Friday, December 30, 2005

Spent two hours job searching on-line for government jobs.

I spent about two hours exploring various government departments and agencies looking at job openings. I got very frustrated with it all. I need a private employer job search strategy. I have been passing my CV around to young people for comment. No reason to discount youth and their opinions.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

I am deciding with my dad's help that grad school in statistics is not for me.

I am not sure of my chances of gaining entry to grad school in statistics. I stand a bettter chance in a legal studies MA program. I also might find the M.Sc. difficult going. Whereas I am doing quite well with legal studies consistently scoring B+ to A on courses. As such I may only study a legal studies course this winter and perhaps only one course. That course might be a feminist legal studies course or a course on sentencing.

I applied to some jobs on the place pro system at our school's career services.

I applied for some full time work through our school's career services place pro account/web system. I applied to be an ethical hacker amongst other jobs.

I read my old criminal law reform course personal journal on my iPod.

I tried out some software called Pod2Go. It did not work for weather. Pod2Go did work fine for lyrics, US stock prices and text notes. I also downloaded a manual for using notes on the iPod and formating them to work with iPod notes' html links to other notes on the iPod. I may teach myself more about how to use notes on the iPod. For now I tested a 56 Kb text file copy of my LAWS4305 course journal from Fall 2003. I read the whole journal on the iPod which was about 3 X 13 pages long.

I also studied one of our law professor's legal journal articles which is assigned reading in the feminist law course I might take this winter term on Thursday evenings. The professor and article are Majury, Diane. "The Charter, Equality Rights, and Women: Equivocation and Celebration" (2002) 40 Osgoode Hall L.J. 297-336.

I also listened to about the 4 most recent Wall Street journal podcasts. I should say most podcasts concern hi tech topics especially being Apple computer centric.

Job searching beginning.

I have begun to make a more serious job search for the end of my second undergraduate degree. In fact I will study less this coming year until possible grad school in the fall, so that I can search more and put more time into searching for a full time job.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

I am reading US defence publications about the information age.

I got some books on eBay and am reading one book today. The book is

Alberts, David S. & Papp, Daniel S. Information Age Anthology Vol 1 : The Information and Communication Revolution (Washington, DC: The Centre for Advanced Concepts and Technologies, 1997).

Today I read the beginning and these two chapters:

Stewart, Thomas A. "Welcome to the Revolution" in Alberts, David S. & Papp, Daniel S. Information Age Anthology Vol 1 : The Information and Communication Revolution (Washington, DC: The Centre for Advanced Concepts and Technologies, 1997) at 7-26.
This article eplored the Toffler's three phaases of modern history, the agircultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the information revolution.
Alberts, David S. & Papp, Daniel S. & Tuyahov, Alissa. "Historical Impacts of Information Technologies: An Overview in Alberts, David S. & Papp, Daniel S. Information Age Anthology Vol 1 : The Information and Communication Revolution (Washington, DC: The Centre for Advanced Concepts and Technologies, 1997) at 27-82.
This article looked at three phases of history too, but all these three are termed information revolutions and then the first two of these three revolution's impacts are traced mostly on the USA and its society but also internationally. First the telegraph, the telephone, and radio are explored, described from a US centric point of view then impacts are described where there are impacts around the world on societies and governments but not so much on international actors. Then the second information revolution is described as the the facts of three technolgies, the television, the early computers and the global satellite communnication system.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

I will be graduating this winter.

I have completed my legal studies BA requirments and will be graduating with high honours this winter. I have no more courses to study for my BA but will study some statistics this winter to upgrade my B.Math for possible graduate school. Also studying these statistics courses should be fun and a good lot of programming and number crunching.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Political economy studies

I read a little of the basics of globalization. This author then takes this into the local city politics sphere and finds we need to re think the globalization thesis. I learned about something called the new localism. Also the same sort of cities in competition for big business locations of workplaces was covered.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Now this blog is marked as spam blog.

My computer log book blog is no longer marked as a spam blog but now this study blog is so marked. I admit it must be boring and seem dreary to read my academic notes and certainly this blog can be dry but I am not selling anything here in fact this address
http://notebook.webpagex.org is a dot org meaning a non profit site. Oh well at least Blogger has improved the image verification system now for suspect spam blogs and I can still edit this blog after the initial post. This is like some kind of internet nightmare.

I am improving on my internet search documentation processes at the same time as reading articles.

I decided to study some literature references for a grant proposal that our self help group submitted to a foundation. We won the grant along with our hospital partner. I believe it was really the hospital that submitted the grant proposal. Our executive officer sent board members the project proposal files and I opened and read the lietrature reference pages. I then searched out a few articles at the school library. I started to read one article this morning.

The first open member/public meeting for our project is an info meeting tomorrow and today I have started to read one of the references/articles about a psychological scale that measures hope.

I did this search on google for the phrase “dispositional approach to measures” after reading Snyder, C.R., Sympson, S.C., Ybasco, F.C., Borders, T.F., Babyak, M.A., & Higgins, R., L. (1996). “Development and validation of the State Hope Scale.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 321-335. They use this phrase at 321 para 3 to describe part of their method. I needed to learn what is meant by dispositional.

I learned dispositional means inner person. In fact dispositional is like the word “traits” and is the view that includes internal personality characteristics, and further, is about internal reality or thought processes thus part of the “self”. Clique for understanding from my own language would be: “One's position on the matter”; One's disposition"; or legallly speaking "One's disposition submitted to the court. Differs from supposition and opposition.

The top three search results point to the same journal as the search term was taken from. Other search results show that making scales for stress, and satisfaction( in employment) and ability to think about symbols are all approached from dispositional approaches. Also the search got confused by the word "approach" being used as a trait, in the measure, rather than a methodological term which was the original context. But even approach/avoidance can be looked at from a dispositional perspective. The original context used approach to describe the method of constructing the Hope scale.

The learning I got out of this was less about psychiatry and more about how to document a google search. I copied and pasted the top ten search results into a word doc using Neo Office. I then followed 9 of the links that were dot edu links or I also followed one dot net link that was a researcher's web site; the only dot com I looked at was the Wiley.com web link because Wiley are an academic publisher so should be good quality.

After visiting each link I copied and pasted descriptions and tables of contents, or I copied and pasted bibliographic cites, or downloaded pdf's and also book marked each link's web page. I did not actually copy any articles off the web in whole and the pdf's seemed to offered freely. Only one article now needs a further search at the school library but in the end I now understand what the original article was talking about in the 3rd paragraph and this was a methodological aspect to this paper, so was important from my prespective. I then made notes on what I did for the nine web pages or documents.

I am still reading the book Techno Feminism.

I am still reading the book Techno Feminism. I am now on this writer's critique of Haraway. I have been reading this book on the bus and the train on the way to proctoring exams mostly but also while Christmas holiday shopping.

Friday, December 16, 2005

The past few days I have only been really reading one book.

Over the past few days I have only been reading one book. I have been reading Wajcman, Judy. Techno Feminism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004). I have been rereading sections of this book. It is a short book only about 130 smallish pages. It is also really just a critique of other writers who write about the Internet or feminism and technology. I have been in touch by email this past term with a legal studies professor Sheryl Hamilton and have started to read her Ph.D.. She writes about cyberspace and feminism. I have even now asked her by email if she would like to supervise my MA in legal studies and have asked another legal studies professor for his opinion on her as a potential supervisor and it was that she is a good person to work with.

I wouldn't write anything other than the simple truth about others on the net and certainly not just anyone. I would not want to risk a law suit for something I wrote on the internet.

I need to read some more combinatorics to prepare for winter studies and also start using statistics software again.

I need to put some more time into reading over the holidays. I had planned on reading some more combinatorics when my law exam was over but have been caught up in working as an exam proctor. The combinatorics book is to help me study experimental design this winter. I am also studying statistical computing this winter. These courses are both on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. I will have Thursday evenings and Tuesdays to work as a TA. This may be my last term working as a TA as I understand I will not be eligible to work as a TA in the statistics graduate school because my GPA is too low.

I read about the Canadian Uniform Crime(UCR) Reports in a book.

I read about the UCR in Canada and the newer UCRII in a book by Kevin Hagerty a criminologist. I also bought a book of Patti Smith lyrics. It is Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Notes, and Reflections.This book inspired a little bass playing and creating some original music on my bass.

I have a new home computer

I was able to buy one of the last Apple eMacs. It will take a while to set it all up but it is working tonight and I burnt some DVD's of my mail for back up. I have burnt two copies of these email backups and before burning the third and final copy, I am using the new eMac to do some blog entries and school work and will also reinstall texshop. I am now using Neo Office 1.2 alpha.

I am still working as a proctor

I have worked at four exams now. I will work at one today and then one tomorrow and have Sunday off. I will then work for four days next week. It is good work nice and quiet. It is also related to being a professor so is in line with my career plans. It does not pay well though.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

I am working on exams.

I have worked at three exams now and this work is not bad. It does not pay well just minimum wage. I guess the university does not value the effort we put into the education process.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Completed my BA now.

I wrote my last exam in my last course required for my BA in legal studies. Legal studies are the study of law in its social context. I have wanted to study this subject since 1981 and have been formally taking the courses since 1998. I should graduate with high honours and will attend the spring 2006 graduation ceremony.

My crystalcomputing blog is still marked as a spam blog.

It is a bit of a pain to have my crystal computing blog marked as a spam blog. The word verfication system only works once then offers the same image with the same letters on an edit but will not allow an edit. Second time strikes out.

Friday, December 09, 2005

TA duties completed for another term.

It was Wednesday this week that I took the student's assignments in to the professor and also returned my textbook and other TA materials to the school of mathematics and statistics. I also took in my grad school application for the M.Sc. signed and completed. I also gave Neil Sargent my referee forms for the M.A. and the M.Sc.. I have only one more set of referee forms to deliver and that is for Dawn Moore. I also have to get working to complete the M.A.application.

Lectures #3 and #5

I got lecture #2 all watched and then lecture #3 and am almost done lecture #5. I am skipping lecture #4 for now. I have all the digital documents from the course open on my computer. Speaking of computers I am getting a new eMac computer in about a week.

