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Coincidental Happenings1.618033988749894848204586834365638117720309179805762862135448622705260462818902 |
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| What it's all about | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| I don't update on a schedule or anything, but I guess it happens often enough. Usually random memes, posts about what's been going on in my life lately, or things making me feel particularly frustrated, happy, miserable, enthusiastic, whatever. Almost all entries are public, as I don't feel the need to hide much from the general population. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 24th, 2007 @ 01:49 pm I passed all my courses~ | |||
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Mood:
*dance* relieved | ||
| May. 28th, 2007 @ 10:30 am Sketchy | |||
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| I got an email saying someone had tried to reset the password of this lj account. So if I start posting strange things, it's probably not me, but instead whoever it was who tried to get into my account. | ||
| Apr. 30th, 2007 @ 11:36 pm Las Vegas trip picture post | |||
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| ( Cut because of lots of pictures ) | ||
| Apr. 20th, 2007 @ 04:59 pm HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX | |||
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Current Location: LAS VEGAS
I'm actually sitting right next to him so it's a little silly to be making a post directed at him. But happy birthday anyway, Alex. | ||
| Apr. 11th, 2007 @ 06:56 pm Compare and Contrast | |||
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|   | ||
| Mar. 27th, 2007 @ 02:13 pm | |||
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| ( The movie list ) | ||
| Mar. 16th, 2007 @ 05:18 pm TMNT!! | |||
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Mood:
http://raincloud.warnerbros.com/wbmovie excitedMust... see.... They say it's geared towards the younger crowd, but most of the enjoyment I get out of it will be nostalgic anyway, and I was "the younger crowd" when I was in the habit of having tea with my ninja turtle action figures, so I figure it'll work out. If I can get tickets for opening night I may just have to also acquire a fair amount of green face paint and a red bandanna. | ||
| Jan. 4th, 2007 @ 01:31 pm Christmas/New Year's | |||
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Mood:
I flew in to Victoria on the 18th and my mom picked me up from the airport. Turns out that since she hasn't been spending her days off at home, she has no food in the house and hasn't been cooking lately (!!!!!) so we went out to a restaurant for some food. I had some excellent and very cheesy pasta. The next day I took the bus to the dentist and had my teeth made sparkly clean and an interesting conversation with my dental hygienist. I think we talked about a range of things like how white gold tarnishes and she wishes that she and her husband had gotten platinum instead, to how when a child has (mild) autism people interpret even normal behaviour as dysfunctional. Then later in the day we took the ferry to Vancouver to spend a couple days at Kevin's house. hungryI didn't realize until we had spent some time there that my mom's and Kevin's concerns about Kevin's 11-year-old son Carson are valid. Before I thought that they were overreacting. He's pretty out of control. Pretty much every moment I spent with him I put up with him constantly trying to put me down by calling me a nerd. ( More details about Carson ) Anyway, on the 21st we took the ferry to Nanaimo, and had dinner at my aunt's place in Duncan. It was kind of awkward because my uncle was really drunk and my aunt was a little bit drunk too. I spent Friday shopping with Adriana and Mary Anne, and we also briefly met up with Amaris. There were a lot of people we knew from St. Andrew's, like some teachers and younger students, hanging around the mall, so I ended up at least saying hi to quite a few people I had known in high school. On Friday evening I went to my grandma's for dinner. Saturday I was supposed to go see a movie with Martin but I had a really bad cold and didn't feel up to going out. On Sunday I went over to my dad's house and we watched the Russell Peters dvd I had bought for him for Christmas. Apparently he has a girlfriend, who knew? He kept insisting that it was nothing serious, before she arrived. He said she wanted something more serious but she knew he didn't want anything serious. She came over and it turns out that she had gotten me a Christmas gift, some pajamas. She had also made cookies. I thought she was pretty nice. Her name is Hilpa, and she's Filipino. It's funny though, he says it's nothing serious but when he went out for a cigarette we were talking about how he smokes too much and she said something like "Yeah, sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night and goes to smoke." So obviously she stays over sometimes. Also, there were several pairs of women's shoes in the foyer. I don't mind if it is something serious, I just don't really know what it is and what it isn't. In the evening we went over to my other aunt's house for dinner, the one who my dad hadn't been speaking to for a long time, so at least they seem to be making amends. Dinner was good, I got to see Rosalina and her family, and Dominic. Carter is two years old now and very cute. After dinner we played Rumoli and then Uno, which was fun. I went back to my mom's house to sleep, which I had decided on beforehand because I didn't want more drama at my dad's house. Kevin and the boys had come over earlier that day to spend Christmas with us. The next day was Christmas morning so we opened gifts. I got a paper mache mask from my mom, she had gotten it from Venice. I also got more pajamas, a puzzle, an interesting-looking game from Rose and Mike, various souvenirs from places in Europe, stuff like that. In the evening we went to Kevin's parents house for dinner. His dad was the leader of the first group of Snowbirds. That's the Canadian group of pilots that do tricks with their planes. So they gave me a collector's set of stamps and a $5 silver coin which are related to the Snowbirds. That was pretty interesting. On boxing day we took the ferry to Vancouver to catch our flight to Calgary. As I mentioned in the Carson cut, we ran into Mary Anne and her family on the ferry, which was nice because I got to see Mary Anne again. It seems like I don't get enough time to visit with old friends whenever I go home for holidays. I told my mom that next time I would like less things scheduled so that I have more flexibility to work around my friends' work schedules and meet up with more of them for longer. The flight was cool because we each had our own screen on the back of the seat in front of us, and we got to pick whatever movie we wanted to watch. Unfortunately it was only an hour and a half so I didn't quite finish watching A Scanner Darkly. I think rotoscoping(?) is an interesting way of doing movies though. My mom, Kevin, and his kids rented a car and went to his hometown for a few