Just got to the break in lecture 12 and my other studies continue.

I plan to catch up on lecture viewing over the study break. I managed to get through the first half of lecture #12 now. This concerns the Supreme court ruling on secession from Canada of Quebec. Mostly the first half of this lecture is about the courts ruling on a unilateral declaration of indepedence.

Last night I read about Silicon Valley North and success characteristics of a silicon valley. I also read some stuff about scientists critiquing their own fields from a feminist perspective. Speaking of my own field of science I have some statistics tests to grade this evening and I graded one question on the poisson process last night for all the tests. I also have gotten the respect of another student of data mining by telling him that I know a little Russian, Finnish, German and Estonian. He is studying Japanese this summer and values other language abilities. I have been talking to him all spring term in the library whenever we meet and also I bumped into him at an academic bookstore downtown once this spring term.

Watching lectures continues.

I watched more of lecture 12 yesterday and might finish it today. Then I have lectures 3-11 to watch but have seen lectures 11 and 7 a fair amount and also the other ones I have watched some of already. I also have the power point slides for all the lectures printed out in my notebook.

I am volunteering a little today and yesterday. I will also volunteer for 28 hours this weekend.

I am working on grading slowly.

I have been slowly grading minitab questions on the student's homework. I should be done with the minitab today. I will then mark the textbook questions.

Yahoo, another spring term ends successfully!

After a steady pace and then two long days and one short day I completed my essay. I worked with a tutor this morning and got the paper touched up. Mostly with these tutors they point out grammar errors then it is up to me to rewrite the sentence. I then handed it in to the law department office.

Well this course requires this one essay then a final exam. The exam is in mid August. One of school friends who also has a mental illness is writing a mid term test in statistics tonight at 7 PM. I helped him with some concepts from multiple regression while we smoked in front of the library. I couldn't directly answer his question but I helped him understand the whys and hows of making multiple regression models. He asked about the sequential sum of squares something I don't know about.

Completed public law paper on Judicial Review with reference to Bill C-38.

I just completed the paper. I added some evidence for my point by refering to Bill- C-38, An Act to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, 2d Sess., 37th Parl., 2004. This was to make my point about marijuana laws being unreasonable and refering somehow to the number of Canadians who use marijauna. Thus marijuana laws could be considered undemocractic.

Now I just need to make sure the ibid's and supras are in italics and I am done. I will though see a writing tutor this morning for one more read through with someone else. I will then make any final corrections and print at school or come home and print and then take the paper back before 4 PM today, the official due date and time for the paper.

Getting my footnotes done.

My immediate plans to do the final footnoting of my essay this weekend are coming along as planned. My lecture watching plans are not coming along very well. Nor are my course long reading goals working well at the moment. Maybe this morning I will complete the footnoting and then work on reading and watching lectures.

Paper in near final state, referencing begins.

My public law spring term paper is written now. I slept on it. I am about to read it now. I will then complete referencing it. Mostly this is the journal articles from the April 1999 Policy Options journal. I also need to reference the Oakes case from 1986. I will use my McGill law student style guide for legal writing.

I did watch lecture 11 as it aired.

I watched most of lecture 11 as it aired. I have started to watch lecture 12. I really don't need to review lectures 1 or 2 again. I could watch lectures 4-10 again. That means I have about 8 lectures to watch again or 20 hours of watching. I have about a week to do this or eight days. I have no security work scheduled in this time. That breaks down to one lecture a day. I will complete lecture 12 today and watch lecture 3 on Sunday.

Completed reading Cheffins and Johnson.

I finished reading Cheffins, Ronald I. & Johnson, Patricia A. The Revised Canadian Constitution: Politics as Law (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1986). That is I have read the recommended chapters of this book.

My public law essay is almost done now.

I worked a fair amount on Wednesday and Thursday morning to get my paper done and then some more on Friday. I have seen a tutor twice now and also had a psych councilor look it over. It is looking good but is a bit too long. I have another appoinment with a tutor on Monday morning then I can work on it in the library and hand it in on Monday afternoon.

