My Week At Fanshawe – 2009-10-08

I got a bit swamped studying and doing homework last week – so I missed my opportunity to post this stutter-starting, somewhat regular, almost weekly rant. 

You may have noticed that I have been keeping up my “Grades” page for this semester.  The idea of that page is simply to make me somewhat “accountable” in that I had better not slack since I am making my marks public.  I am not really happy with where I appear to be:  I don’t need 100’s in every course, but I would like to end the semester with an A+ average.  My Aboriginal Studies (ABST) and Writing and Reasoning (WRIT) are screwing that up.  I can’t get out of WRIT, and ABST is a lot of writing – and research.  I just ran out of time to get an A in ABST – I hope I do better in the next few tests (written assignments that you get a week to complete) and the final essay (which I have eight weeks to write).  My WRIT course – I stopped by at the Language and Liberal Arts office yesterday and asked if I could write an exemption test.  There stance, however, is that it was my responsibility to have perused the entire Fanshawe website and researched exemption from WRIT on my own, prior to September.  Anyone who actually wrote the test, so I am finding out through asking, was made aware of it by a package sent out to them letting them know that they could come in, write the test, and be assessed as Exempt, “Section A” (for lack of a better, official term) or “Section B”.  I am sure that the fact that around half of the people in my program (about 45 of the 90 who are still here) are in WRIT because they had no idea about the test, and of the other half who wrote – more than half of them are exempt.  I am also quite aware that the last-minute addition of 3 sections of WRIT due to L&LS’s “momentary lapse of reason” when it came to implementing the course itself is no reason to assume that they may have simply FORGOT TO SEND OUT INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE THAT THEY DIDN’T KNOW WERE COMING.  The end result, of course, is that I cannot be excused from the WRIT course.  It not only is now manditory for me and carries a grade, but also is now part of my GPA, unlike the Pass/Fail that those exempted (with a “P” of course) were given.

If in reading my blog you agree that I should be in a WRIT course, consider that I do not write theses, for the most part, on my WP; I also already know how to use commas, conjunctions, and with some practice, I can identify verbs and nouns.  Yes, this is what I spend three hours every Thursday night, from five-thirty until eight-thirty, doing.  Well, that and we are also required to write a thesis every Thursday, in the last 50 minutes of the class.  We are given a “Prompt” (often a ridiculous near-thesis that does NOT follow the rules we are given) and we must read it, identify the author’s thesis statement.  Then, we must have a concise thesis of our own, with three points which either agree or disagree with that prompt.  The thesis, three body paragraphs and a summary all have to be done, properly, in 50 minutes (with reading the original prompt included) and must be hand written.  My writing is atrocious.  I lose marks for that every week.  I actually lost marks on my 17/24 thesis because I could not provide “proof” of my thesis’ points.  WTF?  We are writing a TEST.  No INTERNET or REFERENCE material.  Even in class she spoke of only making statements that can be proven … and yet that is not possible in the setting we find ourselves.  The topics have been widely ranged – and not often anything I can give an expert opinion in.

But, enough about that horrible, GPA-slaughtering course.

I can’t believe I got five questions wrong on my Digital test.  20/25???  That is an EIGHTY.  That is just not acceptible. 

Well, I am sitting in my lecture hall, it is almost time for class to start, and I had better close this now.  It is the Friday of week 5.

Wow – I can’t even get my LEISURE done on time, LOL.

 

My Week At Fanshawe – 2009-09-24

I am going to start posting some sort of pseud0-online-twittery thing just so I can look back on this and wonder why in the hell I am doing this from time to time.

I am nearing the end of week three – and because of my current schedule, I am going to make this as regular a Thursday-afternoon-post as I can – and I have a few things I can look back on now.

Let us start with the obvious and expected:  The Bitching.

