Y2kk Update: As you probably could guess from my noticeable absence of updates as of late, my life during the past two weeks hasn't exactly been my idea of a cup of swell... Hell, AOL, the only thing that's swell in my goddam life these days, is that goddam swelling on the back of my crank of a bloody hell neck. Heck, what a wreck - wasting two more hours of my life, just to debug one goddam bug in my stupid Networking programming assignment - sure as hell didn't McGriddle or grimace or give me a goddam smile today... all these delays - what a day... And as for the rest of my past two weeks? I had an impossible assignment on one hand, job rejections on the other. I had two bloody midterms that went horribly, and a denial for my petition to get my goddam failed midterm mark erased... I just won't bother... I got stabbed in the back by not just one fat fuck, but two... but hey, what can you do? This was all crap that I wanted to write on my Tweakui site for it's fourth anniversary or some crap like that, and hell's bells, I've been too busy to even do that... Hopefully tonight or later this week, I'll find the time to finally write what I goddam wanted to write on that goddam site of mine that I never, ever update anymore. But for now, there are a couple of things leftover that I wouldn't mind to note, here and now...

I had a strange, vivid dream the other night... and I was kind of pissed off that I did. I've been seriously getting a lack of sleep lately, all thanks to tests and assignments that just won't quit, even this close to final exam time... And even though it was predictable that it was going to happen, I seriously didn't want the dream to be about her... but I knew it would after she seemed to ignore me for two days in a row, even after I tried to make amends with a smile here and friendly hello there... So last week, after just giving up on the girl I always talk about yet again, I settled down for my night of slumber, only to awake a couple bloody hell hours later with goddam underwear full of semen... Wet dreams happen a lot for me. I just don't remember the dreams or sugar plums that make them... But I don't know why, but something about the dream that caused me to soil my pants this time around, seemed special enough for me to want to write it out, just so that I don't forget what little I do remember...

It's not like I remember much... I remember walking around, cleaning a polished floor of some sort. I was scrubbing a mop in circles around the area that the girl I always talk about was yuking it up with that goddam fairy boytoy she now always hangs out with... As they were fraudulently laughing it up as if the were some aristocrat English secret society or some crap like that, I eventually overheard something... The girl I always talk about was telling the other guy about the first time they met. As I was listening in on the conversation (and as she was ignoring my existence, no matter how close I got, like she always does in reality), I heard her snicker: "I was looking around for Ivan. And when I thought I saw him, I looked over, and it turned out to be you!"... and even in the most innermost subconscious parts of my mind, I knew that this was a dream. But a dream based on reality, since goddammit, my nose grows larger and my penis shorter every damn time I pretend like I don't think of her new jackass as some sort of replacement for me... So what did I do about this in my dream? Even knowing this was a dream, I fell flat on my face. I tripped over my own goddam phallic mop, and tasted the goddam floor that I was cleaning. And finally, the girl I always talk about noticed that I was still alive. She fluttered: "Ivan, need any help there?"... and what did I do? Just like in real life, I lied by putting on a slap happy face, got up by myself, and told her everything was just fine as I walked and wallowed away in self-pity and sorrow...

Eventually I forgot that I was in a dream, and I came across a room (looked like a drama stage) where spinning tea cups seemed to be circling a woman on a podium. I walked up to her and asked if she could be my replacement girlfriend. And I forget what she looked like - I remember I thought she was quite ugly - but did I really care? I was feeling rejected, and I asked for this fugly girl's hand fully knowing that she was just a quick fix for how I was feeling about the girl I always talk about... So what did this girl do? I forget why, but she said exactly this: "Why, of course! I didn't take the prerequisite dancing lessons, but who did?..." Now, I have really no fucking clue what that means, but she grabbed me by the ass and started twirling me around. She soon started smooching all over me, and at first I resisted. But I then saw the girl I always talk about in the corner of my eye, and I just started kissing this ugly girl back, just to feel like a goddam whole again... just to feel like someone of worth... and that's when I goddam woke up from you know what if you're a guy... Back in high school, I used to have dreams like this all the time about the ILuvYou girl and the Beautifully Minded girl who left for Seattle's Best Coffee. But I never really had a dream like this for the longest time since then, not even for my obsession... So I thought it was of some note. Maybe a much better psychoanalysist than I am will figure out what the hell my dream means one day... not like anyone will ever read my website mind you, but still...

Now, it'd surely be an understatement to say that the girl I always talk about was the only person who peeved me off this week... Like I stated before, two of the goddam members of my goddam networking group backstabbed me in the fucking ass... although to be fair, one of them didn't do it on purpose, I believe... but still... There was one other person that hurt me gravely the other week, even though I'm sure he didn't mean it. And I'm sure that I really shouldn't have felt bad about it, considering this guy was a close friend and all... but still...