I saw a writing tutor yesterday.

I saw Eric in our school's free writing tutorial service. We needed to formalise my writing a bit. Today was the first day someone else read my paper. I have some rewrites to do and then I need to write more. I need to do this this morning before 4 am. I can do more later tonight and on Friday.

Watching lectures

I watched the 9th lecture last night. This covered amendments to the constitution. I watched the first hour. Tomorrow while I sleep I will record lecture #10. I won't get back to these studies until Tuesday early morning. I may have some quiet time to read at work and so will take the Cheffin's and Johnson to work and our course source book to work with me.

I have also watched most of lecture #7. I have watched a good part of lecture #2 for the second time now. I hope to watch lecture #11 when it airs. But watching lectures is not as useful right now as doing my essay which means I need to be clear about exactly which lectures cover judicial review and also read more judicial review sources.

I know I'll cover the Oaks test and sketch that test out. I have about half an hour to do that tonight then I will rest my legal studies for the weekend.

I read the graduate school calendar for the graduate school regulations. So I know the rules generally for graduate school.

I think my feminism arguments are just table thumping

I need to be more analytical with my essay. I am just pounding the table about feminism. I need to rewrite that paragraph that covers feminism and the charter. I am gald I caught this because otherwise it appears well written.

Peter Hogg is a good constitutional scholar for this public law course.

I am finding the Peter Hogg book a good read to help me understand the lectures. I have been watching the 8th lecture just now after the guests have gone home. This part of the course is about constitutional amendments. This concerns Pierre Trudeau.

I am using both Open Office and Word to do school work.

I have had to use Microsoft's Word to count words in my legal studies paper. I have about 700 words written now in my paper so am about a third of the way through now. I read some more of the sources last night and also watched more of lecture #2 yesterday. I am set up to record lecture #8 later today in five hours.

I am printing using my Epson 820 photo stylus.

I read some more of an MA thesis today about cyborgs and feminism. I borrowed a book on Monday about addictions and writing.

Supposed to be working on my law paper.

Tonight I am also watching news and politics as the government faces confidence votes about our countries budget. I should be working on my studies. But today was a pay day so when I woke up I needed to do shopping. Even with a quickly looming deadline for a 2000 word paper I was busy starting to paint our bathroom. I did some preliminary poly filla work this evening.

But I have almost read now all the required sources and last night felt the anger and arguments rising about feminism and the Supreme court and the Charter but then I slept without getting the arguments down. I do know that I support feminism and the law and this is my own voice that I need to add to the paper. I have started the paper with a sketch of the idea and concept of judical review.

I web published my honours law paper yesterday.

I web published my paper titled Computer crime: is hacking really that bad? An exploration of the cases and laws concerning unauthorised access to computers. And it can be found as a web page at this address on the web http://www.ncf.ca/~at571/LAWS4908.html

or on my personal home page at this address http://www3.sympatico.ca/ptimusk/LAWS4908.html.

I backed up my present school work files and did a print out of my essay.

I was worried this morning about loosing my work from my public law course so printed out my essay in version 0.1.2 and also the bibliography. I also copied files from my courses from this term and last term over my home network to my Macintosh computer.

Marking assignments today and preparing to solve some problems in tonight's tutorial.

The only work I need to do today is complete marking some assignments and prepare some answers and problem solving for tonight's tutorial. I will then have some time off this job until next Monday when we have a test in one course and then that week I will need to mark the test. In the other course students will hand in their second assignment next week and I will also have that assignment to mark next week.

This will be the same time as my final week of essay writing so I should work hard on my essay this week and get it mostly done this week.

Public law studies continuing today.

