Remember the Y2K bug?
While walking home, it somehow occurred to me that since timestamps are stored as 32-bit integers, what happens if it goes on for too long and overflows? (See Unix time article on Wikipedia for more info)
Looks like I’ll be quite busy next week.
I went through co-op intake yesterday. Just a few hours after, I was notified that I have been accepted into the program. Woohoo!
But I probably won’t be applying to stuff until the week afterwards. Lots of stuff to handle next week.
The big events are the CMPT 307 quiz/midterm that’s coming up on Monday and my self-imposed deadline on Wednesday, which I technically have an extension till Thursday now since that is when I am meeting up with my boss to talk about it. But hey, a deadline’s a deadline and it must be kept. Hopefully I’ll be able to work wonders with my time and avoid the distractions to get things working nicely. Something to pray for.
There’s almost a Scout leader’s meeting sometime during the week as well that has yet to be scheduled. I’ll need to throw that into the schedule somewhere once the time’s decided.
According to Timbo, the practice questions for 307 are quite hard. That has me worried a bit. But then, the fact that there isn’t that much time to really study is also worrying. Saturday’s pretty much occupied with WCCCLC training stuff, Sunday morning’s occupied with Mass, and Sunday afternoon with a WCCCLC promotion team meeting, which really means I have a small block of time Friday, a few hours Saturday night, and all Sunday evening to study for this potentially uber-hard quiz. Something else to pray for.
Then mom’s coming home after three weeks in Hong Kong on Tuesday, and she’s bringing home some 香片 (jasmine tea), which makes me a happy camper. I love that stuff. It’s so delicious and fragrant. And she’s got her birthday coming up on Saturday, which means going out for dinner. Thankfully, by that time, the busy week is over, so it’ll be like a cooldown period.
As an aside, Code Geass is awesome. And from what I heard about it from Dan, Afro Samurai sounds pretty ludicrously awesome as well.
How so you might ask? Let’s see here. Besides the fact that Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of the protagonist, a black samurai with an afro, they have a mix of feudal and modern technologies, one example of which is fully automatic crossbows with RPGs mounted underneath. I think that warrants a WTF.
Well, wish me luck and/or pray for me. I’ll be needing it.
It took me so long, but I’m finally beginning to go towards getting some co-op experience. The intake takes place this week. After taking a good look at some of the paperwork, I really want to kick myself now. I really do.Why? Because I’m stupid, lazy, naive, and full of regret.
Here I am in what pretty much is considered my fourth year and I am finally going to attempt getting into the co-op program. Why am I starting so late in my undergraduate career, you may ask.
I got into CS from high school on guarenteed placement, which is essentially I get in if I get my GPA high enough. Getting fully into the CS program took a bit over two years. If only I studied harder and better and cared more about my marks instead of going on with a slacker attitude, only then would I have gotten into the program sooner.
So finally, after getting into the program, I didn’t start going towards co-op right away simply because of them saying on their website that you need to maintain a GPA of 2.5 or better to be in good standing with the co-op program.
I finally take Bridging Onlne I (BOL I ) six months after declaring my major, a pre-requisite pass/fail course for co-op to help you think of how to apply skills you have now into your resumes and such. But still, I did not go on and do all the intake stuff that I can do after completing BOL I. Yes, my GPA still was not good enough.
But then, just last semester, people were saying that co-op doesn’t care about the GPA anymore. Yet I still did not take action. My excuse was simply “I’m too busy.”
But was I really? Most of my time was spent doing jack squat, playing games, watching anime, reading manga, and other things; procrastinating in general to avoid all the things that I should be doing like schoolwork, study, and tasks related to things I volunteer for, like Scouts. That all just led to the constant mediocre marks that make me kind of disappointed with myself, considering I actually did alright in the world of academics before university. But high school was never that hard to begin with.
But yeah, back to apply for CS co-op. Turns out after this semester, I will have 96 credit hours out of 120 credit hours complete my degree. Somehow, I need to fit in four work terms into this somehow with the conditions that I must adhere to:
So that will be tricky to fit the bill to say the least. But I guess it could work somehow, but I will need to be very lucky to get it all to fit.
Considering how I take 3 courses each semester these days, which on average means 9 credit hours per semester, I can actually squeeze four semesters in between now and my graduation. This means if I do get a summer work term, that means I can do the alternation between school and work.
However, from what I hear, the best co-op terms are the 8 month ones. And then, I am still considering doing Coop in Japan as well.
