed my program chair. I was e-mailing him about a dozen other things anyway (my program's course selection is absolutely covered in errors - no exaggeration - and I've been taking this whole "fixing everything" into my own hands recently, getting these errors repaired one by one) and he admitted that there did seem to be some sort of contradiction. But he said that whether or not it counted was out of his hands, I should contact this other person.

(Note: I'm dealing with the same two people who last year couldn't handle the fact that two of my tests were lost, in any sort of orderly fashion).

So this person finally gets back to me, saying that it's not really in her hands. I should contact my registrar. Okay, this feels a little like Catsy PingPong, but whatever.

I contact the registrar's office. Now they tell me that I've gone too high up: the courses used to be Social Science but are now Science. How they are counted is degree-specific, so it depends on what my department has said counts.

Problem: I don't have a department. Cog Sci & AI is basically a rogue program. So I go back down a step, and inform them that it's their call. They think about it for a while and say: sorry, they count as Science credits, because you haven't taken them yet.

This certainly sounds like an arbitrary decision on their behalf, and I don't like the result, so I argue it: I planned my courses around the fact that JLP would count as a Social Science. Though I may not have taken the courses there, surely they haven't changed their content and this is why the type of course changed, but rather that it is hard to categorize an interdisciplinary course, and if I had known that this year they were changing, I would have taken them earlier, but because no warning was given, is it fair to punish me? (Ironically, twas JUP250 which taught me how to turn that run-on sentence into a well formed argument which I sent.)

Response: they're...not really sure. Maybe I should talk to my registrar? The registrar's office tells me that I'm skipping a step: I'm going from program directors to the registrar's office, without consulting my department. I don't have a department, I reply. Their response? Well, University College is sponsoring your program, so you should let them decide. UC? What the hell does UC know about all of this? Nothing. They just give us money. So now I have to go contact some people and explain the whole situation to them and they won't be able to make non-arbitrary decision. Grrr. Oh, for My sakes, will you people stop playing PingPong with me and make your own goddamn decisions without flipping a coin? All this bureaucracy crap is driving me insane. Grrrr.

Btw, now that my psych class has been cancelled due to a SARS scare - HAHAHAHAHAHA - all I have remaining is:

Logic lecture 258 lecture 209 lecture Logic test 258 Tutorial 209 Assignment Psych paper

We're almost there...

Uh, I can't think of anything to say. Probably because it's really early.

So here, take your flash videos, and go!
Two Towers: part one | part two | part three | part four (soon)

Brought to you by the letter F.

So I have a logic test today, but haven't been to any of the classes except for one, where, I have to admit, I was more banging my head on the seat infront of me, writing an e-mail, daydreaming about rock climbing later that day, and trying to remember some actor's name, than actually listening. So I have to learn the content from scratch. Okay, I can do that. I estimate that reading the textbook and doing sufficient sample problems should take me about an hour and a half. I get home at about 3 pm. No problem!

15:00 - Well, now that I'm home, I might as well make myself some food. Grocery shopping and food prep. And then eating, and I don't want to just sit and eat, so I turn on some TV.

16:00 - Okay, all ready to start now. Ding dong. What the? It's CPwr with Final Fantasy Origins. He only stays for a few minutes - enough to make me drool - and then heads off, but then of course I have to go online and start looking for places to download the fmvs and price shop for it.

17:00 - Oops, I'm supposed to be studying. Except....the Simpsons is on at 5. I have lots of time. Watch that for half an hour. Alright, back to studying! Lemmie just sit down at my computer here and....you know. I really need some good "studying for logic" music. I'll use the Noir Soundtrack. Eeps, the CD is busted. Okay, I'll burn another one. Wait, why is my CD burner going so slow? Ack, there's a weird process eating my comp's power. Kill that, and then look into it. Oops, that was my fault. Now, where was I? By this time it's...

18:00 - So now I'm sitting on my bed eating dinner and watching Chasing Amy. Because that's what I'm supposed to be doing tonight. What? Huh? I don't understand you. "Study"? Oh! That. Yeah, I'll get to that.

