I decided to see what the fuss about Boxing Week was all about today (yeah, right).

1. IBM: Boxing Extravaganza. I had a brand-new 14", Pentium-M 1.5 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g, gigabit ethernet, USB 2.0 + Firewire ports, 24x CD-RW/DVD, ATI Radeon 7500 (32 MB) ThinkPad for $999 in my shopping cart BUT I DELIBERATED FOR TOO LONG AND MISSED OUT!

2. Best Buy: Nothing really on sale. Their Best Buy exclusive, an HP notebook (Celeron-M 1.3 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 30 GB, CD/DVD combo, wireless upgradeable) for $899.99 isn't a deal.

Then I went downtown to real brick-and-mortar stores.

3. Future Shop: Family Guy Season 3 DVD $45.99 (up $18 from just two days ago); Kodak CD-R 50 pack $17.99; one iPod left on the shelves; 120 GB HDD $69.99 after MIR. Although I haven't had any trouble with Future Shop / Best Buy mail-in rebates (yet), I'd rather not participate in them if I don't have to. Looked at notebook computers. I like the design of the Compaq Presario series, but they are kind of heavy (3.5+ kg)

4. A&B Sound: Norah Jones Come Away With Me $5.99; Feels Like Home $8.49. These were supposed to be doorcrashers but they had tons left. I didn't purchase these because, uh, I already have them. After getting rid of their computer department, A&B now wants to be a bookstore, selling discount books. They left them in a big pile on a table for months, and today they're actually organizing them on shelves. Buy two books, get one free. Most books are $2.99

5. Staples: Mostly overpriced stuff. Would have driven them into price-match hell for the Canon PowerShot A85 and their "low advertised price" Compaq Presario 2210, but I didn't feel like carrying these items on the bus. Looked at leather portfolios and decided this can wait too. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hardcover - a bargain at $15, though

6. HMV: Sarah McLachlan Afterglow $5.99; U2 The Joshua Tree $5.99 (one left); TV series 2/$80 (e.g. The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, King of the Hill) or 2/$90 (Friends)

7. SmithBooks: 30% off all hardcover books. Still not good enough. Damaged books on the table at discounts of up to 75%

8. Coast Mountain Sports / Sport Chek: discounts are non-existent compared to their regular prices (they pretty much have these discounts every week!)

I went home empty-handed but satisfied that I didn't participate in over-consumerism today. Except for maybe the ThinkPad.

Boxing Day (and the days leading up to the new year): highly overrated. I happily stayed home and cleaned my room, thank you very much.

I returned to the place where I spent most of my summer to do a little year-end work for them. Final exam yesterday - work today.

First, I had to look up all of the outstanding requests for hardware and software and then type them into a spreadsheet.
Afterwards, I had to draw up a sheet for each software that we were going to renew in January. And then type these into the computer.
Later, I had to hunt for invoices and then make sure we paid Acrodex and received the goods. This is fun!

I have just come out of my last final exam for this degree! It was EDIT 480 and the instructor came in about 20 minutes late, the whole class was sitting there waiting for her...someone commented that if we all left, then our marks wouldn't be affected, if we were being graded on a curve.

We were told it was the traffic. (What would happen if one of the students was stuck in a traffic jam? Would he or she still get to write the final?) It's -17°C (and windy) today, down from 6°C (and windy) yesterday. The exam went pretty well, I suppose, when compared to the other two that I wrote last week.

Why am I sitting here by the computer, when I obviously have better stuff to do? I should be out in the malls, shopping for presents...right.

I have two more final exams, one tomorrow morning (that's Saturday), and one on Monday. Following my traditional self, I only prepare for one exam at a time. That means I haven't even looked at the stuff for Monday.

I can't wait for Monday afternoon, that's when I have a half-day to do absolutely nothing. Or maybe I'll be shopping.

Countless hours in the computer lab, including right now. I'm a slave to Authorware.

Anyway, an American outfit is selling a Go Canadian kit for $24.95 US. You get all the apparel needed to disguise yourself as a Canadian if you are travelling to Europe or overseas. Many Americans already tell their hosts they are Canadians, anyway, to avoid being questioned about Bush or his military policy.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to explain in one of my classes (EDIT 486) what a blog was. (One of the student presentations suggested that blogs were a good way for teachers to communicate with parents, and he asked if anyone knew what a blog was. I was the only one to pseudo-raise my hand.)

Macromedia Authorware is my friend. I'm developing a lesson for Grade 9 or 10 students on the importance of scientific notation and the metric system. If you want to find me on campus on weekdays (between 900 and 2000), try looking in the PC lab in Education North (ED N3-108) before anywhere else.

Today sucked.

I had a full blog entry written up a couple of minutes ago regarding my bad day, and then Blogger gave me a 500 Internal Server Error, and I lost everything, adding insult to injury. Spam that I'm receiving to my ualberta.ca email address. ETS - passed up by two #6 buses (Millgate and Mill Woods Town Centre due to excessive passenger volume, when the large majority of these people could have taken the #6 Southgate, which came two minutes before these). Two boring classes. An unproductive lunch hour (wrong textbook). That's not even half of the problems.

Today really sucked.

What a week it has been. I have been busy, mostly with computer work, for my web page and WebCT. I was only polishing them up for the past week. Today I presented my three projects to the class (WebCT, web page, and PowerPoint).
Now, there's only the final project for Authorware left. It's due in approximately two weeks, and I still don't have the bulk of it done. Oh, that's also the same day I have my first final exam; I need a little less than 10% on the final to pass EDPS 410.

A cold day. I wandered over to the polling station at 10 this morning to cast a vote for MLA (Edmonton-Mill Woods) and for the Senate members. I voted for Lloyd Nelson (NDP) for MLA. I was debating between Nelson and Weslyn Mather (Liberal) on the way to the school, passing by large numbers of election signs for the PC candidate. You can tell they have large coffers. The Senate election, I thought was a total waste of time, since ten of the twelve candidates were either affiliated with the PC or Alberta Alliance parties. You are permitted to select up to four people, but I just selected one, and only because he was "Independent". The whole process took less than five minutes.

The Senate thing is a waste of $3 million, because we know Paul Martin is not going to appoint the "elected" members. Why does Alberta always try these ideas that are so conservative-centric?

Carolyn Parrish has been kicked out of caucus. I'll admit, I've laughed after each of her comments: "...hate those bastards", "the coalition of the idiots" and lately, the 22 Minutes skit. But I think it's disrespectful to publicize comments that criticize your own party, let alone insult a head of state. She still holds the balance of power in Parliament as an independent, though.

Anyway, I sprained my foot today; too much walking. It was a pretty nice day, so I walked along the river valley again, from the UofA to the base of McDougall Hill. I needed the fresh air after a lot of exposure to the computer this past week.

In case some of you don't know, I spend a lot of time on the bus (because I don't own a car). Nearly an hour and a half every day. Usually, I pass the time by listening to the radio or doing course readings. Today was ETS day - a little over three hours - around town.

I missed the University bus, so I had to take three buses to get to my 8 a.m. class. A bus to Millgate. Transfer to a bus that was just pulling away, which carried me to 99 St. @ Whyte Ave. Yet another bus to take me to campus. (49 minutes)

We had 50 minutes after our EDU 250 class to hand in that sheet where we had to decide our own fate. I chose the change midterm to 25% and final to 45% option because the final is all multiple-choice, and I felt short-changed after the midterm essay. Most of the class was done after about 10 minutes. So I spent the remaining 40 minutes talking to John.

I ran to the LRT station and took the LRT to Corona. I disembarked with a girl and then we both boarded the trolley bus on Jasper @ 107 St. She paid her $2 fare here. I don't know what the point of not paying the fare before boarding the LRT is, since if you're caught without a fare, the fine's $110. (41 minutes)

At Jasper Place, I transferred to one of those bus/van hybrids where the air inside is always stale, and the seats are filled with crumbs. It took me directly to the place where I had some software training (in some industrial area). (12 minutes)

After training, I took a regular bus to Westmount, transferred to a bus full of (loud) Ross Sheppard kids to Kingsway, and then to a bus which brought me home. (84 minutes)

I experienced every type of vehicle ETS has in operation on the same day (regular bus, low floor bus, trolley, economical low floor, and LRT). When you don't have your own car, you have to be resourceful.

Well, the university decided to schedule the annual fall-term break in November this year, so that a four-day weekend could take place (including Remembrance Day).

I was supposed to catch up on my sleep, finish up all the readings that I was supposed to do, and work on my computer projects. Well ... surprise! I managed to do all of the above.

