Crazy Musings of a Random PhD Student.

Apparently I'm the 1%...

2011-10-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to come across a bit elitist with this statement, but whatever, its my opinion. Hooray free speech!

I look at the "Occupy Edmonton" protest as a farce, and nothing more than a hipster "jumping off" protest for other causes. I see the VALIDITY in the idea, as it applies to the States. The sociopolitical/economic system is fundamentally different. I fail to see the direct correlation here in Canada. I'm not saying that there is no income disparity. I'm saying that the situation is not nearly as dire. I do not see people getting screwed out of homes by large corporations. I do not see massive unemployment. Everything's not all roses, however, the situation is 100% different. I don't absolve "the corporate boogeymen" (ooooooooooooh *ghost noises*) of profit chasing at the expense of their customers.

I think that the following (at least the majority of it) rings pretty true, although it does sound a bit embellished to fit the counterpoint to all this "We're the victim"/entitlement crap going around:

Being a Graduate Student that has had to sacrifice and make hard decisions about money, I have learned that leveraging the money you have properly can be more powerful than having a bunch of money - this allowed me to purchase a house at 23 while being a grad student.

Apparently that makes me part of the "problem" rather than a responsible taxpaying citizen.

*sigh*

How long until I can just ignore these idiot hipster retards and make several large evil corporations richer by playing their MMORPG?!?!? (Yay SWTOR!)

Yay! Its Election Time!

2011-04-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Long time no post.

Well, to be honest, I've been pretty busy. Since my last post I've managed to publish a paper (yay!), and submit a bunch of grant applications. A couple smaller ones, but one 150k commercialization/development grant. If that one goes through, I'll be able to finish my research (and degree) without having to search for other funding, while getting paid for the first time in over eight months. A lot is riding on that grant, so we'll see what happens. Other than that, Portal 2 = Absolutely Awesome.

In any case, we have another Election coming up here in Canada. Hooray.

Yeah, I'm not too enthusiastic about it, because in reality, there may be slight shifts in power, but I cannot see a wholesale ideological change taking place. As per usual, you have the mudslinging and attack adds, misleading spinning of stories, and of course, the random commentary by significantly slanted random people on social media.

I understand people have opinions - they are entitled to them. However, I just can't but help to laugh/shake my head about people who push their specific ideology or political viewpoint without considering how it impacts others.

For example, the oilsands. Yes. That taboo topic again. I am not going to argue that the oilsands are a "good" thing, because quite realistically, anytime you have heavy industry, regardless of what industry (yes, even the sacred cow of solar panel production*) you have environmental damage.

[*The production of solar panels requires a variety of harmful chemicals, dangerous goods, and significant power requirements to produce. Having worked in a parallel field that uses many of the same technologies/materials, I'm wondering how many environmentalists would be happy to know what specifically goes into making those solar panels. It takes upwards of 2-3 years of operation to have a "net positive" power output (ie, replace the power that was used to produce them). I'd like to know how many "greeners" will admit to that... but I digress.. ]

Anyways, what cannot be argued, even amongst the people who are vehemently opposed to them (*cough* Greenpeace Eco-terrorists *cough*) is the significant economic impact they have on Alberta, and on Canada as a whole. I have multiple family members that are involved directly in the oilfield or in the supply, trades, or worker training (welding, etc). There is a major demand for skilled labor because of the oilfield, to the point that technical colleges are completely full and workers are coming from out of province to work here.

On a national level, the oilfield/commodity sector of our economy helped prevent our recession from being as bad as the one in the US. Additionally, the oilfield is most likely the only reason Alberta is the only "have" province in the "wonderful" equalization payment program that exists nationally. Billions of dollars produced through the oilfield's economic impact are redistributed to the rest of Canada to "equalize" the relative economies of the provinces. Yet, the Alberta oilfield is the "great Satan", while (in the wake of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico) Newfoundland's offshore oil drilling is quietly ignored.

Anyways, the point I'm getting at is that its easy to be against something that doesn't directly (or indirectly) benefit you, regardless of the human cost. Many people want to shut down the oilfields. I'm not sure how many people have considered the entire effect on Canada - both the positive and the negative.

My hope for this election is that people vote with their heads, not with their emotions. Its really easy to get caught up in the "Ignatieff is an American", "I don't like Harper's Lego Hair", or "Layton is a Commie" bullshit. If you're planning to vote simply based on the TV adds being spewed at us constantly on Canadian TV, Stay Home.

I'm serious. People who simply vote on "X said Y, and hates Z" attack adds should have their right to vote taken away. You're not helping the country, and you're definitely not helping yourself. There is nothing funnier than someone complaining bitterly about the government *THEY* voted for.

Get informed. Get off the couch, talk to people, do some research. If you're too lazy to get involved, the CBC has a fairly good website that asks some general questions about the important issues of the day:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/votecompass/

At the very least, this should make you think about the real issues that are going to be affecting our country, and where the parties stand (more or less). There has been some media outlets (Toronto Sun) calling the validity of this test into question, saying you'll be forced Liberal by default. Regardless, if this gets a potential voter thinking about the issues, rather than focusing on "he said/she said", its worthwhile.

If you plan to vote, and can't bring yourself to do some background work to figure out who to vote for, do the rest of us a favor and don't bother voting. People who vote blindly just harm the rest of us.

What a PhD means in the "Big Picture"

2011-01-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I haven't really posted in a while. One part too busy, one part Christmas. So, yeah, this post is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge. Oh well.

As I have worked on my PhD, I have had a bit of an issue trying to explain clearly what exactly the impact of my research is. I always try and equate it to every day life, or some sort of consumer product. Having to equate it to a consumer product ultimately annoys me. Unfortunately, this is the most realistic way of the general public trying to understand what the end product of a PhD is - A shinier cell phone... lol.

I can go on unending rants about how the media uses "Mythbuster-esuqe ""Science"" " is used to "prove" things like global warming, the end of the world in 2012, and so on, but ultimately that's not productive. People are too deeply rooted in the opinion of what is being presented to them in the popular media and television is absolute fact for anyone to argue an alternate opinion. This is where the label of "conspiracy theorist" is used at-nauseum (granted, sometimes is warranted).

Anyways, I'm off on a tangent.

What I want to do with this post is to explain exactly what a PhD is for society, using an excellent example from The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. ( http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ ).

So first, lets consider the below circle as containing the entirety of human knowledge. Everything:

By the time someone finishes elementary school, they know (roughly) this much of total human knowledge:

Now, when someone finishes high school, they learn a little bit more general knowledge:

Now, with a bachelor's degree, you gain more general knowledge, but also gain a specialty, which gives you more knowledge in a specific area, as shown below:

A Master's Degree deepens that specialty further:

When you start a PhD, you first learn the work of others in your specialty, and reading that work/those papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge:

Eventually, you find a specific area of your field to focus a thesis on:

For a few years, you work hard on that focused area of work, pushing the boundary of human knowledge:

Eventually, one day, a discovery or experiment causes that boundary to give way:

That small dent in the "frontier of human knowledge"? That's a Ph.D.:

So, the world looks different specifically in that field now:

Now that the world has been changed by that discovery, its important to reflect on the overall impact, or to look at the bigger picture:

So, in the words of the original author, its very important for people to "Keep Pushing".

Anyways, this is the most accurate representation of what a PhD is for society that I've ever seen.

Hooray for Oil!

2010-09-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a fairly decent discussion with one of my colleagues about the Alberta Oilsands, and how they impact the environment. We both agreed that the environmental impact is significant. However, we did not agree on the basis on how to fix the problem. He believed that the individual could have a significant impact and the efforts of individuals could change the minds of society and move Alberta from Oil-dependence.

I agree that the individuals have an important part to play in raising awareness, however, I do not believe that individuals can persuade our economy to diversify beyond being oil-based. In Alberta, whether or not people are directly aware of it, the majority of the economy is based on either providing services and material for the oilfield (as a primary beneficiary) or on the capital generated from the oilfield (secondary and tertiary beneficiaries). Now, the majority of the people working in the oilfield are skilled workers/tradespeople that are building/maintaining the infrastructure (rigs/mines/plants/etc). These are the primary beneficiaries of the oilfield. The salaries that these skilled laborers make is staggering, enough that during the boom of the oilfield in the late 90's/early 2000's there was a significant shortage of labor in Alberta. Usually, people just think as these workers as the only people that benefit economically from the oilfield. What happens when these workers spend this "oil money"? The local retailers benefit. These are the secondary (and sometimes tertiary) beneficiaries of the oilfield. Alberta has one of the most large and brisk retail economies, dealing in a lot of luxury items, fast cars, and lifted (as my wife calls them) "small penis" trucks. In addition, the Provincial Government vastly benefits from the oilfield and the royalties it produces. Long story short, almost everyone in some way, shape, or form benefits from the oilfield.

For quite some time, there have been a lot of organizations and companies doing various things to draw attention to the oilfield and some of the problems associated with it. For example, you had Lush hold protests in front of its stores. You had a bunch of companies such as Gap, Timberland, Levi's, Walgreens, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. "boycott" Alberta Oil by apparently using oil from other sources in its supply chain. I'm not totally sold that these companies are actually accomplishing anything but pulling a press stunt. These are mostly companies that sell higher end merchandise, ironically to people that are benefiting from the oilfield. Even if their supply chains where made to be completely devoid of Alberta Oil, simple economics would kick in. How you ask? Well, consider this situation. A higher demand for other-than Alberta Oil occurs, the price for that oil increases. Other consumers look at the situation, and are confronted with the choice between expensive non-Alberta Oil, or cheaper Alberta Oil. I can guarantee, with 100% certainty, that someone will buy that Alberta Oil, regardless of whether or not these retail companies do.

So then, how then do you encourage change? How do you encourage the common person to demand change? You saw it fairly recently in the US with Obama's Election. I still believe that Obama won that election convincingly based on one major reason: enough people were affected negatively by the "just" war in Iraq. You effect the everyday life of people enough, they will make a choice for change. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are more examples of stimulus for wide-sweeping changes in public opinion. Pearl Harbor was an unfortunate, but necessary event to change the perception of entering WWII. Same goes with 9/11 and dealing with terrorism.

I'm not saying that violence is the answer, I'm simply suggesting that the public has to be directly affected, or inconvenienced if you will, in order to stimulate change. Its nice that we have all these companies/individuals raising awareness. But, without stimulus for change, awareness is useless. So, here's my solution (not necessarily in this order), that may allow Alberta to get off its "oil habit":

1. There has to be a second reasonable and desirable choice for oilfield workers to go. Government must take a leading role in developing industry other than Oil. I don't care whether it is manufacturing, tech, R&D, or what have you, there has to be a diversification of industry. The majority of workers in the oilfield are not specialized to the oilfield. Its simply the highest paying jobs out there currently. Diversify the industry, subsidize that industry to make people want to move from the oilfield. Perhaps something like a lower tax rate for non-oilfield related work.