• Apparently, walking on the right is not supported by everyone at Fanshawe:  Please do not look to any international students for this odd behaviour, though, as it is mostly just 18 to 20 year old Canadians, of both gender, who wander down either side of stairs, halls, doorways, ramps, roads, aisles … well, you get the idea.
• Staying home when actually sick is a rarity … staying home when hungover, common.  I have yet to be puked on or moaned toward, but Sadly, I have been coughed on, sneezed toward. 
• Every hall in the building has a width of 2n-(1/2) Freshmen.  That means that in any given hallway, you can fit on more person between the even-numbered people walking the halls.  If there are two going North, and two South, side-by-side and moving slowly, you can barely fit one-half of a person through the gap in the middle.  If the hall is 14 and a half people wide, there will be 7 people walking one way, and 7 the other, leaving a space between them that the other 14986 students (plus the staff and faculty) have to use to get to class on time of about 23 centimeters (about 9 3/4 inches).
• The seats in the library, lounges, cafeteria and unlocked classrooms where there are electrical outlets will be taken up by students who have no laptops, phones, lamps or any other electrical device.  The ratio of these non-electrically dependant people taking up these positions increases as your battery power decreases.  When you are in a classroom that has those outlets at every chair (and an ethernet socket), your battery is full, and the wireless is excellent.
• EVERYONE has lunch when you do.  When you are in class, every other person is also in class.  If you leave to go to the washroom, everyone else does, too.  This also applies to Tim Horton’s.

There are, of course, many great things about being at Fanshawe.  The diploma is actually well-respected.  The school has a great deal of state-of-the-art facilities for teaching and learning.  There is a learning centre, chaplin’s centre, medical and pharmacy in the building, free counselling in school, life, career.  The programs are quite good.

Personally, I seem to be out of the running for “top of the class”.  It is not something I am happy about at all.  To date, I have pulled some less-than-stellar marks for ELEC, COMP and most likely MATH.  Still waiting on marks for WRIT, and who knows about DIGL.  Meh.

I don’t know if I like or dislike the Wednesday and Thursday schedules which just changed:  My Wednesday has three classes, but the first one is at 0900h, for an hour, then an hour break.  I have a second, one-hour class at 1100h.  I then have a four-hour break before a one-hour class at 1600h.  I get home around six or so.  Thursday now sees me in 5 classes (one is 2 hours) from 0800h to 1400h.  I then have a 3.5 hour break waiting for my 3-hour WRIT class which is over after the written test (every week) at 2030h.  I get HOME after ten, on those nights.  The only good part of that is I barely have homework, since I have time to kill at school, and since my goal here is to overachieve, I have little distraction.  In fact, I am sitting on the third floor of the Library by myself.  (Not ‘entirely’, there are other people here.  However, I just overheard two girls arguing about how an assignment isn’t due tomorrow, it is due Friday.  They’ll do just fine.)

I think My Lovely Wife and I have finally gotten into the grove of all of this after this third week has wound down.  This is a bad semester for hours – two electives (ABST and WRIT) which are 6 hours a week add an extra day in “student time”.  I don’t sleep or eat much – but I have lived like that for quite some time.  That reminds me, I need to go get a turkey sandwich to take to WRIT so I don’t pass out. 

Talk to you next week!

 

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

I guess the first one that I had, although I do not remember it, was the typical, mostly red-neck-sounding injury: It involved a pony in the yard, a baby carriage in the yard, the pony being tied to a pin, and the tether flipping the thing when it got spooked. Apparently I was ok. Apparently I was ok. Apparently I was ok.

(LOL)

At four years old, I tripped and quite literally smashed my bottom lip/chin/teeth into a coffee table. Lip was rebuilt, spent time in the hospital for that one. Still have an unconscious pout because of it.

At five, I got banged up pretty good when I lost control of a riding lawnmower. Yes, I could drive a mower at the age of five. There is a drainage ditch behind my parents’ house – about 2 metres deep. It was dry at the time, and I went sailing down the side and got pinned under it. Kinda happy it shut off, and didn’t start on fire. Could have died at five years old. LOL

This is of course not about little things – all of the scraped knees, chinked fingers, barked shins.

