Whine to the no-name whiner at: flamemycrowsoft@hotmail.com
- Well, since my cool little ivanf@flame.mycrowsoft.com e-mail address only works every other day (just like a good copy of Windows95...), I'm switching you guys over to my hotmail account. I only use my hotmail one for unimportant stuff like e-mails from new friends, flames from not so new friends, and other insignificant stuff like mandatory online lessons from my university... So go right on ahead, and flame away, because as soon as I get enough piss-off letters, I'm opening my own flame IvanF section @ flame.mycrowsoft.com -

[ c. bored visitors who will never return...]

Monday, June 2nd, 2003

Y2kk Update: Ugggh... just my luck... You know, I would consider the situation funny, if it just wasn’t so damn lame and pathetic... Because you see, I was half bragging last week that I finally got off my Tweakui, no-name ass, and sent out some job applications of the first bloody time in my life. But the only problem?... well, you see, on most of the applications I sent out, I goddam forgot to sign my name at the bottom of each goddam resume... and I personally don’t know what that’ll do to my complexion, my composure, or my latest issues with Cosmopolitan. All I know, is that I seriously doubt that I will get an interview after the corporate hierarchy notices that I wasn’t smart enough to just goddam sign my name...

Anyhew, since I have nothing else to write about today, I might as well just copy and paste for you few readers out there the crap that I wrote on my download site last night. Read the italics if you want, but from my own personal experience, my eyes just can’t help but gloss over and completely skip anything that ain’t in standard, times new Gladiator roman font... Hell, I even gloss over sections in textbooks that are bolded, which really sucks for me when I’m trying to goddam learn in university... and it really sucks when they bold text on final exams, like they did on that bloody Electricity one that I apparently got 30% on, but I digress...

"Well, I'll be damned... It's not every day that fate gives you a hundred dollar deal, but for once, I finally got a buck of a break... I strolled into the local Best Buy this afternoon, and since my home printers have been down for God knows how long by now, I couldn't resist the reset of checking out the laser printer section of the store. The thing was, they had that crappy Samsung ML-1430 model on show, the one that my sister bought the other week for about $300CAN... now, I've never been a big fan of Samsung. I'm now terrified that the company will become the next terrorist Sony to disgrace God's green earth... but still... um... the thing was, my sister bought this laser printer about a half-life month ago, and she hasn't had anything but good thoughts to say about the thing. And the thing was... um... The price of the printer now read $229... And after scouting out three or four other stores for comparison shopping, and after seeing that every other place in the city still had the Samsung labeled as $300... and considering even the Best Buy flyer that came out just yesterday still labeled the laser printer as being $299? How could I possibly not resist a gift foot wrapped in my horseshit mouth, or however that saying is supposed to go?... (well, don't blame me - it's not like I'd know the saying, considering nothing decent ever happens to happen for me... I am IvanF almighty then indeed...)...

So after pleading with my parents to get me a new printer, if only to not repeat the fiasco of the computer virus that I seem to cause every damn time I tried to print with the printers at university (I mean, I printed 20 pages one time... and after the computer refused to print for reasons unknown, it then flashed a naked screen for me that said I had just used up 200 pages of my 1000 page quota... and it sort of did that to me a couple more times in the year for no apparent reason whatsoever, unless someone decided to play a tempered Seabass trick on me, but I digress...)... So after my parents forked over the money, I strolled my ass down to the checking lane counter, swiped my mother's lovely credit card, took my receipt in one hand, and dropped the box and my jaw when the check-out lady placed a $50 rebate in the other hand... because, um... What?!... There were no signs in the damn store that a rebate for the printer was going on. Nobody in the damn store that I had asked for help from even remotely mentioned a $50 rebate. And the thing was... What?!... Yes, I know the printer still costed a lump of a roast of money, but honestly... I wasn't expecting to be handed $50 back to me for no apparent reason whatsoever (which I prompted handed to my dear mother, of course), so I couldn't help but actually think that I was getting a bloody deal for once in my life... a bloody jubilation of a hundred buck break, to put it mildly... I mean, since when did the world actually do me favours without me knowing about it 8 track miles ahead?... and considering nothing decent ever happens in my life, I was sure that maybe the printer didn't actually work or something, or that we'd find it was missing a toner when we finally get it home... but the problem was... There were no problems. There was no goddam problems with the purchase at all. The printer goddam worked... it goddam worked wizardry wonders...

