The travels of Justin

We didn’t write about it before, but our cat had another seizure on November 6^th. I’m glad to have her perched on my monitor with her tail across the screen as I write this and I hate the thought of losing her. Here’s a photo of her right now:

Like the first time, Tina was getting ready to pick me up from school when the cat went into seizure. Tina called the vet, but we still have to wait 3 more weeks before they can take another blood test to identify the cause as hereditary epilepsy, or disease. We are now giving the cat liquid medication twice a day to help prevent another one; it’s a good thing she’s mostly docile, because she enjoys it as much as you can expect. BTW: I guess I wasn’t clear the first time I wrote about our cat, but the cause of her seizures are totally unknown. It is possible it could be feline AIDS or leukemia, but it could also be epilepsy; the truth is we won’t know for a few more weeks.

In my ongoing saga with school, I can happily report my math marks are improving. I managed to score 92% on my last test, an A+. I wish I could have started off with marks like that, but I’ll take it where I can, and work to improve. We’ve just been introduced to logarithms, and I’m pleased that they are not nearly as scary as I might have imagined—so far. Tonight, I whipped through a couple pages of drills with ease, and I’m enjoying the material more and more. It’s a good thing.

Our English class, which I’ve normally been enjoying, seems to have taken a twist lately. We recently were subjected to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. The idea was to discuss and dissect it, as if it were a written essay. I have no reservations about delving into politics, but this class is the worst place for it—it’s hard to discuss that movie without getting into political opinions. Thankfully there wasn’t as much anti-American racism being tossed around by students as I expected. If it were my political science class, we could have really gotten into a great discussion, but I’ve paid a lot to learn English, not to discuss US politics. To his credit, our professor tried his best to keep the class focussed on the movie as an essay, but he made a poor choice by letting his political opinions distract from his stated learning objectives.

Our professor has also decided that our final test will include exerpts from a number of essays we’ve read throughout the semester; specifically, we will be required to memorize the title and author of each essay. If this were a course on literary works, then it would make perfect sense; but it’s not. It’s not as if we are doing any profound work with these essays. We’ve had sessions where he’ll pair students and assign one or two paragraphs to identify different structural elements, such as: transition, thesis, and evidence. Before we write a ‘compare and contrast’ style essay, he’ll make us read one in the same style to help us recognize our goal. Don’t get me wrong, I have no choice and I’ll grin and bear it, and memorize these authors so I can forget them by the new year. It’s a shame that this decent course is getting somewhat high-school’ish.

Overall, my courses are pretty jam-packed with information, are on-topic, and interesting. I’ve heard some horror stories from other students suffering low marks after writing papers that take the side of issues that are not in line with their instructor. I have another friend whose psychology professor will lecture for an hour or more, then declare it to be crap to test if anyone was really paying attention. All things considered, things have gone pretty well for me; I have much to be thankful for.

Moments ago was the first time I’ve ever heard a broadcast by our state-controlled radio interrupted for breaking news: Yasser Arafat has now been pronounced dead in Paris.

Firefox, the finest, most secure Web browser ever created for average-user applications, went 1.0 today. You can download it below, toss out Internet Explorer, and be relatively assured that you computer won’t be compromised due to Microsoft’s bad design decisions and lax security maintenance.

Download it here

The TRU Model UN club held its first General Assembly over the weekend. The two topics we faced were the weaponization of space and stem-cell research. Each of the ~20 participants were assigned a country to represent. The real challenge for our delegates was to research, not just the topic itself, but the official position of the government whose viewpoint we represented. The event represents the closest thing our university has to a proper debate club, and does not lack the energy as everyone gets their blood boiling while passionately arguing their points.

I must say I was impressed by the wealth of information presented by my colleagues. The night before, as I was reviewing my material, I took one last look online. I knew I was working too hard and it was time to sleep, when I almost thought this was from the official White House website:

POPULAR SCIENTIFIC MISCONCEPTION: Studying a newly discovered species helps us better understand other organisms within its genus.
DR. LAURA [BUSH] SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT: “What nonsense! We don’t even know that learning about something will teach us anything – much less that it ever can! Besides, I don’t know about you all, but I get to the point where my brain just says, ‘Hold your horses, Laura! That’s enough information and ideas for this month.’”

I kept re-reading the text and thinking, “this can’t possibly be right.” Once I stopped tuning out all the anti-bush images, I got a grip and realized I was working too hard. I don’t know how many times I taught students to differentiate between whitehouse dot-gov and dot-org. It was a truly dumb moment, but it gave me a laugh and helped me relax a bit.

Anyway, the General Assembly was a lot of fun. I was the delegate representing the United States of America, and I think I didn’t do too badly. I was really surprised to be named 2^nd best delegate by my peers; I was so impressed by everyone else, I was shocked to be in the running. Now that I know how it works, I can’t wait to do it again in January at the much larger conference hosted by UBC.

It was only a few weeks ago when I read about the upcoming official release of the awesome web browser FireFox. Then I read about a donation drive spearheaded by SpreadFireFox.com. The goal was to raise enough money to put a full-page ad in the New York Times. In only 10 days, over 10,000 people raised an impressive $250,000 USD.

After watching this incredible success, I heard about an event dubbed Mozparty2. (For the non-geeks: ‘Moz’ referrs to the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation that manages FireFox and other excellent free software.) Just imagine, people from all over the world, using the release of free and open-source software as an excuse to get together. Just look at all the countries being represented at Mozparty2.

So why not Kamloops? I posted an announcement to the mailing list of the KamLUG website and a location was chosen.

Kamloops Party Details

So Kamloops is officially represented at Mozparty2, and our party details are as follows:
DATE: Friday November 19^th, 2004
TIME: 6 PM
LOCATION: On The Rocks Pub & Grill - 1265 Rogers Way, BC (click for map)

Please RSVP (yes I know the title is redundant redundant)

If you will be attending, please RSVP at the Mozparty2 website.

Who should come?

Whether you are a professional geek, an enthusiast, or a curious luddite, you are encouraged to join us. This is not an exclusive party; it’s a community event—please bring a friend!

This is also not meant to be an anti-propritary software gathering. Ardent Internet Explorer users are still welcome to join us; we will not turn you away, despite your faults.

Anyone familiar with Vancouver winters will tell you the two words ‘Vancouver’ and ‘winter’ hardly go together. It’s been a week or so since Kamloops received a very light dusting of snow in the higher elevations of the region, and despite being pretty high up from the city, we escaped those few flakes. After dropping me off at school on Thursday, Tina picked up winter tires, just in case… as soon as she showed up to have them installed, another light dusting started, which instantly put her at the front of a rapidly growing line up for tires. Excellent timing!

As we peeked out the window this morning, here’s what we saw:

Obviously, it’s still extremely light, but there’s still some here this evening. For Tina and I, even a little snow instinctually tells us it must be Christmas, or at least close. With so little snow, one can appreciate it’s beauty, without the inconvience of a heavy snowfall. So while this is hardly news, it’s terribly fun for us, so I’m posting a photo for the heck of it

The neighbourhood we’re in is quite new, and most of the land, while already divided, is in various stages of development. It wasn’t much surprise when we were visited last night by only four trick-or-treaters, but Tina and a friend had a great time carving pumpkins. Tina’s is the cat: