Tuesday, December 28, 2004

I read two more papers in Brennan, Linda L. & Johnson, Victoria E. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology (Hershey, Pa.: Information Science, 2004). I have not studied other than that in the past few days. I have been busy shopping and taking advantage of boxing day sales.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

I scored a good mark in my numerical analysis course which means I did a good job on the exam. I was not able to answer all the questions so must have done pretty good on the questions I answered.

I was able to write four pages of my mini paper last night and also wrote about one page in the introduction to the main paper, the part about my personal views. I was inspired in writing this introduction by this: McIver, William J. Jr. Global Perspectives on the Information Society in Brennan, Linda L. & Johnson, Victoria E. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology (Hershey, Pa.: Information Science, 2004).

My wife got me Foucault, M. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977) as a Christmas present.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

I spent another four hours researching my computer crime law paper. I used Quick law to search cases. I printed out about six case from the 1990's and 2000's. The other research I did was read Wise, Edward M. United States: Computer Crime and Other Crimes against Information Technology in the United States in Sieber, U. ed. Information Technology Crime (Köln, Germany: Carl Heymanns Verlag KG, 1994). In reading this section on the USA I intended to research the history and development of the US computer crime law for my mini paper. I also found this article Manion, M. & Goodrum Abby. “Terrorism or Civil Disobedience: Toward a Hacktivist Ethic” (2000) Computers and Society, which I just read. The article I printed after finding it through the library was footnoted in Wise and the article's cite is Hollinger, Richard C. "Hackers: Computer Heroes or Electronic Highwaymen?" (1991) 21 Computers and Society. I have not read this article yet. I also need now to consult the journal Criminology at school and photocopy some articles from that journals that Wise cites.

Monday, December 20, 2004

I got an A on my term paper. I got it back from my professor today and she was sure that I have graduate student talent in legal studies. This is good news and fits one of my plans for my future. This also improves my self esteem for writing and command of English. But the professor also warned me that my writing must be perfect in graduate school. She also suggested she might be able to supervise graduate student studies in mental illness and the criminal law.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

I had a look at a projection of the media's future at http://www.letitblog.com/epic/. I have been studying the Internet now for ten years. I had read about Usenet in the late 1980's but it was not until 1994 that I had access to Usenet and email. This is when I began to study the Internet regularly. I have completed two university courses looking at the Internet and law. I have also completed a course in the sociology of science and technology.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

I did an ok job with my exam. Not a great job but I passed the exam too which means I should have a C or better in the course on numerical analysis. I am now more free to read what I want. I have a mini paper to complete but will do that tonight too and on Monday. The mini paper is due the first week of January.

Friday, December 17, 2004

This morning is my last exam for the term. I have been up since 8:30 am yesterday and my exam is at 9 am this morning. I did get about one hour lying down and closing my eyes. I stayed up to learn. I rarely do well with all nighters. But sometimes all nighters work well too. It has to do with budgetting one's time appropriately. It might work out this morning. I will know later at the beginning of January when I get my grade for this course. Oh well I am out the door in a moment for the exam with maybe half an hour more study in the library with a coffee and danish.

My brother suggests I do study Data Warehousing this winter and take my time with the law BA. I did manage to get a seat in the medical issues in criminal law course again. But I am thinking my brother is right that just one law and one statistics course would be the most enjoyable and easy paced for the winter term.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

I did not study enough for my numerical analysis exam. The exam is on Friday and I have saved everything until the end. I will have to find time on Thursday to review.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Now for the statistics books I am reading at present:
Dai, Honghua. Srikant, Ramakrishnan. & Zhang, Chengqi, eds. Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: 8th Pacific-Asia Conference, PAKDD 2004, Sydney, Australia, May 2004, proceedings (Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2004).
This book is a slow slog but I am finding I can understand the book at least. I plan to study data mining I next term at Carleton, course code STAT4601.
Delwiche, Lora D. & Slaughter, Susan J. The Little SAS Book: a primer 2nd ed. (Cary, N.C.: SAS Institute, 1998).
I have had this book for a couple of years now. It should be enough to study this book for the BASE SAS programers exam. I might actually take this exam in January. I was teaching SAS this past term to about 40 students.
And now for the Math books I am borrowing:
Press et la. Numerical Recipes: The Art of scientific Computing (London: Cambridge, 1986).
I have the FORTRAN code for this book on a floppy I bought a year or two ago.