... too bad it seems to be the only thing damn working in the house at this point...

I wish I could say the same about the car... I wished the car worked, I mean, even though I absolutely have a Ferrari passione loathing for driving... but still... If you read my download update last week, you'd know that my sister borrowed the Ford Taurus car from my brother and I last weekend. We weren't happy with the decision though, considering my sister was placing her job interview on a higher print queue priority list than even my brother's summer mid-term... But in the end, I guess everything worked out for the best... for my brother and I at least, and not for anyone else in my family who had to pray and pay in cash... Because the thing was, my sister returned the car to us Monday morning, and considering she would never give back the car to us without her life being threatened or whatever kind of crap, both my brother and I knew something was definitely amiss... And when my sister finally plowed her way back into our driveway?... the funny thing was, when my brother tried the car?... heh... the power steering didn't work anymore... and the windows? According to the power switches, they didn't exist... And the overhead lights? They refused to turn on and off according to our will, but rather decided to be little light bulbs that blink at random, if only to provide a tall toy of a story... And the radio? It truly was demonically possessed, or at least possessed by my sister, randomly playing tracks from the 17th century or some crap like that... or even worse, from the 70s... But none of this scared off my sister of course. The only real reason why she brought back the damn Taurus, was that the ABM breaks kept locking up for no apparent reason whatsoever when she was driving on the highway... And her entire dashboard would flood her with the car equivalent of SPAM or some crap like that, as it would tell her that all the doors were open, or that the key wasn't in the ignition, or that her seatbelt wasn't on and that she was going to die, all at the same time when she obviously knew none of this was true... So it was official. After years of bad driving, my sister had finally dented and dentisted and damaged that goddam heroin of a lemon of a car of ours for good. I mean, it seems that every time she drives the damn thing, she tears a transformer, or freaks out a fuselage, or goddam cracks the carburetor... She's as cursed with the car as I am with computers. It's quite fitting, really... except for those of us who had to pay...

Luckily, I wasn't one of them. There was obviously a problem with the Ford computer or the car's electrical systems, so my sister opted to rather rent a car for her job interview, and heaped the entire costs of the car repair on my hapless, little family... Unfortunately, the road to repairs was not as idealic as we all hoped it would be... Because first of all, the first problem manifested itself in the form of my father. He's always trying to be the big shot when it comes to mechanical engineering crap, considering he's always hoping to someday equal his mechanical engineer of a baby brother in that aspect. And as soon as he noticed that the gas tank was almost empty in the Taurus at the time?... he instantly declared like the best of dick dictators, that all the problems had been caused by the car not having enough gas. He then instinctively drove the powerless car to the gas station, filled the tank to the brim, found that no more problems had arisen, and called it a night... or at least, he would've called it a night, if I hadn't started a night long debate with him, that a dry fuel tank doesn't lead to ABM brakes trying to goddam kill you on the highway... My dad took one side of the argument: that when gas is low, the car will try to kill you, to prevent you from killing yourself when the car stops on a dime from a lack of gas... And of course, I tried to argue otherwise, that except for the alternator, the gas system should have nothing to do with the electrical systems, and that it's ludicrous to think engineers like myself would design a car that a) would not splutter or slow down rather than stopping outright when gas is low, and b) try to kill you just to protect itself from us pulling a Kramer and seeing just long the damn car can chug... But alas, eventually I had no choice but to butt and agree with my dad's opinion, that a hack of a lack of gas caused the fuel lines to clog up somehow, causing the car to go Frankenstein berserk against its hordes of whores of owners. Because I mean, it was the only way he would agree to take the car into the shop. He would only pay for the repairs if he knew he was right, so what choice did I have?... what right did I have?...

