CRIM-413 BS

I took CRIM-413 by terrorism this semester and so far the Tutor Marker (TM) has been … an idiot for lack of a better word. A couple weeks before the final she wrote a post explaining us what to expect and she said the following:

You will not be required to memorize dates, but will need to know the order of key historical events.

Ok fair enough… except look at what was staring at me on the first question on the test:

What year was the Lebanese Civil War?
a. 1800-1815
b. 1900 – 1915
c. 1975 – 1990
d. 2000 – 2009

Now I am not retarded, but these are dates and we were told we did not need to memorize dates. So I try and protest this to the TM but her response:

The message I sent out did specify that you will need to be aware of the order of key dates and the dates that were provided to you as responses in that questions were so far from one another, that if you knew the order that events took place historically, you would have no difficulty deducing the answer. It is important to be aware of the period in which events took place to be able to contextualize them and this question was designed to test whether students were able to do this. The question will not be removed from the exam.

Bullshit. That is the only word to describe this situation. I know I really shouldn’t care because that one question is only worth 0.35% of the year. I am not trying to figure out whom I bring it up to next because obviously arguing with the TM is going to get me no where. While arguing with anyone else still probably won’t be me anywhere, it’s the matter of the fact.

Update de la semaine.

Well today had two interesting set of races, the World Rowing Cup and the NCAA finals. Canada did decently, taking 2nd and 3rd in a number of races, the Lightweight Women and Men’s double, the Men’s Quad and the Men’s Pair. Great Britain wiped the floor winning every race. While in the NCAA’s Stanford won in their Varsity 8 which allowed them to win NCAA’s.

Which leads to the SFU Rowing Club, some interesting stuff happening there. First of all, because SFU is *trying* to get into the NCAA (which I don’t support for many reasons) they need to balance out what they spend on the football team as a result of Title IX. This means they want the Women to become a varsity sport. This is pretty cool as it will mean we will get more money, better equipment and dedicated coaches. While the men are not going to go varsity, this is not a big deal since men’s rowing isn’t in the NCAA. That is why there are the IRA‘s and the ACRA which is something I would like to see the men in eventually.

Other than that, we have been doing some fund raising recently and so we have some money, there has been some discussion on what to do with it. It has been decided that we are going to buy a brand new Hudson Middleweight Coxed Four with Pair Riggers. This will set us back about $20,000 but with the money we have earned last few months and the fund raisers we will be doing we should be able to pay it off in a few months. We get to paint it however we want and I am pushing to have flames painted on. We did a liquor store this weekend, basically all we do is sit in front of a liquor store, smile at people and say hi, they feel bad and give us their change. We are able to make a lot of money out of it. We only spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday and made about $500.

I also got a job (that’s non-military). A local rowing club, the Inlet Rowing Club has hired me on to work for them, as well as another rower on my crew. It’s a pretty easy job, basically all I do is odd jobs around the boat house and coach. Last few weeks we have been cleaning and fixing boats, sandpaper-ing an old rusted boat rack, repainted it and put padding on it. Now we are supposed to recruit high school students to start rowing so we have to go to a bunch of schools in the Tri-cities area. Throughout the summer I will also be coaching learn-to-rows so I am going to try and earn my National Coaching Certificate Level I.

In terms of rowing personally for me, it is has been great. I row at Burnaby lake still five or six times a week (I should be in bed now as I row in seven and a half hours). I told the coach there that I want to do U23‘s so he has been giving me more attention this last few weeks which is great. It has been really warm lately so I have been practicing in my uni-suit and soon I will have a really awkward tan-line. With summer comes summer racing and in four weeks we will be going to Calgary for the Alberta Open regatta. That will be a fun trip, plus I am going to do a side trip down to Drumheller. My last race I did really bad because of the weather, only being able to get a time that is 75% of the olympic standard. I am hoping the weather will be nicer so I can get a much better time and podium.

On top of my rowing, running and weights I bought myself a bike.

It is a Kona Shred with the large frame. I was originally going to go with the Kona Blast but it was not able to handle any abuse and knowing me I am going to want to drop off of stuff. Now I got to start getting some bike stuff, like gloves, tools, and a playing card in the back wheel. I plan to try and ride everywhere I can instead of driving.

Froshweek is going pretty sweet, I am done all the major stuff for now, just got to start doing the little stuff and wait for money from the Sponsors.

Speaking of the CSSS, on their forum there was a thread where all the older members were complaining that there are no pictures of events from the last semester on the website. After their going back and forth one member writes this line:

If you’ve been to the common room, you’d know why.

You’d find either a load of nerds who stare at laptops, or jocks that make conversations annoying.

This statement is quite funny for a number of reasons. First of all the person who wrote this is a huge nerd himself, and whenever I have seen him in the common room, he has been on his laptop. So basically we have an example of the tea kettle calling the kettle black. Secondly, there are not jocks that hang out in the common room, let alone in the department of CS.

