Strange Google Rankings

I've noticed some odd rankings of my blog on Google, but this one is one of the weirder ones. dark glass for car. Somebody in England found my blog with that search. Actually I've had quite a few people find their way to my blog with similar searches, but my blog has never been ranked third on these kinds of searches before today.

Poetry Contest

I went and entered a poetry contest and only have a few days to come up with (write) something that I want to present in front of a live audience. I have performed in front of quite a few people in the past, but it has been a while. I don't have a whole lot of new poetry, just three or four short ones that are okay but not outstanding. We have a three minute limit so I should have no problem staying under that since most of the poetry that I write is only four lines long. I thought of presenting two poems that are related to each other. I wrote a longer poem about 17 years ago and I wrote another that is related to the first one just a few weeks ago. I would prefer to present something current so I had better get started. Actually. I have several poems started. I just can't seem to finish any of them. I wonder how a presentation of bits and pieces would go over? I started a poem about the onset of dementia. Maybe I could piece it all together and demonstrate the process. Sometimes I feel like I am losing my mind.

Speaking of losing things, I had three classes today and I brought a text to two of the three classes. I left behind both texts. Luckily, I am surrounded by people who are more aware of their surroundings than I am and got one returned right away. The other is in the department office waiting for me to pick it up. On the bright side, I had made sure that I had my jacket and my backpack when I left those classrooms. I just have to remember to put my books into my backpack before I leave.

Stats to the Rescue

Some people really make a difference in others lives and they are probably not even aware that they have done so. I ran into one of my profs in the hall this morning, the same corner as in the previous post. This time the interaction was much better. We talked about how I was doing in my other courses and we touched on the events of the last couple of months. It was a positive experience. Later, just before class, I talked to the classmate with the health problems. She is still quite upset. She and her friend know that I have some personal problem which is causing me a lot of grief right now. We commiserated and talked about well-meaning people who say the strangest things to try and make you feel better. She made me chuckle when she said she was putting her knowledge of stats to good use. She has had several things go wrong this fall and she claimed that her recent troubles are a statistical anomaly and that it is highly probable that things will get better. I like her attitude.

Moody Monday

Enough alliteration yet?

Anyway, I am not the one who was moody this morning. I was walking through a very busy hallway in the student centre, one of the busier parts of campus and saw someone I know from a group of older students that I meet with about once a week. We started talking about our experiences at university. We were having an interesting and enthusiastic conversation that was acceptable for the location There was a young woman sitting at the same large table. She had her books out in front of her and had her laptop running. She was studying, or at least she was trying to, as she made very clear to us after about twenty minutes. The first indication that we got that we were bothering her was when she swore at us and said that she had a mid term in two hours and that we were rude and inconsiderate people. Both of us apologized, and I added that she could have said something sooner. She agreed that she could have, but by then she was angry and she left. We could have gone somewhere else to talk if we had known how much we were bothering her. Maybe she was unwilling to say anything until she lost her cool. Both of us are old enough to be her parents. If she doesn't do well on her midterm, she might have a few more choice words for us. I'll probably avoid that corner for a while.

Sunny Saturday

It's a lovely fall day here, too nice a day to have to write an exam on. Oh well, I was done in just over an hour so I did not have to be indoors away from natural light for very long. I saw a couple of students from my section and talked to one. It turns out that he and I have at least one thing in common. We are both renovating our older houses. I didn't see my classmate with the health problem, but I could have missed her in the crowd quite easily. Hope she is okay.

I ran a couple of errands on the way home and got here just after noon. I have the whole afternoon ahead of me and one small bathroom to tile. I may get the toilet back in as well. It just depends on how the tiling and trim installation goes. No school work today. I need a break anyway. At least that's my excuse for taking an afternoon off. I think that I'll treat myself to a couple of glasses of wine with supper tonight, play a little Mose Scarlett and veg out.

One of my friends is in the military and made the paper in a story about Remembrance Day. I was quite surprised to see her pictured in her uniform. She comes to school in civvies.

It made me feel guilty about not wearing my poppy today. I seem to have lost it in my travels. I can add that to my list of things that I have lost. I almost added another jacket as well, but I remembered it in time to go back and get it. I had my cellphone and calculator in the pocket, so I would have been able to add three items all at once.

It is a good thing that I have a good memory, or I would have no possessions left. I even managed to lose my runners once, but that's another story.

Funky Friday

I'm in a bit of a funk this evening, so take anything that I say with a grain or two, or maybe a bag, of salt.

Our stats prof posted a practise test for us on the class website. Today, she reviewed the questions that students identified as being problematic. Most of the solutions were straight forward and there were very few questions when she showed us how to get the solution. That is, except for one. We had to calculate the minimum sample size required to meet a given confidence level. We were dealing with discrete objects and there is no way to take a fraction of a sample but the majority of the class rounded the calculated answer down and were very surprised when our prof said that that answer was incorrect. Anyway, I am not the class genius and maybe I am being too hard on everybody.

There has been more fallout from the events of the last couple of months and that is colouring my writing tonight. Also, one of my stats classmates told a couple of us that she has a medical problem and that she has to go for a diagnostic test tonight. She has talked to our prof and has permission to write the exam later if she chooses. She was noticeably distressed.

