Ahhhhhhhh, its freeeeeezing cold in here. Have the people downstairs never heard of heat?? I'm actually wearing gloves to type. And the always-classy highschool sweatshirt. And my boots. (But not to stay warm, I don't know why I haven't removed those yet. I was last outside like five hours ago. Hold on, I'm taking them off now.)

So some of you have pointed out to me that its going to be the third of March in a few hours. You've politely asked me in your most respectful tone of voice when my latest flash masterpiece is going to be available: "Is your two towers ready yet??" and "Hey, where's my flash?!" and (my favourite) "Hey lazyass. Its almost the third. Where the hell is my flash video that you promised?"

If we all examine the trailor in question, we will see that it says that it is coming "this March". It does not say that its coming the second that your calendar turns to March. The real LotR claimed to be coming in December, and when did it appear? On the 17th. So just calm the hell down and put on your patience hat and lets all just wait a bit, okay?

I'm on Helm's Deep, about 3/5ths into the movie. It'll come, just be patient.

And if you want it to come faster, you can volunteer to do one of the below:
* Make the whole damn thing for me.
* Drive me to classes every day so that I don't have to spend eight million hours waiting for the streetcar to arrive.
* Dress up as me and write my CSC209 midterm for me. (Condition: you have to do really well. This applies especially to C.Pwr, Lao, Daxy, flaps, etc.)
* Sit in Linguistics class and mock the people in the front row for me. (Lou and Arie aren't allowed to claim this one, as they're necessary for the people with whom you mock).
* Sit in psych class and understand all the content, but still fail. (Again, Lou can't claim this one).
* Do my lab in thirty seconds and reduce the self-esteem of my partner. (Lao, Brin, Damnal...you guys might be good at the second half of this)
* Reclaim Jason's office. (Anyone but Jason. Sorry Dr J)
* Get this damn song out of my head. I've been singing it all day. Replace it with anything. I don't care what.
* Build a time machine such that I don't have to rush in order to finish this by the end of March.

Yep, any of those would be helpful. Otherwise.....shut up and wait.

Hmm. Freedom tastes a lot like an orange. In fact...freedom tastes exactly like an orange. Wait a goddamn minute, this is an orange. Oh yeah, I'm eating an orange. Lousy orange, trying to disguise itself as freedom.

Anyway, freedom is juuust around the corner for me.

Tuesday holds...early teaching (dawn - noon), class (12-2), lab prep (2-whenever), lunch (whenever-4), summer job stuff (4-5), an hour break (5-6), more class (6-9), then get my notes in order for Wed's midterm (open book, yay yay yay).

Wednesday is class (11-12), midterm (12-1), then the anti-war rally thing. Now I'd really like to attend the "walk out" at noon...but quite honestly, there are some things that I can't bring myself to "walk out" on. Like midterms. But I'll be thinking vicious anti-Bush thoughts while I write little unix commands.

Thursday is class (12-1), free time (1-6)...where I'll probably sit around bored. Hey, anyone around campus Thursday afternoon and want to do something? First come first serve...anyway, where was I...oh yeah, lab (6-6:01).

Then what?, you must be asking. What midterms do you have to study for? What projects are due? NOTHING! That's right. Other than a few tiny assignments, I have one whole week with nothing due. I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself with all that free time. What is one supposed to do on a weekend when one doesn't have any assignments due? I can't remember!!

Mwahahaha. I hope you're all writhing with jealousy.

So, got a letter just now (a few seconds after midnight) from York University. Its about the NSERC application, but I got a personalized non-form letter.

I regret to inform you that we have decided that it is more appropriate if the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards for York University go to students who are currently enrolled in York University. You are therefore not being recommended for an award.

Jerks. Not because they decided to keep their awards within their own university (that's perfectly valid), but because when my potential supervisors had asked them, they said that it would be okay.

Fortunately, I'm Catsy, and expect for the entire world to screw me eighty times over, and thus always have a backup plan! Backup-job moves into priority seating position, please ensure that your hands, arms and legs are within the train at all times, and enjoy your ride.

Anyway, so now UofT's job looks better.

BUT, the York supervisors sent me e-mail saying that they still want to work with me this summer if I'm interested, it just wouldn't be NSERC-funded so they would have to fund it from their own pockets. Am I still interested? Not sure. Gonna have to think this one over.

AMAZING LITTLE PLANET

Item # 3011078702

Current bid US $0.01 (approx. C $150,000,383,000.01 )   Starting bid US $0.01 (approx. C $150,000,383,000.01 ) Quantity 1 # of bids 1 Time left 23 hours, 7 secs Location TORONTO Country Canada Started 05-Mar-03 10:34:47 EST Mail this auction to a friend Ends 06-Mar-03 10:34:47 EST  Watch this item Seller (rating) Catspaw(-7) High bidder anon@georgebush.com(569) Payment PayPal, money order/cashiers cheque, personal cheque, or see item description for payment methods accepted. Shipping Buyer pays for all shipping costs, which are provided in the Payment Details section below. Seller ships internationally (worldwide).

Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item. You should contact the seller to resolve any questions before bidding. Listing currency is U.S. dollars ( US $ ) unless otherwise noted.

Description

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---

So you know what's almost worst than having too much to do and no time to do it?

Having too much to do, and the time to do it....but not wanting to do it.

I have a solid 45 mins before I have to head to class this morning, and this afternoon I have a good couple of hours off, and this evening post-lab I'm going to have the evening off. And I have lots of stuff to do. Formal e-mails have to be sent, perl scripts read, cgi work done, workstudy stuff done, etc. And I doubt I'm going to feel like doing any of it.

"You're the second laziest person I know", Jason giggled two days ago. "After me."

It's not pure laziness. Pure laziness is last year when I went thirsty without moving off of my computer chair and taking the one step necessary to reach my fridge, because it just felt too far. That's pure laziness.

This is more like....lack of motivation. And despite Jason's comment, I'm not entirely unmotivated. Lots of things motivate me very highly. Once something crawls its way into my "obsessions" category, motivation is no longer a problem. I guess the problem is that I only have three categories:

Obsessions
Have-To's (study, etc.)
Don't Care

Moving things from one category to another is really hard. Unfortunately, most things fit into the last. I want to get all this work done. I just need a shove to get started. Maybe I'll try to trick myself into obsessing about it.

(PS: Mud made me french toast for breakfast. Yay Mud!)

(For some reason, my site had a sudden swelling in weirdo-visits yesterday. People who got here by searching for things on google that not even I feel comfortable sharing publically (though ask if you're curious ;) ), and just a whole heck of a lot of IPs that have never been here before, coming from weird referers. Thanks to everyone who helped mock 19sep02 while I was away in class. ;) )

Now then.

I'm so pissed at my lab partner, and yet even more pissed at myself. On the trip home from class, my streetcar broke down and I had to walk most of the way home. It is only this calming freshair that is going to keep this from being a rant in capslocks.

This is our second lab together. Let me quote myself and remind everyone how I was feeling after the first one:

I had labs last night with my partner (Mr. Random). We finished the three hour lab in (listen closely now) sixty-two minutes. How did we accomplish such a feat? We didn't get in each other's way. Here's how labs work, my style: I tell him which chips to get, what sizes of wires to hand me, and get him to strip wires that need it. He likes this arrangement because he doesn't have to do anything, and I like it because I don't have to deal with an annoying brat who thinks they know what they're doing but is just screwing up my lab work. THAT's partnering.

So today, my partner decides that he doesn't like this arrangement anymore. "I want to understand what we're doing", he says. Groan! Fine, okay, I can be patient. I've had a pretty good day today, so I don't mind doing a bit of explaining. I've done the lab prep myself because (naturally) I don't trust anyone else going anywhere near my grades, but he explains that he's done some prep too. I glance over at his sheet of paper. "That's not prep", I inform him. "That's underlining the handout. This is lab prep. See all the circuit diagrams with the numbers on them?"

"What do all of those numbers mean?", he points. Right about now, I should have been wise enough to see where this was going. Therefore, I blame myself partially for what happened. So I take a sample chip and start explaining to him how it works, how I've numbered which connections I'm going to make, and how you can tell what chips equal what logic gates based on the little handout we got at the start of the year. "Why do you need the flip flop?", he asks. So again, I start to explain why. If the adder fed into itself, you would get stuck in a huge loop. That's why you need a clocked flip flop. "Where's the clock?", he asks, pointing to our apparatus.

Now, he's not a bad person. He's actually somewhat humourous. Under different circumstances, I might be willing to put up with his company for a whole five minutes without making some bad excuse about why I had to leave. He just obviously has no idea what he's doing.

So an hour or so passes. We've barely begun. I notice the time and the fact that we were done the lab at this time on the last occasion. I've basically explained the entire 258 course content from day one. So I start wiring things together, but every few seconds he gets me to stop so that I can explain what I'm doing. "See this 'and' gate on the diagram? That's what this circuit is [from two seconds ago, you fucking moron] and so where it says '3', I'm putting this in the third hole." "But there's already a wire in the third hole!" "Right, that's why I'm putting it down one." "But then what chip is it connected to?" "The same chip. Remember?" "Oh yeah! Okay, keep going."

So I decide to give him a task to do. "You can try to make us an SR-latch using this part of my diagram right here." Then I get Part A of everything working (in what? five seconds?). "How's it going?"

He frowns. "It's not working". So I try testing his circuit, and sure enough, it's not working. Then I spot it: "oh, you put power to ground and ground to power", and I fix it. It's still not working. I try a few more things. Still not working. He must have burnt the chip (or it was fried to begin with), so I grab a new one and stick it in. Okay, now we have a working SR-latch.

"Can you show me what you did while I was doing this?", he asks. About two hours of our three hour lab have passed at this point. So I decide to show him. This connects to this, this does this, this is why that won't work, etc. He still doesn't get the "clocked" concept, so I decide to use a bit of our board that's free and some chips to show him what would happen if we didn't have a clock. Speaking of which, at this point I'm watching the one on the wall very closely. 40 mins left in our lab. I should keep going.