2. There has to be a stimulus to change public opinion, above and beyond the current awareness-based campaigns. If people are comfortable in their daily lives, no appreciable change will occur. How did we encourage people to recycle drink containers? A deposit. How can we make people take a serious stance on the environmental damage caused by the oilsands? Make the oil companies financially responsible for the environmental damage. The oil companies will not even blink, and just simply pass on the costs to the public. I guarantee you, the second that a litre of gas goes up by $3 overnight for Alberta-Oilsands oil only, you'll have your change in public opinion.

So yeah, long story short, without inconveniencing the public, no change will occur.

Snappy Title Goes Here.

2010-08-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I couldn't think of a snappy title today. Oh well.

The running is going fairly well, although its kind of ironic how many things are getting in the way. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it and I want to continue doing it, but it seems like unavoidable things keep popping up. For example, I ended up straining my knee a bit. Nothing serious, no massive damage, just a bit of soreness. So, I downgraded to the stationary bike, at least to keep moving and work on the cardio. I'm thankful I bought one of those "magnetic resistance" bikes, since its absolutely whisper quiet, and you can easily hear the TV or whatever over the bike. However, at the proper height, the seat, for some reason, slants backwards slightly, and thus the support that should be supporting your tailbone is uncomfortably getting "in the way". Yeah, you know what I mean.. lol. I'm going to have to shim the seat somehow to rotate it forward slightly. So, I stick to the bike for a while, and my knee improves. Then the smoke rolls in. Awesome. Thanks Poz for lighting your province on fire. :D But seriously, the air quality has been the worse that I've ever seen or heard of here due to the smoke from forest fires wafting in from a province over. I managed to find some NASA pictures of the smoke plume, and its kind of amazing. I'm just waiting for Greenpeace to blame the tarsands for that one. I mean, they blame everything else on the tarsands, why not forest fires? So yeah, no running, annoying. Grr.

Progress has been made with work, but, as usual, random annoying things keep popping up. Making some experimental progress, although, as per usual, bureaucratic issues keep popping up. I am not a fan of the bureaucracy involved in the University research community. I've always thought of it as a necessary evil, something you dealt with as it came up. Another bureucratic panic has ensued due to a lack of foresight (partly mine, partly others). I'm currently done the paperwork on my end, and again, I find myself in a "HURRY UP AND WAIT" situation. Luckily, I've had random computer help @ the parents place to keep me relatively distracted while I check my email every 20 minutes waiting for a reply that probably won't happen until the usual 2:30am Monday email. That's fine. I'm enjoying hanging out at my parents place.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to get a bit of cabin fever in terms of my gaming. Its part getting bored with what I have and part not having anyone to play the really interesting games with. Its the usual summer issues with everyone having too much to do, all at the same time. I'm enjoying a renaissance of sorts with my 360. I spent the money to get a VGA connection for it, so I could hook it up to my newer wide screen PC monitor that does 1080 HD. Best 50 bucks spent ever. I've been replaying all those games that I eventually got tired of playing on a non HD screen, with text too small to read, and images too fuzzy to figure out what was going on. Its been great, but now I've played/finished everything that is really worthwhile playing. Been looking at Starcraft 2, but yeah, can't really afford to pick that up right now with the move in sight.

Oh yes, the move. That's coming up shortly. Much excitement. Yay!

Rule 1 of Zombieland: Cardio.

2010-07-27T21:15:00.000-07:00

Yup, I'm preparing for the imminent Zombie Invasion. The goal is to run faster than someone, and by gum, I'll do it.

But seriously, I've started running again. I used to run a bit back in the day, before my locker was broken into at the University, and everything got pinched, including my New Balance shoes. Oh Poz, I owe you a set of shelves.. lol! But yeah, running is fun, it gets me some much needed exercise. Working in a research lab for so long kind of ruined my fitness, oh well, something to work towards.

3.2 km down, thousands to go. >.>

Eskimos Season Tickets For Sale.

2010-07-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm seriously considering it.

I'm getting really, really tired of the consistent "shitting of the bed". That's the only thing that's consistent with the current Eskimos, that and the excuse making. I haven't seen the Eskies play a full 60 minute game in about a year.

I'm tired of the constant talk about "something" has to change - but they never change anything.

Fuck it.

If you want to watch a team fold consistently in the 4th quarter of the game, with the lead, with a predictable QB sack on 2nd down, with 10 to go with the Eskimos last touch of the ball in the game, let me know.

Oh so angry...

2010-07-15T12:03:00.001-07:00

Fairly upset about something that happened at work today, so yeah, I'm going to talk about something fun to distract me for awhile. lol.

One of the major things I've been trying to figure out for a long time (and I still have some time to think about it) is whether or not to get involved with either Cataclysm or SWtOR when either come out.

At this point, getting SWtOR is a foregone conclusion. I'll be getting that. There would have to be something serious to prevent me from getting that one, like the game not being printed.. lol. The gameplay looks somewhat new and innovative, although, it still looks fairly similar to the average MMO. They unfortunately braught the "Holy Trinity" into the game, however, from what I can tell, its thankfully not a WoW-clone. Alot of what I saw made sense from a lore and gameplay standpoint (Soldier doing ranged tanking instead of the Jedi, etc). It would be interesting to know how the endgame will play out in this game, specifically because its really where the "meat" of an MMO is. STO really failed here in my opinion, since it seemed like they just rushed it out the door without the back end being complete. Whether or not I actually play SWtOR seriously, I dunno. I can't say where I'm going to be personally/professionally by then (roughly Summer 2011 when the end game is going to be the focus). I suppose it really depends if people I know and want to play with go that way. Who am I kidding, I just want to force-strangle someone in PvP. :D

As for Cataclysm, I'm really interested at the new changes. On the surface, it seems like they're going to reducing the spec and gear optimization coefficients of the "How good are you"-equation. I wouldn't mind that, personally. I miss the days where skill and ability was more important than gear. In Wrath, if you had the gear, you could do the "A million monkeys at a million keyboards" approach and win with most encounters. I miss the days of Vanilla, where good players were rewarded, and idiots were kicked from the raid. Actually, to be more honest, I'm pining for the days of pre-nerf Karazhan. Yes, Karazhan. I really enjoyed that place before they nerfed the shit of out it. I'm hoping that it goes that way for the endgame. The only problems I foresee right now with being able to play are the following:

1. Will I have the time? - I'm not sure, I'd like to say that I will, but I guess that depends on where I am with my work. Things are looking fairly positive, but we'll see. Who knows, I might be a father by then. O.o

2. Where to go? - I have about three different places where I could probably play and be fairly comfortable, or at least have a place to hang my hat. Question is, what's going to work out the best?

We'll see. Unfortunately, I'm speculating on speculation.. woot. We'll see what happens in the long run, I guess. I suppose in the mean time, I'll just keep playing 360 when I get a chance, as well as being the Evil DM, tormenting my 4E group.

OH!

That reminds me, I have to inform my 4E group that they got TPK'd for mostly ditching out on the game at the last minute. Amazing how that happens. >.>

The Culture of Losing.

2010-07-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

So, another football season, another poor start for the Eskimos.

I feel like I'm watching the same season as last year. Same mistakes, same problems. Nothing ever changes. The problem with the Eskies, again, is the fact that Ricky Ray is the "Sacred Cow" again.

I have no problem with Ricky Ray in terms of a quarterback, he's good at moving the ball, and when he has enough time and protection he performs. However, he's constantly plagued with "inconsistency". I guess if you can call falling apart each and every time a play gets broken, a pass gets dropped, or a big call goes against him being inconsistent. I'd rather say he lacks mental toughness. The sad thing, at least here in Edmonton, is that he's a "feel-good" story. A chip truck driver turned QB. Awesome. That means he's apparently untouchable, well, at least according to the "expert" commentary on 630 CHED.. lol.

Last night, listening to 630 CHED on the way home, the call in show host seemed to think that the only way to fix the Eskimos was to change the play calling in the Red Zone, while leaving Ricky in the mix. I guess if you want more predictable "Truck Routes to the corner" (the nickname we gave to the corner routes that Ricky always throws in the Red Zone) leave Ricky in. Go ahead. We may get lucky if Ricky keeps his head and pulls off a completion. We may win on luck. You know your offense is in trouble if my wife can call the play before the snap.

Ricky moves the ball very well when he's got room at the end of the field for long stretch passes. Awesome. If he doesn't have the skill set to score in the Red Zone, GET HIM OUT in the Red Zone. You have another QB on the sideline that's more than capable of scoring. Even if you don't like Maas, you can't deny that swapping out the QB in the Red Zone would at least confuse the defense enough to make the score easy.

Oh well. I can quote the guy on 630 CHED on saying that Ricky is doing his best.

Heh.. that reminds me of my favorite movie quote:

"Your best? Losers whine about doing their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."

I wonder how many games we'll lose this year because the management is scared of hurting Ricky's fragile ego.

Anyone want some tickets?

Stuck in a community college in Lethbridge...

2010-06-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

At least there aren't any zombies. At least not yet.

So, Lethbridge seems like a nice place. Reasonably big, a few things to do, but not really much in terms of big attractions. The only issue really is trying to keep busy, especially today, since I don't have a hotel room to hang out in and work on documentation while I watch the World Cup. Today, unfortunately, I'm sitting in a random common area in Lethbridge College, trying to be useful. To be honest, I'm actually just trying to stay awake. Nothing like getting up at 6 AM to be at a dealership when it opens, so that you have the smallest chance of fixing a potentially catastrophic engine problem with a 6 hour drive ahead of you later in the day.

*sigh*

After waiting about an hour in the waiting room at the dealership, I got the news: the air filter assembly was not bolted down, and was flopping around inside the engine compartment. I immediately rolled my eyes, because I instantly knew what caused the problem. It wasn't no mechanical failure or lack of servicing on my part. No. It was the stupid high school kid working at the Mr. Lube. Yeah. Against probably better judgment, I got an oil change at Mr. Lube, since I was busy with research, and didn't really have the time to muck about with an oil change with Dodge. So, I took the car to Mr. Lube last Saturday, so that we'd be traveling on fresh oil.

So, while my young friend is working on the air filter, his coworker starts telling the story (rather loudly) of how he deflowered a (by his account) a smoking hot chick the previous night at a grad party. The story must have gotten to my young friend, and instead of re-installing my air filter assembly correctly, one bolt made it back in, not tightened, even hand tightened.

Last night, my friends handiwork came undone at an intersection on 3rd Ave S in Lethbridge. Awesome. It sounded like we were either losing a belt or our lifters were beating the crap out of the camshaft. Our pleasure drive turned into questioning if we're actually going to be making it home. Unfortunately, at this point, everything was closed, and we'd have to wait till morning to get it fixed. So, neither of us slept much, if at all, and got up at 6 am, choked down a quick breakfast, hurriedly packed the van, and went to the dealership.

Nicole got a ride to her class here at the college. I stayed in the waiting room listening to the god-awful news on Global Calgary. An hour later, the service manager came up to me and gave me the good news: that the air filter unit was loose.

So yeah, I'll be going to Mr. Lube Thursday, and showing them the bill for this kid's stupidity. I frankly don't care if they cover the cost, or even apologize. I'm going to do what so very few consumers actually do: speak with my money, rather than complain on deaf ears.

