Monday, November 20, 2006

Pleasant surprises

Even though my finished essay was a mere five and a half pages, I handed it in anyway. I couldn't think of anything else to write, and it was close to the deadline to boot. Turns out that although I thought my essay was much shorter than required, it was actually just about the right length. This is because of one little detail that I forgot about, and didn't do, which extended my paper within the 10-12 page requested length. I didn't double space it. After I got home, I double spaced it and discovered that my paper covered 11 pages. Actually with the endnotes, it spilled over to 12 pages. I would have put all the endnotes on the same page, so it's just as well to say that it was twelve pages long.

Class was pretty quiet since it was about a) Battlestar Galactica, which I know little about, and b) a Compendium of Canadian Science Fiction, of which I only read one story! Sadly, most everyone else in the class was on the same boat as me! Really embarassing. Next week it will not be the same, for we will be discussing Calculating God, the novel that I based my essay on. So next week I won't be sitting there looking over my schedule for the week.

Looking over my schedule for the coming week, I noticed something scary. Of the two assignments that are due on Friday, I only have about seven hours to work on them. I hope I'll be able to coordinate with some of my classmates, or at least get some competent work done on my own.

Oh yeah, and my final in C Lit is in EXACTLY two weeks. Meaning I have to start studying this week.

Maybe I should just stop sleeping. Wait. That would get me back in the hospital and into another quixotic quandary that I'd rather avoid.

Why couldn't the Christmas rush be in April when Christ was actually born, or at least January or February when I'm done school? I now know why I rarely worked during the school year pervious to this. The only other time I worked during the school year was when in 2003, and that was at Advanis where they didn't care what I did at work so long as I still had a decent flow rate, and even that they didn't care too much about. Nevertheless, I worked less than 10 shift there throughout the entire Fall term, and after midterms I think I put in two shifts.

Gah.

Well, I'm going to try to start the EE 430 right now before I head off to bed. Even though I need sleep. This is going to be a horrid week.

Five days.

Knockdown

Just finished up my final essay for C Lit 342, and man was that thing a dozy. Here's the initial draft for the email that accompanied my essay to my prof's inbox.

At first I thought writing this essay was going to be a simple matter, since my personal beliefs coincide with much of what Calculating God is about. I wasn't exactly correct in that line of thought, and I struggled to write something I would feel comfortable with.

I put forth my best effort to compile this essay, and I hope you find it to be a reflection of my efforts throughout the year.

Thanks,

Steven Clark

P.S. I fear I might have shot myself in the foot with that last comment.


After reading over the email I reconsidered writing the comment about shooting myself, and comparing the essay to my efforts in class, and I edited those bits out.
It's really hard to write something that you feel very strongly about, but remain detracted from it as well. I really hope I do well in this class, because I don't want to come back and do this again!

Nice as it is to get that essay done, there's no time to rest on my laurels, if I had any. I have two assignments due Friday, which happens to be the day of the Ultrasound appointment. I'll be missing EE 404, and will only have enough time to get to campus hand in the assignments, and maybe attend ECON 204 before I have to head off to work. All my shifts start at 3pm this week, which is good, but bad. It gives me more time on Tuesday and Thrusday, but cuts the time on Wednesday and Friday. I'm going to have really shoddy assignments this week. Hmmm... One might wonder how that is different from any other week. Stupid one.

At the cost of working a Sunday shift, I did get time off work on Saturday to attend the Iron Ring ceremony. w00t!

Five days.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Another step closer to the ring

Today I got sized for the Iron Ring. Oddly enough, before the sizing, I had to read and sign a document that outlines what it means to wear the ring. There was a spot for another signature, so I assume I'll be receiving the doc at the ceremony next Saturday. Next Saturday. Oh wow. With the assignments that I have pressing down on my brain, I don't think much about future events like that. But... wow. Nine days and I'll have the ring.