The other week, I had missed out on my sister coming home for the first time in a month, since I was too goddam busy working on labs at school. The following week, my sister said she'd come back one more time, just to see me. So what else could I do? I promised that I would arrive home in time for dinner that day, just so I wouldn't disappoint my family again. But when the day finally came, complications inevitably arose, as fucking always... It wasn't like I was so damn busy with labs that day. None of our stuff were due for weeks, so there was no damn reason for me to stay at school for more than just the prerequisite dancing lesson hours... But the thing is, I made a crucial mistake. You see, I promised this friend of mine that I would meet him to do the lab early that day. I set a time and a place, and it wasn't like I expected at the time to not meet the deadline... But other things happened, naturally... I ran into other friends. I had another lab to do.  I got hungry. I applied to some jobs on the internet... and by the time I was finally goddam ready to go home, I realized that I had just fucking left my partner out in the cold for more than two hours straight. I rushed to the room where we were supposed to meet, and he was still there. And he didn't look mad... which was fine I guess. I apologized, and expected nothing of it. I mean, my other friends leave me hanging out to dry all the time. I may get pissed when they leave without me, which they always seem to do... but I never get pissed at them for never being punctual, even when they were four fucking hours late the other day past our meeting time... So expecting the same treatment from this other friend of mine, we started working on the lab we were supposed to do, and nothing seemed wrong in the world. It wasn't long until I had to go home for dinner though, and I didn't think that was a problem, considering my partner now had to go do the lab that I had shafted him for earlier in the day. So I left him and my other friends to go home... I felt terrible that I had only spent an hour doing work with my partner, when I had earlier promised to do three. The three. Eternal Sunshine three... But goddammit, I needed to get home for dinner. For family... I was damned if I do, and damned if I don't...

Which is why I still stand by what I did, even to this day. I still stand firm that going home early was the lesser of two evils, even after the scalding e-mail I got from my friend later that night... As I was afraid, he sort of mentioned that he was disappointed that I left him waiting for so long. I apologized to him earlier about it though, so it wasn't like he was cruel about it or anything... but just the fact that he mentioned it again hurt me pretty damn badly, if only because I realized the truth that I had hurt him more than I thought I ever would. Apparently, he didn't have the same patience that I have with my other friends, and I couldn't help but beat myself over with an ugly stick that night for this petty, little transgression of mine... and goddammit, I'm still sorry for arriving so damn late to our meeting place, when I really had no damn good reason to be so delayed. It was my fault, and only my fault... it was my choice, and as minor of a transgression as that may be, it's still haunting me to this day...

But strangely enough, my partner didn't stop there in his e-mail... He only briefly mentioned the fact that I left him waiting and wanton for two hours. He seemed far more upset at the fact that I left school early that night. And, umm... WHAT? I mean, yes, I admit that it was wrong for me to leave him hanging there and only get an hour's worth of work done when I promised three. The three. The trinity... But c'mon, already! I explained to him three fucking times that day about missing my sister's dinner the other week! I even told him that I promised my family I would get home early that evening! And yet here he was, complaining to me that I fucking did the wrong thing by leaving him and my other friends out to dry, when they all knew what goddam family means to me?... I know I'm taking this out of context and severely out of proportions. Obviously, I've had a goddam rotten week and it's goddam seriously ebbing at my temper... but honestly! I know that it was wrong for me to be late that day! I know that it was kind of rude for me to leave without getting anything done, when I promised results that evening. But c'mon already! Chastise me for being late then, why don't you? Chastity belt me for having such a fucking lame night life... But you fucking knew that I had to get home for a family dinner! You fucking knew what I promised my family... The problem now is, I feel terrible that I hurt my friend's feelings over this. I apologized to him the next day... but it still hurts me badly, that I actually feel bad about something that I fucking don't think was actually wrong! I still don't think I was wrong! I was damned if I do, and damned if I don't. I picked the lesser of two evils. And now I'm paying for it with goddam schizophrenia... Normally, when I feel guilty for something, I admit that I was wrong. But I fucking wasn't wrong this time...

... I just wasn't right either...

But enough of petty complaints. It's now my dinner time for today, the Leafs are playing, and I need to get a resume done for a job offer my sister was generous enough to find for me... I know I'm overreacting to the tiny, petty e-mail that my lab partner sent me. In the end, he didn't really mean anything, and I appreciate that he was candid with me... I just don't appreciate being blamed for something that I seriously think was not my fault. But I guess that happens a lot in life... especially in weeks where everything feels like a goddam sanity's requiem... where the only sleep and sex you get, is with nightmares of fucking ugly women with yammering bitches in the background...

I can bitch about that at least, now can't I?...

Y2kk Update: I wrote about my week in review to a certain close friend of mine... He simply snorted and kindly retorted, that in IvanFian retrospect, that perhaps my week wasn't much worse than any other week in the life of IvanF?... at first, I tried to agree with him. I mean, I certainly had my dark days as recent as last year, where I goddam failed a second term course, forcing me this term to painfully go through all the same crops of corn-shaped crap I went through last year... But back then, as bad it was, that was just a bad day, now wasn't it? Not exactly a bad week... and to be honest? Maybe I just have a short term memory or some crap like that, or maybe my brain just purposefully forgot about all the shitty weeks I had back in second year... Because to be honest, I can't even recall one damn entire week in the whole of my life, where nothing seemed to go right. Although it still shames me that I mercilessly, abominably, and nominally failed my programming midterm last year, I simply can't remember the rest of that week being as bad as the crap I had to endure this week...