I went to see my friend John's place in Queen Alexandra yesterday. The purpose of this visit was to show me a picture of the sauna they have at a camp that he's attended many times in his youth. After searching his whole drawer, he couldn't find the picture. That's all right, though, he had plenty of things to keep me entertained. He has a piano (his wife is a pianist, but he's a guitarist). I tried to play for him but my memory was blank. So I sight read my way through a couple of pages of a sonata in F by Mozart.

John's a great improvisation cook. Hash browns with Hungarian sausage and hot sauce (pretty good; ketchup optional). Nachos with cheese heated in the toaster oven and served with salsa and sour cream. Now why haven't I tried these recipes? These are a couple of his staples when his wife's not home.

(I don't have an Xbox, but Halo 2 is out today, in case you were hiding under a rock. It's estimated that this is the fastest-selling game in history. Also of note, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released today.)

Today I received a sheet from my EDU 250 class. The midterm was controversial because the essay portion was 25 marks (out of a total of 54) and it focused on a chapter (1) whose reading was displayed on the lecture overhead, (2) mentioned by the teacher aloud and (3) whose content was covered in class but (4) number was omitted from the syllabus (like the chapter number only, not the topic or anything). So the people who were daydreaming when #1, 2 and 3 happened complained, because they only study what's written on the syllabus, and didn't do as well as they hoped. As a result, the multiple choice average was ~75% but essay was ~50%. The solution the instructor came up with (bless his heart!) for the midterm dilemma was to let us decide whether to:

A. have your midterm reduced from 30% weight to 25% but your final increased from 40% to 45%.
B. have your midterm and final weights unchanged.

Each student is supposed to pick the option s/he wants, and sign the sheet. So, option A is the obvious choice if you did poorly, option B if you did well. It's a losing proposition if you did middle-of-the-road (between 65% and 80%). Guess how I did?

So I was sitting on the bus today. Today was particularly annoying, because I was sitting in front of a couple of girls who talked so loud that the whole bus could hear them. Except maybe the driver, because he was chatting merrily on his cell phone. Here is what I unconsciously picked up, while trying to read:

Girl #1. About 22 years old, has two kids, a boy and a girl (one is 6, and the other 7). Had another child, but died in hospital. Married to a guy she met in high school, works as some "co-ordinator" at a travel shop on Jasper (near a Rogers Video). Has been to Mexico; wants to go to Australia, New Zealand, all of Asia, and all of Europe by the time she's 36. Knows a friend who worked on a cruise ship (Carnival) but was fired because she slept with a passenger (a man). Was told to have all of her babies before she turns 25 because of some hereditary disorder, became impotent by age 20. Has an aunt who has diabetes who gave birth to a son, who was also diabetic.

Girl #2. Birthday: January 19, 1987. Will go to Mexico on the 25th (without parents), because she's old enough to drink by then. States that everyone should go to Las Vegas when they're 21 years of age as a "rite of passage". Wants to work on a cruise ship as a musician, claims that all your earnings are "profit" because all other expenses are covered (as long as you're onboard the ship). Really wants to go to New Zealand. Interested in teaching ESL in Asia, asks how hard it could be if you've been an English speaker your entire life. Has Type 1 diabetes.

Maybe I should just post useless information like this from now on.

Four more years of Bush at the helm. Congratulations, USA. (I feel sorry for you all.)

Q: What's the difference between an American and a Canadian?
A: The Canadian knows the difference.

Yes, my EDPS 410 instructor has done it again. She has marked forty midterms in one weekend, again with the hand-drawn bar graph. I was nailed hard for claiming the teacher was promoting Buddhism in a Catholic school on the case study. According to my instructor, he wasn't. Anyway, someone managed to get 20/20 [the first she's ever given out, ever], and the lowest mark was 10/20. Average was 14.5. My mark was nowhere near the top. I'm pretty sure she hands out the tests from highest to lowest (probably because she arranges them in order to make her histogram). Ethics is always a sticky issue, in any case.

The Hallowe'en chocolate bar conspiracy

Anyone else notice those miniature chocolate bars (for Hallowe'en) keep getting smaller every year? Unfortunately, the price goes the other way. Remember when an Oh! Henry was about one-third the size of a full bar, now it's one-quarter, if that. You can now shake the bar inside the wrapper (which has stayed the same size) with lots of space in between. A conspiracy!

This year, our house is providing a (limited) number of gift certificates from McDonald's, along with lollipops and those "two-bite" (forty licks?) chocolate bars.

Did I use the extra hour of sleep? Nope. I woke up at 7:28 (uh, 6:28), giving me seven hours of sleep which was comparable to previous nights (4 hours, 6 hours, and 4 hours). Midterm week drove my sleep schedule south, although not as terrible as in years past.

Last midterm. Of the term. Yes. Of my degree? Perhaps. Ever? Possibly.
Let's just say that 50 minutes wasn't enough to write everything I wanted to. I forgot one important point in my resolution which would have propped my essay. But I guess it's not the end of the world.

I went to my computer lab after that class for the first time in two weeks. The TA wasn't there, but I figured out how to animate a blood cell through a heart in Authorware.

I am sleep-deprived, but satisfied with my performance this midterm week. I didn't stay up past midnight at any point (although I did become sleepless in the early hours a couple of times). My next school assignments are to (a) build a web page, and (b) design a computer-based lesson.

I have finally finished my term paper for EDU 250, six-and-a-half pages of useless research. I could have summed up the essay in one sentence: "Yes, teacher expectations do have an effect on student achievement."

I banged up my left ring finger earlier today in the washroom, which was perfect timing, since I was rushing to get to my midterm on time. Two short answer questions were ambiguous and four (of eight) multiple-choice questions were unrelated to class lectures. Overall, a rush from start to finish.

Midterm Week beckons. I had a presentation yesterday, which went reasonably well, given the work we put into it. By "reasonably well" I meant that I didn't flub up my part, and our group didn't put out any discussion or questions that the class couldn't participate in and/or understand.

I am getting over my cold, which affected the way my voice sounded. I don't know, is a nasal voice supposed to sound sexy?

Canada finally has its own synchrotron! The official grand opening was yesterday in Saskatoon, although scientists probably tried it out beforehand, to make sure it worked.

Google! shares. I knew I should have purchased a couple of hundred back then, and hold on to for a couple of months. On August 19th, the initial public offering was $85, to much fanfare. It closed yesterday @$172.43, after it released its quarterly earnings report. This is probably just a dot-com late bloomer, but still...

I didn't vote yesterday because it was 17:00 by the time I was headed home, it was dark, cold, and the polling station is a 10-minute walk from my home. I thought my vote might affect the mayoral race, but in the end, it didn't. Everyone I was going to vote for won their seats anyway.

Candidates that I was going to vote for:
Mayor: Stephen Mandel
Councillors (Ward 6): Dave Thiele and Terry Cavanagh
Public School Trustee (Ward I): Gerry Gibeault

Official results from Election 2004 available here.

Today I'm trying to write a six-page essay in one sitting. So far, I have a little over ten lines. Although it appears that this is not going too well, I still have six hours until the lab closes. One hour per page!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
If your telephone area code is 780, then there is a snowfall warning for you. It is really cold today. Good thing the Edmonton 2004 celebration was last weekend, and not today.

Have not feeling well for the past couple of days. I don't know what's worse, coughing and hacking, a runny nose, or a sore throat. Some people experience all three once they catch a cold.

The new Churchill Square becomes really slippery when there is precipitation. Did they not take this into account when they built it?

Today I got my EDPS 410 case study paper back. We handed it in on Wednesday. That means in just two days, my instructor managed to read and grade thirty-seven papers (four to six pages each). Not only that, she made a pretty hand-drawn bar graph of the mark distribution. M = 19/20, m = 10/20. She thought my paper was "unequivocally well thought out".

Anybody want to win an iPod? Pepsi is having a contest where they're giving away a free iPod every hour for the next 12 weeks (= 2 016 iPods). Two weeks have already passed. You can get your codes by purchasing specially marked 591 mL bottles, or register for a "no purchase necessary" code online (limited to one per hour) after filling in a survey. I have not won one, but I find this process too time consuming to pursue this any further. But for those of you who don't have midterms to study for and papers to write, this might be something to do.

P.S. I am not an employee or an authorized spokesperson for Pepsi, I prefer the taste of Coca-Cola anyway.

Success! I have finished a draft copy of my case study term paper for EDPS 410 and have emailed it to my teacher so she can take a look at it. Over six pages! And I've finished it ONE WEEK EARLY! :)

I went to meet my two study buddies at Avalon this morning for the first time. Their names are Stephanie and Matthew. I am helping both of them with Grade 9 Math. I wish I was an undergraduate math student ... I probably would have considered it, if they didn't make CMPUT 114 AND 115 part of their requirements!

If you're poor and cannot afford Adobe Photoshop, my EDIT 486 professor showed us this cool site called gifworks where you can upload your GIF image and do your editing online. Afterwards, you can right-click the final product and download it back to your computer.