Hostage situation and a fellow grad student's plea

This is about the Canadian's being held hostage in Iraq.

Public pressure seems to be working, and the deadline has been extended two extra days, from the original date of today, until this Saturday.  If a petition is going to work, it seems to have a good chance right now.  If you would like to sign, please go here and add your name:
 
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/freethecpt 
 
Below is an article on the situation, and here is a link to Now Magazine, which has two articles by friends of Loney's,  Andrew Cash and Len Desroches:
 
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/current/news_story.php

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

I got lecture 2 started early this morning.

I got started with the review of lecture #2 this morning. I also got my grading done so my TA duties are completed for another term.

Monday, December 05, 2005

I briefly reviewed the second half of lecture 1.

I watched parts of the second half of lecture 1. I have now cued up lecture 2 and will start watching it momentarily. I will take copious notes on lecture 2. I will then watch lecture 3 Tuesday morning and then sleep.

Reviewing law course materials this week to prepare for Saturday's exam.

I started early this morning to work through all 12 lecture tapes for a third and final time. I watch lecture 1 up to the break this morning and made comprehensive notes. I will review the rest of lecture 1, tonight and start reviewing lecture 2 and see if I can get to lecture 3 before sleeping Tuesday morning. I also have to do marking for three Q's in my TA work for 70 students.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Getting my studies organised for next Saturday's exam.

I am getting my studies organised for next Saturday's exam. I reviewed the last lecture in the term tape a bit this morning. I will also do some readings this morning. I have a fair amount of other stuff to do too like household cleaning, groceries, and some carpentry. I also have to mark some papers today or tomorrow.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Marking continues

I marked all the minitab problems for the student's homework. I just need to mark their textbook problems now. I stayed up all night and made ice coffee in the blender. I am just needing to get this marking done by Monday. I am also reading Judy Wajcman's Technofeminism.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

I am hitting the required reading book.

I read the course readings last night. I finished reading about Louis Riel from press clippings from the trial and the execution. The next case we look at in the course pack is Oka. I still have to read Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobediance but have read some of this before. I believe Thoreau's disobediance was to not pay taxes to show his disapproval of the war with Mexico and war in general.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I taught my last three labs of the term tonight.

I solved a two small sample means comparisom test on the chalk board for our final labs tonight. I now have to mark about 50 assignments by next week.

I used texshop to create a latex file for a CV for grad school.

I will have to be able to use latex in graduate school so tried doing my CV in latex. I worked for about two hours on it after grabbing some cv.tex files from the internet and looking at examples of cv's on the Internet. Latex is a mathematics type setting software. I am using the Mac software Texshop to edit latex files. My dad uses Texshop and showed me this software for the Mac. He explained some latex to me on the weekend.

I am doing more audio engineering studies.

I read a different book on the topic of audio engineering. I just read one chapter about the differences between digital and analog signals. That makes two books I have read about this topic.

I got my mid-term mark.

I had some trouble with my mid-term mark and the professor is going to read my mid-term. So far I have a B grade.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

End of term, end of BA degree.

I may have one class left in my BA. That class is tomorrow evening. This is my second and last undergraduate degree. I may take the winter term off.

I am attending a job networking fair tomorrow at school. In fact, I am volunteering to help the fair happen.

Wikipedia editing.

I did a little editing of Wikipedia in English concerning statistics. I am now going to review some criminal law lecture tapes from my course. We have a job networking fair this week in criminology and law at school and I am volunteering to help with this fair. I also made a resume for this job fair but should make a seperate resume for each company at the fair.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

EPI5240 reading list as amazon.ca wish list

I am going to set up this year's EPI5240 reading list as a private wish list at Amazon.ca both for family to buy books for me and to look out for used books.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Reading in victimology

I just completed reading this chapter in a book on victimology: Laub, John H. Patterns of Criminal Victimization in the United States in Davis, Robert C. & Luigio, Arthur J. & Skogan, Wesley G. eds. Victims of Crime (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). This chapter was written at a level of statisical analysis that I could understand and critque. Meaning I could also write statistical analysis in this style.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

I checked out Biostatistics M.Sc program courses.

In the biostatistics M.Sc. program I would have only two pure statistics courses. These would be mathematical statistics I and II, course codes STAT5600 and STAT5501. These would be hard work but I know the material at a basic level and would have to show some sophisticated understanding of this area of statistics.

Then epidemiology I and II (EPI5240 & EPI5241) and clinical trials I & II (EPI6178 & EPI6278) plus one optional course and then a seminar course STAT5902 where a team of students analyse some data or experiment and present this analysis in a seminar.

Yesterday morning I downloaded a lot of the course material for EPI5240 and can go out and buy some books to read long before actually registering in the course.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Reading a lot

I have been reading about musical engineering. I tried reading some Manuel Castells today. His Power of Identity is what I tried to read. I managed to read some of the introduction section on nationalism. This inspired me to search for Estonian music on iTunes. I found an EP by a band from Australia called Fortress Madonna. I emailed them. The EP is called Estonian Female Snipers. This is apparently a sniper in the war in Chechna who shoots Russian soliders. I also searched for Tartu and found a band called Luomakunta and bought their album in Estonian or Finnish titled Raina. I read a little about science and law in the US yesterday. I read another suicide case in a general suicide reader I am reading. The suicide happened in the 1960's British theatre. It was a murder suicide and was explored in the book to make a point about suicide by being murdered. This is related to studying assisted suicide laws. I read about a village festival in Slovenia. I read this aloud to a friend and my wife. I continue to study a self help book for workaholics. I am also reading Wajcman, Judy. Techno Feminism (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004). I read more about the popular history of SAS. I have also been reading an econometrics book about spatial statistics. This econometrics is where I learned about spatially dependent data recently.

Paid for for my graduate school application. This is really happening finally.

I paid for my application for an M.Sc. program in biostatistics. i hope to combine my teaching of statistics skills and my ability to use statistical software with my interests and activities in community psychiatry, other community volunteering, and other disAbilities activism. The application is almost complete now. I just need to wrap up the referees by giving them the proper forms and then submitting the actual application to the graduate student's office in the school of mathematics and statistics.

Now I have to pay for my legal studies MA application and get the referee's forms to my two referees in the department of law at Carleton.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

My other blogger blog got flagged as a spam blog.

My computer tinkering blog got flagged as a spam blog which of course it is not. Of course I am tonight/this morning working on a computer for someone so can not post my progress at the blog I use for this. Oh well I have been hit by a computer error. Yet even with the spam prevention technique the image verification does not function properly. I have been unable to post much or edit posts since this has happened. I am just posting this as a kind of test to see if this blog too has been flagged as spam. One of my other blogs is a number 1 on goggle right now for searches for a certain medication but I am not selling pharmacy stuff rather I take this medication. This goes to show that use of the internet leads to known internet problems so we must be aware of these problems. Much like I wrote a 40 page paper to learn computer security that helps me keep my computers secure.

Friday, November 11, 2005

To Remember Is To End All Wars.

Today is the day we remember the soldiers who fought in our wars. I remember the soldiers I grew up with and my ancestors who died in war and those that lived. I really need to figure out what the war on terrorism is about in terms of basic rights and I think in some way it is a fight for personal security and the right to a secure and safe life. But then we bomb foreign countries so maybe they are just getting revenge for that. When will all the killing stop?

I learned recently that labour was really against fighting in the first world war as it was considered a bosses war. They felt that the rich should have to pay more as the rich did not have to risk their lives for the country. I knew this idea of a bosses war before but not the origin of this in Western Canada where the One Big Union (OBU) concept started. Also it seems one of my unions was very active in the early 1900's in Western Canada. I read about this in a book about the Winnipeg General Strike by my professor's father a history professor. A note here I have long held a bias in second generation academics that predicts career paths of lawyers for philosophy, economics and history professor's children. In my present professor's case this is true. But of course this prediction based on recommended pre law BA subjects does not hold as a hard and fast rule. I only believe it is the colouring of being a professor in these above mentioned subjects and its effect in children growing up in university families. These are my realities not war, killing and aggression. I prefer reading, writing and arithmetic.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

I taught myself something about autocorrelation matrices

I taught myself something about autocorrelation matices in a book on spatial statistics. I learned a response variable being spatially dependent on near by observations. There are a number of ways of looking at or modeling this spatial dependence. Nearest neighbour is one technique.

A world of terrorists, freedom fighters and business people and of course the rest of us.

I am wondering about the spread of terrorism and stuff like this. There are so many people in the world. Tomorrow is rememberance day in Canada. Lets remember the civilian vicitms of war this year. War is evil. Murder is a crime everywhere even when done by the government like soliders. Who will judge war crimes? Oh well I need not really worry to much about all this outside world stuff.

Defining liberty.

Liberty is the right to be left alone. This is an ideal state and can not work in our Western society in an ideal way. We must maintain some connects with others and are never truly alone or let alone.

Reading about the rule of law and other legal studies topics and listening to a law student's podcast.

I am reading about rule of law and completed reading about the special case of England and also started to read about social welfare states and A. I. Dicey and his critique of administrative law involved in supporting the social welfare state and how all these government agencies escape the judges and courts and thus erode the rule of law. I also briefly read about the legal profession and the rule of law and this leads to another book I am reading.

This other book could be part of legal informatics or law and the semantic web project. In fact it is about the semantic web and the law. I read the beginning chapter of this conference/workshop proceedings book. It is interesting this first chapter as the connections are made between computer science and legal studies and I found it a good overview of law and also a good summary of the types of things going on in legal studies. I am interested now to search out languages/schemas like LeXML and LegalXML etc.

The other book I am reading is one of these cute history books in this case called Power and Greed and is about the rules governing aquisition in history and then covers people who have broken these rules to gain more wealth than the rules allow. I have just tonight completed reading about the historical rules which covered rules made by everyone from Mohammed to Jesus to Plato and and others who lived long ago and were all men. Thus is this book really valid history considering that womyn might have made rules too? I am not sure but my professor recommended it in my present criminal law course early on in one of the first lectures. So am I being spoon fed a patriarchical view of the history of the world? I probably am being spoon fed this point of view. Will I question this publicly? I just did. Oh the mysteries of the educated masses.