And yet... you know what?...

Simply from prior experience... simply from porous exposure... and simply from the ironic, pious passions of not pirating that picket of a motion picture... perhaps I finished this week, not feeling so bad at all. But by all due accounts, I sure as hell should have...

... and now, to steal a certain catchphrase from one of my favourite video games of all time...

...

- Dawn of the First Day -

... I hate fucking waking up early in the morning... Lurching out of my sanctuary of a bed at 6:50 in the morning, just to get to a 9am lab at university that day, had me literally hunching over in pain and agony, just because I felt like I was going to hurl whatever I ate the night before... But nevertheless, I eventually got over my periodic morning sickness... and truth be told, besides the fact that the fucking Verilog code my partner and I programmed for this lab didn't even run worth a damn, I can't really claim that Monday morning really sucked at all. I mean, I woke up feeling sick, finished the lab feeling sick to my stomach that I don't know how to do anything, and then I had to wait over four hours for my meeting with the TA who was supervising my next networking lab assignment. Nothing out of the ordinary there...

Well... except for one thing...

Just minutes before my group got to speak with the TA, that genius partner of mine (the guy who literally did everything for the first networking lab, because he couldn't put up with the incompetence and insolence of the rest of the group, myself notably included...) pulled me aside and asked a seemingly innocent but honest question...

He wanted to leave the group, and asked for my blessings.

And honestly, what the hell could I say?... Here, in front of me, was a man who knew corporate network systems better than the people who programmed them. And here, right in front of me, was a man three times my size who obviously was pissed off that we didn't get perfect on the first lab assignment. And of course, right here in front of me, was the very same man that did all the work for that assignment... So what the hell could I say? I obviously couldn't object, otherwise he'd throw the fact that I didn't do any bloody hell work right back into my face. And besides, despite his arrogance, the man in front of me was a good man - or at least, he is when he speaks to my face and not behind my back... So of course I gave him my blessings. And I expected him to be professional about it. I expected him to calmly talk to the TA or the professor long after the meeting, away from prying and gorging eyes, and politely and politically explain his dilemma... in a way that didn't make the rest of us group members look like idiots, that is... and, well...

Suffice to say... I shouldn't have expected so much...

When the meeting with the TA was finally over around six bloody pm, the rest of the group was getting ready to go, and I was expecting my genius partner to wait until we were all gone until he started talking to the TA about splitting... but he didn't wait... Before the others (who hadn't even been told yet that he wanted to leave) had even put on their jackets, my partner went straight up to the TA and demanded that he be removed from our group... Now, he didn't say any nasty things about me per say, but right in front of the other group, he was literally claiming that they were a bunch of monkey morons who didn't know how to do anything for the first project... I did my best to distract the other group members while this was going on, of course. I started talking to them about the plans for the next lab - I don't think they really heard any of the awful things my partner was saying behind their backs, right on front of their faces, but... still... Just a bloody hell half an hour ago, I had asked my partner when he would ask the TA about his predicament. He said he would do so when it was "diplomatically appropriate". I had assumed that he meant when the others were gone and when he wouldn't have to hurt their feelings... but in truth, he simply meant when the TA would've been most receptive to his cahier of doleances and wily complaints, which includes the times when he would literally rip the confidence right out of the others' beating hearts...

Yeah... Michelin man maybe... Marathon man, true... but a good man? Did I really think that?... John Goodman maybe, but a good man? My ass...

...

- Dawn of the Second Day -

I forget why I woke up at seven fucking am in the morning on Tuesday. I probably had some sort of assignment to hand in or some crap like that... Either way, I arrived at school by 9am, did whatever I had to do, and then started preparing for that stupid ass midterm I had for Operating Systems programming at six in the evening. And technically, nothing really went wrong that morning... I studied all the previous midterms, skimmed over the goddam textbook, and realized something: this was programming, right? All the concepts I've been reading, have been pretty goddam easy if you asked me. All this crap about PIDs and processes and multithreading and JCL monitors and shit like that, all seemed to mesh and iMesh into my head in ways that only computer things can. And because I felt like I knew the material, I actually settled down and actually studied for once... I mean, when I don't know a subject, my mind wanders when reading over the goddam textbook, and I end up reading how the Toronto Maple Leafs fucking lost the night before in the goddam sports section of the newspaper... But not this day. The fact of the matter was, the material for this exam was actually goddam interesting to me. Invigorating. Investigating... you know, shit like that... I wasn't studying for this course because I had to. I was studying for this course because I wanted to. And truth be told, after going through all the previous midterms and all the previous labs, I truly did believe in myself for once, that maybe, just maybe... if only... that this exam would be a piece of cake. I knew in the bowels of my gnaring and gnashing heart, that I knew the material like the back of my hand (or at least the look of my hand on the back of my dick), and that absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong... For once, I was actually confident. And as Martha Stewart would say to the juries, "that's a good thing"...