So I pull out all the sample chips, and ensure that the "real" circuit is still working. It's not. I play with it a bit more. Our adder isn't adding. Pull out the fun testing-toy and start working on figuring out why it's not working. He's asking me what I'm doing every step of the way: "I want to learn how to debug".

30 mins left. 20. "Alright", I say to him, finally frustrated. (The patience of Catsy is great, but it has limits). "I need to get this working. And I don't think I'll have enough time to do so if I have to explain to you what I'm doing. You basically have a choice here: you can either know what's going on, or we can get this done. And this is an exclusive-or." (Flaps points out that here he should have said "exclusive-wha?" for full amusement.) He says that he'd rather know what was happening. "Well", I shake my head, "I'm sorry. I guess it wasn't really a choice. I want to pass."

Of course, right now we have nothing. The first half of the exercise which was working is no longer working, because I ripped out the temporary stuff to quickly and obviously screwed something up. Eventually I narrow it down, and solve the problem. 15 mins. Okay, part B. "How can I help?", he asks. He looks at me with big I-want-to-help pleading eyes. But mine are watching the clock. 14 mins. I want him to feel like he's helped, I really do, but there's 14 mins left and at this point it turns into a fend-for-yourself thing. "You........can watch." I try to say it with as little hostility as possible. I don't know why, but I don't want him to feel useless. But I don't want to fail this more. He looks hurt but nods.

12 mins. Wire wire wire. 8. Ahh, something's not working. 3. Problem found, solved. Run run run. 2. This connects to that - ahh, which of these is for the third LED? That must have been unplugged!

"Alright, that's it. Time's up." the TA announces. Fuck!

My partner smiles at me uselessly. "That was a good try", he nods. "You were working really fast. You're so good at this stuff." Argh, why does he have to be nice? Why can't he be an asshole so that I can scream at him for preventing me from finishing this damn lab? I want to strangle him. I want to kill him. And then, once he's dead, I want to raise him from the dead and kill him again. This lab is worth 2.5% He's costing me real, legit grades here. I look down at my nearly-complete set of chips and wires. I might go insane and kill him. It might be worth it.

"Now I know more so I can help more next time", he says. Big smile again.

Please be a jerk, I want to say so badly. If he was a jerk, I could kill him. But he wants to learn. I might kill him anyway. I wonder if I could be allowed to work alone, then...

I hate group work. I hate it so much. It makes my skin crawl. I don't mind working with other people (Ob and I made the world's best programming pair) but I hate it when group work slows me down. And costs me marks.

I don't know what I'm going to do next time. I want perfect again in an hour, like last time. I don't want to repeat tonight. But when he gets that eager-learning look, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to tell him to sit there and shut up and let me do the whole thing and then when we're done I'll explain it to him if he wants. I don't think I can. Yet it's not my responsibility to answer his questions; why doesn't he go talk to the TAs? ARGH! Maybe he'll be sick. Maybe I'll find someone who is sick to go cough on him.

If he costs me marks again, heads will roll.

I'm at my parents' place, and I don't think I've written an entry from here since Christmas. This keyboard has a foreign feel to it, despite being the one that I used for six years or so, so I'm probably going to be a lot more typo-prone today.

So I'm not supposed to still be here. I was only coming here for the day, but this was extended to the-day-and-the-evening when food was offered, and then it started snowing heavily and my parents decided that they didn't want to drive me home. I'd take the subway except for the fact that (a) it's super far, and (b) I have every article of clothing I own with me, because there's a laundry machine here. Who knew that I owned so many pairs of socks; not me.

Anyway, so I'm stranded here for the night until they drive downtown tomorrow. And my brother was working all day. So what better activity for me to do than to watch the eighty billion channels that they get here??

At home (downtown) I rarely get a chance to watch TV. We get five channels or whatever, which is enough to provide me with the Simpsons on Wednesday evenings when I'm home (the only day that I don't have evening classes, but I've been staying late on campus _anyway_ recently), and on Sunday nights, and then CityTV whenever I'm bored and looking for mindless entertainment. Last term I watched a few hours per week, this term it has been seriously cut down. But even when I _do_ watch TV there, we only have the "normal" stations.

Here, it's a completely different matter. My parents decided to get 500000 channels _after_ I left home (naturally), and let me just say....TV has gotten weirder! Allow me to give you some concrete examples to work with of some of these shows...

Blinky the Rainbow - Okay, this is a kids show, or is at least on the kids channel. I don't know why I stopped on this channel when I reached it, but it might have something to do with the fact that my entire TV screen became violently bright pink all of a sudden. I have no idea who the hell "Blinky" is, nor did I see any sort of Rainbow. Instead, I watched what certainly looked like two cartoon flowers having sex on a bright pink background. I don't know what they were _supposed_ to be doing, but there were two flowers with big happy faces, horizontal, ontop of each other, wiggling around, on a bright pink background. I tried to find a website about this in hopes of finding a picture I could stick up to prove to you all that I'm not as crazy as I must sound, but couldn't find anything. Damn.

