February 2006 Archives

Amazingly enough, Linux can actually look very good if configured correctly and customized for your equipment. Luckily for me, it's only taken me about 5 years to figure out exactly how to do that. Hundreds of mindless hours combing through arcane info pages, outdated wikis, and forum postings led to my Eureka moment. I finally have a setup I can live with, sort of. I can type all of the characters I wish to, and they look good to boot. Of course, the Holy Grail of X still eludes me, but I struggle valiantly on trying to find an agpgart driver for my chipset so I can finally have accelerated X. Driver support has always been iffy on Linux, and I gave up depending on it years ago. Too frustrating to limit myself to one or two supported devices.

Of course, if you'd read my earlier entry, you'd know that I haven't spent my entire break wrestling with a software system or rewiring my computer... That actually only took a day. For the rest of it, I spent my time out in Vancouver. I have always liked it out there, and this trip did little to change my opinion on the matter. While I did not do a lot of exploring this time out, I did get a lot of R & R, which is mostly what I was hoping for anyway. With my normal weekly schedule the way it is, I appreciated some time where I could get some other tasks out of the way and simply relax and read and watch the Olympics.

The furthest I got out was to Langley and that was just for a pleasant dinner and a stop at NCIX to pick up a set of headphones to replace an old pair of mine. Other scintillating destinations? Well, I did make it to Costco a few times. In any case, I have to write a paper tomorrow, so I should probably get some shut-eye...

Valentine's Day sounds so much more meaningful and beautiful when decribed with baterial DNA transfer terms. What could possibly be more romantic for Valentine's than learning exactly what means bacteria use to have "sex"? On that topic, wouldn't it be great to study birth and death rates and the associated statistics for Daphnia (a small aquatic species)? Didn't think so. Yet here i am, listening to my prof drone on in that seemingly incredible cure for insomnia. That said, i am panicking as tomorrow it the time for my prokarotics genetics course, and I am not ready for it. That class is really difficult, and I can't afford anything but an excellent grade.

Now that all three of you are feeling sorry for me, I'll mention that I am flying out to Vancouver this weekend until Thursday for a little pseudo R & R. i say pseudo and mean it, as I have to get two papers and my job hunt for this summer over in that time as well. I imagine I will be busy typing away on my notebook while watching the Daytona 500. That said, I do plan on spending some time seeing some new sites and exploring. I am also looking forward to some guilt free viewing of the Olympics, which I am a huge sucker for.

In any case, i should probably head back to my notes and my half ear to the lecture.

As has been previously discussed, i found myself at the beginning of the semester needing a productive change. Specifically, i needed better grades. The rubber is soon to hit the road, as next week I have all of my midterms, or nearly so. i even have the encouragement to start studying immediately after my quiz this morning, which was ugly... Amazing how the nicest teachers can have the nastiest exams. I swear i hadn't even seen a third of those terms, and that was after diligently copying down all the terms off the whiteboard. In any case, I have cut my hours at work next week and sloughed off some extracurricular activities in order to focus on the exams.

Some of my classes are interesting, and those are at least interesting to work through and practice, while others are far from it. Ecology and prokaryotic genetics are... well... boring as all get out. I don't mind working through Geology and French though. I imagine I'll be solving a lot of practice problems and making a lot of notecards. The upside? This time next week, I'll be packing my bag for my flight out to Vancouver. I figure I've got one of the best carrot and stick combos out there.

For those of you who keep up on international news and events, the Danish free press problem may seem a bit absurd. After all, several countires now have severed their ties with Denmark, and there are riots over these cartoons published months ago. And it would seem that Denmark is now quite concerned (en français). Of course, this is an interesting confluence of events. The notoriously open, liberal, and tolerant countries are meeting a culture that is known for being rigid, traditionalistic, and violent. It almost makes me want to reach for the popcorn...

Immigration and the quest for profit have wrought an uneasy alliance in Europe with its North African and Middle Eastern neighbors. Unfortunately, something soon here will have to give. I can't see the Danes abandoning the sacred cow of free press, but neither can I see the Muslims backing down over some cartoons in poor taste. I think that Europe may have to come to grips with the fact that its working idea of tolerance is hypocritical at best and patronizing at worst. The Muslims have called them on it.

For a long time now, Christians have put up with all sorts of mockery, from the "Life of Brian" to later Family Guy episodes that stepped over the line. However, I do not see us taking to the streets. Oh sure, there may be some grumbling from time to time, but on the whole we get over it and move on.

I supsect that the end of this will be somewhere along the lines of an unspoken truce... The European press will generally self censor itself in order to avoid costly public offense and political debacles, while the Muslim world will have to let infidels do what they do best: ignore Muslim law.

All this week I had some desire to see a few of the presentations at the university on international issue and human rights. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed, I wasfar too busy running from one building to the next for nothing of consequence. In the end, the only event I made out of the week long schedule was the final quiz event. I played for the "Holy Rollers" which was the U of A chaplain team. I was kind of pumped for it, as normally trivia is my strong suit.

When I walked up to our table, I saw the rest of my team, and then... my french teacher? Apparently she had volunteered to proctor for the event, and by some strange coincidental twist, she wound up at our table. And that was more than a little awkward. My class is pretty much immersion. The class in conducted completely in French, so up until today, I have never heard her speak English...To be honest, I didn't know how good she would be, as she is just here on an exchange from France. Anyway, it turned out alright, crazy that is. We did well, mostly overcoming the horrible organization, but the end was the worst. Much to my prof's amusement, I wound up finger painting the poster for International Week with Hiebert, as all the chaplains had to leave. How embarrassing.... We didn't remember anything.

In the end, we did alright, but lost by a good margin due to the last event. I figure if nothing else, I had a good time, and for once this semester, I understood my French teacher

My chances for free time this weekend, that is. It's a pity too, since there'salways so much to do, but sadly, I have the first midterm of the semester on Monday, and I have no doubts that it will be quite difficult. After the disappointing previous semester, it's even more important to get this one right. So that will occupy the majority of my time, and I suppose the rest will be spent on work. Due to my busier than normal schedule during the week, I was forced to move my time at the lab to Saturday.

Otherwise, it's been a good semester so far in many ways. It's definately flying by, I can't believe it's already February. A little disturbing too, as my summer job search has been a little slow. I have some good potentials, but I haven't made many moves to secure any of them yet. Perhaps I will do that for my Friday night.