I also downloaded and listened to a podcast by a first year law school student. I found it in the education subcatagory in Apple Computer's music store inside the iTunes software. This is my second day exploring the education subcatagory in the podcast directory in iTunes. I listened to this student's introductory podcast. I started to listen to his first podcast on contracts which was from his notes from his first lecture in his contracts course. It was good to review the basic components of a contract and follow his American examples of enforceable contracts. I got about half way through this first podcast on contracts.

I also listened to some Wall Street Journal podcasts and a Sun Microsystems podcast. One of the Wall Street Journal podcasts was about living wills and I emailed about ten family members with some thoughts and rules I would want for my living will. I included no electroshock as a wish but all other medically acceptable proceedures. There was a Wall Street Journal podcast on cell phone company mergers but I didn't listen carefully to this podcast. But I did hear the journalist discuss the trend to having only a cell phone and no land line, as they call traditional phones in this context. The third Wall Street Journal podcast I managed to listen to was about how to get Wall Mart to sell your product if you are a small business trying to do this. I deleted the first two Wall Street Journal podcasts but kept this one about getting Wall Mart to carry a product, because it is a useful listen for marketing statistics material. The Sun Microsystems podcast was about a portable internet classroom being used in the Brazilian rural school system and was obviously an uncritical look at providing children with Internet access and was meant to make Sun Microsystems look good without too much depth of content.

Well I will proof read this entry now and then go back to reading these three books for tonight/this morning as they all relate to my lecture later tonight. I may end up staying up for 34 hours today maybe 36. I have one union meeting today and one multi union meeting and then time off and then my lecture later tonight. The bad planning today is the last meeting may be over by 14:30 and then my lecture won't be until 18:00. I will be in a tired state at 14:30 and staying on campus for long periods with no classes is not something I do well. But what I may do is watch the lecture on TV tomorrow and tape it of course instead of attending later this evening. I am obviously working too hard at my studies as some readers commented on one of my other blogs. But it is what I want to do and it does not really hurt anyone to do this.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

I gave three labs tonight.

I gave three labs tonight and we are at week eight in this course out of eleven weeks.

Marking done.

I got my marking done and all the marks recorded and then reported to the professor. I also reported the student's progress or performance on this assignment. I also reported what was going on in the labs in the past few weeks and what will be going on in the next two weeks. It is week 8 now and there are only three weeks left after tonight. But I have two more assignments to grade before the term and my work duties end.

I will now sleep and only get 5 or 6 hours sleep after a 22 hour day awake.

Still marking and I won't be done by 5 AM.

I am still marking and have been working for almost 4 hours now with about 1 hour of breaks. I will need another hour to complete it. I have a little more than half the papers left to mark for the final Q.

I did set up the router and it works fine. I wouldn't normally have such a powerful and recent piece of technology.

I am working in the math lab later today from 17:30 to 22:00 and will sleep before going to school. Then I may stay up until 20:00 Wednesday but will try to nap later in the morning Wednesday. I have some volunteer meetings on Wednesday later in the day.

I had a union meeting yesterday that was poorly attended. I though did a good job preparing for it. I have a union executive meeting on Thursday at noon.

On Friday in the early afternoon I have a meeting at our self help group for one of our committees. Then I have an on call shift that evening. Which reminds me I need to get someone to take one of my shifts this month.

Up late until Tuesday morning marking.

As has been the habit this term I am up late from Monday marking statistics home work. I have two Q's left to go now. I want to be done by 5 am again. I am just taking a break and will get back to marking in five minutes.

Monday, November 07, 2005

I sold my broken IBM thinkpad.

I was able to sell my broken IBM thinkpad tonight. We are ordering pizza. That was a very good laptop. I used it quite a lot for two years. My wife had stepped on the screen as I had left it out on the coffee table and it fell off. I got about 25% of the original price but this includes a new Linksys Ghz wireless router that the fellow traded me with some cash. The fellow, a high tech engineer and new Canadian from China is going to use it as a server and he will not use the screen. He gave me this particular router because it can be used with custom Linux software but I will probably just use it as it was originally designed to be used. But I won't set it up tonight as I have marking to do after we eat the pizza.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Plans going fine today. Computer parts deals happening today. Design also happening.

I was able to return the lecture tape on time this morning. I also returned three books to the library. I did not borrow any new books. I spent the last hour updating the union web page calendar and experimenting with PSP web design. I also subscribed to some other podcasts. I will do a little marking this afternoon. I arranged to have a 100 MB parallel port zip drive dropped off at 5:30 this evening. This will cost 12$ and is a tool to help me take files off my old WinNT machine I used in winter 2003. I will then install some new operating system(s) on this old IBM PC 325 server and/or sell this server. I got an email from a person interested in buying my old broken Thinkpad. I am also waiting once again for the possible delivery of the iBook today.

I got some marking done and will help with the newspapers this morning.

I just got some marking done for my teaching assistant work. I also did a little more advanced math studies, yesterday morning. I am getting ready for grad school next year. I will help deliver the newspapers this morning and this includes a Canadian Tire catalog in today's paper. I watched a little news and weather on TV and my tape copying is done for my criminal law course. I just need to go to the campus today to return the original tape. I will also pick up some teaching assistant materials and then may be return some library books and borrow some new books. I am also going out later today to buy a 100MB parallel zip drive for 12$. This is so I can retire my WinNT computer. May be I will buy 10 zip disks to help with this file copying.

Helped with newspaper then attended a volunteer development conference.

I helped with the newspapers as usual on Saturday morning. I did them quickly and was done by 6:45. I then stayed up and attended a volunteer development conference. We heard a talk on background checks. I then attended a workshop on communication. I participated and learned a model of explaination and conflict managment for volunteers. I was feeling tired and cynical. I met someone from a local high tech lobby group and had a nice chat. I then came home and slept. I slept from about 2 PM to 2 AM.

Right now I am taping one of my criminal law lectures and need to return the tape this morning before 10 AM or face a fine. I also need to mark some statistics homework this morning. It is now 3:45 AM.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Quiet evening home from my exam.

I am spending a quiet evening home after my exam. I surfed futureshop.ca and now am doing some school tasks related to applying to graduate school. I am going to make a new blog entry and another referee has emailed me agreeing to referee.

Just going to school early.

I am just getting ready to go to school for my mid-term exam. I will study a little in the library and have some food there before the test.

Reading about war crimes investigations in newspaper.

I am having a good day. By waking up early I have some time to relax and study. I bought the cigarettes and checked out bass amps at the music store. I also checked on my lay away for the Peavey EQ. I read some stuff about RCMP war crime investigations and am otherwise free to prepare for my mid-term exam tonight. I will go to school a little early and relax with some coffee. I have one or two more articles to read still this afternoon to prepare for the mid-term.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Paid for iBlog software today.

I paid for the iBlog software. It cost about 25$ Canadian dollars. It was purchased from an Indian software company. I am using this software to keep my statistics graduate school blog.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

I spent about an hour after work last night studying.

I spent about an hour reading last night after I got home from work. I spent a little time at first with my wife until she went to sleep. I then read some books from my legal studies program, reading about Plato, Liberalism and cyber democracy. At work last night between labs I read some of the required reading for my criminal law course about the Chicago Seven trial.

Monday, October 31, 2005

I attended a SAS Enterprise Guide workshop.

I was invited and today attended a workshop on using SAS Enterprise Guide. We worked on computers in the Sprott School of business Lab E this morning. I found out about a meeting of the Ottawa Area SAS Users Society that is happening tomorrow morning. To attend this tomorrow I will go back to normal days with early mornings and early nights.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Rationalising this week's studies.

Although my pre-grad school math studies are going well and I also worrry about doing enough of these, I am going to back off on these studies for the week. I will only really study SAS today and perhaps on Monday as I have a SAS workshop on Monday morning at school. SAS is one of the statistical softwares we use at our math and stats school.

For legal studies I will focus on my mid-term this week but this mid-term is fairly open. I have done enough studies up till now so only have maybe one required reading or two to still read. As far as suggested readings I have been doing these regularly so am ok with these but these are where I will study more from this week. I need to read a bit more about war crimes, the Winnipeg general strike, and may be continue reading some of the more general books about our times in a legal-political sense.

I will also leave some study time for reading medicine, self help, computers and other fun stuff like Internet research and doing blogs. Mostly this week I have half day assignments and I have all of Thursday off and Thursday is another pay day this week. I will not have had my Friday night friends over for about three weeks after this week.

Friday, October 28, 2005

I updated my new blog just now.

I have a new blog using iBlog on my macintosh computer. It is being used to tell my story of graduate school in statistics.

I attended a lecture last night in criminal law process and politics

This is my last undergrad course needed for my BA. It took nine credits as a second degree. One credit was of course my first year introduction to legal studies. Then there were three second year courses worth a credit a piece and I did these over four years. They were introductions to criminal law, public law and private law. I took the criminal law second year course first in 2001-2002 after I had begun working as a security guard. This was also when I gradatued with my first degree my statistics B.Math but this was only a three year general B.Math not an honours degree. Then for third year and fourth year courses in legal studies these were only half credits, so I needed eight of them plus the fourth year honours paper which was one credit. For third year half credits I only needed three optional courses and one research methods course. I am just now this term completing my last optional third year course in criminal law process and politics. In the winter 2003 term I took my first third year course which was called law in the information society. I focus much on my studies on this area of the internet or computers and the law. After this course in summer 2003 I took my second second year course in private law and wrote about a case at our Supreme court about the right to refuse medications. Recently the person involved in this case has been forced to take medication again so his victory at the Supreme court is really only a theoretical or temporary victory. My next third year half credit course was consumer law in fall 2003. I started studying fourth year courses after having done two second year courses and the one third year course and my first fourth year course was criminal law reform also in fall 2003. This was when I first had my IBM laptop. I then took a business law fourth year course about issues in ecommerce and this was my worst course where I scored my lowest grade in the BA a C in winter 2004. I also took the research methods course that term. For my third fourth year half credit I studied in the criminal law and criminology summer school which has been a tradition at our school since at least the early 1980's and I had wanted to take part in this summer school for years and finally did in summer 2004. I did very well with this course scoring A. This is when I started to have regular 24 hours days awake. I have the same professor from that course this term. I then last school year took my last half credit in fourth year and this was my drug law course. The professor of this course feels I have talent for graduate school and has offered to be a referee for this MA application which I have been preparing in the past week or two. Also last year I completed my honours paper which counted for one credit at the fourth year level. The paper was on the topic of computer hackers. This past summer I completed the last second year course in public law. I only need now to complete this third year course and I am done in about 5 weeks. This will be my first outstanding degree with my graduation average being a B+ in legal studies and a good B over all. The university regard this as graduation with high honours.

