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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.