Kraft - The last time that I tuned into the Food Network, they were making turkeys and this gave me my inspiration for the famous apple-stuffed whole chicken feast. The time before that, I learned how to test when oil was hot enough for frying things (like for making fried bananas). My point: it was informative. Today on the Food Network 2, there was a show called "Kraft". Here, a chef was making Kraft dinner. I'm not kidding. He also was making some kind of chocolate cake or something out of a Kraft box. But making Kraft dinner. On a cooking show. Ahh!

Man versus beast - Have you ever wondered if fifty midgets are stronger than an elephant? Have you wondered if the world's fastest eater can beat a bear in a hotdog eating contest? Neither has anyone else! So I don't know who the hell decided that this show was a good idea. (The elephant won.)

Married By America - The next in the "panem et circenses" modern ludi series (as I've decided to call it), this show is something about some person whoring their life away to viewers. It involves some contest/voting/something but I forget what because I couldn't watch for long enough to even pretend to care. This is getting sad.

Are You Hot - I don't think that I can come up with any mocking to improve on the show's own website: Are you hot??.

Naked news - Wow. That's all I can say about this. Wow. The news is given to you by girls who strip naked. Completely naked. Giving you the news. "The US plans to launch an attack against Iraq within the next week", says the completely naked news anchor who obviously wasn't selected for her media skills, shall we say.

This is my list _after_ I got my brother to help me decide which of the stupid shows were the stupidest. (We removed "Does God Love You? Maybe.", "The World's [adjective]est [noun]" shows, and another half dozen from the list which were admittedly extremely stupid, but not as stupid as the ones above.)

Why the hell do all these stupid shows exist when I don't have my own show yet?!

Well, this may be the last that you ever hear from me.

I have a new unhealthy obsession. And it's all my brother's fault. A cheesy little computer game which is distantly related to Busta Move only a lot more challenging. It's all about recognizing impossibly swift arrow keys as quickly as possible and playing them to the beat of a variety of annoyingly catchy songs.

Now's when I need a little videocamera to make a short film entitled "Catsy's Hand: Playing this game instead of doing her homework" where you can all watch me grow sixth and seventh fingers as evolution kicks into overdrive to try to support this insanity.

Anyway.....toodles!

(Of course, I'm only joking. I'm still incredibly addicted to this site. I have room for multiple addictions.)

Where the hell do all of your randoms come from?

This is what you've asked.

Here are just some of the things that people have searched on google for recently that has landed them on insanecats. I'm ready to be afraid.

People are weird. WEIRD. Some of this stuff is, well......odd beyond all odd.

I might end up being late for class in typing this up, but sometimes it's just worth it, you know? So does everyone remember how in August NetworkSolutions stole insanecats.com from me and refused to give it back and we had a huge custody battle over it, blahblahblah? And they entered very high onto my List of Death. In August, I believe my List of Death looked like:

List of Death

• My Computer TA who screwed me over
• My Calculus TA who screwed me over
• My Cog Sci TA who screwed me over
• My Physics Lab TA who screwed me over
• NetworkSolutions
• The people who signed up for PSY370 before me
• People who think my stickcat is "cute"
• etc. (I think there were a couple hundred thousand others)

So this morning I got mail from our good ol' buddies "NetworkSolutions (R) a VeriSign (R) company".

Dear [Catspaw], Note that they spelled my name wrong in three places

Last summer you transfered (sic) insanecats.com away from us due to technical problems. No, I transferred it away because you're a bunch of fucks.

You may or may not remember some of the complications that occurred during this transfer. What, you mean when you stole my domain name? Kinda rings a bell...

We have improved our services and are willing to offer you 1,000 travel miles if you transfer your domain name to us for just three years. Brilliant! So I lend someone something, then they refuse to give it back, so I have to pry it out of their hands while bashing them over the head with a wrench, and now they're asking me to borrow it again. Yeeeeah, this makes sense.

Start getting more from your web services provider. Start earning miles with Network Solutions.

Sincerely,
Joseph Pickett
Director of Customer Service
Network Solutions

Fuckers.

(First: in the longstanding tradition of insanecats...if my sources are correct then we have birthday wishes! A very happy birthday goes out CPwr who is my inspiration and proof that it's possible to get this damn degree with only minor permanent wounds to one's sanity. Happy birthday CPwr!)

There's been an important update to today's entry. You can see the original entry below.

Brought to you by Catspaw's Insomnia, I give you a short flash video! (This is to tide everyone over until the big one is done). As always, I highly recommend that you watch these with sound.

Enjoy!!

---

I can't sleep.

Not in that "oh, it's 4 am and I can't sleep" way. Though I wasn't sleeping at 4 am either, but that was on the opposite side of the sleeping period. It's 8:30 am. I only fell asleep around 5. I should be deeply involved in some Land of Chocolate dream.

