Blog: Articles from February 2006

After school today I went to the “Outdoors” show, or whatever it’s called, at the Golf Dome. They showcase outdoor equipment and outdoor recreation businesses and stuff. It was mildly interesting, and I got some photos that I may put up if I’m not too lazy.

Oh, and I saw Mrs. Crittall, my grade 9 science teacher, there! She remembers me, apparently. She’s teaching at Hammarskjold and told me to say hello to all fellow former FWCIers.

I’m almost done the last touches on the Admin CP for VSNS 3.2. Unfortunately, it won’t be very good. It’s better than the current system, but still isn’t the best. I’m not that great at interface design. But at least the blog portion works.

My weekend was full of character-driven goodness, starting with Sin City on Friday and culminating on Saturday with Crash. I can certainly see why Crash deserves to win Best Picture, and I will not hesitate to call it one of the Best Movies Ever.

Seldom have I ever seen such a beautifully woven tapestry of character-driven stories. They all intertwine. It was uplifting and saddening, frightening and reassuring, profound and entertaining, all at the same time. The music was awesome. I cried at least once, and was teary-eyed for much of the movie.

Spoiler warnings below.

My favourite aspect of Crash would be that there was no bad guy. There were no clear winners or losers. The movie focusses on a number of main characters in Los Angelos, and as the movie progresses their lives connect in various ways. Each time we see the character, we get to see a new faucet of their personality. For example, there is one character, a cop, who we originally are supposed to see as racist. Later in the movie he puts his prejudices aside to save a Black woman from an overturned vehicle that’s about to explode—the same woman whom he groped while on duty a few nights before. So he’s not the completely irredeemable bad guy; he’s not the villain. All of the characters have both good and bad traits, do good and bad actions (some of them quite dramatic). The characters grow and change even though the movie itself takes place over only a few days. And all the while I’m watching this, I feel for the characters. I root for each one and say, “Come on, go for it! No, nooo, don’t do that! Come on, make The Right Choice!” Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

For those who have not yet seen it, I strongly advise that you watch it as soon as possible.

Did you miss me?

To make a long story short, my Internet connection at home went kaploof! on Saturday afternoon. A service technician should be by on Monday, so hopefully everything will be fixed by Monday night/Tuesday.

I‘m sitting at Seattle Coffeehouse right now, extremely thankful for cafés with wireless hotspots. And that I have a wireless laptop.

You see, we’re painting the room where our desktop computer, modem, router, etc. live. My brother unplugged the modem and router and such, and for the life of me I cannot manage to get everything running again, which is vexing. The router and our LAN work fine; the modem just can’t seem to establish a WAN connection. So maybe the modem got damaged when we were moving it, or maybe the cable running to the phone line was damaged, or maybe it’s something else entirely.

I ache, eh. I live online.

On the up side, the computer room’s looking nice. I’ll put up photos when I’m less lazy. And when I have Internet.

/me coughs. Because my dad complains about my last posts being “less positive”.

I‘m starting to settle into the “routine” of things at school now. I’m actually being challenged in math, which is nice. We finally got our actual French teacher yesterday. She’s nice, and very knowledgeable—to the point that she speaks mostly in French! I think she’ll be good for us, though, especially because while I am strong at writing French, I can’t speak it very well. (It’s a combination of lack of vocabulary and poor pronunciation.) So I think I’ll learn a lot from French, provided that I can understand the instructions.

When we got home from school today, my brother and I disassembled the makeshift shelf in our computer room. My dad’s thinking of painting the walls, and he asked us to take the shelf apart and stack the stuff on it out in the hall. Then I built this super cool brick pyramid from the bricks that were used to hold up each layer of shelving. I lacked a last brick for the top, so I used a baseball trophy from the shelf.

Work on VSNS Lemon 3.2 proceeds well. I’ve finally finished getting the posts formatted how I want them, and the regexps sorted out. Now I just have to finish up the Admin CP and do some last-minute polishing.

New Stargate SG-1 episode tonight, and Battlestar Galactica on the weekend.

