A Note about Thumbs...the digital kind.

Fiasco at work over the last few days: shuffling around a bunch of laptops to meet the needs of various simultaneous computer camps, my coworker moved a bunch of kids' work to a USB thumb drive, and gave it to me to transfer to new/different laptops for kids in my camps to use.

The fiasco: I lost the USB drive, and my coworker didn't just copy the work from the original laptops, he cut and paste it all to this thumb drive, erasing the original work from the kids' original laptops, meaning the only copy, which was on the USB drive, was now lost.

So Wednesday's camp contained a bunch (8) of very confused and slightly upset kids: they weren't able to work on their projects, because of mostly my mistake.

I'd already done a considerable amount of searching for the damn thing, but today I totally scoured both my car and my bedroom even further: searched every cubic inch of the interior of my car (boy does it ever need a good cleaning!), and cleaned my room. The final result: the USB drive, which almost cost the boss $800 in camp refunds, was sitting under my dresser/pushed under my bed. I had actually already checked there before, but with all the debris, I'd missed it on first and second passes.

The benefit to me out of all of this: I now have a much cleaner room, and car. =)

When Beauty > Brains

I`m procrastinating right now from studying. Three final quizzes/exams tomorrow.

Before studying I thought I'd go out and get my compulsory study energy drinks. Shoes, jacket, keys, out the door, and UMMM, what is that CAR doing parked DIRECTLY, square-on in front of our driveway?!

We live at the very end of a cul-de-sac, facing right up the road at the pinnacle of the round-about; our driveway is off-center facing the island in the center of the round-about, and down the road. Being on a round-section of road makes parking complicated, but generally all of us who live on the end of the street get along, and have formed some silent agreement over the years of who parks where most of the time. But there have been, over the years, still plenty of odd occurrences and weird parking jobs directly in front of our house that leave us scratching our heads, wondering what hick-part-of-town/the world people learned to drive. We'd had people just stop and park in the MIDDLE OF THE STREET many-a-times, and even had one person park with all 4 wheels on our lawn, even though there's a very distinct curb, and the lawn is quite well kept (though mossy).

So, when I come out of my house tonight, and it's dark and rainy, and there's a long station-wagon parked in front of and completely blocking our wide driveway, yet there's absolutely nobody parked immediately in front of this car, where one could rightfully park (in front of our lawn), no, this person decided to park right there as if on-purposely to block me, I was in almosta comical disbelief, with a little bit of spite.

I didn't really react in anger, because anger is lose-lose. Though, I've been told, and have begun to believe myself, that I'm generally too passive of a person - I don't take stand for my own rights enough, or stay firm on my own beliefs and personal boundaries enough of the time. In this case, I merely reacted in disbelief, and shook my head, wondering how stupid and inconsiderate this person was.

I immediately knew what house it belonged to, too. There's a student house behind my neighbour's house that apparently doesn't have enough spots to house the cars of all the young-hippie-twenty-somethings' vehicles, so we often have one of their vehicles parked in front of our house, albeit properly (usually). So, I took the walk down the dark, wet driveway of this house, knocked on the door, and the person who answered, who knew immediately who I must be and what I must be knocking at the door about, reminded me immensely of someone I used to know.

.. A girl I dated, the bitter ex of a friend of mine, a total of once. I didn't even get a good look at the girl tonight - but I didn't need to. It was obviously one of 'those girls' who's gotten by in life with pretty much everyone liking them, because of their looks and charm. They need to be liked though, and it's sort of 'out of their reality' that people won't respond to them positively. They constantly, though, need to re-affirm the fact that everyone must like them, so they'll do things like touch you on your arm, as if to re-gain trust in apology if they've said or done something to possibly make you think less of them. The thing is, if these people do ever encounter someone that doesn't like them (and shows it), and they don't see value in the person, they'll be both bitter in the short-term, but will have no problem moving on and completely ignoring the person forever. That's the thing about very attractive girls who can rightly assume that most everyone will like them: most people will, and if someone doesn't, she will have no problem moving on, because someone else will always come along much sooner than later and will give them the ego-feeding attention they want. As a consequence, they never really have a reason/opportunity to challenge their own reality, or grow as people. If they ever get into a conflict, usually there will be drama, but they'll never take it upon themselves to resolve the conflict with the person - they'll make the other person chase them, because they have so many options, and it feeds their ego: both the ability/opportunity to have new people like them just for their looks, but also to have people they already know try to get their attention back.