It seems that each time I think that things are getting together, they start coming undone again. I have to write my stats test tomorrow and I have to get on with my work at university. I need to find some way of keeping my personal life out of my school life. Writing this post is helping, I just cannot say too much, because there is the privacy of others to consider.

I seem to be drawn to people that have gone through hard times. I don't actively seek them out, but I have only told three students about what happened this fall and all three of them have had experiences that are very similar to mine. Maybe it is just chance. I have no idea what the probability is and I am not going to try to calculate it.

One of the student student survival foods is on the menu tonight. Pizza. It's quick and easy. So it's pizza, and maybe some Diana Krall to mellow things out.

Stereotypes

Despite all of the negative connotations of stereotypes, they are useful to us. We sort people that we meet into categories based on past experience and, then interact with them as a member of a class. We do not have to determine how to interact with strangers that we meet on a case by case basis. Having said all of that and, also, saying that I am very open minded and non judgemental, I do sort people that I meet according to stereotypes, at least, in a minimal way. After all, it is a useful strategy, except when it does not work.

There is one class that I take that has a very high proportion of younger students. One of the female students, who is still in her teens, acts just like the stereotypical teenage girl. She does not volunteer answers to questions, she acts a bit juvenile around the guys and otherwise made me think of her as just another flighty teenager.

So, who did I run into the other day when I sought out a quiet corner to study stats. You guessed it. The flighty teenager was there studying for her upcoming math test. She started talking to me and we ended up talking for almost an hour about school, life and future plans. The flighty teenager became a serious young woman who had a good idea of what she wants out of school and out of life. She just hides it rather well most of the time.

I started thinking about all of the other people that I may have met over the years that got slotted into some category or other and reduced to a stereotypical caricature of who they really were. There were, most likely, many. I wonder how many opportunities we all miss from day to day when we don't give people the chance that they deserve.

Coincidentally, we are studying gendered behaviour in one of my other courses. Today, we were discussing the double bind that females are in. If they talk in a stereotypical female way, they are dismissed as not being serious, but when they talk more like males, they are dismissed as being aggressive and too masculine.

So, am I ever going to categorize people according to stereotypes again? Yes, I will. It is just being unrealistic of me to say that I won't. Will I think of my recent experience when I do so? I will and, perhaps, that will make all the difference.

A Dark and Stormy Night

It turns out that my time spent "studying" optical illusions may have been productive after all. Our psych lecture, today, was about vision and perception. Our prof was quite emphatic that checking out the optical illusions website was a very worthwhile activity. He said it about three times, so maybe I should do some more "studying", just to be sure that I really understand optical illusions. When he emphasizes something like that it means we are going to be tested on the concept.

My new printer, an HP F4180, is up and running. No real difficulty getting it going on my Linux (Debian Etch) desktop, although the automated script ran into a problem and would not download some files. I did that manually and then everything went as it was meant to. One feature that I love is that the printer photocopies directly, without using the computer. It does it quickly and does it quite well. I haven't had time to scan anything yet, but that is not a really important feature for me, although it is nice to have on occasion.

My favourite librarian was off sick all summer. she is back at work now, sporting a new, very short, hairdo. It was great to see her back.

It will be a dark and stormy night tonight, a good evening to batten the hatches and curl up with a good book and... oh, I mean stats text and practise doing the kind of problems that we will be tested on this Saturday.

French Results

I got the results of my French mid term. An A+, so I am happy. I had expected a good mark, just not quite as high as I got.

I am swamped with an assignment and studying for a stats test this Saturday and my printer just died. I've been busy researching printers that will work with my Linux desktop without too much fuss. I think that I've found an HP printer, scanner and fax combo that works well, out of the box. I'll pick it up later today. I need to print my assignment which is due tomorrow. I'm not finished it yet, but I have transcribed the dialogue, which is the hardest part, now I just need to analyze the conversation and write up a report.

Random Stuff

I posted a link to a neat website, Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena.
Do not go there unless you have some time to spare. I found it fascinating, and irresistible. I occupied myself, in between kids at the door, last night, with the illusions on that website. It is related to what we are studying in psych, right now, so I justified the time spent as studying. I hope that there are lots of questions about optical illusions on the next exam. How about a couple, at least, so that I get something out of the two hours I invested in "studying" optical illusions.

On a more serious note, I got a solid A in the mid term that I wrote last Thursday. I don't know how well I placed compared to others students, but I am fairly sure that I did relatively well.

We got the topics for our psych project today. It is worth 10% of our final mark, so it is worthwhile doing a decent job of it.

In class today, during a discussion about compliments and who gives them to whom, a young woman said that it made her feel creepy when she got compliments from old men. I've never talked to her, but it felt a bit weird. I don't think of myself as an old man, but I am sure that she would.

Our prof got mixed up about the time today and handed out our quizzes early. We usually leave after we are done our quizzes, so he had a minor rebellion on his hands. We had gotten our signal that the class was over for the day and there was no going back. We were like little kids given the promise of free time. We had a short discussion about the value of time spent in class compared to the degree that we expected to get. Most students valued the degree more than they valued the education. We left early.