Refraction

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.

So today I headed out to university at the ungodly hour of 7am. Catherine’s adventures of the day:

The guy I met at the bus stop seemed incredibly lost. Surprisingly, he was in third year Biochem. Oops. First lesson of the day: Don’t make assumptions.

I am not going to enjoy walking over the field from the bus loop once the rain comes down in earnest. It’s going to end up torn up, anyway. I kinda feel sorry for anybody who has to use it.

My Bio class is too FULL for a class that starts at 8am in the morning. The guy sitting next to me lives in residence and although we were exchanging semi-snarky comments about the course, we never got around to introducing ourselves. Nice chairs, though.

On the other hand, Chem looks like it will be fun. Except for that quantum chemistry stuff which makes up about half the course. As long as the demo guy comes back and blows things up… I’m happy.

Physics is taught by a woman who seems to love Physics too much. I’m scared. The theatre setting’s a little intimidating, too…

Don’t get me started on Math; it seems no one can understand our instructor. *sigh* Not only that, even I can’t understand him sometimes, and I’m Chinese. The seats are the coolest, though–even though they don’t stay still.

I’m sure English will be the most entertaining class of the day. Except when the Chem demo guy comes and blows things up. Then Chem wins.

First of all, my eternal gratitude to Petzee, who has invited me to join GMail! Yay! The username? gemtiger. Who said I wasn’t creative? You? Well, you’re right.

In other news, a friend of mine has recently discovered that a certain Canadian Party leader resembles a certain (deceased) right-wing European dictator with a few well-placed scribbles of the pen. It’s really actually quite scary.

Yes, it is pure gold. And it gives me more incentive than ever not to have anything to do with that party. (It helped this morning, when the candidate in my riding for that party came a-knockin’ on my door. Let’s just say there wasn’t a lot of chatting going on. No, there were no shotguns involved.)

But how does one get the word out? We could share the file on KaZaA, Googlebomb it, or simply spam a lot of Canadians. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, of course…

Sharing the file on KaZaA is the laziest way, requiring little more than leaving one’s computer on for long periods of time. It’s also the most passive way. Not only does it fail to target Canadians (assuming that citizens of other countries don’t have a great interest in the political shennanigans here), it presumes that users will want to download this file. Unfortunately, there probably aren’t many ways of doing that short of giving it a name completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

Googlebombing is a rather complex process. In order to successfully acheive the level of misdirection necessary…. we’d have to create a lot of webpages. A lot. And it might not work all that well, in any case. Although I’ll admit that it does present a very enticing challenge…

Everyone hates spam. Case closed.

I suppose I could post it here, but I think that contravenes R.S., c. C-34, s. 263 of the Criminal Code of Canada. That’s right, kiddies, I’d be publishing libel. Maximum sentence: five years. By the way, R.S., c. C-34, s. 274 does not save me, since we’re not really commenting on his public conduct… just his looks. “Truth is not libel” doesn’t save me, either. Besides… the feds know where I live! O_o

I guess we’ll just send it as an email forward XP

It’s been a while since I last blogged, so this entry will probably be unnecessarily long and full of pointless rambling.

Yahoo! Mail has upped their storage limit to 100MB, and one can now send emails of up to 10MB. Things never load on the first try, however, and I’m getting a little impatient with its long load times. Interesting developments; I wonder if it’s in response to the rising hype about Gmail, Google’s highly anticipated email service. It’s still in beta testing right now, but there are people who would apparently offer an arm and a leg for one. As for me, I think I’ll wait until it becomes open to the public.

In other news, I now have [slow] cable interest service. It’s a mixed blessing, to be sure: sure, I can download things faster, but now I no longer have any reason to tell Michael to archive his blog.

Speaking of Michael’s blog, I feel that several of my friends need an overhaul in terms of their blog designs. *points at Anthony and Michael* I offer new layouts since I designed their old layouts, and they’re not aging very well. Although if anyone else wants a layout, you’re always welcome to ask.

Even though I’ve graduated from high school now, I won’t be changing this layout for a while. It took too much work. Plus, it’s not a trendy anime blog layout. And it’s accessible. Yeah, I’m proud of this sucker.

And that’s not all…!
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Catherine’s feeling deep today. It’s because of TOK.

Are feelings knowledge? And if they are, are they knowledge by description, or knowledge by acquaintance? Can feelings ever truly become knowledge by description. If knowledge by acquaintance is neither true nor false, is it truly knowledge? Do feelings necessarily have to be known? Does it matter if they are articulate or inarticulate? If knowledge and experience are not the same, does that mean that feelings are not knowledge? Can you actually KNOW what you are feeling? And if you can’t, then are feelings false? Are they merely a belief that one holds? Perhaps you can know if you are feeling something–but can you know what EXACTLY you are feeling? And could you describe it to someone else?