I got a little off-topic, and a bit reminiscent/spiteful, could you tell? :P ... So when this girl answered, she apologized profusely, and repeatedly. I simply turned around and started up the driveway - she almost chased after me after putting her shoes on, constantly talking and apologizing. No dice, I've met you before. She briefly spouts out something about 'only meaning to come inside for 2 seconds' (even then, why wouldn't you park properly, twat!!??); she needs my attention, and my approval to confirm her reality that everyone will immediately like her. It's not going to happen. I haven't seen more than her silhouette, but from what I can gather, she's hot, but not going to get it: my attention.

I get into my car, and drive off. Good, Colin, good.

Dancing with the Classics

I'm having Deja-vu. It was sometime last school year: I was sitting in almost this exact spot in my family dining room, filled with stress, doing homework/studying. In the next room, my parents watching 'Dancing with the Stars', one of the worst shows in television for two reasons:

a) I can't stand Tom Bergeron's voice, and b) The fact that it's a dancing-competition show, where the point is to watch NOT the best dancers, who are only b-list celebrities trying to make a bigger name for themselves. Isn't the point of watching a fanfare-filled competition to watch the people best at something?

So here I was, in the Fall of 2009 - sitting, stressed, trying to do homework, and Tom Bergeron's nail-on-chalkboard voice was blaring from the next room. I had to escape. I plugged in headphones - no good, could still hear his self-parodying voice. Had to put something on that would help me concentrate.

It was then that I found Classical music via streaming web radio through iTunes, and loved it. I had never much liked Classical before, but I can only assume that, because it gave me so much value that night, that I came to like it. After the insaneness of my current load of homework was done, I downloaded a pile of Classical, and it now makes up the majority of the music on my iPod.

Mini Me

Today I met mini-me. Or, as my coworker jokingly referred to him, my "son".

The kid, a grade 3 I taught today, pretty much looks exactly like me at age 8. Friggin weird. Even other kids in the after-school camp commented that we looked so alike, which is odd for an eight-year-old to notice. Only later did my coworker admit to me that she too had thought the exact same thing weeks earlier when she first met the boy.

Smart kid. Good looking, too. (-;

Earth Hour

OK I admit it - 'Earth Hour' was last night, and I was at home on my plugged-in computer.

But honestly, how pragmatic (I've found myself using that word a lot lately. Thanks, philosophy class) is earth hour? Earth Hour is supposed to be about saving the planet - isn't it? If we all turn off our lights for an hour - we'll save a bunch of electricity, thereby lessening climate change - for that hour. It sounds stupid even now as I type it. There are 8760 hours in a typical year - excluding leap years. So, earth hour cuts down on 1/8760th of our expended electricity usage. .. .. hypothetically. That doesn't sound like a whole lot.

But then (just now) I went to earth hour's official website: earthhour.org. Turns out, earth hour isn't really about shutting off power at all. So, despite what one Facebook friend of mine thought who complained this morning in her status update about the fact that our city had left its public unnecessary lights on, it's really not about the electricity at all - it's about raising awareness of climate change.

But, as one fictional character on House M.D. put it: wouldn't building houses for habitat be a more useful activity and a better way of raising awareness/fighting breast cancer than walking with pink ribbons on? Why not kill two birds with one stone? If earth hour is about raising awareness of climate change, it's not doing a very good job - besides that 1/8760th of our year. Once that hour - or night - is up, we all go back to our same habits anyways. Also ironic: all of us probably heard of earth hour on some electronic device - or from someone who did, am I right?

Here's a better idea than earth-hour: why doesn't the government give us all who live in a big enough city/town to have a transit system an all-day, one-day pass for public transit? We could use it any day of the year, and it would get all of us out of the houses without our cars, it would support the local economy, and hell, we'd all get a little more exercise just walking to bus stops - not to mention it'd help a lot of lower-income people out too.

Just a thought.

Rigging

One thing about blogging is that one really only finds something to write about at the end of the day if they've let their mind wander, or they've experienced something intellectually stimulating and had time to mull it over. Today wasn't one of those days, though it was fairly productive on the hobby-front. Spent all day learning and trying out a new 3D character facial rigging technique, thanks to a very handy video tutorial series online. Here's the mostly-done result:


Not perfect, but better than any facial rig I've done before - by far. Work every minute of the 9+ hours it took me to learn / do this - not including the model itself, just the rigging of the face - using shape-keys driven by bones.

One Week.

One week left of classes as of today. This time next week = cohortee's birthday, last-class-bash, drunken laser tag.

