Shooting stars and satellites

The other day I bought some plums. Imported of course, though the summer affords a great variety of fruit in this region, when the winter comes everything freezes.

Ordinarily I'd go through pangs of guilt about climate change and local foods and all that, but then I also learned recently that Chile's economy depends greatly on horticultural exports. Plums are good for me, and they're good for Chile, so I bought 3.

That's the great promise of the market of course, through the pursuit of private interests a common good arises. Of course when that idea was committed to paper I think people thought the Earth's resources were limitless. But I definitely can't grow my own plums. For the environment I could have just not gotten the plums, but then I'd be plumless, and I'd've screwed over some Chilean.

I talked to some guy last term who believed firmly we should all go back to living locally and dismantle this international trade system we've got. We'd be all worse off, but we'd be messing up the planet less. I told him I'm cool with that, but there's many billions of people who probably aren't.

Anyway I'm sure there was a time where shopping was not fraught with ethical dilemmas.

Somewhat nihilistically I also noted that if the world ends prematurely and we're blotted out, who would care?

I also opted out carbon-neutralizing my flights around the continent this month, I feel kind of bad. But I wonder what kind of outcry there would be if those were made mandatory. Maybe Air Canada could further incentivize it by giving out bonus Aeroplan miles or something. But then I could also send that money to fight malaria or something like that.

If what we're used to - cheap flights, cheap eggs, cheap soap were swapped out for Earth friendly things - carbon neutralized, free range, vegetable-based castile - they would cost more. Economists might say we'd have less income and a lower quality of life. But knowing that the damage to the Earth might be slowed, that chickens were treated properly, and there's no crazy unpronounceables in your soap, doesn't that raise your quality of life? We'd have less money sure, but what are we buying these days anyway? HD is nice, but I can't say it truly revolutionized anything.

The beauty of the market and capitalism is that it gives people what they want. If we all decided we wanted carbon free cruelty free everything, I'm sure it wouldn't take long to happen. In small ways it already has. Yet people still want cases of bottled water, trips to Cancun, and new cars.

People ask me why I got a Civic instead of something nicer, faster, but the idea of driving for pleasure is borderline indefensible as it is, even if you don't have a big engine.

Getting older
Now that we're all well into (or past) quarter life crises I realize that getting friends together, despite best intentions, still relies on one person to take point and actually make it happen.

You would think getting friends to meet would not be like getting randoms to meet for a school project, but that's exactly what it's like.

Another friend of mine - a close friend - recently signed up to the marriage bandwagon, and I realized that I don't have many unattached guy friends left, and many are in fact in long term stable relationships. I spent 30 minutes talking to him about insurance rates and how he has to modify a bed frame that he and his girlfriend bought that was the wrong size but they couldn't return it because it was on sale and how he's moving in and repainting some of the rooms and they painted it together.

Sometimes I don't think any of this bothers me, but sometimes, I realized, I think it does.

Microloans
In other news the girlfriend and I made two microloans to some randoms in Tajikistan via Kiva.org. You'd think there's be hundreds of borrowers to choose from, but there were only 30 or so, and I suspect that the keep the number shown at any given time limited to make choosing easier.

What surprised me the most was many loan requests were fulfilled pretty quickly - on the same day - and in fact as we were browsing through the loan applicants we found we could not dither for too long as a borrower might need $200 in one moment, and five minutes later some other lenders had already provided it. Somewhat heartening, I guess.

Recent years have seen Apple Computer go from an obscure nerdgeek oddity to the star of all that is hip and cool about technology, design, service, and pretty much everything.

For its superstar rise though, many old techs like me (I'm 24 now, that's old) have stayed with Windows - familiarity, customizability, lots of homebrew software, etc, etc. There was even a practical reason for some time, one cannot run the engineering trifecta of Mathcad, SolidWorks, or AutoCAD natively on a Mac. Some engineers also have a carefully cultivated distrust of style since we think it hides sub-par function.

Yet the other I realized my patience is wearing a bit thin. My excuses for not switching used to be of the practical sort, but computers are affordable enough to have two - not to mention I haven't CADed anything in a long time.

More importantly though, as each successive version of OSX shows the world new and impressive developments in interface design. For example, Time Machine is literally a time machine for your computer. It actually lives up to its name, as opposed to just being a fancy title. In comparison I'm still basically stuck in 2001, when Windows XP was launched. That was seven years ago, when the recommended requirements were a 300MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. For comparison you can buy a ~4000MB stick of flash memory for $50 now. The biggest change in my UI experience lately has been Launchy, which is based off its Mac equivalent - Quicksilver. Another excuse is that the new learning curve. Finder instead of Windows Explorer. Dialog box oddities. New keyboard shortcuts. Yet can't I relearn? Won't other UI improvements more than make up for any lost time due to learning?