I don't know why I am studying Canadian public law other than it is required course in my BA degree. I am interested in politics and this course is certainly about politics and the law. I completed watching lecture #1 a second time. I am now going to at least start the second viewing of lecture #2. I have also completed reading Hogg for lecture 2. I have also been reading Cheffins and Johnson and have added some of their text to my essay on Judicial Review. I learned more about my topic this morning. I now have 200 words in my term paper. I have another 1800 words to complete. I need to reference the McGill style guide for legal writting to see how to include extensive quote in footnotes. I believe professor Jaekl wants us to use longer footnotes to keep our word length down in the paper itself yet still allow us to go on at length.

Aoir email led me to wikipedia today

I was lead by an email to the English language wikipedia today and read a few entries including the entry for community informatics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics).

I have gotten to the break in lecture #1

I guess I have gotten through the first half of lecture #1. The end of the first half of the lecture concerns Hobbs and Locke.

I just read two Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics papers. One concerned literacy and had nothing to say about crime or victimisation. The other concerned disabilites and did include information about people with disabilities and victimisation but I did not read the whole report. I read about employment statistics of those with disabilities but not about victimisation statistics. Employment of those of us with disabilities concerns me highly.

My TA work is going according to schedule. The renewal of effort on public law studies is proving successful.

I got some more grading done just now for the first assignment in STAT2507. I have to get this done by Monday morning or so. It is going along according to plan. I will not work on it again until this evening or Sunday morning.

I was able to watch the first third of lecture #1. It was a review of the common political theorists in English language political philosophy namely, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbs, and Locke. We also covered the course outline and the basics of the defintion of law in terms of its relation to society, behaviour and politics. I hope to watch the rest of lecture #1 before 3:30 this morning.

I also read chapter 1 in

Cheffins, Ronald I. & Johnson, Patricia A. The Revised Canadian Constitution: Politics as Law (Toronto: McGraw Hill, 1986).

This chapter mostly covered the constitutional changes of 1982. There was some interesting comments on Trudeau and his motives. I could also use a few quotes for my essay, from this chapter to introduce judical review and the charter perhaps.

Lectures # 1 & 2 this morning Lectures 3 & 4 tomorrow morning.

I hope to review lectures # 1 & 2 this morning. I will also read books and help deliver the newspapers and sleep by 8 am. I will also watch Spiderman II, the latest Spiderman movie and also Stargate Episode 2 from the first season.

Public law course continues

My studies continue. The public law lecture #8 should have been broadcast today but apparently they made a mistake with lecture #7 so they played lecture #7 again today and lecture #8 will be played next Wednesday with lecture #9 on Friday and lecture # 10 on Saturday at noon. I will be writing some more over night tonight hopefully getting a better start on my essay.

I will also tonight over night be completing marking the Minitab questions to the first assignment in our basic statistics course. I just read some stuff on the valid regions for parameters lambda 3 and lambda 4 for the Generalised Lambda Distribution (GLD) in a book on this topic. I understood what they did to find the valid regions but did not follow the text too closely.

Reviewed two lecture tapes and copied them.

I now have complete lecture tapes for lectures broadcast to date. I have also viewed them all a little almost completely. There are still minutes I must watch so a second viewing will be called for for all tapes. Basically each lecture is 2 hours and twenty minutes. This means I have watched about 16 hours of lectures. I will need another 16 hours of time to view the lectures again to date. Plus I will need to watch another 5 lectures perhaps twice. This amounts to about 24 more hours plus the 16 would be 40 hours by July 1st. One problem is I am watching them after they have aired and recording them while they are being broadcast so get behind. I am basically caught up now and there is the 8th lecture tomorrow.

I am learning to read his power point slides as I watch the lectures. I need to return two tapes now 6 & 7 by Monday 8 am. But I have no work this weekend, no TA classroom duties, and very little active volunteering to do this weekend. I do have a 14 hour on call shift but that should be quiet. I also have a union meeting mid day Sunday and need to prepare a bit for that. I also have some marking of statistics assignments to do but am started that and it should take no more than three more hours to do that marking.