In more good news, somehow I've actually managed to lose 11 pounds since late November. Sure, those are 11 of the 13 pounds I had put on since this time last year, but it's a step in the right direction. I have to thank my too-busy-to-eat school schedule. Actually, that's kind of not true - I've been busy, it's just that I've been doing my best to keep on track, minus the Doritos i crammed down my throat tonight. Made my own pizza again tonight though: low-carb crust and all.

"Tough Guise"

So we watched this video in Adolescent Psychology today: 'Tough Guise'. What a load of crap. I happen to be quite interested in psychology, and have enjoyed this course more than others of mine, but I find it remarkable that the prof pulls out her feminist-flag only right after we do her course evaluation.

The video:

If you've taken any university-level psych course, you'll have heard of the nature/nurture debate. Unfortunately, back when I took psych 1000, I wasn't at the same level of intellectual understanding nor had the same interest in the subject that I have now - not enough to really care about the lectures on this topic at the time. The nature/nurture debate is simply this: are we the way we are, as individuals and collectively, because of society and our upbringing, or because of evolution/genes? There isn't a consensus.

I'm a believer in Evolutionary Psychology, and an anti-feminist. I also believe in one of the forms of equality. Unfortunately, there have been some evolutionary psychologists who have said some pretty chauvinistic things, and as a result, feminists are at war with evolutionary psychology.

But evolutionary psychology just makes sense: men and women are quite physically different - and it's easy to see that men are taller/stronger than women because for 100's of thousands of years, cave-men hunted and performed tasks that required strength, while women worked in closer proximity to the home, and established more social tenancies with children and other women. Studies even show that newborn baby girls respond with much more brain activity to pictures of faces than infant, newborn baby boys. Young girls play with toys with faces - young boys, if given barbies, hit each other with them, or use them as digging tools. Heck, even apparently male vs female EYES are different. Apparently men are better at far distances, and women have better wide-angle vision, and are better at finding things in close proximity. Oh, and men are better spacially - we can better find our way through mazes, and draw maps better than women.

So feminist/nurturists, including my psych prof, argue that men perform better in mazes because we spend more of our childhood playing sports, outdoors, and playing spatially-aware video games. Bullshit, I say. I asked my prof in front of the class if they had been able to isolate the confounding variables enough to eliminate the difference in test subjects between boys and girls - they'd need to find girls who were into sports and video games (which shouldn't be that hard these days) just as much as the boys in the study, and find out who is better, all significant variables accounted for. She couldn't give me an answer, other than the fact that the boys in the study done had played more sports/video games.

I'm not trying to argue that men are 'better' than women - far from it. I'm jusst convinced that we ought to recognize that men and women are biologically different, and that this MUST have an effect on our psychology. Hell, even male birds and female girds act differently - and they don't have the possibility of being socially influenced - as far as I know, birds don't have the pre-frontal cortex to learn socially, like we do.

What's more disturbing is that feminists want to eliminate/transform masculinity. I can't help but relate it to my indigenous studies class: a dominant white culture totally destroyed aboriginal culture/language because they saw it as 'barbaric' - even until the early 1990's, aboriginal children were sent to Residential Schools where they were raped, made to perform sexual acts on priests, forbid to speak their language, and killed, and as a result aboriginal people have suffered more than most can imagine, and have had their culture/identities erased. I can't help but see that men might suffer the same fate - men, and masculinity, are portrayed in almost nothing but a negative light in media - either we're stupid or violent assholes. Think: Homer Simpson or Donald Trump.

Enough said.

Toddlers and iPhones

Today was one of the rare Wednesdays I've visited campus this semester. Thanks, homework.

Ahead of me at the bus stop was a young, and again pregnant mother with a *maybe* 2-year-old in a stroller. The bus was getting full; I found myself facing them once we were all seated, in the front part of the bus appropriate for a stroller - where the flip-up seats are.

Her young (born) one was at that age where you need to keep him entertained or in conversation at all times to avoid him getting cranky. Cute kid, though. The mother was talking to him a whole bunch until she opted to merely hand him her - what I think was an - iPod touch. I had assumed she had put on some video cleverly and proactively stored on there for times just like these. Surely he was busy watching Rolie Polie Olie or something - but no, he was OPERATING the iPod! He had an app open where he had to identify shapes. Sure, OK, easy enough, but then he decided he didn't like that app, so he pressed the home screen button, and launched a different app - he didn't know what it was; his mother informed him it was her grocery list app. It wasn't for him, so he pressed the home screen button again, and went back to his shapes game. The only thing I didn't see him do was swish the home screen to get to a different page of apps!

