So it’s been about a week since my last post, but so much has happened already…I have half an hour before bedtime (2:30 am for me these days since I have only afternoon class on Wednesdays), so here we go:
Boring academic stuff:
Classes are basically same-old same-old. I completely died on the first Stat 230 test, which I pretty much figured. The marking TA made no comments though so I asked Diana to get me a remark, or at least some idea of what I did wrong. She hasn’t returned it yet, but we’ll see what happens. We’re covering distributions right now which I vaguely remember from Data Management, although it looks like I might actually have to start studying for this course soon.
CS245 continues to be boring as all hell. We’ve spent about a week talking about proof by induction (the 3rd time I’ve learned it! I think UW has a mandate to teach it once a year or something…) and then talking about predicate logic (basically the equivalent of function calls in logical statements). It’s like doing Math 145 all over again except SLOWWWWWWWWWW. The midterm for CS245 is tomorrow (technically, since it’s Wednesday now), but I’m not sure what to do. The first assignment was kinda tough, but then I got it and did it and got 96% on it (I made one mistake in about 5 different places, but now I know not to do it again), so I’m not sure what to do. Maybe after class tomorrow (today) I’ll have a better idea.
CS251 continues to be boring. I’m not sure what to study for this course, quite frankly, since the prof (lecturer? instructor? Not sure…) keeps going on and on about these ridiculously complicated diagrams we can’t possibly be expected to memorize (and in fact he said we’re not expected to memorize), yet that’s really all he keeps going on about, so I’m not sure what to study. I’m doing decently on the assignments I guess, and he said the tests are based mostly off the assignments, so I’m not too worried.
CS240 is getting really really hard. Apparently, enough people screwed up the end of assignment 3 (the stupid Calculus crap mentioned in my last post) to warrant a special tutorial session on the usage and meaning of the various analyses. I was planning to go, but unfortunately it happened to be on the (as of yet) coldest day of the winter (more on that later), so I didn’t. Assignment 4 was even harder. The first 2 questions were ridiculously easy (one was a brute-force search, the other was a simple math formula using application of stuff from class), but the third part was ridiculous. After spending 4-5 hours on it and getting absolutely nowhere, I took a 66% on the assignment and forgot about it. Even some of the better people in the class who I’m friends with couldn’t get it. It was really really hard.
My first Japan 202 midterm was last week. I’m going to be getting it back tomorrow. That’s really all there is to say about that class for now.
On to club developments:
First and foremost, I’m now an official member of the CTRL-A exec. The External Relations Officer decided he couldn’t keep up with the workload anymore, so he resigned and we had a re-election, which put me in his place. This is really not that much of a big change for me since I’m already organizing joint KonJa-CTRL-A events. Now I just do it in a formal capacity and also have to contact the “anime industry” to get permissions for series CTRL-A shows. It can’t be too hard…I think…looks good on a resume though…
This week, KonJa is part of an Asian Club Alliance event (the Asian Alliance is basically the unification of all East Asian-related clubs on campus). It’s called LunarFest, and it’s supposed to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which was apparently last weekend or something (I dunno; I can only keep track of 2 New Years…I’ve already got one in January and one in September…). Today they sold food in the SLC, and tomorrow there’s a fashion show followed by an after-party. Our former Science blogger was in the fashion show last year, and it looked kind of interesting, so I figured I’d check it out. I probably won’t stay late at the after-party though, what with a midterm the next day and all. But I dunno; we’ll see.
And now the miscellaneous stuff:
So I’ve achieved my goal this term. After trying twice so far, I got Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes. The quote (with reference to the kanji 道) was:
“This part means “neck” and the kanji means “road”, like finding a head on the road”
She found out. It wasn’t quite as amusing as when I got her in 102. She was thankful I didn’t use another quote I could have used (that one might get her into real trouble; it was hilarious but somewhat off-colour for a classroom, so I won’t post it here).
On a related note, I was hanging out in MathSoc the other day talking about getting Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes (without using her name since nobody in MathSoc is taking any Japanese classes to my knowledge, and definitely not the people I was talking to) when a guy turned around and asked me “is that Misato you’re talking about?” Turns out he was her husband. I’d seen him once before at my Japan 201 exam, but it was kind of random meeting him in MathSoc. We chuckled about it a little bit.
