Y2kk Update: Crap...

So much for that interview...

Because yes, I had an interview. Got all dressed up on a drowsy day on Tuesday.

Went all the way to Toronto... drove all the way there, and surprisingly fit right in with all the other bad drivers that cut me off on the road...

The interview was for a meaningless job. Basically, I'd just be a clerk to a web systems architect in the Ontario, Canadian government... I'd get paid pathetic minimum wage, the job would only last for two months, and in a lovely fit of would-be irony, the government here was all set to strike as well. Meaning no job to do at all...

Still, experience is experience. And I needed some... any, really...

So I got all dressed up.

And yeah, I suppose the actual interview went fine... by my low standards, at least...

I asked most of the questions though, not the guy in charge... I don't know whether that was a good thing or not...

He asked me to describe myself, so I did in mostly computing and academic terms. I mean, hell's bells, it's not like I have any real world experience to justify me getting this job or not...

After I ranted on about my computer engineering shit, he asked me to describe one project that I did at the University of Toronto that would be applicable to the job at hand. So I talked a whole bunch of shit about that four module, XML parser program I did with other groups in first term... I obviously didn't mention that thanks to one of the groups, the whole integration of the modules together went like pure shit...

What I did mention, was that the project was highly object oriented, that I learned to function as head programmer in my team, that I got in a hell of a lot of experience when it came to integration testing, and yadda yadda yadda... generic, boring shit about being a good team member, and getting the job done with minimum cost and effort... always asking the right questions, always paying attention, always being patient and learning and listening, and blah blah blah...

... yeah, right... as if I was doing any of those things in that interview alone...

But like I said, I asked this guy more questions than he asked me... I asked him what the fuck this job was all about, and whether it would ever go beyond the clerical bullshit he was rambling on about... I asked him what his position in government was, and what the work environment was like for him... I asked him which projects he was working on, and which projects he liked most. And if I would ever get to work on the same projects or not...

I tried my best to sound interested in this shitty ass job. I mean, minimum wage or not, I needed some damn experience... And to be honest, I was reasonably honest in what I was telling him. I didn't really care much for the rate of pay, because I was hoping to use this summer job as a stepping stone into getting a full time position in the government somewhere in the fall. I was trying to suck up to him afterall, saying that I'll be real motivated to get this job and all that babyface shit like that...

... yeah, well... apparently, it didn't work...

Got an e-mail back today... It wasn't a generic one. The guy actually did write to me, and told me that he "liked" my answers. But he went for some other bitch instead...

... fine, motherfucker...

... you can take your minimum wage, overglorified, motherfucking waste of a job and shove it where the sun don't shine...

So what did I do wrong?

Well, for one thing... I wasn't a girl... the Ontario government sure loves to hire their visible minority girls...

And I guess I wasn't the Claritan clearest of speakers either. I spoke a bit too quickly at times, and I think I uttered the "umm" word a couple of times at least as well...

Did I slouch? Not that I can remember... but since I'm so used to breathing through my mouth at times, I know that my fucking ugly, yellow teeth did show at one point or another. And that can't be good for business... that can't be good for anyone...

And fuck it, I probably fucked up the handshake as well. I have a womanly handshake, really... can't shake the feeling that I just don't seem friendly enough with my anti-man hands...

But whatever. I'll eventually get more job opportunities... and to be honest? I originally did want to take this summer off, and start full time shit in the fall. Or at least, that was my original plan, until my parents started bickering at me throughout the whole past year, to get a job right out of the hellish gates of the last day of university classes...

... and the whole getting a job part?... that hasn't quite happened yet...

... and ay, there lies the rub...

... but eh, whatever... at least I can finally say I've gotten some real world, interview experience (along with the Microsoft one)...

... so what's next on the list?

Lose my virginity.

Get a fucking girlfriend.

And get a fucking job...

... though maybe not in that particular order...

ATI: Well, I'll talk more about this on my Tweakui site sometime next week, but I'm kinda disappointed in the performance of my new computer. But what else can you expect for just $800 CDN, right?... I dunno. FarCry runs fine, near 60 fps in gameplay, with default graphical settings. But even changing around the texture qualities to high seems to make my ATI Radeon X600 Pro PCIE 256MB start to stutter at times... Not as badly as my Xbox mind you. It still runs about 30 fps, but still...

Anyhew, at least I didn't get a crappy intergrated graphical chipset this time around... Still, if you're into those kinds of things, Anandtech has a roadmap up of future IGP chipsets from both ATI and nVidia. Go ahead and collect them all if you're bored at: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2430.

ATI: Well, this card is slightly faster than the one I got. But eh, whatever... close enough...

