ESC is done!!!, physics close behind, economics in the distance

ESC is finished!!! YEAH!! No more BS, no more principles, no more "look at yourself in the mirror and answer that question for yourself"

No OC today.. Fox is trying to push one of it's new shows by tricking people to tune into it while they're looking for OC. Cheap network tricks. I instead checked out some of the office which comes highly reccommended from Hornyhamster. It's very random. There's this weird boss who tries to be funny and comes off as a complete jackass. I'll look into the british one, that's reccommended by "Hello Cheers guy" who generally has high TV standards.

I wasted a good portion of the evening writing up a statement for the nanoclub elections. I'm not very good at writing such paragraphs. There isn't anytime to develop some BS. You need to be funny, serious and direct all at the same time. Hopefully I'll get acclaimed and none of this will really matter, but you never know who might change their mind at the last minute and throw their hat in the ring. I've learned that it's not worth worrying about who your competition is. There were the good old days of high school when I won one of two spots over fifteen people. I still think there was some corruption with vote counting back then, but I guess I'll never really know.

I should probably get working on physics lab.

bye for now

Tuesday from hell: Part 2..

uh oh.... it's Tuesday and that means more liquid helium with a side of frustration. Anyway I look at it, my data is bad and there isn't a thing I can do about it. I'll have to crack out some hardcore BS for mr. superconducter prof.

24 was again very nice yesterday. Next week is going to be insane! The terrorist stole the stealth bomber and CTU is planning an assault on Marwan's hideout. I hope Behrooz makes it though, I can see him as being the next Jack Bauer. Kim should dump Chase, marry Behrooz and run around in slow motion a la baywatch while saving the country. That'd be interesting TV.

I also got the opportunity to play some bball yesterday. I along with mr. beyondchatsworth made up for some of our eng sci embrassment by smoking mr. facebookaphile and friend. If our team had a little practice we could do some serious damage in the eng sci tournament.

That's all for now..

bye bye

it's been too long..

I continually pushed refresh on my blog when it said I hadn't posted since TUESDAY. I can't believe it's been that long... I've been slacking.

So, I guess I'll talk about the busy day that was Thursday. The morning brought the "special lecture" by the "Lo and Behold" (LB) man. It was actually very good. He did a thorough review of his section of the course and most of it was making sense. To top it all off, he came through with a total 8 LBs to break the 50 mark..

Then came materials chem. Again, very good. There was the need to make up a few polymer names and structures but other than that I believe I should do well. I expect at least an 80% class average. Hopefully this class will balance some of the arts and science beating we got with quantum last semester. Luckily mr. liquid nitrogen was ill with something so we were let out a full hour early.

We took advantage and headed south to China town for some dinner. We scored a nice cheap meal and headed back for Nocturne. It was insanely packed. I don't recall nearly that many in previous' years and the talent was also much better. Besides some classical music which seemed good (I can't really tell), some nice jazz, random guitar players, saigin et al (did well) and Juan was the piece de resistance, jesterhat. Pulling out some random guitar tricks and mild head bobbing he wowed the crowd. I don't think people fully appreciated what he was doing as we were all in a state of awe not realizing that he was playing a classical piece of music!! Good work jesterhat, you sucked it up in design but came through at nocturne.

Following nocturne was Pav's bday party at Peel Pub. We first started the OC download then headed over to the eng sci pack event. A lot of people were finished with midterms so there was a lot of alcohol flowing. It's all kind of fussy after that but I do recall heading back to Roger D's place to catch the OC after it finished downloading. It sucked... Ryan's Bro turn good guy?... I'm not liking this. He'll hook up with Marissa get someone pregnanat, pretty much following in Ryan's footsteps.... OC has some work to do..

This weekend.... lots of basketball/movies (again) and stydying EMPs..

I gotta get down to work, so that's all for now..

bye bye

110 dollars down the drain...

Today.... was crap... crappity crap (a G version of the famous aditya line)

Some helium, a bunch of nitrogen and little results. Damn power supply wasn't working so I had a choice between 4.20K and 4.15K, two points don't work well for fits. And the apparatus was eating liquid helium like a mofo, went through almost 20 litres and at 6 dollars a pop you get the title of the blog. I now have to waste another Tuesday doing it all over again... at least I don't need to go in tommorow morning. I'll be working on ESC and studying materials chem, my idea of a good time.

