Posts tagged with "university"

A Change Of Programme

I sent in an appli­ca­tion to the eco­nom­ics pro­gramme at Carleton before I left for Hong Kong last year, and got an offer of admis­sion when I got back. I accept­ed the offer on Monday, reg­is­tered for two cours­es, and start­ed going back to uni­ver­si­ty for a sec­ond degree. One of my cours­es is on TV, so I’m get­ting Trolley to tape it for me as an excuse to head over there and try some of my duty free Villager Premium No. 7s with him. My oth­er course is a con­cen­trat­ed intro­duc­tion to eco­nom­ics, so it’s two three hour class­es each week, mak­ing it the exact equiv­a­lent of two cours­es itself. I’ll try to get an intro­duc­tion to account­ing course next week as a fourth course, when the aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor is free and not being a bitch.

I’m going to switch my major to busi­ness in the sum­mer and spe­cial­ize in mar­ket­ing. Since I have a degree in com­put­er sci­ence, I’m con­sid­ered a third year stu­dent already, since a lot of my cred­its trans­ferred over. If every­thing works out (pre­req­ui­sites, degree restric­tions, course avail­abil­i­ty) I could have a sec­ond degree at the end of the year.

My first class was yes­ter­day with quite a few first year stu­dents, some of them six years my junior I’m will­ing to bet. Six years. More than half the class was Asian.

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sent­ed to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynam­ic as well as math­e­mat­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­t­ic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that oth­er projects con­sist­ed of. I think I had one of the less­er ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much hard­er than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lat­ed me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spo­ken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funer­al, actu­al­ly clapped at the end. It made me fair­ly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye can­dy in a fac­ul­ty of the aes­thet­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a suck­er for a pret­ty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tive­ly next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rent­ly using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript view­er. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vid­ed to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weak­er body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extreme­ly impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rent­ly in, yet $50 cheap­er. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larg­er liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.

Days At Trolley's, Phases, Etc.

I woke up at 3:33 ante merid­i­an and, unable to sleep, decid­ed to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleep­ing on his couch, and gen­er­al­ly stay­ing up late play­ing Wind Waker. It’s been an amaz­ing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it was­n’t quite patio weath­er yet.

Dolly and Nala did­n’t get along togeth­er well. When they saw each oth­er, they tried to stare each oth­er down. Nala’s tail dou­bled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats intro­duced to the same liv­ing envi­ron­ment are sup­posed to spend around the first two weeks with­out face-to-face con­tact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s any­way.

My trip to Hong Kong has been can­celed, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet anoth­er time that my trip has been can­celed. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, some­thing I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now offi­cial in one of my typ­i­cal “Jeff” phas­es, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been dif­fi­cult, not some­thing which is not com­plete­ly (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in request­ing a marks shift in my graph­ics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need rough­ly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be grad­u­at­ing until I can make up the three cred­its. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves tak­ing a soft­warre engi­neer­ing course dur­ing the sum­mer that I can use towards my total cred­its. I think that means that I won’t be attend­ing the grad­u­a­tion in July. Things seem very fucked up for me aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly right now, and I’m wor­ried, one of the many rea­sons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climb­ing on Tuesday, and even though my left fore­arm was dead from hit­ting the L trig­ger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, some­thing that I could def­i­nite­ly see myself get­ting into. Even the act of belay­ing is fun, in the sense of a trust exer­cise. It’s just not some­thing that I can get into right now with­out a job, or any con­ve­nient way of get­ting to the rock climb­ing stu­dio.

Honours Project, Wind Waker

I’ve been get­ting a decent amount of work done late­ly. I’m pret­ty much fin­ished my graph­ics project, a week ahead of sched­ule, and it looks pret­ty sweet. I haven’t had enough progress on my hon­ours project yet, since my super­vi­sor isn’t very good at giv­ing direc­tions. I’m pret­ty wor­ried about my pre­sen­ta­tion for it next week. It’s sup­posed to be 15–20 min­utes long, and I feel like I only have 10 min­utes worth of mate­r­i­al, but more impor­tant­ly, that I’ve exhaust­ed all aspects of the sub­ject. The essay is sup­posed to be 20 pages sin­gle spaced, but I can’t see that hap­pen­ing with the amount of infor­ma­tion out there on Rubik’s cubes.

The Wind Waker comes out tom­morow at 9:30 am, and I’ll be pick­ing it up before meet­ing with my super­vi­sor tomor­row. I’ll be try­ing it out for the first time in the pres­ence of Trolley and Wheaties, and pos­si­bly Aaron and Dina, dur­ing the night. We’ll be pick­ing up some alco­hol, and I’ll be stay­ing the night there. Trolley has a car, so he’ll be able to pick me up, and dri­ve Dolores to his place as well. It will be inter­est­ing to see how she and Nala will inter­act with each oth­er.