... except in her case... and except in mine...

Because, well... goddammit, Powell... something did go wrong... before the midterm at least... Around five pm, an hour before the midterm, I checked my e-mail and fucking noticed something... There was an e-mail from the networking TA, specifically telling me to go to his awful office. And god, it felt like a goddam note from the principle in goddam elementary school or some crap like that, and with just an hour before the midterm, I was hesitant to go... But in my overconfidence for the OS material, I opted to go see the damn TA anyhew, just to see what kind of shit he was smoking when he wrote that fucking e-mail to me... Afterall, he didn't call any other groups to his office that I knew of, and he shot down my partner's grievances the day before, so what the hell could he want?..

Shit.

I arrived at his office, worrisome baggage in tow... and guess the fuck what?...

My partner ratted me out. To the professor, no less...

Now, I have no fucking clue what my partner honestly said to the professor on Tuesday morning, but judging by the lecture that the TA gave me for forty fucking minutes, it definitely didn't sound good... I mean, I don't know - maybe my partner actually did try to make me sound decent in his argument to the professor to leave the group. And maybe the TA was just making it sound like the prof interpreted it as "IvanF is an AR, acting freeloader... he did no work, and he's too stupid to do given work if needed"... and who knows? Maybe I should give my partner the benefit of the doubt, and simply believe that I interpreted the TA's words wrong, and that only my own pride and internal fears are what made the TA's lecture sound like such a bitter pill to bite and swallow...

... because as we all know... I can't swallow pills...

... or then again... My partner did talk shit about our other group members right in front of their very eyes...

I mean... what was I thinking?... Good man, my ass...

He betrayed me. He snitched on me. Did I really care? Yes, and no... So let's see here. The TA blamed me for being the weakest link in the communication process between the group members for some shitty reason, as if my partner had pretended to the professor like he was the one directly dealing with the "morons" on the other side of the picket fence, not me... The TA blamed me for doing no work, for forcing Mike to do all of the server program, when in reality, the only real reason that my partner did the whole thing was because he told me he would do the thing... And he did! In three fucking hours, he did what I couldn't do in two weeks! So what the fuck was I supposed to do? Whatever I wrote, he could write better in a fraction of the time, so yeah, I did let him do all the work... So the TA asked me what the hell did I do then? And I told the honest truth... well, mostly, at least... I told him that I was the link between my partner and the other group. I claimed that job interviews kept my partner busy, so I was the one who had to try to interface his protocols with the client side's program... And in truth, it was pretty much true - my partner was busy all the time with his own shit, and I was the one who did all the intergroup communication. But in all honesty, the only real reason why he didn't deal with the others, is because he couldn't stand how primitive and "rudimentary" their goddam understanding of coding was... I also told the TA that I did do the server for the first two weeks of the lab, I did do the first draft of the readme file, and I have worked on the client side of the project since then. All of which were true... I didn't reveal however that my server was completely smacked off the face of the planet by my partner after those first two weeks, that the other group mutinied against me for my god-awful readme file, and that the other group members wouldn't accept my bloody hell help for the client side whenever I offered it... I mean, I was telling the TA the truth. Just not the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, it seemed...

The TA finished off the forty fucking minute long meeting, by claiming that I wasn't on trial here. He just wanted to know where, when and why this breakdown in communication (which my partner obviously blamed me for to the fucking professor) seemed to occur... But the happy, happy, joy joy news of it all?... that my partner wasn't allowed to leave the group... so, umm... let me get this straight? The whole point of these assignments is teamwork, and my partner openly admitted to the professor that there was no teamwork in our first lab?... Sure, he tried to swindle all the blame on me, which half of which is true. But honestly, considering the professor might've lowered all our marks for acting as snotty individuals, and considering my partner now has to deal with me for four more weeks after I found what what the fuck he said about me behind my back?... well then... it was pretty damn stupid of my partner to go into the professor's office, fucking guns blazing...

Smart man in programming? Undoubtedly... but genius man in politics? My ass...

But with just twenty minutes left until the midterm was set to start, what choice did I have left but to continuously nod my head off, halfway to sleep, and just take all the remainder blame for whatever the fuck my partner told the professor had happened in our group... And in my opinion, I only said nice things about my partner. I said he was too busy with co-op job openings for this first lab. I said he was a good man who was a friend (yeah, right), who trusted me with the protocol message passing, and that I was the one who failed. I argued that the other group worked really hard on this assignment, and that should anyone be blamed for freeloading, it was me... I took the cold hearted chance that maybe I could be given a second chance. Hopefully, my gamble will pay off in the end, not that I've told my partner what I said in my little interview with the TA... but with twenty fucking minutes left until the midterm, did I really fucking care? I was betrayed, yeah. Stabbed in the back, with salt and fatty acids poured into the gaping wound, but still... I was expecting that from my partner, considering he talks behind my back all the time. But I just never thought he'd say such stupid ass things to the professor, in some desperate, feeble attempt to get himself out of our group... I still think of him as a good man, sad to say. Just not the brightest of men, any longer... and to be honest, sorry for him, I think he'd prefer to be the latter...

