That’s Right, a New Laptop.

June 18th, 2010 Thomasso

I am happily typing on my brand new laptop that I just bought today. Since the death of my old laptop three weeks ago, life has been rough trying to cope without one. I have really adapted myself to using my notebook when attending lectures and other events where I need to take huge amounts of notes. I find that I can type faster than I can by pitting pen to paper, the old school method. So this is the test run with the new machine.

A note on driving in Langley City. I have to applaud the RCMP for their enormous effort when they did the police state traffic blitz last week. That was great. That was a rare time to have everyone driving the proper speed, driving defensively, and not having to worry about being cut-off. I was beautiful! I really think that if this is what it takes to get people to drive safely, then I have no problems with the police state deal in Langley. I like it when I see speeders, tailgaters and red-light-runners get nailed!

Summer, could it finally be here? Doesn’t it start officially Monday?

Human rights: in my fourth year class this term, we are studying the topic of human rights from many different perspectives. My group presentation will be in three weeks, and out topic will be international criminal courts and law. When I first started looking at the option that I have for information on this topic, I thought that I would be struggling to find information and sources, but as it turns out, there is no shortage if texts on the topic. Heck, just in terms of current events from the news there is so much going on around the world that I can hardly keep up with it all. Right now we are focusing on the Gaza Blockade by Israel, and the G20 summit in Toronto. I am finding tones of stuff to write about. I think we will have a fun presentation. I’m looking forward to.

Next week’s class we will be having a mock court, and we will be arguing about a heated debate  on whether women should have to wear the veil/scarf aka Hijab. I will be playing the roll as one of the Crown prosecutors, of which I must come up with an argument to that will hold up against the Chart of Rights and Freedoms (1982) in Canada and state why women who choose to cover their heads should not be allowed in certain circumstance under Canadian jurisdiction. I think I got my work cut out for me.

My business Communications and technical writing class: My last class was dedicated to the topic of BS, or Bull Shit, from which we explored several ways that people can lie, spin or not tell the truth. The humour was gone when we got into the nitty-gritty aspects of how much of it there is in the world today. Oddly enough politics was not the worst bunch, but businesses and marketers took the top spot! I know, it was a shock for me too!

Well the lap top seems to have passed the first test. I can connect through wi-fi on campus, type out a doc, and upload it to the blog. I think we are all good here now. Talk to you later, gater.

Posted in Criminal Law, Criminology, Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, University classes | Comments Off

The Final Term – It is Cast in Stone Now

June 2nd, 2010 Thomasso

It is a weird feeling to know that this will be my last term, as an undergraduate, to go through the routine of signing up and scheduling for regular classes. I have developed a habit of always checking the registration website for classes. I think I will miss that? Actually, I will miss a lot of the routines I have developed over the last five years while going to classes.

I was kind of hoping for a better selection, but with just one elective and my mandatory language requirement, French, left to do, I found I will have my biggest hurdle to jump over yet. The only second level French class offered for next semester is a double split class, meaning two classes per week at two hours a piece, and it is in held Richmond – a one hour commute for me. I wanted to take my final Computer Science class to fulfil my Minor, but the French classes conflict with the timetable, so sadly, I opted for a Political Science class instead to complete my elective requirements.

I guess I do not care any more, other than completing my undergraduate, so whatever is available for courses to complete it with, works for me. I am tired and anxious to get it done and over with. This has being a long journey for me, and a very expensive one too. Including textbooks, roughly $25,000.00 and counting. $17,000.00 in fees and administrative costs, and these are the bare bone numbers, so you can see that see the University gig is very expensive. Now imagine what a student loan would have cost–on top of all this!

There are still more that I want to do with my degree. I would love to complete my honours. This would mean three more courses, a fifth year, and a mini dissertation that would take about twenty five weeks to do. That would be nice. But for now, I am focusing on the main goal, graduating with the BA.

So I have a few more bumps along the road to my goal to drive over yet. I hope I get through the Richmond commute next term. I hate driving to  Richmond!

