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.