... uggh... I should've taken my chances with the car... Because my dad was actually foolish enough to bring the car into Canadian Tire, a place that may sell good tires, but consists of pretty much the dumbest Canucks you can find on the face of the planet when it comes to auto mechanics... But nay, scratch and scotch tape all the above out. My dad's real stupidity came when he just kept nodding his head to everything the head repair guy was spouting to him about what to check... And when the bill came in later that day? The thing was... we just wanted the damn electrical systems checked... or at least, I wanted the electrical systems checked. But my dad's endless conquest, to prove his theories right, led to everything BUT the electrical systems being checked. And the grand total in the end?... a goddam $1500... just to check everything except what I wanted to fix... Of course, we tried to stop the repair people from going ahead with every single damn upgrade or whatever hell crap they were trying to implement. In the end, we cut our losses and cut the costs to $700, but still... the computer systems were checked and were apparently in check, but everything else they looked at in the car was so damn trivial that it wasn't funny. They found no real problems with the windows, and yet they charged us $100 just to see if the switch went up and down? Give me a break... But alas, my father was content with the repairs nonetheless, and why? Because they had told him exactly what he wanted to hear. After seven long years in Tibet of driving the car, the gas tank had indeed become dirty harry and dull enough to be a warranted as a hazard and definitely needed cleaning... and my dad used this as gasoline on the flame, to clinically prove to us rebellious children of his, that he was right and right all along... And since I didn't want to argue with his seven hundred bucks busted and wasted, what else could I do but simply nod my head in agreement and cite my oh so exciteful, "yes, father"?...

So my brother and I took the car back home, and after driving around the city for a while, we noticed something... the car was working perfectly fine... it was in perfect working order... There were no anomalies, no gremlins, and no paranoid delusional ghosts or whatever that my sister was ranting and raving about. So I did start becoming afraid... afraid that my father was right all along... and that's when... right on cue... as if it knew exactly what I was thinking...

The car died. The very next day.

Or rather, the power steering shut off... and it didn't just shut off. Oh no, it just had to shut off with true flair, by refusing to make up its mind on whether to be a good gremlin or not... My brother in the end was able to adjust to the steering wheel being ten times harder to pull than it was before, but what really sucked for him (and for me, considering I was in the car too) was that every time he did a damn turn, the power steering would turn on and off a dozen times fold at pure random intervals... In the end, it was really pathetic to see, but I had no choice but to keep peddling and paddling up and down on the damn window knobs, just to see when the damn electricity in the car was out, and when the damn electrical chose to magical come back for a wonderful Disney visit... For the most part, the windows now refused to budge, as if they had some goddam police badge or some crap like that. The headlights were now making headlines, by deciding to map out their own morse code. And although the ABM brakes never tried to suicide us like it had our sister, the car certainly didn't provide for us a joyous ride home that evening, considering the drivers behind us had no clue why our brake lights were getting mixed up with the traffic lights on the long road ahead... It truly was a road to perdition. The only problem was, the car was perdition.

So we took the ol' 96 Taurus back to the Canadian Tire shop right away and demanded our damn Canadian Tire money back... and you know what the funny thing was? Too bad I wasn't there to see it, but my brother woved for me a wickedly wonderful tale... how the Canadian Tire people who had "fixed" our car just a day before, were poking and prodding and pricking away at our car with sticks and stones, looking as goddam stoned and stone aged as a goddam set of monkeys typing away at a million goddam typewriters... And their end verdict? That they had absolutely no fucking clue what the hell was wrong with the car... they simply backed away from it slowly, gave us a hundred bucks back when they noticed that the windows were now going up and down like a possessed elevator whenever it pleased, and then ran away from the sight of the site to never come back... It must've truly been a sight to behold, but it certainly didn't fix our situation... it certainly didn't fix our car... but still... we had gotten a hundred bucks back, but just a hundred. We had lost six hundred, all for nothing, but one hundred bucks is still something... a hundred bucks is still a steal... and although we still lied in the shadow of the car of the damned, rest assured, cynics be damned, it's not every day that fate gives you a hundred dollar deal, because for once, just for once, we had finally gotten a buck of a break...