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, Events, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

I am Back to Normal – SNAFU

May 26th, 2010 Thomasso

I’m a little under the weather right now. I must have being dragging along some sort of flu for the last couple of day that just hangs around and drags me down to about ten percent and never lets go. Yuck! I had it since last Thursday, but it got really bad on Saturday. I missed the Fort Langley parade because of it. I still have the lingering effects of it in nose and throat. May flues suck, but so do any summer flu.

I have being told that this is probably why I got so under the weather, because of all the four hour sleeps and long hours of reading for some research papers coming up.  I knew this would happen-as it does every term; they call it sleep deprivation, like a form of self torture one inflicts, and you crawl forward with a goal of seeking higher enlightenment, but sooner or later it will catch up to you, but the goal is so tempting so you run yourself down getting there.

Another sign of bad news came in the form of a malfunctioning lap top.  My HP notebook died on me while I was taking notes in class last night. I left it running while we took our break, and when I came back to class and powered it up, the screen went black after about four seconds into the start up. Now, it just does the same thing: starts up, then freezes. I guess I have something to do next weekend now. Fortunately I did not have any critical information on it from my classes. I will miss typing out my notes from the lectures though. I find typing way more convenient than hand written notes.

So, lack of sleep, a dead lap top, lots of readings: I think things are back to normal now.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

Work’n Hard – Just an Update

May 5th, 2010 Thomasso

The Official Announcement: Yes, I’m at work, but I’m on my break – honest.

Now for the post:

If you are sensing a little “ick” in my writing in this post, it is because I am typing it on a Microsoft Window$ Machine, believe it or not, with XP as its OS. I know, why? But most businesses I know are still running this garbage. What can you do, it is their call.

I think everyone is eager to know how I did on my French exam-right? Well, I passed the course, barely, and albeit with an academic pass, I somehow managed to do this on my final. So I did something right. I thought with such a dismal effort on my last mid-term that doom was to be the only outcome I would see on my transcript. This means that I must have gotten somewhere around 70 to 80 percent on that exam. Seriously, this is huge if that happened. We never get to see the exact mark for our finals, and we never know the exact percentage when we finish the course, just a letter grade and GPA. So you can only guess. Perhaps I should email the prof and just check if this wasn’t a mistake?

As for Statistics – Well, my favorite letter was given for that course: an “A.” This is also a pleasant surprise because that should be the course from hell, not French.

A Note to My Mother: Mom, the disk, instructions, and the Monitor are in the mail and are on their way. I know you will probably not be reading this until your computer is sorted out, but I will try and make contact with you over the rest of the week to see what I can do until you are back on-line. Hang in there!

DianeOUtLoud: I will email you very soon for upgrade instructions. Next week I’m back in classes, so we will need to book this soon.

OK, I’m leaving the desk-enclosure and going home.

Posted in Bitching about work, General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, Linux | 6 Comments »

The Unexpected Result

April 27th, 2010 Thomasso

It is weird, I have to say. One one hand the course that I should have just squeaked by and passed, I earned a very high mark in, an “A,” while the other course, the one that I slaved my ass off, I may not get me an academic pass to get the credit with. I only have the one mark so far, but I am anticipating to have all my marks in by tomorrow. The mark I do have, from my statistics class, I even surprised myself with it. It is to my understanding that getting an A of any level is a very tough achievement to say the least for Stats.What happened?

I’ve talked to a few of my friends in the Stats class, and they all didn’t do as well, but they all did pass, which is the general goal of this course. So, with so many before me who did not pass, or get the grade that they were hoping for, this leaves me thinking to myself that I must either be a “keener” in mathematics, and piss-poor in languages, or this could be one of those anomalies that statisticians call an “outlier.”

If I could tell you the horror stories that I have heard about Stats. I was even thinking at one point about avoiding the whole stats thing, and trying something different. Good thing I didn’t listen to my friends, eh? I’ll know more very soon when my exams are finished being marked.

Well, I’m already preparing for the next term! Summer School!

Posted in Criminology, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

The Official End of Spring 2010 – Finals Start.

April 19th, 2010 Thomasso

What a day. I am very happy that it is over. All that is left are the finals, but I think those are going to be easer to deal with than all of the events that led up to today.