I took time while studying for this BA to also study a philosophy course in the history of ethics. Two sociology courses one in criminology and one in the sociology of science and technology. I also studied last year a course in numerical analysis and also a course in data mining.

Next week, I have my mid-term in the third year criminal law course and should get an A on the mid-term or at least a B+. Then on December 10th, Human Rights day I have my final exam. I will have to wait until March to find out if I have formally graduated and then will attend graduation in June along with spring graduates.

In the winter I will not be in a program but will be considered a special student and can really study whatever I want provided that there is space for me in the course. I am thinking of studying experimental design and have started to read about combinatorics for this course. I am also considering statistical computing. I also am considering bioethics as a course. In legal studies I am considering state security and dissent, feminist legal issues, and risk and the legal process. I would like to find a space in the medical issues in criminal law course as this course covers topics like the insanity defence but this course is full right now. Again I will cut this list down to one or two course by the time the winter term begins.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Legal topics studied this week, so far.

So far this week, I completed reading an article about privacy by Valerie Steves from our criminal law and political process course readings book. I also read two cases concerning aboriginal Canadians and the colour of right defence to charges resulting from protests. Basically aboriginals are allowed to trespass given that aboriginals have not sold their land to us Europeans. The belief that Canada, or parts of it not covered by treaties, are/is still aboriginal land and the complexity of land not being owned, because land ownership is a concept alien to aboriginal legal systems, is affirmed in these court cases I read. This continues the coverage of defences from my introduction to criminal law course, and also continues the coverage of aboriginals and the law from my introduction to private law course.

I spent about five minutes or less so far this week looking at the Rule of Law history book I am borrowing. I borrowed only one book tonight after reading

Schwartz-Morgan, Nicole. Loose Cannons In Cyberspace: Society and Psychological Change in Last, David & Horn, Bernd. eds. Choice of Force: Special Operations for Canada (Kingston, Ont.: The School of Policy Studies, Queens University, 2005).
This article depends on and describes the concept of genetic change by the concept of propensity genes. Her point is that the Information Age is changing the way we behave and that this change is not individual or cultural and thus is permanent. She is worried about this in more than just our dependence on technology, but also in regards the behaviour of the special forces and its leadership as these people change because of cyberspace.
The booked I borrowed is an analysis of the British Army Special Air Service and its presentation in popular culture. I will cite it at a later date, if I read more of it. Also this week I got more into reading about feminism and femininity involved in Latin American revolutions and also labour movements.

I have labs again last night.

There were fewer students this week in the labs. I gave labs in determining probability using a probability density function and also using a cumulative density function. I showed students how to calculate these proabilities using Minitab software and also using the formulas for the various distributions in particular I showed them the binomial and poisson distributions, two discrete distributions.

Monday, October 24, 2005

I got my transcripts requests mailed out.

I attended McMaster university in 1977-1978 and also in 1980-1981. In between I took a couple of courses but didn't complete them at Mac. I also attended some night school courses at Algonquin college from 1995-1999 studying managing volunteers. To apply to graduate school I needed to get my transcripts from both of these schools and have them mailed to Carleton. I filled out the forms for both schools twice, once for the M.A. and once for the M.Sc. I just mailed them at noon today.

My next step is to visit my M.A. referees this week and I also need to pay for the M.Sc. application on line this week then just complete the forms which are almost done now. I might also need to check with or change my referees for the M.Sc.

Today I will go to campus to hardware services to borrow a set of SAS install disks for my broken laptop which has a WinXP install that is still fresh.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

The college life: faculty partners and family charity book sale today.

This is typical of college life today. I woke up at 2 PM yesterday. I stayed up and wrote things and read things and am up still this morning. I will now stay up for about a 24 hour day. I will stay up to attend a charity booksale of faculty and library books. This all seems like typical college life.

I gave the statistics mid-term, as part of my teaching assistant duties, last night or helped proctor it might be a better way of saying this. It went well and the boss offered to be a referee in my statistics graduate school application and gave me some advise on how to find referees.

In other school news today I am trying out iBlog on my Macintosh and am hosting the blog on my student web space. This blog will be a record of my statistics graduate school experience. Yes I do too much web publishing and it costs too much.

Friday, October 21, 2005

I gave a mid-term tonight.

I proctored a mid-term tonight in statistics as part of my teachng assistant duties. It went well no major peek experiences and all experiences were positive. I got to know my students better.

Started a basic book on Information technology as a review of IT.

I started to read a review of the principles of how computers work. This was written for lawyers. This book is
Handa, Sunny. Fundamentals of Information Technology (Markham, Ont.: LexisNexis Canada, 2004).
This book starts with a review of physics of electronics and I am going to read more of it later.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Completed reading David Shenk's 1997 Data Smog book tonight.

I completed reading David Shenk's Data Smog tonight and returned it to the library. I also returned a few other books I was not reading. I borrowed books on computational materials science, grad school algebra, and a few on law and information technology. I will read for a few hour tonight. I will read our course pack for LAWS3306 and did attend the lecture this week earlier this evening.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Missed some work today.

I was supposed to do building inspections today as part of my health and safety committee work but did not have enough sleep or wake time. I prioritised my main work and my social night tonight. I will be on a good sleep schedule for the rest of the week. Tomorrow there is steward training at noon. There is also a workshop on IP and copyright at school tomorrow that I want to attend. I note here that a book project I am involved in is starting to earn royalties which will pay for another edition. Then in the evening tomorrow I have my weekly lecture to attend. Then Friday I am working in the late afternoon early evening at our statistics student's mid-term. Then this weekend I will mark it.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Just heading off to my teaching assistant work with everything ready for tonight's labs.

I am just powering up my iPod with PDA guys podcasts to learn about gadgets. I am taking my legal studies books for school to read on break and also I hope to finish reading Data Smog today. I will be early to work I hope and drop by the union office.

Continuing marking early in the morning/late at night.

It only took me half an hour to mark one Q just one more Q to go now. The problem is dealing with some social facts but in fact if one were studying this area of sociology one would not be so certain that the numbers for this statistical problem would actually be accurate. In fact, these numbers might never actually be available but in our imperfect world these numbers are always available for policy but in true science these numbers would be doubtful and more uncertain than they seem to be presented in this statistics textbook. I will meantion this to the students later today. The problem claims to measure the number of unknown cases but by definition these are still unknown in number and will always remain unknown.

I am up late working on my teaching assistant work.

I need to mark two more Q's on the assignments and then spend about 2.5 hours preparing for the assignments. I need to sleep by about 3 AM or 5 AM and wake up at 2 PM for a less than 24 hour day and a good ten hours sleep. I am working later today at 5:30 PM until 10 PM.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Marking statistics assignments today and reading Jihad v McWorld

I am reading a little this morning about interdependence and resource economics in Jihad v McWorld. I am also going to do some marking. I am managing the household budget and buying some cat food today. I am also doing some green party volunteering at school today.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Article in today's paper about youth and adult transitions.

I did everything I usually do today, although my today is from 4 PM to about 6 PM later today. I will volunteer today starting in about 1 hour. I have also worked for about an hour marking statistics assignments. I am more than half way done with this work which is due back on Tuesday. I need to volunteer on Monday too with my PA system so should get this marking done today if possible. This is part of my teaching assistant duties.

I have read some of my own studies earlier today. This includes studies in law, informatics, and also social research. I also helped a fellow academic with some statistical problems and although I took the role of statistical consultant in this work I believe it was not all that successful. There is a book review of a pop statistics book in today's Sunday newspaper by journalist Jason Chow who is in Toronto. The book is Rosenthal, Jefferey S. Struck By Lightning: The Curious World of Possibilities (Toronto: HarperColins, 2005). I was struck by the term Markov Chains again and Monte Carlo another term I seem to have some understanding of, and these combined are Rosenthal's specialty.

I listened to some podcasts, which are in this case just spoken radio like entertainment. But the difference is that they are digital and thus can seemingly be saved for later use or reference. I have also listened to two or three albums of music. I have two reasons to listen to more music. One I need to put more relaxation into my schedule because even reading is work for me. And two I am taking up my music career a bit more including giving a free lesson today at about midnight, in blues playing and also major and minor scales on the guitar. In my studies today and in the podcast I was learning about PDA's as well and I mention this here because the applications I installed and tested on my Palm PDA today were artistic tools. One is called Fretboard and is very useful and not bad as an interface for what it does. It is able to show the fretboard positioning for chords, scales, and notes for a variety of fretted instruments and this is really its power is that it has many fretted instruments I have never played on nor have played with players of these instruments. Another music tool for the palm PDA was the software Tuning Fork which played throught the speaker on the palm perfect A notes at 440. I tried it to play 880 which it did but then the palm froze and needed to be soft reset.

The other PDA art tool was Q draw perhaps more in line with my school training in arts and I used it to draw a floor plan of our apartment. I was quicker and did a better drawing, than I have with other softwares like Illustrator and Photoshop. The reason perhaps is because doing this on the palm was more like holding a sketch pad with a pen instead of a mouse. Yet the various drawing tools are similar to other computer drawing programs where there are tools such as shapes and fill and of course text my all time favorite tool as I was trained to techincal drawing and map making. These types of drawings are incomplete without text labels.

