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sh!thawks...on parade: 11.2008

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30.11.08


for all intents and purposes i'm done the semester. i have to hand in my last paper tomorrow and that's it. tomorrow night is also our program christmas party which i kind of deleted the email about so im not entirely sure when things are supposed to start. apparently it's somewhere in stanley park.
actually, while the semester is over, i guess it doesn't really count anyway. seeing as how i get to spend the next month and a half in rooms and libraries and desks and chairs writing, writing, still writing, there's no real definitive end to anything.
now i have to convince myself not to drop the ball on this and figure 'i have time to take a break'. i mean, yeah, i do need a break after the semester. it hasn't been the easiest four months of university i've ever had.
i keep having little flashbacks to Dhaka. i overheard some of the first years talking about it the other day, cause JR is trying to recruit a few more to go next year. for a minute i felt like running down to his office and asking to go again.
i think im going to try to keep this week low key. ok, well, this week insofar as to not include monday or friday or saturday. any day in between can be low key.
friday will be the first time i've ever gone to another city for a concert. everett and i are hopping on the ferry at some point in the morning and chilling out in Victoria before jumping and yelling and screaming and generally having a blast at NIN. im hoping they dont check for cameras cause i'd like to bring my panasonic in. i can fit it in side pockets in my concert pants. yes, i have concert shorts, they happen to be the same ones i use to go hiking in, so they're long and camo and have pockets on the side. and most important, zippered pockets so as not to lose anything.
i also have to remember to go to the SFU computer store and buy a license for SPSS so i can actually analyze my survey data.
im meeting with my supervisor on tuesday afternoon to find out exactly what the fuck is going on in my head plan wise for this thing. i need to be sure that im totally not going to shit the bed while writing it. that would be bad. bad bad bad.
btw, i hate SPSS. i should have seen this coming. i designed an open-ended survey to collect qualitative data so as to minimize stats work, but basically created qualitative questions that could be measured quantitatively. i have no idea why i never thought i'd have to do stats work when i was super pleased with the fact that i'd done that.
i think i'll step away from thesis work a bit this week to go through the pictures i need to sift through for the photo exhibit in january. i have to do write ups for each one. i also changed the day for that to the 16th. in any case, invites are going out so people will know anyway.
i have this weird thing i do when i live somewhere that after a certain amount of time i desperately feel the need to move things around to a new layout. given that my room is pretty small and the bed basically fits in one way, this has been driving me absolutely nuts. im thinking i'll have to default to the living room, but even then there's only so much that can be moved. lately i've found myself wondering if i'll stay in this place if i manage to find a job in town. this place basically screams male student. but it's cheap, it's bright, and close to transit. also, i dont think i could live in the west end, and i saw that Cascadia mega earthquake show on discovery channel again the other night that first birthed my paranoia of living downtown in Vancouver. well, maybe not paranoia, but creeped out enough to never want to live in a tall building on anything except solid bedrock far enough from the water to not have to worry about a tsunami.
where was i going with this? i dont remember.
my landlord put a giant christmas cactus down here in front of the window. it's huge. it's like whoopi goldberg had hair made of plant and planted it and put it in my living room.
i went to see Transporter 3. it was ok. not great, but it's still good to just let your brain mush out to awesome cars and fight scenes. the plot was probably the worst part, but the saving grace to those movies is always the fact that cars, chicks and fights take your mind off it.

somebody order some exploding pants?

29.11.08




Smemo and Umbrella Boy had been forgotten until i decided to go back through what pictures i had put up on buzznet. and then all the FOB and MCR emo wannabes hoarded the site and fucking wrecked it.

anyway.

i now present the LIST OF IMPROBABLE CHRISTMAS GIFTS ON AN IMPROBABLE LIST THAT WILL PROBABLY NOT BE CONSIDERED AS PROBABLE.

1. Tokina AT-X 107 DX 10-17mm Fish-eye lens

2. A WRC spec'd Imprezza

3. Nikon D700

4. The always present vintage '57 Gibson Les Paul Custom Black Beauty with triple humbuckers

5. Knoxx SpecOps stock

6. Benelli Super Black Eagle II with SteadyGrip and Realtree APG HD

7. Sigma SD14

8. Sigma 8mm f3.5 DG Fisheye lens

9. Sigma 4.5mm f2.8 EX DC Fisheye lens

10. Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 IF-ED lens

11. Two Nikon SB-800's

12. Marshall MG250DFX

13. A house in Manzanita

14. No student loan debt

15. All of the Star Wars Lego sets

16. Hang gliding lessons

17. A trip to Portugal

18. Audi S5 4.2 FSI for those days when driving a rally car just isn't happening.


i just realized i have the set list from last year's HIM concert still tacked to my wall when i didn't even really want to go but Everett pulled the 'come on' thing so i went and laughed at all the 14 year olds who thought they were vampires.