There isn't much else to talk about, the whole day was spent staring at a voltmeter, which set me up for doing little to no work up until now. I need some down time to recover from the stressful and annoying day.

In this down time I spent a good hour playing this win, lose or draw game hornyhamster sent me a link to. It was fun. There is however a bit of pressure when you're forced to draw for fifteen people and possess my drawing skills. The worst was the word "start"... not as easy as you think. I tried to draw people lining up for a race and someone shooting a gun... but that didn't work out so well. It's those simple words that screw you up.. I still can't think of a good way of approaching that one.

I also watched some of the amazing race. It annoys me when people on that show complain and bitch. They have the opportunity to travel around the world for free and they don't even realize it. They could be anywhere and it wouldn't matter it's all about the next taxi, the next challenge that keeps them going. If they would just step back for half a second ever so often and realize where they are and what they were doing it would go a long way to help their morale and motivation. The money is good... actually great... but that can't be the only thing. This is leading me to the amazing race is like life analogy.. but screw it..

that's all for today.

bye bye

Dina dead, Jack screwed...

I did not see this one coming. I thought Dina was going to play a big role in the show and they have gone ahead and killed her..... or have they? We haven't actually seen her dead body, the shooting was behind a wall and they do seem to be pushing the Behrooz deal again. I'm thinking he'll play a bigger role somehow. Out to get Marwon to avenge his mother's death... that'd be cool. Enough of 24.. I'm gonna move on.

This morning brought some frantic MSE Pset finishing. Let me reiterate that I do not mind working hard, crazy problem sets, loads of work, that's fine. What I hate more than anything is unclear directions, vague questions and crappy teaching. I think that pretty much sums up the MSE course. And damn Phil... the bastard. He went over the easiest problem in tutorial claiming that all the others are trivial. The bastard can't draw.. that's the real truth. And the prof who's unable to answer a question about the problem set 30 mins before it's due. Greaat.. fucking great.

Then there was economics, probably a good lecture but I was continually falling off to sleep. All sense of time was thrown off. Everytime I woke up in class it looked as though we hadn't gone ahead, all his slides look the same. I thought we were still on the same topic, so I figured that it wouldn't mean much to nap some more. That all back fired when the class ended and I realized that he had in fact covered 20+ slides... damn..

Following the nap I headed over to the Physics lab. Tommorow will be the much anticipated six hour block of time where I finally start taking some data. I think I have a decent understanding of what's going on, I can only hope that the data comes out nice... There's nothing like some good physics data, it's like opening a gift and getting a surprise. Pushing submit on faraday and seeing a reasonable chi-squared probablilty...

The things that bring joy to an eng sci....

gtg.. bye bye

Two days to catch up on...

I did it again.. I acted like a complete bum for the entire weekend. I did absolutely no work and watched a bunch of movies/basketball.

Ladder 49 and Flight of the Phoenix suck.. big time... One has no action the other no story.. When I mean no action or story I'm not lying. Ladder 49 was a predictable sob story that looked like some 9/11 tribute whereas Flight of the Phoenix was a plane crash with a bunch of other randomness. Damn... how the hell are these movies popular? All I was looking for was a nice action movie with a decent storyline, a hero and some hot girl to tie it all together. Steven Segaal needs to get back in the business.. his under seige movies are classics. You haven't seen a real action hero till you've seen him snap a neck like a twig. I bet I could make an action movie.... all you really need are these components.

(1) Your hero. Ex-military/ex-cop who has done their bit for their country and wants to relax a bit. Even better if they're reluctant to be the hero in the beginning but are slowly forced into it.

(2) Villian and his small army. Somehow has a grudge against a hero. Usually of russian origin, ex KGB or something like that. But nowadays they could be from the middle east as well.

(3) Hot girl, either a girlfriend, wife, daughter or a random girl who ends up falling for the hero in the end. She has to somehow unexpectedly get caught up in the whole mess with the climax being when the villian ends up going head to head with the hero while holding the girl hostage.

(4) Authoritative figure(s). Someone who dissaproves of the hero and questions what they're doing. Making it tough for him the entire way, until the end where they finally realize that the hero is all they got and he'll save the day.

(5) Lots of bloodshed (Obvious)

(6) Hero wins in the end (Obvious again..)