I sat there in awe. What a testament to iOS's user interface design that a 1-2 year old can use it! The kid was barely able to retain attention to the screen, often lazily flopping his iPod-holding hand over the side of his stroller, but then he'd bring it back up and continue using it. It was second nature to the kid! Good on you, Steve Jobs.

Daydreaming

.. it's that time of the semester when you start dreaming of that nice vacation you've been meaning to go on: all-inclusive, white sandy beaches. ..Started doing some online searching and oogling of resort photos, instead of assigned, menial tasks like writing that term paper and preparing for this week's three class presentations.

Stopped in at one of our Spring Break Camps happening right now. Very refreshing - a great feeling that the winter is finally coming to a close, and summer is on its way. As of yesterday - or the other day - I think it's actually, officially Spring. Hooray!

Wet, Muddy Gravel and Power-Naps.

Biked to school today - glad, but it was drizzling, and had been raining harder earlier, and I drove through a dirty construction zone, and so when i got to school my ass was covered in wet, muddy gravel.

Biking is still worth it, though.

Out-of-class is more busy than in-class time. Told a couple fellow students yesterday that being in class is more of a break than my free time: in class I can shut-off. I 'have' to be there, but my participation can be very minimal, so I often use this to my advantage: light meditation as rest, clear my mind of extraneous thoughts. Apparently if you meditate (well) a few times per day, you need less sleep. Often this is what people call 'power naps', which don't actually involve sleep, but 20 minutes of meditation. Maybe in a land where I have free time I should read more on meditation.

Here's a conundrum: Reading more about meditation so your mind can better get a grasp of, better understand, not needing to - letting go of the need to - understand.

Totalitarianism

Up til 3am+ doing homework. Again.

Loving this end-of semester feeling. Not the overload of projects; rather, the lack of caring about anything else, as I wrote about here a few days ago. Everyone is getting along great too as a result - or at least I am, with everyone. My cohort rocks.

Two weeks from now, when we all get plastered and play laser tag, and then we don't see each other again (or, I won't see many of them) until September, is going to be bitter-sweet.

Oh, and I've discovered I have a real hard time saying "totalitarianism."

Crazy Slowly Are We Going

Two more weeks of school. It's come down to that point in the semester: still somewhat sick, mentally checked-out, and a buttload of assignments imminently due.

Sometimes working in groups is a pain in the ass, and sometimes it's a nice change. Usually, for me, it's a pain in the ass. If I'm in a group or partnership where something creative is to be endeavored, I become controlling, and stubborn. I'm a perfectionist - and, let's face it, probably more creatively inclined/talented than others are likely to be, at least in a wide scope. Most of the time when I've been in a group, I've ended up doing far more than my fair share of work - often because of dissatisfaction of others' work or ideas, or because they aren't able to achieve the desired result, at least up to my standards. On the other hand, sometimes working in a group just makes things easier. I've barely experienced this in my University career, but this semester I've learned that in some cases working in a group is not only socially and emotionally rewarding, but it also has the benefit of cutting the work down a whole lot. Writing group essays, which, albeit, is pretty rare, except in education I suppose, is a nice change from writing them alone. Two, or in my current case, three heads, is better than one, and it turns a 6-page essay, single-spaced, into a 2-page essay. Nice.

Friday, Friday, Gotta Get Down on Friday.

Interesting Day - starting to reflect on long-term personal goals of the last few years that had to be put on the back-burner for school. Are they going to have a resurgence for practicum/summer? Let's hope so.

Procrastinating from reading the mental-masturbation that is my Philosophy readings. Have to read 3 articles - Totalitarianism, and 2 others, and then an article on Indigenous storytelling.

Today, before the rum was hit, was full of giggles. Lack of caring, socially, definitely has its benefits. Nobody was listening in class = 12:30 giggle-fit. Really appreciating the comradeship that has become my cohort. People will piss you off - the ego will always assure to that - but getting along with everyone around me and being able to appreciate what they bring to group dynamics is a rare thing. I'm looking forward for two weeks from now to come, but it'll be bitter-sweet. At least said bitter-sweetness will culminate with intoxicated laser-tag. :D

Day

"Despite sleeping 18 minutes into my morning midterm, not shaving/showering, not eating 'til after 4pm, and having rum and a green tequila shot before getting up for a class presentation, today was a pretty good day." -me.

The day didn't start well. I was up until about 3am studying for my psychology midterm last night - the plan was to wake up decently before 8am to get in some last-minute cramming before the 10AM test. I woke up at 10:18.