20:00 - Alright, now I am SO ready to start studying! It's just me, my study music, my logic book, a big wad of paper, and a pen. And my computer. With a 'lotr_part_four.fla' icon on the desktop. I wonder if I'll have time to work on that tonight if I study fast enough. Probably. I wonder how far I am in it, I can't remember. Clickclick. Oh yeah, right up to "Don't you know your Sam??". Almost done. This scene is going to be pretty cool to do. Except I don't like how I did the movement right there. Let me fix that.

22:00 - Right! Study! Okay, I'm all set for studying. Open the textbook. 10.1 The blahblahblah......blahblah.......I bet I know how to do this. Flipflipflipflip. 10.2. Let's start here. The blahblah.......boring! Flipflipflip. 10.3 This is a good place to start. "Forall and exists must be applied to..." BORING! Flipflipflip. 10.6. Okay I'll start reading from here. Oh. We were only supposed to go up to 10.5. Well, I guess I've done all my reading. Whew. Those were a stressful 4 minutes. Time for a break before I start doing problems.

midnight - Grrr, don't want to start on my problems. This sucks. This is a waste of my time. I'll read the entire website of everyone I know first.

1:00 - E-mail from work. "Hi there, I don't want to take you away from your assignments on the last week of classes but could you please [be our web-bitch and fix everything on our little broken ass site because we're incompetent morons and we know that you just have loooads of free time to waste on us]*?" (* May be paraphrased). Hey, look, morons! I'm a busy person! I don't have time for this crap!
*sips on glass of coke*
I think I'll play some Tetris.

3:00 - Groan, so I suppose I'd better get around to these logic problems. Here we go. Question 1.......I bet I know how to do this. Let's move onto....question 8. "Show that each of the following is valid in PD+"....okay....let's go for it. La la la. La la la. There. Check the answer....good. See, I know how to do this. Question 13. "Show that each of the following is valid in PD or PD+". Alright, la la la. Check the answer....right. There, see? I know how to do this. *close book* Bed time!

3:10 - Yay, finally in bed. Whew. Studying is exhausting.

Endings never quite go the way that I feel like they should. I'm always expecting some sort of dramatic climax, hopefully accompanied by epic music, likely written by Howard Shore or John Williams, but this never seems to happen. Endings always seem to be so anti-climatic compared to what I expect. "Sorry, Catsy, our princess is in another castle."

Walking out of Bahen at 9:30 pm last night, late on the last day of the last week of classes. The entire building is silent, except for some students screaming "Wait, what's a socket???" in the cdf lab. And thus, it was over. Sure, there are still exams left, but I certainly don't expect to fail any of my exams. All that's left is determining what mark I manage to slip away with, nothing much more. Sure, there's still that psych paper to write, but that's different from sitting in a class. No more classes in second year. Half of my undergrad classes are over. And no epic music.

So I decided to make my own epic music...through buying toys! This includes buying an ethernet card for my laptop (which doesn't work even though their website says it supports 1400cs; long story, appropriate heads will roll and it'll be resolved), and a new HD (oooooooooo) which I am appointing as my Debian HD and is huge enough to be stuffed with the gazillions of movies that I downloaded....legally, of course. And of course Final Fantasy Origins is on its way, not to mention all the exam rewards. Who says money can't buy happiness?

And I found out that one of my Munk Centre keys unlocks a kitchen with coffee!! Wow. Byebye loitering in Bahen, I've found a new home. Yikes.

Alright, this entry is starting to get a little too positive. Back to the complaints.