If I go heavy on (3) and (5) I'll have a blockbuster..

k.. enough with that..

Basketball was everywhere this weekend. NCAA, NBA, CIS (canadian university championships)... which brings me to more complaining. Why are sports treated like crap at UT? We are the biggest university in Canada and we stink at men's sports. Everyone is gonna bring up the whole university is about academics and we shouldn't waste the money.. but it turns out that well-run sports programs bring in the most money for universities. There are ticket and merchandise sales as well as more alumni contributions. I will admit for UT to turn the corner it is going to take some money but I really don't mind. Everyone seems to be at the trough feeding off incidental fees, why shouldn't the sports teams take some... on a temporary basis at least. It'll raise school spirit which UT is in dire need of and raise the profile of Canadian universities.

I gotta finish the MSE Pset..

bye bye

Blaze of Glory..

ahhh... I missed OC yesterday.... actually, when I think about it, it's the first time I've missed it since the christmas break... I've had to move myself into the lowly class of torrent downloader, which in the post-suprnova times, is not so easy. Luckily, I did find the oc torrent late last night. But, when I awoke in the morning I found it had only downloaded 20% of the file. Damn leachers... I only hope it'll be done before I need to go into the lab at 1..

So, why did I miss the OC? An insanely long production of skule nite. From start to finish the entire thing lasted three and a half hours! (with a 15 minute break inbetween). Overall, it was good, but it could've been a lot better if they concentrated on fewer storylines and actually told some engineering jokes. I know that's the reason I came... who doesn't love a good artsie or eng sci joke? I guess the skule nite producers don't. Perhaps they wanted to take a different direction this year... not sure.. but nevertheless I'll probably attend next year, it was still well worth the price of admission.

We also got back our ESC formal reports yesterday. Although I did fairly well comparitively, the comments given to me are not fairly constructive. So, I don't see how my mark can improve much with a second revision. The comments don't seem to say much as they are quite vague and even contradictory. For instance, for one of my conjuctive adverbs (something that connects two sentences), he indicates that it should be changed to "however". Seems good, but then he goes on to comment that I use "however" too often. WTF?!?

I gotta get some breakfast so that's all for today.

bye bye

The simple life.

Yesterday.... was kind of boring. With no new ESC material to complain about, all I really have is economics. Due to the lack of deadlines, I've been starting to slack off. So, to counteract this laziness I decided to attend the ill-attended economics tutorial yesterday. I quickly realized why only about 5% of the class shows up to these things. They're boring, the TAs suck and they're placed about two hours after the last class of the day. I can deal with the boring and scheduling, but the TAs are just inexcusable. Our TA knew nothing. The question she discussed was sooo easy and yet she somehow managed to confuse the hell out of everybody. She shrugged off questions from the class and pushed forward so she could finish a full half an hour early... wtf. She's almost as bad as Tae-Ho, the infamous inorganic TA. Who's paying them for this crap? I could go on and on about bad TA experiences in eng sci, but I think I've proved my point.

Onto the title of this blog, "The simple life". Yes, I admit it, I watched some of the show yesterday. It's like that time I watched "When celebrities don't wear makeup" or something titled similar to that. You know it's garbage, the lowest type of information out there, but you somehow can't change the channel. Celebrities have this type of intellectual hold on all of us. For those who are confused, "The simple life" is the supposed reality show of one Paris Hilton. The stupid ass rich heiress who can't figure out that it's not a good idea to videotape/picture yourself doing explicit things. What the hell is wrong with her family? They must be smart, intelligent people if they were able to build a hotel empire, did they just let her go? Why not cut off her money, force her to go to college.. something.. their family name is forever screwed and I thought that sort of thing was important to rich people. Ah... whatever... it's just that people like that piss me off... She has unlimited resources, all the time in the world and she can't make something respectable of herself... I'm sure she'll be one of those "don't like it people" (from constantinine) when the time comes..

That's all for now. OC and Skule nite.... my motivating factors for the day.

bye bye

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue..