"I can't get no respect." - Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004). A quote that teachers can certainly relate to.

Why is Microsoft Word such a useless piece of software?

I'm working on my case study for EDPS 410 just now. I use the term "well-being" (with a hyphen), and the so-called grammar checker (which you should never trust completely; the "guts" of this checker are flawed) underlines it in wavy green. I right-click it and it suggests replacing it with "well being" (with a space). I accept the suggestion. Can you guess what happens afterward? That's right, "well being" (with a space) becomes underlined in wavy green. Right-click it and it suggests replacing it with "well-being" (with a hyphen). Subsequently, this cycle repeats. What a piece of junk!

I am submitting this entry from somewhere other than the privacy of my own home (first time ever). That's right, I'm working in the Mac lab in the Education building, sitting in the furthest row from the front.

Today our latest assignment for the interactive multimedia course is to make a ~30 s video and mix it with music extracted from a CD, a voice over (recorded with a microphone), and snazzy effects in the middle. The video comes from a MiniDV camcorder that we get to use around campus and act crazy.

I can't believe that I'm having trouble keeping up with four courses, I wondered how I managed to do five for the last five years. I believe I'm spending too much time on the ethics and law in teaching course. I signed up for the Study Buddy program, and will be volunteering at Avalon Junior High School this term.

Our EDU 250 professor wanted to shift the final exam date to December 7, which would have made my exam schedule a breeze (one final per week, for three weeks), however, many students objected to this (through a form we filled out recently) because of their various term projects and papers which are due around that time. So we will write the final exam one week before Christmas.

I went to the bank after class today, because (and I didn't know this), your account is given a status of dormant if you haven't made any transactions for six months. I think it was practically a year since I tried anything with my savings account. So I xferred a few dollars ($3.78, to be exact) into it, and had to show photo ID to prove it was me giving them real money. Remind me when February 23 comes around. What I noticed is that this location (Whyte Ave. @ 109th St.) now has keypad shields for their Green Machines, since this bank appears to be a favourite for ATM scammers.

If there's anybody who likes solving ethical dilemmas (particularly those with respect to classroom situations), please let me know. Maybe you could help me with my case study. I can offer you $3.78 as an honorarium afterwards.

There are too many assigned readings for EDPS 410. I've looked at all of them, but by no means read them in thorough detail. There's also a case study due (how am I going to write four to six pages?) in a few weeks.

The Amazing Race 5 is coming to an end tonight ... and ... it finishes up in Banff, according to this CBC news article. It's a two hour finale, so that means staying up until 11 p.m., something that I don't do too often these days.

It's a surprisingly nice day in Edmonton. Sunny. You couldn't tell summer was almost over.

If you have Windows on your computer, and you're still using Internet Explorer, then try Mozilla Firefox today. This still applies to users who have upgraded to Windows XP SP2. Version 1.0 Preview Release was released today, but I've been using it as my standard browser since version 0.6. Micro$oft is quite ignorant when it comes to fixing their web browser. Patches take weeks to get released, only to have new ones discovered and exploited in between. With Firefox, annoying downloads and unwanted browser hijacking doesn't occur without your permission. In fact, it never happens. I wholeheartedly recommend this software.

In other news, I spent a total of 110 minutes on the bus today (50 minutes in the morning, one hour in the afternoon). The bus schedule says the trip is supposed to take about 40 minutes each way. There were massive traffic pileups through the 114th Street corridor. It took at 35 minutes to travel from University to Southgate this afternoon. The driver's constant starting-and-stopping movements and yelling at us to go to the very back of the bus didn't help much, either.

How I introduced myself in two of my classes this past week.

EDPS 410
"Good afternoon, my name is king, and (hopefully) this is my last year in education; my major is physics, minor is bio. I am a born-and-bred Edmontonian, and yes, I am double-jointed."

EDIT 480
"My name is king, and I'm in my final year of education. My major is physical sciences, minor is biological sciences. I've been using computers since MS-DOS 6.0, mostly self-taught. My experience with computer-assisted instruction has been limited to web-based online tutorials, the asynchronous kind. I like to read for fun, mostly non-fiction, with the exception of maybe Harry Potter, and I like to go for walks, when it's nice outside."

Now the techie in me has led me to purchase one of those USB memory keys that you can snap onto a lanyard and walk around with (if you're so inclined). It's USB 2.0-compatible with a 10x transfer rate (1.5 Mb/s) and holds 245 Mb of data. Coincidentally, I purchased it on the same day that Hurricane Ivan threatened the city of Kingston, Jamaica.

I woke up at midnight this morning and couldn't get back to sleep until 5 a.m. The lesson here is King + medium-size Second Cup iced caramel coretto in evening = inadequate sleep. My friend Karl bought it for me for helping him lift and move the stuff he bought for his kitchen renovation. We rode in a Home Depot van that had a built-in cage (to prevent stuff from flying into the front).

My final (?) year of education started for me this morning. I caught up with a lot of EDSE 352/360/364 students from my IPT at lunch, so we just chatted about what we did in the summer, what teaching was like, and where we wanted to live (and teach) once we've graduated.

I am extremely happy with my classes, every one of them! This doesn't come too often. I'm getting by with four courses [*12], but I'm planning to volunteer and work part-time as well. Where to volunteer, I still haven't decided. Maybe a school (study buddy program), maybe a hospital, maybe the ESA ...

I am mysteriously locked out, once again, from my registration. And, when I use the "Forgot your password?" button (which I didn't, but claims I did), I get the following error:

Failed to connect to the SMTP server at 129.128.5.19:25 (80,1)
A connection with the specified SMTP server was not established. The SMTP service on the specified host may not be available.

(Whatever that means.)
Sorry, but I am giving Bear Tracks a grade of D+ (1.3 on four-point scale) for reliability.

Two more sleeps until classes resume. How exciting!

I went to see what was up at the UofA yesterday (my third time this week; the first two were for textbook shopping). As I was searching for one, I found out that CNS upgraded the computers in ED N3-110 [Macintosh lab] to Power Mac G5! Wow, I can feel the 64-bit computing power already. Too bad it wasn't open for service yet, but I am going to spend all my spare time during the academic term in there, you can count on that. (Way better than those Dells with crappy Windows XP they have next door.)

On a different note, researchers at Boston University have developed a suntan lotion that allows you to get burned with minimal side effects! How did they do it? They added oligonucleotides with thymidines at the end, which activates the DNA repair mechanism automatically in skin cells. It reduces aging of the skin and stimulates melatonin production. They've tested this on mice and human skin fragments (ex vivo) with much success (but not yet with real humans). The challenge now is to figure out a way to get the cream, with DNA fragments (which are charged) across the skin barrier. Suntanning without skin cancer? Sounds good to me.

I haven't posted anything recently because I have tried to reduce my exposure to computers. After I shut down my computer at work for the last time on the 27th, I thought it would be fun to see how long I could last without facing a computer monitor (of any sort).

So, I watched the Olympics on CBC. I went out for a walk from Gold Bar Park to Riverdale. I took carefree naps. I read. It was great being out of touch electronically. Until I purchased some textbooks from the UofA bookstore and the guy at the cashier told me I couldn't buy the books AND my September bus pass on credit card. So I had to check my balances on the web when I got home because I was worried that I had overdrawn. Thankfully, I had not. But that stopped my computer-free streak at 75 hours.

One last note about the Olympics: Canada seems to have a charm for finishing fourth. This appears to have severely affected our final medal count (12). As Global National put it, it cost $5.8 M per medal based on the funding the government allocated to the athletes.
Anyway, the World Cup of Hockey is on! Go Canada go! (They won 2-1 over USA last night.)

I went to Zellers at Mill Woods Town Centre yesterday afternoon to pick up something I had ordered online and delivered to a local store (this saves me the shipping costs).

There were two ladies working the customer service desk. I'll say, the return rate at Zellers must be pretty high. One of the ladies was tied up with a customer who wanted to return and then re-order something that he had initially purchased using HBC Rewards Points and some cash. He wanted his cash back (or something) and didn't have a receipt. The lady had him fill out pages upon pages of forms, and she had to lookup a bunch of stuff on her computer. The phone rang almost every minute, and she handled these as well.

So what was the other lady doing, during this whole time? First, I had to wait some five minutes for another customer returning a bunch of clothing. Then she left to go upstairs to get the product I had purchased (a portable radio). The only item that they keep in the vicinity is the order form. I had to wait about ten minutes for her to fetch it, and the queue grew by two more people, of course, requesting returns. Their customer service desk is severely understaffed.

In other news, Canada's olympic team isn't doing too well. So we chose the "best" athletes that have a chance of finishing 12th or better by setting tough standards, and we only have three medals to date. What could have been if we allowed those who have proven themselves in the past, but just couldn't meet the arbitrarily-set Canadian standards? Congratulations to the medallists, though.