In the past 24 hours, I hated:

• Windows' telnet program. It can just foad.
• Having to bike between the north and south campus about a billion times.
• Computer salesmen who won't goddamn hand me a HD box behind their glass case because they think there's no freaking way I know what I'm talking about so help every male in their five km radius first.
• Meetings early in the morning.
• Not being able to sleep.
• Wanting to sleep more.
• Kosslyn. Jerk.
• Writing my psych paper on Kosslyn.
• The coke machine that ate my $1.
• UofT not sending me my T4 slip for last year's workstudy.
• That this year's fun classes are over.
• That next year I'll probably have crappy profs. Because my luck is like that.
• 3Com.
• The knowledge that exam-dreams will plague my nights shortly.
• The fact that Haldir died in the second film.
• Cog Sci & AI. I'm so close to wanting out. (This should be contrasted with how I felt half a year ago).
• Non-disclosure agreements.
• When you're hungry and it's dinner time (3 am) but you're too tired to get off your chair.
• The lack of winged-monkey armies in my possession.
• Pedestrians.
• Motorists.
• Other cyclists.
• The fact that just because I'm too lazy to keep writing more will lead you to think that I don't have anything else that pissed me off. Because I sure as hell did. I'm just too tired to keep going.

There. That feels so much better balanced, doesn't it?

Art donated by fLufFy. Frighteningly accurate.

So next week I have this huge assignment due, and I'm really not sure when I'm going to be able to get it done because I'm either in class or busy doing other homework for the rest of the week.

HA HA HA HA HA!

That's right! No more! Today I handed in my psych paper (I actually ran up to the assignment box and did a nice little dramatic slam-dunk thing and then ran in a little circle doing a victory dance, but no one was around to see). And that's it.

Other than exams, I am dooooooone.

Q: What's it like having no more assignments due?
A: DAMN NICE!

Q: What's it like not going to classes anymore?
A: Sad. I didn't learn _anything_ today. I'm going to fall asleep tonight with the same amount of knowledge that I woke up with.

Q: What's it like being the world's coolest person ever?
A: Fabulous! Because you get to Q&A with yourself and make it look like it's a different person talking to you, and no one questions it.

So now that I'm done all my assignments, I think tonight I'll do absolutely nothing. Mwahahahahahahahaha.

You want to see this!

And once you're done watching that, and have closed your jaw in awe, you can understand why it is that I have nothing else to say. The link speaks for itself.

*smack forehead*

Thank you to Cecil and to a very few number of others who were able to use their common sense to figure out that there was a part four sitting there yesterday.

Stats on those who visited /flash/two_towers.html:
4% Did not have a flash program and thus saw nothing.
26% Visited /flash/part_four.swf and /flash/towers_prev.swf
13% Visited /flash/part_four.swf
10% Visited it and didn't watch anything
47% Visited only /flash/towers_prev.swf
So let this be the announcement for almost half of you.

If you go back to the menu you can see part four.

Yeesh.

So someone asked me a few weeks ago if I minded if they gave my e-mail address to some dude who was writing a paper on moos. Of course I said I didn't mind, because if he turned out to be a moron I could just ignore him or send him back with a pile of sarcastic or false replies. And it could be amusing. I never heard from the guy, so forgot all about him. Then a few hours ago I got this:

Hello, my name is [Mr. Masters Thesis] and I'm currently writing a Masters Thesis on [Masters Thesis Topic], specifically with respect to online communities. I have been informed that this e-mail address belongs to someone who goes on multiple MOOs by the nickname of 'Catspaw'. If I have the wrong address, I would greatly appreciate it if you could e-mail me back and let me know, so that I'm not forced to perpetually wait for a reply that will never arrive. If, however, you are 'Catspaw', I'd kindly ask that you take the time to read on.

[Blah blah blah boring intro, as if I care who his supervisor is and what he plans on doing with his life. Blah blah blah on boring topics he's already researched for this thesis. Okay, shuddup already. Get to the good stuff.]

As well, I have interviewed multiple characters from a wide assortment of MOOs. It is through these interviews that your name came up, and on multiple MOOs no less! As you probably know, it is rare to hear cross-MOO stories, especially on ones where the character in question isn't even a member of the community. Specifically, I refer to the stories surrounding your MOO hacking abilities. I'm curious what is truth and what is simply MOO urban legend, as although I'd like to include both, I'd also like to have them separated beforehand. If you could help me clarify some of these issues, I would greatly appreciate it.

1& Many characters from different MOOs have assured me that you have been proven to be the world's greatest MOO hacker alive. How has this been "proven"? Is there some kind of MOO hacker contest where people can challenge your title?

