Author: chuma

Today I was not such a complete ass than I was last saturday.

According to my gigantic master playlist, I have over 219 hours of music in MP3 format. That’s over nine days. This is good to know in case my CDs suddenly di sappear in a cruel twist of cosmic fate and the momentary suspension of the laws of physics.

Haven’t had time to do much thinking. It’s the week of non-thinking I think. T oday I decided to set up a web-based bookmark manager. Yes, I’m a geek. Links when I get it all nice and done.

QOTD: “I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be.” –Office Space
Yes, I just saw Office Space. I’ve had it for over a year but never got around to watching it. It was rather funny and so much of it was pulled right out of c orporate and geek culture. I was actually rather impressed. “PC Load Letter?
What the fuck does that mean?!!” Heh. I also had no clue that it was written a nd directed by Mike Judge, who created King of the Hill, one of my favourite shows. Aah, the ugly truth of No rth American society rears its ugly head once again.

Song: Guster – Window
I loaded my huge fuckin’ playlist into Winamp, clicked shuffle, and I swear this is the first song that came out – one of my favourites. Guster live from 3/17/98. The title for this update actually came from the beginning of the track when Adam is babbling on about something.

I’m back from Easter weekend. I had no time to unpack any of my stuff before I left, and today I’ve only got my computer unpacked. I also moved my dad’s machi ne downstairs and set it up as a NAT router using the 56K modem, which also invo lved running 100′ of CAT5 from my room on the second floor to my dad’s office in the basement, via the laundry chute. This is, of course, only temporary.

But this NAT router isn’t very stable yet, which has been pissing me off this ev ening. Now I’m just really tired and once I get all the crap off my bed I’m fal ling into blissful slumber.

Yes, I’m done. It totally hasn’t sunken in yet. All of my stuff is in boxes al l over the place. Today I’m getting dragged down to the cottage for the weekend . Aw fuck. I really don’t want to go, I have a list of a million things I have to do (especially reply to a very short but important e-mail message) but I’m n ot going to get to it because now I have to jump in the shower before my parents get back from shopping. Bye everyone until the 23rd.

This morning I found this really strange Slashdot comment. I have never heard of the term “filker” before ever, but I immediately understood what the idea is – song s like this have been part of hacker culture forever.

I was also trying to find some pages about the NEC Ultralite PC-17-02, and I rea lized that my own hardware page was the o nly personal page left on the web that even mentions it. Meaning my goal is cle ar: dedicate an entire page to information about this machine. It’s coming soon . I’m gonna have to redo my site map soon I think – I keep on adding sections.

I wrote yesterday’s exam in the main gym of the Athletic Centre. This is probab ly the worst room for thinking in the entire world, but that’s not what I want t o talk about. There were three courses writing in the AC that evening: my cours e (Contemporary Cinema), Music and Popular Culture, and some Anthropology. The first two courses mentioned are generally regarded by the university population as bird courses. So as I buried in a sea of people in the lobby waiting for the doors to open, I looked around and noticed that about half of the people in the crowd just didn’t look like they belonged in University. They mostly looked li ke they were skipping their OAC or Grade 12 classes to come hear and write their exam.

What I’m trying to get at is that it seems that many people are being pressured to enter university right out of high school when they haven’t personally consid ered if it’s the right thing for them. As much as the government tries to trans form the post-secondary education system, universities are not institutions for training: they are institutions for research and learning. Learning is not the same as training – you can teach me how to use an oxy-acetelene torch to weld tw o pieces of metal together, but if I want to design and build oxy-acetelene torc hes I have to learn about them and understand how they work. University is abou t gaining massive amounts of understanding, usually in your major, but often jus t about the world or the “real world.”

Song: Brand New Heavies – Brother Sister
My sister Sylvia got me into the Brand New Heavies last semester when she asked me to find some of their music for her. Since then it’s become a permanent part of my collection. This particular track would probably be considered “Caring F unk” in my own personal music nomenclature. It’s real smooth, but it seems to want to give you a big hug at the same time.

I finally got the status of my Newton Messagepad repair from Apple, no th anks to the people at their 800 number – bunch of clueless monkeys. I used 411 and the address on my copy of the courier waybill to find out the real Apple Can ada phone number, called and very nicely asked for the Repair Centre and that I would like to check on the status of my repair. I then got transfered to the Se rvice Desk and spoke to George, who is one of the top 2 most helpful phone suppo rt people I have ever talked to. After giving him the case number he told me th at 1) I had included a personal cheque instead of a certified cheque, 2) The amo unt on the cheque was wrong (I forgot to add the tax) and 3) I would be getting a replacement unit. I mentioned that I also needed to change the address that t he unit would be shipped to, and he told me that all I had to do was mail a prop er cheque with a note of the new address and he would ship my new (woohoo!) Newt on to the address. This made me oh so happy – if I had visited in person I’d pr obably have wanted to give George a big hug. Exam in three hours, but I don’t c are, because I finally know that I’m going to have my Newton back before the end of the month.

Song: is still Macy Gray – I Try
And here are the lyrics.

Just in case you stumbled here by accident, I’d like to point out that things he re aren’t quite finished yet and so most links will be broken or pages will not look like the rest of the site. Everything will be fixed by May 1.

It’s really hard to believe that I survived my second year of university. Well, I’m not quite done, still got two more exams to write, but I don’t expect to di e during them. I can easily look back and say “this has been one really fucked up year” which, ironic enough, is probably exactly what I said at the end of las t year. I gained a ton of new friends this year, which I actually didn’t expect – I guess I thought it was going to be like UTS (my high school) where I’d go b ack to the same old crew, year after year, but it’s not. University is fluid.
It’s madness. It’s crazy. And I love it. I’ve already got my plate full of th ings to do – although I’m leaving the Com puter Science Club I’m already diving head first into college government. W ill I survive? Will I go on academie probation after this semester? Only time (and the registrar) will tell.

Song: Macy Gray – I Try
I heard this song and also saw the video for the first time on April 7th at the CASU Council end-of-year house party. I then totally forgot about it until toda y when I checked up on Calum’s journal and noticed that he had just picked it up. S o I grabbed a copy and it’s on repeat in Winamp right now. The lyrics are simpl e but remind me of all those times when I did something stupid and just wish I c ould go back in time and do the right thing. I’m going to invent a time machine . Yeah.