So I decided to go on a walk from Mill Creek Ravine Park (83 St./69 Ave.) and ended up at Concordia University College (71 St./112 Ave.) some two-and-a-half hours later. This represents over 15 000 steps (which I calculated with my Special K step counter).
I saw the "pedestrian overpass" near the low level bridge, which I found was actually closed, because of vandalism and flooding. This stuff you never see unless you walk there yourself.

I'll admit, I jaywalked across 112 Ave. The #2 bus was coming, and although I pressed the crosswalk button, it seemed like an eternity to change. At least 1 minute, and no cars in the flow direction! I didn't want to wait half an hour for the next one, so I just ran. There were two women (both conspicuously adults) who tried to board the bus with a child/senior ticket (value = $1.25). Yeah right, you paid but the coin disappeared, I thought. Good thing the driver didn't fall for their lame trick, and earned the city another $2 in the farebox. Question is, what were they going to do when they got on the LRT? (I watched them get off at Stadium.) If a fare inspector caught them, that would have been a $110 fine. Teach them a good expensive lesson, I say.

On the way home, I boarded a bus where the floor in the back was flooded with black elastic bands that girls use to tie long hair together. My estimate was about 50. The bag that once held these bands was lying under one seat. The story it tells: Girl buys a pack of these and boards bus at mall. Opens the package to take one out to tie her hair. Bus brakes or hits a bump. Bands scatter everywhere. No point in picking up stuff that's touched the floor, and leaves all of them there.

The other peculiar thing was this guy who disembarked the bus (same bus) from the back door, and as if thanking the driver wasn't enough, he said something along the lines of: "You did a fantastic job today! WooO! [claps wildly] Yay for ... #8! God bless you!" Before making any conclusions, the guy was a grown man, and was not drunk. Oh, and he wears Abercrombie and Fitch.

Today there was another unscheduled fire drill in our building at 16:15. Unfortunately, I was on another floor, so when I returned upstairs to retrieve my stuff, somebody who works on my floor told me I couldn't go in. Pretty sure it was a false alarm. I didn't have the energy to wait for the all-clear which could take at least 10 minutes, and I had already walked down eighteen (thirty-six, technically) flights of stairs, so I went home with my time card, ID card, cell phone and pen in hand.

I had a fun time with a bunch of grad mates last night. We went bowling at Gateway Lanes, but I didn't play because of previous experience with bowling balls. Then it was dinner at Sicilian Pasta Kitchen in southwest Edmonton, where I ordered a linguine marinara. We then had bubble tea at some tiny restaurant near Old Strathcona. We relived many moments from high school and the early years in university. I was the only one who had to get up at 06:00 the next morning, and I got home around midnight, but didn't actually sleep until 01:00. To top it off, I had a sore throat, so I got a grand total of three hours of sleep last night. Thankfully I managed to slog through today at work and when I retuned home after the fire drill, I dozed off almost immediately.

Windows XP SP2 has gone gold. However, no matter how much you like to update your OS, you will have to wait a few days before you can download it. Be careful, though, I've heard that it will break some of your apps or hardware drivers. And if you haven't ditched IE, now is the time!

I got a new mouse yesterday. Believe it or not, it's the first optical mouse that I've owned. Until yesterday my experience with optical mice were limited to the computer labs at the university. It's a sleek, black and silver coloured Logitech MX310. I love it!

I was extremely bored at work yesterday. All of my co-workers were either on vacation or taking their earned day off (EDO). I ran out of stuff to do, and usually I would go see my supervisor and talk to him about miscellany or get his newspaper, but he wasn't there either.

My neighbours, who are really generous to let me use their fence as a shortcut on a daily basis for quite a few years now, went out with my family (all three of us) with my grandma for supper yesterday. We went to a Chinese seafood restaurant, and there was way too much food. They get along well with my grandma because they're from the same generation (i.e. old). Not much else happened this week to me. Still looking to that last week of August.

Great. I'm locked out of my own course registration. One of my friends asked me what was so bad about registering for my university courses online, when I told him I didn't like Bear Tracks that much. It's reasons like this. Couldn't they have kept the telephone registration system (780.492.4000) as a means for old-fashioned people to register? It's the weekend and there's nobody at the Office of the Registrar to talk to, and I'm 100% sure that I was typing my password correctly (eight alphanumeric characters plus a special character, for good measure) but I kept getting invalid LoginID/password errors. I didn't set up a password question, which shows you how much faith I had in the computer system. (Bad idea.) Now I can't reset my password, and still don't know if I actually got that last spot in the section I was hoping to fill. (Yes, another one. I have a skill for finding these.) If not, I will have huge 2-5.5 hour breaks all over the place. I guess I will have to wait until Tuesday to find out.

I was on my usual walk during lunch hour when I decided to walk east on Jasper Ave from 97th St. It was a sunny day and I was busy listening to the radio. As I walked by yet another shopping cart filled with old sleeping bags, clothing and useless junk I heard a cry from below. "BUDDY!". I looked over and saw a homeless guy and woman trying to climb Grierson Hill. "GIVE ME A HAND," he called out. They were about 10 metres down and wanted me to pull them up back to street level. I didn't want to get dirty, smell like booze, or risk being stuck down there with two dirty people, so I waved my hand and walked on. The man called out again, "HELP ME OUT HERE!" Yeah, right. I thought he might pull out a gun or start chasing after me, so I marched on, afraid to look back. By the time I stopped I was at that halfway house where they keep convicted criminals. I crossed the street back to the bike path and finally felt safe. That area freaks me out, and I'm never walking to the park using that way again.
Yesterday there was a crowd of people on my usually quiet neighbourhood street. There were three firetrucks. Only one had to draw out a fire hose, though. I don't know what the whole deal was, but I think some teens were playing with fire in their garage and oops! However, the garage is still in one piece the last time I checked.

After an evening with my friends with an unexpected rainstorm last night, I was planning to get up real early to attend the 7th annual Premier's Klondike Breakfast on the legislature grounds this morning. I was quite tired and set my alarm clock to wake me up at 5:43 a.m. Or so I thought. I had the weirdest time falling asleep. The next thing I heard was my mother, asking me if I was going to get up, since it was 6:30. My first thought was, why didn't the alarm clock go off? It turns out, I had set it to 5:43 p.m. So no free breakfast for me.

Other than a 9.5 hour work day, not much happened. During my lunch hour, I went to the UofA to ask the education general office whether I could apply the CMPUT 114 credit that I took in first year to my program (I never thought I'd see the day when I would use the worst grade I have ever received in my university career applied to a degree). I actually kind of miss school. Only a month-and-a-half left!

I am now going to place 'Shaw Communications' on my blacklist of goods/services. I turned on the computer at 6:05, hoping to make some changes to my course timetable. The Internet was down. (Loading the corporate page didn't work either.) Luckily, the 1 spot on the course I wanted was still there when I did managed to log on temporarily about one hour later; otherwise, they could have been expecting a mean phone call. (Well, maybe not that mean, seeing that it's coming from me.) At 13:30, the Internet wasn't working again, and the TV lost its signal as well. I watched as an already fuzzy-display faded into complete grey fuzz. Why is it that when you need something the most, it stops working? Another example of Murphy's Law #1, I guess.

Sunny day today. I mowed the lawn before noon because that's what Saturdays are for. Oh, and on to another electronic image-capturing device: the Canon PowerShot A80. Of course, I have suggested to my father that he return it, because a new model to replace the A80 is rumoured to be introduced in the near future. It came with an hp photosmart 145 printer, which I also think is useless.

Yesterday I went to A Taste of Edmonton with my friend BoBo. We walked to the little park on 102nd St at Jasper. We spent a combined total of $12 (= 16 tickets) and were still hungry. This is what we purchased: 3 bacon-wrapped scallops (4 tickets); 4 stuffed mushrooms (5 tickets); 1 chicken caesar pita (5 tickets); 2 chocolate cappucino shooters (2 tickets). Lucky for BoBo, he went to a pancake breakfast earlier that day, I did not. So I was practically starving until I got home.

New iPod announced today (a.k.a. fourth generation iPod). This was leaked a few days ago [thinksecret.com]. If you feel like saving some money, Apple has made a deal with hp: you install iTunes on your computers, we'll let you sell rebranded iPods. Anyway, the new features: click wheel (same as the iPod minis, but bigger), better battery life, and 1 mm thinner.

Walked from the Low Level Bridge to the UofA via QueenE, Kinsmen, and Emily Murphy parks yesterday. Waterfall on High Level Bridge turned on for Sourdough Raft Race festivities. There was no hailstorm this week (thank goodness). I see that they have built a nice wheelchair-accessible ramp for the east entrance of the Gunning / Lemieux Chemistry Centre. Those who can walk will find the stairs much quicker.

