A Crossroads

So I’m standing at a crossroads right now, and I’ve been thinking about this all weekend, and I think I’ve come to a conclusion. I was originally planning on walking away from this blog at the end of April for good, as I will be in 2B in September, and the likelihood of anyone taking any of the same courses I’m taking then who will actually care enough to read this blog will be almost 0, as my degree plan is somewhat niched (of the 5 courses I’m taking in fall, 1 will be a 2B CS, 1 a 2B Stats, 1 a 3rd or 4th-year CS (I haven’t actually decided what course it will be yet), one a 2nd year East Asian Studies non-language course, and I have yet to decide the 5th). However, I’ve decided to end the blog early. This will be my second-last post; my last post will be a short FAQ on questions I’ve recieved over the course of my term as UW Math Blogger for future reference. I have a few last comments, but first I’ll explain my reasoning:

My reasoning is threefold:

1) Upon deciding I was going to quit the blog in April, I thought about what my courses are this term. I’m taking 1 2A CS, 2 2B CSes, a 2B Japanese course, and a 2A Stats course. Of those, only 1 is open to all Math students (the Japanese course being open only with the right knowledge, which it’s doubtful a significant percentage of people reading this have), so most people reading this are either CS majors or are skipping over 3/4 of every post. I’m not the UW CS Blogger, I’m the UW Math Blogger, and I’d like to keep my content to its purpose, and I feel my content has passed its purpose.

2) Upon editing and reading past posts, I’ve found that my past posts were filled with a lot more humour and were more interesting to read than my later ones. I don’t like writing boring things, as I’m not (or I try not to be) a boring person, and I hate (yes, I used the word “hate”, because I really mean it) coming off as something I’m not, especially when it shows me in a false negativity (if it shows me in a true negativity, then whatever, I’m not perfect, and I know it).

3) I’ve recently been receiving quite insulting comments on my blog from a particular source. I’d go so far as to say these comments were harassing, but so far there have only been 2, and 2 is hardly reason to call harassment. I received a comment (I before E, except after C, Lyle… ) on a post I wrote a couple weeks ago that essentially said “you suck, go kill yourself”. Not in those words; it used synonyms. Not euphemisms, synonyms. The meaning was not blanketed in any way. I received a similar comment this morning from the same source on a post I made last night. What was troubling wasn’t that these comments existed – I know there are fools on the internet who have nothing better to do with their lives than troll random blogs – but that these comments were from a source I knew.

The source of these comments was taurine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (I don’t know if it’s WordPress that told me this or GMail that tracks it, but it was included in the e-mail notification I got when this message was posted); that is, these comments came from somebody on a Computer Science Club machine. The CSC is very picky about who gets on their machines; only members are allowed logon privileges. This means that someone from within the CSC wrote these comments, and since I know pretty much everyone in the CSC (I know the more active members anyway), I probably know this person. I don’t know who this person is, and frankly I don’t care; what bugs me is that such things are allowed to go on in the CSC (the members either know or have cause to know), and that people who treat me well (or at least decently…usually…) in person can be so underhanded and insulting when they’re anonymous. I know it’s a basic trait of the internet – anonymity brings out the worst in people – but I’d like to think that people I consider my friends, or at least positively-minded acquaintances, are as such. Just a warning to people who come to UW, that such people do exist here, and they do exist within the CSC (although, to be honest, there are not nearly as many here as in other places, and most of the CSC members are nice, at least to your face; since I don’t know who wrote this comment I can’t be guaranteed that one of the people who’s nice to my face isn’t a troll behind my back, but as far as I know they’re mostly good guys most of the time). Personally, I don’t want to be even tangentially associated with mean-spirited people though, so I won’t be renewing my membership after it expires at the end of this term (although this unfortunately means I’ll have to find another convenient room with a whiteboard when I need to study for a test, or I might have to *gasp* study in my room), but I feel that people should know all sides of a story before making a decision on how to spend their money and time at UW. The CSC is a useful academic resource for CS and opensource software help, but as a general social hangout, my opinion of them has unfortunately deteriorated substantially over the past couple months.

In general, when someone tells me to stop doing something, if I see no immediate reason to stop, I generally don’t, but given both this and the other 2 reasons and the fact that I have too much else on my mind at the moment to deal with it all, I’ve decided to just get it over with; it would have been done in a month and a half anyway.

So basically I figure that my travels here at UW are best told to people who I know will care and who I know I can talk to rationally and will respond in kind. I must confess that part of my reason for continuing the blog as long as I have (aside from the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed doing it until I started being harassed by the CSC) was to keep my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives and important people to me, updated on how I’m doing without having to call them all individually. That’s largely why I wrote so much and went so in-depth into everything. I suppose I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way from now on. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll start another blog on a different topic. If you see my name on anything in the future, I encourage you to post and ask questions or make comments. Just keep in mind my rule of thumb:

“If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”.

(and yes, the post I made about a week ago made me look like a hypocrite in that sense. I was. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it again.)

Also, as of now, the e-mail box will remain unmonitored, so comments will go unchecked and unanswered. I apologize if anyone has questions. I’ll try to cover everything in the following FAQ. To all reading this (including the anonymous CSCer), my best wishes to you for all your future endeavors, whether a current UW student, a prospective UW student, or just someone who’s curious about what this windbag is talking about. On to the FAQ.