Far too many people think that saving a buck is worth the headache of bad customer service. If consumers, in general, actually did more than complain about bad services or products and stopped paying for mediocrity. The only way that the quality of retail services will improve is if you choke out the bad by not using them. Its that simple. Consumers need get out of the rut of "cheapest at any cost" and start looking for value in customer service and quality of product.

Too bad that Japanese Garden didn't have wifi. I'd probably just hang out there today to destress. Oh well. I'll just drink coffee, listen to Pearl Jam, and write.

Opinions. I like them.

2010-06-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

Anyone that's really been involved with serious research on any topic has been exposed to the differences between fact and opinion. I'm not even talking about being a grad student, or even going to a post-secondary institution. This is the type of skill that most people learn at a rudimentary level in high school.

For example:

Gravity = a fact.

Blogs = an opinion.

This should be clear to anyone. However, here comes the problem. Even if people can distinguish between fact and opinion, the attitude of "I'm right at all costs" is so unbelievably prevalent in today's society. Don't get me wrong, I like opinions, I like when people express opinions, since it leads to dialogue and discussion, which usually leads to understanding. On the other hand, the segment of society that cannot either take the time, or are unable to interpret an opinion dumbfounds me.

Now, there's a bit of a spectrum to this group:

1. The people that agree to disagree. Generally, I really don't have a problem with these people, because they're defending an opinion. If they defend their opinion logically, with evidence, precedent, analogy, or otherwise, that's great! However, the people that decide to defend their opinion with no evidence, or better yet, unsubstantiated "facts" and rumors that are completely wrong/misplaced are hillarious. These are the people that I give up on having any sort of discussion with, and just avoid and then laugh at when their opinion's blow up in their faces. Good fun.

2. The people that fly off the handle the nanosecond their opinion is challenged. These are the fun people. This tends to be more internet-related, found on forums, leaving comments on news stories, etc, that absolutely (and audibly) snap when someone has an opposing opinion. Now, there's a bit of latitude in these people, the people ranging from having a hissy fit, yelling, screaming, going all the way to violence and hate. Usually these are the type of people I bait into flame wars on forums as a past time. I know, I'm a jackass. However, this group is also the scary portion of society that you can see somewhat in an international connotation (ie, Israel and everyone else).

So, why the social commentary? The University I'm a part of is experiencing financial troubles. The issues are specifically caused by a reversal of policy on the government's part (this University is partially publicly funded) which ended up in a unexpected funding cut during the fiscal year. Of course, like the other cuts by the government, (significant cuts in health and education) this cut was carefully hidden by press releases and reorganization. Anyone not involved with the University now sees the financial problem as the University's fault, not that the government cut nearly $100 million in funding. The University is now the bad guy, not the government that can't manage its own books. The public backlash is overwhelming, and anyone trying to defend the University or provide factual counter-evidence to this opinion get destroyed.

Anyways. I'll just go write a Wikipedia post explaining the situation. Then it will be "fact". *shakes his head slowly*

Wow, I've been neglecting this!

2010-04-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

So yeah, with the weather getting better and not being tied to my computer with publishing or candidacy exams means that I stop blogging. Imagine that. lol.

Anyways, not much is new, the experimental work is proceeding fairly well, and should have some sort of working prototype within a week or two. I ended up diagnosing some serious roadblocks, with some simple fixes. In any case, serious positive work has been achieved. Yay.

I'm still not "playing" WoW... lol. Its been what, 6-7 months since I've taken a dose of the heroin-raiding stuff. However, something interesting happened in the WoW-world today. Something odd, wierd, and interesting that will turn guilds, servers, etc on their ear in the next expansion. I'm not certain where exactly this will end up, in terms of postitive-negative changes, but its going to change the landscape of the game.. forever.

The major, game changing change is: 10 man and 25 man raiding (for all intensive purposes) will be equal. Difficulty, loot level, raid ID's. The only difference is that 25 man raids will drop more loot (most likely the same ratio of people:loot).

What does this mean, generally?

YOU CAN RAID AS A SMALL GROUP OF FRIENDS AND EXPERIENCE THE FULL GAME/CONTENT, AND NOT BE PENALIZED FOR PLAYING WITH FRIENDS.

Wow.

This is a HUGE change. Now, you can play with your friends or a smaller circle of people with no penalty. Additionally, you end up not having to wrangle 25 people, which is the most painful part of running a guild or raid period. Smaller guilds are easier to manage, and really, the "work" into a guild would more or less dissapear.

I'm seriously, seriously, thinking of playing in Cataclysm. Why? Playing with good people, raiding for 2-3 nights a week? That's... almost.. manageable. Imagine that. Manageable raiding.

Hooray for transfer payments!

2010-03-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Heh.

I remember those days in Undergrad, where you thought your input and "voice" actually could make a difference in the day-to-day operation of the University. Yeah, I'm far more cynical now, and have a better understanding of the inner workings and how this University, as a whole, operates.

As an Undergrad, you assume that this institution runs as another school. Plain and simple. This institution exists to teach you the skills necessary to become an Engineer, Nurse, Teacher, Artist, Professional Dodgeballer, etc, and that's it.

As a Grad Student, you learn that the University is first and foremost a research institution, and that the majority of money (and yes, this is when you realize that the world runs on money, not idealism or good intentions (lol SU). ) comes from research grants and royalties from technology. The teaching of students is revealed to be a secondary concern, essentially something that is another revenue scheme, an avenue of Grad Student recruitment, and more often than not a charter obligation for the massive operational governmental grants that the institution recieves.

Now, with the recent governmental cutbacks (usually a year or two lag behind the economy), the University is seeing tough times. Research grants will be smaller. Operational grants will be smaller. Tuition credits (that the undergrads recieve indirectly) will be smaller. The end result? Massive budget gaps for the University.

It is funny, however, that the general undergraduate population seems to think that they will be receiving the brunt of the burden in making up this gap. I think its absolutely laughable. Of course, in typical "Undergrad Style" half of the problem is understood.

First, I'll talk about the tuition issue. Generally, tuition is getting a big hike next year. A fair bit more substancial than previous years, specifically because the operational grants and tuition credits (from the government) got cut. What the average Undergrad Student does not realize is that the total cost of their tuition is automatically subsidized by the government. Yes, you may be paying 5-8k a year. The real cost, at this institution, is 2x or 3x that. Ask an international student what their tuition is, and you'll get a fair gauge of what you *should* be paying per year. The amount of tuition that is subsidized by the provencial government is different from province to province, this is why, generally in Quebec, tuition is much less than Alberta. In any case, the increase of tuition that you are seeing is directly tied to the reduction of subsidy that is being given by the province.

Secondly, the "fact" that this "bailout" is being "forced" on the Undergrads is completely false. Grad tuition is basically doubling. University Employees are getting 5-8 days of *unpaid* vacation. Operational budgets are being slashed by 5%. There will be layoffs. Research grants are getting significantly reduced. For example, last year we had 17 summer students in our department. This year, it looks like we'll be getting 5. At this point, I'm wondering if there will be enough funding to complete my research, or if I will have to pay alot of the costs out of pocket.

The Undergrads are getting a $550 increase in tuition in the form of a fee to maintain the standards of education and building services. Right now, this is for next year, as a temporary measure.

Yes. This is much more harsh than people losing their jobs, taking a paycut of roughly 2-4%, or in my case most likely not getting funded (income --> $0) and scaling back/not finishing my research due to lack of funds.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to be completely selfish and kick up a media/protest storm about how my specific segment of the University Community is being abused/mistreated/squeezed to make up the budget gap, without considering how others are affected.

Even if this fee of $550 is mandatory for the length of an undergrad degree (4-5 years), say maximum $3750 extra, that's a drop in the bucket in comparison to, for example, my case of outright losing 6 years of my prime career years with ultimately nothing to show for it.

But hey. What do I know? I'm only a lowly Grad Student.

Ironically, this whole problem, the health care cash shortage, and our provincial deficit could be completely wiped out with one single act: the removal of transfer payments.

What are transfer payments?

Well, when Canada was formed, transfer payments were used in order to prevent provinces and territories from adding taxes and tariffs to trade. Simply a general payment scheme handled by governments at a high level to encourage trade and prosperity. Eventually, somewhere along the way, this idea got super-socialized. Without giving a major history lesson, the end result is that the general wealth of a province is measured, and according to that measurement, funds are redistruibuted in order to "Equalize" wealth.

The end result is that financially strong provinces (Alberta, BC, Sask, and Newfoundland) get to pay the social programs of the other provinces.

If you want to go read about how this is actually done, go wikipedia it, there's a reasonable (however "slanted to Ontario") explanation.

The end result is, as a province, Alberta pays billions to the other provinces, and receives nothing in return. Now we're dealing with a large deficit, and stressed social programs (ie, University Funding).

It would be interesting to see the difference if transfer payments were simply abolished.

Well, that was fun.. lol

2010-03-10T21:14:00.000-08:00

So, after the major nationalist kick of the Olympics, it was time to bear down and get that Candidacy Exam done. Yup, its been two-three weeks of static on the blog, and for a good reason - I've spent nearly every waking moment preparing for that exam. Long story short, I passed, and it wasn't quite as I expected.

Now, some background:

At my University, specifically my department, the Candidacy Exam structure is as follows:

1. Candidate writes a proposal and distributes it to his committee 2-3 weeks ahead of the exam date.
2. Committee exists of my supervisor, three other professors from my department, and then an external.
3. At the exam, candidate gives a 20 minute presentation, followed by 2-2.5 hours of questions. The questions can be any subject matter related to the project. Depending on your answers, you pass or fail.

So yeah, it ends up being a bit open ended in terms of what the subject matter of the questioning can be. Sure, you'll have an idea of the subject matter, specifically subjects that are tied to your project. However, that could be fairly broad, for my project, it is. The major importance of the Candidacy Exam, at least in my department, is that this is the last time that your "general knowledge" is tested. From this point in, its your work, and you're defending it. Generally speaking, its considered to be harder than a final defense, simply for that reason.

Anyways, I had been working on the documentation for my exam since early February, and managed to finish during the Olympics. I finished just over a week before we had to submit the paperwork to the committee. As you would expect, I passed the document to my supervisor, and had him give his input. In usual fashion, a week passes, and at the last moment, I get the document back from him with a bunch of changes required. I understand that he's a busy guy, essentially the poster-boy for biting off more than you can chew, but you would figure that something this important would take some priority. Oh well, this is something I'll probably never understand, since I'm just a grad student, and don't manage 10 grad students at once... >.>

In any case, my planning ahead to get things done ahead of time was totally negated by this. I suppose it happens, but still, it would have been nice to not have to continually swap between the document and the presentation. It would have been perfect to been able to work on everything in a sequential manner, but yeah, best laid plans... lol. In any case, the loss of time made things fairly hectic, moreso than they probably should have been. Everything ended up being shifted back a week, and with all things considered, I only had a few days after finalization of my presentation to study fundamentals and practice my presentation.