I also found out that I can have guests at the ring ceremony. Two guests, that's all. I had a guest list planned out in my head already, and the top two people are:
1. Caitlin (of course)
2. My dad

After that, I considered my father-in-law, and after that... well to be honest, I didn't think I would be able to invite more than three people. Heck, I didn't know if I would be able to invite anyone. Surprise surprise.

Nine days.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Not as I hoped

I just talked with a former classmate of mine, and he applied for the Rates Analyst & Implementer as well. He has an interview tomorrow. I do not. Methinks that I'm not going to get one either.

I'm starting to wonder just how long I'm going to be working at the Source.

There's another line of employment that was put in my eyes. A certain Drew LaHaie mentioned that Intuit is still hiring, and that all I need to do is go to the website and apply directly. They're looking for Quality Assurance people, and I think that's something I can do. Looking for mistakes, crashing systems, and debugging. Again, it's a stepping stone.

Hopefully I won't land in the water trying to cross the creak from university to the workforce.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Job Hopes

I need to keep my mind open for job oppurtunities. Turns out that a friend of the Tolleys has a brother who is one of the Vice Presidents at EPCOR. Let's see... I married Caitlin, Caitlin's parents are involved in the Beaumont Drama Club, of which Martin Stout is also a member, and Martin Stout is the brother of Richard Stout, Vice President of Regulation for EPCOR Utilities, Incorporated, one of the co-chairs for the 7th Alberta Power Summit. I called up Martin and gave him my phone number. Perhaps he'll be able to arrange a time to introduce us.

Maybe my application isn't such a write off after all!

Time will see.

Monday, November 06, 2006

You want what?

Should have guessed that university employers would want to see my transcripts. They serve as a better filter than any kind of cover letter software. Nevertheless, when I read the posting for the EPCOR position, there was no mention that transcripts were to be included, hence I didn't. With good reason. They are not the most impressive thing! Unless they are looking to see which courses I've taken, and how well I did in them...

I think my chances at getting an interview, let alone a job, dropped signifigantly when I hit send.

Time will tell.

TGIM

It's kind of weird that I look forward to Mondays. Most people don't have a Compartative Literature course through, and I feel sorry for them. Then again, those same people might feel sorry for me because of the essay that I have to hand in two weeks from now. Nevertheless, it a cool course, and my day is definately looking up.

I just dropped off the assignment that was due today, and I sent off the job application to EPCOR. I should remember to carry the cell phone with me in case they call, but I believe they set up the interviews through the employment office. Meh.

The big thing right now is to form a thesis for my essay. I'm basing it on Calculating God, and the challenge is finding a core theme to write the essay around. Science facts overlaps with theological beliefs; they are not seperate issues. This is what I took from Sawyer's work. The force of gravity is ever so close to forcing earth to collapse on itself, the curious wonder that is the physical properties of water, and the base structure of DNA. I seem to remember in scripture that God is bound by physical laws as well. There may be some standards that existed before the world was. That's not addressed in the book, so I can bypass that. I suppose all I need to do is take excepts of the book to back that up.

I was trying to think of something along the lines that you need to have an intersection of religion and science in order for them function optimally. For instance, you have the creationist who believe that the world was created over a period of 144 hours, no more no less. I personally think that's a crock. It's said that the Lord created the world in "six days". A day to God is not necessarily 24 hours. Our days are measured by the axial revolution of our planet. Just because God created the Earth, doesn't mean that he was living on the planet, and setting his watch to the local time. My assumption is that He would work on a certain thing, and once He was done, He called it a day. Literally. It might have been 10000 years, but under the project timeline, it was called Day 1. So why would the seventh day be included? Most people I know take some time off between massive projects.

