:: The Ruminant ::

The Ruminant's first visitor, amayamaya, left a nice comment requesting more posts. Just as retailers often display their first dollar, I am going to display this first comment for a while. Rest assured, amayamaya, when I get my thirty minutes of fame, you will have your fifteen. I hope I'm not too selfish to keep some of the fame for myself.

:: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 ::

The more I talk to Canadians, the more I suspect that Canada has no actual laws. I just got off the phone with campus legal services about some basic questions which you would think have answers. I am now more convinced than ever that there are no laws here. They just make things up as they go.

Is there or isn't there an Edmonton bylaw requiring snow removal from entrances to parking garages? Are U-turns ever allowed or not? Is the Canadian legal system based on Godel's theorem?


:: Chris 3:30 PM [+] ::
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Update

It looks as though my paper is the 999,999th entry in the IEEEXplore document database. How cool is that?


:: Chris 11:09 AM [+] ::
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Graduation

An issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits arrived in the mail today, featuring my first journal publication. I am now a full grown, official nerd.









:: Chris 9:56 PM [+] ::
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I'm sure all the other nerds have already noticed this, and maybe I've noticed it before and forgot about it... At the end of the "Hotel Royale" episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation, Capt Picard says to Commander Riker, "perhaps, like Fermat's theorem, it is a puzzle we will never solve."

Of course, Fermat's last theorem was finally proved in 1995 by Andrew Wiles. Writing about the future is always a gamble in terms of credible suspension of disbelief. The writers no doubt expected this sentence retain its weight for more than just a couple of years.


:: Chris 1:00 PM [+] ::
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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone, but just so you know, Erin and I had Christmas yesterday, so you are all suckas having Christmas a day late. I got Erin a Creative Nomad MP3 player, which kicks ass. I got an HP PSC 1300 multi-function printer, which kicks ass. I can print, scan, make copies, and print digital photos directly from the memory card [pause for drooling]. For dinner we made a Christmas chicken, some unspellable potato dish, and a giant pot of banana pudding. All of our relatives sent us candy, and my sister gave us a pizza pizzazz, which we have already used to cook pizza. We are absolutely overflowing with chocolate and sugary things. I will no doubt have diabetes by the New Year.

There's a lot that I've been meaning to write about, but I've let this blog slip. I've been learning Japanese. It is a fascinating language. Learning it almost feels like playing a video game. I get really absorbed in it. I can now say and understand sentences such as:

"How many pencils do you own?"
"I own three pencils."
"How much does this pencil cost?"
"Will you please give me the pencil?"
and so on.

I've also been hacking the hell out of my computer. I got a memory upgrade a few weeks ago, so I now have 256MB (the max for my laptop). My system finally works properly under RedHat 9. Everything works great. It is orgasmic. I've spent many hours upgrading all my libraries and software packages, often to the CVS versions. I'm out of control. I was planning to document everything, to keep track of what I needed to do to make things work (I have modified the source of a few packages). I just did so much so fast that it may be hopeless now. Ah well. The system works: I can write my thesis, draw my diagrams, download/view pictures and movies from my digital camera, print and scan on my new printer, and maintain my CV and job application letters in OpenOffice. I am now also running Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird, which are so wonderful they nearly replace the need for sex.

Our good friend The Chairman (Michael) came up to visit us in Edmonton a few weeks ago, and we all took a trip to Banff, in the Canadian rockies. It was gorgeous. I took lots of great photos, and scanned them with my schnazzy new printer. I made a little photo album on this page:

Photos: Our Trip to Banff

We found a number of interesting things in Banff, but by far the most perplexing was this ad from a local tourist guide:


What mental pictures does this image evoke...? It gets even worse when you see full ad. Bon apetit.
:: Chris 1:31 PM [+] ::
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It's been snowing for days. It is very strange to me to see this much snow in October. And, of course, it came right during all of those solar storms this week. They're seeing the northern lights all the way down in Texas. Here I am in Northern Canada missing it because of constant cloud cover. Oh, the bitter irony.
:: Chris 9:17 AM [+] ::
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I haven't been blogging in a while due to massive technical difficulties. First my machine went haywire. I fixed it; but then the networking services mysteriously disappeared in the grad student office where I work. It took me three weeks to figure out why. When I finally found the right people to ask, they were pretty angry with me.

"All http access is down in our office, and has been for weeks," I said.

"That's because you guys are spewing viruses!" was the reply.

Campus Network Services had "black holed" us because there are viruses circulating on some computers in the office. It was apparently rediculous that I would inquire about network access when, from their perspective, I know damn well what I'm doing. The nerve I must have to request network access when I'm only planning to use it for criminal purposes.

The network is back up now, but I have to authenticate in order to use it. The new setup is extremely slow because all the traffic is now routed through some sub-standard hardware. I suppose I should be happy to get anything at all. The department here has made it resoundingly clear that "students" are at best freeloaders and at worst security threats. "Staff," on the other hand, are bright, useful people who can do no wrong.

The student/staff distinction is a puzzling one, particularly concerning the difference between a "PhD candidate" (such as myself) and a "Research Assistant." Both positions require a Master's degree in engineering. A PhD candidate, though, is expected to do work of greater significance than a Research Assistant. The PhD candidate is expected to work perhaps twice as much as the Research Assistant. The PhD candidate is expected to produce novel results which significantly contribute to the knowledge of electronics engineering; this is not expected of the Research Assistant.

Nevertheless, the Research Assistant is referred to as "staff." This affords him a salary of perhaps five times that of the PhD candidate. The Research Assistant also has access to office supplies and billing codes. He can sign purchase orders. The secretaries will cooperate with him. He gets keys to special offices. He can get security access to most floors (including the secretive faculty floor). He can access the special staff stairwell. And most importantly, he can access the special staff kitchen.

I just don't understand why he can be trusted to make Xerox copies and long distance phone calls and faxes, but I can't.

I better wrap this up. The bell rang and I don't want to get caught without a hall pass...


:: Chris 1:00 PM [+] ::
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