Right, so, I know that I haven't been writing much here, and this is gonna be a sore excuse for an entry. More of filler, really. Said bye to Lao and Cecil, got home from Vancouver in the wee hours of the morning, went into work the next day, then hung out with Rappie in the evening (who's visiting, if you missed that), then went into work, then hung with Mud and Rappie, and this weekend I have to head out to some family thing to visit with my uncles, and then maybe upon my return on Monday I'll get back into the swing of writing stuff here again.

I'm bringing my laptop with me, though. Many thoughts bouncing around in this head of mine, and it'll be a good excuse to be antisocial and work on some of them.

And, uh, yeah...that's it. Go outside and enjoy the day. Stop sitting inside and reading insanecats.

The preview for Alexander was next. Standing by his army, marching through the streets. "By the age of 25 he had conquered most of the known world," Mr. MovieVoice pronounced. They hadn't yet announced that the preview was about Alexander the Great, but it was easy to tell. Who else had conquered the known world so young? .........yet.

I grinned at my own thoughts and leaned over to Jason. "I'm going to do that too, y'know."

"By 25? Only three years left. Better hurry."

"Three and a half!"

Still, that's not a very long time, is it? If I'm doing my undergrad for two more years, that would only leave one and a half years to conquer the world. That's not to say that I'm not doing conquer setup work parallel to my undergrad, but one and a half years isn't a long time. Add grad school to the picture and the possibility disappears.

I can see the movie preview now. "She, after claiming that she'd conquer the world by age 18, then 25, then 30, then 42, then 56, conquered the world at age 71." It just doesn't have the same ring to it. Even when said by Mr. MovieVoice.

"She, after claiming that she'd conquer the world, became overwhelmed by how long the process would take, and instead went to lead a life as a fruit picker."

I know that I wouldn't go to see that movie.

The summer is over. Everyone knows it. If you ask students how they're doing, they respond by talking about the courses they're going to be taking in the fall. September is on everyone's minds. The rest of August is just a formality.

"Are you well rested? Are you ready for another year?" I like to scare students. I like to scare profs too. "Do you have your lessons all planned for the upcoming term?"

I'm not really worried. Fall term, Spring term, Summer break, they're all the same. Wake up, then think and work until sleep takes over. Delay sleep with caffeine if possible. The only difference is whether the "main" stream of what I'm supposed to be doing is the fun part, or if I have to make all the side streams into the fun stuff. Oh, and some stressful evaluatory spikes around midterm and exam seasons.

I like to keep myself busy enough that they all look the same.

"You've been busy this summer", a friend of mine was saying earlier today. "Are you going to have more time to hang around once the fall term starts?"

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. ahh, that's a good one.

Walking through Kensington for the second time today, I was stopped suddenly by a young boy who came marching confidently up to my legs. He was no taller than my waist. He looked right up at me and I looked back down.

"Why is your hair blue?" he asked.

"I was born that way," I replied. The answer rolled off my tongue with ease.

"Why is it that way?"

"Well, you know some people are born with light skin and some people are born with dark skin, and some people are born with brown hair, and some people are born with blue hair."

He looked right up at me. Then spun around and glanced back at me over his shoulder. "I have a Spiderman backpack," he pointed.

With that, his mother from across the street called for him and he ran off. I'm not sure why, but I think that this was the best response that the kid could have possibly given. It was somehow perfect.

With several lectures, seminars and tutorials already lined up for me to give this year, I'm feelin' good about getting a chance to do lots of one of the things I love to do best: corrupt eager minds. Now all I need is someone with my level of uncalled-for sarcasm to follow me around and give the intros:

"Hi everyone, this is Catspaw, and she has a whole lotta opinions about stuff and won't seem to shutup about any of it until we let her talk. Yes, I know that you all want to go home but---hey! You in the back! Stop trying to escape! Sit yer ass back down and listen. If you leave, everyone else is going to want to leave to! So sit! Now then, what was I saying? Oh yes. Catspaw won't seem to shutup until we let her rant for an hour or so, but hopefully then we can all escape and do something more interesting like try to slam a freezer door on our knees without balancing with the other hand. Now then, without further ado, here she is. Please try to avoid a riot like last time."