I read the paper with interest today which is unusual for a Sunday paper. The cover of one section had a photo of a sister union member. The article "On Hold: Coming of Age in Ottawa is a Road to Nowhere For Many Worried Twentysomethings" by Pauline Tam Ottawa Citizen, October 16, 2005 C3-C6. It is about concepts like emerging adulthood and arrested adulthood. There are some pretty simplistic value statements defining adulthood and relating the values of work, but the economic arguments I thought might be missing that explain the situation, like lower wage trends in the past thirty years, were included in the article. I have experienced what this article is about both in my work and my school life. It also includes the family as a topic in this article and the plea for government and business policy for part timers and this hits one of my road blocks square on the head. This pieces analysis and my reading of it remind me to see the parallel developments approach to analysing problems. The social can not be divorced from the economic and, in fact, the best perspectives are interdiciplinary perspectives. This article also had some critiques of teaching and I seem to be taking on the resonsibility for my teaching and hoping to improve it.

Speaking of teaching I need to prepare some statistics labs for Monday. I also have about three data mining conference reports out from the library from Friday night. I should take some time now and read some of these articles before going out to volunteer.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Reading about child poverty research, evidence and privacy, and other legal studies books.

I read some more of Data Smog this week. I read the first chapter of a book about child poverty research. I read the first chapter in an old law reform commission report about electronic surveilance. I read the introduction to a book on Ulrich Beck and his risk concept. This is for preparation to a possible legal studies course this winter on risk. I read the first chapter about youth in Robert Kennedy's To Seek a Better World. This last book is for my legal studies course tis term in criminal law.

I am slowly slogging through Neil Nehring's Popular Music, Gender, and Postmoderism: Anger Is an Energy (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 1997). In music I also started to read this book this week: Firth, Simon. World Music, Politics and Social Change (Manchester, UK: Manchester University, 1989). Both of these books are critical of the elitism of music studies in universities. I also started to study mixing and effects in the book White, Paul. Basic Effects & Processors (London: SMT;Sanctuary, 2003).

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Taught some labs and borrowed some books.

I taught some labs in statistics tonight. I was mostly quiet in the labs only helping the students rather than solving problems. We interacted fairly well. I have some marking to do now. I also talked with our TA union business agent and some other TA's during the course of the evening. I also talked with a student who also has a disability. I borrowred books on revolutionary women fighters and feminisms in guerilla warfare, special forces operations in the Canadian forces, exploring child poverty, and finally a handbook for university courses in forensics.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

I did a little studies today to prepare for my teaching work on Tuesday. I am working tomorrow.

I read the course textbook for statistics for about half an hour this weekend. I need to spend about another three hours on Monday studying this textbook for the labs on Tuesday. I am also writing an M.Sc. thesis proposal today. I have a rough draft but haven't read it yet I just wrote one page and printed it but still need to read it once through.

But at the moment I am going to try to nap for about four or five hours because I have to go to work early Sunday morning. I managed to help deliver the newspapers this morning and also did a volunteer on call shift today. I am also reading some legal studies and other books.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Attended lecture last night on war crimes.

We had a lecture on war crimes last night. It was shocking to watch the footage from Nazis Germany and the death camps. I left in a strange mood. I hung around school for about two hours before the lecture. I had everything read that was required. I borrowed some more books about terrorism. I am borrowing about 40 books now. I had to take back the book on basic gender studies. I am coming to understand that law school will be too expensive to study. I may investigate grants and other funding help but I am thinking the MA in legal studies will be more fun intellectually and better for me.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Continuing to read critics of the information age.

I am reading Shenk, David. Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (New York: Harper Collins, 1997). and Rose, Ellen. User Error: Resisting the Computer Culture (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003). Both of these books are critical looks at the Information age. These are borrowed books. Another critic I was reading in August was Stoll, Clifford. High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian (New York: Double Day, 1999). I own this book or it was my mom's.

Monday, October 03, 2005

I found three referees for my law school application today.

I spent about an hour surfing the law school application web site last night/this morning. I printed the manual for the application. I emailed some four lawyers and two community leaders looking for referees. Today I have two lawyers who are my past teachers and also a community leader to act as referees. So this is on its way to being ready to go. I will check the application again tonight and read the manual for this year's applications.

May be meeting with a professor of criminal law this week to discuss MA supervison.

My drug law professor has agreed to meet with me and discuss supervising my MA in legal studies. She really made me work hard last fall to write a very good paper on drug addiction treatment and the law. This paper is one of my best in terms of having a very academic diction. She may be able to supervise some studies on criminal law and mental health. I should try to study the criminal law and health issues course next term but need to find a space in this course. I guess with that reminder I am off now to surf the school's registration system to check on class openings. I will proof read this and then surf on over to the University web site.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

I read three chapters of a book and turned on the movie Y2K.

I borrowed this book today at an employee's suggestion
Shenk, David. Data Smog : Surviving the Information Glut (San Francisco, Calif. : Harper Edge, 1997).
I read three chapters this evening. Then I turned on the movie Y2K and watched it to the second commericals.

One of my old friends has to keep a blog for a school course.

His blog is here http://waltonp.blogspot.com. It is for some teaching course he is studying. I comment on his first post. Here is what I wrote:

Peter said...


Phil as an old friend I had never read you before. High school and elementary were verbal between the youth. Only love notes between girls and boys nothing between male friends. True we read books but we never read each other. Of course, it is easy for anyone to proof read and I did that. Is it Keating or Keating's? Much of my Internet use is proof reading my own public self.


I am not surprised to see spam here. Art blogs on blogspot get spam. My dry school blog does not. My school blog which is inspired by the school but not required is here http://notebook.webpagex.org. This is just a blogspot site where some computer techs donated my cute web address.


I have now joined you in your public writing. I have been writing in public on the Internet as world wide web for ten years. I think this really is welcome to the Internet for you.

I like books about computers.

I am enjoying reading cyber sociology. I really like books. Today I have read about drug offences in Britian, the Greek, Solon and his legal constitution, information overload, and the rule of law. I emailed two professors about finding a supervisor for my legal studies MA. I also read a paper directly for my own course that we were assigned to read this week. I borrowed books by famous academics in Internet studies, books on law, a book on women work and technology, and a book on crime and numbers. I am borrowing about 35 books at the moment.

Surfing school web pages and installing school pdf's on my palm.

I am just about to surf school web pages which means read web pages. Our criminal law course has a web CT web page and I can look at extra readings on this web page. I have also read a little this morning. I installed a few course outlines, school union documents and my mixer manual as pdf's on my palm pilot.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

I defeated the shopping cash flow bug today.

I managed to buy a bus pass, smokes, and groceries and only spend 5$ on something unplanned. I am heavily behind on bills this month but have spent 930 dollars at the music store in the past two months. I am such an independent musician ;) Said with sarcasim towards individualistic neo-liberal personal accumulation schemes. Am I really smarter or more creative owning music technology? I think with all the music technology I just bought I did not buy one item with a integrated circuit chip in it.

Oh well our rent will be paid and our debit was serviced and I even bought stock. Our house has some food and some drink. We will buy our major amount of groceries tomorrow. But most probably our phone will be disconnected and our power turned off.

Friday, September 30, 2005

Recording lecture

I am recording lecture #3 today or Thursday night's lecture from my criminal law course.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Major school future decison made with my brothers advice. Stress break begins.

I asked my brother for help deciding my grad school program. He did offer advice which I have now followed for today. I dropped my stochastic processing and queuing theory course so only have the one law course to study. I did get a refund of the fees. This fee money will pay for another law course this winter. I will not be able to get a student bus pass now with the reduced course load but I will have more time to either work or stay at home and read this term. I will prepare to study legal studies at the master of arts level next year. For now I have a reduced study load thus a major stress break has been implemented.

I wrote up one problem from my assignment in Maple.

I am allowed to apply to the Biostatistics M.Sc for next year. Based on this positive news I renewed my effort on my stochastic processes and queuing theory course. I wrote up the first problem in our first asssignment using the symbolic algebra software Maple. I used Maple 7 and worked for about half an hour to get my solution written up and now printed out. I want to work on three more problems this morning. I also want to write up the second problem in Maple but it is not solved yet.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

I may take a lighter course load this fall and take time off studies this winter.

I am having diffculty with my statistics homework. I could drop the course now and get the fee money back. I have only two days to decide and still get the money. This is sort of a reaction to my confidence levels with math as apposed to statistics because the homework I am trying to do is very math like with integrals and derivatives. Oh well I worked for an hour and half on this one homework problem now I will take a break. I started one problem and met a snag where I will need a trick to continue and solve the problem. Maybe this is a matter of a methodology approach issues rather than a pass/fail and therefore avoid/approach problem. If I drop this course it will not affect my present program in legal studies but would affect my chances of going to grad school in statistics next year. I would be down to only one course and only be on campus for two days a week and both days in the evenings. I don't think it would affect my work at school either. The refund would pay for one course this winter. Or I could take the winter off freshly graduated by spring and follow the advice of a few law professionals who think I should try working in the real wortd.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Reading about ebusiness.

I am almost finished this book Adams, F. Gerard. The e-business revolution & the new economy : e-conomics after the dot-com crash (Mason, Ohio : Thomson/South-Western, 2004).

Friday, September 23, 2005

These are the library books I borrowed last night for my criminal law and the political processes course.

Barber, Benjamin R. Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).
Belknap, Michal R. American Political Trials (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981).
Christenson, Ron. Political trials : Gordian Knots In the Law (New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction, 1999).
Gigantès, Philippe. Power & Greed : A Short History of the World (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002).
Kennedy, Robert F., Thirteen Days; A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969).
Kennedy, Robert F. To Seek a Newer World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967).
McNaught, Kenneth, Bercuson, David J. The Winnipeg Strike, 1919 (Don Mills, Ont. : Longman Canada, 1974).
Muir, James. The Demand For British Justice Protest and Culture During the Winnipeg General Strike Trials. (Winnipeg: U. of Manitoba, Faculty of Law., 1993).

Reading about political trials.

I just read this small legal history essay Muir, James. The Demand for British Justice: Protest and Culture During the Winnipeg General Strike Trials, Canadian Legal History Project Working Papers Series (Winnipeg, Man.: Canadian Legal History Project, 1993). This is for my criminal law course.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Completed reading a chapter of interviews of terrorism victims.