Total disbelief. Damn you, alarm. Throw clothes on, contacts, grab laptop, books, water bottle, bag, shoes, key, run out the door. Fuck it, parking on campus without paying.

Arrive at building: 10:39am. Pretty damn good time. Walk sheepishly past cohortees in the hall (who'd just finished the test), and sheepishly, again, through the classroom door and up to my prof, who found me a spot in the curric lab to write my test late. Got it all just done by the end of class.

The afternoon was just as good. It was group-presentation time, and St.Patty's Day. Time for group (green) tequila shots and other drinks before our presentation. Nevermind I hadn't eaten anything yet. Presentation went OK. we ran short of the expected time, but rocked with the public-speaking-in-front-of-peers part. Thanks, alcohol.

End-of-day back to my car: successfully avoided parking ticket. Really suspecting campus security only very rarely does rounds. Like, maybe once daily. I've never seen anyone patrolling, though a couple of people I know have gotten tickets.

So that was my day, besides napping and forthcoming philosophy-reading after this post. What was probably the best aspect of this day was though, was that, because I was so frazzled from the moment I woke up and onward, that my mind didn't have time to get crowded up with all the usual nonsense. I was goal-oriented, and much more present in the moment. People tend to react better to people who are less in-their-head, and I felt that today towards myself. I didn't much care to spend as much time trying to analyze the reactions/expressions of others, and instead just said what was on my mind. Oh, the beauty of indifference.

And So It Begins

Last Friday marked just 3 weeks left of the semester. Total.

It's now just a little over 2 weeks left, and it's crunch time. Out of my 3 classes tomorrow I have a midterm worth 15% and a presentation 20%. Monday there's a test-construction assignment due (only because I got a pity-extension - it would have been due tomorrow as well), next Thursday there's another group presentation, and Friday I have to lead 2 of my 3 classes, and a term paper worth 40% is due too. It doesn't slow down there - the following (and last) week: a semester-journal is due, and 4 finals- 3 of which are on the same day. Friday evening there will be drinking.

Today, besides filling in for an afternoon of computer-camp, I looked at C++ for the first time in 5 years. The C++ I learned back in Lethbridge seems so elementary compared to the hell I have been put through to Java (the 7th layer of Hell) and back. Might have to teach some of it to grade 9/10's come April/May. But that's for later posts....

Unpragmatic Disaster/Info-Porn

I don't know about anyone else, but I find it hard to watch shows that don't directly, or are unlikely to ever, affect me.

News that doesn't affect me, or TV shows that don't do me any good and aren't otherwise entertaining - in other words, they're pragmatically useless - turn me off. They're the equivalent of Disaster-Porn, Factoid-Porn. Watching destruction - either of nations, or of Charlie Sheen, or pretty much anything on the Discovery Channel filled with 'knowledge' I'm never going to use, is mental masturbation. I'm never going to go into screw manufacturing or need to learn hgow they make Bunsen Burners, nor do I have any use in watching epic CGI-created simulations of how the world MIGHT end, if -INSERT UNLIKELY NATURAL/HUMAN-CAUSED DISASTER HERE- happens on a global level.

Also, one would almost certainly be more healthy if they spent an hour outside walking, than if they watched Dr.Oz religiously.

Emergency Room

The power of suggestion is amazing. Or perhaps it's just good timing... either case, here's the story:

...I went to the dentist about 3.5 weeks ago - got my teeth cleaned. Now, they might seem unrelated, but because I had open heart surgery 26 years ago, I have scar tissue left over in my heart. Because bacteria can enter the blood stream during teeth cleaning, and the mouth connects directly to the heart, and heart scar tissue is easily infected by bacteria, I'm at risk of getting Subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE), so I've always supposed to have taken antibiotics when going to the dentist, though, hadn't the previous several visits over the years because of the low risk, even though SBE can be fatal.

SOO I went and got my teeth cleaned, a week later I got some fillings and a wisdom tooth pulled, and then immediately my mother FREAKS because I didn't take medication. She insists I let her know if I get any symptoms.

And here comes the power of suggestion: About a week later my chest starts to hurt. Last friday, my right arm starts to go numb, and spends about a day half-asleep. GREAT.

Last night my father takes me to the emergency room. note: apparently you get put to the front of the line and seen immediately if you tell them you're a former cardiac patient and are having chest pains. I got put on Oxygen and a couple of different heart monitors, had some blood work done and a couple of chest x-rays, not to mention the opportunity to wear one of those stylish and too-short hospital gowns. Why did I have to wear my purple underwear that day?!