    this is what I'll try to study for my MATH3806 exam.
  • chapter 2 is linear algebra
  • chapter 3 is interpolation and extrapolation
  • chapter 4 is Integration
  • chapter 9 is root finding and nonlinear sets of equations
  • chapter 15 is Integration of ODE's
Train, Kenneth E. Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge, 2003).
I learned what open form and closed form integrals are from this book. I also have a good idea or better idea now of modeling of shopping and other markets.
I have another math book out but I haven't really read it so won't put its bibliographic info here.
Now for the criminology books I am reading or still borrowing:
van Leeuwen, Marianne. Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2003).
So far I have only read the first chapter concerned mostly with introducing the book and defining terrorism.
Pogrebin, Mark. ed. About Criminals: A View of the Offenders World (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 2004).
I have read the first article and picked this up to deepen my knowledge of criminology writing generally. This book is divided by type of crime which is a simple way of looking at criminology.
Sieber, Ulrich. Ed. Information Technology Crime: National Legislation,
Jus Informationis European Series on Information Law v 6 (Köln: Carl
Heymanns Verlag, 1994).
I am now reading the USA section of this book but not quickly or not as quickly as I might. I am still borrowing this book now for two or three months.
Sofaer, Abraham D. & Goodman, Seymour E. Eds. The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 2001).
I am still borrowing this book too for three months now but am not consulting or reading it at present.
These are the books I am reading right now for the post end of term. First the health books:
St. John's Ambulance, First Aid: First On the Scene, Activity Book 1st ed. (Ottawa, Ont.: St. John's Ambulance, 2000).
I read this in school first at an on campus first aid training standard level A session. I have since read it for level C certification and also for three years of being level C plus CPR certified. I have other first aid books including military and northern survival books. I have also read some guerrilla warfare books that include medical practices. I also read self help books concerned with addictions.
Humphreys, Keith. Circles of Recovery: Self Help Organizations for Addictions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge, 2004).
I have read the first chapter of this book and begun the second chapter now. It has offered me hope in my self help volunteering and paid work as web master. It was also used by me in my drug law paper this past term. I used the index of the book rather than reading the whole book.
.
Petit, Jorge R. Handbook of Emergency Psychiatry (Philadelphia, Penn.: Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins, 2004).
I learned a little of this book so far. This book is especially important for me as most of day to day associates have some mental health issues or are involved in mental health work.
That's it for health books right now.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Dawn Moore the professor in my drug law course said I had written a very good term paper so I am happy now. I also did a not bad take home exam and even established my own view on the 'other' and intention in the criminal law. I may publish some of this stuff on my home page under my law studies page. I only have my honours paper and my numerical analysis course to complete work on before January. I also need to study for a SAS exam soon.

I have some grading to do today and tomorrow. I have been doing some volunteer work this week and on Thursday I have a union meeting in the evening and then on Friday maybe another union meeting where I might be hired as a web master for the unions web site.

I have been reading about environmental law and data mining. I have also been reading that study of self help groups for substance addiction. I am also still reading about crime victims and criminology generally. Finally my studies continue on the global internet and computer programmming topics. I am not reading about disabilities right now.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

I stayed up yesterday for a 27 hour day. We managed to do our appointments together in the cold weather. I then slept at 19:00 until 4 am.

I had worked on my exam until about 7 am yesterday, then completed grading the last assignment in STAT2507. I then took these to school and gave them to the professor. I returned the textbook for STAT2507. I also talked a little with another TA. We might study MATH3806 together next week. I also photocopied the last two chapters of Hacker Culture because these chapters deal directly with the criminality of hackers and cover famous hacker cases. I also have court reports now downloaded for some of these cases and will be looking up more of these cases using Lexis.

I worked on the exam when waking up this morning and have a good start on the second questions at this point at 6:30 am. I have about 10 more hours to complete this exam and am feeling good about my answers now. After getting this done if I can complete it in the morning we can go to the Psychiatric Survivors Christmas party in the afternoon. I can then start to grade the STAT2606 assignments to return to the professor later this week. This will be some intense statistics grading that I need to complete. I also bought some more black ink for my Epson 820 so I can continue to print my exam answers on this printer but have my Epson 440 ready as a backup machine.

Monday, December 06, 2004

I worked basically straight with very few distractions on my honours BA in legal studies this weekend. I did find some time Monday morning to install Debian 3 r2 on an old workstation I have. I wrote about five pages for my take home exam for LAWS4306B the course in drugs, users and the state. It is a criminal law course. I worked on this for about 2 hours today and 4 hours yesterday. I also worked for about 4 hours yesterday and one hour today on my other legal studies course LAWS4908 the honours paper about computer crime. I am feeling good about all these legal studies.