days. I met Alex at the airport and the twins (Melissa and Michelle) picked us up. We went to my auntie Clara's house, where we would be staying on an air mattress in the basement where Melissa and her boyfriend Ross lived. Ross got a Wii for Christmas so we played some Wii Sports. They introduced a drinking game that went along with bowling. If someone gets a strike, you have to take a drink, if you get a gutter ball, you have to take a drink, if someone gets two strikes in a row, you have to do a shot. It didn't go very far because we got called upstairs because pizza had arrived, but I'm a cheap drunk so I was feeling a little bit of a buzz. Ross also has a ps2 and Guitar Hero I and II. So I got crazy good at that in a few days. Well, not crazy good, but crazy for having only played it for a few days. It's driving me nuts, though, I had to leave with two songs left to beat on expert on Guitar Hero I. They're both pretty ridiculous though, not sure if I could get them. There was Bark at the Moon, which I can get about 65% through, and Cowboys from Hell, which I couldn't really come close to doing. In the next few days, we went shopping, got our hair cut by my auntie Madalena, and met various family members. On Friday (or Thursday?) my mom and the rest of them came back and we had dinner at my auntie Clara's with a bunch of other family. This is when the Carson getting kicked out of the basement incident happened. Later that night (or the next day, depending on if dinner happened on Thursday or Friday), the twins, Ross, and me and Alex went out to a club. All of us except Melissa (designated driver) got fairly drunk, but nothing embarrassing happened. Dancing was fun and the drinks were pretty good. The next day we went to Banff to visit the hot springs. Leo came with us too. The hot springs were pretty packed but it was still kind of fun. When we came back we went to my uncle Frank's for a big family gathering. And by big family gathering I mean there were 40+ people there. After spending five million hours introducing Alex to everyone who was there, we played Cranium with some of my cousins and other people. My mom had given Cranium to Alex for Christmas. The next day was New Year's Eve and we (auntie Clara household + auntie Madalena and Doug) went out to the golf course for dinner and dancing. The food was really good and the place was classy but most of the people aside from my family were at least 20 years older than us. The music was from the 60's and 70's but I had fun swing dancing with my auntie Madalena. At 10pm I called the Ontario people to wish them Happy New Year but their watches were wrong and they thought it was only 11:59 their time and they bitched at us for interrupting their countdown. The next day Lisa and her kids came over to auntie Clara's, as well as Louise and her kids, who I hadn't seen yet. We visited for a while and then took a plane back to Ontario. My family seemed to like Alex, which makes me happy. All in all it was a pretty good vacation. | ||
| Dec. 23rd, 2006 @ 10:04 pm Grades are in | |||
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| My overall average this term was 77, which is not bad. I'm slowly bringing my cumulative average up towards 80 rather than hovering around 75. I got an 89 in Applied Real Analysis, which I'm proud of because I studied really hard for the final. It's good to finally have hard work I put toward a course actually pay off, unlike when I was working really hard on school a few terms ago and had to miss my exams for a family emergency and write them months after I had taken the courses. Unfortunately, similar to that term I am once again sick in Victoria. I fly out to Calgary in three days so I am getting really worried about having this cold because I don't want to get ear infections and a sinus infection like last time when I flew while congested. Everybody wish me luck in getting better before I have to get on the plane! | ||
| Nov. 24th, 2006 @ 06:26 pm Applied Real Analysis | |||
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| I think this is the first time I have had a course with a good professor, material I genuinely enjoyed and mostly understood, lectures I attended most of, work that I did most of, and exams I studied for, and grades which disappoint me. Seriously, I've been to over 80% of the lectures, grasped the concepts presented in class, learned the techniques to work through problems, retained the information, which isn't that complicated, but when it comes to writing the exams, I just find that I don't have enough time to figure out the problems before the end of the exam. For the first midterm, I know what happened. There was one concept, contractive sequences, which I didn't really understand, so I spent most of my time studying them, and not enough time studying the rest of the material. Then contractive sequences didn't show up on the exam, and I didn't have enough practice with the stuff that was on the exam. For the second midterm, though, I studied all of the material from all of the lectures that would be covered on it, but on the exam, there were a couple problems that took me longer than they should have, and then I didn't have time to get to the last question. But it's not that the exams are too challenging or that the prof isn't good, because the exams seem like they would be about right, and the prof is coherent in his verbal and written explanations. He's friendly and welcomes questions if people don't understand. So I'm just really confused as to how I am doing so poorly in the course when everything seems to point to the result of me doing well. | ||
| Nov. 22nd, 2006 @ 03:23 pm Mandelbrot me | |||
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| So for my PMath370 class, Chaos and Fractals, I'm supposed to do a final project which somehow reflects content covered in the course. For my report that I wrote for the course a while back in the term, I wrote on the Mandelbrot set and the Julia sets, and the article that I reported on said that we can assign a rational number to each bulb around the main cardioid of the Mandelbrot set, and if you start at the cusp on the right side of the Mandelbrot set and move around the edge of the main cardioid in the clockwise direction, the order of the bulbs based on their assigned rational numbers is the natural order of the rational numbers between 0 and 1, and that there is a bulb for every rational number between 0 and 1. The article I wrote my report on didn't go into depth about this or explain why or show a proof that it was true, it just gave a few examples, so I was thinking, for my final project, that I could look up the references for where the author of that article got his information about the rational numbers related to the Mandelbrot set, and write an essay as my project actually explaining how we know that to be true and maybe a little bit about why it's true. I'm not sure what sort of mathematics it involves though, it might be beyond the scope of my education so far. We'll see, I guess. ( A picture of the Mandelbrot set (pretty!) ) | ||
| Nov. 16th, 2006 @ 12:27 am This title is self-referential | |||