I should go write now.

Yesterday I learned a lesson that I already knew. One should not be late in replying to requests from the people giving one a mail-in rebate. They sent me a letter, oh, two weeks ago, kindly informing me that I had left out the UPC from the digital camera and printer (the items which have the rebates).

I was supposed to ensure that they received these no later than February 14, 2006. /me looks at calendar. Whoops.

Yeah, I was inexcusably lazy and didn’t get around to it in time. Which means that this “free” printer actually cost me money. It’s still a good printer; I just didn’t intend to actually buy it.

That was my life lesson for yesterday. Oh, I knew that I should be responsible before that. It just really doesn’t sink in until one has to pay for the printer.

We ordered pizza last night, pepperoni and cheese pizza for my brother and I.

It was very very yummy. Except that I discovered it had sun-dried tomatoes! I abhor sun-dried tomatoes.

Basically my entire pizza-eating experience was ruined. I ate it anyway since it’s pizza and I can’t let it go to waste. Still though, my brother (who did the ordering) claims that he did not order it with sun-dried tomatoes, which means that they must have mixed up the order somehow… .

I thought this semester would be easier than last, but now I‘m not so sure. Maybe it’s just the transition that’s really difficult, but I feel very tired and very burnt out.

Part of the reason is that my classes are so low-energy. Last semester, particularly with drama, I had something to anticipate each day: moments of high-energy where I got to exercise and be hyper. Now it’s just mindless plodding from class to class. I feel less motivated, which is kind of unfortunate.

Another part of the reason is that I have an awkward sort of schedule. It’s awkward in the sense that I had both math and French in the first semester of last year. Now, while I couldn’t bear having all 8 classes simultaneously, I do think that the semester system is disadvantageous for classes like math and French if you happen to go an entire year without having them.

I feel like I‘ve forgotten how to do math. I’m frustrated that I can’t get a simple application question, and I feel like an imbecile. I know that it’s only been three days, that I should just give it time, but I’m a very impatient person.

Combine that with questioning my own modesty, confidence, and ego, and you have to wonder if I should slow down. I had a good conversation with Ms. Sukalo, though, which has restored most of my confidence in myself. I suspect that this sort of self-doubt is latent from the move to Westgate and stimulated as I struggle temporarily to adjust to this new semester.

On a happier note, I am writing more. I sort of took a tiny break there after finishing my novel, then I wrote a short story. Now I‘ve got some good short story ideas and maybe a poem or two. I don’t want to go too fast and burn out at that too, but I also don’t want to deliberately pace myself—if I have to write, I have to write. It’s just one of those things.

It’s also my paternal grandmother’s birthday today, so wish her a happy birthday.

Last updated Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 1:29 AM

Today my mom turns 49. Due to the fact that I have a website with a modest readership, I think it is cool that I can wish her a happy birthday and have many people who neither know me nor my mom know about it. It just goes to show how wonderfully disturbing this whole concept of blogging is.

Oh, and yeah, happy birthday, mom!

/me pokes loyal stalkers.

I did say that I wouldn’t make any decisions until 3:30. Well, it’s 4:32 right now, and I already have a pretty good idea of how this semester will be.

I finally figured out what the computer course is about: “Introduction to Computer Science”. Basically programming and stuff. We’re going to start off with Turing, then move into XHTML—but only so we can display the output from our final units, creating dynamically driven websites using databases and PHP.

So in other words, I already know most of this stuff (except Turing). I don’t think I’ll learn a lot coding-wise, although I hope I’ll emerge with an improved understanding of OOP and maybe regex. But Mr. Dubyk (the teacher) told me he’d help get rid of our bad habits, of which I have accumulated quite a lot. The major focus of the course, however, is on planning one’s programs using flow charts and such before one even starts coding them. I really think that this will help me, since I am terrible when it comes to planning. I really should plan, but I just can’t stand doing it. Being forced to do it will help, though, since it’ll make my life easier in the long run. So all I have to make sure is that I don’t step on any toes.