But as for the OS midterm? It was harder than I expected... much harder than any of the previous midterms were... And I was caught off guard in some places... This year's test was far more Ritalin focused on processes and monitors than any of the previous years were (which focused on semaphores and lock mutexs instead). But still, I thought I fared rather well... so fucking well in fact, that I was expecting at least a seventy percent on this goddam midterm, if not a ninety, if only the marking TAs were Lenin and not Stalin lenient... I pretended to my friends later that night that I didn't do well though, since they seemed bitter that they didn't do as well as they'd hoped... In essence, I lied to them, right to their faces, and felt guilty about it afterwards... but after that fucking meeting with the TA?... guess I'm getting good at those little white lies, now aren't I?...

I can only be so lucky... I can only be so bold...

Bold and beautiful. Not with these fucking new glasses that is... half empty or half full? That's a story for another day..

...

- Dawn of the Third Day -

I forgot to mention one goddam thing about Tuesday night... that I didn't even goddam arrive home until one in the fucking morning. Because you see, we had this fucking horrible Algorithm Complexity assignment due at nine on Wednesday morning. And since I had absolutely no clue how to do this assignment, I stayed at school where all my groups of friends were working on it... and quite simply put, I copied and modified whatever they got... Pretty much, from nine in the evening to twelve at midnight, I just sat around there, obsessively checking the Raptors and Leafs' game scores as everyone else seemed to actually be doing productive work... and suffice to say, although thanks to my friends, I'll get some marks for this assignment, I know that I certainly won't get enough to pass... And it's my fault obviously, not theirs. Hell, by now, I think I owe each of them a million Milwaukee bucks...

When I arrived at university at 9 am the next morning, I was surprised to see so many faces of that same group still working away at school... they had pulled an all nighter. They never left the goddam computer labs and the goddam campus... and goddammit, they actually finished the assignment? I mean, before last night, I had made up some shit for the questions that I still had blank that'll hopefully get me a couple marks out of one hundred in the end. But here were people that actually had the real answers?!... so I did something really goddam stupid... I asked if I could see them... and, umm...

Here's a tip: never ask to steal the work of people who haven't slept in twenty four fucking hours... friend or foe or not, they do tend to snap at you... and snap your wrists with a snarl if they ever do get the chance...

And yeah... that was real dumb and insensitive of me, both as a student and as a friend... I guess my networking partner isn't the only one with the least manageable of political skills... Either way, we all handed in our assignments to the Complexity professor a few minutes later, and I proceeded to prepare for my goddam Control Systems lab with a certain close friend of mine, who was only still awake thanks to a new dependence on Tim Hortons coffee... The lab prep took us a couple of hours. The lab itself went from 12pm to three in the afternoon... and I can't really complain about the lab, now can I? I mean, my partners did most of the work. They set up the circuit, they tested the actuator, and they did all the tau and gain calculations... All I did was read the resistivity codes, draw some probed waveforms, and play around with the servomotor, to see what it does when it tries to cut your finger like glass in half... And of course, I couldn't complain about the time to my partners, since considering they didn't even like coffee until they started pulling all nighters in third year, they would've literally snapped my pinky finger apart and fed it to pigs they're not allowed to eat, if I ever did open my big, fat, obnoxious mouth...

But you see, I did have one minor, iddy biddy complaint...

The lab lasted us until four pm. actually (since marking took us a while to get to)... and the thing is... you remember that fucking course I failed last year at the end of second year? The same fucking course that I got stuck with a 49% in?... yeah, well... you see, I had the fucking midterm for that course at 6pm on Wednesday night, and considering it was already 4pm, that didn't give me many options, now did it?... I didn't have time to study for this midterm on Monday or Tuesday, thanks to that goddam OS midterm and the fucking Complexity assignment due the morning after. And I barely got to open my Electricity and Magnetism books on the weekend, with the OS lab due the Friday before, and the Computer Hardware lab taking me forever to get done before Monday... So in other words? For the second fucking year in a row, I was screwed... Last year, I studied an entire week for this course's midterm, and still ended up with only a fucking 35% on it (with no hope whatso-fucking-ever of normalization or a bell curve, thanks to the fucking 70% class average...). And this year?... suffice to say, considering I only studied for my midterm for one and a half fucking hours (thanks to the assignment and the lab), I think I did even worse than I did last year... and hell's bells, goddammit Powell, that's saying a hell of lot... and it certainly ain't saying much in my favour... no doot aboot it...

Tim Hortons. 4. Life.

What the fuck?

Yeah, I was screwed. I was fucked right in the ass... but at least I finally had to ability to skip a day on Thursday, and just forget about the rest of this hellish, Hades of a Haiti week. At least I could just kick back and finally relax, and just know that the fucking clown-circus, horrors of the past week were finally over...

Or were they? Cue ominous sounding drum roll, please...

And roll up the rim to win.

...