Smemo'd and the Umbrella'd Boy

28.11.08




the internet exists to pander to our sense of narcissism. and for porn. anyone who tells you otherwise is completely full of shit.

oh, and to tell us that it's important that we know that some random Canadian voice actor was injured in Mumbai. cause that's news you need to know. when that whole thing started, i wondered how long it would take for the first mention of some actor or model to pop up. less than a day. like, remember when the tsunami hit and everyone was all 'oh that's terrible!' and then like a day later the news was like 'a super model was caught in it!' and everyone was like 'FUCK THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END EVEN MORE SO THAN BEFORE NOW BECAUSE A RICH SUPER MODEL WAS THERE SO WHO CARES ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE!'

the internet is also for making us think that.

suddenly there were birds

27.11.08



im still working on my social policy take home. cause it's fun like that... it's one of those things where you probably could finish it in a few hours, but you're pretty sure that you'll have to abandon any attempt of that at some point otherwise the answers that are already being pulled out of your ass will get worse and you'll just get more frustrated and end up doing that thing where you skip through notes, websites, and end up looking for videos on youtube for 'just a minute' and twenty minutes later you try to remember what it was you were looking for in the first place.

i could easily tell myself i can go work on this thing at home, but i know that if i do, the most work i'll get done is looking at different blog templates to play with. and then i'll have to come back down here tomorrow to finish it off. which i'll probably end up doing anyway. or i could crack open the red bulls in my fridge and give'r til 3am.

one of the things that happens when i work in the lab is that i lose any sense of time at all. at 2:30 i thought it was about 8pm. and ten minutes ago i thought it was around noon. and now it feels like it's about 6:30. it's all a mess and warp of notes and paper and typing and DOTN on repeat. and the odd whiff of humous cause i got lunch at the mediterranean place in the food court.

i have to buy an SPSS license cause i guess i'm now doing crosstabs on my survey results. which pisses me off cause i was hoping i only had to do simple stats on it which is why i made the fucking thing open ended cause i hate stats work and working with quantitative data makes my head explode.

i can't decide what to write now. this leaves me no choice but to go back to trying to gice a succint critique of perceived advantages of the 1996 Seniors Benefits proposal...

more than half full but less than mostly empty

26.11.08




we got out social policy take home today. it's due friday at some point. i won't go any further than to say expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive. i showed it to some other people who all gave me the same reaction. the 'hah, yeah, good luck with THAT' look and laugh.

i've been watching a lot of Top Gear the last few days, and i had to try hard not to sound like Jeremy Clarkson when giving my last presentation of the semester.

crap. i just realized that i missed the new Billable Hours...

i've been tossing around the idea of hopping over to wordpress. i dont know why. i dont know how. but i have been.