Its kind of ironic, after spending pretty much every waking moment working on, well, essentially my life's work at this point, how much the little pleasures in life actually mattered. The one thing that probably kept me sane was forcefully preserving the semblance of a sleeping schedule. Also, taking time, even just an hour in every, say, four hours just to switch the brain off and either watching TV or playing some video games. Just some time to let the brain rest. Heck, a good cup of coffee was a treat, but not as good of a treat as the cold Holsten Festbock I have beside the laptop.

As I got closer to the exam, my stress level rose significantly. To keep sane, I tried to keep as busy as possible by tweaking my presentation, adding equations and figures to my presentation to refer to in questioning, practicing the presentation, and studying fundamentals. I pretty much went over my 4th year of by B.Sc. and all my grad courses in three days flat. That's an insane amount of material in a very short time - all of it fair game for questions. On top of this, my presentation was over the time limit until a day before the exam. Understandably, I was exceptionally stressed.

Tuesday came around. I got a good night's sleep. I did my final prep. Then we got stuck in traffic. Awesome. Then we couldn't find a parking spot. Awesome. Then two of my examination panel was late. Awesome. Then I had a bunch of random people show up (our presentations are open). Awesome. Then one of the randoms asked a serious question about the fabrication of my device (noticed that the release of my structures wasn't very clean). Awesome. As if I needed more things to happen.

As for the presentation itself, it went very quickly. I had 20 slides to present, 20 minutes, so a minute per slide. I went through my first 5 in three minutes. Talk about adrenalin. I pulled it together, and pulled off the presentation fairly well. I did a good job of defining my project scope, and not opening myself up to a lot of stray questions. Then the two hours of questions started...

I was dreading the questions. After talking to people in my group about their exams, and people outside my group, the overwhelming problem with these exams is the questions. I did get my fair share of questions, including some that blatantly questioned the operation of my device, and rightly so. The design of my device is from the very beginning of my project. Since I'm microfabricating this, I developed a mask set, and haven't been able to deviate from that mask set. Fortunately, my exam panel realized this as well. Without going into the nitty-gritty details, the examiners were satisfied that these problems (although somewhat serious in terms of operation) were easily fixable. Essentially some design optimization that is easily accomplishable with my fabrication recipe. In the end, I ended up being surprised on how casual and non-structured the whole process was. Essentially, it felt no different than sitting down with my own research group and talking about people's projects. The input was very valuable, and some opinions were raised that I'll be taking to heart (the design revisions, etc). The major thing that surprised me was the fact that my supervisor was a non-factor in the questioning. He didn't really ask any questions, nor did he seem to have the time to talk to me after the exam (left in a hurry, fairly upset..). So, ultimately, I have no clue how he feels about the exam. Hopefully, something external to the exam was happening to distract him. I've been told by two professors in my department that I did very well, so I'm unsure of my supervisor's reaction. I'm sure I'll get an earful eventually one way or another, either in private or at my next group meeting (next Tuesday) about how I "barely passed" and was "lucky" to continue.

All speculation aside, the experience (at least to this point... lol) has been ultimately positive. I have the best grasp of my research I've ever had, period. I know where the project is going, and have a clear grasp of what's required to finish. In addition, the validation that what I've been toiling with for the last five or so years wasn't misguided or worthless, as my supervisor has, on occasion, pretty much suggested.

After it was all said and done, the relief was FANTASTIC. I slept like a baby. I got up early, sat myself down in front of my computer, relaxed, played video games while listening to Ron and Fez/Opie and Anthony all morning while casually drinking a pot of coffee. It was heaven.

Yeah, that's right, its our game.

2010-02-28T20:45:00.000-08:00

So, a week ago, the Americans beat us at our own game. All you heard after that in American dominated media, blogs, radio, etc, was how they would spoil our party, beat us at our own game, and how Miller would shut us down.

So, today, we witnessed a great game. The first game where the US Hockey team really had some organized opposition, and no gift cushion of a few goals. The 5-3 win over Canada had 2 freebies where our goalie pretty much scored on himself. The curb-stomping of the Finns had a goalie self destruct. Today, however was a different story, where the always colourful and ever confident US athletes got to eat their words...

ITS OUR GAME BITCHES.

Yes. I had to get that off my chest. Canadians are quietly patriotic, but we can be just as equally offensive and defensive over our "game" as you Americans can. The trash talk and posturing before the game on American media was hillarious, and now its time to eat those words. But, of course, the usual excuse of "Its not important to us" will be liberally applied, because, well, you lost. The mass media outlets will just gloss it over, or focus on the point that Miller got MVP (well deserved, because, well, he carried the team to the silver), and then just let it pass. However, if the US won, it would be another "Miracle on Ice"-type event. Funny the way that works. I'll peg that to the mass insecurity Americans generally have, where the MLB/NFL have "World" Champions, and the mentality of "If we're not winning, we'll ignore it" is prevalent.

... and then you have the interwebs. Ah yes, the world wide web, where ignorance and self importance is king. Do a Google/twitter/facebook survey of anything having to do with the hockey game today. You'll find whole Facebook groups dedicated to Sidney Crosby hate, littered with comments of "we don't care", "we defend and feed you" (I thought this one was funny, especially the feeding part), "you use our players (... what? we use Canadian players, playing in the US, for a Canadian Olympic Hockey team.... you're.. serious? Are you from the deep south or something?), "We still won more medals" (so? who cares? lol) and the like. The hate over this loss is absolutely amazing.

For example:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=sidney+crosby&init=quick#!/pages/Not-Sidney-Crosby/317346861661?ref=search&sid=1504339364.3193346398..1

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23iHateCrosby

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=ihatecanada

Out of the one above, I like this one the best:

amazing #bipartisanhate RT @wccubbison: US mens hockey team played well. Its just too bad we lost to a fake country. #ihatecanada about 5 hours ago via TweetDeck

Fake country? Fuck you. Seriously, go fuck yourself. Why don't you go invade another country for oil? Your tears over this loss are sweeter than any double-double.

http://twitter.com/search?q=%23doyoubelieveinMillercles

On ESPN, Americans are complaining they got screwed by the rules:

http://myespn.go.com/s/conversations/show/story/4954922

I could dig for more, but I think my point is well made.

So, if you don't care about being beaten, why all the hate? Talk about sore losers, poor sports, and ignorant people.

I'll spell out the facts for you, my American Friends:

1. Winning Gold in Hockey was expected for us, the fact that you got there in the Men's side was over achievement. Period. IIHF had you ranked as 6th. Everyone in the know had Canada/Russia. You got there on happenstance, and the simple fact that Miller carried you there. As explained by your venerable football announcers on Fox: "One man can't win a championship.".

2. We won the most gold medals ever in a Winter Olympics. Period. Host country or not. We may not have the most medals, but we have the most golds. That's good enough for me.

3. 50% of the players in the NHL (obviously, an "American" league, dominated by "American" teams) are Canadian, 75-80% of the elite players are Canadian.

4. You lost because your team wasn't as deep as ours. Period. That's why we won. We had better talent, more talent, and didn't rely on one line or player to get us there. You. Did.

So in closing:

My American Friends. You lost. Buck up, take it like a man, and stop whining. You're perpetuating the stereotype that you are just simply the "spoiled suburban teenagers" of the world.

Although, I'm not sure if that general stereotype isn't far from the truth now, is it? Anyways. I'm going to go wave my flag, and point south, laugh hysterically, and wait for more American idiocy.

2010-02-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

So, the Olympics are cool, and for once we finally have some decent coverage. CTV (the non-government owned Canadian National Network) is running the coverage, and its really good. They have multiple networks (which they run/own) broadcasting multiple events, different feeds, etc. There's a wide variety of events shown, and rightly so, being a Winter Olympics in Canada.

Although the amount of negative press/coverage that is out there about the Olympics is pretty funny. Granted, some of the sources for this negative press are suspect, but yeah, its still there. The ones that really get me are the following:

1. The brand of "Worst Olympics Ever" due to the death of the Georgian Athlete and the hydraulic failure of the indoor cauldron during the opening ceremonies. Well. I won't disagree or downplay the tragedy of the training accident. That was pretty brutal. What was more brutal was the media's coverage of it, with many outlets showing the last moments of this poor athlete as his head bounced off the steel beam at 90 mph. That sickening "boing" noise stayed with me for a few days. This is what I don't understand: they show someone colliding with a steel beam at 90 MPH continuously, and then they'll freak the minute there's verbal profanity or the slightest bit of partial nudity. I suppose if it makes news, the rules don't matter. The hydraulic failure of the cauldron goes into the "shit happens" column of the potential things that could have gone wrong. I would like to see a full list of "Olympic Glitches" that have occurred in the recent Olympics, and then compare notes with Vancouver.

But anyways, in terms of "Worst Olympics Ever", the current ones have a LONG way to go. There's a few memorable Olympics that stand out in my mind as markedly worst. Munich with the eleven athletes murdered and Atlanta with the terrorist attack. Realistically, this isn't the first Luge-related death at an Olympics either. But whatever, this is looking more like a "Oh, the Olympics aren't in the USA, therefore its crap" syndrome of the US-based media.

Heaven help us if we show the slightest iota of national pride.. lol.

2. The major outcry about the "lack of winter" in Vancouver. Holy hell. Vancouver doesn't "see" winter half the time. I think this is being blown out of proportion, especially with the trucking/shipping of snow into Cypress Mountain. Talk to anyone that is an avid skier that gets around in BC. They'll laugh and say: "Cypress has a two-week season some years". Hmm... it seems like the choice of venues is to blame here. Why isn't the freestyle isn't happening at a venue that's guaranteed snow.. like Whistler? Oh well, bad planning.

3. The protests. Wow. People protesting things like tarsands oil at the Olympics. Talk about complaining about the wrong thing at the wrong place. Yes. The tarsands are environmentally bad. That's a point I won't even remotely consider arguing against. However, I think the people that continually call for the reduction/stoppage of oilsands production in Northern Alberta simply do not understand the simple economics of the situation.

You stop the oilsands, Alberta goes broke as a province. Its THAT simple. Period. What people do not understand, especially the environmentalists that are too concerned about digging up skewed facts that just strengthen their argument, rather than understanding all sides of the situation, is that the majority of Alberta's Provincial Revenues, the actual money that runs the province, are oilsands royalties. Not to mention that a large amount of Albertans work in the oilsands, oilpatch and related services/industries whose livelihoods would be instantly crushed. Pair that, with the reduction of social programs and rampant government cutbacks, and suddenly every Albertan gets affected. The only "have" province, supporting all the others through transfer payments is on the verge of being a "have not" province.

