Dave Kellam

I have an exam in four hours. Do I want to write it? Not particularly. Is it because I’ll do horribly? Hell no. I just feel like I waste at least a month or two of my life every year preparing for exams. They won’t benefit me at all in this ‘real-world’ they like to talk about all the time. I don’t envision a work world with my employer putting me into a hall with a hundred other people and telling me that I have to develop a product or something in three hours or else they’ll fire me/reduce my salary. That’s right. Projects and assignments, those are alright… I’m down. They’re practical. I don’t learn shit from cramming all of this knowledge in at the last second just to regurgitate it moments later. And a few hours after that, I’ll end up in a bar, working on brainwashing myself and making room inside my head for more temporary information. It’s not that I’m setting about changing the system, but it seems like the only reason for keeping the old one around is to separate the people who actually do work from the people who drift by on the shoulders of others. They’re going to exist regardless. The administration preaches about modern technology and innovative solutions, yet still clings to old world ideas that ‘work’ because, well because they’ve worked in the past. Go team.

There are other things I’d rather be doing.

I picked up a bit of a cold the other day, just the common cold, none of the SARS. People are going apeshit these days, it’s kind of ridiculous, the odds on you dying from it are pretty slim compared to a lot of other things. I guess it’s the whole epidemic thing. I just pump myself full of nasal decongestants and try to carry on with my studying. The point, well the point is this picture that i found at CNN (link). Yes, it’s a Kerropi breathing mask, just when you thought Hello Kitty had everything.

Alright, two exams down, three left to go. I had some Digital Systems and some Operating Systems to do. I think they went alright, considering i sporadically went to class the last month and had to teach the courses to myself. I find it a bit easier at the end, when you cram it all together and get a solid view of the big picture. Although, that shit doesn’t pan out sometimes and you’re left just staring at the exam and the fine wood grain surface of the desk.

I was briefly concerned that the sport of wife-carrying was restrictive in the sense that you needed to have a wife. Although, I guess it’s just some sort of figurative thing, like ‘Tennis’. I was also worried about the polygamists, carrying three wives would be much harder than carrying one.

Well, someone writing fortune cookies has a sense of humour. I just finished eating my chinese take-out and pulled this fortune out of the cookie:

You may be hungry soon: order a takeout now.

It must have been a slow day at work. I have to admit it’s one of the better fortunes I’ve seen though.

War on Iraq is one thing, it was a nice grey area, Cuba’s is different though. Cuba enjoys good relations with many countries outside the United States, including Canada. About the only real comparisons left for the tropical island are North Korea and maybe China, but I’d rank them higher up on the priority list in terms of weapons of mass destruction and brutality against their own citizens.

 

“I think what is happening in Iraq is going to send a very positive signal, and it is a very good example for Cuba, where we saw that last week the Fidel Castro regime ordered the arrest of more than 80 citizens … simply for their ideas,” Mr. Hertell told local reporters.

I’m curious to know how many Americans were arrested last week… just for their ideas. I’m not pointing fingers, everything is relative, right?

This site’s been shit for the last year or so, it’s been a pretty weak display. I got sick of the temporary design that I put up months ago and meant to change. Hell, I’m not even designing anymore, I barely open photoshop. So, here’s a nice texty layout that suits me for right now. I’m looking to overhaul this shit in the near future, I need to get back into the design game. I’ll get all my old work back up, I’ll get all the stuff I’ve written up, and a new photo archive too because the current one’s broken. And I’ll start Conform up again. The game man. I haven’t talked to people in years but they seem to be appearing to me again.

And what better time to start doing all this shit? The start of exams. If I fuck them up and fail a bunch, is it because of the website? Nah, it’ll be due to my lacklustre performance and not trying all that hard. On the plus side, I added a links thing on the side. Just one offs, that should get me updating a bit more.

Well, I’ve had a couple days to come down from the end of the school year. The downside is the complete lack of studying that has been done. Namely zero. I’ve printed off some old exams and starred at my books a little bit, but that doesn’t seem to be helping much. I came home for a couple days, it was my brother’s birthday yesterday. I have a tendency to get even less done here though.

I went by blockbuster this afternoon to grab a gift-certificate for my brother, it’s the old standby. I also picked up a previously viewed copy of Minority Report. I don’t see anything wrong with previously viewed dvds, it’s not like the quality degrades; scratches maybe. I also went by the dentist today, no cavities but I’ll be damned if that fucker didn’t make my gums hurt like a bastard afterwards.

Somethings to look at: understanding the psychology of programmers a must read for any future employer, kidwithcamera goes to shows, dealership is a band with some mp3s you can download.

It’s always fun when you have big projects that just don’t seem to work. We got an extension for our user interfaces assignment, which was basically making a user input device with a webcam tracking a pencil to move the pointer. It’s essentially getting a whole assload of components trying to work together in Visual C++. We finally got it compiling and running but we’re having some troubling adding the code that actually converts the camera tracking into mouse movements. We know where the pointer is, but it only seems to be returning null data and crashing the program. Bah, too much starring at code. And then the operating systems assignment that’s due at 1130. That’s done roughly now though. I think i need sleep.