The morning brought the much anticipated nano vs. cheng (and Morag) meeting. Although there was no juice or muffins, the meeting did feel positive in that we have made some progress. "Action items" (as cheng puts it) that stand out are:

(1) Impeach the nano club (hence the white house reference). They suck. They used to be good, but they suck now. The forth years simply lack energy and drive. They like their titles but don't want to do anything. Our solution, kick them out and takeover. Screw them. Who do they think they are? Who elected them? They are obviously not doing anything of relevance. Networking events, a lecture series, anything... just so we can feel good about nano and that our education means something. We're young, intelligent and motivated, with the proper planning, the nanoclub can easily evolve into one of the best clubs in engineering.

(2) Curriculum changes. We are planning to re-evaluate all the core courses in third and forth year. There is an outside chance that the changes can be made in time for forth year.

After the meeting, there was Nogami... boring as usual.... then physics labs. I actually did some work on the first day, which is very surprising. I think I figured out how to take data, the key is to figure out what to do with it. Some sort of meiseler effect crap with hardcore E and M. To help me figure the stuff out, I took out a few of the reference books from the library. One of them is "Introduction to Solid State Physics" by Kittel (the same guy from thermal physics). Where has this book been? What the hell have we been doing in the first part of phys elec, atoms now, and random points in nanostructures. Just give us a course with this book. Holy crap. This is a core course... this is nano. Someone needs to tell perovic and cheng.

okay.. so I think I get nano a bit more or am at least able state that I am in.. Solid state physical and chemical, materials and electical engineering..... that's the working title for now. That'll shut them up when they ask what nano is.

gtg.. bye bye for today

A fitting end to pi day...

Yes, it's Pi Day, don't ask me how I heard about this but today is March 14.... still don't get it?!? 3/14... 3.14.. I know, it's pretty lame, what's worse is pi approximation day, July 22, or 22/7 an approximation to pi.. k.... enough of that...

so, what else is new... I must mention jesterhats unfortunate leaving of a radioactive sample under the muon tank. A big no no. I hope Tack et. al don't blow up at you.. If in doubt... blame someone, I suggest Roger, as he was working with radioactive samples with compton and he doesn't read the blogs so he can't get mad at me. I used to have that luxury with saigin..

24.... it was again pretty good tonite. They're now trying it seems to counteract some of the stereotypes the show is projecting, namely that all people of middle eastern desent are terrorists. Two random middle eastern guys helped Jack take on a bunch of commandos, but not without a whole speech of how the two were going to stand up for their country... blah.. blah... blah.... I'm glad they're making an effort but they can be a bit more discrete...

Lastly, tommorow morning it the much anticipated nano vs cheng meeting. It of course won't live up to the hype but you can never go wrong with muffins and juice. It'll be great, combining two things I love... free food and complaining. Kind of like george did with the whole sex, food and tv fiasco on seinfeld....

that's all for now.

bye bye

compton finished, raps go insane...

I'm sitting here on a Sunday night... chilling. Yes, Sunday night... no problems sets, no labs, I'm finished it all.. I think I'm starting to like school again. It's great when there's no work to do.

So it turns out the compton scattering lab wasn't bad at all. It was made a whole bunch easier thanks to people like Saigin and Jesterhat (thanks guys). I hope "guy with glasses" doesn't go wacko on me in the interview, if not, I don't see why I shouldn't smoke the lab.

Speaking of physics profs, I probably told you all about this but NMR/Aperiodic guy was in the toronto star. Although it had nothing to do with his research it was about his teaching, which people do not at all value enough at the university level. We almost show disrespect to instructors or lecturers just because they're not of professor status. It should be the reverse. I'm in my undergrad, I'm here to learn, teaching is top priority. Screw UT in its we don't give a crap if you can't speak english as long as you publish policy. Now I can see why pure undergrad places like Simon Fraser are good places to learn, there are no pompous profs who take lecturing as a royal pain in the ass thing they do inbetween their research.

Onto the raps. They were INSANE today. Threes raining from everywhere. Donyell Marshall was on fire. All he needed to do was walk over to the corner behind the three point line, wait.... get the ball and shoot. Philly really sucked it up on defence. The guy was on fire and they did nothing. I'm not complaining... it was extrememly entertaining and Donyell picked up an NBA record in the process. I guess I'm still holding onto that very outside chance that the raps can make the playoffs. You never know with this team. They can lose to the hawks one night and tie a franchise high in points the next. With the leafs gone, toronto needs a team to get behind. April is going to feel very dull without the usual hockey playoffs to keep us all entertained, it would be great for the raps to fill some of that void.

that's all for today.
bye bye

revenge of the profs?!?

