"Guten Tag?" My First German Words

And, I don't think they'll be my last. You see, I've just been accepted into a scholarship program to study in Germany for five months next year. And, I'm pumped. Except, I know very little about Germany or the German language. Which I wouldn't really worry about except that my classes are going to be taught in German.

Anyway, I'm going to have to work through that because I don't know that I'll get this opportunity again anytime soon. As for where I'm going, well it's a city called Mannheim. I guess you'd say that's kind of in the southwest somewhat. Either way, I hear it's a cool place. It's got a population of about 350,000 which isn't tiny, and it's pretty darn close to France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland. Actually, everything in Europe seems to be pretty close to everything else which will make traveling convenient.

Though it's not going to be all play and no work. I will have to go to school sometimes at Hochschule Mannheim. But I'm ok with that. What better way to meet people than go to class with them? Well, that's my good news of the week.

Oh, and that news is "unofficial" as of now, so I guess nothing is set in stone... but lets just say I'm very confident in it.


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Happy Birthday Mary-Beth

And I almost forgot to post that it's MB's birthday today! She's the big 2-1. I think she's planning a trip to Vegas. Or at least dreaming about Vegas.

She seems to be having a great day though! And that's what's most important! Happy Birthday MB!!

Final Exam - Computer Organization

My last exam is tomorrow. It's in a course called Computer Organization. Unfortunately, computer organization doesn't refer to positioning the monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard in the correct locations. It also doesn't refer to sorting pictures in the pictures directory and music in the music directory.

Actually, I'm still trying to figure it what it has to do with but from what I can tell, circuits seem to be fairly important. So do a whole lot of other things that are based around circuits. There are also some other odds and ends tossed in there too. Surprisingly, I think I may actually do well. Let's hope I'm right.

Banned in Schools, Malls, and even Bars... Why Not a Child's Presents?

I don't know if anyone has come across it, but there's a group on Facebook (with almost 1500 members) called "Ban Smoking in the Presents of Child."

The group has been around for quite a while now, and I've been puzzled by it ever since I first laid eyes on it. See, I don't smoke, but I've grown up around smokers all my life and never have I had a problem with anyone smoking in my presents. They've smoked in the same room as me, and with me in the car. Actually, during the holidays, people even light up cigarettes while sitting quite near my Christmas presents. However, I've never actually experienced someone smoking IN my presents. Has anyone else had this problem?

Alright, before I take this too far, a guy who posted in the group's wall had an interesting take on the situation. He wrote:

"I am a firefighter. I would just like to say that I have experienced the problem you are trying to ban. It was a quiet day until my pager alerted me of a a possible house fire on Christmas day. I got on the truck and eventually went to the house and there it was....under the Christmas tree.....smoke coming from the presents! It was a dangerous fire to fight because each time I would apply the water, the midgets in the presents would just light up another cigarette. Oh it was terrible!"

Note that the group owner did eventually catch his error, though Facebook doesn't allow groups to be renamed, so he was unable to change it. However, with the emergence of social networking websites, I am becoming amazed at how terrible so many people are with grammar. I'm not talking about writing things such as "gonna" or "luv" or anything. I'm talking about dropping the 'e' before adding 'ing', or the difference in synonyms such as "there" and "their", "here" and "hear", "presents" and "presence". Don't you learn that stuff in elementary school? Maybe it's just ignorance...

Anywayz ime gonna quite bitcheing now cuz its probbly geting anoying.

Playoff Beard or Study Beard?

I have an exam tomorrow at 9:00 am. The Calgary Flames are currently playing the San Jose Sharks at 12:15 am.

I've studied... a little.

I've watched the playoffs... a lot.

This is going to be a problem. Not to mention that this game won't be over until 3ish at the earliest. Also, not to mention my 2 other exams this week (both of which are early morning exams) and my girlfriend's birthday which I'm apparently not allowed to celebrate the day after.

Anyway, I just think it is an interesting, yet cruel, way of scheduling MUN exams, particularly for Computer Science students.

First post of the New Year

So, after taking most of December, January, February, and March off from my not so frequent in the first place posts, I'm back. A lot has happened since my last post. I got married, had a kid, bought a house... nah, I'm kidding. Life hasn't gotten that exciting yet. However, I did finish a semester at university and partially developed a computer game (based on the board game Clue) in the process. I also applied for, and have a good shot at receiving, a scholarship to study in Germany next winter semester. Man, I'm pumped about that. I hear they've got some pretty good beer... err, I mean educational facilities, over that way. However, that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to complain about online help forums. As a university student, I have better things to waste my money on then books. It's like $200 a pop to buy some of these piles of paper which turn out to be about as useful as a warm beer when it comes to teaching me anything about anything. So, as my education continued I've learned that Google is as good as, or better than, most textbooks out there. There have been countless projects I've completed through searching the information (and sometimes the answers themselves) on Google. Then, as time went on, I noticed that online forums seemed to hold some pretty good information. But lately, I've been finding that more often than not, when I find what I think is good information on an online forum, all the replies say, "I have the same problem." Like, who gives a shit? Why is it necessary to tell the world that you have the same problem? It just forces me to read 10 pages of replies only to find that 400 people have the same problem as the first guy. Anyway, that annoys me, so I thought I'd share my frustration with the world. And, I know, I know... who gives a shit?!