At nine, well, I was eight – I had my ninth b-day in the hospital – my appendix blew up. The stupid doctor that was covering for our normal GP (remember – I was EIGHT years old) gave me a list of instructions and said, “if it gets worse, give us a call”. Apparently, that was only told to me. 3 days of not being able to move from the couch, eat, drink, sleep … they took me to the hospital and as a little 8-year-old kid, I had an 11-inch scar. I remember measuring it, and back then, we were still using that “Imperial” measuring system. I spent two weeks in Intensive care, then another 6 days in paediatrics. My second day in the ward was my ninth birthday. Almost didn’t make nine years old.

**Shortly after getting home, I was playing outside (still had the giant bandages over this giant incision, and still had stitches) and tripped, landing in a thudding faceplant. Thought for SURE I blew my abdomen open … but no, all was cool.

**From the time I was a baby, until I was 8, I used to get so sick – which doctors blamed on my toncils. I got fevers that topped 103/104 to the point of dehydration, hallucenation, blackouts. After getting my appendix removed, I never had that problem again.

At ten – I had my 10th b-day in a house trailer because we were rebuilding the house (more than doubled the size of it – there were five of us in total now, with my 6-year-old brother, and 3-year-old sister). We were unloading large stones (on the order of 25 to 40 pounds each) and this idiot girlfriend of one of my uncles dropped a good sized-rock on another good-sized rock … which I happened to be picking up at the time. It landed on my right-hand pinky-finger and ring finger, not quite breaking the bones, but hard enough to forcibly eject both fingernails. My uncle had to restrain me from punching her.

Eleven – a whole year – but the two things I remember are accidentally over-extending a bow, and having the satellite (four-bladed, pointed) tip of an arrow just nicely insert itself into my left wrist and getting bitten by a spider in the left hand when cutting the grass at my aunt’s house, down by the lake.

Had I let go of the bowstring, I would have driven the arrow through my wrist: Had I let go of the bow, no idea. So, I used all of my brute-Jethro force to pull back on the bowstring and pull the friggin thing out of my wrist. Like most of the things I have mentioned – I still have the scar for that one.

The spider bite – kinda new thing – never happened before. I am allergic. Didn’t know that. In fact, after a few other encounters, I found out that even the most common spiders can kill me. My hand actually swelled up to the point where my fingers all touched. I actually could not move them. (Later on, twice, spider bites nearly made me “drown in my own lungs” do to allergic reactions.)

When I was 12, we were playing outside in the Winter – almost Spring – and when crossing that aforementioned ditch (snow-covered at the time) I went through! Had one of the guys I was with not hooked me with a hockey stick, I would have not only drowned, but been carried away by a surprising current in unexpectedly deep, cold water. It was only about 100 yards to the house, but that hypothermic walk, after being nearly drowned, it might have well been 100 kilometres. How many near-death accidents is that so far?

**That was the same year that we accidentally burned down the barn. Me and my neighbour burned down his barn – doing typical kid stuff – and forgetting to keep an eye on that kid stuff. The thing is, we were off playing way far away from home – and my parents and his thought we were still in there. It was NOT a pretty site. Wasn’t much fun gettin’ punished for that one, either. LOL.

When I was lucky 13, I started to work for area farmers during the summer. I picked cucumbers for a farmer that had converted the “sit down” stations into “lay down” stations. I didn’t actually like doing it that way (we had a tomato harvester that had 7 seats, so I was able to pick vegetables that way). Anyway, 2 months of that ended up really hurting my left knee. That was aggrevated later on with a few accidents, and eventually I had to have a “lateral release” done arthroscopically when I was 18. That same farmer also had pigs. Those porcine demons attacked me a few times.

Fourteen. Let’s see. Burned my right wrist quite badly with roofing tar. Cut my left thumb to the bone when doing body work on a friend’s Mustang (Sixty-Four And-A-Half, Convertible, Pony, 289, 3-Speed). Hacked my right ankle (ya, coulda cut my foot off) with a chainsaw when cleaning brush from a fencerow.