The emergency ward is a terribly depressing place. I'd say the average patient age is about 84, and most of them aren't in a good mood. Mostly nurses, and some doctors, are swarming around - they're obviously over-worked, but what obviously makes their job much worse is the incessant needy complaining of their elderly patients. I couldn't see most of the patients around me thanks to the cloth walls, but the woman next to me was constantly calling over any nurse who happened to walk by to accuse her/him of keeping her there for longer than she'd like - on-purpose, and to ask for constant re-adjustments to her bed/pillows. She was nauseated, and diabetic and on morphine, but kept trying to get different nurses to bring her a glass of juice. The nurse who was in charge of her would always over-hear though and explain to her that she couldn't drink anything, especially juice at that time, but she just continued to try and over-mine this nurse by trying to trick others into doing her bidding. I'm not sure if it was the same patient, but the same nurse confronted a female patient later for muttering 'incompetent' at her as she walked by, and had to deal with another who was complaining about being left on her bed out in the hall - the ward was out of bed stalls.

Don't become a nurse.

All in all I was relieved when a doctor finally came (after about 2 hours at the hospital) and talked to me and let me know the pain/numbness I was experiencing wasn't anything to do with my heart or lungs - most likely from stress and lack of sleep. I wonder where those two things came from?

Sleeping and *this* don't go together

So I'm horribly late for this post, but still I'll have you all believe this was written at 11:59pm - just on time.

"Tonight" saw the candle burned late again. I was up finishing my 'Learning Support' paper until about 3 or 3:30am - um, tomorrow - but in the process, drank two Monster energy drinks - the last at around 12:30pm. Mistake.

Printed off my paper at about 3:45am, and was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Laid in bed wide awake. Joys. 4am turned into 5am, 5am turned into 6:30am. Fuck.

In the end, managed to scrape out about an hour to an-hour-and-a-half of sleep. Lesson learned: Caffeine never used to affect me this much, but since I've cut down on it substantially, it obviously affects me more now. Suppose, ultimately, that's a good thing.

Blind-Spots

It's funny how one can have a false model of the world, and live life perceiving aspects of their environment through said false model without any recognition of all the little pointers that might indicate, to someone who didn't have all the blind spots that said false model relies on, that that model isn't actually how things are.

Example: I used to think that everyone who worked for a business - even a retail business - cared about the livelihood and all the policies of said institution to-the-T. That perception got shattered when I was 15, when I was wandering into a mall shoe store with a friend, got asked by the (young - but older than me) female shoe-store-clerks, "How's it going?" - I replied with "We're just looking, thanks" - to which they retorted, with a laugh, "I just asked how you were doing, we don't give a rat's ass if you buy anything!" -- It shattered my perception. Until then, out of all my customer-service interactions, I had been so fixated on all the times/ways that the employees of any given store had been acting like company employees, and had a complete blindspot to all the ways in which or times when they were just acting like shmoes waiting for the end of their shitty shift to come.

If reality is so easily tainted by subjective perception, with so many blind-spots, it begs the question of how accurate anyone's perception of the world is. And more: If we base many more of our thoughts and actions on a seemingly very easily WRONG perception of the way things are, and come to conclusion after conclusion-based-on-conclusion from these thoughts and perceptions, then why not, if we don't like something about the way things are, can't we just happily assume we're WRONG, and decide things ARE the way we want them, since we were probably wrong in the first place? Or maybe the answer is not to think at all.

Where did you go, week?

More and more lately, especially this semester, with Wednesdays off, weeks have gotten shorter and shorter. Days blend from one to another, and weeks stream by like that colourful, psychedelic river-tunnel from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - frightening, but eerily calming at the same time.

This week was that - and more. Monday night I got sick after two long sitting-sessions with sick classmates, and took Wednesday and Thursday and first class on Friday off, leaving me with just 3 classes and a workshop this week, plus work (which I felt OK going to in the afternoons). The week both feels like it just started, but that it's also somehow the weekend, like two weekends existed without much in the middle - which, oddly enough, is pretty accurate.

It's hard to believe the semester is nearly at its end - my last final exam is in exactly 3 weeks, albeit with a frightening amount of projects, presentations, and assignments due in that time. The hard work is only then just to come: five-week practicum.

Sick Day

I don't often get sick enough to take time off work or school. In fact, I can count the number of days I took of in all of K - 12 because of illness easily on my fingers and toes. Today, count one more toe claimed.