But school is going pretty well, English has some interesting books, CMPT-383 has really effed up programming language, CMPT-475 is boring and Terrorism has a lot of reading that is not too interesting. But I keep busy with rowing.

I also plan to try and get in a few trips this summer when I have time. VIA rail is giving out free passes to all military members so I am going to try and go to the Rockies. I have trips to Victoria and Calgary for racing. I want to go to Kettle Valley or other places for biking and then I would like to go to Baker and hike the crater. Of course there are many local places I want to hit up too: Grouse, Seymour, Lynn Valley, etc.

But now it is time to go to sleep for rowing.

Till next time, Keep on Keeping on.

Fucking Cellphone Providers

So, when I was with telus, I had unlimited texting. I could send texts anywhere across Canada and the US.

When I switched to solo, I got unlimited texting and I asked them if I could do the same thing, they said yes.

I went to Reno last month, sent 71 texts and now they want to charge me $42.

No fucking way. This is absolute bull. When I get home from Toronto I am going to phone and bitch at them and threaten to leave because they lied to me.

Shuffle This

One thing I can never figure out about iPods is why the shuffle function sucks so much. It has sucked in every version of every iPod I have used since 2003, it is almost like Apple never even gave it a second thought.

I always listen to my ipods on shuffle mode, usually because I am driving for a long time, or running and I don’t want to listen to the same stuff. Even iTunes seems to have this problem on my home computer.

What is wrong with the shuffle function is that is doesn’t actually shuffle. It plays the same subset of songs over and over. You will hear the same band and songs all the time but there are so many songs that never get played.

I cannot figure this out, It doesn’t seem like it is hard to make a random list of songs and just play through them.

When will Apple ever fix this!

Solution to the American Mortgage Crisis

This is from a video rant of a guy from the US and it is pretty awesome, in my opinion.

What’s next? I’ll tell you what’s next… The mortgage “crisis”. The housing “crisis”. First of all, it’s NOT a crisis. it’s a scam! By the liberal mainstream media and the government in order to try and get responsible people, to pay, for irresponsible peoples mistakes. I’m going to solve the problem for you right now. Okay? They keep saying how the freaking prices of houses are going down. The prices of house are going down! The prices of houses are going down! We have to bailout the freaking mortgage industry. The prices of houses are NOT going down! If you have a house that is worth 200,000 dollars. it was ALWAYS worth 200,000 dollars. You thought it was worth 400,000 dollars over the last couple of years. Why? Because the government artificially inflated the housing market. They went to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other mortgage companies and FORCED them to give loans and mortgages to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back. People who never should have had them to begin with. So now you have all these people in the freaking housing market that never should have been there. In turn, builders started building more houses to accommodate these people. it was an illusion! It was a facade! The buyers didn’t exist and the houses didn’t need to be built! Let’s say this. Let’s say you sell oranges. You stand on the corner and sell oranges for a dollar an orange. Then, all of a sudden, the government comes in and they starts giving people money to buy oranges. You have all these people. With all this money and all they can spend it on is oranges. The price of oranges are going to go through the roof. People are going to be spending 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 dollars for a freaking orange! Then all of a sudden the government comes out and says, listen, we can’t give you any more money to buy oranges. The price of oranges is going to drop dramatically. Probably down to a dollar an orange. Is the media going to come on t.v. and say, oh my god! We have a crisis in the orange industry! We have to bailout the orange industry. No!! Oranges are still going to be worth a dollar. Like they should have been all along if the government didn’t come in and artificially inflate the market. So here’s the solution… Here’s the solution to the mortgage “crisis”… First of all, if you own a house and you can’t pay the mortgage. You have to leave the house. You have to go out and rent, like you should have been doing from the freaking beginning! If you’re a builder and you built all of these houses in anticipation of all these people buying them and now you’re screwed cause they’re not. TOUGH! You’re out of luck. You took a chance and you lost. If you’re a bank and you lent money to somebody and now they can’t pay back they’re freaking mortgage. You have to foreclose on the house. You have to resell it, at fair market value. You know who wins under my plan? YOU DO!! The responsible citizen. The person who lived within his means. The person who put a couple of dollars away each week. Now, you can take your savings. Go into the housing market and get a house at a reasonable price! Would you people WAKE UP! The solution is simple. It’s staring you in the freaking face! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!! What’s next! What’s next!! What’s next!!!

Raul…

… he is young, has a 14 year old Perv Stache, and wear a Burger King Uniform. This is my nemesis and he fucked up my order.

So I go to Whopper Wednesday to have a Whopper with my friend the Whopper before he heads off to Prague for seven months. My friend Tom and I get in line, we spout off our order, the trifecta, the Holy Trinity of fast food combos: a Whopper Cheese, poutine and chocolate milkshake.