But I slept lightly for the three hours that I was in bed, and now can't seem to fall back asleep. C'mon, I need to be rested! But, nope; not happening. There isn't something in particular that I'm horribly stressed about, my mind is just keeping itself too busy with the "little things" to worry about sleeping tonight:

The program wasn't copying off the CD properly; you should have returned your form to the Munk Center a whole seven days ago; you screwed up that question and know it; you have to send that guy an e-mail message back, stop avoiding it; you were supposed to finish cleaning last week; your "end of March" deadline for yourself is impossible; if you'd wanted to sleep nicely you shouldn't have downed so much caffeine yesterday; you shoulda taken that other course instead of this one; you're going to fail that particular course horribly; you're going to do so much worse in that other course than you want; you can't just not connect and use that as an excuse; your computer really needs to be de-MSed; get that damn song out of my head; you should have posted your never-posted rant for the 12th, sucks to if they saw it; you can't recall how your own theory went, ha ha; please just let me sleep?

I could sleep until 3 pm this afternoon if I wanted to. I only have a tutorial today and I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to make it (bad habit forming! a bad habit is forming! danger danger!) so I was just going to head onto campus leisurely whenever I woke up and then loiter for a few hours then come back home. It was going to be an opportunity to sleep.

This whole not-sleeping thing is ruining all my plans. Bother.

"Are you in university?", asked the likely-crazy guy on the streetcar.
"Yep", I nodded.
"What are you majoring in?"
"Computers."
This seemed to shut him up. He looked out his window for a few blocks. Finally he turned to me again and said: "I didn't think women were in computers."
"You're right. I lied. I'm majoring in advanced sewing", I responded and got up and left, as it was my stop.

NOISE!

Gah! What the hell was that high-pitched noise?
"Don't leave yet", says the girl in my dream. "We haven't found it yet."
What was it though?

NOISE!

What is it? Oh. I'm sleeping. It's trying to wake me up.
It must be my alarm clock. Why is my alarm set? What day is it?

NOISE!

If I set my alarm it must be a school day. What happened last night?
Maybe I can use that to figure out what day is it. What class do I have to get up for?
I have no idea what happened last night. I can't remember yesterday at all.
C'mon, think. Did I have class yesterday or was it the weekend?

NOISE!

I stand up, run over to my alarm and slam it off.

NOISE!

What the hell?! Why is it still making that noise? Wait, it's coming from over there.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's the phone.

.....Well, it's silent now. Hey -- and it's the weekend! I don't even have classes today! YAY! I'm going back to bed.

Yeah, so a bunch of amusing things were said and I kept trying to make mental notes to remember to use that as today's title, but then someone would say something even more amusing and this would overwrite the previously amusing title until I started just accepting that everything I was memorizing was temp memory, and then after walking away I accidentally deleted it all.

So today's topic is: Spring. The debate is: is warm weather starting, or is this just the weather's cheapass attempt to try to get me to bike to campus so that it can create a blizzard while I'm in class?

There have been an amusingly large number of comments about my weatherpixie recently by some of you (who, you might notice if you read this pre-blizzard, tends to be wearing a lot less than usual):

alright, it's 0 degrees and she's wearing a short-sleeved shirt which leaves most of her stomach bare....At least she no longer has the Britney Spears type look of this morning.

your pixie is dressing more like a hussy what with this warm weather appearing...

hey, you should lend your weatherpixie a sweater or something.

omg.. that pixie's gonna be nekked by the day's end...

Yes, but can we really trust the weather predictions of someone who seems this eager to take all of her clothes off? I, for one, am skeptical.

Update: 1:15 PM:
So I just got out of class. Guess what's not sitting where it was at 11? My bike. Well.......fuck.
Fortunately, I'm honestly just too damn exhausted today to actually really care. The "well, shit!" feeling will probably sink in tomorrow. Oh wait, I have to get up early and stay up late tonight. Okay, it'll probably sink in on Wednesday.
For now, I just feel really damn ass sorry for the poor sod who is off riding my bike somewhere. I wonder how long it'll take for him to realize that the brakes don't work.

Prior to update: 10:33 AM:

Two cat's paws touching This kind of rage can only be counterbalanced by a sappy photo.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Whew, well now I'm starting to feel better at least. Let me quote to you part of the e-mail message in question:

> I've finished converting all of the pages into their smaller
> format. Don't use the program to upload pages again, as it
> will revert them to their original size and messed up HTML
> tags. Instead, change things by hand or send me an e-mail if
> you don't know how to change something and I can change it.

Bad news :-( We had to upload something in a hurry and used the program again, but it uploaded ALL of the pages and now they're all in their original sizes. This should take second priority to the python script, but could you please go through and change everything manually again? And then tell us how to avoid this problem so that it doesn't happen again? Thanks.

There is no blunt object heavy enough for chucking at their heads.
Pro: At this rate, with them breaking things faster than they can fix them, I'll be employed by them for eternity.
Con: I have about three hours of sanity left. Tops.

...still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator's report card would say: "[Catsy] is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on [her] cooperation skills."

Of course, that's not the one who I relate to in this novel (fact: I can name seven people on here off the top of my head who have read the novel in question), but the quote above has a good point. Or no point at all.

