Another Update

October 4th, 2010 Thomasso

Classes are going well. Well, in the sense that I think everything is going well. Someone from the outside may not agree with me, but being that I know myself better than anyone else in the universe, I say I am doing pretty damn well.

I did not pass my first French midterm. Yes, I only received 48/100 on it. However, this is a great achievement for me because this surpassed my expectation. This chapter that we just covered was very difficult, and even for the most proficient French speaker, this chapter on grammar was a doozie as it covered verb conjugation and past participles for both perfect and imperfect verb modifications. Heck, even for native English people, this is a huge challenge in the English language.

My achilles heel was not being able to follow the instructions on the exam. As I am very poor in French, my first challenge on the exam was deciphering the instructions, literally. I probably spent more time on that than actually writing in answers. Because the exam is in pure French, meaning that all of the content was in French, no English whatsoever, the roadblock that this presented for me was huge. One little word would obviously change the whole meaning a sentence and throw it off if I misinterpreted it; so indeed I was blind when entering my answers in the blank spaces in each line.

My work to school ratio is starting to come unbalanced again. The need for me to be in the office/warehouse is growing as the family members of the business cannot be there themselves to maintain some the spontaneous situations that seem to be popping up with more frequency. My co-workers are asking me to stay far later to facilitate their needs while my needs of commuting to the Richmond campus takes a greater share of my time overall. Just the tugging back and forth between work and school is wearing me down, but my first commitment is to finishing my classes—all else is secondary.

My learning curve on Twitter is growing. I finally figured out some more functions and explanations of how more things work in it. To the naysayers of Twitter, I have already found it to be a great source of up to the second news and current events. I have to admit that I do find Twitter appealing. Maybe I am taking this social networking thing to seriously?

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, University classes | 2 Comments »

A Gaggel of Girls

October 1st, 2010 Thomasso

Many people go to university for many different reasons, but primarily the common denominator is that a benefit is gained when you leave. But what happens if your intent is not always fundamentally obtainable and you leave without the net benefit of your intended gain? Well, that is where I picked up the pen, or in this case, hit the keyboard to tell you my tale of a day (last night) in one of my classes at Richmond campus at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

There is an entrenched belief among my peers that it is the boys who are guilty of attending University for finding that perfect woman instead of applying their full attention on the blackboard (or whiteboard in my case). This is a stereotype. Hearing a group of young women talk about their peers totally tilted the scales away from the stereotype of boys being “pigs,” as the girls proclaimed some very profound statements of their own.  According to these women, they are just as equally, if not more guilty of having a dual motive for attending classes at the university than the boys are.

Networking

Perhaps the most advantageous statement made in class from the girls were the vast networks of communications, and the speed and breath of which news travels through it. As one of the women put it, “texting has not made the spread of gossip go (grow) faster, it only has made a permanent record of it,” as she was referring to a statement about the rash of criminal events/Facebook on the news in the last few week.

The power of Facebook has enhanced the ability of the social community to advance more information in a shorter period of time, but with more “clout.”  There is a “code” that is obvious, even the boys can figure it out, “but you do have to be wired for it” to fully understand it, one woman said. “If the boys could fully understand the power of emotion and (female) logic (of the text), then they would see the complexities that surround each thought, and deciphering its full meaning would either cause chaos, or make him the most desirable man on campus.”

Just friends

Keeping things above board and preventing the risk of unwanted compilations such as awkward moments of miss-communication, i.e., getting the signals crossed, is a constant, and is the most common risks cited by the group. There is a method to all of this madness, and of course, it follows the rigid guise of a hidden social cast system where “looks, fashion, body type, economic strata and intellectual ranking are all determinants,” as one women said. However, issues such as “body language, bad wording (texting),” are just a couple of the ongoing problems that “women face on a minute to minute bases.”

“How men interpret all of this is the core problem,” another woman said.

Code of Conduct

There is a code, but it is inconstant among all members of this group. It is very hard to pin down the details because of the disagreement in the list of points as some of the members viewed the justification of “why we are all attending university” in the first place kept coming up. I was awestruck that all of the women could agree without actually agreeing on the specific points.