In my legal studies course this term I will be studying political trials. I am also continuing my studies of terrorism laws. I am reading a study of victim's of terrorism. This chapter covered victims of state terrorism too like the war and genocide. There were no victim's of Vietnam but there were some bombing victims from the fire bombing of Dresden interviewed. The interviews ended with some victims of the '911' terrorist attacks. The interviews also included death camp survivors and soliders from all side of world war one and two.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

These are the twenty two books I am borrowing at the moment from our school library.

Adams, F. Gerard. The e-business revolution & the new economy : e-conomics after the dot-com crash (Mason, Ohio : Thomson/South-Western, 2004).
Best, Joel. More damned lies and statistics : how numbers confuse public issues (Berkeley : University of California, 2004).
Cavalier, Robert J. The impact of the Internet on our moral lives (Albany : State University of New York, 2005).
Chiang, Chin L. An introduction to stochastic processes and their applications (Huntington, N.Y. : R. E. Krieger, 1968).
Day, Peter & Schuler, Doug. eds. Community practice in the network society : local action/global interaction (New York : Routledge, 2004).
DeRose, Steven J. The SGML FAQ book : understanding the foundation of HTML and XML (Boston : Kluwer Academic, 1997).
Glannon, Walter. Biomedical ethics (New York : Oxford, 2005).
Glidden-Tracey, Cynthia. Counseling and therapy with clients who abuse alcohol or other drugs : an integrative approach (Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005).
Harrington, C. Lee, & Bielby, Denise D. eds. Popular culture; production and consumption (Malden, Mass., Blackwell, 2000).
Hemmungs Wirtén, Eva. No trespassing : authorship, intellectual property rights, and the boundaries of globalization (Toronto : University of Toronto, 2004).
International Bar Association. Task Force on International Terrorism. International terrorism : legal challenges and responses : a report by the International Bar Association's Task Force on International Terrorism (Ardsley, NY : Transnational, 2003).
Jones, Neil C. & Pavel A. Pevzner. An introduction to bioinformatics algorithms (Cambridge, MA : MIT, 2004).
Kelly, Petra Karin. Thinking green! : essays on environmentalism, feminism, and nonviolence foreword by Peter Matthiessen. (Berkeley, Calif. : Parallax, 1994).
Li, Wai Keung. Diagnostic checks in time series (Boca Raton, FL : Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2004).
Rupert G. Miller, Jr. et al. Biostatistics casebook (New York : Wiley, 1980).
Ossewaarde, M. R. R. (Marinus Richard Ringo). Tocqueville's moral and political thought : new liberalism (New York : Routledge, 2004).
Ross, Sheldon M. Simulation (San Diego : Academic, 1997).
Béla Szabados & Kenneth G. Probert. eds. Writing addiction : toward a poetics of desire and its others (Regina : Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 2004).
Tamanaha, Brian Z. On the rule of law : history, politics, theory (New York : Cambridge University, 2004).
Webel, Charles. Terror, terrorism, and the human condition (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Weinreb, Lloyd L. Legal reason : the use of analogy in legal argument (New York : Cambridge University, 2005).
Wharton, Amy S. The sociology of gender : an introduction to theory and research (Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 2005).

Monday, September 19, 2005

Cases this weekend.

The cases I read about the past three days, as part of my hundred cases in one hundred days, were in the newspaper. One was a case of young men gropping a classmate. They were all give jail sentences. This seems a strong message by the judge. The other case involved a women who has been missing for a week and today they found her body. So she was most probably murdered. The other case was a women murdered. Her boy friend is the suspect and has been charged. According to the newspaper report she was a poet who had been quoted at a poetry reading on the front page of the newspaper a few years ago. Other people have died here too recently but they were traffic accidents.

I did a library search from home.

Amazing the Internet at schools these days. I looked up nine famous bioinformatics algorithm pioneers and found books by seven of them. I did this from home using the web and a list of these scientists from a book on bioinformatics algorithms.

I attended a tutorial today where the TA K solved some of the exercise set of problems on the black board. I interacted with her. Later in the day because the tutorial was at nine this morning, I attended the statistics class for the third time in the afternoon. We covered joint random variables and then the common discrete and continuous distributions or statistical models.

I also found time today to attend a green party beginning of term meeting and we planned some events. I will volunteer two hours this week on this club before classes on Wednesday and Thursday. I also am trying to get us a donated solar panel from a hardware store for a raffle to raise money for this club. I have to call the store manager tomorrow. I guess I called inappropriately this evening.

Also today I was interviewed with the students emergency response team and decided I could not volunteer with them because they require 12 hours per shift on campus. I find it difficult enough to stay on campus for my classes. The campus is not very comfortable.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

I finished printing off the Employment Standards Act.

I finished printing off the Employment Standards Act. I need this to study employment law so that I can draft some employment policy for our self help group. I will also today start what I want to be 25 hours of work on the network's web site. This is the self help network.

Reading this morning and preparing for my teaching assistant work.

I spent about half an hour this morning preparing for my teaching assistant work. I have to prepare for another 2.5 hours before late Tuesday afternoon. I read the first section of the student's textbook this morning and looked at the assigned problems and thought up ways to teach this stuff to the students on Tuesday. This will be their first lab so I must also explain the math and statistics lab rooms to them.

I read some stuff about terrorised warriors this morning. I also read about ebusiness. I also read about Standard Query Language (SQL) and Data Definition Language (DDL) an SQL language. I also read about cybercafes in South America and Internet policy in South America. I also read a little about assimilation v two row wapum parallelism in regards Native Canadians.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

I attended the Field's Institute Probability day.

I went to school early this morning to atttend the Field's Institute Probability day. I heard one talk but was too tired to stay for another. I had been up over night helping deliver the newspapers. The talk was on Poisson clusters to model queuing processes. The example was packets arriving at an Internet server. Mostly statistics and probability professors were there in the audience.

I downloaded some journal articles from the Political Theory journal.

I downloaded some articles as pdf's from the journal Political Theory. They are articles concerning the concept of justice. I am just reading and scanning course outlines for other law courses from fourth year. This means I am studying law. I recorded and watched the first hour of this week's lecture even though I was also in the class when it was filmed Thursday night. I saw myself on TV. I also read an excerpt from Niccolo Machiavelli concerning attaining the position of prince by villainy. I have spent about 3 hours out of class time on this political criminal law course so far this term.

I also downloaded the exercises from the stochastic processes course. I did about three problems and spent about 15 minutes of the three hours I need to do this weekend before 9 AM Monday morning when we have our tutorial. I am just about to print an article in queing theory and then later this morning at 9 am I will hear the author of this article give a talk on this problem of queuing in call centre operations. So I will be at school later this morning. Then I will come home and sleep at 2 PM or maybe sooner.

In the next few hours I will help deliver Saturday's newspaper.

Friday, September 16, 2005

100 cases in 100 days.

I plan to look at 100 cases of law in 100 days remainiing in my BA in legal studies. Today's case is Application under s. 83.28 of the Criminal Code (Re) [2004] 2 S.C.R. 248. This was a case related to the Air India terrorist attack.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Read the first reading in my criminal law course.

The first reading in the criminal law course examined violence and how the media function to create the dominant discourse involving terrorists. I completed reading it late Thursday night. I also read about community reinforcement models of maintaining abstience from drugs and alcohol. I also read about popular culture studies. I also reviewed a little of the textbook for STAT3506.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Today's class and buying books.

I am attending my second class in stochastic processes and queuing theory today. I am also buying the criminal law course reader and the music course book. Actually I may decide not to study the music course so will make sure I can bring the book back for exchange or not buy it today. I may not be able to afford the tuition for the music course.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

I watched episode one in the first season of Stargate a few months ago.

In this episode Kowlosky is investigated because he has been infected by a Goa'uld worm. We meet the medical doctor in the show. Kowlosky is taken over and tries to escape through the Stargate but Tilk stops him and in the end Kowlosky dies.

The pilot episode of Stargate SG-1.

In the pilot episode Anubus comes through the moth balled Stargate and captures a female US solider. The marines fight them and kill a few and capture a staff weapon. Captian Jack O'Neil is brought out of retirement to to be questioned. General Hammond plans to send another bomb through and O'Neil tells them that the bomb did not destroy the gate. They then plan to go back through the gate to Abidose.

They introduce Samantha Carter as a member of the team, who yes played with Major Matt Mason dolls as a kid. So the new team go back and find Daniel Jackson who explains the stargate system he has discovered. Then the Goa'uld come through to Abidose and capture Sharea and Scara. The team return to earth with Daniel Jackson and the stargate coordinates to where the attack came from.

In this episode we meet Tilk and see the process of the Goa'uld worms being placed in the host. Sharea is implanted with a worm as is Scara. Scara and Sharea become major figures in the enemy panthanon. The team go to the other world and eventually escape with only Tilk and some freed prisoners. Tilk rebels and joins the team and helps them escape. Kawolski is infected with a Goa'uld worm which goes into his ear. They all get back to earth after a big battle.

Tonight

I was not able to go to the bookstore yesterday as it was too crowded. I may try to go there tonight as it closes at 7 PM tonight. Otherwise I will go tomorrow. I still need to buy the music course textbook and also the criminal law process and politics reader for that course. I need to get these soon as the classes are on Thursday and I am behind on the readings. I will try to buy the music book first and it costs 108$ and includes 3 CD's. I also still owe 444$ in tuition for the music course. These two courses are on Thursday's and my first attendance will be Thursday this week starting at 14:30.The music professor contacted me today with the course outline. It looks like a very useful course to study and the outline suggests that this study of popular music is late to the game as the classical music scholars held the popular music out of the academy. But now we can study music as it is in real life.

I attended my first class of the fall 2005 term yesterday, STAT3506.

I attended the first class of the course STAT3506. This is the stochastic processes and queuing theory course. We reviewed the axioms of probability and some basic set theory. The next class in this course is tomorrow. I have the textbook for this course and will get started on some practice exercises tonight.

Completely watched the first season of Stargate.