Fifteen … Broke both of my thumbs. One, wrestling around in a friend’s living room, when he landed on my hand; the other, walking. Ya. I was simply walking out of my parents’ house, my hand on the deck railing. Got to the stairs, and jammed my thumb SO HARD I cracked it. Shut up. All of you.

Sixteen. Hmm… Feeding pigs (I hate them) I got hit in the head with an auger on a Mix-All. Knocked me out while feeding them. Woke up to getting stomped and bitten by them. Did I mention I hate them?

Jump to Eighteen. Got my knee fixed around my birthday (wtf – I hate my birthday now, too) and my first action, when I got home, it to walk off my crutches. That time – I WISH I had died. LOL. A few months later, I had all four wisdom teeth pulled. Contrary to popular belief, my mouth is actually not big enough. I had two hard impacted and two soft-impacted teeth. Got them pulled under a local. Well … not “A” local. He had to give me EIGHTEEN F’ING NEEDLES IN MY MOUTH!!! The only two that still make my eyes water are the two that are in the roof of your mouth. Those hurt like hell.

I was crossing the road as a pedestrian when I had not only the right-of-way, but an actual crossing light. In order to beat the oncoming traffic, the driver of a shitty green station wagon lurched forward into me.

Nineteen, my girlfriend at the time, who decided to sit beside me as I lay on my couch brought her knee up, nailing the glass I was drinking from (as I was drinking from it) and broke one of my front teeth.

Let’s go now to 1989. Working for GMD. I wanted to see a panel that we had to do stuff with in a CN Locomotive. I was hurrying to see it because my co-worker was about to close it. CN Locomotives are not “open” on the body – they have the walkways long them inside. This is likely for inclement weather. SO, as I rush up to see this panel, I also pre-emptively tilt my head. Then, I find myself on my knees against the wall. I had actually hit (AND BENT) a 2 inch by 1/4 inch spar for the outside wall with my forehead. Yes, there is still a dent in my skull. I think they fixed the one on the locomotive, though. LOL. Had a good concussion – had to stay up for about 24 hours after that so … lol … I didn’t die.

Now, in February 1990, I was working with some of the largest cables in a locomotive – AWG “0000″. I slipped while placing one, and my hand flew into the back of the distribution box. My knuckles met the metal, and my hand folded down so quickly and violently that my thumb actually hit my forearm.

*waits for you to actually try to touch your thumb to your forearm*

So, that little event actually broke the scafoid (not to mention really messed up the tendons, caused carpel-tunnel syndrome) and after trying to work like that for about 3 weeks, I was off on WSIB (comp) until they sent me to school to become a computer programmer. I was off work for about 14 straight months. I actually lost the use of my left hand for a lot of that time, it atrophied, had to start learning to use it again. I still eat with my left, but my writing with both hands is just atrocious.

I have a scar on my cheek from leftover gravy, which was heated a little too quickly after one Easter. Another Easter I stubbed my toe so badly walking out of my bedroom in the morning I thought I broke it, it bled so much. I love Thanksgiving just as much, having once cut my finger with my butcher knifes hacking an abnormally tough turnip (again, to the bone … probably have a permanent nick in it). Burned my arm taking a gigantic turkey out of the oven.

A little over a year ago, I was opening a child’s toy. Using the scissors on a funny angle, cutting something with a wire core (didn’t know it until too late), I broke through the wire, and somehow caught most of the pad of my pinky finger inside the scissors. Clean cut (even took pics) of my almost incising half of a fingerprint.

I know there is more. I am just looking at the scars to see what I have missed. LOL.

---

I just remembered – I have two fingers on my left hand, the back of both, around the first knuckle, which are quite shiny. This was a result of one of my short-order cooking jobs. I have been horrifically sunburned once (which, LOL, was on my 12th BIRTHDAY) which I could not walk for 3 days. I have been burned by 750 C roofing tar. That took a month to heal and I still have scars. However … those two fingers were scalded by steam from a roasting pan. That was the most intense, lingering pain I have ever felt (and I am no stranger to pain, as you can see).