Las Vegas has opened a P3 (public-private partnership) monorail to the public, built by Canada's own Bombardier.

At this moment, in the land the Americans call the great white north, it is currently 26°C, with a projected high of 32°C today. I don't know what the deal on West Nile virus is in Alberta, but how are you supposed to go running in this kind of weather while keeping from being bitten by a mosquito?

There was a silly fire alarm in the building yesterday. Luckily, it happened at lunchtime, so then I thought "what the heck" and walked down eighteen floors where I was greeted by a nice loud buzzer on the main floor. I took the LRT to the UofA and walked/ran all the way back to Grandin Station. I managed to do it in 22 minutes wearing cargos and a polo shirt.

This time I actually used the hiking trail which led to the bushes. Last time I went that way I was afraid that I was going to get lost and backed out after maybe 50 metres, but I was determined this time. There was a lot of staircases in between lengthy downhill paths (you have to keep running to keep your footing). But when it led back to the bike path, I knew where I was, and that was good.

After work, my friend A.M. and I went out for coffee (in a bookstore / coffee shop hybrid), went to Best Buy to look at miscellaneous stuff that techies would love to have but not actually need, and then visit to Tokyo Express. As usual, I didn't eat the pink ginger things that came with the plate but I did try my raw fish with wasabi in soy sauce this time. Not too bad.

Today I was quite tired because I only got about five hours of sleep. This was because I was at my best friend's house until it was quite late last night. Since I haven't seen him for a while, we chatted about anything and everything.

I heard from my sister today. She's in Montréal, taking in the sights, going to class, doing whatever she wants. Apparently she's always out until midnight, doing lots of shopping, visiting people hotspots, you know, the things that teenagers tend to do when their parents are a few thousand miles away.

Well, I've already been in front of a computer for nearly eleven hours today, so it's time to sign off for a bit. Enjoy the warm weather!

I woke up at 05:30, somewhat deprived of sleep. Reason? My sister left for Montréal this morning and she had to get to the airport. I watched longingly as travellers checked their bags, ready for their summer vacation. When I got home I couldn't sleep. So I walked to Lakewood (about six blocks away) and took the bus to the UofA. It was such a nice day, people were in shorts and stuff, while I had my fleece and jeans. I walked along the bike trail westward on Saskatchewan Drive until I saw a sign that said Kinsmen Park, although when I followed the trail (second time in my life I went down this path; first time was in Biology 208) all the way to the end, I saw Emily Murphy Park and a firepit and picnic table that looked really similar.

Exactly where I was three Saturdays ago, hanging out with l337 d00dz and other people who love cellphones, PS2s and computers. We had a barbecue and played this stupid card game called Mao. I reminisced for a couple of seconds, and then walked towards downtown along a wide dirt path that followed the river. I was getting pretty sweaty, and thirsty. Nope, didn't bring a water bottle. Practically all of the cyclists and joggers along the trails had shorts...but I am West Nile Virus savvy. Anyway, I walked under the LRT bridge to River Road, and then followed the bike trail some more until 105 St. Then I walked northbound to 96 Ave., then west (up a slight incline) to the Legislature building. I took a quick repose watching some kids play in the mini pool and then continued to the Grandin LRT station. The sky was overcast by then. I took the LRT to downtown and waited about 10 minutes for the bus. About three stops away from my home, it began to rain. Hard. With hail. Just my luck. Or maybe I should be glad I didn't go out in a T-shirt and shorts. Anyway, I got home soaked. And that's my adventure for today.

Searching for that ultimate vacation...

I've been working in the IT department for some seven weeks and they've run out of stuff for me to do. I look forward to my abbreviated summer vacation, which begins August 28th this year. My parents have been out of the country twice in the past year; next week my sister leaves for Montréal for five weeks. Montréal is one of my favourite cities in Canada. The last time I went on a vacation was April 2003, which was a two-day getaway to Banff National Park. The last time I went anywhere more than 2 Mm (2 megametres, = 2 000 km) away was San Francisco and Las Vegas, and that was ... almost two years ago.

I've been travel deprived, even though it's one of my favourite things to do. I've opted for summer jobs instead of going on vacation. I've gone to school for five straight years now. I travel virtually through the Internet and travel guides. My philosophy says that I can't go anywhere exotic until I secure a full-time job, and (unfortunately) I don't know when that is going to happen. Tomorrow night my favourite reality TV show begins on CFRN and CBS. The Amazing Race 5! I can't wait.

Election Day is over. I spent over six hours glued to CBC Newsworld, wondering how the election would turn out. Of course, I went to the polling station straight after work to cast my vote. I'm glad the Liberals kept their two seats in Alberta, the only two in the province. Unfortunately, the NDP do not have enough seats to keep the balance of power. I would have voted NDP, but I felt it would have been a wasted vote. In my riding of Edmonton-Beaumont, the incumbent, David Kilgour (Liberal), beat out his closest rival (Conservative) by a mere 131 votes. Mr Kilgour has represented our riding faithfully for about a quarter of a century, but the rural area south of Edmonton (part of the new riding) was a small-c conservative region, a fact that explains the closeness of the final count.

Today there was no free sample at Starbucks, contrary to what it said on the Yahoo! site. As a result, my friend and I paid for a full cup. We didn't actually ask for the free sample, we were hoping it was an unadvertised special. Everyone who ordered the new Frappucino light paid for theirs. (Maybe they were hoping it would be free, as well.)

Want a CD from pre-2003 for under $4? Better hurry, the bookstore at the UofA is clearing out all of their music. 80% off retail price! This deal is especially good for cheesy pop music that you wouldn't pay $15 for, but like one or two of the songs on an album (and if you are philosophically opposed to downloading music). To save you some time, if you like classical music, there's nothing good left.

On my way to work, the bus passes through the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona, one of the city's most highly-contested ridings. There is a good battle between Conservative Rahim Jaffer, Liberal Debby Carlson and NDP Malcolm Azania. (I guess with the environmental-ish flavour of the riding, it wouldn't be fair to exclude the Green Party's Cameron Wakefield either.) I have to smile everytime I think of Michael Moore and his idea that we shouldn't vote Conservative because that would break Canada's ethic.

"And that ethic says: 'We're all Canadians, we're all in the same boat. If one of us gets sick, that person should get health care 'cause we're all affected.'

"The American way is pull yourself up by your bootstraps: 'Me, me, me, me, me. It's mine. It's mine.' You know? Don't go that way. Your Conservatives are trying to take you that way."

Anyway, this riding has lots of giant lawn signs, propped up with large wooden frames from the three major parties. On Connors Hill (or is it Cloverdale Hill?) there is a house with a couple of these large Conservative signs where somebody crossed off the first two letters of the word "strong" from the phrase "For a strong Canada." He isn't too far off.

I wouldn't vote Conservative, an idea which isn't too strong here in Alberta. That leaves the Liberals and NDP. Here in Edmonton-Beaumont there is a candidate running for the Communist party. She might get a few votes for fun, I think, or from those dissatisfied with all the major parties.

My first experience in the river valley with my inline skates this past weekend wasn't too exciting. I climbed hills with my skates on, which is worse than walking uphill (because there's always the possibility of rolling down the hill backwards). I wore off the sides of my wheels, while doing this decreasing their lifetime significantly. My friend on his bike wasn't as unlucky. We went for coffee afterwards, a remedy for my blue toes caused by this climbing.

Just before I mowed the lawn today, I saw a mosquito. Usually I just put up with mosquito bites but this year, you can't take any chances. So I searched for my mosquito repellent before starting. Since I am working on four hours of sleep today, I discovered that a good stress reliever is to pull weeds in your garden. Bonus points if the root comes out on your first pull.

The price tag on the S500 was apparently too high for my father, so he returned it and instead bought a bargain-basement, discontinued HP PhotoSmart 935 digital camera. It is 5.3 MP with 3x optical/7x digital zoom, uses SD memory cards and 2 AA batteries. The thing is a power sucker, and it takes a long time (~10 seconds) to write pictures to the card. 15 minutes of usage and the two 2100 mAH rechargable NiMH batteries are drained. Heck, the indicator goes down to 65% when you turn it on for the first time with the new batteries! Not bad value for $250, though.

I watched Fight Club at my friend Karl's house last night, along with Jeremiah and Arif. Then we watched and played along with the 1 a.m. Price is Right with commercial breaks filled with B.C. government-sponsored advertising. I suppose that is how small TV networks in northern B.C. find their dollars, because there is no target market in Houston, Kitimat or Smithers.

Web-based email to your heart's content.