Yesterday was... interesting.

Not your typical Friday to say the least. I actually slept in for once, which I frequently get the opporunity to do but rarely take advantage of. There's always some BS lab or assignment to take care of, but things are looking good for once, it seems like clear sailing, at least until finals...

About 30 mins before I had to head out for my TEM lab, I was given the star wars torrent. Under normal circumstances, downloading a 60 mb file off BT in 20 mins would seem difficult, but I guess revenge of the sith brings out everyone's benevolent side. The trailer was pretty amazing, tons of special effects, some natalie portman, and some insane fight scenes. The trailer and ceph (a surprising star wars fanatic) also helped me make some connections. I never realized that palpatine was that nasty evil looking emperor guy. I'm now very excited about the May 18th opening.

So, the TEM lab... ahhh.. it was three hours of extreme boredom, which I could normally handle.. BUT... when you are with two other people who seem interested it just makes things worse. We were cooped up in some stuffy room for 2 hours with a faint ethanol smell, a compressor that periodically turns on and off and lighting that constantly needed to be changed. Think about it, it was a damn torture chamber. .. I'm just glad I have that lab over with, it's not something I want to repeat, hence the underlying advice, avoid the TEM for grad school and thesis if at all possible.

Then there was of course the piece de resistance, eng sci basketball. We probably shouldn't have played but some strings were pulled and our crap ass team was the given the opportunity to fall flat on our faces. I'll mention the highlights.

- Getting smoked by the prof team, 7-0.. but I "inadvertently" knocked Cheng to the floor (that made it all worthwhile)
- Saigin getting hit in the head on a rebounded ball
- Pier sending me a pass through someone's legs, a good idea, but I had no idea PO was capable of such things, so I missed it
- Us TYING a team, 2-2, and it wasn't some shitty team they had some skill, we just worked harder.

Overall, it was fun. I of course want to play in future tournamants I only hope we can make some drastic improvements and be more competitive.

that's all for now.. I apologze for the shitty posting, not feeling so great with a slight headache and sore everything (thanks to bball)

bye bye

Blogging is good!

Why might you ask?

Two specific instances from today will help me elaborate:

(1) ESC Midterm
I had no trouble at all (trying out the bold) writing BS. It just flowed out of me. I was very relaxed and able to write a bunch. Most of it is probably crap but I don't give a damn, hopefully AC will just look at the sheer amount and conclude that I know what's going on. I must apologize to mmm-donut. I was sitting next to him and I think I made him a bit nervous with my pages and pages of writing. Soo.. in this regard, blogging has helped remove the middle man between thinking and writing. The little man inside who mans the gate between the two processes is out for lunch, taking a break, watching TV, whatever...

(2) Cheng appointment
My complaints about nano might be useful after all... WOW! We're going to meet with her next week and I will bring forth all of my complaints. Maybe she can do something about it. And thanks to blogging I have a bunch of complaints ready to go, all I need to do is print them off, it'll be 4 per page on duplex but it'll be with me when we go in for the talk. Damn ECF print quota. Damn Kai Langstrom, bastard kept on changing the notes, and Damn nogami whose lecture notes can easily make up an entire textbook but somehow still manage to explain nothing..

I must also mention that I watched the contender today. It was very good indeed. Lots of excitement and action. Check it out..

back to compton, bye bye

OC vs. OTH ...

The age old battle, two of the best shows on TV.. but which one is better?

This is a very time dependent question.

So, I will look at different stretches and compare.

(1) First half of season 1

OTH - I watched these shows in about a span of two nights and I don't think I've ever seen better TV. The first few episodes were alrite but once the storylines kicked in it was great. Peyton, Lucas, Brooke, Nathan, Haley, the love PENTAGON!! that was insane.

OC - also good, but it took more time for the show to develop. The whole summer and seth thing wasn't really there, which is all I really care about with that show.

So.. round 1 goes to OTH

(2) Second half of season 1

OTH - started off great was moving ahead really well but started slowing down. Lucas was getting comfortable with the whole haley thing, we saw less basketball, there was Brooke pregnancy thing and nathan divorce crap. Still good but not great.

OC - really started to take over. There was the oliver stuff, more crap, seth and summer getting together. I just remember it being good... really good.

Round 2 to OC.