NextGen Electronics has a review up for the ATI Radeon X600XT 128MB PCIE. Don't know what they say, but go ahead and check out this discount, midrangecard over at: http://www.nextgenelectronics.com/gigabytex600xt.php. You can also find reviews on the Gigabyte X800 and X800XL over at Hardcoreware: http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-286-1.htm.

AMD: And since I did just buy my AMD64 3000+ 939 CPU, I thought I might as well post here Techgage's review of the AMD64 3200+... I'm surprised that even with AI NOS overclocking set to 5%, FarCry on my new computer can't seem to keep a stable 30fps all the time with graphical details set to high. Or at least, that's what it looked like to my eye... Maybe I'll try to reinstall the lame ass game and actually benchmark it for once over at: http://techgage.com/review.php?id=1286.

Y2kk Update: It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times... or was it?...

It was neither the most fucking sorry day of my entire worthless existence... nor the luckiest day in my goddam uneventful life like I had hoped...

Yes, I missed the last of my final exams of fourth year a few weeks ago. I was sick, and thus I slept in through my goddam alarm clock... In my panic, I got two doctor's notes that day, one from my university medical center itself, and practically begged my case to the exam committee in my online petition later that night...

Well, on Friday, the results of my petition finally came in...

And yes, they passed me. But with a mark so goddam bad, that I probably couldn't mustered it myself, if I had just written that goddam exam with a full fucking flu in the morning...

I had about a 63% or a 64% going into that course's final exam...

After the petition, I'm now stuck with 54%...

... just fucking great...

I'm not going to argue it though. I mean technically, I am lucky that I didn't take the exam while I was sick. I probably would've failed the course then, knowing my great track record with second term courses... But really, 54%? I know that I was taking the course a second time, but geez - didn't the exam committee at least look at the rest of my fourth year marks, and notice that I'm much better now than a pathetic 54%?...

... well, not much better really... but that's besides the point...

Either way, I passed the term. I ended with a pathetic 63% term average instead of the 65% that I would've had if I had just kept my mark before the final in that course, but a pass is a fucking pass nonetheless...

Which means what?... Which means that I will never have to take a fucking university exam ever again if I don't want to...

... which means I'm done...

... almost, that is...

I was at school on Friday, being interviewed by professors for what you can call my undergraduate thesis project: the grand, ol' design project that I have to do all upcoming year long...

I went to school with basically no expectations of what to expect from the professors. I knew I had to meet them, I knew I had to discuss preliminary design project ideals with them, and I knew that we weren't just choosing the professor we want to work with - the professors would also be choosing which students they wanted on their side...

... don't ask me why, but I just kinda didn't expect interview-type questions, that's all...

Because yes, I choked... I really, really, ridiculously suck at those personal/behaviour type of goddam questions...

Simple shit like... 'oh, tell me about yourself and your experiences related to this proposed project?'... or 'oh, tell me about what you have learned from your university studies, and what you hope to gain from this design project?'... or goddam crap like 'tell me, what do you want to become after you graduate? How will this design project help or affect that?'...

... you know? Simple questions that a fifth grader or a five year old could figure out if they were just goddam prepared...

... of course, I was left staring like a deer caught in the headlights...

With no prior work experience to fall back on, I could only comment on what I learned through team based projects in third and fourth year. Of course, all the 'umm's' and '...' moments of awkward silence that I put into my sentence structures, certainly didn't help things out much...

Either way, my two partners made the save. They were suave and sophisticated enough to bullshit our way through the introduction processes quite nicely. And we did get a design project in the end, the Virtual Window, which I'll describe in detail some other time... after it's patented by my University of Toronto professor of course (since he wants to try to market it eventually...)...

I owe those two guys a lot. My friends, I mean... They've always been friendly to me, and fourth year was kind of bland and uneventful without real trustworthy guys such as themselves being around... they've been at co-op positions all year around, and the school really felt empty at times without them there...

... but I do admit, there was one thing that I certainly did not miss...

It barely came up this year with my fourth year friends (the ones who didn'y go to co-op placements). I mean, only three or four of them were Indian or from Pakistan, so I was exposed to much more English that I had in my past four years of university... and thus, this problem never really came up...

What problem?... well...

My two design partners are from Pakistan. And the thing is, it just makes me feel like the complete odd man out, not when they speak in their native tongues... but when they don't...

My two friends shared a joke in English around me on Friday... I didn't exactly laugh so much, since it kinda missed the punchline it seemed...

Now, I still don't know whether this was a follow-up joke or not... but it still kinda hurt my feelings either way...