Apparently, HoTMaiL will increase their capacity to 25 MB, up from their 2 MB limit. The new capacity is is one-quarter of the capacity that Yahoo! offers, and one-fortieth of what Gmail offers.
You would think that Microsoft could afford to do better with all the money they make: 92% of all computers in the world run Windows. And unlike other web-based email services, spam actually counts towards your quota in Hotmail. Does this mean I will get 23 MB more spam now?

Apparently this change will take place in July, which conveniently coincides with their end of Q2 financial statements. If you can't wait for your own Gmail account, Rediff is an email service based in India that will offer you 1 GB of storage today.

The Canon PowerShot S500 digital camera my parents ordered last week has come in. What's not to like about it? Five megapixels, 3x optical zoom in a case smaller than a box of cigarettes. The compact size also means that you need to buy proprietary rechargeable batteries (at $70+ each) instead of traditional AA ones, and may be non-existent (obsolete) within three years.

I signed up for the new Bonfire music service at futureshop.ca and received a $10 credit. Bonfire is a front-end for puretracks.com. After relegating myself to using two pieces of junk temporarily (IE and Windows Media Player) to access the site, and much browsing for good music (of which there was little), I settled for Audrey de Montigny's new album, which is mostly in French but still a pleasure to listen to. It cost $8.55. For a bunch of digital files with copy protection. Je peux toujours utiliser un peu de pratique sur mon français.

What else? I got an extension at my current job until the end of August. So I guess I was doing a good job, after all. This means I get to keep my cell phone as well. Not that I was becoming attached to it or anything...

Too bad the Flames lost Game 7 by one goal. If only they didn't play so badly in the first minute of the second overtime in Game 6, this wouldn't have happened.

Anyway, we people in Edmonton are supposed to stop our love-in affair with Calgary. Ditch those flags. Donate your jerseys to charity. And on and on...

On Tuesday, dell.ca was a popular place to be on the web. One of their "upgrade" options cost -$1017, rather than +$349. That means you could get a Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.6 GHz notebook with 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD and 64 MB video card for less than $1300. Lots of people took advantage of it and ordered. But then Dell sent everyone an email to those who did and only offered them a 10% discount on the customer's initial configuration only. And no, I missed out on the "offer". Computer technology is going to *significantly* improve in about a month. So don't buy a new one just yet.

In other useless news, Microsoft patented the double-click in the U.S. The behaviour of this corporation is just mind-boggling.

I usually take the #66 bus to work. This is because I always miss the #64 by about half a minute every day. This has happened every day (not an exaggeration) for three weeks now. So now I will leave 5 minutes earlier so this doesn't happen anymore, as the #66 takes a nice scenic route.

Anyway, on the #66 yesterday there was this woman dressed in camouflage-coloured clothing (with matching handbag), a bit manly and really short hair who had the urge to reveal her life to the bus driver. (She's not a regular on this bus.) The distracted bus driver in turn forgot to let a boy and his skateboard not one, but two bus stops too late. I, sitting in the back, yelled at the driver (for the boy) after he passed the first one, to no avail, because the message got lost in the chatter by the woman.

Things I learned about this woman (while I was trying to concentrate on reading my book):
- she wants to work for ETS but "not as a bus driver" because she only has a class 5 and 7 driver's license
- her salary went down this year because her employer told her her qualifications were insufficient (one year short of a BA)
- she believes women bus drivers are more compassionate because they don't drive over curbs, and brake properly
- she doesn't usually drink, but the night before she felt like drinking lots of beer with her friends and that's why she was tipsy

I noticed the chatter stopped as we approached downtown, wondered why and looked up. She was sleeping, probably because she was hung over.

Today I met my friend K. at his new digs in downtown (Edmonton City Centre East). We sat in front of the City Hall pool and chatted for about an hour. It was a beautiful day, and K. noted that weekdays at lunch are the only time you will ever see a busy downtown. I appreciated the break from staring at a computer screen for four hours.

I also in-line skated in public today. It went pretty well apart from my skates loosening a bit when I got to Mill Woods Park. The braking was minimized by grabbing onto poles when rounded corners or at intersections or by jumping on to the grass. I'm now ready for the big time - and the whole purpose of getting in-line skates - the city's river valley trails.

It was definitely a day where people should have stayed indoors. It was raining, and windy, but I decided to go out anyway. When I returned home, my parents were stranded outside the house; I locked the storm door before I left not knowing they would return this early. I was supposed to pick them up from the airport later this evening.

My friend K., my sister and I went to the Princess II theatre in Old Strathcona to see a matinée movie, after a quick browse through Greenwoods and HUB Cigar & Newstand. The Corporation is a 145-minute documentary on multi-national corporations that exist for one motive only, and that is money. According to the movie, a corporation shows all of the symptoms of a psychopath, as diagnosed using the DSM-IV manual. These include things such as inability to form long-term relationships (when cheap labour gets too expensive, they look to other desperate countries whose only asset is manual labour) and do not accept responsibility for anything (ecological disasters, the general welfare of its workers, etc.) It even showed how IBM was related to the holocaust (victims' information was stored on punch cards, and the machines to read these were programmed by IBM, even at Dachau, the concentration camp). Kathie Lee Gifford, who didn't know that children making handbags with her brand name on it earned virtually nothing, brought media attention to the sweatshop issue, but today, Wal-Mart is still paying them about 3 cents per hour. Other topics include biotechnology and patenting genes, the privatization of water, and overzealous media giants.

The best part was Michael Moore talking about how he is able to talk about greedy corporations publicly in a movie, but the film company will still distribute it because they know that people will pay to watch this documentary, and that will translate into profit for the company. He also says the company also knows that people won't do a thing to change anything either, so the negative publicity probably wouldn't do any harm to their business.

So get up and do something. Stand up to these conglomerates who will leave the Earth in a mess. Is this what you want for your children and grand-children?

Overall, it's a great movie. I highly recommend it, especially if you are into sociological issues (like I am). Oh yeah, did you know that AOL Time Warner owns the rights to the "Happy Birthday" song, and you would have to pay a royalty in the tens of thousands of dollars if you include it in your movie?

Today people are taking over the 18th floor at Century Place, and since I am a temporary staff member, I was moved into a cubicle with no window, located in a more open space (= more traffic); a longer walk to the elevators, stairs and elevator; and a smaller desk. I guess there was no asbestos problem after all. The peace and quiet on the 18th will be gone next week.

I went to the University to purchase a bus pass and get some lunch today. It was the first time in about a month since I was last there. The pizza place appears to be popular, I saw quite a few people eating pizza throughout the mall, and there was a lineup.

Coyote Ugly was on TV last night. So I watched it with my sister. Nothing like free entertainment, eh?

Parents are returning home from Hong Kong on Sunday evening. Just when I was getting used to having (almost) the whole house to myself.

I went to the Sport Mart at Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre this morning to have a look at their inline skates. I tried on a pair of Ultra Wheels HY3, and they were enough for my needs, so I bought them. I actually wanted the HY5, but the closest Sport Mart that had them (in my size) was in B.C. I got a free 3-piece protective gear set with my skates (because they did not have anymore 2-piece ones in stock). That's good, because now I don't have to buy wristguards either. The colour of the personal protective equipment was orange, which just happens to be the same colour as my skates (as the salesgirl noted). The wristguards are probably the most important piece of protection (more than the elbow and knee pads), she said. Well, it doesn't matter, because I'll probably be using them as secondary brakes.

I practised my skating technique inside my house for a bit, and will hit the streets of Edmonton once I purchase a new helmet from MEC sometime tomorrow.

I wish I had a pair of inline skates so I could zip around. I've always wanted a pair, but never got around to getting them. We will see this year. I would also need to buy some safety gear as well.

Work is getting progressively exciting. Another day of identifying software and then mapping them to the appropriate licenses and the database entry. Your tax dollars at work. After work, I waited at the bus stop for 15 minutes before realizing the bus run I was waiting for did not exist anymore, but I'm too cool to pick up one of those timetables from the front of the bus and keep it in my pocket.

Nobody at work is talking about hockey or the Flames. I think it's because the IT branch is more interested in the latest version of Roxio Easy Media Creator (formerly known as Adaptec Easy CD Creator, until they changed the company name, and the ability to burn DVDs as well as CDs was included) is. Any computer user knows that it's a candy-coated useless piece of software. In fact, one of the first things I did when I got my new computer (a few years ago) was uninstall Easy CD Creator.

The people at IT also lock down all corporate computers so that nobody can run any external programs. My computer, for example, runs the antivirus scanner automatically every two minutes! And there's no way I can stop it. The links to the network drives are already broken, and I haven't used them. (The network drive mapping function is disabled on my account.) I cannot get updated versions of the software, because that would be running an executable. My co-workers are annoyed at the IT Help Desk because I can't do my work if I cannot run the updated files. And the IT Help Desk (separate from my department) is probably annoyed at me for calling them all the time, but hey, I didn't give myself the restricted access. I can't even change my password, and I had to read it out loud over the phone when the IT guy was on my computer and I was working at another workstation. Just don't send anything too personal to king.luu@[edmonton.ca]...