It's becoming increasingly clear that I'm using a second-rate (fourth-rate?) operating system for no reason, except for cost.

Will my next computer be a switch?

Having been long-obsessed with cars (since childhood really) it's been somewhat incongruous that I can't drive manual.

Some time ago my family decided I needed a new car. After poring over every detail of a large list of cars I fell back on the old standby, the Honda Civic. While it might not seem like an enthusiast car it does represent the best set of compromises. It's light (1207kg) reasonably powerful (140hp) and good looking. Really I just have to reconcile myself with the spaceship interior, which I think I eventually will.

It also has a manual transmission. Having some, (But not much) experience I set out to drive it yesterday, with predictable back-rolling, stalling, jerking, wheel-chirping results.

My dad and brother reminded me to drive the car with the clutch, meaning that along with the brake and throttle it's another way to control the movement of the car. I inched up and down my driveway with the clutch to determine feel. I added bits of throttle in increments I didn't know existed. Whenever the revs dropped I thought it was going to stall, but it didn't.

Basically driving automatic is much cruder than stick. Watching The Fast and the Furious you wouldn't know this, but it takes a lot of finesse. And physical coordination, which has never something that has come naturally to me. Still I'm looking forward to practicing, but not now - dumb snow.

Maybe there's something missing from my life when, as a leisure activity, I write to take a break from work that largely involves writing.

To be fair, a few alternatives were considered - a walk (windy), rollerblading (snow), video games (overdone), moping (emo) - no, not moping, I don't think anyone takes the initiative to mope.

I'm ready, acutely, to be done with school and do something else, work, travel, whatever. I lean towards work since I increasingly suspect that I am one of those people who define a large part of themselves in terms of their work. I've applied to three jobs so far, haven't really heard anything, but then one of those three I have to write further exams for anyway. Many international organizations also have internship programs that I guess I should be applying to, though they're certain to be very competitive.

Once in a while I'm tempted to stay on another two terms to go for the honours political science. But just tempted. I've spent way too much time here - I really hope I find something to do - job, intern, whatever, so I won't be compelled to consider it further. There is of course grad school, but again I would much rather work than do school. Give me a few years to make some money and lease fancy cars beyond my means before sending me back to school. But when that does happen I'd like to study in Europe or Asia.

...

In other news, my one Imprint article was published. It took a lot of time and research, and I thought the photography I did for it was pretty good. As a journalist / photographer I figured I did my part. All that was left to the proofreaders and editors was give me a nice layout, and perhaps propose changes to make my article better.

But no. They mis-edited my article to make it worse, and they didn't make any of the edits that could have made it better. (My friends later caught them.) Considering the time I put into doing my job, they could have done theirs. Not only that, they also put on a sensational headline that really pushes the boundaries of factual accuracy. This compromises the trust that I established with the interviewees, so how am I supposed to get another interview? At least they didn't mis-edit my article to make it factually incorrect this time, but fuck it's annoying to have your work tampered with.

Through paranoidly Google-searching myself I discovered that McMaster has a website saying I participated in the 2001 Engineering Olympics in high school. What's more interesting is that same page has the names of two of my classmates, that I would go on to meet a little over a year later.

We're all in the third place column, incidentally.

http://olympics.mcmaster.ca/2001/results.html

Who knew, I could have been so in.

( A quick chart )

I signed up for three microstock photo agencies, and they have a surprisingly detailed application process. istockphoto.com even had a quiz, and a quick list of pictures that they do not need more of.

They also wanted a picture of photo ID, and I needed to submit samples of my work so they can review it. Pretty detailed process.

August's late summer is marked by boredom and crickets - in the grass outside our windows they chirp most of the day and most of the night.

Exams make me question my continued undergrad career, not because they're hard, but because they're so boring. And long. And studying for them is so tedious - even for reasonably interesting material it's not so much fun to repeat it to yourself endlessly, so much that the prospect of repeating it all again on the exam itself elicits a - well it really exasperating anyway.

Tomorrow is the last one, but already I'm just tired of reading the words and terms over and over again. Times like this I wonder if a entry level engineering job would have been less boring. At least I could be leasing beyond my means if that were the case.

I guess it's just a case of wanting to learn it but not wanting to be examined on it.

Since I received an email today saying that my password had been compromised by the development of UW Chatter, I obviously had to find out what UW Chatter was.

Apparently it's a Twitter clone for the UW community, which in turn meant I had to find out what Twitter is.

Apparently it's like the Facebook Status Updates function on overdrive. The only thing you do is update your status. You can post your status updates through SMS, and you can receive the status updates of your friends on SMS.

Officially: "Chatter is a communication tool that lets you choose the messages you want to receive from the University, and how you receive them."