Education vrs Relationships

The tug-of-war between “finding that hot guy [or girl],” versus “attending classes and building the career,” is a power play among all students, male or female. However, it is all in the interpretation of what you see, hear and do. Your actions speak louder than words, so it no wonder why men and women who dress provocatively, act outrageously, and react to issues, undergo extreme scrutiny among their peers.

According to the claims made by the women, they feel that they have more social and self directed pressure put on them than the men do.

Closing

It is unwise to plan a full course load at university for the purposes of finding your dream mate. Although university yields a higher quality and standard of people to propagate with, most, or a high percentage, are there for their betterment of obtaining a higher education towards their dream careers. I’m sure, however, if the opportunity did present itself, if a good partner was found (by accident/coincidence of course) that a good wholehearted relationship would be formed.

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Update on Life

September 29th, 2010 Thomasso

I am doing one handed typing right now becuase I hurt my hand yesterday while accidentally hitting a stairway banister. Apparently I cannot walk, think about French midterms and climb a set of stairs, all at the same time.

I got through the French exam, and I used just about all the time I was allotted for. How well I did will remain to be seen. I will find out tomorrow when I have my next class how well I really did. I feel I did somewhat OK, meaning that I think a passed it, but it will be very close. I did leave some sections blank as I had no idea what to do. It is funny becuase all the instructions are in French too, so if you have poor French skills to begin with, then you might as well prepare for the worse. I think the people who came up with this curriculum thought that it would be better to have everything in French, and that way you would be forced into dealing with it. This does not really work that good for a monolingual person like myself.

Before the exam I gave myself lots of time before class to ponder life, the existence of Thomasso, and answer the “Why.” It was at that moment that I decided to take some photos of the front half of the Richmond campus. Although I took lots, 60 to be exact, this was in my opinion the best one.

The steps, which I would also have trouble walking up, are very interesting becuase of the lamp-standards on each side of them. The architecture is very interesting in the way the cement blocks are arranged along the steps. Also, at the top of the steps, are the plant-beds that remind of my World Ware II pill boxes, but modestly created. Although Richmond campus does not have a large courtyard like the Surrey one does,  they did do a good job on creating a nice open area just before the main entrance.

My next photo-op will be the third floor. That is cool, but too many people hang out there so getting good shots is going to be a challenge.

Well, hand hurts, and must get my sleep. End of transmission.

Posted in General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, Photographs, University classes | 2 Comments »

Test Stress-Case

September 27th, 2010 Thomasso

This is just going to be a little post because I really need to get to bed super early and prepare myself for the coming day ahead.

Tomorrow I have a huge French midterm. Right now, I am freaking out as I am trying cram as many of the verb combination into my head as possible. And although this is a “part 2” of a beginner’s course, sort of an introductory course about French, it feels like a Calculus exam to me. I actually found Calculus to be much more friendlier than French is today—but that is my opinion. I passed Calculus!

Perhaps I am just making myself more scared than I should be? After all, this is just a midterm and I will have two more attempts at it throughout the rest of the term.

But, I know the odds of a good mark in this class as well as I know myself and my limits. I am a late comer to the whole “learn a second language” thing, and it is much harder learning this language then had it been if I were still in high school.

Awh, yes, high school. What happened in high school?

I have gotten back very little information from the records about my performance during my high school time. Nothing really informative that I got from them, as I went through the archives at the education centre. They really could not tell me what happened back then. I know I passed the Math. My English was good, but French? It is a mystery.

My parents are not much help either as they seem to have no recollection about those dark days back in the eighties. I know for my mother, school was just the “State run Babysitter” that our hard earned tax money went towards. She jokingly told me once that all that mattered was that I show up and not skip.

I remembered our principal, who we jokingly called Ralph Ferly from the character on the television show “Three’s Company,” was such an a-hole. He once tried to stop me and some other students from entering the school grounds once because we no longer lived with our parents. I was eighteen and just moved out on my own, and when he got wind of this news, he tried to have me (and others) removed from the school because we had to be registered with our parents, and under their care, at the time we were going to classes. I recalled that School District 88 did have a Court Challenge from one of the rich families in Terrace, and all of a sudden we were let back in. I owe that family a debt of gratitude.