I have watched a TV show on DVD now. In fact I borrowed a friend's DVD collection of the first season of Stargate. I was able this summer to watch the whole season. I have written reviews of each show. I have nine shows left to review out of twenty. I should get these other nine episodes reviewed tonight, or at least before tomorrow evening when I have to give the DVD's back to my friend. I do the reviews on this blog first then use dream weaver to make them into web pages.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Episode #19 leads off the final three episodes.

In the final three episodes the first is called There But For The Grace Of God. In this episode Daniel while exploring some alien cultures' collection of artifacts uses some device and activates a kind of mirror. He touches it and is sent to a parallel dimension. He finds himself alone on the planet they had just gone too.

Meanwhile just before he is separated, Tilk tells Jack that a symbol they find means that this world has been completely destroyed by the Goa'uld. Tilk warns Jack they must leave immediately.

So Daniel separated in the parallel world and alone, returns through the stargate and finds the SG-C on a parallel world. In this SG-C roles are changed slightly. In this parallel world the Daniel here is not even part of the SG-1 and in fact Kathryn does all the decoding, Jack is the base commander and Sam is a civilian Astro Physicist who is engaged to Jack. In this SG-C the Goa'uld are destroying the planet. After Daniel figures out that the annihilation fate of this parallel world will happen to earth, he talks the parallel world Jack into letting him return through the gate. Jack, at Daniel's suggestion of his Tilk's attitudes, attempts to reason with the parallel world Tilk who will have none of it.

This is actually the last time the gate can be used in this parallel world as the parallel world self destructs the SG-C as Tilk and Goa'uld have won the battle. The parallel world is destroyed by the Goa'uld. Daniel returns to the first world SG-C and the show ends to be continued. He also returns with gate coordinates for the world where the Goa'uld will launch their attack.

The Solitudes episode

In this episode #18 in the first season the SG-1 team return from a battle. The problem is two SG-1 members namely Sam and Jack return through another gate. They are stranded in an ice world. The gate has overloaded and the worm hole has split. The gate was overloaded by the energy weapons being fired in the battle. The SG-C ( mostly Daniel) eventually figure out that the split is to a second earth gate. The story also features Jack and Sam using survival techinques to survive in the cold. The SG-C trace the vibrations of the second stargate and locate and rescue Jack and Sam in Antartica.

Tin Man

The Tin Man episode of Stargate suggests an older technology. Basically the SG-1 find an underground complex with only one inhabitant. This fellow makes robotic copies of the SG-1 team and they go back to SG-C and are found out to be robots with the souls of the SG-1. They go back to the other planet and find their real selves and leave the robotic selves to help run the underground complex. The underground complex and the robots are the remains of a dying civilisation that remained immortal by making themselves mechanical bodies. The acting is the classic film trick of twins or doubles. Only really Jack but also Sam get to talk to their doubles.

There are once again too many interesting courses at school.

I have my work schedule at school now. I am just now choosing courses for myself based on this schedule. One reason for my success is choosing a good schedule so I am trying to do this now. I will attend one class today in statistics and look at books in the book store for other courses. I did some volunteering yesterday. I have no security work scheduled. Tomorrow will be a day off except for some union stuff later in the afternoon. I will not be able to study intellectual property but can study criminal law for my law course this term. I might also study a basic music course in popular music. So I might have three courses this term. I will have short statistics classes on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with a statistics tutorial Monday mornings. I will also have three hours work in the labs on Tuesday night as a teaching assistant. My own courses also happen on Thursday afternoon and evening. So I will be on campus for four days with only Monday an early morning. Wednesday and Thursday will start at 2:30 in the afternoon and Tuesday will start at 5:30 in the afternoon.Thus is doesn't matter if I sleep in except for Monday's. For my own studies and the time in classes: Monday will be two and a half hours; Wednesday will be one and a half hours; Thursday will be six hours. For my work Tuesday will be three hours.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Watched the last episodes of Stargate the past week.

I watched Enigma the 16th stargate episode from the first season. In this story the SG-1 finds some near dead humans on a planet.

The planet is being destroyed because of changes in the planet's orbit. The humans gave some advanced technology to another human inhabited planet in their solar system. The other humans used the technology to make war and destroyed the second planet. This causes the problem with the first planet. As it was destroyed by volcanos and gases the first humans escaped to another world.

The humans SG-1 found were the last team to leave. So SG-1 in saving them from the gases and volcanos took them back to earth where they are kept prisoners because they could not return. They object and in the end they do not share their technology with the SG-C.

The SG-C arrange to have them contact the Nox so they can stay with a similarily advanced civilisation. This contacting the Nox and letting the advanced humans leave is against the wishes of Mayborn who wants to keep the advanced humans on earth. The president orders SG-C to turn them over to Mayborn so only Daniel can help them escape SG-C because only Daniel will not face a court marshal for disobeying orders.

Again technological transfer is dealt with in terms of the military technology example.

Sam and one of the advanced humans fall in love briefly. Of course they fall in love with their mutual scientific interests as the catalyst.

I read a little today about moral impacts of the Internet and also e-business success by distruptive technologies.

I will not read a lot today. I read the school calendar and some course outlines I printed out for law courses. I read some Internet stuff. I also read some procedure manuals in my volunteer work. I volunteered for about four hours today. I helped deliver the newspaper but did not read it.

May be takinng a political law course.

I might be studying political law with my old professor Chris McNaught instead of the intellectual property course. I am also considering a French course instead of statistics. Another possibility I am considering instead of statistics is a music course.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Scheduling problems make two courses in legal studies practically impossible.

I have been assigned labs late on Tuesday. Because my law course is early Tuesday morning this raises a potential for 14 hour day at school. This is dangerous. I can certainly not study two law courses in a row as I suggested might be possible in my Tuesday the 30th of August entry. In fact it might be good at this point to try to find a differently scheduled law course than Tuesday. Wednesday I am also scheduled to have one lab at noon. Then my own statistics class is only an hour or so later at 14:30 and is only an hour and half class. Wednesday has a good schedule. The three labs on Tuesday start at 17:30 and end at 22:00. Each is one hour long and I have an hour and a half break between 19:30 and 21:00. I must find a law course after 10 am Monday morning but before 14:30 or later in the day on Tuesday's. Perhaps there is an open Monday evening law course. That would work well too. There is a course on Tuesday from 11:30 to 14:30 but this would allow no time to go home and I would be on campus for three hours with no purpose. This would be very bad too. At least with an early Tuesday class I will have four maybe five hours off and can come home for some of this time. Yes if I had a Monday evening course I could then take most of Tuesday to rest. But a Monday evening course might mean I would not sleep enough Tuesday night and I might stay up much too late and be late Wednesday morning or noon. Perhaps two statistics courses is the solution and save my law course until the winter term. I will check the course registration system now.

Reading about terrorism.

I have been reading about terrorism. The author of this book interviewed victims of both terrorism from below and terrorism from above as well as vicitms of torture and genocide. The book cite is Webel, Charles P. Terror, Terrorism and the Human Condition (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004).

I started some web pages for Stargate TV show reviews.

I started some web pages to contain my Stargate TV show reviews. I will start the content with my reviews from this blog. the page will be here
http://www.webpagex.org/SG-1/index-sg-1.html
. I have only three episodes left to watch in the first season.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

I did not stick to my decision so am keeping my options open in regards courses this fall.

I could not leave statistics alone and some encouraging words from professor Zhao, the school director and instructor for this course, have kept me in his course. I will also check out the two law courses, intellecual property, and the advanced issues course women work, and the law. I have until September 16th to get my money back on the statistics textbook. So hopefully I can decide by the second week on the courses.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I am studying legal studies only this term.

I think I have decided that I will only study legal studies this term. I will take a third and fourth year course. This will allow me to slightly improve my average and I can graduate this Winter or next Spring and I can also take the next term off of school.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Having last minute thoughts about my extra course.

I have been buying music equipment recently so the idea of studying a music course appeals to me. Also to improve my law graduation average and knowledge of law I am thinking of taking another law course as my extra course. If I were to follow my brothers advise I would not study the statistics course because it is being chosen to fit a degree program template. I might not also take the extra legal studies course because I am only taking it to improve my average. But this isn't totally true as I am interested in the topic of the course and the topic is women, work and the law. And next term I could study feminism and the law and this would prepare me well for graduate school in legal studies. I am saying this as I face the fact that my statistics marks are not good enough for graduate school. Using the famous Peter principle I have risen to my highest level of incompetence as a teaching assistant. I don't think I should arise any higher in this work but instead move onto legal work. The law course also promises to be fun and and highly interesting in an intellectual way. This also keeps my courses to occur all on one day, it won't mess with my teaching assistant schedule and the time spent between classes and on campus is minimised. It is also simple in that I would only study law this term. I will return my statistics book tomorrow for a refund and change my course selection now on the school registration system.

Scored another A in a law course

The professor emailed me my exam score which he said was excellent 317/350 and combined with my essay grade I should be getting an 84% grade which means A at my school. I really wanted to celebrate. But did not really do that. I did not work much on school work today after about 5 am or so. So I put in about three hours general studies this morning. I also put in about half an hour reading something for my intelllectual property law course. So I have about 17 hours to go in September. For statistics I surfed the school web site and may go to one of my former TA's PhD. defence later this morning at 10:30 AM. I also want to pay off my mixer and bring it home later today. Today is my last pay day for my summer teaching assistant work. The A in public law means I could also be asked to TA that course this year. I may just stay up all night and sleep at noon tomorrow.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Completed another hour of statistical study yesterday.

I have completed another hour of statistic study by finishing the text of chapter one in Ross, Sheldon M. Introduction to Probability Models 8 ed. (New York: Academic, 2003). I solved the first twenty or so exercies in my head from the end of the first chapter. Thus I have about thirty three hours left to study out of class in September and about one hundred and fifty three hours left for the term out of class hours. I may start chapter two this morning.

Reading extra stuff this morning.