Describing today is so difficult becuase I am still processing it. I think the best way to start would be to describe the sky, the sun and how warm it was. Today was a day that was hard for anyone to want to stay inside if one had a choice. The sun over the campus was a brilliant bronze colour by 4:00pm. There were very high clouds, but they were evenly spread out across the sky making it look like a very fine silk shroud covering the entire horizon. The sun did shine with its brilliance though, but the colour made the walls of courtyard look like they were made of amber and silver. The water in the turtle pond looked a deep blue, as if it were bottomless, and the water fountain made pearls as the foam slowly dissipated away from it.

On the grassy knoll students bathed in the warmth of the sun, holding their book over their faces as they tried to get some last minute studying done. At the foot of the knoll every picnic table was taken up with students chatting away like birds, and across the courtyard more students walked, ran, and mingled in every direction from one building to another. There was a noticeable difference in how students moved in the courtyard today; everyone was moving faster, straighter, and spent little time with their groups as they moved.

Time stood still as people just moved from one point to another. There was no pattern, just people everywhere, walking about.

The giant doors to the library looked like mirrors as the glass doors moved a beam of light that reflected from the sun and it would shift across the courtyard like lightening.  People looked like they would appear, invisible one moment, then appear the next, as they walked through the giant glass doors out into the courtyard. When I walked through those doors, I was transformed into another world, a mechanical world where instantly the cool conditioned air met my nostrils and the light seemed to be dim as compared to the outside. Now I was inside a glass box. The skylights made everything look blue and gold, and human figures dotted every level, stair column and chair.

A beautiful female figure approached me, calling out my name. As she drew nearer, I could see in her hand a small plastic and metal stick. She smiled as she spoke, ” Tom, we have a problem, the paper is not finished yet, there are some problems with it, you need to look at your part again.” She places the USB stick in my hand and leads me over to a working workstation. I sigh. Only sixty-four minutes to go before the deadline is due. My group greets me. I am briefed and caught up to speed. The feeling of panic hits me. Now I wish I could stop time altogether.

Posted in Events, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

Monolingualism Can Be Cured

April 1st, 2010 Thomasso

This was a caption that I read when I was doing some French homework. This was a recommended link that my prof posted so that we could use in order to help us further in our up coming finals. The “Monolingualism Can Be Cured,” banner just made me laugh when I saw it. I suffer from a strong sense of ignorance that perpetuates my  monolingualism. I am now convinced that fifty percent of my problem is fear and laziness when learning the French language. Having grown up with nearly all of my life speaking only English, I realize now that I have missed on some golden opportunity becuase of this. Sure, the world seems to revolve around English, but that is only in my mind – the English speaking me. Speaking French is like looking through the world with a whole new lens – the view is so much different and beautiful.

Here are a list of excuses I have compiled:

Excuse #1: I look down on our current provincial government for treating out schools like game pieces on a monopoly game board. Shame on you BC Liberals. This happened to me in the mid 1980′s during my days in high school when the then Social Credit (right wing) were in control. Having gone out of a brutal recession in the early 80′s, times were tough, and the answer was electing a government that would cut taxes -  and boy did they ever. The residual effects are felt today – i.e., Tom having to learn French in 2010, becuase French was cut in high school back then.

Excuse #2: Age. Everyone knows that once pass that ripe age of four to eight years old, your brain is fully imprinted with the language you are bought up with.

Excuse #3: The only way I can truly learn French is to marry a French woman, move to France, and move in with her family.

Excuse #4: All of my francophone friends will not take the time to help with French becuase they don’t want to speak French – they prefer English. For a while I really believed this when I asked them for help. But of course, this has more to do with lack of time, not a preference to their second language. There is the posiblity that they hate me becuase of my monolingualism, or they just plane hate me?

I think I have covered all of my excuses?

It is not over for me yet in French class. I still have the verbal assignment (responding to questions in French and answering back, in French) and the grand final exam, still a total of 40 percent of the term to do yet.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, University classes | Comments Off

Another Big Day – Ready, Set…, Oh Wait?