Mr. Dubyk’s a pretty cool guy though. I start the day with him too, in Math, which I think will be fine. He talked to us about how 20% of our mark consists of the communication portion, which involves knowing what the symbols are and how to translate them into comprehensible English. He really appreciates that part of the course, and English in general, so I think he’s just what I need: someone who likes me as a person, and who knows that I can go ahead and learn at my own fast pace myself, but who is available to help me with the organisational and applicational skills that I often neglect in my quest for knowledge.

Chemistry is, well, chemistry. I think I’ll learn a lot but it won’t really be that hard. And French will be fine; a lot of my friends are in it. Mme. Melanson teaches it now instead of Mlle. Kukko, at least for the first half. I really wanted Kukko as my teacher, because she’s fun and helpful, but I feel so sorry for her because she’s been overloaded by her semester one courses. So I hope she feels better soon.

That’s about it. I’m going to just relax now after my first day. Hardest academic course will be French, because vocabulary is difficult. Chemistry will have the most intense workload, math will be fun, and computers will be interesting. Let’s see how my predictions match up in 90 days or so.

Tomorrow I go back to school. Mixed feelings, eh, which I kind of regret, since I want to like school. Westgate makes that incredibly difficult, however. The atmosphere is just not wubbly like it was back at FWCI.

But I harp on that enough. I‘m going into this semester with a fresh slate: no preconceived notions until 3:30 PM tomorrow. Then I can make irrational decisions if I want, but only then. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I supposedly get a teacher from FWCI for two of my classes.

Speaking of classes, I have math, chemistry, French, and a computer course. I have no clue what the computer course is about—I signed up for it last year but have completely forgotten what it involves. So tomorrow will indeed be an interesting day. Everything is still really up in the air, of course, since my schedule could have changed.

Anyway I should get to bed, as I have to wake up in about seven hours and eat and go to school. I’m glad to be going back, even though the week could have been a bit longer.

P.S. Sorry if those leftovers I ate before going to bed were supposed to be your lunch, Dad.

Today and tomorrow I live in my kitchen.

Why? Well, because it’s better than my room. My furniture in my room is uncomfortable (I need to replace it). The kitchen is comfortable, spacious, bright during the daytime, and it has food at my fingertips! Thus, I’ve relocated to the kitchen. The only downside is no TV. But that’s a small price to pay for the other benefits.

As my editors dissect my novel, I make headway into VSNS Lemon 3.2. I’m coding the comment functions now, after which it will pretty much be on par with version 3.1. The major difference, aside from some features, will be the fixing of bugs.

What a wild ride! Got up, ate breakfast, went to school, set up for drama. It was interesting, to say the least. I love the controlled chaos of setting up for a drama production.

As you may recall, last week’s drama exam was moved to this week.

The order of the docudramas were: “Genocide”, “Hurricane Katrina”, “Life in the Fast Lane” (my group!), and “War for Peace”. They were all brilliant, considering that we hadn’t practiced them for a week. Every group had its share of mistakes (such as me forgetting to do portions of a chase scene) but every group had its strong points too. I think that, visually, “Genocide” was the most effective. They had an awesome array of visual icons. “War for Peace” presented the most meaningful message (all of the topics are meaningful, but I loved how they used “In Flander’s Fields” for one portion; it was quite moving). “Hurricane Katrina” had awesome music! And my group, aside from the great chase scene, had the benefit of being a slightly lighter topic—not necessarily in nature, but in the way we presented it.

Overall I think it worked out wonderfully. Cleaning up wasn’t that bad either. Now I just have to wonder what I got for a mark.

I’ll put pictures up later. They mostly didn’t turn out well because of the lighting, so there’s a lot of glare on my classmates‘ eyes, and I’m too lazy to do some glare removal right now. Eventually.

Thanks to Dave for doing the curtains, Vivike for doing the slideshow stuff, Cora for the lighting, and Mrs. Vieira did the sound.

The entire class was awesome. I’m going to miss drama next semester, because it was without a doubt the best part of this year.