Last night was the first all-nighter of the semester. After finishing my paper at around 8AM, I drove it to the house of a friend in my class to hand it in for me, drove home and went to bed. My real day didn't start until about 2:30PM.

Besides sleeping, I used the day to catch up on my Blender work and last night's episode of Survivor I missed because of the essay.

In other news, it's looking like work will take me to the big city across the pond for June, July, and August. Should be an interesting Summer.

Procrastination & Sickness

As for the title of this post, I'm suffering from the consequences of both.

Some nasty bug is going around that's knocking, or has knocked, me and almost everyone around me out of commission for several days. Achy, stuffy nose, tickles in the throat, and extra weight weighing down seemingly every limb. My cohort at school is definitely one germ-infested petri dish. On Monday I sat next to two people who were sick, and now, it seems, me and most of the people I also came into close proximity with that day are also feeling it. The funny part: many of us have independently been pestering our profs by email for extensions on due papers. I'm sure their inbox's have been filling up, and class attendance is undoubtedly dismal this week - not helped by me either.

No time to be sick, though. I had two papers due tomorrow, and only one I asked for an extension on, and as a result I'm going to be up late writing what's sure to be an 1800-word beauty. (-;

How TV Ruined Your Life

Stealing this from Jared on Facebook:

Actually, I saw this show available for download in Torrent-land a few days ago. I'm pretend-busy, so put it on my to-get-back-to list, and forgot about it. The show: BBC's How TV Ruined Your Life.

The host, Carlie Brooker, is laugh-out-loud funny. The show is wonderfully satirical of modern media, and what it has done to us, and our perception of the world around us. Definitely out-of-the-box, though simplified for a mass audience, this show, if it ever made it to North American Airwaves, would put up a real fight with the likes of the Colbert Report, and pretty much everything on the Discovery Channel. Thus far, there've been six episodes: How the TV has made us scared, made jokes of every stage of our lives, made us all aspire to wealth and fame, and messed up our love lives, dependence on technology, and even our own notion of knowledge.

In a decidedly British word: Brilliant.

Here's a clip:

Lay off the Public Speaker

Today I and many of my cohortee's and many others from the High-School PDPP went to a workshop where a speaker talked to us about teaching 'Career and Personal Planning 10' (CAPP 10), a course the government requires all high-school students to take in school, and a subject that often gets thrown onto first-year teachers, because, well, nobody else wants to teach it.

I didn't mind attending the workshop at all - it was in place of, though longer than, one of my courses, but I took it at face value when they said it would be good to attend because it looks good to prospective employers (principals) when you say you'd be happy to teach a block or two of CAPP in your first year, something many teachers aren't happy to do.

Unfortunately, though, a couple people from other cohorts acted belligerent part way through the workshop, unnecessarily questioning, interrupting, and giving the presenter a hard time, as if he was wasting their time.

I say: Fuck Off, PDPP students. It's one thing to disagree with a public speaker (who's only there for our benefit), but it's another thing to badger said public speaker when he's there on his own time. One student made some resentful remark about the terminology the speaker used about 'money' vs "currency", and another, a young woman, badgered the public speaker about the validity of him taking her precious time away from classes she was 'investing' in her education. I can't help but think that both of these future-teachers wouldn't take too kindly to their students, in the future, giving them lip or inturrupting their lectures with petty minutiae as they did him today. More to the point, as future teachers shouldn't we ought to be more considerate to the people giving their time and knowledge to us at the front of the class? I think so.

Worm.

Besides walking up the mountain with Jordan, today was dedicated to ongoing work on a blender project I'm working on, that I started about a month ago during a break between classes. The worm, yet unnamed, from Labyrinth:



About 20 hours has gone into this scene, much of which has been learning how to uses particle systems for hair, and compositing nodes to add depth-of-field to and adjust the colour and brightness/contrast of my renders. Next step: Rigging for animation.

Complaining and Resentment

The following is a section, titled 'Complaining and Resentment', from Eckhart Tolle's book: A New Earth. The more I read it, the more I think every person alive should read this book, too.

Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don't have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such and ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don't know what you are doing. Applying negative mental labels to people, either to their face or more commonly when you speak about them to others or even just think about them, is often part of this pattern. Name-calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego's need to be right and triumph over others: jerk, bastard, bitch - all definitive pronouncements that you can't argue with. On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness, you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that, physical violence.

Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people's greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing what they did in the past, what they said what they failed to do, what they should for shouldn't have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it in to their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the fault that you perceive in another isn't even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be theirs, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.