I note that no one lets me rant about my opinion on water [1], child safety [2], or dinosaurs [3]. But I don't mind so much [4] because most of the requested topics are things I can rant on about for weeks without taking a break. Nevermind an hour or two.

If all of the potential plans happen, and none of the confirmed plans are cancelled, some of this year's Things Catspaw Will Traumatize People With will include:

- Collaborative Learning in a Constructivist Environment [5]: RCAT
- Virtual learning environments: University of Westminster
- Social engineering: KMDI
- Women in CS (with some heavy cr4x0r undertones): Ryerson ECE
- Hacktivism: McMaster U
- Applications of MOOs in Hypermedia: University of Westminster
- Computer Security: 3 open CS tutorials
etc.

Anyway, I'm hyped about it all.

"Thanks everyone, for putting up with Catspaw's lecture. You can all go home now! ....Hello? Hello? Aw, crap, they all stabbed themselves in the throat with their pens again, rather than have to listen to another ten minutes of whatshername. I guess we'll have to move on to yet another university..."

---

[1]: It tastes a lot better if you add coffee grinds to it. Otherwise it's just plain undrinkable.
[2]: Let them bang their heads against a cement block if they really want to. Safety's gone past reasonable limits. Kids are gonna grow up without having ever had to pull a jagged rock out of their own knee. I had to do it, and look how well I turned out! ;)
[3]: Definitely hot pink.
[4]: Though sometimes I cry myself to sleep screaming "why won't they let me lecture about edible playdough, why?!?!"
[5]: Ten points if anyone can guess which insanecatser came up with that title

Who thought that it would be a good idea to let users change their display name? I spend half my time mousing over each name and trying to figure out who is who. Is it too much to ask that you just add something to the end of your name, rather than replacing your whole name?

Here are some examples of the MSN names of people on my list tonight:

• And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown that the ancients did not know everything. -- Pierre de Fermat
• but apart from that, I'm electrically derelict
• teh MLE
• When days were different
• isn't it weird how we take a sheet of material day in and day out
• I know you have my Coventry
• veins blossoming with liquid gold
• -Hot Sauce- love my 8-|
• Asymmetrical wanderings are where I am

Here's my comment: these are not names! These are little quotes or sayings or whatever else you want to call them, but they're not names! Here are some examples of names on my list that are acceptable:

• Ben
• Francis
• jon
• Matt
• Omni@Home
• iper salvo
• Pirate Cecil
• Cat
• eric
• Mathieu Fenniak

Now let's discuss some of the fundamental differences between the Names That Are Names and the Names That Are Weird Sayings. Number one, I can immediately identify the second group by their names. Number two, I can see the second group's names without having to use a scrollbar. etc. Now I'm not saying that one can never include a saying with their name. Here are some examples of acceptable hybrids:

• Lou - "Credo Quia Absurdum"
• mich the fish - clean toby, clean!
• Raptor (witty message broken)
• Ben - Gmail
• Ornoco - so sick of Java
• john: AHHHHHH!

See how I can still tell who you are? This is acceptable. Otherwise nicknames become more like when people send you e-mail but include the entire message in the subject and then have a blank body. ARGH! But worse, because they're supposed to be used as identification.

I'm done now. </rant>

Does the whole world have nothing better to do than sit around all evening and watch TVO?! Gah. I think when I take over the world, I may have to get a body double to play the part of me.

In other news, I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am.

"You're going to Second Cup?", Tim asked, eyebrow raised. "Supporting multinational corporations, again? Supporting the Man?"

"I'm all up for supporting the Man", I nodded. "I plan to be the Man one day. Don't damn the Man!"