Still not convinced? Well, lets look at the numbers. The government's revenues are directly tied to the price of oil and the US/CAN dollar conversion rate. High price of oil, and low Canadian Dollar, suddenly you have ridiculous revenues. Its to the point where they've actually calculated the revenue loss per $0.001 gain in conversion rate vs the US dollar at $225 million. Before the economic downturn in the US began, there was a point where the government, essentially run by blindfolded monkeys, had multi-billion dollar surpluses. Let me put this in perspective. A province/state of just over 3 million people had something in the order of an 8 billion dollar budget surplus. For the majority of the downturn, while jobs were being cut left right and centre everywhere BUT Alberta, we were in a worker shortage. You could not find workers to work at McDonalds. People working at Tim Hortons in Ft MacMurray (Oilpatch) were reported of making upwards of $30/hour. Then.. oil started to drop, Canadian Dollar started gaining relative strength. Suddenly, the revenue stream dried up, and we started to feel the effects of the recession. Oilpatch layoffs, Gov't cutbacks, and retail jobs/stores dissappearing are common place. Going from multi-billion dollar surpluses, now the provincial gov't is going to run a multi-billion dollar deficit. Nice.

Now, I won't downplay, nor argue the environmental impact of the tarsands. The University that I work at essentially has a whole Faculty (more or less) funded by oil companies attempting to reduce the environmental impact of the oil processing. Nobody's arguing the fact that there's positive change that needs to occur.

But you know, apparently that's not good enough for the protesters, the majority of which most likely have no ties to Alberta whatsoever. Environmentalism at the cost of the livelihoods of many and the well being of 3.5 million plus people is apparently acceptable for these people. Good to know someone values the life of a duck moreso than my well being.

I have no problem with people expressing their views, in fact, I encourage it. I just wish people would think more about a situation as a whole, rather than taking narrow minded, one dimensional views. Oh well. Environmentalism seems to be just another way to be selfish.

(Edited for my horrible late night grammar. Damn you Candidacy Documentation!)

Hah.. Since I'm writing anyways.......

2010-02-11T21:56:00.000-08:00

.... I'll randomly rant about protesting the Olympics.

So, what's the deal with this?

I understand that the Olympics themselves are a monumental event, with a multi-billion dollar budget, which essentially interrupts/disrupts an entire metropolis for a month. I get it. I understand the hassles, the potential for excess and waste of money. I have friends that live in Vancouver, and believe me, they've voices their opinions about the situation and how it will adversly affect their own lives. Hell, my friend working as a game programmer will be working on a "show up if you can" basis just simply due to the influx of people into the area. I understand why people may want to protest this event, especially since there's better ways to spend that massive sum of cash in this day and age of recession and governmental budget shortcomings.

But, lets look at some facts in this situation:

1. The Olympics were bid on YEARS ago. Vancouver was awarded the Olympics in.. I want to say 2003, probably 2004 or 2005. Regardless of my somewhat incomplete memory (lol, I remember where I was when I watched the webcast, but not when it was.. ) my point here is that the economic climate was 100% different. The economy was booming, things were stable (well, more or less... definitely a better economic situation than now). From then till now, things have gone fairly badly. Its not really fair to start making the arguement that the money should be spent elsewhere, or that things should be scaled back. When VANOC bid, they had to submit detailed paperwork about how money will be spent, the scale of projects, venues to be constructed, etc. From writing and helping to write grants for research, I can understand how detailed this will get. On top of that, those agreements are BINDING, so protesting about something that cannot be changed.. period.. is kind of silly. (That didn't stop Mike Hudema.. go back to Bejing, you moron.). Do you think that VANOC is prepared to be branded "those people" for changing/cancelling the Olympics? Wow. Do you understand the personal, legal, societal, national and international implications of what you're suggesting? Apparently not. Given recent events (Iran announcing to the world "WE GOT NUKES!" and Israel's track record with "diplomacy") we're almost assured some sort of Middle East conflict, perhaps a world war. Awesome. I'm not saying an Olympics where these countries are not even going to be involved will even scratch the surface in solving these problems, but a little "world-unity" isn't a bad thing.

Oh, and VANOC announcing that they're already running a balanced budget before the games is icing on the cake for me and this point. They haven't opened the doors, and they've paid for all the venues and costs up to this point. Holy hell. They haven't seen one cent of actual concession, souvenir and random non-variable money flow in yet. I heard a news story that predicted millions of PROFIT if the economic downturn didn't occur. If any government was run as well as VANOC financially, we'd all be much happier.

2. There has been a fairly large outcry about the environmental impact of the new venues, roads, facilities and what have you. Fine. I can understand if the projects were done in a non-sustainable way. From what I've heard, the majority of the new venues are ULTRA-sustainable, and go as far as collecting rainwater for use in toilets. In addition, consider the quality of life legacy that this will leave in the long run. New recreational facilities, new mass transit, better roads, etc. Yes, maybe money better spent feeding Haiti for a week.. So, a two week event planned for probably close to a decade leaving a legacy of infrastructure for Vancouver is a bad thing? If I had the time, I could probably dig for sustainable building methods that were DEVELOPED for producing these venues. I'm sure we'll hear more than enough about this with the filler material between events.

So, I guess my real problem with people protesting the Olympics is more or less the complete and utter lack of focus and priorities. I don't get it. Lets protest an event that ends up having more positive outcomes than negative ones. Could it be that the professional activists suddenly felt that the Olympics were as big of a target as the WTO for protests? Wow. That's kinda sad. I know you're arts degrees were painful with all the free time you had to waste between "classes" but yeah, issues with priorities?

I don't know, if I had the time to protest something, it would be Iran VS Israel, not the Olympics. Something that actually would have a signifigant negative worldwide effect, not something that brings people from around the world together for a month. There's got to be something more important to protest about. But hey, I'm not the one with a degree in Philosophy, so I guess this isn't my field.

The one thing I do know, however, is that Mukmuk will destroy the protesters.

BEHOLD MUKMUK AND HIS GLORY!

Tick tock, tick tock.

2010-02-08T19:26:00.000-08:00

So.

I finally have a date for my exam.

March 9th.

Now I have to jump through the hoops.

First unofficial hoop:

Present a very rough candidacy presentation tomorrow. Catch as many rediculous questions as possible to prepare and understand the type of questioning that will occur.

First offical hoop:

Complete a report on my project to the committee next Tuesday. Thankfully the majority of the information is written. However, that doesn't mean that it's going to be easy.

Then I have roughly three weeks to tweak things and study for the possibility of completely random questions.

Expect much tired randomness. I'll be using this blog as stress relief. Might as well. :D

So True....

2010-01-27T18:28:00.001-08:00

Achievements:

Lol.. this sounds like my wife:

And the best for last:

Relief Efforts for Haiti/Catching up.

2010-01-26T14:05:00.001-08:00

So, I haven't really posted much lately with various issues popping up. Well, now that I have a few moments, I'll post a couple things.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the drunk teenager driving a black post-2005 Accord for hitting my parked mini-van in front of my house, then running like a coward. I hope the police end up catching you. Ironically, he took the corner in front of my house too quickly, drove on my sidewalk (see previous posts.. lol) and rear ended my van. The damage was not excessive, its just a pain in the ass.

Anyways, while working like a dog getting ready for an upcoming oral exam/defense, I noticed a few specific things about the relief efforts for Haiti after their earthquake.

I'm generally impressed. Many aid organizations and governments went in with "boots on the ground" rather than throwing money at the problem. All too often, people assume that donating cash money to a charity equals a significant help and/or impact on a specific issue. Generally speaking, these charities skim the donations for operational costs. Some charities/organizations, such as the Red Cross, are better than this than others in this regard - maximizing the amount of benefit per donation dollar. The difference between "cash" charaties and "boots on the ground" charaties was made very clear to me by a presentation I was lucky enough to go see, given by Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire (Ret), Canadian Senator. ( http://www.romeodallaire.com/ ) Having commanded the peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the civil war/ethnic cleansing in the 90's and being forefront in many charitable causes for third world countries (see his website) Mr. Dallaire has an interesting point of view on charaties.

Unfortuantely, I do not have direct quotes, but essentially the message was:

Charities that have "boots on the ground" such as Doctors without Borders, Engineers without Borders, Canadian Forces (yes, not a charity, but does immense humanitarian work that rarely is covered in the media), etc, are much more effective in creating positive change and actually helping out people in third world countries than "cash based" non-governmental agencies (NGO's).

I am pleased that many organizations (governmental or not) are making a serious effort to help Haiti. However, I wonder how effective most of these groups are. I mean, its nice that there was a massive telethon hosted by various celebrities, but how effective is that actually going to be in saving lives or helping to fix the immediate problems in comparison to the Canadian Forces D.A.R.T. or the Red Cross?

The long run will show us.

ITS ALIVE!! MUHUHUHWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

2010-01-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

Well, after many years of hard work, my research produced something.

My generator harvested its first energy today.

Granted, its not alot, nor is the device "complete", but it validates YEARS of work.

Well, I think I'm about ready to be done with Social Networking..

2010-01-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

Ah Facebook.

I joined Facebook "late in the game", meaning that I purposely delayed joining, put it off, and dragged my heels in the sand because of my previous experiences with forums and message boards. I assumed that much of the asshatery that would occur on forums and message boards would not occur on Facebook, since, you know, people would know EXACTLY who said what.

Although I haven't received any threats of physical violence on Facebook, (lol.. 3 from various forums, if I have my math right..) the asshatery is still there, but slightly different. The difference is trading the anonymity of a forum for the physical disconnect of Facebook. For some people, that's enough to "pull the trigger" and be a complete jackass online.

I'm tired of it.

Its the same kind of stuff that you get on various forums: Someone posts something, you calmly post a reply a differing opinion, then someone random comes and "teaches you reality" by simply stating your opinion is wrong, without reasoning or logic. A "just because I say so" mentality. No discussion, no thought about the opinions being presented, no logical thought, nothing. Just a simple: "You're wrong, shut up. Fuck you."

Or my other "favorite" situation: posting a joke or statement as your status, and then having people beat you over the head for it. Why? What happened to intuition, reading comprehension and simple common sense? While, in the same general circle of friends, someone else can post literally anything as inflammatory, controversial, whiny, confrontational as they want and nobody skips a beat.

Yeah, I'm done with it. Tired of the double standards. Tired of being continually grilled for having an opinion.

I'm just going to go back to toiling. You know, do something useful for society rather than taking random shots from random people about having an opinion.

Well, since I can't sleep, I'll postulate the Law of Conservation of Douchebags!

2010-01-07T02:05:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason today has been, more or less, a complete waste of time. Usually, when I say this, there's a reason. I slept in, I goofed off, something extraordinary and out of my control happened...

Today however, has been odd, and I'm literally at a loss.. lol.

I woke up today and felt fairly ill. I sometimes feel off until I get some food and coffee into me. That's been usual for me since I could remember. Mornings were never really my friend. Anyways, had a cup of coffee. Started getting dressed, and then felt chilled. Fine. Put on a sweater, started heading out to work. Get to the bus stop, and my stomach turns. Make it back to the house just in time to "release" everything. Struggle to accomplish anything while making constant trips to the bathroom all afternoon. Started to feel fatigued at 5:30 PM. Managed to nap a bit... which was a mistake. I don't nap for a reason.. because now I'm wide awake at 2:30 AM local.

Awesome.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to put up with when I need to be effective at work.

