Fuck People.

I fucking hate group projects. We've just started and already I can't stand my team-mates.
Fucking 275. It's either dead-weights or ego-maniacs. I don't need this shit. The only lesson i'm learning here is that people are stupid. When I see a hole in the road, I don't say "please , if you would be so kind as to swerve, dear sir". No, fuck that. I say "Swerve. Now!". Why do stupid people take offense when you're offering them a better way to do something, but not saying please while you're doing it.
What does "Please" mean anyway? Sounds like a shortcut of what probably used to be "It would please me if you..." -- so how is doing something to please me better than doing it because you're afraid of me. At least while doing the latter you're serving your own interests.
Ask a moron to be consistent with formatting his document and he snaps at you for giving him orders. You say to yourself  "Fine, fuck it." The result: 2 morons working all night doing the same segment. That's what happens when everyone's doing their own thing. Good job Steve, and fuck you too. Imagine what's going to happen when we actually start coding...

Thank god we're not doing any group crap in 376.
I can already imagine my group going on about The Fungus Eater...
Just once I'd like to be in a group where everyone pulls their own weight.

And i'm telling you, them pussycats is quick.

Ok

I don't know if I want to do this anymore. Every time I look at this blog all I see is how much of a bitter douchebag I really am. It's depressing.
If I am to have a shot at self delusion, this blog cannot be.
Anyhows, I think I'm going to drop the Perez Hilton crap and focus on technical documentation and general captain's-log-type comments.
Back to business:
I fiddled around with the system time incompatibilities between linux, osx and windows agian. I now understand it fully, though I have no solution.
Windows uses local time, Ubuntu has an option, and I believe is smart enough to default to local time if it recognizes the windows system as present, which it does. OSX on the other hand is hardcoded to UTC time, and currently increments my bios time in 8 hours every time I boot to it through grub. It's funny that people say with a straight face that OSX is more secure.
Every 3 year old could break that system. It's as easy as installing an unsupported driver. Every driver conflict in OSX causes kernel panic, and your system won't boot until you delete one of the conflicts and reset permissions from terminal boot option.
This is because macs aren't designed to switch hardware during their lifetime, so the OS just breaks on hardware conflicts. Evidently, Apple never found it fitting to design an effective fallback mechanism.
I also find it amusing, while reading the Objective-C tutorials, that macs come with a single-button mouse and an OS designed for right-click functionality. To access the right-click menu you need to press alt click or something. Why use 2 buttons with one hand when you can use a key AND a button with two. I'll try to remember that when i'm designing interfaces. Perhaps the general idea is to keep your limbs excercised to make you a better looking mac person.

I can't believe it's not butter.

I can't believe I'm 6 courses away from graduating. That's 2 easy semesters and at least 3 interesting courses (embedded systems, real-time systems and distributed systems)! Totally doable assuming I don't fail 307 which I hear is brutal. I've been dreading and delaying that course for ages now, but it seems like it's time to confront it.
So now what? Am I ready to face the sharks of the industry? Wear a suit and a tie every day and talk about TPS reports and unparallelized code?
Absolutely! I'm going to do my best to get a RIM co-op (not a RIM job!), cause I only hear good things about them.
Speaking of butter, I hate it. Did you get to see Julie and Julia? Not a bad movie, especially for someone like me who's never heard of Julia Child before. I feel like it filled a huge hole in my education. Only beef (pun!) I have with that movie is that it encourages people to throw even more butter into their cooking.
Butter is not any healthier than margarine, trust me, and it's infinitely more disgusting. Infinitely, that's not a sum to be taken lightly.
What else...
Just completed BOL I, the pre-coop-work-on-your-resume-and-cover-letter mandatory workshop thing on WebCT.
It was kinda fun. All I did was practice my technical writing skills in ongoing forum discussions and got more experience in self restraint when some students wrote about their desire for more "piratical" classes that would prepare them to "piratical" situations.
Come to think of it, I don't remember if ended up commenting or not. Let me check... I believe i pressed cancel... damnit. I did press submit on this:

I definitely agree that the University should have more pirate classes. One never knows when one might encounter a piratical situation in which such skills would certainly be handy ;)

So much for self restraint.

On a side-note, turns out Jared Leto has a band. Who knew.
I just saw the video for Kings and Queens and I must say, against all my better judgement, I actually like this band. There's something very moving about a bunch of misfit weirdos commiting suicide by urban cycling to the sounds of an epic orchestra, riding together against a city that does not recognize them.

Group Projects - Hurray.

I can't say I didn't see it coming.
It's so much fun waiting hours on end for your group members to approve of every little change you make and spending ridiculous amounts of energy trying to convince them of what you think is absolutely straightforward.
I do my best not to insult anyone, but inside I'm frustrated, and my initial response is never a pleasant one.
Yes, group projects are a challenging excercise in self restraint.
What do you do when your team member is set on taking your group down a path you know will lead to failure? How hard are you willing to fight for what you know is right? Wouldn't it just be easier to let him take the lead for one phase, then pick up the reigns after they crash and burn?
Perhaps, but you'll be in that crash right along with them.
Besides, what's to guarantee the rebel has the insight to recognize his error and take responsibility for it when the time comes? If he can't see something as straightforward now, why would he see it later?
These questions always come up whenever I find myself leading a group project. Knowing the right direction isn't enough, you have to find the right way to steer your group into it. Perhaps I need to adopt the Yago approach and let people think the right direction was their idea all along.
I understand that people have an ego, i just don't understand why they let it make their decisions for them. Maybe they actually believe their way is better? But it's so straightforward... Can they really not see it?
The human mind is exceptionally effective at creating alternate realities that justify a false notion. Never doubt people's capacity to fail to see the obvious.

Here's what I consider to be a straightforward example of bad sentence structure (and this is from our project plan, mind you) :

Players navigate through multiple styles of games all following basic elementary level curriculum. With games such as ABC's, Counting and Spelling where players shoot asteroids in order and Math and Trivia where players shoot the correct asteroid answer, players will be captivated not only by the immersive dynamic graphics and fast-paced action but by the diverse and challenging content as well.

I even italicized the especially bad part.
here's my suggested revision that didn't get approved:

Players can progress through varying levels of difficulty, testing and strengthening their knowledge of math, trivia and spelling, mixing the learning process with interactive competitive gameplay, while capturing their attention with immersive dynamic animation and fast-paced action.

If any of my 6 readers thinks the first one is better, please explain why so I may gain insight into the strange machinations of group dynamics once and for all.