Normally, any competent fast food worker could punch up this order and have it to me within three minutes. However it takes him more than five minutes to punch in my order. Tom then comes along and orders the exact same thing and he takes, yet again, another five minutes. Two more guys come, each taking five minutes each to have their orders punched in while in the mean time the line is getting longer and I am just standing there wondering why the fuck is this 14 year old kid working by himself in the front?

I can see my food ready to go in the heat chutes… but he is not serving me as he is too busy slowly punching in more orders. The people in the back are mocking him for being retarded (I tried to nominalize that and it just didn’t work) and I do not blame them. Finally a supervisors realizes we are all standing there waiting for our food and she starts to distribute them… only to realize Raul has fucked up every single order.

When the surpervisor asked Raul if we ordered what we claimed he just responded, “I dunno…”

Clearly he should not working here.

He also made two guys get so agitated and they almost got into a fight. The managers had to yell at them to calm down, I was so excited for a fight, but it never happened.

Now I realize he was new, that is fair, but when I was new to the Burger King I worked at when I was 16, I was not this retarded, I was just less efficient than everyone else.

This is what happens when you hire people who are way too young to work.

Effin Scientologists

So I went to the Church of Scientology today for my weekly mass… ok I joke, it wasn’t for mass, but I did go to the Church of Scientology. Now I got you asking, “why did he go to the the Church of Scientology” and I went for my HUM-130 Intro to Religious Studies class where we had to interview a religious leader in the community.

I headed down to Harbour Centre, where the church is located, armed with my interviewing questions, a laptop to record it all and a camera, just in case. I had phoned the previous week to set up an appointment to make sure it would be fine to do an interview today.

I arrive there ten minutes early, as I didn’t want to be late on my special day, and I walk up to the receptionist. After waiting a few minutes for her to get off the phone she informs me the Scientologist that was supposed to do an interview with me was not there. They didn’t know where she was, what was holding her up or when she would be back.

Great, I got stood up by a Scientologst and there was no one else there for me to do an interview with. So now I cannot do my assignment because I can’t write 2-3 pages on “the Scientologist never showed up” and then write a reflection of the interview in another 2-3 pages saying, “Scientologists don’t have a concept of time.”

Now I am going to have to try and contact her again so I can get this interview done on time. I am definitely not impressed.

This is just one more religion that I am adding to the list of religions I am not joining.

How to Lock a Door

So my roommate is an idiot. I know many of you know this as he is someone I really detest at this moment. He does not think about anything he does or says. For some reason he always leaves the front door unlocked at all times of the day whether we are home or not. This is why I have created this little instructions on how to lock a door. I then printed them out and placed it on the front door.

HOW TO LOCK A DOOR

Locking your door is a great idea, not matter if you are home or not, as it prevents people from walking in and stealing your possessions. It looks like this is your first time locking a door; do not worry as this is a simple task.

Locking the Door from the Inside:

1. Pinch the locking mechanism, with your index finger and thumb. The locking mechanism is the round object a few centimeters above the door handle.

2. Turn the locking mechanism in a counter-clockwise direction, one and a half times around, until you may not turn it anymore.

Locking the Door form the Outside:

1. Grab your key. The key for the townhouse, as issued to us by the Residence and Housing office is a long key, with a black triangular handle and a brown label.
2. Place your key into the lock. This again is the round object above the door handle.
3. Turn the key in a clockwise movement, one and a half times around, until you may not turn it anymore.
4. Remove key.

Once you have locked the door you need to test it to make sure it is locked. To do so, grab the door handle, turn it and try to open the door. If you are not able to then you have succeeded in locking the door.

Congratulations! You have just locked the door.

For more information see: http://www.wikihow.com/Lock-a-Door

I am in a generation of idiots.

Seriously, what is it these days with students, my age, who are idiots and do not know how to send emails properly. We do not even need to get started on the Alan Lau – Engineering Student, situation.

Just take a look at this email a student in my CMPT 371 sent to the professor:

Dear Prof. Liu:
What is the platform the programs in Prj 1 run on? Is it Windows or
Linux? And what programming language should we write in? What do you mean by “include your code in the report” ? Does that mean we are not gonna submit our programs in executable files?
Looking forward to your reply.
Thank you!

Michael Tong Man

I do not know if you know this Michael Tong Man, but when you write an email to a professor, unless you are close friends, you do not address them as “Prof”, you do not use words like “gonna” and you sure as hell need to learn to type in proper English.

So next time you decide to fire off an email, just take a second to think about it.

Spore is Anti… Evolution???

I have been excepting to hear from the fanatical Christians arguing that Spore is anti-creationism and is promoting Evolution. However, the first article on the subject I found is from McGill University out in Montreal which says the game is anti-evolutionary and promotes Creationism…

Why can’t people just have fun with games?