One of the things that has lingered on my mind is getting a minor. Maybe I should make up my mind and go for a minor to extend my degree time. But what? CRIM was pretty fun. CMNS was too. PSYC.. I can see it being interesting, but I burnt out last semester, so it didn’t really leave too big of an impression on myself.
Oh the choices.
I have lots to think about if I am going to fit in a co-op education with my degree. If only I could start it all over again, then maybe I would have made the right decisions and be a better student.
A “for the curious” post.
Well, Bartender’s technically a complete series – I’m just waiting for subs to be released. As for the remaining three, they should be interesting to follow in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
I would have become a homicidal maniac.
Today was an alright day. I woke up promptly at 9 am in the morning and after making and eating breakfast, checking my email, and various other morning things, I leave my house at 10:15 AM. Considering how I borrowed my dad’s laptop for the day to write a reference letter and it is raining out, I decided to take the bus to my Skytrain connection instead of doing my usual 20 minute walk to Commercial Skytrain Station.
Getting to my stop in a very short amount of time, I expected to see a bus there in a few minutes time. Ten minutes roll by with no bus in sight. Mind you, the bus route in question does have a bus come by once every 12 minutes at this time. Twenty minutes go by and I heard one of the old ladies at the stop say that she had been waiting at the stop for 35 minutes.
THIRTY FIVE?!?! What the hell is wrong with you? It’s a light shower on a bus route that’s predominantly on a straight line and it’s two to three buses behind schedule?
Thanks a lot Translink. Because of you, I end up walking to the Skytrain station and end up being late for my CMPT 307 class by at least 25 minutes and after that class, I am confused as hell as to what the prof was talking about.
Thanks so fucking much.
First week of classes is over, and you know what that means: first impressions of classes!
I’m currently registered in three classes, like always. This semester’s three lucky courses are CMPT 307 (Data Structures and Algorithms), CMPT 471 (Networking II), and JAPN 100 (Introduction to Japanese I).
CMPT 307 is going alright thus far. So far, we have been doing some review on topics touched on in CMPT 225, MACM 101, and MACM 201, going through stuff on O-notation and series so far. This is reportedly a weeder course, so I shall be on my guard and focus better.
CMPT 471 so far has been review on stuff in CMPT 371 (Data Communications and Networking), mainly on Ethernet. The first class was a sleeper, with it on how to use Unix. Unfortunately, I found myself falling asleep in lecture for all three classes so far. I guess there are several reasons why this is the case.
I just hope things pick up next week.
JAPN 100 is my first class ever at the Harbour Centre campus, let alone a SFU satelite campus. But so far, it’s quite interesting. Just after four hours of class, our instructor wants us to learn all 46 ã²ã‚‰ãŒãª characters! Taking this course has opened my eyes to what I have forgotten about in terms of how to learn: following through on course materials learned that day. Of course, going to the “On Your Way To An A” course helped with that as well.
When I went to Nancy, one of our academic advisors, to talk to her about not going to CUTC anymore due to personal academic worries, she suggested I do something on time management from SFU Learning Commons. I ended up going to the first offering of “On Your Way To An A”, since that has stuff on time management and study tips. Going to put those things learned into practice!
Going to go do some work and sleep earlier – sleeping constantly at 3 because of Infantry does not exactly help me follow through on my New Year’s Resolution.
Today was the beginning of a big change in my university career.
For most of my time at SFU, all of it actually, I was up on the Burnaby Mountain campus. For the first time, I have a class at one of the two satelite SFU campuses: this being Harbour Centre, where I am taking the evening session of Japanese 100.
Leaving Burnaby Mountain at 4 PM, I figured I would have plenty of leeway to get downtown, given the heavy snowfall we had today. What I would not have expected was the bus getting jack-knifed while turning off of Gaglardi Way onto the Burnaby Mountain Parkway, effectively blocking passage into that way down Burnaby Mountain (unless you went through University Drive East, but that area is the steeper way out.
The funny thing about this was that as soon as it happened, the bus driver got out of the bus and proceeded to take pictures of his jack-knifed bus. Nonetheless, this incident further deepens my dislike of Translink’s articulated buses. Sure, they are fine on the B-Line routes, especially the 99 route, as most of the paths are straight lines and flat roads, but when you use those things on the curvy, steep roads at SFU, it doesn’t really work all that well.
Obviously, because the bus is completely blocking that path for other 144s and 135s from getting off the hill on Hastings side, we had to get out of the bus and start walking in the snow to get down to somewhere that I can actually catch a bus from. That ended up being the intersection of Hastings Street and Inlet Drive, a good 3 kilometres in the snow down from where that poor bus got jack-knifed.