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So I realized I haven't posted in like... seven months. From May through August I'm sure I would have updated all the time since I worked at a place where I was the supervisor and I didn't really have anything to do except in rare circumstances, or towards the end of the work term, except that the school I was working at blocked internet access to livejournal. Unfortunate! Anyway, I don't know if I wrote about it on livejournal at all but I was working for a place which gave lessons to kids about how to program videogames like pacman and frogger and so on, and the more complicated stuff was like, simple RPG games in C++ or Java. Overall I think the concept behind the company is really cool but the organization of the company could improve. Maybe it's just that they had expanded to another location across Canada and I think it was at the awkward stage where there were not enough locations that had managers who had been with the company long enough that they could make decisions without checking with the owners yet, but too many locations for the owners of the company to easily handle all the details of all the locations. I think it was a good experience but I don't think I'll be going back there to work. Middle management is not the position for me, though I did enjoy the teaching aspect of the job. I wrote my work report but I have to revise some parts of it before the university people will accept it. The Co-op system is frustrating and I think i will be finding a job on my own and submitting a job info form to get credit for it next work term, so that I can avoid jobmine. I had a conversation with Alex about it earlier today and he put it nicely when he said that the jobmine people are most concerned with getting the best statistics possible to advertise for the university rather than actually matching students with appropriate jobs. This term I'm taking Applied Real Analysis, Chaos and Fractals, Social Psychology, and Educational Psychology. I dropped one of the courses I started taking (at the beginning of the term when it doesn't matter if you drop a course) because pseudointellectual discussions about the nature of intelligence isn't really my thing anymore, I guess. I attended a couple lectures and realized I would be bored out of my mind and not care about the class, but that there was groupwork so I would have to put effort into the class anyway, so I dropped it. I haven't been doing that well on my exams but I don't think my average will be significantly lower this term so I guess it doesn't matter that much. I'm enjoying my math courses and my psych courses are interesting enough I guess. My mom has a boyfriend named Kevin and she keeps thinking that I'm going to develop some complex about her dating new people since she and my dad broke up, but I really don't mind. Kevin is a nice guy and I've met him a few times, he seems to make my mom happy so that's enough for me. She keeps saying she has to have a serious conversation with me about whether I'm comfortable with her moving in with him, but the conversation is pretty much, "Are you okay with this?" "Sure, go ahead, you can make your own decisions." I guess I appreciate that she discusses stuff like this with me before going through with it, but I think it's a little amusing how she seems all paranoid that I'm going to have a complex about it. Her boyfriend has two boys, 8 and 11, and the 11 year old one likes to call me names. I think it's funny because I just call him a loser in return. We're both just kidding around and nobody's feelings are getting hurt but apparently Kevin doesn't like to hear his son call me names so I'm supposed to not egg him on. I'm going to Victoria for Christmas and then Calgary for New Year's, and Alex is going to be flying out to Calgary too to meet some of my aunts/uncles/cousins/friends of the family. That should be fun, I'm looking forward to it. I'm supposed to get my wisdom teeth out when I go to Victoria for Christmas but I think the dentist will just tell me that they haven't grown enough and it will be another year or so, like he has for the past three or four years. I don't know if my dad is on speaking terms with my auntie Mary or not but if he is then things will be simple because I can just have a family dinner with that half of the family, but if he isn't then I'll have to pretty much spend a day alone with him which I anticipate to be either extremely stressful, or very quiet. I got into the beta for Burning Crusade for World of Warcraft and that's tons of fun, the new content is muchly needed for people to maintain interest in WoW. Our guild Eventually is suffering a little due to lacking raid attendance from members but I think that some of that is not so much a guild problem as a problem with people losing interest in the current content of the game. Hopefully things hold together until January when people will have more things in the game to amuse them. Even if we don't have enough people to raid when Burning Crusade comes out, we'll have plenty of time while levelling to 70 to find good people to join us. The content is geared towards smaller groups of people which is something I like about it. My warlock is now level 66 and I have taken a break from beta for a bit so that she can build up rest xp and level faster, since I know the grind from 66-70 is a long one. A few weeks ago I went to a charity ball (see http://spoonkun.livejournal.com/165 I'm sure I've missed tons of super important things to update about but that's what happens when you try to mash in seven months of life content into one post. Maybe I'll think of something later and post again, or maybe it will be another seven months before I update again. Oh yeah! I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few months ago and it is excellent. Like that is a quality movie in so many ways. I highly recommend watching it sometime. And if you live near me and plan on watching it, let me know because I want to see it again. | ||
| Apr. 16th, 2006 @ 07:45 pm Happy Easter | |||
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Mood:
[TKid] says: amusedLmfao. [TKid] says: "Jesus was SSed." | ||
| Apr. 12th, 2006 @ 04:04 pm SO BORED!! | |||
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Mood:
So I'm at home in Victoria now for another 5 days. There was a big hole in my exam schedule so my mom wanted me to come home for Easter in between. I have another two exams when I get back. I might have passed Stat230! And I feel like I did decently well on my calc final. Alg and C&O are left. I'm frustrated because Niella is lvl 59 right now and I can't play because my laptop can't play WoW and I usually play on Alex's computer/laptop but I don't have either of those while I'm in Victoria. Argh. I also miss all my friends. Maybe things will pick up a little once my mom gets back from Vancouver and I'm not at my dad's place, since then I'll be meeting her boyfriend Kevin and his two kids. That'll be interesting. Anyway. I'm going to.. eat breakfast or something. bored | ||
| Feb. 16th, 2006 @ 08:58 pm Inverse Johari | |||
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Mood:
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Niella waryNohari! Now you get to say all the bad things about me you wanted to say but couldn't in the Johari window. | ||
| Feb. 15th, 2006 @ 11:29 am Johari Window | |||
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Mood:
http://kevan.org/johari?name=Niella curiousMy opinion is that you should fill this out for me. | ||
| Feb. 8th, 2006 @ 07:38 pm OMG AN UPDATE | |||
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| Academically so far, this term has been pretty unmotivated. Seems like it's like that for a lot of people. Also I'm pretty unmotivated to find a co-op job. The "it'll get done eventually" attitude is prevalent as usual, only a little worse than in past terms. In any case, aside from the school part of this school term being full of indifference, the other aspects of the term have been extremely awesome. I'm very happy with where I am right now. I became a rangemaster for the archery club, so that's something good I think, and I participated in a climbing competition near the beginning of the term which was a lot of fun. I haven't been climbing since, but I hope to start that up again really soon. Another thing that should be mentioned is that I finally got sucked in. My female gnome warlock is currently level 26 and will probably hit 27 by later tonight. I have two assignments to due before I go to sleep tonight, though, so I'm not sure what time I'll be waking up tomorrow. I have one class on Tuesdays and Thursdays which is really hard to motivate myself to go to since I barely attended any lectures before the first midterm and I got an 87 on it somehow. The assignments aren't actually due until Friday morning, but I have a DnD session tomorrow night that I don't want to have to cram doing my assignments in before. Or after, since I actually do have to wake up on Friday to hand in the assignments. I learned how to play Bridge, and it's certainly a lot of fun. I like the bidding system a lot as it has a lot of flexibility about how specific or vague you are about information you're revealing about your hand. The fact that the declarer's partners hand is open is another interesting part of it. I'm not going to attempt to describe the bidding system in detail on here though since I'm pretty sure I'd either botch it horribly or type 1000 words and still not have an adequate description. Anyway, that's that. Expect next update to be somewhere between a week and 6 months from now. :P | ||
| Jan. 1st, 2006 @ 12:53 pm Calgary | |||
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Mood:
I doubt I'll have time to update for ages after I get back to Waterloo, what with classes starting a not-long-enough night's sleep after I get back, so I'll do a quick rundown of what's been going on in Calgary. My cousin's wedding was lots of fun. The priest did magic tricks to demonstrate how the story of Jesus changing water into wine when it ran out at the wedding represents how turning to God when you run out of love in your marriage can help things. I watched my cousin Brett's hockey game, they won 6-1. He's 13 and a pretty good hockey player, and I find that hockey is more interesting to watch when you know the people playing. I went horseback riding with my cousin Jenna. The last time I went horseback riding was years ago and so it was a little embarrassing to have an 8-year-old telling me how to move when the horse is trotting and laughing at my bouncing. I saw my mom's uncle and aunt, who are 89 and 83 respectively. Her aunt is really energetic and social, it's weird to compare her to my own grandmother who is only 77, who seems so much older. But overall I've been having a great time seeing all my relatives. My family here in Calgary is great, and I wish I could come here more often. happy | ||
| Dec. 26th, 2005 @ 12:54 am Christmas | |||
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Mood:
( More trouble with my dad ) upset | ||
| Dec. 21st, 2005 @ 07:27 pm Exams | |||
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Mood:
So, Calc II. I rocked that exam, seriously. I feel like it's a high 90. I had an answer for every question, but I hesitate to say I got 100% because that's a little ridiculous and it's likely that I made a few careless errors here and there. pleasedAs for CS, I uh, did well? On CS? I didn't think it possible, but apparently it is. I estimate my mark to be somewhere between 80 and 90, but it feels more like it's between 85 and 90. There were a couple questions about Big-O notation that I wasn't sure exactly how they wanted me to do it, so I ended up doing it my own way. ( Prove 100(n^2 + n + 1) is O(n^2) -- 'Danielle has just spent an entire weekend studying Calc II' style ) The other question was prove n*sqrt(n) is not O(n) and that was done just by showing that the limit of n*sqrt(n)/n is not 1 as n approached infinity. So the funny thing about these is that I had no idea if these answers would be acceptable since they totally don't make use of the CS definition of Big-O. Lino happened to be the one to mark this question and came up to me in the SLC shouting that he just finished marking my exam but he wasn't allowed to tell me my mark, the bastard. :P However, we had a brief "unrelated" conversation about Big-O and whether the use of limits is a valid way of going about solving certain problems, and it seems that we are in concordance. Another kind of interesting question was the induction proof where you're told that the S_T = h_T + S_L + S_R where S_T is the sum height of the tree T, h is the height of T, and S_L is the sum height of T's left subtree L and S_R is the sum height of T's right subtree R. As in, the sum height of a tree is the sum of all the heights of all its subtrees. You're supposed to prove that S_T <= 3^h and you're given that k <= 3^(k-1). ( The Proof ) | ||
| Dec. 17th, 2005 @ 12:17 pm Done Linear Algebra | |||
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Mood:
That exam was not good. It was a different prof, so the areas of emphasis in the course material were completely different. Exam was out of 60, and there was a 16 mark question about a part of the material that my prof barely spoke about, and this one apparently thought was like, the most important part of the course. It's just hard when everything is phrased differently, or asked by somebody who has a different view of the concepts, and so on. It's really frustrating and I feel like it's really unfair that if I had written the exam when I was supposed to write it I would have had a mark at least 10 percent higher than the one I'm going to get now. disappointedI'm really upset about it because if I could have done well on this exam my overall cumulative average would likely have been above 80, which is significant since when it's above 80, if you want to do stuff outside of what is normally allowed, they take you seriously, like if you want to take an extra course, if you want to take an advanced course, and so on. So maybe now I won't even be able to go into Math249 instead of Math239. Or maybe it's worse, maybe I actually don't have what it takes to be able to do the advanced course instead of the regular one. Whether it's intelligence or diligence or both that's the problem I'm not sure, but in any case I might have to re-evaluate how wise a decision it would be to go into Math249 instead if they'll even let me at all. | ||