I have a scar on the bottom of my right foot, I got that walking barefoot through that creek I mentioned, behind my parents’ house. Very stupid, I know. I got a slice in the sole of my foot about 8 to 10 cm long. Been bitten and clawed by dogs, cats, snakes, chickens, cows, sheep (been run into by sheep, too), goats (same as sheep). Been stung by bees, wasps, hornets. Snakes, flying insects … no allergic reaction to them. Just friggin spiders.

I once had to go to the hospital to have a metal sliver taken out of my sclera. You know, the white part of the eye. They used this nasty dye to see it, and a magnet and tweezers to get it out. LOL, my father tried to do it with a magnetic screwdriver for about 15 minutes when I had had enough and told him to take me to the hospital (was about 15 years old then).

If I think of anything else…

 

Centimonious

LOL, well, this blog entry represents “Post Number One Hundred”. I guess that means I am not the most prolific writer. Not that I don’t like to write. I have actually put pen to paper and finger to key in many different forms. I have always liked writing. When I was in high school, my highest-scoring exams were in History and English, where the exam was three hours and was one or two essay questions. I would approach essays for those classes (English, Modern Literature, History) with a smile on my face, and that was before computers made things easier. Keep in mind that word processing didn’t proliferate until after I was done high school. It was a unique experience to get something like PaperClip for a Commodore 64. Which, by the way, could only handle 440 pages, and less if you got fancy.

I have actually started two different stories, and no, I won’t post them. They exist in the electronic periphery of my home network. Will I finish them? Maybe. I find writing my ideas out quite therapeutic, however, writing my problems out often is most damaging and upsetting.

I had never really thought about publicly writing anything. I mean, why would anyone want to read what I write? But, about four years ago, I unknowingly joined a group by simply registering my PlayStation 2 gaming console. I actually visited the PlayStation Underground PSU) a few times, but the cyberthugs, sanctimonious moderators and what seemed to be controlled chaos put me off of ever participating. A few days after I signed up, I got an invite to something called the Gamer Advisory Panel, or GAP. This was a more targeted marketing feedback group. At the time, it was similar to being in an office with thousands of cubicles lining many hallways: You couldn’t truly see everyone in the office, although you could hear some of them, if not most. You could interact directly with anyone there, as long as you navigated your way down the right hall, and stood in the opening of their cube. I got to know a few people, and during the few months after my arrival, but before the “new version” of the GAP was unveiled, I learned a few paths to certain cubicles in which I found friendly, familiar people. Some, like the first person who ever “spoke” directly to me, TexanFanatic (James, but I will not put his last name to protect his privacy) would visit me in my cube as well as making introductions. I really didn’t stay in my cube (write or post) much, but I did start visiting a lot more of them.

Then, GAP 2.0, as we called it, was introduced in September of 2005. It was a significant change in that now, instead of an endless sea of isolating cubicles, we were all now standing in the middle of a big town square. No hiding. No privacy. In fact, there were times where you couldn’t HAVE a conversation because EVERYONE was talking – and many just yelling at the top of their lungs because they could.

It was at that time I had started to write – and a lot. It wasn’t so much to yell louder than anyone else. My goal was to try to bring a calming effect to the GAP. Don’t post like you are sending Simple Message System text to your friends, but actually act like you are speaking to a few thousand people (who, btw, are ready to pounce on any percieved mistake). It was an amazing marketing tool for the group that created and maintains the GAP community. I actually befriended a few of the staff from that firm (Direct Partners). They were hired by SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America) to create this subset of the PlayStation Underground in order to get more metrics and other indicators. For the most part, it works well, but there are a lot of members who just don’t get why the GAP even exists. To give you an idea of what I mean, if Sony has an ornate crystal figurine of, say, a dolphin, and Microsoft has an ornate crystal goblet, with a fine engraving of a cougar on it, the people I say “do not get it” are the ones that complain that they should be able to drink from the dolphin. No, really, it is that blatent.

There was an interesting social experiment done there, too. A few, actually. It was amazing for a few of us to watch what happened. From these experiments the terms “FlyPaper” and “WIIFM” were coined. There are more, of course.