On another note, I've been WoW-free for roughly two months. Kind of interesting to say it like that. I gave up the game to focus more on real life and work, but its interesting to look at it now as a quasi-outsider trying to keep in touch with friends in-game and keeping up to tabs with the events and occurances that happen in-game. I suppose the thing I miss the most out of WoW at the moment is bullshitting on vent with my guild. It's an odd thing. Unless you've experienced it in some way, shape, or form, bonding with a gaming group of any kind is a hard thing to explain. You've never actually met any of these people, but you consider them friends, moreso than say a co-worker. I suppose WoW stopped being a "game" for me a long time ago, and more of a task that needed to be completed on a weekly basis, like TA'ing, or experimental work - probably why I was effective at the organizational/leading portions of the "raiding treadmill".

But yeah, I miss the people, moreso than the game. I guess that's what kept me going back all these years. Although, every once and awhile, it is funny when you come across someone that you had dealings with in game that ended badly. It's even funnier when, for example, you come across it randomly. When you recognize a name, or a email address, and you make the connection and figure out that this person is the one that, for whatever reason, went absoultely "emo" over really inconsequential bullshit. Here in my insomniac stupor, I came across an absolute gem:

Sempelis, Zoi Dia Thanatos, Garona.

Now, if someone from my guild, Intrigue on Garona, happens to stumble on this they'll be confused at this point. They won't recognize the name. Why? Because in WoW, you can buy a second chance and anonymity for $25 with a name change. I'll take the time to explain. The guildies with long memories will remember.

When Wrath came out, I leveled my Priest, and leveled quickly since I had quite a bit of foreward knowledge from the beta. I knew where to go, what to kill, what routes to take, etc. I was able to cut alot of corners, so eventually that meant that being ahead of the curve on my server, finding instances at later levels, you ended up running with the same people. That's where I first met Kiexel. Yes, Kiexel. The older guildies are now probably snickering to themselves.. lol. I eventually got Kiex into the guild, where after putting my ass on the line repeatedly because he would quit the guild, due to loot issues, a total of four times. The last time he left (at this point under the name Kovacs, because, you know, he must of pissed someone else off, and cribbing names from Watchmen = original!) in a torrent of drama over a legendary mace fragment. People who raided Ulduar in WoW know EXACTLY the kind of drama I'm talking about.

The drama was legendary. He not only quit on the spot, he ranted and raved on his blog about how horrible our guild was, and how we'd never, ever, amount to anything. Essentially how we held him back, yadda yadda (insert typical "I've never really experienced real life, 18 year old bullshit here"). At that point, he dropped off the radar.

Ironically, cleaning out my bookmarks on my laptop, I came across his old blog, which of course, got deleted to hide his asshattery. A quick google search later (because I wanted to read the post again for old times sake) I wasn't able to find the post, but was able to find this:

http://sanctifiedretribution.com/

Turns out, my "friend" decided to get yet another name change (if you're counting, $75 now) and has been raiding on Garona for about two months now. Heh. Apparently he's landed a spot in a top 5 (was top 3, but seeing that I haven't really been online, nor can't be bothered to go check the multitude of "ranking" websites out there, so top 5 is a good guess). Ironically, he used another guild, Divinity, as a loot pinata to gear up to get in, but systematically trashes it on his blog. Same kind of "I need to justify my getting up and leaving to the world, but yet, I won't say a thing to the guild that carried me, because, you know, I'm much better than they are"-type bullshit. Sounds like he's happy now, well, until he gets passed over for loot. You know, life depends on getting a digital sword.

I suppose it just goes to show you, for every good person you meet through gaming, life, etc, there's an equally douchebaggy person to offset them. Probably some sort of cosmic/karmic equivalent of Conservation of Mass or Momentum - Conservation of Douchebags.

As I'm considering how to end this post, I can't help to think how ironic it is that my brother-in-law, whom I met playing MohAA and fixed up with my wife's sister, and the above douchebag are both named Joe.

What's the odds of that?

If only I could get my hands on antivehicle mines...

2009-12-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

Living in Canada snow's a foregone conclusion.

Owning a corner house, on a non-arterial road, the streets don't get plowed. Eventually there's enough of a snowpack on the road to bring the road's surface up to the height of the sidewalk - and that's when the "fun" begins.

I'm not sure if its the area I live in (mostly smaller, starter-type homes), but inevitably, someone drives on my sidewalk. That's annoying, especially if there happens to be fresh snow out on the sidewalk. So, on top of shovelling my driveway, and my 120ish feet of sidewalk, I now have to chip away at the packed snow/ice on the corner that people continually drive on. Tonight alone, this added about another hour to my shovelling.

I understand people cut the corner. Fine. It happens.

Its when people drive.. on my lawn.. I get annoyed. Its not rocket science, there's a foot and a half snowbank. I understand the sidewalk/road thing. I don't understand the.. "huh, I'll drive into this snowbank" bullshit. It's even funnier when you can follow the tire tred, and identify the instant as they're turning the corner that they realize they're going to hit the light standard that's a foot into my lawn. Good times. Generally these are fairly wide.. truck tires. You know the type of truck. Lifted 3/4 ton trucks with massive wheels, which my wife refers to as "small penis trucks".

Last spring, I cut a flower bed in the front lawn, the front edge of which could be in the "path of destruction" for some truck this winter. Fortunately, I was able to find a rock, about a foot and a half in diameter to guard that front edge with. Just big enough to be drug along with one of those trucks, bouncing around in the undercarriage.

Should be good times for the first person driving on my lawn this winter.

The Price is Wrong, Bob!.. err.. Drew.. Drew.. >.>

2009-12-13T22:05:00.000-08:00

So recently, I've been subject to more "awesome customer service" from the retail local retail sector. Its absolutely hillarious that we, as consumers, actually allow bad customer service to exist. Quite frankly, If more people had balls, and decided to spend where they were treated as, I don't know, customers, rather than assholes interrupting someone's texting on an Iphone (while they're working), I think you'd be surprised how the general atmosphere of customer service would change.

For argument's sake, I believe there are a few factors in this ongoing problem. I think the biggest one, by far, is location.

Consider your local economy. What are the pillars of the economy? Essentially, identify the one or two things that drastically affect the quality of life of where you live. (and no... I'm not going off track, just think about it and trust me here). Where I live, its the oilfields. The production of oil is what makes the provincial economy tick. There are two factors tied to the oilfields that affect the quality of life: the price of oil per barrel and the value of the dollar versus the US dollar. Its pretty simple, the higher oil is, the more money is made here. The lower the Canadian Dollar is versus the US Dollar, the more we make in Canadian Dollars per barrel. So, lets review. For the local economy, a high oil price and a low Canadian Dollar equals unbelievable wealth, everyone has a job, labor shortage, every rigpig is driving a new lifted pickup. The minute the dollar goes par, and oil takes a nose dive, suddenly we have mass layoffs and massive government deficits. So, then the retail sector does get influenced by the price of oil, but, will still keep on going regardless. The retail sector suffers, yes, but doesn't dissapear.

Now, consider someplace like Las Vegas. I'm not certain when the last time you've been to Vegas, but the place is literally the epitomy of consumerism. Take for, example, the strip. Every big Casino has some sort of mall/shopping area. Ceasar's, Venitian, Bellagio, Aria (or the new mall beside it), Wynn are some of the biggest, many of which are comfortably within walking distance, all of which have the same stores. I'm not talking about having a McDonalds in each. You know.. Louis Vitton, Tiffany's, Kenneth Cole, etc.. the big stores. Also consider that there's three outlet malls, the Fashon Show Mall, Town Center, and I'm sure many other malls we didn't get a chance to go to within a 20 minute drive. To put it very plainly, the place is oversaturated with commercial stores. Couple this with the simple fact that the American economy is becoming more and more dependant on the retail sector and suddenly customer service becomes literally, life and death.

Now. In a saturated environment like Vegas its stupid-easy to simply walk out of a store because of poor customer service. Don't like the service, go across the street and buy the exact same item from the exact same store. In my experience, I was treated like royalty in these stores. Why? They desperately wanted my buisness. I baught a watch in Vegas, and had it sized twice. The second time was at a completely different store the next day. They sized it no problem, they cleaned it and buffed out some scratches on the band. Here, I'd be grilled for a reciept, or just simply told to go back to the store I baught it from.

Now consider the non-saturated environment where the major driving economic factor is NOT retail. Suddenly, to go to, for example, a different Best Buy location on the basis of getting stuck with unknowledgeable, bitchy, horrible service individuals suddenly isn't such a easy option. Is half an hour drive (potentially in the snow and horrible road conditions) worth not having to deal with a retard trying to sell you a product? Suddenly this isn't such an easy choice, and on the other side of the equation the retard making your blood pressure rise doesn't get punished by lower sales. The people that are geniunely bad at retail are allowed to sell and "work" without any sort of recourse - the store sells things therefore they don't care that the customers are dissatisfied with the service. I can't tell you the times I've been screwed around by various retail outlets after the cash changed hands. Three installs and 12 hours of install time to get my XM into my car. Yes, 12 hours in Best Buy. Constant run around for trying to return faulty electronics, shoes, clothing. Being asked to leave a store for calmly asking a non-inflammatory question. Being refused service because the store is closing IN AN HOUR (yeah, fuck you Canadian Tire. Fuck you.). Unfortunately, I'm not alone.

And yes, I'm sure someone working retail at this point is lighting a Molotov cocktail, and getting ready to throw it through my window, but you know, tough shit. I have politely listened to people I know working retail constantly complain and fly off the handle about horrible customers. How customers are always wrong, stupid, moronic, etc, and how those retail workiers are never, ever wrong about certain situations. I don't discount the fact that horrible customers exist; I will argue to the death, however, that there are an equal proportion of horrible customers to horrible customer service individuals.

Unfortunately, I don't live in an area where good customer service means life or death for that particular store. Well, it just means I'll have to disturb either teenagers texting while working or their managers/older coworkers (who for whatever reason haven't managed to make it farther in the workforce) with simple questions about their products, to which I'll get flippant and condescending answers to. I'm sorry to disturb your groundbreaking, earth-shattering work in arranging the shelves for my retarded question - retarded only because I'm not intimately familiar with your store or store layout, because I've only spent 20-25 minutes of my insignificant life in your store.

Yeah. I wasn't wrong in saving up to drop a few thousand in Vegas on consumer products.

Darwin is rolling in his grave.

2009-12-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Nah, this isn't going to be a social comment on creationism vs evolution, because, well, there really isn't any discussion, evolution is fact. I digress... lol

I'm convinced that as a civilization, we're building a society that works completely against Natural Selection.

Essentially, if you're not familiar with the idea, natural selection, in the biological sense, is defined by wikipedia as the following:

Natural selection is the theoretical process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism in the theory of evolution.

This is essentially the root of the idiom: "Evolve or die", one of those sayings that gets thrown around much too often in the business world. If you extend this idea to the human experience, this is where homosapien using tools, etc, was able to dominate other human-like species. Unfortunately, as we've evolved, we've slowly grown overconfident and worked against Natural Selection. Our society, on a fundamental level, is preventing the "If you do something completely stupid, you get punished for it" aspect of many situations.