- Dawn of the Fourth Day -

... yeah, umm... I can't really complain about Thursday. Nothing really went wrong, afterall... I stayed home to help move more of the junk from my grandparents' place to my own basement, which really wasn't very hard to do. It was just time consuming, that's all... But if I had written a Y2kk Update the week before, I would've definitely admitted how damn pissed off I was at the fact that my grandparents finally chose to live at their new nursing home. I mean, in case you've been living under an IvanFian rock, you must've read somewhere on my sites that two years ago, my grandmother from my mother's side fell in her own backyard, and had to hospitalized for half a year... And at that very same fucking time (exam time for my first year), my grandfather from my father's side had a stroke and was hospitalized for almost an entire year until we had no choice but to ship him off to a god-forsaken nursing home... Well, now it was my grandma's turn, and I didn't like it one fucking bit. I was morbidly depressed just a couple weeks ago, when we helped my grandparents move into the new "Yee Hong" Chinese nursing home... I mean, it wasn't their fucking time to move into a nursing home yet! My grandmother may have trouble walking, but my grandfather on my mother's side is still healthy enough to take care of her at home. I didn't fucking like the feeling that my mother was forcefully taking away her own parent's freedoms, just so that we wouldn't have to deal with the constant fear that something unpredictable could go wrong... And it shamed me actually that day. When my grandma first moved into the nursing home, she asked me in Cantonese whether this was a good place for her to stay or not. And with my mother there, all I did was pretend like I didn't understand what my grandmother was asking, since I was literally on the brink of fucking crying then and there... I mean, I couldn't answer honestly. Doing so would've had my mother fucking my ass, and not in a good way... if there's even remotely a good way for a mother to fuck a son, but I digress...

Well, two weeks have passed since then, if not three... it seems I've already lost track of time... guess I really do have a short term, actuator memory afterall... And what really hit home last week, was the fact that my grandparents have officially decided to live out their rest of their lives in that goddam nursing home... and to be honest, I now have nothing that I'm allowed to complain about. My official grievance before was that my parents were forcing this nursing home shit on my grandparents, but what can I say now?... The truth is, I just hate the fact that my favourite, dearest grandmother is now not even allowed to see us unless we fill out a fucking form? I hate the fucking fact that I can't just sit in their house anymore and have a dinner that my grandmother created like only she can cook. I hate the fucking fact that she'll never even be allowed to bake the Chinese New Year pastries that nobody but her has ever made good enough in my entire goddam life, no doubt... I just hate the reminder of her own mortality, and my own, to be honest. And I don't particularly, fucking like the fact that there's nothing I can do about it, because my own grandmother chose a life of security over a life with us... Of course, I'm blowing this way out of proportions. I still see her almost every week, but... it's just not the same, you know?... And helping to move all her stuff out of her old house so we could sell it, really took its fucking toll on me last week when I offered to help out...

But that's a story for another day, really... because while I'm still bitter at what's happening in my family life, I was more fucking bitter when my close university friend contacted me and told me that the marks for the Operating Systems midterm had already been posted online... He got in the seventies, and since my answers were close to his (we compared afterwards), I expected at least a class average mark for myself (which was 65%). So without fear and without hesitation, I logged onto the online course website... and without even holding my breath like I normally do when marks come in, I just clicked on the link... callously waiting for the next screen to load... forgot all about the MyDoom, living spiritual crap going on in my life... and... umm...

...

... umm?...

...

... uh?...

...

... what the...

...

... WHAT THE FUCK?!?

...

... what the fuck happened?...

...

... WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!?

...

... because honestly, guess what I got...

...

... no, really. Guess.

...

... because what the fuck?...

...

... HOW THE FUCKING HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?!?

...

... I got a fucking forty percent...

...

... WTF?!?

...

... I GOT A FUCKING FORTY PERCENT?!?

... ON A FUCKING EASY MIDTERM?!?

... IN THE ONLY FUCKING COURSE THAT I FUCKING KNEW THE FUCKING MATERIAL LIKE THE BACK OF MY FUCKING HAND?!?

... WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!?...

... and to be honest, I still don't know...

... all I know, is that I promised myself that I wouldn't swear...

...

... o_0!

... Fuck.

...

... to be honest, maybe my memory is just too short term, but goddammit, this was unprecedented for me... Even for my programming midterm last year (which I failed mercilessly might I remind), I at least knew when I was writing that fucking thing that I didn't know shit for its questions. And for every fucking midterm and exam I've ever done, I always get at least what I expect to get, because I fucking don't lie to myself about how I do. If I don't know the material (like for 99% of courses out there), then I fail and laugh it off. If I know the material (like in the programming midterm last year) but wasn't prepared for the questions, then I fail and eventually forget it (after swearing a few million times).

But goddammit! Not only did I fucking know the fucking course material this time, but I fucking thought I fucking aced that exam! And in the end, I got less than fucking half of the goddam marks that I thought I'd get? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!?...

... I don't really know... all I can tell you, was how fucking embarrassed and goddam mortified I was, that's all... Hell, I thought I had been humbled before. But hell, this experience sure as hell taught me to never, ever have confidence in my goddam knowledge again, lest I ever fucking forget...