March 14th, 2010 Thomasso

Oh wait, I think I might have piled too much on, and I can  feel my head ready to explode with all the things I have/need to do. Having the time sit and blog is a big problem too. I’m only typing this becuase I was actually about to do something else when I clicked on my browser and may web page popped from a previous session I forgot to close. Now that I’m here, I thought, I might as well through something in-so here we are.

Two TV shows that have riveted me to the monitor: Lost, and Caprica. Lost, for its obvious reasons, I have followed all five seasons, and love the plot with all its weird and twisted concepts. Caprica, well, this is the prequel to Battle Star Galactic, and at first I though, “what a dumb idea,” but as it turns out, I think the series is very good. I watch them on-line becuase I do not have time to park myself in front of the TV, so I watch them I’m between classes.

“Spring ahead,” really sucks. It is bad enough that my sleep is all messed up, now I have to deal with the loss of an hour. I hate this “savings time” crap. I’m sorry, but I need every second of time I can get, and the only place that I can take time from in my day to day routine is from my sleep time. Moving to Saskatchewan may have a benefit as it is one of the few areas in North America that does not do this time switch twice a year. We invented window blinds so we can simulate night-time inside our homes, so why do you care if the sun is up at 5:00am? Even when we lose this hour, for most of us, the sun is up before we are anyway–what is the difference? If I were a Vampire, well then moving to Antarctica would be my only solution, and I would have to fly by night too, so day light savings time would not work for me anyway either. Stupid.

Tomorrow is also registration day down at admissions. This will be the second to the last time that I will grace the halls of admissions. Hard to believe that classes will come to an end, and I will have to venture into the big world in search of a job with my piece of paper with the gold sticker on it. Of course finding a job will not be the problem, but rather, choosing where to go will be my dilemma. I have so many options, directions and places with my pool of knowledge, that sitting down to choose will be the challenge. Already one of my best friends from on campus will be leaving, graduating, in May, and she’ll be taking with her the B.A. But she has found her calling, and I am so happy for her. I will miss our time together–all the joking around and study labs together. There are about thirty in our little world, and when you spent so such time under pressure with these people, the sadness of leaving, and splitting up to move on, can be hard. Even the “hard-ass” Criminologists feels emotional too. But we went there for a purpose, so time to move on!

So I will be sad and happy. Sad that my friends are going on, and happy that we all made through the forty to fifty courses, and 300 or so exams and papers, and survived with most of our fur on us. For me, it will be forty-five courses, and a defence hearing for the honers dissertation. Then the choice of Masters, and Doctorate? What path should I take… gulp.

OK, must go. Time to cram for the French exam tomorrow. Yes, more French. Thank goodness there are only four more weeks to go of this.

Posted in Criminology, Events, General, Homework and deadlines | Comments Off

Once Again I am Happy it is the Weekend

February 12th, 2010 Thomasso

I am tired and sore from all the classroom time I have logged in the past week. On top of work, reading over 300 pages of high intents text about statistics is enough to drive anyone into a state of craziness. Between all of my classes I have to deal with work too as we have taken on new contracts that are extremely demanding. But my classes are my biggest chunk of the daily pie chart of time, and the search for sleep is getting out of hand as that part of the pie chart is getting nibbled away. Yes, I complain about this a lot—I know that. What can I say, I’m a whiner when I’m tired.

Statistics is a really weird subject because all most everyone in the class is suffering from denial, or they shutter like it was the new AIDS epidemic, or they complain about it like they are about to be tortured by the rack when they have to show up to class. The language of statistics too is really wired because you are using common words in the most unique way. For example, “mean” is something like average, or “regression” is really predicting the future. The formulas are really algebra on steroids. And worse yet, there are multiple version of the same standard used by the various profs who teach it, just ask about the “X-bar.”

I found myself daydreaming at work too from lack of sleep. It was the weirdest sensation as I was reading my email, and found myself drifting off thinking about taking a trip over to Europe. I snapped out of it when I thought I could taste the salty air off the coast of Italy. Then I starting surfing the net looking for cheap flights right after that. That was bad I tell you—never go on a holiday searching spree surfing the net while at work. Surfing the web while at work is not good if you are back logged with numerous tasks. Though I did find some sweat deals. But I need sleep, and a better schedule to maintain my mental health with.