My friend then told me, "well, it's funny in our own language. But I had to translate it for you."...

Now, that was an honest thing to say. I appreciate that. It still made me feel like crap though... because the last thing I want, is to be the cancer in the group that forces my friends to speak English, just so that I would understand what they're saying... I hate being the liability, who drags others down...

But alas, that's what I was for three years straight in university... I guess with one year left to go, I might as well just suck it up and make it four...

Either way, I'm still goddam relieved that not only did I pass all my fourth year courses, but that my group got a pretty damn cool design project to work on too... if only we knew how to even start it...

... just don't tell our professor that...

... or at least, not in English...

ATI: Well, I'm relatively happy... I'll post more about this eventually on my Tweakui site, once I actually buy (...) a game to test on the new computer that I just bought. But still, happy is as happy does... I may have only gotten a paltry ATI Radeon X600 Pro PCIE 256MB for just $120 CDN, but I'm sure that my new card is still decent enough for games like Far Cry, Half Life 2 (more or less), and pretty much any RTS or RPG I care about in 2005...

I just don't get why the Catalyst 5.5 drivers wouldn't install for me though... Either way, Rage3d did report that the Catalyst drivers were updated to version 5.5 sometime in the past week or two. Besides some high definition and specific game tweaks, I don't know what's new... But that won't stop me from still trying to figure out why only my legacy Catalyst PCIE drivers work at: https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27.

ATI: Don't know what they talk about, but The Tech Report has an article up about the new X850 AGP cards from ATI. Go ahead and check out if ATI simply rehased the 9800 again at: http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/agp-radeons/index.x?pg=1.

Y2kk Update: You know, one of these days? Just one of these days...

I keep hoping that I'll have something positive to write about on this goddam download site of mine...

... I almost got that feeling of joy this week... almost...

My marks came in for what I hope to be my final, goddam term in university...

I thought I refailed Computer Complexity. That would've been a hoot if I did... But I got spared a mortal blow and disgrace, by getting a pathetic 52% in the course... Now, 52% in a 3rd year course I'm retaking is pretty damn awful. But who am I to complain, right?... I did absolutely no work in that course, skipped the midterm, went into the final with a 50%, and came out with basically the same bloody hell mark...

I thought I would do better with Economics though... I mean, I technically didn't 'cheat' on that exam. But knowing what our professor did for the midterm, it was kinda easy to see where he would get his questions for the final, so... The thing is, I still quite bombed the exam. WTF?!... I went into the final with a 65%, and came out with a 62%? WTF?!... No matter what I do, I just can't seem to do well in that course. My dad is going to bitch slap me for that, considering he'd rather me be an engineering accountant or some crap like that... But a pass is still a pass, right? And at least I didn't drop below that 60% thin red line that I was so concerned about and all...

In Internetworking, I got basically what I went in with... I fucked up the midterm so badly, that there was really no way in hell that I could do well in the course. And I didn't... I went in with a 67%, and came out with a 67%. The final was pretty easy, but getting around 70% on it (like I guess I did) sounds about right. I was hoping for more, considering my friends are all still complaining about getting in the low 80's as their final marks, but... whatever...

It's just that, this is the one course that I especially feel terrible in. Internetworking, I mean... The concepts were all easy. And for the first fucking time since first year, I actually went to class. I went to almost every single Internetworking class that there was, and why? Because I actually found the source material to be interesting for once... And yet what happens? I end up third worst in the entire class when it comes to the midterm, and then I end up over 10% below the goddam class average after the final... Jealousy is a total bitch when it comes to all your friends scoring easy A's in the course, while despite all my efforts, I'm still stuck in the dungeon pits of the fucking marks I've been always getting since first year... What the hell is wrong with me, right?...

I thought fourth year was supposed to be different...

... and fuck, I'm still pissed at my friends for cheating on that final exam without me, but that's besides the bloody hell point...

Now, there was always one bright spot during the school year, for both first and second terms... my Software Engineering courses...

I pulled a miracle 87% in the first Soft Eng course, besting all my university friends for the first time since... well?... ever, actually...

I really, really ridiculously wanted to repeat the same magic this term with Soft Eng 2... but last year's mark was definitely a fluke, and I guess reality really had to drag me back down to reality sometime, right? Or something along those lines...

I got a bloody hell 57% on the Soft Eng 2 final exam, the third or fourth worst mark in the entire class... Sure, I feel more sorry for that one piss poor sap who actually failed the final exam according to the rankings sheet, but still... For a course where all my friends got 70's or 80's on the final? Of course I'd still feel pissed off...

