Sleepy

I start my work placement on Monday. I have to be there, in Kanata, between 8:30 and 9. It takes an hour on the bus, so I have to be leaving the apartment around 7. To be ready for 7, I have to get up around 6.

I can't get up at 6. Some nights I'm barely in bed by 6.

This could be one hell of an adjustment.

Time to cut loose

We finished the major project and handed it in today.

Three and a half days of freedom begin now!

This is the way the semester ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Classes ended on Tuesday, and I found myself unexpectedly sad by that fact. I didn't really enjoy going to class, but I'm going to miss them. Probably because now I have to look at working, and getting on with my life. Real life is scary, and my academic refuge from reality has lapsed in its ability to protect me. I must face this new challenge, head held high, a rock against the current.

Right after I get the user manual finished up. After some revisions and minor re-writes on Tuesday, I decided to start looking for pictures to illustrate what I want to do. I should probably just draw them, like I did for my tutorial, but my wobbly lines will look far too out of place.

Anyway, I was trying to find a picture of a bearing in a pillow block, and in the process I found out that the little nipple used to grease the bearing is called a zerk. I've been telling everyone I can about this, and I honestly don't know why. Maybe it's just fun to say. Zerk.

Yesterday was a write-off, because my brother decided to not go to work, and to go golfing instead. Scared the hell out of me in the morning, but I got over it.

The golf course was like a sponge. Water everywhere, squishing out of the ground with every step. It was raining pretty heavily for two days, so I don't know why he thought it would be a good idea to go golfing. especially seeing how today is nice and sunny. Oh well.

I had a horrible front 9 and an even worse back 9, and wound up shooting 122. My wedge decided to not give me any distance at all, and almost all of those strokes were very short wedge shots. My driving was good, putting was the same as it always is, but my short game was embarassing.

Guild Wars: Factions releases tomorrow, and my enthusiasm for it is at an all-time low. I'm preoccupied with schoolwork, and all my gaming time is occupied by Oblivion (I'm hopelessly addicted). I think I've played Guild Wars once since I installed Oblivion, and I've definitely failed in my quest to capture every elite skill before factions was released.

Life goes on.

Silent Hill is really weird

I saw Silent Hill last night. We wound up going to the 10:10 showing because Srol didn't get off work until 9:30 or so, and we were in the theatre until after all the buses except the 95 stopped running. Slept on Steve's couch, afer playing Oblivion until 6 in the morning. Woo.

I've never played a Silent Hill game, so I had no expectations or prejudices going into the movie. This was both a blessing and a curse, because I could watch without comparing the two, but I didn't get a whole lot out of it. It wasn't a bad movie, but I might hesitate to call it good.

One thing that definitely stood out was the gore. I have a love/hate relationship with gory movies. Mostly hate, because blood in general makes me queasy (just ask Kevin), but a well-done gory scene can be too awesome for words. Silent Hill did gore very, very well. If I can watch a guy get torn to pieces by barbed wire and say "Fuck yeah!" instead of "blurrk", then the movie's done it superbly.

Yes, I know I don't normally swear in the blog, but my reaction to that scene warranted it.

For me, the best parts of the movie were the 2 or 3 scenes featuring the guy with the pyramid-thingy on his head. That guy was hardcore, and he provided some of the best visuals in the movie. I just wish that a) we'd found out WHO THE HELL HE WAS, and b) there was more of him.

Everybody who took the bus back with me heard my rambling on the guy with the pyramid thingy, and I'm sure they got sick of me talking about him. But still, to introduce a character whose sole purpose seems to be tearing people apart (either with a giant sword or with his bare hands) and then not tell us anything about him, is just mean. Not to mention sloppy filmmaking (since I'm an expert of making films...)

Anyway, decent movie with awesome gore. That's all I can say about it.

After getting back to Steve's I played some Ob;ivion on his computer. He has a whole bunch of mods loaded into it, so the game doesn't look at all the same. Textures seem sharper, the menus were higher resolution, and his map was colour coded. Crazy.

Anyway, I started a dunmer Witchhunter, and I'm having a lot of fun conjuring up skeletons and zombies to do all my fighting for me, as I throw fireballs at the enemies. I'm not entirely sure what summoning has to do with witchhunting (and I don't think there are any witches in Cyrodiil anyway. Necromancers, yes, but I don't think they qualify as "witches"), but I also get alchemy as a major skill, so i'll be able to raise my level just by mixing potions. Nifty.