Now there with a few other hikers who made it from the stranded bus, we rejoiced as a 144 headed for Metrotown Station showed up. Now normally, the 144 does not even come here at all, but heads south at Duthie and Hastings, but a bus is a bus, and it will get me to where I want at possibly a faster time, since it means I can SkyTrain. Yay SkyTrain!
In the end, this supposide 45 minute trip took 1 hour and 40 minutes, leaving me late for class by 10 minutes, which really sucked. Oh well. The trip itself was a welcome change to the same old boring routine, even if it was inconvenient.
I just hope it doesn’t happen again, because we will get quizzes for JAPN 100 and if we miss 3/20 quizzes, we get 0 for that 15% of our mark.
Ouch.
I have an idea and a general idea, but I probably do not have enough time to work on it. So if you are interested in working on a WarCraft III map, let me know.
As for genre, it would be an open RPG type.
Cleaning my room yesterday, I found some notes on things involving monies that I was supposed to have done some time ago (ie. November 2006).
Oh boy.
Now if I could only find the receipts that need to be given….
Happy New Year!
Looking back at the past year, and the years before it, there are many areas that I can improve myself on. Giving it some thought, I’m putting forward for myself the following New Year’s resolutions.
This would most likely be the first time I actually made some New Year’s resolutions. However, I’m looking at it more as goal setting for the new year. If there’s anything that the current leadership team approach in Scouts has taught me, it’s setting goals and paths to achieve these goals.
With the first item on the list, I will believe in myself more and quit second-guessing my choices. Since our very recent semi-annual leadership conference with Scouts, people have pointed out that I lack confidence. Thinking about it a bit after, I see their point.
I never seem to be able to make my own decisions without other people’s help. I seek their advice and all, which is fair. However, in the end, I most likely end up leaning towards what they say is the best decision, without weighing in what I believe in on the matter.
At times when I am absolutely sure of myself, if I am questioned, the second thoughts start. Of course, you can say that I think objectively because I would think of the different choices I have available. However, the fact remains that my final opinion is based on what most people say is the best, not what I believe is best. It is by far the biggest weakness in my character.
Item number two is simple enough. I should probably go pick up swimming again, since I dropped it near the beginning of my time in university. I could use the exercise.
Well, as I am typing this, my room is quite messy. Not exactly messy when compared to some other people, but yeah. I have papers lying down on the floor, textbooks on the floor, clothes not in the dresser.. the list goes on. I can take a proactive approach to cleaning that all up. As for other areas of the house, say the bathroom, I will take some time once a month to clean.
There have been times over the past year when something small gets the best of me, especially when it comes to being in an organizational role for stuff, such as Frosh Week or Scout camps. I found myself in panic mode for some very little things. As an example, on the day before our Scout group’s Group Camp, which I was Camp Chief for, I neglected to note that we need a food permit or something and I started to freak out. I quickly emailed the guy who was in charge of food for said camp and told him my bad news. Stupid thing about that? After freaking out about it for a few hours, I finally smartened up and called the campsite and asked – turns out we only need FoodSafe.
Sure, freaking out gets me doing stuff, and generally stuff in the right direction, but it isn’t exactly the wisest choices. Frankly, all what I need to do is be more calm about things and think with a clear head in all situations. It’ll take some time, but it should work out in the end.
And on sleep. Right now, it’s almost 3 in the morning. Why am I still up? Obviously, my sleeping schedule’s gone out of wack. And what’s my action plan to get it all better? Referring to some stuff I’ve learned in PSYC 100 last semester regarding sleep, as well as a document from my mom’s workplace regarding hints on getting a good night’s sleep, I should go to sleep and wake up at the same times. My goal times of choice? 11 PM to sleep and 7 AM to wake up. Of course, this does not happen overnight, so it will take some time to get on.
The very last thing on this list is going to be difficult to say the least. I find myself wasting so much time these days and not being able to focus. Perhaps it’s the whole lack of sleep thing starting from about Chirstmas till now that’s causing it, but truth be told, I haven’t exactly been the best when it comes to focus. Unless the task I am doing is extremely interesting to me, my mind will drift off and go towards something else in a short time after.
Back in second year (or was it third?), I ran into a friend of mine from elementary school on the route to school. He’s always been a smart student, even up till now, whereas I kind of drift off after high school. His tactic is to brainwash himself into thinking that activity X (where X is something that may be boring, like studying) is fun.
I think I’ll try that out for once.
So yeah. A hefty list of resolutions that aren’t just random things I resolve doing, but I will actually get done sometime this year.
What’s your new year’s resolutions?
