Superfluous Matter
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I'm in Toronto now. things are still a bit up in the air since I can't actually move into my room until Wednesday, but it's all good. I'm staying in the room next door, so I'm not unpacking and everything is a mess.

I went downtown this afternoon and bought "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. I've been meaning to read it for a long time but just never got around to it. It will keep me company on the long subway rides to and from work this week.

That's about it, pretty crappy post I'd say.

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Yesterday was fun. Kim's family rented the arena in Ilderton for her cousin's birthday so I got to go ice skating (in August!) with just her family. Private rinks are fun! I really enjoy skating, even though I am not so good. After skating we all went back to Kim's aunt's house for shish kabobs and various other yummy foods. It was a really good afternoon.

I start work next Monday, so I'll be moving back to Toronto on Sunday, but for the rest of this week I think I will continue to do nothing much at all.

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I'm home in London now, which is pretty sweet because I can just relax for a couple weeks with nothing to worry about. I will almost certainly accomplish nothing, and I'm OK with that.

I'm reading the complete Chronicles of Narnia, and it's pretty good so far. Also, I watched Donnie Darko last night and that was a really cool movie. It gets to go on my movielist. That bunny is the creepiest thing ever.

Hmm...so yeah, not much else happening. It looks like Apocalyptica is coming back to Toronto in September so Matt and I will probably try to check that out again. Oooh, I also forgot Jen's birthday and have absolutely no good excuse. So I stole her an eCard to make up for it. Haha. At least I'm not as bad as Ryan though.

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Well tonight was special. I was supposed to have my Databases final, but five minutes before the start the professor informed us that the Registrar's Office, which is responsible for printing the exams, did not print anywhere close to enough. He attempted to get the correct amount printed out, but not having access to good equipment on short notice he pretty much failed. Apparently there is a policy that states that if the exam is more than 30 minutes late in starting it must be rescheduled to a later time. By 8:00 we were still short 40 copies so we ended up not writing this evening.

This kinda sucks because the exam will likely be rescheduled on the last day of exams. Also, I was ready for it today and wanted it to be over with. But I understand that sometimes things go wrong and stuff doesn't work out. What I don't understand is the reaction of many of the people who were supposed to write with me. There was a lot of intense anger and what seemed like no attempt to understand the professor's situation. He is obliged to follow policy. If he were to get us to wait longer than 30 minutes and try to force us to write the exam, any student who wasn't happy could complain to the registrar afterwards and cause a lot of problems. It's not unreasonable to suspect that some students leave an exam unhappy, that happens regardless of other circumstances. Students who originally thought it would be OK to disregard the policy might "suddenly" change their mind if the exam were to go poorly for them. For the professor, it just isn't worth the hassle.

Even if everyone "agreed" that it would be OK to have the exam tonight and disregard the policy, there would still have been the potential for students to complain to the registrar afterwards about feelings of peer pressure. I'm pretty sure anyone who disagreed to having it tonight (given the opportunity) would have been treated severely be the rest of the students. It was a pretty nasty situation.

I am somewhat sympathetic to those students who have plans that may be disrupted by this event, but not too much. This is an upper year class. By now everyone should know that things can happen and exams can get rescheduled. There are a million things that could disrupt an exam at any time of year, it doesn't take a lot of effort to see that. You take a risk by planning something before the end of the exam period. Normally it works out but sometimes it doesn't. You have to be prepared to accept that. It isn't the professor's or anyone else's responsibility to fix it.

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So every once in a while I read Fark which is basically just a news aggregation site. It links to news articles and gives a short and normally amusing description of the article. Today there is a link to a BBC article regarding when the US will leave Iraq and the summary is:

"Bush rejects pulling out of Iraq early. Undersecretary of Innuendo Glenn Quagmire heard to comment, 'Heh heh allll riiiiiiight'"

For anyone who has watched The Family Guy that's just hilarious. I'm still laughing about it.

Part of what I love about shows like The Family Guy, The Simpsons, Futurama and others (generally animated) is the social commentary -- both in the shows and generated by people influenced by the shows (as above). That statement communicates a lot of information about a whole bunch of issues. I don't know why the commentary is more prevalent in animated shows though. Maybe because the people who might try to stop it don't pay as much attention to animation because they think it's just for kids. Such a silly opinion. Some of the best TV is animated. Oh well, someday people will learn, or the people who don't will die and then there won't be any people like that left.

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Time for finals!

2005-07 | 2005-09