Alright

I now have everything written for the user manual. It's all pending review by the engineers for technical accuracy, and there's a section I need to discuss with them (and I can't write it until I do so), but otherwise I have a good chunk of my part of this project finished.

I figured my partner and I would set up a layout and whatnot together, seeing how it's a pain to send information back and forth and we'd both have to make our own copies of the master pages and whatnot. Just easier to do that at the same time, and merge our parts of the documentation at the same time. I'll have to see if he agrees with me, but I can't see any argument against it.

Well, aside from the fact that we'd probably have to do it in the lab. That's a good argument against. Just shot a hole in my own argument, dammit.

Oblivion has been sparse lately. I've only played a few times this week, but it was enough time to quickly rise through the ranks of the Mages Guild, after doing a whole bunch of quests out of the Arcane University. I'm now ranked a Warlock, but I haven't gotten any new robes since I became a Conjurer. What's the point of getting promoted if you can't get nifty stuff to show it?

And furthermore, why can't you wear a robe over armour? I like to wear the robe for official guild business, but putting it on replaces my armour. I spent a long time raising my armour skill to the master level so its weight doesn't affect me at all, and having to take it off to put on a loose-fitting robe is an unnecessary pain in the arse.

Oh well. Maybe there's a mod for it.

Lookee there

A picture of me, in full Glasses and Beard Brigade regalia. Which is, to say, glasses and a beard. Shocking.

Added a new "about me" blurb, and I think it's true. Every time I see a picture of myself, I cringe just a bit. I'm not photogenic, at all. I'm like Bigfoot, but in focus.

The website is almost done, just a few more pages to do up. I'm glad my goal was to keep the pages short, because they are. At the same time, they're concise. I think the hardest part of this assignment is going to be my rhetorical description of the site. That is, answering a simple question, "why does this exist?"

Not a simple answer, I think. Is a photojournal of buildings at night a virtual tour for vampires? A map for insomniacs? A challenge to night photographers? I'd better come up with something before tomorrow.

Workload

Just a quick rundown of my current workload. I'm having a little bit of trouble keeping track of it, so I thought I'd list what I have left to do. Not only will this help me sort it out, but you'll get a fascinating look into my life. Your definition of fascinating is probably very different from mine.

First and foremost, I have to finish a website in Dreamweaver by Tuesday. I took a bunch of pictures of Queen's campus at night a while back, and I've set up a map of campus to have clickable hotspots that will pop up a picture of the building or location and load some information about it in another frame. It's working decently, but my picture layer keeps appearing in the wrong place. I figure I can fix that later, and clicking on the picture makes it go away, so it's not a big concern.

Next, I have to present two short tutorials. One's on FrameMaker's copy special command, the other's on making css styles in Dreamweaver. I already have these planned and I know pretty much exactly what I'm going to say. I have to find out about making a handout for the dreamweaver presentation, because people have been giving them out but I can't remember the assignment requiring one.

Next, there are two word processing exercises due on April 26th. I have nothing to say about them.

Finally, there's the user manual. This is the big project of the semester, and after I get all the piddly crap done, the manual will consume my soul. I'm writing a maintenance and repair manual for a system that turns a solar panel so it always faces the sun, thus maximizing the amount of energy it absorbs. It's a neat project, but I think most of what I write for it will be steps to describe changing the motor or replacing the bearings. Not exactly thrilling, but it has to be done.

I have no idea how long my section of the manual is going to be, but my partner and I have decided to write the entire thing in FrameMaker, so everything will take a bit longer than we expect. Until we remember that absolutely everything you want to do with FrameMaker is an option in the Special menu, that is.

It doesn't look like a lot, but that manual is going to be a killer, I'm sure.

The funny will return to this blog someday, I hope.

No updates

Oblivion has taken over my life, and now I'm scrambling to get assignments done. I fear I'm only scrambling to do them so I can play more Oblivion. Best vicious cycle ever.

Level 28 Nord Crusader now, master of Blade and Heavy armour, soon to be a master of Blunt as well. I have full Daedric gear and as soon as I find some more grand soul gems I can get the rest of it enchanted with good stuff.

The other night I snuck up on a sheep and punched it in the ass, killing it instantly. The power!