I can this can be useful for school closures due to snow or shootings. But I anxiously await the day a prof sends out "sry no cls 2day bc emerg dept mtg cu next wk".

http://chatter.uwaterloo.ca/

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In other news, they still haven't started work on my computer, but there seem to be good chances they will, but not before a lot of hassle.

End of lectures of my first arts term. I barely noticed, like a true slacker arts student I wrote all sorts of (admittedly terrible) papers and assignments at the last possible moment.

The past 72 hours have been an odd mismash of pain, excitement, and fatigue, as there's been lots of staying up late, caffeine abuse, but also a game of paintball. Since stories of school and caffeine are familiar to most, I'll proceed onto the paintball.

First, it was early. I felt kinda tired, and not really at my peak, due to the aforementioned hours and caffeine. However, that would turn out to be the least of my problems. After 10 minutes of backing my car out from around another car to centimetre accuracy, I picked up some friends and headed out.

On arrival, my companions and I noted there were a lot of people - a lot of very hardcore looking people, with expensive looking paintball guns, and wearing camouflage, boots, goggles, bandanas and such. Soon after we'd find out that today was a Big Game, an all day struggle between two sides, fighting for control of the field.

The next big shock was the price - $75 - exactly three times the amount we'd been expected to spend. Still, since our organizer had already dropped his $75, we didn't have any time to discuss the possibility of going to another field or doing something else for the day. In any case we tried to take solace on our miniature arsenal of 500 paintballs. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't go through them all, but it turned out that was merely a problem in my shooting philosophy.

Though we arrived at 8.30, the game didn't begin until 10.15 or so, after a loud and confusing briefing of the rules of the scenario. The person in charge made reference to all sorts of landmarks on the field, and none of us had any idea what he was talking about. None of us really remembered the basic rules either - did we have to stay off the field after a head shot? For how long? Where was this Marine base again? How big is this field? I spotted one experienced looking player who looked like Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4 - bandana, mustache, build, and all. He was even smoking.

Once on the field I tried to join the battle in earnest, though it didn't take long before I was hit. Not really remembering what I was supposed to do - was it ten minutes before you could walk, or was it two - I waited around until a ref noticed I'd been there for a while and just told me to rejoin the battle.

I soon discovered that my rental gun was better characterized as a paintball launcher than a paintball gun - there was a pronounced arc in the trajectory, and the range was not so impressive. Most, if not all my paint was used as cover fire, and although there were some instances where hit players emerged from the general area of my fire, I could not confirm if I had any hits.

I immediately saw the importance of communication and leadership - I was most effective when I followed someone experience, together we laid down cover fire and advanced unscathed slowly, from bunker to bunker. It was really then that I felt like I was playing a tactical game, and later I found that I'd been advancing with Solid Snake himself. At another instance a bunch of us were held down behind some barrels, when a team (people already showed up in teams) decided to be brave, and got the six of us or so behind the barrels to lay down a withering barrage of paint as they advanced under our cover.

I displayed considerable inexperience while taking cover - my height serving to my disadvantage as I took a few to the head and shoulders. The field itself was very "realistic" with lots of terrain, berms, trenches, and cover like buses and cars. That also meant that I was incautiously n00bish, and usually fixated on the novelty of having a clear defined target, ventured too far out and suffered hits to the side. It was no minor novelty either, much of the time was spent sneaking around, popping out to observe the area, and then suddenly being fired on by apparently invisible foes. The scenario was supposed to be Vietnam, and I wonder now, if being paintballed from invisible assailants was tough, I can't imagine what being shot at by invisible assailants in the jungle would have been like.

The weather was also an unforgiving 28 degrees, and we were all wearing long-sleeved dark clothing. Running around got tiring fast, as did popping out around corners, and running that hunkered-down soldier run that I ran to keep to lower profile. Looking back today I'm not really sure it made a difference for me as a target, though today my legs hurt like hell.

The aesthetic of the whole thing (Now that I'm in arts, I can use words like aesthetic) was decidedly warlike. I remember when paintball first became popular, critics decried it as glorification of war and killing, and for the most part, they were right. This scenario game was based on war, and many players had paintball guns (Or the more politically-correct paintball "marker") that were modeled directly on actual firearms - M4, AK47, and XM8 rifles were on show. Some players had expensive-looking optical sights or even electro-optical reflex sights - I guess their guns must have been much more accurate than mine. Mostly everyone wore camouflage, and some wore insignia of actual military units of their uniforms. The only un-warlike aspect of paintball I saw was the speedball field, where players wore bright coloured uniforms, and their guns had a unique style of their own - as opposed to resembling actual firearms. Defenders would say (And I would agree) that the camaderie and team work aspects of paintball are more important for players that all the military dress-up, but the entire subject could probably use a post of its own.

In all, not the greatest value for $75, since we were n00bs. I'd also like to try an indoor field - maybe in the winter (Although I've heard of outdoor games in the winter as well)