Yearly Archives: 2003

Serenity

I’ve come to under­stand the mind­sets of a few dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple when it comes to per­son­al prob­lems. Most peo­ple I know will sim­ply deal with any prob­lems, instead of fight­ing them head on. I find that I try to do the same thing some­times, but I tend to come out a lit­tle worse for wear. Most have prob­a­bly gained more seren­i­ty, some­thing that I’m still learn­ing to con­trol.

Yet when most peo­ple are deal­ing with their issues in a pas­sive man­ner, the meth­ods become even more diverse. Justification seems to be a very com­mon method, but many jus­ti­fy in dif­fer­ent ways.

Some that I know believe that life is sim­ply full of dis­ap­point­ments (a few Buddhist can­di­dates, I’m sure) and that any bad things that come their way should sim­ply be under­stood. They don’t get angry or upset, and they seem to come out on top of things in the end. Others try to ignore the prob­lems, since think­ing about them will only make things worse. Some that I know even use such bad sit­u­a­tions to their advan­tage by exag­ger­at­ing them for some cheap atten­tion. I even know oth­ers who are able to feel bet­ter by com­par­ing them­selves to oth­ers.

Some will sim­ply get depressed.

I find that I gen­er­al­ly fall in either the for­mer or the lat­ter cat­e­gories. I would hope so at least, since I’ve been in the lat­ter for a great part of my life. I’ve been able to deal with things a lit­tle bit bet­ter now, for about three years. I sup­pose that it’s some­thing that Rob was able to teach me, but prob­a­bly also due to the fact that I’ve had a good last three years. I’ve been able to see the oth­er side of life that so many oth­ers seem to be able to expe­ri­ence. I feel like I’ve only got­ten a taste, and that I should try to expe­ri­ence it again.

But God still owes me some seren­i­ty.

White Cheddar KD, Game Addiction, Etc.

I had some white ched­dar KD for din­ner tonight. I have to admit that it tastes bet­ter than reg­u­lar KD. It seems to have a “high­er class” cheap taste.

Blizzard has me addict­ed yet again. At least Dina is addict­ed too. And Trolley some­how made the FT beta, which is amaz­ing. I feel like I get to say, “I know a guy who made the beta!” When I tell peo­ple they look at me fun­ny.

I almost com­plet­ed my graph­ics assign­ment. The only thing that’s miss­ing is the object motion along the con­vey­or belt, and some pol­ish­ing of the col­li­sion detec­tion. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get per­fect col­li­sion detec­tion done, but I doubt that I’ll lose too many marks for that. I think I’ll just leave it the way it is, since I should be work­ing on oth­er projects, and I need to pri­or­i­tize.

Mel is hav­ing a birth­day par­ty on Saturday at the Honest Lawyer, and I’m look­ing for­ward to going.

There are a few things I want to with this page, like add a fea­ture that will sep­a­rate archives into dif­fer­ent pages, if it finds more than 100 results from a data­base query. I sup­pose I’ll find the time some­where.

I got my mouse in the mail today. It has stiffer but­tons and a stiffer scroll wheel, but every­thing is more respon­sive. I don’t like the fact that a part of the design isn’t flush with the rest of the mouse, so my pinky will catch on it. I’m not sure if that’s part of the design, or just some­thing that hap­pened to mine. The back thumb but­ton is also a bit too small and sunken when pressed. The pre­ci­sion of the mouse is dead on though, even with extreme­ly fast motions. I can now retire my old mouse. I should have giv­en him a name.

I don’t know how Trolley seems to drink every night. Some weeks I wish that I had noth­ing but alco­hol con­sump­tion, but my con­science always pre­vents me. I guess the idea that it’s cost­ly and not-so-dele­te­ri­ous real­ly pre­vents me from tak­ing shots as dessert. Yet Wheaties just tells me, “drink for fear of being upset do to lack of rea­son to drink. this way, you can drink before you get upset, real­iz­ing there real­ly isnt a need to drink, and you’ll be a peace­ful alco­holist — bet­ter than a ragin one.. hon­est­ly, its for your own good”. I think I’ll heed some of his advice.