And a broken car to boot, that could barely boot, but I digress... but if you're looking for some closure, for some antidote to this little, pointless anecdote of mine? Well, my mother then called some small shop mechanic guy that we used to get our car fixed at in the good ol' days, and right away, the guy claimed that he had seen the same problem with Found on Road Dead Tauruses a million times fold... Over the phone, he instantly told us that it had nothing to do with the gas systems, but rather with a fluid pump that partially controlled the electrical systems or some crap like that... and for three hundred bucks, we could get our damn car working in pristine, polished, Pine Sol order again... And after my dad blushed and vomited to no end, fully knowing that he had been proven wrong, he sighed and signed the car up and winced with his left, sinistre eye at me that I shall never speak of this again...

And truth be told, short story short, the car works fine now... until the next time my sister drives it and drives it to insanity, but that's besides the point... because it all sounds like so much goddam fun, doesn't it?... though we shall never speak of this again..."

Monday, May 26th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Just my luck, and just in the nick of time... Just when I was finally going to get off my lazy ass. Just when I was finally going to send my lackluster resume off to half a dozen stupid engineering firms or whatever kind of crap I found on the internet. Just when I was about to actually start to defy the laws of IvanFian physics and actively seek a job out for the first bloody time in my life...

This sucks... although if you think about it, it would be funny... it’d be funny if I ever got a job at a computer store, repairing computers and crap like that... And every time I fix a damn computer, it would return a week later... after the owner installed Quicktime or whatever, I’m sure... heh... I’m the guy who puts the "bugs" in... um... "bugs"... I am truly the incarnation of a Bug's Life, in that sense... and I’m sure Bill Gates would give me a America’s Army commendation for that... because it all sounds like so much damn fun, doesn’t it?... as long as this Y2kk Update doesn’t self destruct and delete itself before I bloody get it uploaded, but that’s besides the point...

Friday, May 16th, 2003

Y2kk Update: ... written for my download site today:

"I had a dream... or at least, I had a dream the very first day I set foot in university... You see, I've probably mentioned this on my site before, but I'll mention it again, if only to save face with some mindless rhetoric... that all through my life, I've only had one goal, one focus, one damn dream... to simply pass second year of engineering without a bloody, damn hitch... That's all I ever wanted, it's all I've ever lusted, and in a sense, it was all I ever needed. Because a dream is often all we need...

All I ever dreamed of, was to seek and finally find some goddam proof that I was good enough, good enough to be me, to find some goddam proof that I was better than goddam Proof of Life... and my proof? To be goddam good enough to pass that goddam year that so many engineers before me had claimed was the hardest damn year of engineering in their lives... Whether second year was really the apex of damnation difficulty was never really the question for me. But I heard tales of it so many times in my youth that it reached near mythological status, as the vulture was to Prometheus, as the boulder was to Syphilis, as the stone was to Cronus. And all that ever mattered, was that second year was all that I've ever damn cared about... And on my first day of university, and on my first day of high school, and hell, maybe even on my last days of elementary school, I just knew... I just knew, that if only I could just finish second year without the slightest of glitches or goddam problems, that I wouldn't known, that I would've finally goddam known, that I was finally good enough... good enough to justify being me... that I was good enough to be the man that I've always wanted to be... This was my test. This was my initiation. To be a man. To be the man. For what must a man do, to be hers?... to have confidence... to be or not to be... To be the man, I had to beat the man... or beat the year, as I rather considered the phrase... and I knew, that if only my second year of engineering could be completed in one swift stroke, that my sole goal in life would finally be completed after all these years, and I could finally consider myself free... free to be me... to actually achieve... to actually try to soar instead of sore... and to finally feel for once, that I was right... for choosing to be the way that I am...

But some dreams just aren't meant to be... hell, my only dream just wasn't meant to be...

I failed.