I was just reading about gender. I woke up trying to capitalise on the school feelings of yesterday. So I began studying. I read some very interesting stuff about gender in social situations. I read about tokenism and ascribed characteristics like gender, race, and age. I reflected on my use of these characteristics both at a BBQ on Saturday night and within the school workforce and my other work environments. I then read a relapse prevention model in a medical research book.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Watched the Cor-Al and the Singularity episodes yesterday of Stargate.

The court case episode was called Cor-Al.

The third episode I watched was called the Singularity. In that episode we see how SG-7 was all killed by biowarfare. I was slightly critical of the amount of stuff SG-7 had brought through the gate to the planet they were on. They had set up a large telecope and buildings and computer racks. They were there to observe a black hole. Also in this episode a young girl who has been in tramatic shock from all the death in the biowarfare, goes through the gate/worm hole no problem which means going through the gate is not such a difficult feat. This does not quite fit the physical effects of going through the gate that had been part of the story up till now.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Out of class hours for homework this fall term.

This school term coming up I have a third year course with three hours of lectures a week. I also have one hour lab per week for this course. So four hours total. Since it is a third year course the multiplier is three. Thus out of class time should be twelve hours a week. With thirteen weeks I need one hundred and fifty six hours out of class time. For September I need about three weeks worth of this or thirty six hours. I have so far this past week done one hour and then last week another hour. Since I want to have my out of class time for September done as soon as possible I count down from thirty six. September is three weeks of classes. Thus I now have thirty four hours left to study.

In my other course I have a three hour lecture per week. This will be most likely a two and a half hour lecture per week. Since this is a also a third year course the mutliplier is three. Thus out of class time should be seven and a half hours per week. With thirteen weeks this becomes ninety seven and a half hours out of class time for the course. I have put in five hours so far. Counting down September's hours which will be twenty two and a half hours, I have seventeen aand a half hours still to go. I have now read everything required for the third week. The first week has no assigned readings. I have not been able to locate the second week's reading and must buy the course's reading text for these. So my homework has begun for the fall term almost two weeks ago.

I watched two episodes of Stargate tonight and I might watch more.

I am more than half way through the first season.

The first episode I watched tonight was called Hathor or something. It was about a God who could seduce men. She proceeded to seduce the main characters. She almost got a Goa'uld worm inside Capitan O'Neil. The women of the base were able to defeat the God. This was because they were women. In the end the God got away through the Stargate.

The second episode involved law. Tilk was put on trial for a crime he did when under the service of Ra. He had murdered someone's father. The main characters tried to be his defence attorneys and almost proved that he was now a changed person. They showed how he had killed the weak so that the many could survive. But this was not enough. After an attack from Goa'uld soliders and Tilk doing his usual battle thereby saving even more people, the son of Tilk's victim forgave Tilk.

I have about 12 episodes to still watch in the first season.

I updated my school home page.

I haven't updated my school web page in four years. I wasn't working too hard on the web back then. I did some more of that four year old page today according to the plan I had four years ago. I also updated it a bit and made it a bit more neutral. Visit it here http://chat.carleton.ca/~ptimusk/. I should still make links from my home page list of school courses to calendar course descriptions but that might wait until another day.

I did some union volunteering this morning in preparation for the up coming school year. I have been listening to the CBC locked out workers radio on labourstart. You can listen too on iTunes at http://www.live365.com/play/labourstart.

My sleep plans are off schedule now.

I had planed on sleeping at 8 am yesterday morning and going out to a green party event, Thursday evening. I had to stay up and buy smokes though. I stayed up and went to school and took back about 8 books to the library. I also got a course outline for a music course. I also bought a used textbook for my stochastics course. I am now this morning going to start reviewing basic probability and statistics in this book. Also yesterday when I bought the smokes I paid a little more for our new PA mixer. I owe less than 200 dollars for it now. I slept at 3 PM Thursday and woke up at 1 AM this morning Friday morning.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

My plans are becoming more solid for the fall term.

I am fairly sure I will study intellectual property law this term coming up. I will also study one statistics course namely stochastic processes and queuing theory. The books will be about 150$. I need to ask my father for book money now.

I met other TA's in our union at our summer meeting.

I attended the summer meeting of our union membership. I met TA's from China studying in chemistry. I met a new Law TA. I also met a geography TA. I talked with all these people for a few minutes each. I also met the usual union members and we chatted a little. I took minutes at the meeting and then we had a BBQ.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Studying intellectual property law.

I continued to study intellectual property law early Tuesday morning. I have about 22 hours left to my extra out of class studies for LAWS3202 for September. I read James Boyle and Richard A. Posner from the Daedalus journal Spring 2002 issue. I also read the beginnning of the Copyright Act.

Monday, August 22, 2005

I am really relaxed with the break in school work.

I am having a great time now that the summer term is ended. I am reading most of the day now. Our money is holding out not bad. I just have to report income today and will start to get to that this evening. I bumped into the president of the university today and joked with him a bit. I didn't know who he was at first and I was forward in a friendly way. I bought some on sale books and borrowed some books for my fall term course. I have two meetings tomorrow and a BBQ on Wednesday. I also volunteered ten hours today but was only on call and their were no calls. So I had yet another easy day. I took my laptop in for repairs and got some quotes on memory for the laptop which aren't too expensive and I can afford them perhaps.

I am just checking my schedule and applying for mathematics and statistics teaching assistant work again today.

I have just printed my tentative schedule. I leaning towards the stochastic processes course now. Based on this I will submit a TA schedule for the mathematics and statistics school today. I will have about a week to apply again with changes to my schedule. I have not yet heard about being hired as a legal studies TA but should hear about this soon. I have a career counselor appointment tomorrow and a union meeting Tuesday and Wednesday this week. I may got to campus today to use the library and take my laptop in to be looked at by the hardware repair services.

Most probably studying intellectual property law this fall but other than that not sure.

I am fairly sure I will study intellectual property law this fall but other than that course I am not sure what else I will study.

Jordon another statistics student who is now in grad school said the Time Series course is easy. I also agree with this and have the books borrowed to start studying this course.

I could chose to study state security and disent but this runs late Tuesday nights and the Intellectual property is early Tuesday morning. I could come home Tuesday afternoons. I also could take Women, Work and the Law on Tuesday's right after the intellectual property course but this would be 6 hours of lectures in a row.

I could also take a course in stochastic proceesssing and queuing theory and this course is a key course for future statistics studies. It could be difficult.

I had thought of taking it easy and studying a first year course in popular music but I don't take arts courses even with the best intentions to do so.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

I did some volunteering today and tinkering with my computers.

I did some volunteering for a community group today. I also continued to study community networking. I just sanded the bathroom wall where I had put polyfila. I cleaned up some paper garbage too.

I also installed Windows 2000 successfully on my new laptop hard drive. I need to download about 20 drivers or more from IBM for Windows 2000 to work properly on the IBM Thinkpad. I can not download the drivers on the Macintosh, so I am going to boot up my server running Windows NT and see if I can download them to a zip disk. Then I will transfer them to the Thinkpad. This will also test the server running Windows NT and its USB connection because I am using a USB zip drive. I have never tried to get anything to work in the servers USB connections. I am at the moment copying the old My Documents folder from Windows XP to Windows 2000 using my USB hard drive on the Thinkpad.

My first finger on my left hand has been hurting since that three hour exam in public law. I basically wrote steady for 2.75 hours during that exam.

I spent another half hour this morning reading about IP law

I have about 24.5 hours left to study before the class begins September 13th. I read about some of the techniques used to further medical research v the claims of patent holders. This covered mostly European courts like Germany, Italy and Britain but also looked at the individual agressive tendency in the USA.

Continuing to read about intellectual property law.

I reread the section of William Cornish's lecture on patents and read further on medical patents. I have put in about 2 hours of a planned 27 hours pre-term study for the course LAWS3202 Intellectual Property Law. So I have 25 hours left to do before September 13th.

Recovery of the laptop!

It is only the screen that was broken on the laptop. But this is a key part. On Monday I will call IBM and see if they can fix it. I was able to connect the laptop to an external monitor and access everything and keep it working. I took the entire My Documents folder off using a USB hard drive of 20GB size. I am able to access all the word processing documents on the Macintosh computer. These are most of my key school documents. The only other documents that might be windows only are SAS program files. I may not need these too dearly this year as I may not study much in the way of statistics this year. I also took the email off the laptop be exporting it to Netscape and then copying this folder full of email to the Mac mail program. In the end I had just bought a new 60GB hard drive for the IBM laptop and installed it and tried to put on the operating systems WinXP and Debian. Both failed at this point. With the Debian though it is just a matter of getting X windows working.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Another Stargate Episode watched.

In this episode the play of Amercan military technology threads through the story. A peaceful alien is found who can heal people back from the dead and also become invisible. Apothus is encountered and the characters fight him. There really is no pacifist in the main characters as Daniel Jackson has conveniently been converted into a cold blooded killer in the TV show. Jack attempts to help the Noxx by offering them support against the Goa'uld. But the Noxx advanced technology aliens are not afraid and they are used to explore the theme of pacifism against aggression.

Reading a variety of books but concentrating on Internet studies.

I did some studies of the networked society by Manuel Castels in his book The Power of Identity. I also was reading some post studies to his epic study: The Information Age,whichThe Power of Identity is the second volume. I also read a basic Introduction to Time Series from an early edition of the Time Series course STAT4603 textbook. I borrowed a few books for the fall term yesterday. I was able to implement a back up process and have most of my files accessible again after my laptop broke down. I also just now after reading the newspapers for the past week or so read a statistical report on a study into substance abuse self help. I also read the beginning of an intellectual property law lecture and this covered patents.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

My school machine broke last night.

My IBM Thinkpad T30 that had been my main school work machine for two years now is broken. I don't think I will be able to get it fixed. I have some back up CD's though. At the moment I have no windows computers. I was able to power up my Palm on the eMac and also hotsync it with the eMac. I am just going to find out if Neo Office will open my open office files from the back up CD.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Up early to review notes.

I am up at 4 AM today. I got a email back from a statistics professor about my grad school topic but he is not into biostatistics so could not comment. I am up early to review my public law notes. Actually they are the professor's notes with my own notes scribbled on top of his power point slides. But I will review these today. Then in the evening I will got out and play a role playing game.