(3) Up until now..

OTH - developing some insane storylines. As it stands now the whole town is up in smoke with Jules, Brooke, Karen, Andy... very crazy stuff. I still don't like the felix and anna stuff and what the hell happened to the basketball?

OC - kinda slow at the start.. but with summer and seth, the spiderman stuff.. AMAZING...

OC takes this one..

(4) Future..

I have to give it to OTH, there seem to be a lot more storylines in play. All I see in OC is "MORE OF THE SAME", seth and summer (which I like), but marissa and ryan..?? wtf.. new characters?? wtf.. More Julie?? I don't like that.. OC has to do develop some new concrete storylines to win me back.

I give this one to OTH..

So... all tied up then. Girls? I only like Brooke and Summer and I'm pretty split on that one. Other charcters? I like seth, I think everyone does... but he's the only one on OC... in OTH I like Lucas, Nathan and Andy... so, I can't say much on that.

right now as it stands I'm looking to the future.. so I choose OTH.. sorry hornyhamster..

I wanna work for google...

Sooo.. mr. ummm-dounut and I attended the google info session today in hopes of getting free stuff and... we did! We both ended up with some pizza, cookies and a google pen/t-shirt. Google continues to be one of the places where I want to work, it's too bad they don't do anything nano-related. Perhaps some mems or neoms that search for stuff, I know, it's a stretch. Besides free lunch and dinner and the friendly work environment, you're allowed to spend 20% of your free time working on whatever you want... For instance, google news and maps both started as "20% percent projects". It's a place that really cultivates creativity.

hmmm.. what else.. okay for PO, I'll throw in the lame physics guy pick up line

"Hi, why don't you in I go into the raman effect room and pretend we're taking data"... hahaha.. yes yes.. very funny.

Eng sci basketball is this friday.. but .. we need a girl!!, not the p diddy song type girl but one who plays basketball. Actually.. they don't even need to play basketball, we'll take anybody.. we're taking PO and Saigin so the standards are already pretty low (j/k guys...). If they can dribble and pass ( I mean both of those in the most basic sense ), we'd be more than happy. That's the story of eng sci, like three girls who play basketball and they're all taken within a moment's notice.

wow.. I actually got through a blog without complaining about nano.. I can't have that... so on that note.

third year nano still sucks.

bye bye

Mr. Speaker... the President of the United States..

Compton was actually going well today. We were getting some nice peaks, getting a bunch of data (thanks to Jesterhat) and then the dude with glasses walks in. He's soo random. It's like he comes in to complain. He saw us using one apparatus and kept on insisting that the other was working this morning. I don't give a crap, it wasn't working then. He's such an asshat. We have to get data some time and I'm not going to waste my time with a piece of crap spectrum analyzer. There's just too much wrong with that guy, I don't understand how he can function as a prof.

Onto the subject of this blog, good quality political tv shows. They're great. The West Wing specifically. Whenever I watch that show, I end up wanting to work in the white house.. but then I remember I'm Canadian.. damn. So, I could end up working at... hmmm.. what do they call it in canada.. the canadian parliament buildings?.. wtf... I don't want to work there.. BUT, I also realize that if I were to work at the white house it'd be for someone like George Dubya Bush... fucking great. Why can't the leader of the free world be smart? Is there no one out of the some odd 300 million that's smart and a leader? Look at the west wing and jack & bobby, those are real presidents.

man.. I wish life were like TV. I'd be rich, there'd be hot girls in all of my classes, I'd go to all these crazy parties and if it did rain it's be so that I could mimic spiderman and kiss someone like summer. DAMN!!! Life sucks, TV's great...

bye bye

The following takes place between....

Michelle is back!!!, 24 is absoloutley insane. The excitement never ends. After what seemed to be a lackluster episode after 40 mins came some of the best 20 mins the show had this season. It's not just the pure action that drives the show (alhtough that is pretty amazing), they seem to build character conflicts that are played out in the midst of it all. There's now Michelle and Tony with their whole history and Jack, Audrey and Paul with their love triangle. To top it all off they've put Jack into another new impossible situation, trapped in a building with important information while being chased by security guards with no electricity thanks to the EMP. Can't wait till next week.... TV is what keeps me going in the horror that is third year nano.