Anyway, my point, which is what you keep tuning in to hear (you'd think that I'd begin to feel insulted that only obsessive weirdos read my site, but I don't), is that I'm greatly amusing myself through observing the shift in my own outlook on the academic world recently.

All of a sudden, without warning, I'm having little wars waged inside my head between being content or grades driven. I'm not taking notes in psych class because I'm too busy actually listening, and thinking about what's being said, and what it implies, and deciding whether or not I agree with it, and why...but I should be ignoring this and just taking notes in order to get the marks.

Similarily, I'm feeling more inclined to skip the useless classes so that I have more time to explore the fun ones. I've found a whole bunch of stuff that I want to learn and I feel less inclined to playing the little games necessary in order to get there.

But I'm still being radically obsessive over absolutely needing to accomplish the goals that I've set up for myself: finish this year with mark X in class Y, TA next year, get into grad school here, etc etc.

These two things are contradicting each other. I want the end result, and I'm willing to fight to get there, but I don't want to fight with the pre-stated rules.

As soon as I ignore the grades-stress (you're gonna fail psyyych, you haven't attended enough logic classes to pass thursday's teeeest, you stopped handing in linguistic assignments...etc) campus life becomes amazing! I'm learning the most awesome stuff, and luuuuuhhving how it's going and all that.

I think I'm probably going to continue playing the diligent-student game until I'm high enough in it that I can afford the luxury of playing the academic game MY way: smashing my way through leaving stunned bystanders in my wake!

In the fabled words of CPwr: BAM!!

Ages.

When I hit Grades 5-6, all of a sudden I stopped hanging out with all of my friends and joined a new group: the guys in my class, and younger kids from other grades. All of a sudden all of my female friends jumped into the giggle-over-that-cute-boy mindset and I definitely didn't feel like playing along. So I hung out with those who hadn't "matured" yet.

This worked out perfectly for me, despite some chants that I should "grow up" (psh, I still need to "grow up"!) because I had more in common with them than with my previous group of friends. Who wants to guy-giggle when you can invent elaborate games?

And then, for about a year, I "caught up" to my age. My peers were the exact right people for my frame of mind.

Since then, I've been naturally drawn to an older crowd.

I feel like I fit in better at Jason's pizza parties, say, where everyone's older than me (except little Muddymudchuck, smirk). Our conversations are stimulating, our humour is similar. But at the same time, there are people my age who fit into that category too. And some who are younger, though I haven't really the means to know many right now (and of course I can know people more older than me than it's possible for me to know people that amount younger than me).

But this age thing is weird. It's the difference between whether you were born with a blog in your name, or you consider yourself to be too old to bother learning how to use computers. When you grew up influences how you grew up, and how long you've been around often influences how much you know.

So what if you're age Y hanging around with someone who's age X (X != Y), and you get along well. Would you have got along well if you'd both been age Y? What about age X? I can think of some people who would have annoyed me to absolute death if I'd known them when they were my age. But most I just have to wonder about.

And what about people who you know who are your age. Choose a bunch of best friends from pre-university school. Would you have ever gotten to know them if you were a year ahead, or a year behind? There was a lot of prestige at stake, then, socializing with those who weren't your exact age.

Fortunately, it seems like the gap continuously shrinks as you get older. Two and three year olds are extremely different, but few could tell a 45-year-old from a 46-year-old. So this little puzzle combining ages and dates and fooling around with one of them, will become less and less significant until it doesn't even make sense anymore.

I still think I was born five years too late though.

Alright, before I give a quick rant, let me say this right now: a bunch of you have very differing opinions about the war. If this entry's comments turn into a flame-fest, I'll -w the file and comments'll turn off. That said, it's rare that I'm gonna talk about politics on here (too heavy for my light little ranty site) so if you have stuff to discuss, might as well do it now.

I heard about the sirens going off in Baghdad a whole three minutes before CNN said anything. Probably as soon as CNN heard about it, but it took them a full three minutes to get enough details to announce something.

"I am only staying to see whether or not they take down our internet", said the guy from Baghdad who I was talking to. "Then I go to one of the bomb shelters." But fifteen minutes later (with his internet connection still working, though others' had failed) he left anyway.

But even with my direct contact gone, I'm chatting with people who are chatting with people who are right there. We're all waiting for their internet to go down, as the US is planning to do. But this is a weird sensation...being so close, yet so really really far. Chatting with someone who heard the anti-aircraft explosions before slashdot even had the "US declares war" article up. The internet certainly makes "distant warfare" a whole lot closer to home.

Anyway, anything I write here will become "old news" fifteen minutes later, and "uh, duh!" news by the time most of you read it, so I won't bother.

But, well.....people signing off the internet and saying "Bye" when you might be the last outside person they speak to ever.........I don't think I can wrap my mind around it. I know I can't. It's just too weird.

We're sorry. Your update cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and hit 'Refresh' again later today. This is a recording. Please hang up now.

---

Later (2:30ish pm):
So guess what I saw today? My bike.

Yes, that's right. My bike. Sitting. On campus. Outside of a building. Half a campus away from where I left it. Not locked. And definitely not there last night.

This means that someone put it there today.