2& There seems to be some kind of gender confusion. Are you male or female? If you are female, what's it like being a female programmer on the MOOs? If you are male, why do so many people think that you are female? Is your character one and you are the other in real life? And if so, why do you pose as the opposite gender?

3& One character interviewed mentionned that you have never hacked any computer system except for MOOs, but says that it is not for lack of ability, but rather that you have not made an effort to learn other systems yet. S/he even mentionned that you know nothing about unix. Is this true? If so, why?

4& You seem to have a character on Canada MOO. Do you have a character on any other MOOs? How many wizbits would you say that you've hacked and on how many MOOs? The numbers quoted to me seem a little exagerated. Is it true that you hacked the enCore system and that all MOOs using this core are still vulnerable? How old were you when you started and how long ago was it? Can you elaborate on what "imps" are?

5& It seems that other MOOs have "hired" you to patch their security. Do you consider yourself to be a MOO hacker on the side of good? One character on your Canada MOO said that you are "practically a [wizard]" and "harmless, just a little playful". On the other hand, many characters have expressed the opposite sentiment. One character on an educational MOO said: "You can't trust her. She leads people to trust and like her and then uses them for her own ends, crushes them, and leaves them to die. She's absolutely brilliant but is manipulative in ways that people can't understand until it's too late." Why is there such a contrasting view of your personality? Is this a chronological difference (you used to follow one philosophy but now follow another), a MOO difference (you act differently on different MOOs), is one of the views mistaken, or are they both exagerated?

6& With your name, the phrase "wetware hacking" seems to come up a lot. Can you elaborate? If you could provide me with any e-mail addresses of other MOO hackers, it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, any extra information about yourself and MOO hacking in general would be very helpful.

Thanks for your time,
[Mr. Masters Thesis]

So I've sent back an e-mail which basically said: "Hi dude, yeah you've got the right person, but I'm curious about what angle you're trying to take on this paper and thus how I'm going to end up getting portrayed before I give you a bunch of information". Anyway, this whole thing has amused me to death. Here's why:

- Catspaw: the Urban Legend. *Giggle* I can't help it. It's just silly. Sure, the five-years-ago me would have absolutely loved being an "urban legend", but now it just feels a little rediculous, if not embarissing.

- The "gender confusion". Does it sound to everyone else like he's just heard most people calling me a female but assumes that it must be wrong? Look at the pronouns in the quotes he included. He even says "Why do so many people think that you are female?". I dunno, maybe this is just me.

- "You know nothing about unix". As most mooers know, guilty as charged. But shh, don't tell flaps that. I've got to convince him otherwise on this exam.

- "How old were you when you started and how long ago was it?" That's the most round-about way of asking "How old are you?" that I can think of.

- "The side of good". By now I was in a fit of giggles. I feel like I should be wearing a superhero costume or something.

- "Harmless, just a little playful". Who was this? It had to be one of you! Only you guys know me that well! ;)

- "...crushes them, and leaves them to die..." from an "educational moo". Sound like cou-Myra-gh to anyone else? Yeah, I thought so too. You'd all better watch out for me! Or I'll gradually gain your trust and then crush you like a bug! Mwahahaha.

Ahhhh, I'm amused. Gonna go get a coke or something to celebrate.

Sorry, this Second Cup is closed in order to mourn the death of Our Lord. We will be open again on Saturday and on Easter Monday.

Damnit, I'm not doing any mourning; open up and gimmie my coffee!

So I spent last night at my parent's place. Showed my father the LotR flash videos.
"Those are awesome. Now make a Ben Hur one."
"What?! I've never ever _seen_ Ben Hur!"
"It takes you an hour for thirty seconds of footage? You could make a short like ten minute one."
"I'm not making a goddamn Ben Hur flash video!"
"What about 2001: Space Odessey? That would be really cool."
"No!"
"But you could make stickmonkeys."
"I'm not making any stickmonkeys! Why don't you learn flash and make stickmonkeys?"
"You're good at stickflash. You should make lots of movies."
"And fail school."
"What about something like Titanic?"
"I'm not listening. La la la. La la la."
"I really think you should make Ben Hur."
"LA LA LA."