| Dec. 17th, 2005 @ 08:16 am Linear Algebra | |||
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Mood:
So it's time to leave and write my linear algebra final, four months after I finished the course, and I've managed to refamiliarize myself with all the concepts. I'm still a little worried that I just won't be able to do the questions fast enough to finish the whole exam. I don't know what my final mark will be in the course, but at least I'm going in with a high mark so if I do decently well but not spectacularly, my mark will still be good. Wish me success! nervous.. maybe? | ||
| Dec. 13th, 2005 @ 01:50 pm The Year in Review | |||
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| ( Paste the first few lines of each post from January to December of 2005 ) | ||
| Dec. 6th, 2005 @ 03:58 pm Fortune cookie fun! ... in bed. | |||
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Mood:
One I got last night: amusedBackground noise: radio stuff People find it difficult to resist your persuasive manner. | ||
| Dec. 3rd, 2005 @ 10:18 pm She likes doing dishes? She must be mentally challenged. I dunno if we should take advantage. | |||
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Mood:
This 25x25 sudoku is pretty ridiculous. The logic isn't any more difficult than in a regular sudoku, but there's just so much to take into account at once that it's really slow-going. I'll get through it, it's just going to take a long time. I still have to write my work report and it seems like that's something that's going to happen entirely tomorrow, but I guess that's okay since I don't have anything planned for tomorrow anyway, except maybe laundry. But laundry can be done at the same time as other stuff so that's cool. We found the switch to turn on the heaters in our rooms so maybe I won't be cold the whole time I'm at home anymore. calmBackground noise: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger | ||
| Dec. 1st, 2005 @ 09:56 pm Time is a weird weird thing | |||
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Mood:
This term is crawling but at the same time I have so much stuff I have to do before the near-end of it hits that I'm starting to feel swamped and like I have no time to accomplish what I need to. I haven't seen any material for calc, alg, or cs for around a term and I have a lot of information to get into my head, but tonight I'm just not motivated whatsoever to do any of it. In fact I'm not motivated to do much at all. I don't want to play a game, or just hang around on my computer talking to people, or anything. The idea of starting my work report is awful and I don't want to pull out any textbooks. I know I have to buckle down and do it all at some point but things are still far enough away that the pressure isn't really enough for that yet if I'm feeling this opposed to doing any of it. I guess the prospect of reading my textbook for developmental psych isn't that bad, and the idea of doing the actual assignment problems for calc isn't so bad, but it's getting started and looking at the whole chunk of everything that needs to be done that's really discouraging. guiltyBackground noise: Vienna Teng - Harbor Thing is, I like learning new stuff, I really do. But all the stuff I need to cover before I write my exams is stuff that I already knew and that I had to miss the exam for. So going over it isn't learning it or figuring it out or anything, it's just reviewing stuff from a whole term ago. I really don't like cs134 and I hate that I have to go through it all again. Calc and alg are okay but it's a lot of work and it feels unfair that I couldn't just do the exams when I was supposed to because I would have gotten awesome marks on both of them. Now I have a lot to do if I want to get a decent mark in either of them, even. And my family acts like I was being disrespectful by going out and doing enjoyable things with friends while I was in Victoria since it was so soon after my grandpa died. The one would-have-been redeeming factor by the time the end of last term came around was that I was doing extremely well academically, and I couldn't even carry that out since I was respectful enough to fly home for the funeral. Missing exams isn't something to shrug off and I'm not sure how many of my family members understood that it was a big deal. I don't even know what they really think of me. Because my dad was always telling me how they said to him that I was lazy and disrespectful and ungrateful and just not a good daugther or whatever, that's what I feel like they think of me, even though I found out from Dominic that they didn't say those things. It frustrates me because even if things are all good while I'm with them for Christmas this year, I can't help but feel like they'd at least be criticizing me (either in their minds or talking with each other) about not going to the hospital in Vancouver to visit my dad over the break, even though he's the one who told me that he wouldn't be paying for the plane tickets even in part, and that I would have to charge it all to my mom's credit card. My parents are still not even speaking with each other so my mom is getting concerned about this income tax form that the university is going to send to my home address (which is where my dad lives) for tuition. She thinks that she'll get screwed out of claiming it this term even though it's supposed to be her turn. In developmental psychology there was a topic on how if you tell somebody something about them often enough, you can stop saying it, because they start saying it to themselves. Whenever there would be an argument with my dad, whether it was with me or with my mom and I interfered, he'd say things like "you know ZERO," like that I just don't know anything at all about anything, or that I was lazy and selfish and that he was sick of me. And there were arguments with my dad pretty often.. I don't really feel like I don't know anything, but that's maybe because I've had a lot to contradict that. Like I've always done really well in school and people seem to get the impression that I'm intelligent and somewhat knowledgeable, so there was a lot to make me think he didn't know what he was talking about when he said I didn't know anything. But I think I still have quite a bit of insecurity about people thinking that I'm lazy or selfish or just.. unappreciative or I don't even know. But then I think, maybe the reason why I feel that way is because it's true. Maybe I am lazy and selfish. Maybe I'm unfair on my dad in the first place. Maybe in my mind I exaggerate all the things he said and did just so that I can feel like I'm not so completely in the wrong for having such a poor relationship with him and not doing anything about it. Like right now he's helping me out with a weird legal situation about our landlords and he's also paying for me to go to Montreal for another weekend, so it's obviously not that