I'm debating whether to go take it back, or stand outside with a baseball bat waiting for someone to come take it when they leave the building.

It's also horribly raining, and I'm going to Slogs' birthday party tonight in Hamilton, so I'm not even going home. And it doesn't have a lock (they must have cut and ditched mine) meaning that I have nowhere to keep it over the weekend where it won't get stolen again.

This is too surreal. I'm gonna go see if it's still there.

I'm really too tired to write about anything today.

So instead I made a slideshow featuring what it would be like if I had a personal photographer following me around, documenting my very exciting life this week.

Thanks to everyone who showed up for movie night. Everyone who cancelled can just die. And everyone who doesn't live in Toronto and thus didn't show up can die too. Or send me cookies.

So, amusing story.....

Everyone remember how I was in a real panic about my last logic test? Worth 25% I hadn't attended a single class since the previous test, including lectures and tutorials. I was positive that this was going to go horribly.

"I'm going to fail!", I whined at Arie and Lou after linguistics class.

"I don't know anything!", I cried at fLufFy on the way there.

"What if I did horribly on my logic test because I didn't attend enough classes and just fooled myself into thinking that I knew the content?", I complained to all of you.

The tests were handed back today in tutorial. I didn't attend the tutorial, but I did go in within the last ten minutes in order to pick up my test.

95%. HA! Well that's just about the worst lesson anyone could ever teach me, ever! Let's see if I ever go to THAT class again! I did worse when I was attending. No more logic lectures for me, nosiree. (I just hope I don't start generalizing this into my other courses and skipping all of there stuff too. Man, am I ever glad that this term is ending soon in some ways. I love this term but I'm starting to quickly lose my will to attend most classes.)

Oh, and I suppose that this is what you're all looking for.

So last evening rocked, but last night sucked too much for me to sit on my chair and mumble a few incoherent sentences on the keyboard in order to explain why. So you get it now. On this happily rainy morning. (Ha ha, take that day star!)

So yesterday evening I got another bike. Yay. Unfortunately despite being used it's still way too shiny and pretty looking for me to risk taking onto campus. So one of my jobs today is that I'm going to junk it up a bunch. Put duct tape around parts of it, tape up the seat as if it's ripped, etc. Maybe get some mud and dirty up the frame. It'll be fun. Operation Devaluification!

But that meant that yesterday I got to ride it home. Now it has a definitely different feel than my old bike, but I already was pretty used to it by the time I got home. The brakes work. The first time I hit them lightly I nearly flew off the front of my bike. I'm used to slamming on the brakes meaning "brake lightly" and slamming on the brakes and using my feet meaning "stop". Also the chain is brand new...so it doesn't take much force to get the whole thing going at a good speed. The tires are also a whole lot better (damn, I could have used those tires this winter) especially for making sharp turns at fast speeds.

What's really changed though is me.

It's been a full six weeks now since I've been biking several times a day to class and back. Reading Week was the dividing line. After Reading Week it was just too cold and snowy and so I wimped out and figured I'd take the streetcar for a little while. A little while became a longer while, and then when it finally became Spring outside my bike was stolen.

Anyway, so I'm rushing up and down the hills of my favourite one-way street on this bike, silently racing a car like I always do, but this time...my legs hurt. After a few blocks I have to slow down and let the car win. Since when does the car win?! Ahhhh, I've lost all my biking muscles. My legs have been replaced by useless chunks of flab and bone that can't speedbike if their lives depended on it.

Also, my reflexes are soooooo slow. Cardoor opens, and it takes me one second to see that it's opened, one second to evaluate if I should swerve and brake, and one second to do it. That used to be reduced to but an instant.

So yes, I did hit a car door yesterday.
And yes, I did get harassed by the cops yesterday.

I've only been back on my bike for a few minutes and already my two "favourite" parts of biking have happened. Ironically, they happened at the same time.

I notice the parked cop car (in a no stopping zone) from half a block back. It's taking up 2/3s of my lane, and the lane to my left has streetcar tracks on it, which I don't like to cross over because I've seen the number of bikers who get their wheels stuck in the tracks and cause an accident. But there's lots of space for me to go between them. However unlike most cars, cop cars have their back windows tinted so I can't look through the window to see if there's anyone in the car that I have to watch out for. I'm a smart biker though, and assume that there is. I prepare my reflexes to have to do some major swerving as I start passing the cop car. This is when a car drives up on my left, covering the other lane, so now I can'tswerve. And this is when the driver of the cop car opens his door.

BANG!

So I get harassed for a minute about "what the hell am [I] doing?", then put on my best "I'm an innocent university cyclist" face and explain that I don't like crossing the streetcar tracks and why, that the car pulled up next to me, that their windows are tinted, and that technically it's a no-stopping zone so that things like this don't happen. (I don't mention that maybe they should use their mirrors before opening the door.)

Another minute of them checking the door to see whether or not it's broken. (It's not.) Then a minute of further verbal abuse about how "it's dangerous on the roads. If [I'm] not prepared for this kind of accident, bad things can happen". I have no idea what this means, but I nod dutifully, and am eventually dismissed: "Alright, go on. But be careful! Safety is your responsibility!"