Anyway, congratulations to the Calgary Flames for being Canada's Team. Go Flames Go!

My next assignment for the City of Edmonton is in the IT department. The vast majority of the staff have abandoned the 18th floor at Century Place, taking up the newly-renovated 17th floor. This means that my office space is located on the 18th. My supervisor mentioned something about cleaning up the asbestos on this floor, but I wouldn't know.

I get to use a corporate-owned cell phone, which is the only phone I have access to at work. In case you don't know me, I've never used a cell phone. Until yesterday. Still not sold on the idea of having one. Why make yourself more accessible to others when you don't have to?

The computer they gave me was pretty crappy, because they didn't give me all the access I was supposed to have, so I had to work on the 17th. The good news is that I actually have Internet and e-mail at work, unlike at Community Services. Today somebody came to fix it up and it's fine now. I bet when he's gone, it won't work properly anymore.

I'm supposed to track every piece of software the City owns and compile it into the main database. Since they have two databases and a multitude of spreadsheets (and sheets of paper), it's not as easy as it sounds. The database is a MS Access/Oracle thing, and it's not as reliable as it should be. So this assignment might take me the whole six weeks I am there.

Whenever my parents go away on vacation, my sister and I usually take a break from rice (and other chinese stuff) and eat whatever cooks the fastest. This includes items such as macaroni-and-cheese, pasta and sauce, instant ramen (noodles) -- boil water and you're off. Pizza -- not delivery, but from the deli or from the freezer; and Pizza Pops (microwave for 3 minutes).

This morning, I finally finished Mineweeper in expert mode! At 387 seconds, it's not exactly the best time. But I'm glad to have finished it at least once.

My sister was nice enough to buy me a new water bottle to replace the one that was stolen from me while I was at Riverbend. This one is green with a black lid.

I found my scientific calculator as well, so all in all, this is a good week for me. I thought somebody had stolen it from me at Riverbend. (I usually brought it to school in case some student forgot his or hers on the day of a quiz or exam, a practice I learned from my EDSE 352 instructor, Sherry Olson.) There was always a student who forgot to bring one.

Yesterday was my last day at the community services department for a while. I did a lot of photocopying and data entry (community league grants). After keying in numbers in front of the computer screen for six hours, I went home and watched TV all evening.

I also tried Quizno's Bourbon Chicken Flatbread (a low carb selection). Cost: $6.73. Very hot, but packed with chicken strips and a sweet sauce. Comes with a jalapeno pepper, which I promptly discarded. The sandwich was hot enough without it. I ate the whole thing in less than five minutes. The flatbread was an $.80 upgrade, one that I will not opt for next time. Note: This was not a personal attempt to follow the Dr. Atkins diet.

What's new since last post?

- at work, entering information from these huge binders full of papers into the electronic database. The binders are thirteen years old, and the back room is full of them.
- started reading The Great Gatsby (second attempt; I couldn't get comfortable with it the last time I tried. And, as I found out today, it's actually a really good book)
- my sister finally got a job offer for the summer, only a couple of weeks later than she expected; during this period, she did absolutely nothing at home except for watch TV (well, what would you do if you were home alone and don't like to do chores? Wait for someone else to do it.)
- learned how to read NMR and IR spectrums properly, something I glossed over in organic chemistry five years ago and still somehow managed to pass the course(s)

You know something's wrong when it's warmer in Yellowknife than in Edmonton. At least we didn't get a blizzard, like my fellow friends 294 km to the south. Well, at least they have the Flames to keep warm.

Today was my second day at work (City of Edmonton Community Services, Revillon Building). I did some word processing, and assembling stuff into binders. I made labels for the binders. Everything is neat and tidy.

I bought a book today from Coles at Mill Woods Town Centre. I've heard good things about Eats, shoots and leaves (by the British author Lynne Truss). One of my pet peeves is people misusing "it's" and "its". I think it will be a good read, but I've still got a bunch of books that I haven't even tried to peel open yet.

As well, I tried a double chocolate chip blended crème frappucino from Starbucks. Perfect for today's weather. I'm hooked, but I have to limit myself to maybe one a month, because $5.14 for a coffee is pretty expensive.

Insomnia has hit me. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. and haven't been able to sleep since. I did catch a quick nap on the bus rides to and from work. Thankfully I didn't miss my stop in either case.

I hate Minesweeper.

I have played Minesweeper for the last two hours, and still haven't won a game in Expert mode yet. My fingers are gradually suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), and I have nothing to show for it.

I hate Windows XP.

It is full of bugs and there a worm going around, infecting computers around the world. In preparation for my future Windows-free computer, I have installed a new theme that makes my desktop look like a Macintosh OS X. It looks kind of cute. But I am not intent on getting a Mac anytime soon; too expensive. My next computer will run Linux. No more Windows + Office + Internet Explorer + Windows Media Player bloatware. I've practically stopped using the latter two, and almost Office as well.

My house is a mess. I am a packrat, especially with my high school and university notes. I just can't bear to throw them away, since I spent lots of time creating them (by listening in class and copying stuff down). They might also make a good resource for my lessons in the future. I also paid to take these courses (or did I pay for the credit? Good question). Until I have a good set of notes for each high school course, these piles of paper will stay in my room, stored in two boxes, and under the bed as well. Maybe TLC's Clean Sweep crew can pay my house a visit, I could surely use them.

Now what about those 30+ page Microbiology 450 lab reports? I spent a fortune printing them out, and loads of time writing them up! But of course, they're essentially useless now. Maybe I can sell them to one of the ten students registered in the course for next year.

I went to my friend C's house yesterday. She was holding a party for those who graduated this year from university or college. I think there's only one person there who is actually graduating; the rest of us either graduated last year or still have one year to go (I fit under both categories).

People I haven't seen since 1996 or thereabouts were in attendance. There were a few people I see from time to time on campus, so they were recognizable by me. It was a good reunion, although I didn't drink (what a surprise!), and was the first to leave because I had to take the bus home. Some of them brought their old notes from courses they despised and threw them into the bonfire (outside, of course). I should have brought my MICRB 343/345, GENET 301 and EDPY 301 notes for this lovely occasion.

Ever tried making homemade macaroni-and-cheese?

My sister decided she wanted some. But there was no more nicely-packaged boxes manufactured by Kraft, so she cooked macaroni, and then proceeded to make the cheese sauce: a mysterious mixture of milk, Becel margarine, and Black Diamond processed cheese heated by microwave.

About half of the macaroni went down the drain when she was draining the water. Very intelligent.
The sauce was a bit too liquidy.
I had to add lots of ketchup. That made it more palatable, but still needed a good can of pop to wash it down.

In other news, I contemplated taking a 300-level zoology course (animal developmental biology) and an additional 300-level educational policy studies course (society and education). But I figured, why take courses harder than you have to? :P Fall 2004 is going to be a breeze. Have a nice day.

Today was the last day at school, and I just sat around for a whole day (this was the intended purpose). I burned a CD with all the quizzes, assignments, etc. that my teacher made after school. Then I talked to the teacher for almost two hours about miscellaneous questions I had about being a teacher. I got my final evaluation as well. It wasn't bad, but I didn't have the feeling that it was particularly strong either.

The last day I taught was Thursday, and I felt quite confident giving my final lecture. I didn't plan anything exciting (i.e. a lab) because my goal was to lecture the students to death. I did buy Timbits for one of my classes today, and one of the students called me a blockhead when I returned his lab (because he thought voltage and charge was the same thing, and I took marks off). But that's all for exciting stuff. I like the students (in general), and promised to come back and volunteer my time whenever they're doing something fun and scientific.

The gift I got from the school was a Riverbend cup, a Riverbend pen, and a slice of carrot cake that contained raisins.

My fellow student teacher has taken some of my stuff and permanently kept them. But still, it was obvious that my mentor teacher liked him better because they have more in common: married, pregnant wives, and other adult stuff I haven't experienced. Oh, and basketball. Still, he's a kleptomaniac.

You know something is wrong when you get a B after earning 78.5% in the course. The course average isn't high, either. Probably in the mid-70s.

The course was boring. The textbook was wordy. The professor is the among the three worst lecturers I have ever had in my five years, joining "Dr. C." (that's what he called himself) and Dr. Adames.

We missed a few lectures because she felt sick. We watched a lot of useless videos (for viewing pleasure only). And in the staff room at lunch, I heard one of the student teachers tell a teacher about how wonderful she was. That explains why she was late for a lecture one day, I remember following her from the education building, and she stopped to talk to a certain someone. That someone was the student teacher.