"How're you going to be the Man?", Jason asked. "Hormone therapy?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not gonna be a man. I'm gonna be the Man. I'm currently the Man's apprentice. And once He teaches me all His secrets, then I'll kill Him off. Then I'll be the Man. And then when people say "let's fight the Man. Damn the Man!", I'll say, "hey, damn you too, buddy!" and throw a rock at him. The only real way to fight the Man is to kill the Man, and become the next Man. That's what I'm doing."

I don't get why my team thinks I'm so weird.

Friday afternoon, there's a knock on our door at work. We all glance at each other: who could that be? Finally, I'm the one to stand up and walk towards the door. Open it. There's no one there.

The only trace of anyone having been there is a familiar figure on a cross (yes, you want to click on that photo. Trust me, do it. Do it do it do it) wearing a crown of thorns. He's on piece of paper that features a quote from the book of Revelations.

I suspect that it's a sign of an apocalypse to come.

(Or a sign that Clarence needs a hobby.)

"So what do you do?" he asked. It's one of those questions that I hate the most. I know how this is supposed to work -- I know that I should have a one-minute answer always available on the tip of my tongue so that if I'm ever in an elevator with a billionaire who's looking to give away his fortune to a worthwhile project, I have something impressive to tell him -- but for some reason "what I do" is never a simple answer.

My answer depends on what impression I want to give. It varies from the buzzword dramatic stuff ("I study internet censorship and surveillance") to the mundane ("I'm an undergraduate student") to the academic ("I'm writing a lightweight framework for managing undergraduate team programming projects") to frightful ("I use social engineering to con my way into taking over the world") to outright sarcasm (like the subject of today's entry, which I overheard said today and decided to add to my repertoire of "things I do"...especially once I've taken over the world).

The one minute timer is set in my head. Sixty seconds to impress. Any longer and you just become boring. Five seconds to think about the answer I want to give. Fifty-five seconds to say it. "I'm a computer science student here. This summer I worked on software development tools for undergraduate teams, and during the year I work at a lab that studies online censorship."

Not bad. Not great -- I sound a little too much like a "picked at random" undergrad -- but not bad. I've used up about thirty of my sixty seconds. He asks another question: "Are you planning on graduate school afterwards, or...?"

CRAP! No fair asking questions I don't know the answer to. Admit to the uncertainty, lie about the reasons, and you're all set. "I'm fairly academically inclined, but I also think there's a lot of important things to learn from the outside world. I'll no doubt do a combination of both during my lifetime, so I think it's more just a matter of choosing which I'd benefit more from doing first."

He smiles. A winner is me. Hands shaken ("well, you sound like you've got it all figured out. I wish I'd had that sort of insight when I was an undergrad. I look forward to seeing what you do with your life") and we're done. Successful contact made.

I don't do first impressions. They're not my specialty. But I think I'm starting to figure out the game. Now, if only I could figure out how to use hate mail to my own advantage, I'd have the entire world just sitting in the palm of my hand...

We should probably warn someone: the frosh are shrinking. Has anyone else noticed? They're getting smaller and more frightened. It's not just a problem with the frosh, either. The older students are getting younger too. Fourth years used to be unimaginably old, and now they're just my age.

But the problem's even worse than it sounds: the campus is shrinking as well. What used to be a labyrinth of indistinguishable buildings is now a cosy and familiar arrangement of second homes to me. Has no one else noticed this strange metamorphosis?

And --- I don't mean to frighten anyone --- but the Computer Science department seems to have wasted away. The faculty used to be filled with distant, unknown faces. But everyone who was a stranger to me seems to have left. Only those who I know remain. There must have been a flood of people quitting that no one noticed. It's the only possible explanation.

Oh, and they must be offering fewer courses this year than ever before. I used to have trouble keeping all the course codes straight because there were so many. I know them all now. I wonder what happened to all the others.

But, most obviously, the frosh are shrinking. They're no more than children. Who decided to allow children into our university? This must seem like a big, scary place to them all.