Elbie at Trig dot Net

Mon, 27 Jun 2005

I searched and I searched, but I never found my cute little bunny wabbit.

Gosh it's hot.

Allusions to Looney Tunes aside, yes. It's hot. It's been above 30 pretty much every day since Friday. And smoggy. And oppressive. Bleh.

In case anyone is wondering, I kicked ass on my Graph Theory mid-term. 38/40. And the distribution was pretty wide. I was surprised. I then wrote my Japanese mid-term the following week, and passed, but didn't do nearly so well. Oh well.

Really though, I can't complain. In general, life has been pretty ass-kicking good. I'm even liking the heat for the most part. I spent most of the weekend out and about. Saturday was the busiest day. I ended up quadruple booking myself for Saturday, and being a jerk and backing out of two of them, and leaving another one early. Sunday was mostly just taking it easy, but still a good chunk of that was outdoors.

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Thu, 16 Jun 2005

Not quite the same, but...

You know how when, right before an important event where someone has to give a speech or talk about something or say two simple words, their mouth gets all dry?

Well, I have to write a mid-term exam in less than an hour.

It's my first mid-term in seven years.

I would like to do well.

My hands are dry.

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Mon, 13 Jun 2005

Once upon a time, there was a little neurosurgeon.

He was very successful at what he did, mostly because in school, he studied very very hard, and excelled at his chosen profession. As a result though, he didn't have much time to socialize, and grew very lonely.

One day, the little neurosurgeon was reading an article in one of his favourite publications, "Advanced Neuropsychology Today For Fun and Profit", about how the field of Artificial Intelligence has been making great strides in the area of creating systems that are more and more adept and communicating in a way that seems natural to humans. This gave him an idea: Why not construct a natural looking artifical person?

Why not indeed. The little neurosurgeon researched and studied. He experimented and schemed. He invented and planned. Until eventually he constructed the first prototype for a new era. An era where no one need never be alone or in need ever again.

And with only the humming of the electronics of his work room as fanfare, he turned on the prototype. The prototype looked around, saw the neurosurgeon, and said hello.

A success! The neurosurgeon jumped for joy. They had a brief conversation, and it seemed to respond naturally enough, and move naturally enough. All was well. Time moved on however, and the prototype eventually got bored talking with the neurosurgeon who still had not developed any significant social skills. And so it left, leaving the neurosurgeon alone again. The neurosurgeon decided to build instead a robot kitty to keep him company, which worked well enough, until he forgot to feed it, and it short-circuited from hunger and ate his head.

THE END

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Wed, 08 Jun 2005

My brain hurts

This week has been really busy. I've been in training all week. As a result, I've had to blow off my classes, and as a result of that, I've been working overtime to try to stay caught up. For once, I've been going to bed late for legitimate reasons. Whee.

The training is proceeding at a brisk pace. It's an SGI taught class about linux on multiprocessor systems. A lot about system tuning, memory usage, CPU usage, disk usage. Improving performance. Half the stuff I struggle to follow. The other half, I just don't understand. Then I go home and look at math I don't understand until I'm too tired to struggle further.

It's really not been so bad. I was panicking for a day or two over my Graph Theory assignment that's due tomorrow, but last night, I had a few things click into place rather nicely. So at least I understand what's going on, though I doubt I'll get the whole assignment done for tomorrow.

I'm in a desperate need of a break, and someone I haven't seen in quite a while asked me if I wanted to go climbing in Guelph tonight. I haven't been climbing in quite a while as well, and I think this is a much needed diversion.

Other than that, I've been enjoying the weather. Sunday, Summer arrived. It's been unseasonably warm (30°ish) and sunny. When I'm not in training, at least, it's been quite nice. Still, I'll be glad when the weekend gets here so I can get a decent night's rest.

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