Why Assume Evil?

I read an arti­cle about a giant snow penis being erect­ed and the con­tro­ver­sy it cre­at­ed. The arti­cle dis­cussed the way the entire joke was tak­en by some of the women on cam­pus. Some of the female groups felt that “such a dis­play is demean­ing to women”, and that “women do not need to be remind­ed of the pow­er of the sym­bol of the male gen­i­talia.”

Although I agree that such a pub­lic dis­play is inap­pro­pri­ate, I com­plete­ly dis­agree with the rea­sons these women put forth. I’m will­ing to bet that the males who erect­ed the sculp­ture were not think­ing, “Hey, let’s cre­ate a huge dis­play of male gen­i­talia so that women know that their place in the world is below men”, but rather, “I’m bored. What can we do?” As one of the builders said, “We built it for fun”. I don’t believe that the motives behind such an act are sex­ist. Sometimes peo­ple just do stu­pid things.

I find that this has been a great trend in cer­tain groups of think­ing, such as part of the fem­i­nist move­ment. Sometimes mem­bers take things the wrong way. For exam­ple, I know of peo­ple who com­plain about com­mer­cials for house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts, and state that it’s sex­ist to have a woman being the token spokesper­son. They believe that the cre­ators of the ad have the mind­set that the main duty of a woman are the house­hold chores. When I see the com­mer­cial, I ask why a male isn’t the spokesper­son, why they show a male as being infe­ri­or to a female in doing the house­hold chores. And since both sides see things in an oppo­site man­ner, I decid­ed to ignore it com­plete­ly.

After all, we take offence to how we see things, not to how they are.

The idea of women being remind­ed of the pow­er of the male gen­i­talia is an exam­ple of this. In the world, there are many, many phal­lic sym­bols. Take almost every type gun as an exam­ple. This can even be broad­ened to just about every pro­jec­tile weapon. Sure, these things are reminders of the penis; they look the same, they serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose, even the actions are the same. But not every sin­gle fuck­ing object that holds a point is a phal­lic sym­bol. I don’t look at the Washington Monument and say, “Oh yeah, I have a penis. Aren’t penis­es great and supe­ri­or in every way to vagi­nas?”

There seems to be a great over­sen­si­tiv­i­ty still lurk­ing from the PC move­ment that swept Canada in the 90’s. Things are tak­en the wrong way many times, when there was no inten­tion of insult­ing any­one offend­ing any group. I wish peo­ple would­n’t place so much mean­ing in what oth­ers do, espe­cial­ly when the world is so full of sequa­cious peo­ple. Then again, the blind do lead the blind.

The only way I would be able to place some blame on the erec­tors ::ahem:: of the stat­ue would be if there was some sort of sub­con­scious sex­ist mind­set that they had. This means that the cre­ation of the snow stat­ue was not a con­scious deci­sion to men­ace the women on cam­pus, but rather a sub­con­scious exten­sion of their sex­ist ideas.

But some­how I doubt that.

Graphics Assignment, Frozen Throne

I’ve been work­ing most of the week­end on my graph­ics assign­ment. I have the arm ani­ma­tion work­ing now, togeth­er with most of the tim­ing, but the object motion is killing me. Somehow I have to get an object to move with the claw of an arm, get the object dropped, and then move along a con­vey­or belt. The prof gave us anoth­er week exten­sion (on top of one we already had) so it’s due next mon­day. I would pre­fer to get it done for tomor­row though, since the delays in projects would just add up, and I have my hon­ours project and cryp­tog­ra­phy project to think of. I might be hit­ting the bot­tle a bit ear­ly today.

I’ve been read­ing some Frozen Throne info, and the new units look pret­ty cool. The prob­lem is that the expan­sion is com­plete­ly chang­ing and re-bal­anc­ing all of the pre­vi­ous units and build­ings. Essentially, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent game. For exam­ple, all the build­ings have their costs reduced by about 15%. Or the fact that units can now ethe­re­al, and that there’s a new type of dam­age. Basically every­thing I learned has become use­less. The only thing that I’ve kept is what I learned from micro­man­age­ment. Shit.