Refraction

As a typical university student, I ride the bus. More than I like. And it’s not always the most comfortable of rides. So, on the behalf of bus riders everywhere, I would like to bring the following things to the public’s attention.

1. Do not stand in the doorway if you’re not getting off until the last stop. Actually, just don’t stand in the doorway unless you’re getting off at the next stop.
2. If you are standing in the doorway, open the door for the people getting off the bus. On a crowded bus, it can be hard to get to the doors in time and missing your stop can be very frustrating.
3. If there is an empty seat and the bus is crowded, sit down. This especially applies if you have a huge backpack of doom on your back. It of course does not apply if someone who needs the seat more than you is standing.
4. Your bag does not deserve a seat. Give the seat to the carbon-based lifeform that’s not rotting in your backpack. (Although it may be just as inanimate.)
5. Keep your music to yourself. At a managable level.
6. When the bus driver tells you to move back, move back.
7. Don’t cut in line for the express bus to the university in the morning, and then tell the person who was just about to get on that “there’s no room left.”
8. Please, have your fare ready before you board, especially if you’ll be getting on the bus first. It’s not really that hard, is it?

Nothing even slighty witty or insightful today; I won’t even make the attempt.

Except that I’d like to share the dullest blog in the world with you all. Isn’t it nice to know that there is someone out there who’s more boring than you? Actually, on second thought, I could probably take a few lessons from this guy…

Oh, and Jess, I hope my choice of music this time doesn’t offend your musical taste too much :tongue:

So I open up my email and I see a flood of new messages. At first glance, they all seem to be emails letting me know I’ve gotten comments. I like comments :happy: But then I looked closer–and these comments were all “awaiting moderation.” Hmm. Suspicious.

Seems I got 20 emails telling me about these comments. Gee, it seems this could be serious. And oh, it is.

Welcome, my friends, to the world of comment spam. Where bots come and deface perfectly fine blogs (even if they be trendy anime blogs) with legions upon legions of absolutely useless SPAM, advertising cheap prescription drugs, free online gambling, and various unsavoury sites of the Internet. So, to sunny of the domain moonlightshadow.us and lilo of the domain suddenenlightenment.us–go find yourselves a new hobby. Really.

I’m wondering how in the world they got my blog address, though. Considering that there are only a few sites that link to mine and that the majority of sites still link to the old address…. Hmm. Kinda weird. :confused:

Of course, if they found my blog, that means they’ve been posting all over the Internet. I haven’t found any references to Lilo yet, but Sunny here is quite a prolific poster, it seems: Nathan’s had to deal with her, and so have others… And thanks to him for pointing out a WordPress blacklist plugin!

Oh, and Reina, I really apologize for any spikes in your bandwidth that may have been caused by this idiot. 🙁

Number of spam comments deleted: 624 653 930

Hands up those among you who remember the Tamagotchi craze. Heh. I do. As a matter of fact, I had several. Those things were just too cute! Then again, I got bored of them rather quickly and left them to er…. expire. So, it was with some trepidation that I clicked on the link for Tamaboy.

Tamaboy has the same basic premise as a Tamagotchi, except for the fact that it’s online. It’s not really what you’d call a faithful porting of the Tamagotchi, although it stays true to the concept. There are three things you can do with your Tamaboy: feed him, talk with him, and let him relax. And… that’s pretty much it. I guess he’s a low-maintenance guy.

It’s definitely not as involved as Neopets. The site itself suggests that you visit your Tamaboy once a day; I think I can handle that. :kawaii: That, and you’ll get reminder emails if you abandon your Tamaboy…

So the highly anticipated (well, among her fans, anyway) North American debut album of Japan’s Hikaru Utada is here…. and so’s my review. Like the devoted fan I am, I got it today, on its -er- ninth day of release. :biggrin:

I got my grubby little hands on a copy of UTADA’s Exodus Thursday. That was satisfying. I called several music stores, only to be told that “we don’t have any copies in stock, sorry… you might try phoning our other branches.” Oh well. I double checked the store I’d visited last week, and they had plenty in stock. Unfortunately, they were all at a listening post, which I didn’t see until I was about to ask an employee for help. Heh. I haven’t listened to it all the way through yet. Some of the songs are good, a few make me cringe, and others just aren’t memorable at all.

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More school stuff! Yay! :dorkygrin:

Yesterday, we got back our math midterms. :tensed: When our instructor went over it, you could tell she was really disappointed with how her class had performed… “And this is a high-school level question. You don’t even need to know any calculus to do it! But some people still didn’t get it.” Sixty-seven people wrote the exam. Forty-four failed. Twenty-three passed. The average mark was 40%. Yikes. Despite all that, however, she’s not scaling the marks. I was quite satisfied with my own performance, since I was given close to full marks for a question which I answered incorrectly.