he doesn't care about me or want to do nice things for me, since it's quite clear through his actions that he wants to do things for me. I'm not very good to my mom either. I'm irritable on the phone with her whenever we talk even though sometimes I'm actually quite looking forward to talking to her. Last night she was pretty stressed out and upset about some stuff going on at work and about this tax thing, and I was pretty much irritable the whole time until I started letting myself feel that I was actually feeling really bad about how I wasn't being compassionate at all. I managed to fix that up and actually cheer her up about other things too so it wasn't so awful, but I feel bad about my general attitude. I think there's this whole plethora of negative emotions that I have when it comes to my parents that I don't let myself feel usually. In grade twelve, the religion teacher, Mr. Brock, gave this talk about his dad and how there was this whole thing about them having a poor relationship and then his dad was dying and he barely could make up for it at all, and so they geared us all to already starting to feel about our own relationships with our parents, and then they gave us these letters that they had had our parents write to us without letting us know beforehand, and after everyone had gone into their own little space in the room to read the letters, not a single person wasn't at least crying a little bit. I was sobbing pretty badly because there was a lot that I felt bad about with my parents, like how I would spend all day in my room on the computer and they would have to ask me to come out and spend five minutes with them once a day (aside from supper) and even then I'd be impatient for the five minutes to end. Also, at the time I had feelings for someone online and I had been hiding this from them and I'd actually lied to my mom about it, which I felt extremely guilty about. I called them on a payphone at like 2:00am that night to tell the truth to my mom and apologize for being such a shitty daughter, but nothing really ended up changing. I even asked my mom not to tell my dad about what I'd told her. Now I barely talk to my parents for ten minutes on the phone in a week. So this post was just going to be about procrastination and whatever, but it seems to have turned into this whole big thing about my parents so I don't even know why it came to that, but whatever, I guess it just has to get out sometimes. | ||
| Dec. 1st, 2005 @ 04:10 pm FIVE LIGHT GREEN GONMONS | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Nov. 29th, 2005 @ 10:43 pm Midterm 2 results | |||
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Developmental psych midterm number two resulted in a 91. I estimated getting around the same as on the first one, and I got a 92 on that one, so it seems my judgement isn't that bad. calmBackground noise: Paul Oakenfold - Southern Sun Now I have a Paul Oakenfold album on my computer and it's good. edit for Alex: Yes, it was through you allowing me to purchase the album on your iTunes account that it got on my computer. Thank you muchly. :) | ||
| Nov. 29th, 2005 @ 11:41 am Get a room! | |||
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There is this huge group of people here in the SLC every day practicing some play, I have no idea what it's for or anything, but it's really disruptive and annoying. They sometimes block up so much of the staircase down to the bottom floor of the SLC that it's hard for traffic to flow, they're very loud, the acting is horrible, and recently I discovered that there is a "musical" element to this play as well, and it's sung by the most tone deaf people I've ever heard. They don't put up any signs saying that it's just a dramatization and there are some parts of it that involve a lot of screaming, so if they weren't such bad actors I'd be worried that someone might misinterpret and call the police or something. annoyedI don't have a problem with people trying to improve their dramatic skills by exercising them, but really, there are rooms and whatever that you can book on campus so that you can do it without disrupting everyone around you. | ||
| Nov. 26th, 2005 @ 05:13 pm Njet! | |||
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So last night I played this really awesome game for the first time. It's called Njet! and it plays a little like euchre with a lot more strategy to it. It's played with its own type of cards. There are 40 of them, 4 suits with 10 in each suit. Two ones and one of the numbers 2-9. The dealer deals out 10 cards to each player. Everyone starts with four markers except the dealer, who starts with 3. The markers are placed starting with the player to the left of the dealer and going clockwise, on a special card for the game. The card has 5 rows. The first row is a symbol of each player, the second is the number of cards to be discarded (zero, one, or two), the third is what suit is trump, the fourth is which coloured "one" card is supertrump, as in the highest trump (also an option in this row is "njet!" which means there are no supertrump), and the fifth row is how many points each trick is worth. So you place markers on which options you want blocked out until all of the markers are used up and there is one option left in each row. The player symbol left up is who gets to pick their partner (that's right, partners change from round to round). Sometimes your partner is beside you, sometimes across from you. Gameplay can really vary from round to round. Also, if you capture a "one" from the opposite team it's worth an extra trick. Also, since there are two of each, if both are played in the same trick, the SECOND one is considered higher than the first one. So suppose in one round, one team gets three tricks and the other gets six, then the people on each team get points added to their individual scores depending on how many points tricks were worth that round. In the end the player with the highest point total wins. The game ends when you get to the bottom of the score sheet. It's really interesting and I think I'll be playing quite a bit more of it. happy | ||
| Nov. 25th, 2005 @ 03:34 pm In response to Nick's mini-rant about tipping | |||
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Since the link to comment on your blog isn't working on this computer, I have to reply on here. hungryAbout tipping and standard percentages, etc, you know what annoys me? When people think you're obligated to tip. A tip is to thank the server for good service, and if the service wasn't good, or if it was only mediocre, or whatever, why should you be expected to tip a certain amount higher than you feel they deserve? Suppose you do always tip a minimum of 15%. What happens when the service actually was great? Then if you give only 15% you feel like you're being cheap and not thanking them for their good service because 15% is what the worst server in the world would get from you. So what, you should have to give 20%? 25%, maybe? For somebody who might not be in the best financial position in the first place, this is getting pretty expensive for every time you go anywhere that leaves a line that says "TIP:" on the receipt or that asks you if you want to add a tip on a debit machine. I think it's probably not a great thing to do to always leave nothing whenever you go out, but I don't think you should be expected to tip a minimum of 15% regardless of what the service was like or your own financial position. | ||