One thing that many of us watched happen is the development of cliques. I was baffled at first, but when you consider the GAP community as any other community – even high school – it began to make more sense. You had the odd ones, the better-than-you group, the self-proclaimed popular crowd, the nerds (although – in the GAP, Nerdism is a prerequisite for being there, since anyone who is part of the GAP is by definition a gamer).

After a great deal of discord over the rules, about 6 months after GAP 2.0 was introduced, DirectPartners added moderators to the GAP. I was one of 14 moderators, although 2 of them remained ‘quiet’ about being moderators when the rest of us went public. It was a good idea, in retrospect.

One thing I did learn to do is write online in a fashion that lent itself to conveying not only the story, but the telling of it. Pauses, stresses, purposeful misspellings and phonetic spelling. The use of [square] brackets to denote an optional word or phrase; the use of asterisks to describe an action associated with the prose *rereads the line he just wrote*; using ’single’ quotes to define a sarcastic or less effective paraphrase, rather than “actually quoting a source or previous fact”; using BLOCK caps to STRESS words, rather than using a bold or other typeface option; and … if needed … adding ellipses to indicate a dramatic pause. It was fun to do, and many times, I wrote simply hoping that anyone … someone … would just get a smile or giggle or open their mind, just for a moment.

After a time, a friend of mine (who I cannot name) from the GAP introduced me to WordPress by letting me know he had a blog there. I loved it. I started my own blog not long after that. I have started (and either closed or passed on) a few others since then. This is the only one I have now, and I will never get rid of it. I have mentioned my enjoyment in having a weblog on WordPress to a fair number of people, and at least 10 of them have actually created (and kept up) a blog here. I don’t want credit for that – I only mention it because I think it is cool.

Although I seldom ever actually post about ME, it is sastifying to be able to write. Even if nobody ever reads it. But, if you do read it, I thank you. I don’t expect comments, but they are always appreciated.

 

Pizza Hut Lied.

First off, I don’t have to “prove” anything – and you can search around the blogosphere – because even if you believe the commercial, most find it absolutely unbelievable that four somewhat normal people can be led back into their own house, fed at their own table and yet are fooled into thinking they are in an Italian restaurant.

I don’t fall for high-pressure sales, and I question things that I see – everywhere. But, you know how once someone has really lied to you, you think back (because hindsight is 20/20) and realize that wow, if they lied about THIS, then they probably lied about THAT. After looking at this latest commercial, I am finding the others to be highly suspect. I am sure that Pizza Hut – well known for being very forthcoming and always paying their fines … – will issue some statement explaining it all. I mean, I remember remarking (to her chagrin, of course) the statement that was shown on the other commercials, like “real people” seemed odd. I think my exact statement was, “they didn’t use the latex people for this commercial?”

I am just saying, I find it very, very hard to believe that these four people are made to leave home, blindfolded; we are to assume they have been driven around, blindfolded; led into their own home, blindfolded, and eat a meal in what they think is an Italian restaurant, blindfolded; and THEN, the blindfolds are removed to reveal that Pizza Hut take out is as good as an Italian restaurant.

First off – the obvious. Pizza Hut tastes like Italian food because – well – IT IS ITALIAN FOOD. Grow up, people. Now, seriously, am I the only human, or in some kind of elite 97th percentile that knows what my own house smells like, sounds like, feels like? How many people assume the only sound you are going to hear in this Italian restaurant is awfully similar to your own clock, furnace, fridge, that rosebush that taps on the window, the neighbour’s stupid dog that barks at falling leaves or your cat? Funny how that votive candle smell your wife put on the credenza or that garlic smell from last night’s fish seems to be EXACTLY like the smell you left 20 minutes ago. Pizza Hut is lucky this particular family doesn’t have a phone, or people that knock on the door to sell vacuums, cheap heating oil, religion or chocolate bars.

So, now, all that bull about serving Pizza Hut in “high class” restaurants – I don’t believe any of it. But, once you get big, like Yum, you start getting weird.