cooking in tin pans




im gonna be perfectly honest and say that the prospect of finishing this degree and this thesis scares the shit right out of me. half the people in my program are already thinking CAREER MUST FIND CAREER! meanwhile i look up out of my daze of essays and research most of the time and think WHY IS IT ENDING SO FAST?
almost every day for the last two months, one of the first things that's gone through my head when i wake up is 'you can always walk away from it'. truly. this sentence goes through my head at least once every other day. i think the part about it that makes me worry is that sometimes i stop to listen to it for a few seconds.
and then i go about my business of heading downtown for class, or to sit in my corner that i hope no one else sits in to work on stuff. and i stare at a screen and articles and word documents for hours and leave to go home satisfied most of the time, knowing that i've taken a chunk out of something i've set before me.
and then i wake up the next morning and think, you can always walk away.
but i won't. and not because it would disappoint my family or my friends or my profs, but because i know if i did i'd disappoint myself the most.
do i have issues with self-confidence? hell yeah i do sometimes, so does everyone. sometimes i wonder if i'll make it through this degree with my friendships and my sanity intact. and every day i get up, and i get right back at it because it's there for me to do.
in a year and a half, this program has seen me get depressed, have panic attacks, have two month long bouts of insomnia, get sick from stress, put strain on relationships, pissed me off, put me $30 grand in the hole, confuse me, and generally beat the crap out of my mental capacity.
does this merit bitching about it? sure it does.
but for all the bullshit i've put up with, and all of it that's left to go through in the next five months, i would do it all over again.
because i think at some point you come to a realization that if you can recognize what you have to go through and still have a good time, then you know that you'll be alright. yeah, you might doubt yourself, but back in the depths of your mind, you know that if you take what's coming at you, hit it back as hard as you can and look up and say 'What's next?'
everyone's going to have those instances where it seems like the whole fucking world is crashing down around you, and at that point it's good to have people around to help you back to your feet. but at the core, there's the reality that you need to be able to be strong enough to get back on your own two feet on your own.
some people believe that some higher power will help them through tough spots and keep them going through life. you know what? hats off to them, they think they have something to lean on. i can respect that. but personally, i think that the biggest pillar of support should be yourself. if you can't put more faith in yourself than anything else, you're never really standing on your own.
i fully expect to be driven near crazy getting this thesis done, but i know that at some point in april, i'll walk out of a room having just been evaluated by peers and profs, and be able to sit back, smile, and know that i'm still standing.
and then i'll probably blow $50 at the Cambie to drink the adrenaline away.

the shelf in the room

24.11.08

































those guys weren't actually doing parkour, they were jumping off heating vents three feet high with one of them taking pictures to make it look like they really were. and they did more posing on the edge of the roof of Shrum than they did any real running around and jumping off things. i'd like to learn to do parkour but seeing as how my leg is still giving me grief after i strained something in it in october, that might be a ways off. were i to learn it, i'm pretty sure i wouldnt have the presence of mind to take pictures of me posing trying to look like i know what im doing over actually doing it to make sure i know what im doing. know what i mean? besides, action shots of that would be way cooler than just sitting on a roof and getting a backlit shot.

i am so not impressed with the speed of the internet at my place now. it took me four hours to upload 30 pictures.

Captain Tripps

22.11.08


i feel like making jell-o but i can't decide which flavour.

all adders are puffs

21.11.08

FINALLY!

Your application has been categorized as 'minimal risk' and approved by the Director, Office of Research Ethics, on behalf of the Research Ethics Board in accordance with University policy R20.0
i made pretty good progress on the draft yesterday, so i haven't had that many things to pick through today. basically all i have left before i send it in today is a completion schedule and a rough outline of the word count per section, which isn't all that important cause my supervisor basically said it's just to see if it's going to be weighted in the right way.

waiting on thin ice

20.11.08






i had uploaded some pictures of the pile of stuff all over my desk but then when i looked at them i realized that i had left my notebook open to a page with info on it that isn't supposed to be seen by anyone not doing my thesis. so they came down. instead you get pictures of George hanging off my ceiling.

i actually managed to get a decent amount of work done at home today. i had planned on going downtown to work but when i got up and it was pissing rain i figured screw that.

for some reason the internet at my place has been slower than shit today and it's annoying the hell out of me. when i get in a good work groove i like swapping between pages at the pace im going. today i've had to sit and watch pages load. i timed my flickr uploads and was hitting the same upload speeds as i was in Dhaka. i bet it's cause the CRTC is being fucking retarded. i really don't understand that. the same issue was brought to court in the US against service providers and they all lost. i'd really like to know why Canada is screeching to a sudden halt in broadband expansion. maybe someone has some crazy idea that because Canadians are all polite they need slower internet speeds because otherwise they wouldn't have apolite handle on things. which really, when you think about it, the reasoning behind Bell's argument was that a small portion of subscribers were overusing the network. ok, well, i would think that those people using that amount of bandwidth would probably have T1 lines, or at least a lot of them would. so why not just fuck with THOSE people and not the rest of us? actually, no, scratch that, cause at some point in the future i'm pretty sure i'll be looking at a T1 line.

our thesis template has everything aligned to the left. this annoys me to no end because everything i write is always aligned fully justified. and for some reason when i update the table of contents it won't pick up my tables. fack.

my ethics application is FINALLY getting sent to the actual review board after six friggin submissions. watch they'll look at it and be like, "can you fix this please, and after you do we'll get back to you in a few weeks." meanwhile my brain is like SPLODE.

i should probably start thinking about making some dinner.

chugga chugga wow