And then, I'd just like to make yet another gripe about crazies on the subway. On the way home this morning I had to listen to the alien connection with good friday. Of course I was in a good mood and felt like humouring the wacko.

"And then for every tear that Christians do not shed on this day, the aliens are able to send another of their females to Earth to try to mate with us."
"Mmhmm?"
"And their spawn are called nephilim and roam the Earth looking like one of us."
"Yeah, you never know who could be Nephlym."
"And then _they_ breed with us and create half-demons who try to turn the world against Christiandom. They are the ones who create video games and movies and try to distract us from Christ."
"You don't say."
"They also created aids, cancer and sars, so that the people would be fearing and not go to mass on Easter Sunday. For every person who does not go to mass on Easter Sunday, the aliens are able to send another of their males to Earth to take over the government."
"And all the alien females get to do is breed, huh? Not a very fair society of aliens."
"That is what they want you to believe. The alien females are also responsible for feminism and pro-choice movements."
"Really?"
"You can recognize the alien females for they are young and beautiful and try to tempt the flesh of Man. And if you see them you must raise your hands and shout 'STAY AWAY FROM MEN, FOR IT IS I, A DAUGHTER OF EVE, WHO SHALL BIND WITH THEM!' and then God will strike them down."
"Just like that, eh? What happens if I say that to a human female by accident who isn't really an alien female? Would God strike them down?"
"..............."
"I mean, would he strike anyone down who I said that to?"

And then he got up and walked away. I made a crazy guy think I was more crazy than him!! YAY! Victory!!

Lastly, my parents were kind enough to give me food poisoning last night. Last time I ever go home for free food! Of course, fLufFy was kind enough to inform me:
fyi - just cuz you're puking and it's good friday doesn't mean you get to take the day off from posting [on insanecats].

And thus you all got this message. Now go away. Or, y'know, leave a comment. One of the two.

ADSL modem broken.
No updates for a little while.
Pissed.

(Wow, I feel like I should have a photo of an old man standing in ankle-deep water on a beach somewhere when I say that.)

I barely survived. Those who were unfortunate enough to have to hang around me during those rough couple of days were witnesses to my twitching, gum-chewing, restless wandering, overall freaking-out behaviour.

But it's over. My ADSL connection has returned and the world is once again at peace.

WHEW!!

In order to try to distract myself, I made this flash video which although not technically accurate (I really had to get a new modem mailed to me, but in the video I just need them to fix something remotely....didn't fit right with the song otherwise) is very psychologically accurate. Enjoy! :)

Is Exam Study season really a time to study for exams, or is it a time to turn paperclips into pointy toe-ring weapons, make falafel pitas, listen to the FF5 soundtrack, run away from your cat who is trying to steal your breakfast, and try to do handstands without breaking your neck? Some would say the first. Others have spent the morning doing the second. But regardless of your outtake on this particular question, it is absolutely essential to remember one thing: the worst part about the fact that it's getting warm outside is that there's no snow on which to pour maple syrup.

So guess where I've been getting a lot of people dropping into my site from over the last little google-crawled while? Search on google for SARS chinatown toronto WHO guide and I'm number one. Mwahaha. I'm also second if you search for SARS mask WHO guide, etc. That's right. Insanecats has managed to push its way to the top of the google ranking for a number of SARS-related searches. Because, well, I rock. Obviously.

I'm getting so sick of this studying thing. I still have a few hundred pages of my psych textbook to read, nevermind learn and then I have to start on linguistics, which is on the same day. I don't think that anyone who doesn't have these two exams side-by-side is allowed to complain about their exam schedule whatsoever. (ie: you have to be Lou, Arie or I). This is distructive interference at its best! And of course, being an absolute moron, I forgot to pick up my logic test on Monday meaning that I have to wait until the final marks are released in eight billion years on I'm-the-worse-computer-system-ever ROSI. (You know what feature ROSI needs the most? A "send your complaints and suggestions to the following e-mail address" line.)