| Nov. 17th, 2005 @ 02:34 pm Hobbies? | |||
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edit: Does this sound too much like bragging? I don't mean it to, I'm just thinking about the things I'm interested in and my accomplishments with them so far so I thought I'd write about it. optimisticI've been a little disappointed with myself when it came to archery lately because it seemed like I just couldn't shoot well, but it's all good because last night I shot far better than ever before and scored 230 at 18m. Next term there is going to be quite a few tournaments so I'm going to be shooting more often and going to some of those. I'm taking it seriously this term, but next term is going to be hardcore and it's going to rock. I haven't been playing the piano, and realizing how long it's been makes me a little sad, so later today I'm going over to the piano room to play for a while. I still eventually want to do my grade 10 exam, but unless I start playing more often and actually practicing technique and take more care with the quality of my performances, that's not happening anytime soon. Climbing has been going well, recently I've been consistently able to climb up across the cave, and I'm working on being able to climb down now. I'm less concerned with actually being able to get across as I am with being able to figure out effective ways to do it, as in paying attention to weight distribution and balance and how that affects stability when going from hold to hold. I was drawing a few weeks ago and things were actually turning out well. I was taking more care with the final product, like doing shading and everything, and things were better than they've been for quite a while. As for karate, I'm regretting not keeping up with it now, but I guess there are still opportunities for later on. I don't know if I'll ever be thoroughly involved with it while I'm at university, but I suppose as long as I keep myself in shape I'll be able to pick it up again quickly enough when I get the chance. I guess I'm afraid that if I put it off for long enough I won't have any motivation to start it up again when I do have the time to. It's hard, though, I really loved the club and instructor I was with and I think it might take me a while to adjust to a new club. Last term I attempted to pick up Swing but I ended up missing quite a few sessions, and I was planning to take it up again this term but that didn't work out either, so next term, as I've found out that more of my friends may be joining, I might have more motivation to actually follow through with it, so I might attempt it again. So all in all things are pretty good, I'm involved in a lot of stuff and I'm fairly good at what I put my mind to doing. Something to feel good about, I guess. | ||
| Nov. 14th, 2005 @ 11:02 pm Dev Psych II | |||
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The exam went really well, I predict somewhere in the low 90s for my mark. I couldn't remember that the fourth reason that children might have difficulty with the concept of conservation according to Piaget is that they are perception bound. accomplishedI know what it means, and I wrote that in my answer, but I couldn't remember what he called it. The other reasons were irreversibility, focus on state rather than transformation, and centration. | ||
| Nov. 13th, 2005 @ 02:48 pm You are not the light of my laundry machine! | |||
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( Montréal! ) cheerfulBackground noise: Scooter - One(Always Hardcore) | ||
| Nov. 9th, 2005 @ 02:23 pm Hiccoughs :( | |||
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I have the hiccoughs at work and it sucks, they just don't stop. happyUpdate on Montreal trip to come later! | ||
| Nov. 3rd, 2005 @ 10:34 am Meme-ories | |||
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If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want, either good or bad. I promise not to come after you with a spatula, either way. curiousWhen you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you. | ||
| Nov. 3rd, 2005 @ 08:31 am I know Kung Fu | |||
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Just over 15 hours! excited( I love tight-fitting costumes ) | ||
| Nov. 2nd, 2005 @ 03:16 pm I'm done with cognitive processes! | |||
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That's right, no more thinking for me. bouncyAnyway, the back-to-back exams are done with. I estimate the results to be somewhere centred around 80 for each of them. Maybe a little higher if I got lucky with a few of the questions I had to guess on. Had some fun with the written, though, when I drew a complete blank about the Stroop effect. Ended up guessing something wrong, but close enough that the answer to the second part of the question (worth 3 marks out of a total 5) was almost completely right. Next up, Developmental Psych's second midterm on the 19th. I'll be in Montreal in less than 33 hours. :D | ||
| Oct. 31st, 2005 @ 10:39 pm My life rocks | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Oct. 28th, 2005 @ 12:05 pm He's mastered the pincer grasp!! | |||
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I'm at work and once again I've finished everything I needed to do for the week a day early, so I'm sitting here doing nothing. I've already done the sudoku in the Imprint and looked one up to do online, so I don't really feel like doing another one just yet. boredI'm trying to figure out if I should go to Victoria or Calgary for Christmas. My dad is going to be in Vancouver in the hospital after having surgery done on his leg, so at first my understanding was that I wouldn't be seeing him anyway so I might as well go to Calgary since I'm going there for my cousin's wedding on New Year's anyway. But now my mom is telling me that my family is expecting me to go to Victoria for Christmas, also go to Vancouver to see my dad in the hospital, and then go to Calgary for New Year's. They think my dad is going to sink into some kind of horrible depression after his surgery and not seeing me at Christmas will just make it worse. This is the same family that isn't speaking to him because he's been such an asshole and they figure he needs to realize that he can't treat people the way he treats them and expect them to stick around, and yet they expect me to make things all better for him. Personally I agree with them, he needs to realize that people won't stick around if he treats them badly, and for me to go and be this supportive, loving daughter when that isn't what I actually feel towards him makes me really uncomfortable. They want me to write him a letter trying to help him become a better person or something, but to me, making a gesture like writing a letter is saying that I'm ready to want to repair my relationship with him and put all the effort that's necessary into helping him and becoming close to him and so on, but I'm really not ready to do that. Another thing is that my family in Victoria is supposedly not going to have a joyful Christmas because it goes against Italian tradition to celebrate things when there's been a death in the family. So because my grandpa died at the end of July, they aren't having a Christmas celebration. Also, they're not going to my cousin's wedding in Calgary supposedly because of the same reasons. I really don't agree with that tradition and so I thought it might be good if I went and spent Christmas with the other side of my family, in Calgary. But now Rose has sent me pictures of her and Mike and Carter (14 months old now) and I realize I do want to see them at least for Christmas, so I may end up going to Victoria after all. I'm just not looking forward to having to go to Vancouver and visit the hospital. | ||