However, somehow, French got lost in all the commotion. So here I am, twenty years later, paying the consequences of that time so long ago.

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Richmond Campus

September 21st, 2010 Thomasso

OK, I am going to do a naughty (when I should be sleeping) and stay up a little extra because I need to write a post. I figure I need to type a little bit about my daily commute, especially the one from Fort Langley to Richmond I do every Tuesday and Thursday until the end of the semester at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I am starting to have good feeling about going to the Richmond campus all of a sudden. I do not know why at this point in time, but for whatever reason this place is not that bad.

I am not sure if it is because the last two commutes had being very expectational and I now have some extra time to kill by catching up on my pile of readings, or if it is just the people who attend the campus, but the Richmond campus was really a nice place to be. Today I took some time to smell the roses, so to speak, and did some exploring.

The campus is smaller than the Langley and Surrey locations, and it seems to have lots of parking for the motoring public, which is a huge bonus for us drivers. Even more weird, Richmond has underground parking! Ya!

The classrooms are noticeably smaller in the physical scenes. In the hallways, it is possible for a human who is over six feet tall to touch each wall, and the desk in the classroom that I sit in is only 42cm wide. Not much room, but it is cozy.

When it is nice and sunny out, Richmond is a very nice place to be. You are so far away from the mountains that you would almost think you were in another province because of the flat prairie like surrounding.

YVR is next-door. If you love watching jets landing, well, the Richmond Campus is the place to be for you. You can sit on the steps at the North end of the building complex and watch the huge aircraft coming in for their final approaches. It is quite cool to watch. Very weird how low they are when come in over the city. And they build fifteen story buildings here?

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Headaches From Reading

September 18th, 2010 Thomasso

OK, before you think I need better, stronger reading prescriptions, no, this is just from too much reading altogether. My headaches started when I decided that I was going to complete all of my French home in one sitting. Boy, was I wrong. On top of that, I received seven emails from friends asking me if I wanted to go out with them for some fun. That just added to the headaches.

I stayed and focused on homework, which I never made it through. Instead, I am about half way, which puts a kink into my plans on just studying for the midterm on Tuesday, (0r Thursdays), I cannot remember any more when it is.

If you are here from the “Tweet, ” posted at 11:55pm, well that is just me trying to get this posted so that it would stay in Saturday, rather than post on Sunday. I am a stickler on when I post on what dates. I do not know why?

I also spent part of the day encrypting my research data and various other files for my homework (possible honours paper application). You are probably wondering why I would spend so much time on something like encrypting my digital homework, when just loading it onto a flash memory card would do? Two years ago I had my USB 4 GB flash Memory card stolen, and later on in that semester I noticed a paper that had some of my words, almost word per word written on it. It was impossible for me to accuse that person of stealing, but from now on I take every precaution that I can against my work from being stolen. Encrypting is time consuming, but worth it. If someone wants to see it, they have to ask.

If you are interested in what I use for encryption, I use TrueCrypt. It work on all platforms and is free to use.

Here is a sample of some of the work I did today in French. I had to change all the verbs in to the past tense.

Hier matin, j’ai eu des ennuis. D’abord, j’ai entendu la pluie sur le toit et je n’ai pas voulu me lever. Puis mon chien Médor a couru dans ma chambre, les pattes couvertes de boue (mud)! J’ai dû nettoyer la boue avant de me doucher. Enfin, j’ai mis mes vêtements et j’ai bu un bon café au lait. Mais au moment de partir, j’ai entendu/appris une mauvaise nouvelle. Pas d’autobus aujourd’hui à cause d’une grève (strike)! J’ai ouvert la porte et regardé la pluie. Et puis, un rayon de soleil est apparu sous la forme de ma copine Élodie et de sa petite Renault rouge. Elle a offert de m’emmener à la fac!

Well, it is now 12:07am Sunday morning. I guess I better start thinking about packing up my books and call it a night/day or whatever. At least I have one more free day to complete my homework for the coming week. I just wish I could have used this for studying. Heh heh, now it is raining-hard out. Nice.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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 »