Again, I will bitch about school, frankly because it's sort of therapeutic in the sense that it relieves stress. So, I think I can make a case for nano being the most difficult option in eng sci. In the world of university I believe there to be (4) types of courses (cracking out the rhetorical toolbox):

(1) An essay writing type course eg. philosiphy, english.. etc.
(2) A reading, memorizatioon type course eg. typical life sci course
(3) engineering course, understand formulas apply them to solve problems eg. thermodynamics, circuits, signals
(4) hardcore thinking and problem-solving eg. quantum mechanics, advanced classical mechanics.. etc..

The typical outside observer would choose (4) as being the most difficult and they would be right. But that's not the full story. A typical intelligent person will be good at one or two of these courses. Those who become doctors will destroy type (2) courses, physicists will be good at (4), but reverse the courses ie. put the doctor in (4) and physicist in (2) and you'd be looking at some bad gpa. That's nano. Biomeds get (2) and (3), Physicists (3) and (4) but Nanos get (2), (3) and (4). I ask you to find someone who can memorize like crazy and still destroy quantum, you'd be looking at very few number of hard-working geniuses. We're destined to do bad. Each type course requires a different method of studying and mental preparation. You spend one week prepping for something insanely difficult, try to read everything you can, search the web etc.. to understand a key concept, finish the exam then move onto memorizing one hundred pages of BS. It can't happen. It's very difficult to adjust your mindset and focus so quickly. I agree that physics and say electrical engineering are hard but they can concentrate on doing things one way, approaching problems the same way and using the same thinking because all the courses are designed and approach as all the others. We don't have that luxury..
I hate third year nano..

bye bye

Britney and Alan.

So, what does one do with the first weekend in a long time where the work does not seem insurmountable?.... blow it off. I watched a bunch of CSI Miami this weekend thanks to my sister. She's a big CSI fan and after quickly finishing off the normal CSI episodes (about 4 season's worth), she's moved up to CSI Miami which is actually pretty good. Every episode is big, there don't seem to be any simple killings in Miami. Everything from serial killers and rapists to snipers was covered in the first ten episodes. It's a show that quenches the need for action, mystery and the display of good winning over bad (typically) in 40 mins. This brings me to seeing ceph's display of a news article that quoted Britney Spears stating that she wanted to be a forensic scientist of course inspired by the CSI tv show. I can't really picture her digging through trash for hours looking for something that might not even be there or watching countless hours of video looking for a mysterious person but if she wants to do it.. go ahead.... I know I wouldn't mind providing her with lots of personal tutoring.

Now that I've wasted my Saturday, I'm now "working hard" on my formal lab that's due tommorow. I'm finding it difficult. There is a lot of stuff I need to cover and I'm not sure I can spell it all out without writing a boring textbook. I think I'm going to need to resort to the famous "beyond the scope of this lab" phrase. Knowing Alan aka "the bastard" (or whatever hornyhamster calls him), he'll probably dock me or something. screw him.. I don't care anymore. It's almost impossible to find a comprimise between sounding mickey mouse and being unclear. And those damn principles.. sure.. wtf is mastering the sentence rythm. Does my formal lab need to double as the lyrics to a Megadeth song? Actually.. it probably could, no one knows what they're saying anyways... (directed at you jesterhat)..

gtg.. bye bye

edit: yes, I know I make spelling/gammar mistakes, but I don't care, it's a blog.. not english!!

My abstract

Quantum Electrodynamics and its relation to the periodicity of reciprocal space nanocrystaline materials using perturbed variational methods with russel-saunders coupling is a hot-topic in many rheological studies to date. This paper will dive into the issuue by examining the Hamltonian related perturbations using nanocharacterization methods such as the SEM, TEM, SAD, XPS, XRD, AES, EDX and WDS. The results are surprising. They contradict the earlier multidimensional Hamiltonian polymer work of Juilofik and Smith [1]. The problem lies in the evaluation of the superconductor based cooper pairs of the polymer in relation to its degree of crystallization and breadth of molecular weight found using simple GPC methods. Finally it is reccommended that this is all complete BS and I fucking hate third year nano.

forgot to post yesterday... oh no!

Damn, there goes the streak... I honestly don't know what happened. All I remember is reading about "the principles of writing" and then somehow waking up the next morning. The long Thursday coupled with no OC and Communications is a deadly combination.