Case in point: The evolution of automobiles. One of the driving forces in the industry is to improve safety. Couple that with improved handling and acceleration, and you've essentially reversed Natural Selection. How? People can drive like complete selfish idiots, endanger themselves and others, and walk away from accidents that would rather maim or outright kill them because of these "safety" innovations. I miss the good old days of solid cars, no airbags, and sometimes seatbelts.

What brings on this rant? Heh. Winter driving conditions and stupid drivers. There are many people today that Natural Selection should have claimed, but for whatever reason, they get saved, and then flip you the bird because youmanaged to "wrong" them (also known as swerving out of their way so you don't sideswipe them.. )

I miss Natural Selection.

Society is SMRT

2009-12-07T22:24:00.001-08:00

I'm amazed at the complete stupidity of society.

Yeah. I went there.

I'm getting sick and tired of the news media. Not necessarily about the particular slant, or outright lies (Fox "News") that a news outlet may spin a particular story. No. I'm exceptionally tired of the rumor/gossip/star-watching mill that today's news media boils down to.

Case in point: Tiger Woods.

To this point, he's done a very good job of keeping his PRIVATE life out of the news. Now, he's just one of the countless "celebrities" who have a very ARTIFICIAL importance in the world today. Every move he makes is scrutinized and over-hyped to the point where all other news in the world takes a back seat to what Tiger did today.

So very tired of this bullshit.

Today's society has ridiculously screwed up priorities and people are profiting and promoting them. People are making a killing off celebrity worship. What have they done of REAL importance? Who was the last celebrity to invent something that improved the life of millions? Who was the last celebrity that served in the military to keep the peace, to protect the weak, or sacrifice themselves to save a comrade? Which celebrity has done charity work and not publicized it or profited from it in terms of their image? Yeah, I thought so. These people are worshiped. These people are loved. Why? Media's created a self-sustaining, totally addicting market for people to consume meaningless information about random "important" people's lives. Rather than focusing this energy on bettering the world, even through something as simple as volunteering locally to make a difference (note that I haven't gone over the top and said: Hey! We can stop world poverty!) its wasted completely.

Society is ill, and its going to get much worse before it gets better.. if it gets better. Essentially, its going to take a "World War II"-sized event to derail this bullshit. Society is so hung up in celeb-centricity that having the trendy clothes, electronics, cars, etc, is more important than having the ability to EARN these things.

As I get older, I see a distinct rift between my generation and the current group of highschool/early undergraduate kids. I look at my generation, I realize that by and large, we haven't had our defining moment, such as a moon landing, or a world war. There hasn't been a single event that has been a catalyst for focused effort. However, the majority of people that I've gone to high school with have made something of themselves. They've gone out there and put forth effort to do something. Effort that yielded results.

Now. Especially in the last two/three years, I've noticed that the generation that grew up with the "Everyone deserves respect/nobody fails/you can be what you want to be, even if you don't bother to put in the effort" mentality has started to head out into adult society. Unfortunately, that mentality has followed them. Generally those messages are positive, but people who gave them to this batch of kids must have forgot the important caveats. Everyone deserves respect: respect is earned through actions, not given when demanded. Nobody fails: when they put sufficient preparation and effort in. You can be what you want to be: with hard work and perseverance. Someone along the way dropped the ball with these kids, not drilling into them that you actually have to work for things in life. Seems like the messages were too "front loaded" with the good, popular, happy overarching messages, without outlining the importance of hard work and effort. From personal experience in teaching labs at my University, I've run into the following situations:

1. Student does nothing in the lab. Doesn't listen to the lecture portion, doesn't do the assignment, then complains to the prof that I didn't teach *him*, and that I'm responsible for his failures.

2. Student does the lab assignment incorrectly. Acknowledges that they made mistakes. Demands full marks based on the fact that they bothered to hand in the assignment.

3. Student that I've never seen in the lab comes on the last lab period and demands that I give him the marks for the whole semester, since he showed up.

Yeah. Unfortunately, these are all true. The "Give me" generation will be in full control shortly. To quote Clint Eastwood:

"The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits."

Soon these twits will be in control. Heaven help us.

One down, one to go/Grey Cup.

2009-11-28T22:49:00.000-08:00

So, I came out of my yearly advisory meeting fairly unscathed. There was some very valuable feedback about the scope of my project, that I needed a specific "end" point. That's really reasonable, since you could essentially keep going with my project indefinitely. My supervisor attempted to throw some pretty serious technical questions my way to scare me. Its kind of funny, because this goes back to some of the issues I had hinted to previously, in terms of the communication breakdowns that constantly happen between us. Its sad but true. If he'd listen to the actual words coming out of my mouth, rather than assuming that i've done nothing and that I'm lying through my teeth.. but I digress...

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH RIDERS!

Yeah... LOL

I just finished watching the Grey Cup (Canada's Superbowl Equivalent). Fairly one sided game until the 4th quarter, where the team that was losing (Allouettes) overcame a THREE SCORE deficit to win with a no-time-on-the-clock field goal.

The team that was winning for 59 minutes of the game was the Saskachewan Roughriders. The Riders have probably the most devoted core of fans in the league, if not the continent. They follow their team around, they're always loud and raucous. Essentially, any team would want fans like that, since they can essentially take away home field advantage for opposing teams. We have a 70,000 seat stadium in which our local team plays. The only complete sellout of the season is when Sask came to town. Our local crowd ranges between 30-40k, it was almost even between Eskies fans and Riders fans. The unfortunate part is that they take it --TOO-- far. If they win, and you're an Eskies fan wearing anything with the Eskies logo, you'll hear about it. They'll get in your face, yell, scream, and let you know how much "they" kicked your ass. They'll start fights, badger people, throw things at you, you name it. Their behaviour borders on soccer-hooliganary. As a season ticket holder, I've seen it all. Sask's fans are by far the worst.

Also, the hype for the Cup game was how much the crowd will affect the game. "The Thirteenth Player" type talk. Although the Cup game was not in Sask, they had the majority of the fans, and yeah, they were loud. They managed to build a three score lead in the first 3 quarters. The Als started to come back, and closed to two points, and got into field goal range with no time on the clock.

Now. Make the field goal, and the Als win, shank it, and Sask holds on. Crowd's going nuts, Sask bench is celebrating before the kick, since its a long one 46-47 yards. They line up, snap the ball, and the Als miss.

Then the flags fly. Not one, but ALL of them. Why? Too many Riders on the field.

.. ha.. .. HA.... BWWWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHH!

So, 10 yard penalty, and another try. Now its a 36 yard FG. They make it.

Sask loses.

Huh.. That Thirteeth Player really screwed up.

Sweeet sweet IRONY. I'm going to enjoy it

Back to the grindstone.

2009-11-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

Well, back from Vegas. Vegas was fun, did some gambling, did some shopping, relaxed, and had a lot of fun.

Inevitably, its back to the grind that is my life. The next two weeks will be fairly high paced, with a lot going on, and a lot of long hours in front of my old friend, Mr. Work Laptop. I have a supervisory committee meeting in about two weeks, and of course have to produce a bit of a yearly report. I'm planning to produce a draft candidacy report instead, and using the meeting to prepare from the candidacy exam I'll be undergoing in February. I'm not terribly concerned about the meeting. I'm more concerned about the seemingly impossible attitude that I'm encountering with my supervisor and publishing.

One of my strengths as a researcher is experimental work, being able to work in the lab, perform experiments, and in this case, microfabrication, and produce devices and results. One of my weaknesses is the documentation behind the experimental work. Not so much the writing, moreso the proper way to disseminate that documentation. This problem usually rears its ugly head when I talk to my supervisor and attempt to discuss my project with him. I usually make the error of assuming that he understands the background of my project beyond the simple physics behind it. I'm not saying he's stupid - he just doesn't have the experience with the project that I do. So, any time that I attempt to talk to him about it, from his point of view, it will look like I'm either out to lunch, or haven't done my background research, because I'm expecting him to know the background.

Imagine talking to someone about driving a car, with the person never having the experience of driving. Its that kind of discussion, except that he's assuming that I have the same background experience that he does. Many arguments have spawned from this misunderstanding, largely on my part. The phrase "are you doing anything?" usually pops up, to which I do my best to turn the question on him in terms of trying to publish under him. (but that's a rant, for another day.. lol).

But yeah, Nov 27th is the first meeting. The first hurdle. After that it will be a mad dash to February, and the candidacy exam. Its going to be long days of work, experiments, simulations, and studying. Unfortunately, it just means I need to streamline my life a little bit. WoW's out. Probably extended vacation time @ Christmas is out too. Well, if those sacrifices allow me to get out of this university with my PhD before 30, I'll be happy.

Anywho. Back to talking about non-linearities in the frequency response of my device.

I R ANONYMOUS!

2009-11-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

So, today the wife got some "hate e-mail" from one of her anonymously from one of her students.

I'm not going to post it, or anything else related to it, but it brings up an interesting point about which I commented on awhile ago.

People believe that they cannot be held accountable for their actions online.

This could not be farther from the truth. Even if you know how to contain your personal information online through management of cookies, downloads, etc, the majority of your online activities are monitored elsewhere.

If you happen to have an email address, even one that you pay for from your service provider, guess what? Your emails are being stored/monitored by your provider. Generally, your ISP does this for backup purposes, so, you know, when you do something to lose all your email, that they can be your savior and restore most, if not all of your email. This goes for any web-based free emails too. But these get more scrutinized, not so much for the "evil, you're going to bomb something" issues, but more for market research and advertising.

What the average person doesn't know is that in every email, blog post, forum post, tweet, Facebook what-have-you, tracking information is logged. Doesn't matter if you use a laptop, desktop, phone, iphone, blackberry, there is enough information logged to determine who posted it, from where, from what computer, and at what time. The majority of this information is hidden and cannot be blocked or otherwise manipulated by anyone other than those providing the service.

So, threaten someone online recently? Send someone a anonymous hate email? Well, you better hope that the recipient doesn't report you. Harassment is a crime. To give you an idea of how easy it is to be caught, most serious cases of email harassment are resolved, even those made "anonymously", with charges laid in less than 24 hours. In some cases, the time required to actually go physically arrest these people is LESS than the time required to determine their identity online.

Food for thought before you randomly go flame someone because nobody will catch you, huh?

Zomg Strategic Laser Chess. >.>

2009-11-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I've posted a few critical things lately, probably a byproduct of a lot of frustration.

Now for something fun: STRATEGIC LASER CHESS!

I like playing board games, always have. "Run of the mill" board games like Monopoly, etc, have too much randomess for me. Essentially, strategy doesn't play much into the game and you just end up rolling dice for fun. Mind you, I love rolling dice (palms his d20 lovingly.. lol), but eventually it gets boring.

Awhile back, we started getting into what I now refer to as "Real Boardgames". Games like Puerto Rico, Calyus, Settlers. Games where strategy > randomness.

