I have three marking assignments right now.

I have to mark a test of about 100 students. I also have two assignments to mark this week. I need to get working on this but I have also been managing to clean our apartment, do some carpentry and look for work. So I have work to do as a teaching assistant.

Reading about social networks.

I searched out some books on schizophrenia at the school library. I read this chapter of a book last night.

Abrahamson, David. Social Networks and their Development in the Community in France, Jenny, & Muir, Niki. Communication and the Mentally Ill Patient: Developmental and Linguistic Approaches to Schizophrenia (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1997).

The author looks at some housing options and the observations of social networks amongst discharged patients. This was a study based on some housing in England where social networking was encouraged and studied.

I am reminded of Barry Wellman's paper on using SAS to study egocentric networks. I am planning on doing some mapping or writing down of my own networks but will read Wellman's paper again, as I do this and try to set something up in SAS.

I am posting this from the Math tutorial centre.

I am at school connecting to the Net wirelessly. I am giving my office hours. There don't seem to be any of my students here yet. They may in fact not show up today. My next office hours are on Monday at 17:00. I am just about to reboot my Macbook and launch SAS inside WinXP.

I completed marking the two first assignments and am starting the second assignments.

I got my marking done that was due this week. One assignment was about two days late. I now have a second assignmet to mark. I am giving some office hours this afternoon at 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Then besides the marking I am not working in this job until Monday when I proctor a test for one course and give more office hours. But next week there are no labs or tutorials scheduled.

I completed marking the question I was working on.

I completed marking the question I was working on. I now have two more questions to mark. I will do this marking this morning.

Marking continues

I just started marking for the evening. I am just completing marking a basic histogram problem and a stem and leaf problem. The problem asks students to construct both of these types of pictoral data description and then compare these description methods.

I got some marking done just now.

I got one courses' first assignment all marked now and the marks recorded. I now need to take a break and then mark the other courses papers. I am then going to a large labour protest today then I have a volunteer board of directors meeting in the late afternoon.

I started to study for my first course in the systems science certificate

I printed the course outline for SYS5130 Systems Optimization and Management. I then used the Carleton university library web journal search and found these ebooks at the Knovel Library and read this book:

Rao, Singiresu S. Engineering Optimization - Theory and Practice (3rd Edition) (John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

I type set equation 1.1 from this book in TeXshop and then stopped studying.

I did some more marking and am half way done one assignment.

I did some marking. I am going to do some more this morning. I am behind on this what with a recent job interview and getting excited about the graduate school admission.

I have also had some family time in the past few weeks and travel. I have been trying out on-line games that involve commerce. I have spent no money on these games yet. My big problem right now is cleaning my living quarters. I am also doing some carpentry at home.

But back to marking now.

I have been admitted to a graduate program in systems science.

My goal of being an interdisciplinary scholar is continuing. In the foot steps of scholars such as Rob Kling I might be treading. I got a letter saying I had been admitted to a graduate school program at the university of Ottawa in systems science. I have studied various studies in systems science all my life. Terms from cybernetics like feedback, systems, components, parts, wholes and sub systems etc., ring in my mind in regards systems. Optimzations, estimation, convergence, bifurcation are other terms from systems. There are financial systems. There are illegal and legal systems. There are banking and other industrial systems and international goveranace systems and there are biological systems and the king of them all, the planetary ecosystem.

Marking begins for the spring/summer term.

I began marking this morning. I marked for about half an hour. I got about a quarter through the assignment for one course. I was marking some very basic questions that would have the answers in the first chapter of the textbook.

I read about bargaining equality.

I started to read about bargaining equality in a binder provided by my national union office. I read this on the train. I am becoming a member of the teaching assistant bargaining team for the next contract. This contract might cover the next two years. At this point we have served notice to bargain.

I was talking about R software with my father.

My dad needs to do graphs on the computer of experiments in optics. I was discussing the use of R software for graphics with him tonight.

Social design of computer systems.

I have been reading about the need for social design of computing systems.

I faithfully completed my TA duties for today.

I had office hours today. I waited for students but none came. I did take the time to study the social design of ICT systems. I also took the time to enter all the lab and tutorial hours into my Palm agenda. I met with a new contract instructor and budgeted my hours, I got the assignment of duties form submitted now. While in the tutoiral room I talked briefly with the TA on duty and told him about monies available to him through his TA work. In other words I did some shop steward work with the other TA. I also had some union email to do today but otherwise it was quiet day. I got my new laptop and installed some statistics software and tried out some of the multimedia features of the new laptop.

I should start to study object oriented programming at least at a basic level for the U of Ottawa next year.

If I am admitted to the university of Ottawa certificate in systems science I will be required to do object oriented programming. I should prepare this summer by learning some more C++ and also learning some Java programming. I have some books to do this with and should start reading them this month, June.

I have been admitted to a diploma in Sonic Design.

I have been admitted and accepted the offer to study towards a diploma in Sonic Design. This program is only five credits about 1 credit per year at Carleton university from the School for Studies in Art and Culture, and there is a web page describing it here at this URL http://www.carleton.ca/artandculture/sonicdesign/index.html.

Laptop bought for graduate school.

I ordered a new Macbook computer on-line and it is now on its way here from Suzhou, China. The intention of this laptop which is meant as a graduation present is that it will be used in graduate school. I am not sure I have a flat surface to work with the laptop. I like to use the coffee table to work on with my laptops. But our living room coffee table is always piled high with papers, books, phone, ashtrays and various remote controls. We have a very nice coffee table with six shelves underneath the table. But these are mostly jammed full with books.

The last books I bought I think were some health and safety reference books I ordered on-line. The ordering was done on a German web page and they just sent the books and invoiced me in Euros. I wasn't even sure I had read the web order page correctly because my German is very weak. I got the books in the mail a few weeks ago and just read some more of one tonight after getting home from work at school. I finally after about two days of trying, a few weeks ago was able to afford to buy a money order in Euros from my bank and mail it to the German publisher. This money really comes from my union who give me money every school term for doing this health and safety representative work at the campus. The latest magazine I bought I bought today and it is about Linux computers.

"SAS" search at library.

I used a keyword search for the term SAS and then copied and pasted all the library entries I found into a word processing file. I also explored some on-line links to SAS data sets.

I am downloading 745 MB of compressed SAS and ASCII files of crime data from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data a US clearing house on mostly US crime data. I am going to use this data in SAS and may be design some statistical learning problems and practices with this data.

Union convention almost over.

We are having a union convention for our TA union and today is the last day. I was only able to attend the first day, Wednesday and yesterday, the third day Friday. I am up over night now and will stay up to attend the last day today. The convention is only a half day today. I am staying up all night and then attending the convention. The convention includes all the union locals from Ontario. I am meeting and talking to many other union members as well as leaders of the union. I am listening to a diverse set of voices from other union members and leaders. I am pressing people on disAbility issues and the rights of workers who happen to have disAbilities.

I am up because I was excited with a friend and of course the union convention and then spent the last hour helping my friend transfer his Internet Explorer Favorites to a new computer I sold him. This was the computer I bought this past January for my SAS work in my experimental design course. I needed a windows computer then to use SAS. I now have SAS running in Win2K on my eMac so do not need a windows computer right now. So I sold him this windows computer. Most of the help was done over the phone with instructions and closed questions. He simply told me what he saw on the screen and I then told him what to select.

I am receiving a laptop from my father as a graduation present and am just about to order it on-line from Apple.ca. It will be a new Macbook computer. I will use this Macbook for my graduate school studies.