There's something incredibly ironic about trying to memorize a chapter about why it's so hard to memorize things.

Maybe I'll go play DDR until I feel magically motivated again.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So last year I typed up a list of exam emotional stages just before the exam season, based on my memory from high school of what sort of psychological spins I was taken on before exams. It turned out to be stunningly accurate and multiple people e-mailed me about how much they agreed with my stages.

Well, this year I'm going through them again.

A few days ago I moved from Stage 2 into Stage 3 and decided I probably should open my textbooks if I plan on studying. And then I've sat grumpily in Stage 3 for the past couple of days, kinda doing some studying, kinda, almost, kinda, often, kinda.

And then last night I was at the grocery store (buying a chocolate bar, coffee ice cream and a bottle of coke; all the studying food groups) and then all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever except for the fact that It Was Time for the stage-switching to occur, I was standing next to the frozen juices aisle when it occurred to me: I don't know anything!

In psych this has been proven, in ling I must think I know what I'm talking about but don't and I must just be faking what I know in computers because I'm going to be failing all four of these subjects in my future exams.

Stage 4 hit like a ton of bricks.

Reading the answers to assignments "I don't know this stuff. I was just lucky. And I probably failed this one". Flipping through old failed midterms "I haven't fixed my knowledge since then". Why didn't I attend the 10% tutorials? Why didn't I go talk to more profs and figure this out sooner? Why didn't I keep ontop of the textbook readings? Why didn't I do the weekly assignments? Why didn't I start using unix when I was 2 instead of now? Why didn't I attend all the lectures?

Why have I doomed myself to failure?!

*cry!*

Thisstagewillpass. Thisstagewillpass. Thisstagewillpass.

I am, like, so in stage 4 right now, it's not even funny. I don't know how I'm going to handle 6.

Hello1? We haven't received an update in three days now! What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how tiring it is to sit around and hit refresh every five minutes? Pleeeeeease say SOMETHING!

Alright, alright already! I wrote an entry in the car ride up to Ottawa (on the 26th) but am feeling so lazy right now, that I don't feel like uploading it. Didn't write one on the way back (27th) despite having lots to write about, cuz we spent the whole time solving the world's problems. (Extend the open source philosophy to other systems, spread the responsibility of raising children to a greater community, remove prestige from the management hierarchy, same salary for all jobs such that appeal comes from love of the work rather than the benefits, fewer Wendys' salad commercials, give Catspaw all your money). The last point is still in debate, but I'm certain they'll come around eventually.

So I'm studying. It's extremely exciting. Right now I'm learning thaaaaaat *glance at notes* consolidation is an inefficient explanation for the temporal gradient of memory. And then later today I'm going back to memorize that damn phonetic symbols chart again. (Please be first victory; to do some zoo; all fears somethingsomethingsomething....see I can't remember my mnemonics anymore.)

Yes, it's an exciting day in the world of Catsy. Anyone who was around last year to listen to me talk to myself online about my cognitive science notes in a bizarre "hey, I remember what I teach!" way of memorizing information can start giggling now as this is the plan for tonight. I'm gonna know this damn psych material so damn well.......so that it makes the fall when I fail anyway even more painful.

Yay. So yeah, enjoy your respective days today. And if you have any questions, comments, ramblings, things that vaguely occured to you, good recipes, scary dreams, ideas about the world, phone numbers, mathematical formulas, or any other bits of information, please feel free to distract me with them!

Alright, no time for a full entry, because I'm stuck deep in the black hole between stages six and seven, and I'd like to get out of six and into seven as quickly as possible.

But gotta share a quick story first. So I run over to the grocery store to pick up two more bottles of coke, and on my way out of the store, this old guy comes up running behind me. I figure that I probably left something at the checkout counter, so I turn around.

In one hand, he is holding a $20 bill.
In the other hand, he is holding a dog biscuit.
And he is holding them both out towards me.

"I'll pay you twenty bucks to eat this milkbone", he says.

Where the hell do all these crazies come from?!?! And why do they always want to talk to me?!?!

Okay, back to studying.