Now to get that into 10 pages, and I'm set.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Much better now

Wednesday, I was in distress. I was worried about my courses, about my job prospects, and also about my family. I actually spent some time at the Student Distress Centre to help with the maddness that was chewing on me and it helped quite a bit. After talking with the volunteer, I had my feet on the ground, and some information about the Academic Guidance Centre. Yesterday I signed up for an online workshop about overcoming Exam Anxiety. Included with the purchase is a free 45 minute one on one session with one of the staff in the office. I'll have to arrange that appointment for next week, but I'm waiting until I know what the work schedule is for next week before I do that.

Oh, and yes I did get the exam back. Much to my surprise, I didn't get the worst mark in the class. My mark was higher than the 28% I got on my EE 430 midterm, a sore embarassment, and I didn't get the lowest mark in the class. Rather my mark of 40% earned me the third lowest ranking on the midterm. Sadly enough, I know who got the lowest mark, and he was none too happy about it. We went and played some Gunblade to help get the dregs out of his mind, but we both know that we need to really shine on the Final, or else we are hooped.

It can be done. It will be done. Now I just need to find a copy of the assignment, since I have misplaced mine. I'll email Koval. He's good about things like that.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Congratulations! You're an idiot!

Just finished the second half of the EE 404 - Reliability - midterm. Wow. I thought that studying yesterday would help me be prepared for the onslaught of knowledge testing, but that was a bust. For the one question that I figured out a last minute answer which I was quite confident of, I may have done wrong because most people don't have answers which match me. That could mean anything, but I've come to note that it usually means that I was wrong. Then the second question I thought was pretty straight-forward, until I realized after walking out of the exam, that the graph was not a sucess density plot, but rather a failure density plot. All my answers were wrong, only because I didn't do the final step of reversing the answer.

I am failing this course. Is this because I don't know what's going on? Is it because I don't do the work? That would be a no on both accounts. I'm not completely clueless about the material, but I don't refresh myself on a daily basis as to what it is. I find that I get frustrated easily, and when I'm frustrated, I don't concentrate, because I'm screaming inside. Most of the language used I prefer not to hear or read, yet I always seem to tolerate my indiscrepencies. Most people would say just stop and take a breath. I stop, forget what I was doing, start from the beginning, get lost again, get frustated again, shut down, and the cycle continues until either a) I find the correct answer, b) I find a solution that quiets my demon, or c) I run out of time and it doesn't matter what kind of solution I have.

Some people will work on something until it's done. I can't do that. I only seem to work until I hit an impass (ie. I don't know what to do next). That's not entirely true. Sometimes I'll work through an impass, especially if it's some kind of writting assignment. Lab report, Gateway article, or even the reading journal. Even doing blog, I write until I can think of nothing else to write, or I revamp until I find something that sounds more of what I was going for.

After the midterm, I was poring over the notes, trying desperately to figure out where I went wrong, and why other people got the answers they did. For the life of me, I couldn't do it. Every calculation that I did resulted in the same result that I wrote down on the test. I don't even know if I got the project right or not. All will be revealed in due time. We'll get the test back, and I'll see how much trouble I'm in. WHY? Because of the instant society we live in perhaps. Should I blame society on my idiocy? That would be unfair. It's my fault I didn't review. I could have stayed at home and studied on Sunday. I could have spent more time last night reviewing procedures and notes. I should have done that. It's just when things seem so easy, that when I don't do them. Or is it? Getting an engineering degree isn't so simple. I've been at this for over five years now. It's not just something that I picked up and boom there it is. I've worked at this for a long time, bit by bit.

Even so close to the goal, I'm still in a state.

I'll have to mention this to the doctor tomorrow when I go in for my monthly I'm-not-crazy-give-me-more-drugs visit.

All Hallows Eve

Even though I had to work, there was trick or treating at the mall. Lots of kids, lots of candy (we had to do five candy runs and we still ran out well before the scheduled time to end the trick or treating), and I still managed to do okay on sales. My AM took some wicked pics. I would almost say that I should get a new phone so that I could spontaneously take pictures like that. Meh. Have to sleep, and tomorrow I have the second half of a midterm.

Laters.