Non-reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can recognize someone's behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were. By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned. At times you may have to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. This you can do without making them into enemies. Your greatest protection, however, is being conscious. Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Non reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.

The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only abut other people but also about situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy. The implication is always: This should not be happening; I don't want to be here; I don't want to be doing this; I'm being treated unfairly. And the egos greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself.

Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn't necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter that your soup is cold and needs to be heated up if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. How dare you serve me cold soup... That's complaining. There is a me here that loves to feel personally offended by the cold soup and is going to make the most of it, a me that enjoys making someone wrong. The complaining we are talking about is in the service of the ego, not of change. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the ego doesn't really want change so that it can go on complaining.

See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern,a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but every time it is recognized, it is weakened.

Good Days and Bad Days

In this post I'm not going to go into the fact that whether or not a good day is 'good' or 'bad' is all in your head, but it is, rather, I'm merely going to reminisce now on the fact that some days just go good, and some don't.

Today was one of the good days - at work. Group of grade 3's - a different group of grade 3's than my Tuesday group (the group from hell) - but about the same number of kids: 15-16. Same class, same lesson plan, but today went so much better.

I'm constantly trying to do it, but it's very hard to notice and track down all the tiny variables that contribute to a class, as a teacher, going great, or falling apart. I was more on-the-ball today, tried something new out (letting kids know what I needed to cover at the start of class on the screen - which I do all the time during the summer. Why didn't I think of this until now - duh!), and was more charismatic, which let me focus more on teaching than class management - which works all-around much better: kids who would be listing are, instead of being distracted by kids who aren't or getting bored by the fact that the instructor isn't teaching, instead trying to get the 3-6 kids who are being noisy or not listing to, well, listen and behave. It's a vicious cycle.

So today was a good day - I wait to see whether or not I can carry this momentum forward.

Biking

Today I biked to school - University - for the first time this school year. Despite knowing it'll make me feel great, and it's faster than taking the bus, I could never bring myself to do it until today. Laziness.

So many benefits come from biking first thing in the morning it's ridiculous: More awake throughout the morning for class, calories burned, muscles worked, release of endorphins which make you happy and feel great, and -again- it's faster than taking the bus for me - about the same time as it takes to even walk to the bus stop to find out my local community bus is full.

Note, despite all these wonderful benefits, it's been hard getting myself to do it. Just goes to show how outdated, and strong, our conditioning is to *conserve energy*. Thanks, evolution.

Ugliest Car Ever.

So I've seen one of these cars drifting around town a few times in the last couple of months. Didn't know where it came from, or what car company makes it until yesterday. The car: The Nissan Cube, the ugliest car I've ever seen.


There's also a bit of an inside joke here for those of us who are graphics-savvy, or anyone who's used photoshop for more than a bit, too. Those of us proficient in Photoshop, and observed graphics newbies use photoshop, know how horrid it is when people for the first time discover Photoshop's 'layer Effects'. Specifically: Bevel & Emboss. I even had a university graphics prof once that loved using these and other photoshop effects at their default settings. Ugh. You'd hope, though, that designers who work for Billion-dollar car manufacturers would be more Photoshop-savvy, and more artistically inclined, than to fall into the trap of using these cliché effects at all. Unfortunately not. The Nissan Cube, at first glance, looks like it was conceptualized by an 8 year old during their first exposure to Photoshop - and I would know. It looks like the most basic car shape, with oddly-rounded windows cut out, and then almost the default Bevel & Emboss Effect applied to it.

Here:

Irate Parents

I hate conflict. When it happens - when someone exerts themselves on me, with arms swinging (metaphorically or not) - I'm very bad at keeping my cool and dealing with it in a rational and tactful way. From early adolescence I - strongly - haven't liked being backed into a corner, likely, at that age, when I was bullied. Luckily that doesn't happen so often as an adult, but it still happens - conflict. And I'm poor at dealing with it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to be a teacher, and as I already work in education, I have to deal with parents - some of which will inevitably come at me - verbally - with great hostility. And precisely that happened today.

Long story short, when someone is acting irately towards me, I just sort of freeze up, and all those witty comebacks that I can think of 15 minutes later don't come out, and that smarmy presence of self-justification I should have just evaporates. Today, all I could do was come back at this irate mother with ill-thought-out words, and a strange smirk, both of which didn't over over well when she was talking to my boss later on the phone.


I'm going to have to work on this.


Maybe I should start a few fights (-;