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.

I have applied for a certificate in systems science.

I have applied for a certificate study program at the University of Ottawa in systems science. I will also apply to work as a teaching assistant in statistics at the University of Ottawa. This could mean I change schools next year.

I have been admitted to a diploma on Sonic Design.

I have been admitted to the study of Sonic Design. This is a program where one studies music making on computers. It is only a five credit program and I would study it concurrantly with my MA next year. I should hear about the MA admission in June.

Returning books to the library.

I returned the book on digital crime and digital terrorism. I read about a third or a half of this book. I also returned a book about statistical machine learning.

I have not been studying much the past few weeks.

I have been reading the past few weeks but I am not studying a course formally this spring term. The spring term started on Wednesday. My TA work will start this coming Wednesday.

I did some reading into the vulnerable worker.

I read a disccussion report from the Law Commisson of Canada on vulnerable workers. I got quite angry about my poverty after reading this report.

I am no longer studying environmental sciences but I did do some green party official unpaid labour in the last 24 hours.

I attended a green party meeting yesterday and today did some cyber organizing for this part of the green party which is the local part here. Don't mind my obtuse English; it effects no one; mind your own.

The mayoral candidate.

I have been bumping into the Mayoral candidate recently. I just sent him a web based comment. He said feels tax payers should not pay for disAbility benefits. He seems to be dividing the community while he says he is out to unite people. He seems to be a politician who claims he will handle diversity. He is gay so I think he should be a politician of difference(s). I think he speaks out of both sides of his month.

Criminology's Promise conference

I am attending a conference today at my school. It is called Criminology's Promise. One of the presenters is a former professor of mine in drug law. Some of the presenters are graduate course professors so this is a chance to get to know them a bit better.

Where I went on-line this morning concerning health statistics

I used the book from the university library on health statistics to search on-line journals, the WHO and US government health institute for information on health statistics. The US document was here http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov/21st%20final%20report.pdf, concerning health statistics and health statistics models. I got lead astray at the WHO web site looking for this document on disease classifications http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/ which is on-line. I went to something on noise and ended up in Germany at a national occupational health and safety web site here at http://www.baua.de/ which is available in English. So another research adventure over night.

Of course disease classifications included stuff on schizophrenia, so I printed that out from the WHO classification. But to put it in popular language it means we are being put in little shoe boxes by doctors. In academic terms, classifications like the WHO's and the DSM are contested areas and suggest viewpoints that priviledge scientific knowledge above other forms of knowledge. When, in fact, experimental science can not study the whole of life. Even just feelings and emotional reality, or friendships and real human to human relationships, and the effect these have on mental health and mental illness recovery, will be unrecorded as experimental sciences can not record these factors. So these factors will be ignored and left out of a scientific and classifications world view. Thus we need narratives i.e stories from friends, family and professionals a bigger story.

Digging deep into an book introduction.

More and more these days I search out references in things I read. I just completed the first read of an introduction to this book:

Friedman, Daniel J. & Hunter, Edward L. & Parrish II, R. Gibson. Health Statistics: Shaping Policy and Practice to Improve the Population's Health (Oxford: Oxford University, 2005).

Tonight this inspires me about community. The model presented for identifying gaps in data shows the topic of social change as but one of about 40 topics. Social change and law is the theme of the graduate school I hope to enter this fall.

I am now going to look up the references at the end of this introductory chapter on the internet and using the internet at our school's library.

My proctoring duties are done.

I have completed my proctoring duties for the winter term. I have been hired for some extra proctoring duties though which I started last night for five hours.

My final exam in my course in statistical design of experiments is done now.

I finished another term by completing my take home exam in statistical design of experiments this past weekend.

My winter term TA work is done.

I marked a series of questions concerning cluster sampling as an appropriate choice for a sampling technique. This took two hours of marking. I am now done my TA duties for another term.

I have been doing mundane computer tasks today.

I have been backing up computers and testing my new used iBook today. I am also preparing a bibliography post for my meeting with a professor that may occur today. I am also surfing a little on the new used iBook. I am surfing a couple of conventions' web pages. One is the teaching assistant union's Ontario convention coming up in May and I am already registered as a delegate so this is just research that will help me participate in this event in Ottawa. This union represents more than just university workers and I attended a university worker's convention with this union a few weeks ago. The other convention is not until November and it is a convention of disAbled students and I am thinking of doing a presentation on working as a person/student with a disAbility. This convention is also in Ottawa. Speaking of conventions I was going to make a proposal to the Association of Internet Researchers to hold our 2007 convention in Ottawa and did get two Canada Research Chairs to say they would attend but the deadline for proposals approached too fast and I gave up.

Focus on experimental design for the next week of studies.

Whether the term focus comes from photography and optics or revolution and guerilla warfare I need to apply it to studies. Too many times the confused academic advisor is devalued by me in a form of elitism where I see their lack of understanding of me as evidence of their lesser intelligence. I need to learn from this because I am now becoming the academic and employment advisor for other students. As a teaching assistant my role of advisor is optional but it can make be a better teacher if I do it right. Also I need to focus on experimental design for the next week of studies.

Reading critiques of Wired magazine.

The first critique I read of Wired magazine was

Pauline Borsook's, Cyberselfish (New York: Public Affairs, 2000).

This book enlightened me to the dangers of Wired magazine and clarified some of my own thoughts as a Wired reader.

This past few months I have been reading

Stewart Millar, Melanie. Cracking the Gender Code: Who Rules The Wired World (Toronto, Ont.: Second Story, 1998).

This book builds on the sexist reality of Wired magazine. I have not read the whole book yet but am rereading parts of it with interest.