I have about half of the STAT2507B5 assignments still to grade completely. I hope to get this done this morning and then head off to school and return library books and hand in the assignments to my boss. He taught me an introduction to probability course in fall 1999 and is only my boss for this term.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Unfortunetly on Sunday I stayed up later than I should have so missed my early morning writing tutorial appointment on Monday, because I slept later than I planned too. I got a good ten hours of sleep though showing that I am probably not depressed based on sleep disturbances as a depression symptom. But I made it to my psychologist appointment and basically decided to bring my study load down next term to two courses, one in law and one in statistics. This will mean I will graduate earlist by the end of fall 2005. I also made it in to see my math teacher and ask for some help but he hasn't been able to help much beyond pointing out errors in my MATLAB code which don't seem to work even with his corrections. Also he pointed out my derivative errors for my implicit backwards Euler solution. I also attended a scholarship awarding and bumped into an old physical geography professor who is working as a dean now. He recognised me after some 20 years of not seeing me which I think is amazing but then I had won this scholarship two years ago so he could have seen my name recently. Also I have sent him an occassional email recently.

I just completed my paper, adding a few more sentences from yesterday, and also last night I had changed all the ibids and supra's to italics, and will hand it in later today as I am up all night getting some more quiet reading done. I also just checked my student email account and found out that the professor in our drug law course has basically canceled class tomorrow although we must show up for five minutes or so to do a class evaluation. This is good because this will mean I can possibly get home by 12:30 and be asleep by 1 PM for a 26 hour day and also I don't need to do important in class verbal interaction stuff at the end of this day. That is always when I babble at the end of long days and it is never good for in class talking. This is the good news that the day won't last until 4 PM today. This sleep adjustment was made as well as cancelling my attendence at our role playing game this week so that I can make it to my early morning Thursday class because it is the last class and we will have the all important exam review in Thursday's class.

Monday, November 29, 2004

Well since I got my paper completed yesterday I have been not studying. But I did not make all my study goals yesterday. I did not complete any more math questions and had meant to complete one more yesterday. I did contact the professor by email and made an appointment to see him today just before my school psychologist appointment. Then after seeing the school psychologist who is really my only psychologist these days, I am going to an awarding of a scholarship ceremony. E whose is a chair person and a film student is winning the scholarship this year that I won in 2002. I have to brief a case too before Tuesday and in the morning late today I have a late morning appointment with a writting tutor to go over my drug law paper.

My drug law paper was my most important and immediate deadline. It is natural to relax a little after I got that done. I have been up for 23 hours now. I really should sleep now and get up at 9 am. I have all my school work printed out that I need tomorrow. I will also pick up some assigments to be graded.

I am still being affected by the schizophrenia's ambivalence. What I can't decide is " am I a cop or not?" I tell everyone I can't be a cop because I can't drive or may be can't safely operate a weapon. But who knows about the police gun thing. I also can't decide on school courses for next term. It is better when I do decide ahead of time and stick to that decision. I am figuring that a 10 hour schedule of classes on one day is too much so studying statistics next term no longer looks good. The opposite studying three law courses doesn't make sense as I don't really need that many credits in law. I did a SAS program of my own to solve a problem a few hours ago late at night on Sunday. Maybe I only need one law course next term and my honours paper. It might be good to reduce my stress levels and I might find more time to do things I have been letting go of like writing science fiction, radical union administration, volunteering, playing music, getting certified in computer skills. Ya I'll only study two law credits next term. But I will wait until after seeing the psychologist tomorrow and perhaps wait until I get my grades near the end of December.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

I had a tutorial lab yesterday in MATLAB and Euler & Runga Kutta methods. I completed it late Thursday night early Friday morning as I again shift my sleep to days over the weekend. I am up now late Friday night until mid-day Saturday. I am fairly good at programming computers and did good MATLAB code for school work. I am doing two linux oerating system installs tonight. I got the Debian 3 r2 installed on an old IBM 486 Thinkpad. I am just about to spend some time installing Fedora core 3 on my IBM PC server.

Yesterday was buy nothing day. The radicals at school had a free store and I got myself a calculator and then gave it to J later in the evening. I also got a palm handwriting computer in Chinese that is totally useless for me just like half the stuff I buy.

I am happy with school right now. Soon I will be able to say another successful school term completed. I have one more math assignment to do and then an exam for my numerical analysis course. I have to polish up my term paper in drug law and then write a take home exam. I have to complete by January a paper comparing US and Canadian law on hackers. I also have to write, again by the time school starts again, a legal brief of a Canadian hacker case from 1980.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

I really was getting upset with the school's students with disAbilties Centre but today the counselor helped me proof read my drug law paper and I am doing well now.

Later today I give a lab but my teaching assistant work is winding down now. I have a couple of more assigments to grade but this week was the last week giving labs for one of my assigned courses.

I missed my morning class again this morning because I was up late last night grading assignments. I am not sure but next term I may study only statistics courses basically on only one day of the week. I will have 8 hours of class on Monday's if I choose this plan. Then only 3 hours on Wednesday's. I would need to put my legal studies on hold to do this intense statistics studies but maybe at this point in my studies that is a good idea. Whatever I do next term I won't have early morning classes.