Well, what a coincidence, my grade for this very course shows up when I checked at the university after school. (The course ended in March, and it took exactly one month for her to post the grades.)

I went out to complete a few errands. Among them was to visit the education library to sign out a few resource materials.

And the bus ride home was so much fun! Not only was I lugging a 1000 page teacher's resource binder, but I was listening to music on my CD player as well. I boarded the #8 bus (known for having loud teenagers, drug dealers, alcoholics, cell phone gamers and people who don't know what volume control is on their music players) to complete my trip. When the bus reached Millgate "transit centre", there were many empty seats, but oddly enough there was a woman who deliberately sat beside me, on the front seats. I think she was illiterate, because she asked me where we were. Why she didn't ask the bus driver is beyond me. So I whispered to her "Millgate". She nodded, probably not having a clue where she exactly was .

Then she asked me what I was listening to. I said "classical music". She asked if she could listen. I was worried about having hygenically clean headphones, so I shook my head. Maybe she was trying to distract me and then try to take my wallet. As the bus headed towards Mill Woods, she yelled at the driver "when are we going to get to downtown?" Wrong direction, miss. The driver suggested that she get off at Millbourne Mall and then transfer, but she said she'd rather just stay on (hmm...adds 30 minutes to the trip). Suddenly the #8 to downtown came, and she wanted to get off, but the bus driver had already pulled away from said stop. Just before she got off, she asked me if I'd give her $2 for another bus ride to get home. I told her I didn't have any change, and disembarked before anything else happened.

marking planning lecturing demonstrating walking questioning reading helping drawing

Those are some of the things that you do as a classroom teacher. One more week of this stuff, and then I can finally watch TV and sleep whenever I want. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...

Why can't I take courses like this for credit?

How much fun can you have in South Edmonton?

On Saturday evening, my friend K. and I felt like wasting four hours. So we did.
At 8 p.m., we went to the Mohawk gas station on 23rd Ave. to visit my friend J., who seems to have a knack for getting jobs that involve gas stations.
We went to Best Buy (South Edmonton Common) at about 8:40 because they closed at 9. We looked at random digital cameras, USB keys and DVDs. They don't force you out at 9, nor do they announce that they close. It's a customer relationship thing.
Afterwards, K. and I went to !ndigo, to look at books. K. is going travelling (again) this summer, so he was looking at travel books. I went to look for Haddon's novel, which I found, bought and read in one sitting the following day. We each had a cool drink in the café that cost $4 each, but made us thirstier still. !ndigo closes at 10 pm.
Second Cup on 34th Ave. was next. They close at 11. I saw lots of college and university students who were cramming for their final exams. Suckers. We each had a coffee.
We returned to Mohawk to give J. a double shot of espresso that we bought for him at Second Cup. This is an unexplainable drink. 50 mL of concentrated, bitter, black coffee for $2. I don't see how anyone can drink it, but it made J. smile. We chatted outside for about an hour in the cold. By then it was midnight, and K. gave me a ride home.

Here's the situation.

You've actually taught a whole topic! The quiz is scheduled well in advance, so that the students have time to review and study. You made the quiz from scratch, without the use of a databank or any software. It's going to be a challenging quiz, but you know the students are quite bright and should be prepared.

Quiz day arrives. Students rush into the classroom, hoping to get that few extra minutes of study time. ONE MINUTE before the bell is set to ring, the fire alarm goes off. In disbelief, you usher the students outside, all joyous and expecting the quiz to be postponed (until Tuesday, because there's a four-day weekend).

The fire alarm was a real one, not a drill. (Somethin' happening in the boiler room, which was fixed.) Firetrucks came. But it took at least 20 minutes before everyone was able to return to class.

Everyone is jumpy. You administer the quiz, telling them to try their best in the time given, and take off a couple of the *really* difficult questions. One is changed to a bonus question.

After about 25 minutes, the dismissal bell rings. Some students are visibly upset because they ran out of time, and cannot stay after school to finish up, nor would you allow them to finish up on Tuesday. (What would that do the reliability of the assessment?) A couple of the hard-working students want to finish up, and you allow them to do so. You mark the quizzes leniently, hoping to keep the class average high.

That was my Thursday.

The spring break must have been some elixir! My fellow student teacher is much more sociable now. We are working collaboratively in developing a lab for the grade nine classes.

I feel sick because I don't think I have the energy to control the grade eight students. I rushed them through so that we could finish the topic, and have all of tomorrow's class for review.
I think they were lost after about 20 minutes. I wonder how my mentor teacher thinks about this disaster.

On a happier note, the Canadian women's hockey team won the world championship in Halifax! They defeated the U.S. by a score of 2-0. Canada has won every gold medal since the tournament began in 1990; the U.S. has won every silver medal since then.

I love April!

The time for final exams ... NOT!
IPT is good because I've already had all of my finals in mid-March, and can just breeze through the rest of term making lesson plans.

Today I learned how a DC motor works, which I first learned in Grade 12 (Physics 30) but somehow it's now in the grade 9 science curriculum. I made a nifty pressure worksheet for my grade 8 science students, since I love making worksheets.

The Juno awards are being held in Edmonton, only the third time it's taking place outside of Ontario. All the stars are here, and so is the Prime Minister.

Only In Edmonton...

Yesterday it reached 24°C. So while everyone was celebrating in shorts and sandals, this morning it was 0°C, with flurries. Isn't this the coolest weather or what?

I have a new music favourite. I discovered her by chance, a New Zealander with an lovely angelic voice named Hayley Westenra. Her album, Pure, comes out April 6 in Canada, so I guess I'll visit A&B Sound when I have time, to buy it. She celebrates her 17th birthday on April 10.

I decided to download Linux to try it out. Since my download speed tops out at 15 kb/s at home, I did it at the UofA, where they have plenty of bandwidth. The flavour I chose was SuSE Linux, and I'll admit, the interface looks better than Windows, sort of like the MacOS.

Afterwards, I decided to do some planning for next week. I made a pressure quiz (not a quiz that you do under pressure, but a quiz that involves the formula pressure = force/area), so if you're in LG 8-2 at Riverbend, better start studying now, because you will be notified next Monday.

I went downtown afterwards, hoping to buy a bestselller from SmithBooks. Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was $29.95, whereas it was 30% off (and 40% off for me, an iRewards member) just last week. I checked Kingsway as well, hoping downtown was an anomaly. I was wrong. I did, however, see some pretty people on the #9 to Kingsway, so maybe it was worth the trip.

Today is the second day of a nine-day weekend. I know a couple of people who chose teaching as a career solely for the 10-week summer vacations. From one classmate: "Once July hits, I'll be at the beach, sipping coolers everyday for a whole month!"

Trust me, teachers actually need the holiday. I've been stressed for the whole week, and I haven't actually taught for more than an hour per day. What will I do when I have to teach six classes? And prepare a lesson plan for each of them?

My sleep cycle has already been disrupted. Which is just great. The Venetian blinds in my room just fell off, and I have no urge to fix it. So the sunrise each day at 6 a.m. is my natural alarm clock.

Hmm...one week down, three to go.

Spring break is next week. This is good, I can actually work on developing lesson plans for a whole week! The week back is only four days, ditto for the following week. Hurray for Easter!

I finished Fast Food Nation, a book that I received as a birthday gift, and am planning to give up fast food temporarily. Yeah, how do you know what's in the hamburger?

OK, so I am going to talk about the student teacher who shares the class with me, after all. He asks so many questions, it defeats the purpose of a mentor teacher. He doesn't share any (school-related) information with me (therefore, I will not share anything more with him), and I have trouble making conversation with him. I envy all of my friends who are getting along well with their fellow student teachers.

The guy is a kleptomaniac: he stole the secretary's (Winnie-the-Pooh) pen, my pen (he put it in his mouth, so I am not touching it again), one of the handouts I got from a staff meeting (he stained his own copy with his cup of coffee, and I don't want a coffee-stained copy), the textbook, the multimeter...and who knows what else.

Today was the second day at Riverbend. I was going to comment on my fellow student teacher, but I think I will reserve that for my personal notebook.

We did a lot of marking yesterday. Imagine all of the quizzes for eight Grade 9 science classes (~200), marked by two people. I think I spent about 5 hours marking.

I was teaching the grade 8 class today. Boy, am I in trouble! I need to plan better (time management). I spent a lot of time making sure everyone understood how to do calculations. I hope they do well on the quiz tomorrow, it's going to be a tough one.

Hi!
This is *shivers with excitement* my new blog. I've decided that this would be easier than writing about my life with Microsoft Word.
A bit of a topic starter: I start my field experience practicum tomorrow at Riverbend Junior High School. So expect a few stories, but nothing *too* personal or anything that might violate the privacy of other people. Until then, read on!