Now, I've found something awesome:

http://www.productwiki.com/khet-the-laser-game/

ITS LIKE LASERS AND CHESS HAD A BABY!

A co-worker showed me this, and I may have to try it. :D

H1N1, R2D2, and C3P-O!

2009-11-01T17:13:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I know, two posts in one day... but I suppose that's what happens when I watch the news.

Ah the "news".. another skewing of facts, only this time about daily events.

Generally, I won't question the severity of certain events, nor their general impact on the world. I realize that there are serious things that happen on a daily basis that have large scale real-world ramifications. I'm not arguing that point. What I am arguing is the panic that is being fostered by the media about our old friend: H1N1.

Yes, H1N1 is a public health problem, yes its dangerous and potentially life threatening if you happen not to take it seriously. Yes, vaccines are a good thing. I hope that everyone will be able to get them. Yes, there have been issues with how the Alberta Government has handled the inoculation campaign. But, lets review:

1. The Gov't was able to initially get 400000 doses of the vaccine, and set up clinics. They asked that people who are high risk (Small children, Pregnant Women, and people with chronic health conditions) groups be given voluntary priority. Otherwise known as, "Hey IDIOTS, if you aren't a part of the risk groups, stop being completely selfish and wait your turn."
2. The media heavily covered this. Awesome. Get the word out. They seem to have the "voluntary priority" tidbit in the small little snippets they use as advertizing, but never in the main story they show. Excellent.
3. Apparently "High Risk" meant everyone, and the voluntary priority thing went out the window.
4. In order to not run out of vaccine, the Gov't decided to suspend all clinics open to the public, and to restrict the vaccine to the high risk groups mentioned above. Everyone else now has to wait 2 weeks for supply to catch up to demand.
5. Massive public uproar, whipped up by local media.

So, currently there's politicans demanding resignations and such. Massive knee-jerk reactions by random people on the news, some of which I doubt are not even close to being "high risk".

Well, I have very little sympathy for those that are upset about this situation. However, I do not have any sympathy for the Gov't in this case either. The situation could have been handled much better. I do think, however, the news media didn't help any. Not many people heard that "We have 400k doses, and will eventually be able to supply vaccine to every single Albertan", but heard "we have a dose for every Albertan NOW! and YOU WILL DIE TOMORROW IF YOU DON'T GET IT".

Yeah. The hordes of people panicking over H1N1 have brought this shortage on the rest of you. Heaven help you selfish people if the gov't runs out of vaccine and pregnant women or small children who should have gotten the vaccine get seriously ill.

Advertizing does it again!

2009-11-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

It blows my mind how much people rely on the media for general knowledge.

For example, the Mac "attack adds" (you know, those popular adds with "Mac" and "PC") are probably the best example of how people get misinformed, and believe that its absolute truth. Essentially, the overwhelming message that "Vista is the devil" to the uninformed masses was a slick advertising campaign. It got many long time windows users to not even bother with Vista - a definite upgrade in functionality and performance from XP. XP was the single most exploited and unsecured piece of software out there, recently over taken by Acrobat Reader. But yet, since it was familiar, and you had a good looking Hollywood actor, slickly implanting the message that Vista was evil, broken, had many bugs, and wasn't worth dealing with a lot of people didn't bother upgrading.

I've used every windows operating system. I switched to Vista when I got a new computer. Vista has been my most stable and useful OS yet. I haven't had the irrecoverable errors that had required me to reinstall 95 and XP. I haven't had the DLL errors, the constant crashes, memory leaks and what have you with Vista. The only legitimate problem that users of Vista saw was running it at the minimum system requirements. But then again, did they expect it to run well at the minimum requirements?

What's even worse, is that people who have never ever run Vista in their life would openly and blatantly argue with me that I was wrong to use Vista. Why? because Mac told them that Vista is bad.

Anyways, the campaign of misinformation continued today with a bunch of new Mac ads that could no longer attack Vista for being a "bad" piece of software. Windows 7 is probably the best piece of software that Microsoft has produced, so suddenly, can't attack that. So, what did they go after? Oh yes: "You're going to have move all you stuff, so why not move it to a MAC"

Yeah. I'm not joking. They're trying to convince people that its going to be a hassle to upgrade. Yeah... Talk about grasping at straws. But the sad thing is that people are going to believe them, because you know, TV never lies.

Oh, those crazy Eskimos!

2009-10-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

I have season tickets to the Eskies. For those of you that aren't familiar with the CFL, its pretty much the same as the NFL with the following exceptions:

- 3 downs.
- No fair catch rule
- Bigger fields (110 yards long, much wider)
- Bigger Balls (actually our balls are much larger, also, pun intended).
- Recievers and Running backs can be in foreward motion before snap.
- You can return a missed field goal.
- Field goal posts are @ the goal line.

The bottom line is that there's more passing, the game is quicker, and its much more entertaining to watch. It may not have the big name players, but I feel its a less boring game to watch.

Anyways, back on topic.

Our local team, the Eskimos, has the the league's leading passing yards quarterback and reciever, also we have a running back with 1300-1400 yards, with one game to go. It boils down to the simple fact we have a yards productive offense, but a generally "unreliable in key situations" quarterback. Yeah, I said it. Ricky Ray is unreliable. I've seen 10 games this season in person. I can count on one hand his good games, games where he didn't self destruct and hope to hell the defense kept it close.

To make matters worse, the coach seems handcuffed to keeping Ray in all the time. We have essentially 3 starter-quality quarterbacks. Our second string is Jason Maas. I've seen him "bullet" pass over 50 yards. The guy has a crazy arm, and can thread it. Our third string is Jared Zabransky. If the name sounds familiar, he's the Boise State quarterback that pulled off that massive upset in (I think) the Tostita Bowl with a massive trick/fake play. He got the opportunity to play a quarter in a preseason game, and tore it up.

So, essentially, we're hanging on by a thread to make the playoffs. We've lost many games this season because, quite simply, Ray couldn't get the offense going.

Well, we'll see if Ray blows it next week. Its sad really. For whatever reason, the upper leadership (not the coach) and the media paint Ray as a complete saint, not being able to make any sort of error, ever.. even when he can't complete a play to save his life.

Not enough hours in the day.

2009-10-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Really busy lately, which is fine. I guess it comes with the territory, deadlines and juggling experimental work and documentation, real life and work commitments. Expectations are high, and rightly so.

Just finished editing a review paper that I'm planning to publish. Essentially its a topical review on implantable micro generators. Useful for my thesis, so its time well spent. The only problem is that the paper itself is 30 pages long. To give a better idea, as a paperback novel, my paper would be roughly 50 pages long... lol.. a non-trivial length. Problem is, editing it takes a lot of work, time, and patience.

Of course, life being what it is, wouldn't hesitate to throw a couple curveballs into the mix, just to make things interesting. Some major, some not so major, essentially just enough to occupy a little extra of my time. Essentially it ends up being an exercise in "bending but not breaking".

I stumbled upon a little tidbit of wisdom over the last week that has helped me cope a bit:

"God, give me the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

Albeit this is the prayer given to new members of Alcoholic's Anonymous... lol. there is a fair bit of wisdom in that statement.

Anywho, back to the grind.

Heh.. WoW. >.>

2009-10-28T13:27:00.001-07:00

In addition to my research and being married, I play WoW.

Yes, WoW.

I have a hard time explaining this to some of the people in my group. Some don't get it, some think they're "above it" (aka, academics do not stoop to that level), and others just see it as my pastime. Some people mountain bike, ski, spend their time with various NGO's. I play WoW.

I've played WoW for a long time because its fun, and its a reasonably decent investment vs time choice. Movies can cost you upwards of 15-20 bucks for two hours, WoW will cost you that for a month. Again, its one of those "If you use it, its worth the money ideas" (Not very dissimilar from the "Having alot of cheap shoes vs having a few pairs of expensive shoes" argument.. which I'll post another day.. lol)

Anyways, I enjoy the raiding portion of the game. The best analogy to raiding would be.. for example, playing a game of football (either or) against with 25 other real people versus a computer opponent. Somehow I always end up in a leadership role in these types of things. Perhaps that's the Engineer in me surfacing, I'm not sure. In all respects, a raid functions essentially like a football team. There are various different roles. Each role is required and important. Success is directly measured by personal ability/achievement and teamwork. Leadership is important as well. I am the raid leader for my group. Essentially consider me the coach/quarterback all rolled into one. I call the plays, assign roles, etc. Generally people cooperate. The only issue is, you're not dealing with these people face to face.

This is where the situation becomes a bit muddy. Instead of being able to communicate with these people face to face, in many cases, you're reduced to text. If you're lucky, you may have a VOIP system set up, where you can talk to the person. Either or, things like body language and tone are lost. This makes communication somewhat hard at times, since you're not able to infer people's attitudes easily. You have to pay close attention to what people say and do, that's more or less all you have to go on.

The second complication is the Internet. Yes. You're dealing with the commonly held belief that the Internet is better than Vegas - that there is no blame nor accountability for one's actions on the web. This is where the majority of the issues come from, and usually from the "I'm going to to whatever I want, because I'm invincible" group of 17-22 year old males.

The third complication is the simple fact that you're playing a game. I've learned some major life lessons on how to motivate people to perform a task well when there is no monetary or tangible reward. Not very easy, let me tell you. Unlike the real world, where managers and bosses can hold the possibility of losing your job for poor performance or lack of production over someone's head, in the game there are no consequences.

Let me tell you.. its not easy leading. Its even harder to be successful at it.

On occasion I'll get people in real life ask me: Why? Why do you put the time and effort into a game?

Well, here's why:

1. Its a release. Both myself and the wife enjoy games. We both find WoW to be fun. I enjoy the raiding, she enjoys the pets (yes. your characters can have pets, she enjoys collecting them). There, I don't have to worry about microfabrication, deadlines, publications, meetings, supervisors and their randomness.. none of it. Regardless the topic, I would probably spend equivalent time split between other hobbies. The only scary thing is that WoW catalogs the time you spend online. TV, websurfing, etc doesn't.. lol.

2. The more I thought about it, being an engineer and (hopefully.. I say hopefully today, because I'm proofing a 12000 word review paper, and its testing my sanity) a future PhD, I'm getting management experience. Sure, I may not be able to claim it on a CV (actually, it would be pretty funny if I could.. lol), but I'm being given a finite set of people and resources, and I'm being asked to manage both people and resources to meet a goal. Sounds like an exercise management to me.

3. I enjoy the sociology. Yeah, odd remark. I'm sure at this point with all the "learning" about the social dynamics of how people interact online, I may be able to even consider a publication.. ok.. maybe something in a non-refereed journal someplace. .. lol. In any case, it is interesting watching the dynamic that occurs when people believe that their actions won't come back to haunt them in any way, shape or form.

heh.. good times.

It begins!

2009-10-28T13:13:00.001-07:00

So yeah.

I've been considering starting a blog for quite some time. Nothing serious, nothing majorly political, more so something to catalog the things that I happen to come across in daily life that fall into the "you can't make this stuff up" category.

Hopefully the posts that follow will be just something entertaining to read.

More to come.