This morning, Bio midterms were waiting for us. “I think for some of you, this–writing a biology midterm–was a new experience.” Well, thank you for stating the obvious. This remark made me extremely nervous about my mark, so I got my friend to look at it in Chem. I did much better than I thought :tongue: Then again, I had knowledge from my grade ten Science class to back me up, so… how could I ever doubt Dr. G?

Right after Chem, I had to write a Physics midterm. I was panicking about this last night–the questions from the textbook wre extremely difficult and I couldn’t get through half of them. I planned to study in the morning/on the bus/during my other classes. Needless to say, this never happened. Luckily for me, the questions on the midterm were not as difficult as those in the textbook 😯

Finally, I also got my English midterm back today. I did better than I expected but not as well as I could have done (does that even make any sense?) I suppose I’m not really satisfied with my mark, especially considering the fact that I really feel my first response was much stronger than my second and yet I scored higher on the second, which was, for lack of a better term, “rambly.” And for heaven’s sake, who gives out marks in increments of 0.25?! Oh well. Time to actually read Paradise Lost.

I suppose my school instincts are finally kicking in.

Today was the day of my Chem lab, where I was to find the amount of lead in a given sample. What I love about having a lab in the afternoon is that it leaves the morning free to write the procedure. Nothing much of note happened, although I got to leave about fifteen minutes before the end of the period because I finished er… relatively late. My side of the lab was almost empty.

I pride myself on the theory side of things, though. Dimensional analysis is still serving me very well :love: When comparing quiz results with my neighbour, she looked at my quiz and said, “You do it backwards.” Yes, so everyone tells me. But better to do it backwards and have it work than try to do it forwards and not understand it at all. “Oh,” she said, “when you do it backwards everything just kind of falls into place…” Yep. And that’s why I love dimensional analysis. Everything falls into place. Starting with the factor you want to find is much easier than starting with the information given–no thinking required!

I love Chem labs, although I don’t really like the “research modules” we have assigned as homework. They’re a little too patronizing. Even in a walkthrough, I think it’s pretty clear that when directed to a site with an “Enter” button, one needs to click “Enter” to access the content of the site. :tensed:

Another Wednesday post. Whee!!

I had two midterms today–Biology and English.

For Bio I was to prepare a concept map (mindmap) and summary sheet. The summary sheet could have absolutely anything on it. In my panic, I forgot about it, and ended up scribbling random things on it before class, prompted by the sight of other people’s summary sheets, which were probably course notes reduced to font size -1. I think I might have overdone my concept map though. It had a lot of lines. And it was more colourful than most people’s.

English was bad. I knew what I was writing for the commentary, but I didn’t do a particularly good job on it; Still, I feeel much better about that than about my answer for the question on The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. That was just plain… bad. It didn’t strike me as a particularly literary topic, I suppose. Not after 2 years of the IB program. 😡

Chem lab tomorrow. Does anyone know how to cool a glass crucible quickly? Using an ice bath? You can’t just stick it in since I assume the ice will melt and seep into the crucible, thereby defeating the purpose of drying the thing for 30 minutes….

Oh, this is interesting. I got one of Hotmail’s “service e-mails,” telling me to download their toolbar to stop pop-up ads. Funny thing is… I started getting random pop-ups a few days ago. Merely coincidence…? Perhaps not :tongue: I’ve run Ad-Aware three times now, and HijackThis twice… I haven’t had any in the past hour or so. So…. you can forget about it, Microsoft.

I ended up skipping my Physics study group meeting today, although it was partly due to the fact that I didn’t realize how quickly time had gone by; by the time I remembered that I had a study group meeting, it was already too late for me to hop on the bus. Oh well.

I used my wasted time well, by finishing off a Clover skin that I’d started on the weekend. Heh…. :blush: I’ve only tested it in IE and have no idea how it will fare in other browsers. However, it should be fairly resolution-friendly; it’s possible that even 640×480 users will be able to handle it. Then again, I don’t think I’ve very many readers with that resolution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to study for my math quiz tomorrow! Yay! :cheerful:

The thing I like about not having a class until 2 on Thursday (if I have one at all) is that I can do whatever I like Wednesday evening and worry about schoolwork on Thursday morning. Most of the time.

Since the Beads & Crafts meeting didn’t begin until 5, I was forced to hang around from 2 about 4 with nothing much to do. Chatted with a old acquaintance for a little while, and then WHOOSH! It was off to the Quiz Bowl meeting. There, I saw another old acquaintance–well, two, I suppose, but I expected one of them to be there–and at the behest of certain members, I sat down in front of a buzzer and felt stupid for about twenty minutes. I ended up joining (but not forking over the fee :biggrin:; deferred payment, you see) and we have a tournament on Saturday which I will probably end up watching but not playing in.

I skipped out just in time to make it to my Beads & Crafts meeting, where we made the cutest little puffy animals. :kawaii: Mine’s a purple cat. The ears are a little messed, but… eh. It’s still cute.

I think I’ll skip out on my Physics study group meeting tomorrow. I just can’t muster up the energy to go to campus for an hour.