Half empty or half full? You decide. Choose fast. Chow Yun Fat. I'll shatter the glass in the meantime...

Everything in my hands seems to dissolve into ashes. Especially my own ass...

...

- Dawn of the Fifth Day -

I can't really say that Friday was really that bad... I got to sleep in, I went to school, started preparing for the lab Monday with my partner, when all of sudden... as if Karma wasn't done fucking with my fucking asshole...

... heh...

My fucking glasses snapped like a fucking twig in my hands as I was cleaning them.

...

Guess I should've expected this. Hell, my frames were three years old afterall... But the timing was Mecca impeccable. I wanted an excuse to drop all work and just pathetically go home as a failure. And with my goddam -8.25 myopic eyesight in both eyes, I was quite literally blinder than a bat, in a week where I was fucking blind enough to fail a fucking easy midterm... I don't know why my glasses just chose to break in half on the very last day of one of the worst feeling weeks in my entire life. Guess it wanted to go for the hat trick, that's all... and I tried to make a joke out of it at first. As my lens toppled all the way to the cold hard floor, after realizing my glasses had been snapped like a wishbone in two, I took in hand the longer half that remained and made a wish of my own...

To never have a fucking week like this again...

My friends were there to help though... The university had some industrial strength superglue available, and since I was afraid of... quite frankly, supergluing myself to myself... I got my friends to work as slave labour for me, and quite honestly, my Comp Hardware partner did a pretty damn fine job of gluing the pieces of my life back together... I mean, his makeshift engineering workaround didn't last for long. Saturday morning, my glasses ripped apart yet again as I was reaching for them on the table. But at least they lasted long enough for me to see the Toronto Raptors get massacred by New York that night... and at least I managed to get new glasses at Lenscrafters today, even though it took them like four fucking hours to get my -8.25 prescription right... I can't really complain though. Every other place would've taken a week to custom order my lenses in. And with my hardest midterm coming up on Tuesday, that's not what Martha Stewart would've consider a good thing (guess she had a more worse week then I did...)... But I can complain about how ugly my new frames look, now can't I?... those goddam trendy Lenscrafter wannabes, con-aired me into getting fucking pussy, girly glasses. I almost miss the Urkel tape I was wearing this morning in contrast...

... but backtracking to Friday, right after my glasses were at least partially repaired by my good friends, I went over to collect my fucking Operating Systems midterm from the professor... and realized something...

It's not like I deserved to fail this midterm. Looking over my answers, I shouldn't have done that badly... But the TAs were brutal in marking, and I realized something from comparing with my friend's answers... Fucking hell, AOL, I misinterpreted all the major questions... When a question was talking about processes, I interpreted them as threads. When I was supposed to use condition variables, I used booleans instead... Even when it was directly spelled out for me right in front of my face as to what to do, I ignored the instructions completely, and ended up paying dearly for it in the end... with zero, after zero, after fucking resident zero on my sheets of faerie echos and tears... But still, as stupid as I was on this midterm, I didn't deserve to fail. I even compared my answers to what others' had as 'correct' answers, and apparently, my fucking midterm was marked hardware harder in places than theirs ever were... I first took it up with the TAs, and they claimed I didn't have a causal case for any of my fucking cahier of grievances. And I didn't want to show them my friends' midterms (who's checkmarks defied the TAs' logic, seemingly), otherwise they might've been marked down themselves instead... So I decided to fucking write a fucking letter to the professor himself, asking him to remark my entire midterm himself or something. I mean, what choice did I have?... I have a 95% in the labs of this course so far, and a fucking 40.5% on the fucking midterm worth 30% of my final mark. If I can get this fucking midterm dropped and get the final exam worth 75%, then maybe I'll have a goddam chance in hell of doing as well as I first expected to in this course, before this fucking week ever happened... But the question was, how could I fucking get my midterm dropped?

... the thing is... I didn't like my solution... and I still don't...

In first year, I could've petitioned off my final exams if I wanted to, simply because my grandfather and grandmother were both in the hospital from a fucking stroke and injury, respectively... Last year, I could've fucking petitioned off the fucking midterms I failed, simply because back then and there, I could've claimed I was distracted by the moving of my grandfather from the hospital to a fucking nursing home... But I didn't petition off any of these fucking things. Even with midterm marks of 9% in Electronics, 25% in Digital Systems and a 35% in Electricity and Magnetism, I still didn't petition off any of my goddam courses, and why?

Because I fucking had principles. Because I fucking didn't want to use my very own grandparents as sorry ass excuses as to why I'm failing in university. Because I know why I'm really failing - because I fucking don't know shit. And the last thing I want to do is pull the same thing as my fucking networking partner did, and blame my woes on other people to try to save my own ass... But after failing my Electricity and Magnetism midterm again this year (although marks aren't in yet), and after getting fucking 5% on a quiz in that E-n-M course of mine to start this week (although I admit, half of my entire tutorial got the same mark as me thanks to our horribly stern and not Howard Stern TA), I just couldn't give a fuck anymore... Principles be damned, I'm going to fucking try to petition off both midterms this year, because I'm goddam sick of goddam playing the nice guy any longer. I'm going to write to both professors, that moving my grandparents from their home to the nursing home has goddam burned a hole in my goddam heart, and at least, that much is true...