| Oct. 21st, 2005 @ 09:35 am Not indescribable geekitude... | |||
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( Describable Nerditude! ) nerdyBackground noise: radio Also... ( ABBAABBACDEDCE ) | ||
| Oct. 19th, 2005 @ 10:30 pm Next term is going to be nuts... | |||
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My schedule for next term looks insane for the first couple weeks. Even though I want to go into the advanced C&O section, I have to enroll first into the normal one, attend both lectures, and see if I still want to switch. If I actually go to my tutorials, it's pretty nuts. crazyMonday 10:30-11:20 Math249 11:30-12:20 Math237 12:30-1:20 Math235 1:30-2:20 Math239 2:30-3:20 Stat230 5:30-6:20 Math235 (tutorial) Tuesday 2:30-3:50 Psych257 Wednesday 10:30-11:20 Math249 11:30-12:20 Math237 12:30-1:20 Math235 1:30-2:20 Math239 2:30-3:20 Stat230 3:30-4:20 Stat230 (tutorial) 4:30-5:20 Math239 (tutorial) 5:30-6:20 Math237 (tutorial) Thursday 2:30-3:50 Psych257 Friday 10:30-11:20 Math249 11:30-12:20 Math237 12:30-1:20 Math235 1:30-2:20 Math239 2:30-3:20 Stat230 | ||
| Oct. 19th, 2005 @ 04:01 pm Exam time! | |||
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Wish me success! hopeful | ||
| Oct. 18th, 2005 @ 10:48 am Developmental Psych | |||
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This course is really interesting, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I like the concept of a two-way influence of child and environment. A child's temperament influences how adults treat him, and how adults treat him influences his temperament. Also it's so interesting to think about how different kinds of development affect each other. Example, developing motorically so that you gain the ability to reach towards things with your hands and attempt to grasp them opens up the possibility of so many more different kinds of experiences that help towards cognitive development, and cognitive development helps you understand the world around you better and in a more organized way, which helps with the development of perception, which helps with motoric development.. and so on. interestedWhen discussing fractals and mathematical patterns being aesthetically pleasing, Alex once told me that he thought one aspect of beauty was complexity, as in the more complex something was before we stopped being able to perceive the pattern, the more beautiful. Interestingly enough, in developmental psychology I learned that as long as infants can perceive them, they prefer gazing at the more complex images. For instance, if shown a picture of a checkerboard with 16 squares, or a checkerboard the same size with 64 squares, adults will prefer to look at the more complex board, but to infants, their visual sense is not developed enough to perceive the more complex board (they see a grey blur), and so they prefer looking at the 16-square board. If presented a blank square or a checkerboard simple enough for them to see, they prefer the checkerboard. | ||
| Oct. 18th, 2005 @ 09:53 am The world hates me | |||
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Vienna Teng is playing in Montreal on Sunday. I'm going to Montreal, but not at the right time to see her. Then I found out she's playing in Toronto on Tuesday, so that brightened my hopes for a bit, except that when I checked the site that was selling tickets, it told me there was a 19+ age restriction because of the venue. So I can't go to that either. disappointed | ||
| Oct. 13th, 2005 @ 03:10 pm It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all... | |||
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So Martin knows of one of my best friends in Victoria, Mary Anne, entirely without my doing! He's friends with Harrison from a swing dancing club in Victoria, who I also know and am friends with. Harrison, if you even pay any attention to livejournal anymore, isn't that crazy? happyBackground noise: good radio stuff | ||
| Oct. 12th, 2005 @ 02:25 pm Trampoline-a-thon! | |||
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In the basement of the SLC they are holding a TRAMPOLINE-A-THON to raise money to help with the various disasters that have been happening around the world. I think the idea of a trampoline-a-thon has got to be one of the best things I've ever heard EVER. I'm so high-energy today it rocks. They are also playing awesome music to go along with this trampoline-a-thon and it makes me want to dance around. bouncyBackground noise: awesome I really want to go out there and bounce on one of the trampolines to raise money but I have to work until 4:30 and then I have class! :( | ||
| Oct. 11th, 2005 @ 01:57 pm Woo | |||
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I am having a totally awesome day. I've sorted out my issues with my exams and courses with Serge D'Alessio and I've also made arrangements to talk to my Psych207 prof from last term after work today to figure out when I'm making up my midterm and final that I missed last term. Everything seems to be working out, people seem to be helpful and cooperative, and as an added bonus, my boss who I don't like very much is out of the country for this whole week and so at work it's just me and my two coworkers who are fantastic. ecstaticBackground noise: radio stuff | ||
| Oct. 10th, 2005 @ 05:19 pm Google "(your name) needs" meme | |||
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Danielle needs to let the Social Security Administration know. cheerfulBackground noise: Vienna Teng - Harbor Danielle needs to involve Cienna in the process of getting ready for bed. Danielle needs some advice about IUI pregnancy please! Danielle needs to stop making stuff up. Danielle needs to be abused!! Danielle needs new sequencing with her putting while Pamela needs to overcome some covert fears about speed control. Danielle needs four wheel drive. Danielle needs to be attuned to how she is feeling to determine how far she can push herself. Danielle needs more. Danielle needs a family that is stable, supportive and has a firm structure. | ||
| Oct. 6th, 2005 @ 04:00 pm Gravity | |||
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( lyrics ) anxiousSuch an awesome song. Almost all of Vienna Teng's lyrics that I've seen so far are just amazing. | ||
8.4
8.2
5.6