I got another job offer in the mail today. Last September I attended a trades-fair at the University, and I have being getting a steady stream of replies ever since. This company is located in New York State and seems really eager to take on graduates from anywhere around the world in the field of Criminology, though not in Forensics, but in Psychology which is right up my alley. I think I would have an issue with leaving Canadian soil though, but there was a listing from a European company too that looked very interesting. The European one was looking for researchers/crime experts… gulp…, more Stats, but hey it’s closer to Italy than Vancouver is. I really don’t think finding work is going to be a problem when I graduate.

Well, another Friday night is upon us, so I’m going to read for a few hours then call it a day. I need to get up fairly early tomorrow to do some on-line work with one of my classes—those pesky lab assignments for French. Then later on I have a video-conference with my classmates on Chicago—topic, International Crime between Canada and the USA, which will probably be dominated by the “War On Drugs” that everyone is talking about here in British Columbia.

Posted in Bitching about work, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off

Living in the Null Hypothesis World

January 23rd, 2010 Thomasso

It is 8:23am on a sunny Saturday morning here on campus in Surrey, (BC – not go get mixed up with my British friends who live in the original city of Surrey) and the birds are up, and probably there is a Bee buzzing around somewhere too as you would think it is April or May around here. I am here because I have no choice. If I want to pass my exam coming up this Wednesday in my Statistics class, I have to be here. It boils down to software and textbooks, or the lack there of.

Here is my rant:

There is a big battle among many institutions and their students and faculty members on what is, or should be, the accepted tool/product for statics. Right now in my class it is SPSS, which is a wonderful tool for spitting out any statistical information you need from your hard earned data, but it is not cheap, and as I found out, it is not the only game in town. To buy the licences for SPSS, with all of its modules and updates, it is a whopping $800.00 to get it working for one year. On the other side of the coin, there is “R,” which does exactly the same thing, and many have argued that it is less buggy that SPSS. R, is free under the GNU/ Open Source agreement, so there is no real intensive for the creators to push their ware, other than the textbooks. SPSS textbooks are about the same price as the ones for R, but SPSS seems to go through more revision than R, so their textbook list are always updating. I can hear the cash registrar ringing louder and louder as I type this out.

I am very familiar with R as I have worked with it for several years now. SPSS is a challenge because it is very different to use and operate, and its look and feel is like ridding a Volkswagen with no shocks when compared to R, the Ferrari, as I see it. Part of the problem is Micro$oft, since 80 percent of the computers on campus have it installed, there is a natural tendency for the Window$ salesmen to push the statistical Micro$oft product along with it. And when you are limited to running homogeneous software for that O.S., you will get the hook, line, and sinker with an $800.00 gorilla attached to it.

In the free world, the standard is set higher with R as I see more and more people running it for their research needs. R seems to be, in my world, the standard. But I am puzzled why I read that places like MIT, in the U.S., R is the software to use in research, while in my humble little University, SPSS is the benchmark. Oddly enough from the two comparisons I did, R and SPSS give you are same answers, and you still have to use a third-party software because each still has a lousy graph creation tools. The problem is that data sets are non compatible between R and SPSS.

I am on campus because I cannot run SPSS at home because I do not have the $800.00 to use it. Sure there are lots of illegal copies of SPSS floating around, but I am past that stage in my life. I have R, but it is totally useless to my prof if she can’t open my data up to mark it. I am also behind because I could not initially afford all of the textbooks at the beginning of the semester. For the first half of January I managed to live on $82.55 because the rest of my budget went to getting 3/4 of the needed textbooks. On my last pay day, on week three of the semester,  I finally got the last textbook, the SPSS book at a cost of $170.00. Now you know why I am so behind on my studying—it is very tough to do without textbooks when you can’t study for the assignments and exams.

I’m not going to use the world scam here because I know University is really only for those who can afford it. I do have the option of dropping the course and waiting for another instructor who would hopefully use another piece of software, with cheaper textbooks, but we are not getting any younger here—right. But I can make one guarantee, I will not be using SPSS in the real world, it is R for me all the way baby!

Posted in Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | Comments Off