Speaking of meeting people randomly, I saw Professor Willard today in the Davis Centre when I was passing by. He still remembers I write this blog and said he might look it up again sometime. So here’s a shout-out to him if he decides to read it!
(And because I know I’ll probably get e-mailed about it otherwise, I suppose I’ll shout out to PR as well while I’m shouting out to profs).
I forgot to mention a detail of my little Linux adventure in my last post. I had a couple tax forms I needed to print out for my marking job (FYI for those considering: marking sucks. Don’t do it. It’s not worth the money. I’m doing it mostly cause they wouldn’t let me do tutorial centre instead), so I was trying to print them out through Ubuntu. The Ubuntu PDF reader froze up when I tried to print, so a friend of mine in res printed it out for me. He asked for a shout-out, so here it is. Sorry, I don’t use real names here (except mine and my profs).
Other happenings…hm…ah, right, a good rant about MUO now and then never hurts anyone. So here we go:
So I went by MUO (the Math Undergrad Office) the other day to hand in my course override form for EASIA250. It turns out that normally people don’t take terms off to do educational stuff (I dunno) and MUO tells me I need a stream change to do the trip (i.e. I need to take 8 months off school and come back in stream 8 so I can work for 4 months). I had already spoken to the Math Co-Op Advisor about this towards the beginning of the term, and she approved everything already. Apparently MUO won’t believe me, so they have to double-check. Problem: Renison College is asking for $300 from me by tomorrow (Thursday) as a non-refundable deposit, but I don’t know if MUO is going to approve my trip. I e-mailed the co-op advisor again and she said if MUO contacts her, she’ll approve it, but I have to wait for the OK from MUO before doing anything. Stupid MUO. If they cost me this trip, I’m going to be SOOOOOOO pissed at them it’s not even funny. Normally I’m too lazy to act on my own for these types of things, but I’d seriously consider going to the Dean or Needles Hall if MUO screws with me on this one.
In other other MUO-screws-me-up news, I apparently failed my first work report. Don’t ask me. I got this job and my previous writing job, but apparently I can’t write an academic paper. I think my marker had some issues when she was marking my paper…she failed me on improper formatting and stupid grammar stuff. Improper formatting. Apparently MUO has this standard, and if you try anything else, it’s a fail. Don’t ask me; I didn’t make the rules. So I have to go and get the stupid thing revised again and then find some way to edit the stupid thing. I’m probably going to end up bootcamping my Mac and installing Office 07 on it since I have it lying around (legit, by the way) anyway. Damned MUO…
And finally, the saga of the computer continues. So far the Mac’s been good. It’s really loud (hardware-wise I mean), but otherwise not bad. I got an app that monitors my system resources which tells me that if I try to use a certain program, it uses 100% CPU power (i.e. if I didn’t have Core Duo, it would lock up my computer on me). I think it’s a minor thing of updating the file, but I don’t know for sure. It’s a known bug with Leopard though, apparently. Other than that, I think I’m pretty much fine. I need to reboot more often; my comp takes a while to power cycle (it’s still significantly shorter than Windows or Ubuntu, but still a bit slow compared to how it was when I bought it. I dunno though; everyone I ask says “don’t worry, it’s fine” and if my grandmother who quite literally got every virus known to man on her computer under Windows can use Mac without problems, I suppose I shouldn’t worry. Hopefully nothing will be wrong, and if something is, the Apple people are much more knowledgeable than anything I got for Windows or Ubuntu.
Anyway, this post took much longer than I hoped it would, so I should be going to sleep now. Until next time,
Lyle Waldman
February 13, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Did you consider starting to study stats before flunking your mid-term?
Is “I took a 66% and forgot about it” a winning strategy?
cs 251 and cs 245 are bird courses? Like stat 230 and cs 240 used to be?
When you read a novel do you find it possible to get anything from
it without memorizing it?
What’s the common pattern below?
“I flunked stat 230 because the TA …”
“I flunked my co-op report because MGO …”
“I blew off my 240 because it was [stupid, hard] …”
“I am not sure what to study …”
“I was planning to go, but …”