I also have my paper to start writing and the recent lectures are covering our essay topic so things are going well with that again. I have read almost all the required sources now and done a little thinking about the topic as I watched the lectures.

I am working on a linux computer install right now and may be going to help deliver the newspapers.

Gave talk on recovery and attended health and safety meeting.

I attended a health and safety meeting at the university. This was my first as the TA health and safety representitive. The news for us TA's is that science, engineering and design TA's will face extra safety training.

I also gave a talk on recovery yesterday and was a big hit. I got a lot of compliments.

I have been active on the aoir list discussing social science technical training and statistical training.

I have some 40 assignments to mark and should get those started today. The students generally worked hard with me to get good answers so I hope their marks reflect this. I will try to mark all the minitab questions today and finish off the marking tomorrow. I am skipping out on suicide intervention training that I was supposed to attend today and tomorrow but I have too much work and school work to complete.

Worried about spending enough time on my public law course

I have been making more mistakes recording my public law lectures. I now have the first five lectures taped. But taped over lecture #6 and did not tape lecture #7. I now have to borrow lectures #'s 6 & 7.

I have been steadily reading Hogg on amendments and have read about 71 pages of Hogg. I need to read another 180 pages. I also need to read more Plato and other books.

I started my spring term law paper.

I started my paper on the power of judges and judicial review and the Charter. I am going to call the judges guardians and use Plato's theory found in the Republic to explore the new legal reality in Canada. In particular I want to get at values and judges guarding values from reactionary politicians.

I forgot to turn the mute off on my TV and missed Wednesday's lecture

Oh well my first mistake happened on lecture #5. I forgot to turn off the mute on the TV and thus recorded the lecture without sound. I will need to go in later today or next week and borrow the lecture and tape it. I completed chapter 3 in Hogg. I have read the Bertha Wilson article on judical review and have about four other articles to read for the term paper required sources.

I am going to check out a summer term law course

If I complete another half credit of law this summer I will be able to graduate in November 2005. So today I am going to see if there is a space in a summer term course on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Then I would not have to study next year at all if I so choose. I would not have the pressure of jumping straight from graduation to grad school or law school.

Speaking of law school I checked out an LSAT guide book that costs 60$ at a book store in a mall. These books stores were my high school haunts back in the middle 1970's. I read science fiction books bought in these stores in those days.

I am just completing printing the lecture slides for this week. The lecture starts in 1.75 hours.

Printing lecture power point slides

I am printing the first 6 lecture's slides from my public law course. I am printing them two slides per page and double sided so it takes one piece of paper to print four slides. I have almost completed viewing the 4th lecture. The fifth lecture will be broadcast today at 9 am. I will be asleep and tape it. I will watch it on Thursday morning and then next Tuesday. I will also record Friday's lecture and watch that on Tuesday next week.

Next Wednesday I am taking part in a recovery forum at a local social service centre. This will be part of my board duties. I will also display a work of art at this forum for sale. The work is a ready made and I will price it at 250$. It is titled Vintage Keyboard. Then on Thursday and Friday I will train in ASSIST suicide intervention. I will then have Saturday off of working except for the newspaper delivery help I do. Then on Sunday the 12th we have a union meeting at noon.

Speaking of union activity I will have a health and safety meeting next Wednesday at 9 am at school. This is for my health and safety representitive duties. We have our summer retreat for this local coming up in June possibly on the 21st.

I have been reading at a slightly slower pace this past week and am increasing my reading this week. I may have spent about three hours now working on the public law course and since the last time I accounted for this I have spent about 5 more hours. I have had about 10 hours of lectures now and put in about 23 hours out of class time including required readings, extra recommended readings and also talking or listening to the professor in his office hours. So I am at 23/60 or about .37:1 hours out of class to in class for the total course. For the present time in the course schedule I am at about 2.3/1 so slightly better than recommended by the simple year:class time ratio.

The spring term paper topic is available now and I have printed the main sources for this term paper.