The thing is, at least this course wasn't a total waste of my time... There was that huge ass project that I always talked about, the one about file synchronization for a graph editor over a Web Service and shit like that...

I was so damn worried that I would fuck up my group with that...

I mean, they did most of the SRS documentation (well, sort of... I did a lot as well, including documenting all the code itself...), and they wrote some of the base P2P functions (which you can download off the net, which I'm sure they did)... they taught me the basics of SOAP and Axis and Web Services, to get me started and all. I thank them for that... but?... really?...

I did about 90% of the actual programming for the entire project. It was my group and my group alone, essentially... everyone else was too damn busy with their design projects to really give a damn... So whether it be successful or a complete failure, the Soft Eng 2 project would be my damn fault...

I was so damn worried... worried that because I didn't use a proper design pattern for my programming (or any semblance of object oriented code in the first place), the TA's would bust my ass for having a poorly designed final source code... and a binary that didn't exactly work...

... and, well... that's why I was so relieved...

We got 95% on our project...

A 95%? WTF?!...

A good WTF? A good WTF for once? WTF?!...

Ninety-Five Fucking Percent...

The second highest in the entire class, thanks to some last minute documentation from my partners, and the 300KB source code that I spent a whole fucking month on...

I was so damn relieved...

I didn't care that much, that this 95% would solidify for me a high mark in the course (a 79% at this time of writing... I just wish I could get one more goddam percent out of it all...).

What I did care about, was that now I didn't need to owe my friends ever again. Instead, they fucking owed me...

I wrote them a nice e-mail, praising them for doing so well on the documentation (which was half true... I did only 30% of the SRS document myself), and for writing the basis of the program itself (which was half true as well... they did write the core of that Web Service for me)...

I was hoping they would all send me back e-mails, praising me for taking the project under my own wing when they were all too busy to help... that I secured them all A's in the course, thanks to the fact that they all demolished my mark on the final exam... but...

... one of my partners e-mailed me back, thanking me for my hard work...

But the rest?...

... umm...

... yeah... kinda figured...

If they had e-mailed me back, and actually given me credit like I so desperately needed during a crappy week like this, maybe I'd have something actually positive to comment about for once?...

... instead, all I can concentrate on, is the bloody hell fact that there's a DNW callsign next to that fucking course that I fucking slept through my alarm for...

I calculated my total term mark. I can get as low as 35% in Control Systems and still pass the term.

Problem is... if the goddam exam committee doesn't let me pass the final exam that I missed... then I still fail the goddam term...

I won't know until the end of May...

... all I do know for now, is that I'm still fucked...

And still waiting for my friends, to just say thank-you just once more...

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

I dunno... maybe five years down the road, I'll look back... and mistakenly think that it was...

ATI: It's been a long while since I actually updated my video card news. And it's been even longer since I saw some custom, optimized drivers for video cards that I care about, like I used to see all the time in my Savage3D/4 days... It seems Omega has updated his optimized drivers based on Catalyst 5.4. Don't know what was added, but go ahead and have fun with the driver tweaks of version 2.6.25 at: http://www.omegadrivers.net/.

ATI: Since I'm getting (finally) my AMD64 939 soon, I might as well post that new ATI Catalyst WHQL drivers were released for 64-bit processors. Version 5.4 probably does a bunch of new stuff over at: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp64-8-12-050317m-022144c.exe.

ATI: Hmm... where have I been? I didn't even know ATI Radeon X800XL 512MB cards were released, but apparently they were. They're too rich for my blood, but if you're flithy rich, go ahead and check out the review over at Driverheaven:  http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/x800_512/.

ATI: Hmm... I haven't used DX Tweaker in a long while (I think), but if you want to play around with your DirectX settings, then you might as well know that DX Tweaker has been updated to version 2.0B. Go ahead and see if my memory serves me right or not at: http://www.nonatainment.de/portal/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=19.

ATI: Don't know, and don't really care what's new with ATI Tray Tools. But the little tool was updated to version 1.0.2.640, so go ahead and experiment your video card away at: http://www.radeon2.ru/atitray/.

Y2kk Update: Well... it's the aftermath... aftermath of the afterparty...

... not to mention possibly the most profoundly, profusely profane weeks in my entire goddam pathetic life, but...

... surprisingly? I just don't seem to care that much about it all anymore...

... well, except for the fact that I didn't get to enjoy the afterglow of the hot and horny sex I wanted on my birthday, but I digress...

