2011-03-18 - A Conversation About Conversations

People suck at conversations. Now admittedly I'm not the best conversationalist but I like to think that I am at least nice about it. Other people are just completely terrible at having conversations. So I thought I'd put together a list of the things that annoy me most about talking to people.

1. Superfluous Conversations: People feel the need to talk to other people. If you see someone you know you have to talk to them right? If you're at a get together you have to talk to everyone right? Wrong, that is completely wrong. The problem being that you don't actually care. That's fair, no one says you have to care about talk to everyone you meet. Personally I prefer the reverse because at least then you're not pretending to care. Having a conversation when there doesn't need to be one is just insulting and a waste of everyone's time.

2. Small Talk: This is rather an extension of the first point but in a special way. The world conversations and the most boring conversations are the ones with no point. "Hey, nice weather we're having" "Yeah, it's pretty nice", there you have just wasted everyone's time and have said nothing of value. That was some excellent work there spreading of trivial information. If you can't think of anything interesting to say don't say anything at all.

3. Arguments: Arguments are actually good. I love having arguments with people. The problem is that most people suck at arguments as well. To have a good argument you need to both be A) detached from the subject and B) able to say things about the subject. Now that's not to say they have to be correct, bull is the best cannon fodder for a good argument. Just yell mindlessly about something no one cares about with another person for a few hours and you'll be good. It's important to remember A) though, the minute you start getting upset and defensive about a subject the fun dies. No one wants to argue with someone who gets mad because you're talking bull about his favourite subject.

4. Why does word use a different quotation mark? I mean this is the notepad++ one ", and this is word's “, look at that, what is with that?

Now I don't expect anyone to listen to these points because stupid conversations and angry arguments are the name of the game but hopefully someone will.

2011-03-10 - One More Month

I take great joy in the fact that in a little over a month I'll be done all the big things. The design project presentation day is the 9th of April and the Phil final paper is due on the 5th. The design project itself is going rather well, we've got some things that are in some sort of a state of working and nothing has blown up. The Phil thing is harder because who knows that you're supposed to do for a Phil report? We're mostly scientists and engineers taking this course as an elective come on man. Oh well, you have to pull things out of your behind sometimes for school. The other three courses should be easy, ENGG 400 is barely a course, ENG M 310 is easy money (it's easy and about money) and CH E 243 is odd but fairly simple. I just need to remember to sleep, man am I exhausted.

Another interesting thing I've concluded this week is that you couldn't pay me to take business. I see those people talking about how successful engineers they are with their using business degrees to run companies and I think that's not engineering. I don't want to become an engineer so I can run a company, I don't want to run a company. People who want to run companies are crazy. I want to design stuff and be one of those weird guys with solar powered saws (My design prof made one of those). Designing is what engineering's about and I want to be an engineer. Damn business people.

2011-03-05 - Electives Suck

It seems weird but it's true. I much preferred it when they told you what to take, at least then you were pretty well guaranteed to be able to take it. Looking for electives it's a lot of "That looks interesting... but it's not offered that term" or "That looks interesting but it's at the same time as this and if I change that I have to find something else and go through this all over again and oh god dammit ". I would love it if I could get my schedule to only be MWF or TR but noooooo... can't do that because half of the classes are only offered on one or the other. Then there are classes that have their lab on the alternate day just to piss you off. Abandoning that idea I've gotten

CMPE 449 - Intelligent Systems in Engineering
M W F 11:00AM - 11:50AM + LAB T 2:00PM - 3:20PM
CMPE 420 - Reliable and Secure Systems Design
M W F 1:00PM - 1:50PM
CMPUT 325 - Non-Procedural Programming Languages
T R 9:30AM - 10:50AM + LAB M 8:00AM - 10:50AM
ENG M 406 - Adapting Technology to Meet Societal Needs
T R 12:30PM - 1:50PM

On the bright side I can only die once.

2011-03-04 - Hosts

So I've been doing some looking around and there seems to be a ton of hosting services and some that'll even set you up a .ca domain name. Of course there's always someone who says they suck. That's the problem with the internet; every positive review has a negative review to counteract it. Of course there's always the chance (and it's usually right) that the negative review is by an idiot who has no clue what he's supposed to be doing and just bitches. I'm tempted to just pay for one now and move all of this over there but at the same time I'm nervous about spending money. I'm also nervous about being on school servers so it all works out nicely. I mean it’s only about 50 bucks for a year, is that so bad? I don't know.