Is it true that my grandparents are the reason I fucking failed my OS midterm, the same damn test that I fucking thought I'd fucking ace like an ass?... No, not at all. It's not the fault. Not even remotely. I could never honestly blame them...

But it'd also be a goddam lie if I said that their choice to stay in the nursing home, hasn't rattled me in ways that goddam get me to write goddam two hour Y2kk Updates, now wouldn't it be?...

What is the truth anymore? I can't really see...

I can't really see anything. Not with these fucking new glasses of mine... and especially not with my glasses of old and gore and yonder lore any longer, since they're missing half of their lenses like a fucking Frodo or a fucking Oscar, fucking their fucking rings... but I digress...

Stupid Academy Awards.

God, that movie sucked...

...

- Dawn of the Sixth Day -

... well... I still haven't submitted my petitions... I still have time to change my mind, but I doubt I will... I wish I would though... how I wish I would...

... the tape on my old glasses this morning was chaffing me like flares... now my new glasses not only make me feel like a fucking woman, but the goddam fishbowl effect the lenses are having is literally burning a hole in my eye sockets...

... and as for network sockets? I have to go to school next week, and pretend to my partner like he never bothered to go behind my back to blame me for all his woes and problems to the fucking professor, no less... I talked to him on Wednesday though. He pretended like he didn't say anything mean about me. Or actually, he pretended like he didn't even say anything about me at all... And maybe he didn't, I don't know?... But then again, he didn't even admit that he talked to the professor to my face. Not until I told him about my meeting with the TA, that is... and something just doesn't sit right about that with me... I've never really been betrayed before... I never really met Judas... then again, I really have no-one to blame but myself... I think...

I wrote about my week in review to a certain close friend of mine... He simply snorted and kindly retorted, that in IvanFian retrospect, that perhaps my week wasn't much worse than any other week in the life of IvanF?... and at first, I tried to agree with him. And in many ways, I suppose that he was right... But that doesn't change the fact that I truly feel like a sack of stupefied shit right now. It doesn't change the fact that I fucking hope that my fuck-in-the-ass karma doesn't carry over to next week... and it doesn't change the fact that regardless of whether it does or not, regardless of what kind of corn-bred Iowa crap I'm going to have to put up with in the next seven days or not, I'm just happy... I'm just still midly content... that at least, just at least... this goddam week is finally done and goddam over with... at least I have that... a small consolation, at the very least... a small relief...

A small victory, indeed.

It's true that some decent things did happen this week for me... I got 70% on a midterm from two weeks ago that I thought I failed. And my friends showed great compassion for me when they helped fix my glasses... But then again, on the other hand, I didn't even bother to mention all the other shitty things that happened this week, like the girl I always talk about ignoring me when I was trying to make amends with her, and my parents once again taking it out on me when my brother kind of scolded them over the phone... But in the end, everything balances out, now doesn't it? Life is a sport... drink it up... what a stupid punchline - about as bad as the Lord of the Fucking Rings... but I digress...

... and yet?... nyet?... about life?... no doot aboot it... truth be told, suffice to say, haters be damned, who throws a shoe, and short story short - it's all about balance...

And unfortunately for me, thanks to my new glasses, the world is spinning like a fucking top and ain't exactly balanced... Hell, I might as well be drunk on my goddam passions... it's just too bad I'm not - because then at least, I'd have a fucking way to fucking forget the entire past, fucking week... lest I ever forget...

Because it all sounds like so much goddam fun, now doesn't it?...

... doesn't it?...

... well...

... in retrospect...

Don't answer that.

ATI: Saw over at Rage3d that some new Linux drivers have come out for Radeon cards. All they seem to add is support for the 9800 XT card, but you can download the Xfree86 version 4.2 at: http://www.schneider-digital.de/download/ati/glx1_linux_x4.2.zip. And the 4.3 version is over at: http://www.schneider-digital.de/download/ati/glx1_linux_x4.3.zip.

ATI: Finally, a guide that I actually care about!... After tweaking and dweaking for so many years of my life, I got sick of making video cards and CPUs run faster, louder, and hotter. But at long last, X-bit Labs has released a guide to make your CPU quieter and cooler. I hope this becomes a trend, or at least a fad over at: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/volt-red.html.

ATI: ATI has released a press release about PCI Express. Now, I still don't know what the point of PCI Express is, but I remember being all jazzed about it back in 1999... which was a long time ago, of course... A lot has changed since then. And a lot of boredom has set in... But read the press release anyhew at: http://www.ati.com/products/PCIexpress/index.html.

ATI: Hmm... seems that Hercules is leaving the hardware industry. I forget what they used to make in the past... but if they were PowerVR manufacturers, than I am going to miss them. Read more about it at Beyond3d: http://www.beyond3d.com/#news10452.