I mean, when it comes to that missed exam of mine, I ended up with just two doctor's notes. I ended up submitting both to the Registrar's Office by Monday... and yes, I'm still worried about the outcome of it all. I was so worried, that I submitted my medical certificate photocopies to my counselor as well, just in case the Registrar Office botches things up before my petition gets to the exam committee... I tried finding my two professors at school on Monday, but there were nowhere to be found. Expectedly so, considering they wouldn't stay in their offices unless they expected students to prattle and annoy them with questions...

But I haven't even e-mailed my profs about the situation yet, after talking to them live the day on the day of question, that is... I haven't even started communicating with my counselor again about possible alternate solutions like a make-up exam. Afterall, I wasn't prepared for the exam last week, and I sure as hell wouldn't be prepared for a test in the goddam summer... And when it came to my parents? I told them mostly the truth... I told them I was late, and that the professors recommended to me to petition the exam, since I was feeling ill with the stomach flu anyhew. What I didn't tell them, was that I was so fucking late to school that day, that I didn't actually have a choice. It was petition or die, really... but what I told them was mostly the truth, wasn't it?...

... well...

The thing is, I don't feel really bad about the situation right now. I guess I'm always the same when it comes to tests and exams... feel bad about failing for a day or two, and then I go back to being my cocky, arrogant, ignorant son of a bitch self by the time the next time I have another test or whatnot... The thing is, everything hinges on this one damn petition of mine alone. It alone may determine whether I ever have to take a damn exam in university again or not. And I'm sure I'll be pissed off as profanity hell when the final results do come in...

Like I said last week, either missing the exam due to my goddam flu, was either the worst thing to ever happen to me in my goddam life. Or the goddam luckiest... I won't know for at least another month...

What I have cared about more recently, was the fact that my brother was too damn lazy and perhaps too damn incompetent to actually hide the fact that he had not one, but two goddam parties at my house while my parents were gone... with the second one being a smaller BBQ with his friends the day before my parents got back from China...

... so let's trace back all his little mistakes, shall we?...

First of all, he was too damn lazy to put away all the beer bottles... Hell, he was too damn lazy to even get rid of all the Vodka bottles and shotgun glasses laying on the goddam kitchen counter. Now that's just fucking stupid...

Second, he left out all the hotdogs buns and leftover steaks and sausages in the fridge. Why he didn't just give them away to his friends or the neighbour's dog or whatever, I will never know... The first time my mother asked about it, I made up some lame excuse that my brother was planning to have a small BBQ, but they didn't end up eating any of the hot dog buns in the end... Then my brother was stupid enough to just leave the supermarket receipts on his goddam bedroom desk, showing really how much damn food he ordered for the 20+ people who showed up at our doorsteps that day...

And third... my brother promised nothing would be broken. But in my paranoid delusional frenzy, I made sure nothing would ever get the chance to break... I moved all the paintings in the house, and all the valuable collectors items (including my 150+ game collection, mind you) to a bathroom upstairs, where I locked the door and hid away the key... Nothing could get broken that way, and nothing did. Although it was sure as hell a pain in the ass to move everything back the day after (cutting into my study time for my last of my exams, mind you)...

Now, I never noticed this myself, but my brother sure as hell did the morning after... And really, I guess he couldn't have done anything about this either, but...

... umm...

... one of his friends somehow chipped off a quarter of one of our floor tiles, it seems...

... how the hell a person managed that, I will never know...

Either way, a severly cracked tile was not exactly a good thing, considering my parents keep an eye out on the floor every single damn day of the week... So yeah, there was really no way to cover this up. But if my brother had just hidden away everything else from the goddam party, at least we could've made up some excuse, that we dropped a heavy glass jar or something, which chipped away at the cold, brittle floor or some crap like that...

Well, my brother got in a bit of trouble for his inane actions. I was off the hook, although my parents are still and always will be hounding me to get a job... and I really don't blame them. Now, I guess was too dumb last year when I was deciding to take the design project off, as I didn't goddam realize how damn hard it would be to just get my resume through without having the words "graduated" somewhere on it...

I just saw the latest Future Shop flyer yesterday morning, with the Star Trek Enterprise DVDs on sale for $110 CDN...

... damn, I want money... I love materialism. I really do...

That's sadly what I care about right now... Not exactly about my job situation per say, and not any damn bit really about the fact that I could fucking fail all of my fourth year's second term, thanks to one fucking mistake to sleep in through my goddam alarm clock, but...

I just want money. Money, money, money.

Back to square one, I see... the Canadian Square One area, I mean...

... sigh... I've never quite been the life of the party...

But today's my birthday anyhew... Well, a very goddam belated birthday, considering today is the day my family finally celebrates my April 20th anniversary at a Chinese restaurant or whatever...

... might as well enjoy the free food while it lasts...

Happy birthday to me, indeed.