Damn FOX. They had to put the reruns on. I hate it when they claim they're doing something special when all they're doing is pulling out episodes from the archives. "Back to Back" OC episodes, complete BS. It is all just one big scam. I somehow think it has to do with the star wars trailer they're going to show during next weeks fresh OC (to steal a WB term). They can be certain that next week will have a large viewing audience both to watch the OC and to watch the trailer so the two will be able to feed off of each other. Star Wars of course wants to be the big movie of the summer and OC is trying to introduce some new characters which can cause the loss of casual viewers unless they watch the episode in which they were introduced. All one big scam. I prefer 24, two-hour premiere, 20 weeks straight, two-hour finale.

okay.. what else.. see that's why you must post on the same day you're writing about! I must have some sort of maximum memory capacity and long since cleared out the bad long-term memories and BS coursework. For instance, we had to sign a going away card for cheng today. When I was trying to think up crap I hit a roadblock. What the hell did we learn in that class? All I could remember was the dipping bird which Adrienne had already written about, some sort of adiabatic cave and that Sid Smith room we had class in. Not much material to crack a joke about. We learned garbage back then but I sure as hell miss that bell!

gotta go read about LEEDS

more wasted time..

I always seem to find ways to screw myself from getting ahead. I tried to make an effort in getting my formal lab done but it just wasn't happening today. Crap just always takes longer then I intend, which discourages me and then sends me off doing something else. For instance, the formal lab requires a lot of organization and planning that I did not realize. And not to mention my need to draw nice diagrams in illustrator, which is great for making that perfect diagram but it entails an insane amount of time.

Following the frustration of the lab came some of the raptors game and resume help for some second round PEYers and others. If I'm skipping a year I'm going to make it my personal mission to get others to do the same. So any blog readers out there who need someone to read over their resume or cover letter, contact me and I'd be glad to help.

k... so today was an overall quite frustrating thanks to the physics lab. Damn peak analyzer stopped working on me and NO ONE knows what's wrong. Bailey and is clueless and Mirco the genuis TA is dumbfounded. I hope that it somehow magically works when I come in on Friday. Otherwise Tack is my only hope. I'd hate to be the one who broke the analyzer after 25 years of faithful service, it's not something I want to be remembered for.

kind of tired, need to work on lab and must wake up early to book tennis courts.

bye bye.

campaign, grad school, lab, oth..

So, I finally had some free time today to help out a friend of mine with his SAC campaign. It didn't amount to much besides handing out flyers and quoting the random BS one liners "He'll reduce metropass lines", "He'll make SAC more accountable". It actually all seems like a lot of crap, no one seems to care, less then 10% of the student body votes and it's all very disorganized. But I did learn of a person who commutes from Barrie to Toronto everyday. HOLY SHIT THAT'S far. It's soo far that even jesterhat can say it's far. Whitby seems pretty close by comparison. That guy is nuts, he must sit on a greyhound bus for at least 4 hours a day. Not a great way to enjoy university. He's just one of the extreme commuter cases. If you look at a guy like him you can understand why people are apathetic.

Following the campagining came the grad school talk. It was more crap. Fucking advice they gave. They were almost discouraging people from applying to places. I hate it when they reassure people with high marks. THEY DON'T NEED REASURRANCE YOU IDIOTS! What is the point in saying something like "If you have 90% you don't need to worry", honestly like ten people have that in eng sci and trust me they're not worried. I did learn however why grad school at UT is not so bad after all. You're pretty much paid for whether you get an NSERC/OGS or not. If you get decent marks, maybe even over 75 you get about 20k a year, which is easily enough to live off of. Not bad. I don't see a reason for not doing grad school in that case, even if it is at UT.

I'll skip the lab which was a bunch of playing around with some radioactive samples and go to OTH.

WARNING OTH SPOILERS AHEAD!!! I'm talking to you hornyhamster!

It was crazy tonight.. so many things are happening. I could not have predicted any of it and I have no idea where it's going. Brooke might leave, Nathan is on his way to Haley to either get back together or ask for a divorce, Deb has gone crazy, Karen is now the evil one, and Keith... well.. he's just screwed all around. I have no doubt that oth will have an amazing conclusion. I don't know if I can say that for OC in which there aren't many storylines right now, only ryan and marissa really.


k.. enough out of me.. g'nit