(This is when I want to say "I thought safety was your responsibility. Isn't that what you're paid to do? Increase safety?")

So I bike the rest of the way home problem free. Ahhh, how I've missed having speeds faster than a brisk walk. Catsy the cyclist is back, and I've missed it.

Lou points me to next year's psych courses. Vervaeke is listed as teaching PSY370. ???? How is this possible? Wasn't he fired? Didn't he quit before he was fired? Aren't him and the psych department not on speaking terms?

This is probably a mistake. This must be a mistake. Unless.......

That would be too cool. Reason enough to live through PSY270 this year. DROOL!

Wellwellwell. It's that time again in CatsyLand. Looking too far into the future and worrying about things that aren't ready to be worried about yet. Today's irrational fear (other than my Masters Thesis nightmare that some of you heard about) is "Part Time or Full Time Student?" brought to you by the "Catsy, who likes to worry about things too far in advance" corporation.

Why am I even caring? Let me share what the options are:

Option A: FINISH THE DEGREE ASAP. Life is short, you have a whole planet to conquer!
Well, with this option it looks like I already know my schedule for this fall. I have a few pre-reqs that I reallyreally need to complete asap so that I can take the courses that require them in the second term. The result? An ugly looking fall term.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
12-1	CSC324	CSC324	MAT223	CSC324
1-2		MAT223
2-3		MAT223
3-4	STA257		STA257
4-5	STA257		STA257
5-6
6-7		PSY370		JLP374
7-8		PSY370		JLP374
8-9		PSY370		JLP374

Pros:

• Hey, the schedule has Fridays off. That's pretty sweet. I've never had that before.
• Earliest classes at noon? Sweeeeeeeet. (Take THAT csc258!)
• I have to take some of the dumb courses eventually anyway. Might as well get them over with.
• Vervaeke might teach PSY370. I'm sorry, is that me drooling?

Cons:

• SNORE! I'm already skipping these classes, and I haven't even ended this term, nevermind the whole summer. Linear Algebra, Stats...snore. And then two courses given by the psych department. If they dislike me as much as PSY270 has disliked me this term, I'm in deep shit. And only one computer course?? Cry. What kind of fair deal is that?! Sure, just take all my happiness from this year and yank it away next year why don't you!
• Though it looks okay, this schedule is actually pretty ass. Let me tell you why. First off, I'm good at knowing myself and what sort of things I can handle. Last summer I was almost completely right about what most courses would be like, before I took them (with a few small exceptions). Look at this schedule for a moment. Remind me how I'm going to convince myself to get up on Thursday morning for a stupid little one hour long class if, when I skip it, I can sleep in for another SIX HOURS?? There's no way I can do that. Any Wed at noon is a tutorial. HA! I'm not going to be able to attend that. No way. And guess what? The stats on Wed is tutorial too. All day Wed is a bunch of tutorials. Well now I'm going to be tempted to take Wed off. And so if I skip all day Wed and skip Thu morning, after my class Thursday night I get a whole day and a half off. Well now, I also have Fridays off. So what's a little skipping Thursday night classes now and then. If I skip Thursday night (because I know others taking it and can get their notes), then I would have from Tuesday night until the next Monday off! Uh oh. See where this is going? Not good! This schedule is skipping-prone. Too easily am I lured by the temptation to stay in bed. (Ironically, I notice that I'm not lured very hard by the go-to-bed-instead-of-writing-this temptation.)

Option B: TAKE YOUR TIME, DUDE. Why are you rushing undergrad? You're loving it to death! Stay an undergrad for as long as possible. ENJOY it!
Alright, so maybe I should be slowing down a little. Take a few extra fun courses. That hieroglyphics course I wanted to take, a few histories, maybe some non-cogsci philosophy, an english or two, uni255, drama, environment studies, physics. There's a billion other courses I want to take. So maybe I should slow down and take a few fun classes while working on the side in some fun job or another in order to have the time to actually enjoy my undergrad rather than race through it.

Pros:

• Time to take some extra courses. You know you want to.
• Time to figure out what the heck you want to be doing with your life instead of rushing through it.
• Delaying the end of undergrad: the coolest thing since FFX (smirk)
• Time to get more involved in the dept. Slither my way into every corner of the university.

Cons:

• Don't get to graduate with friends my age.
• "Technically the grad school committee isn't supposed to care how many years it took you...but you have to wonder: 'Why did this person require more years to finish?'" Sigh. That's right, The Voice Who Knows thinks it's a bad idea. "It won't necessarily harm you...but it definitely won't help you, and it _might_ harm you. But if you don't care about grad school, go right ahead." Mutter
• I have to take all the prereqs anyway. I have to do 3rd and 4th year courses anyway. I have to risk doing badly in them eventually. Am I just scared of failure and trying to delay/avoid it? I must admit: maybe.

So there you go. There's my potential-life sitting on the table. Both would probably work out. But which would work out better? I have no idea.

Maybe I'll just drop out of school entirely and do something less stressful. Like mash my head into a blender.