... well, I didn't exactly fail, Birds of Prey style, per say... I failed a course... On Tuesday the 13th, a date that forever will live on in infamy, I checked my marks posted on the school website, only to find a goddam F instead of an IvanF, and a bloody blow of 47% next to my goddam Electricity course... The other courses I passed, albeit terribly enough to warrant the worst term average I have earned yet in University... not like it mattered anymore... because all I knew, was that I was gone, that I was finished. When it rains, it pours, and just to highlight my patheticness, pathetic fallacy was raining a true hellstorm outside of my goddam window... it was nature's way of spitting on my tears... not that I was crying, of course... not yet, this year, at least...

All I ever wanted was to finish second year, but thanks to one damn, lousy course, I was the one who was finished... and a burning behemoth began to swell in the pits of my stomach, as my gasps for air soon shifted to the most worrisome and nervous of gulps... to the most Canadian dry of throats, to the constant shriveling and slinking of those goddam chills up and down my spine... I was cold. Too cold to be hell. I was dead. I was as good as dead. Because here I was, the cocky no-name whiner, who whines even though he's never really faced a real hurdle in his entire damn life... and here I was, the spoiled no-name brat, finally faced with a barrier, a real impediment, an actual Cuban Crisis blockade, and I didn't even have the guts to tell my dad about it...

I wasn't just an embarrassment. I was a coward... not like I can blame myself for it... I mean, I failed... I failed the whole year... or at least, that was what I thought had happened... until I scavenged the university website for any hope that my life, or my life as I cared for it, could simply go on...

And I found it. And I confirmed it... as I was frantically checking ever nook and cranny to find out just how the hell I can try to appeal this damn course, court ruling of theirs, I stumbled across a little FAQ that actually gave me the guts to tell my dad the truth... the truth is nice, when it's a truth and not a goddam privilege... And the truth is, if I had failed two courses, I would've been out, period, and trust me... that second failure of mine was closer than even I anticipated, as I only managed a 54% in Electronics, not that I expected much better... But as long as I only failed one course, as long as I have never been on probation (meaning as long as I passed first year with over a 60% average), and as long as my term average for second year is above 60%, I could go onto third year, albeit with some unwanted baggage and bags under my misty eyes... and the truth of the matter is, I was lucky... I got lucky... it's too much of a crying shame that I wasn't lucky enough to pass every damn course of mine, but still...

If I hadn't scored an 85% on my Digital Systems exam, I would've failed the entire damn year. I only ended with a 71% in that course, thanks to minimal bell-curving and the fact that I went into the exam with exactly 50%, but thank God it was enough, because just a couple percent lower would've sealed my fate... Because I only mustered 77% in my history course. Although that's obviously a good mark, it just wasn't the insurance marker that I so desperately needed... and my only other insurance was my goddam Discrete mathematics course. I went into the exam with a 64 or a 65%. I walked away with a smug, little thug, smirk on my smile, as I deemed the exam to be pretty damn easy, an effortless 75% all the way through... but it seems I'm always wrong at the seams, even when I'm sure I'm right... I saw my final mark in the course the other day, and screamed at the screen, bloody murder, and a "What the hell is going on?!"... because my mark dropped to a 56%... Hell, I must've failed the exam to get that mark, which is ridiculous considering I know I did half the exam goddam perfectly. There was no way that I could've screwed it up, unless I was screwed by a reverse bell curve or a Communist Superman or the goddam computer ghost of tempered Seabass, or some crap like that... but it's not like I'm demanding a total recall and total recheck of my Discrete exam or anything, because what if they actually marked me higher than I actually got?... truth be told, my term average, failure included, is a mere 61% this goddam Spring... it's the worst I've ever gotten, in a term that felt the goddam easiest... and I'm bloody hell afraid that if I ask what the hell happened on my Discrete exam, then that average of mine just might Krispy Kreme dip below the 60% mark that I so desperately require to pass to third year...

The Digital exam saved my ass... and I am indeed lucky to have survived second year... but alas, my dream of actually passing second year of engineering will now never come to fruitation, or even to goddam fruitopia, as I have to take that goddam Electricity course of mine as a sixth course my next Spring term... Now, I don't mind having so many bloody courses at once. Considering I never attend lectures anyhew, it won't make a dent on my schedule... but it will make a mark on my pride, as the greastest thorn in my side, as I can already hear the marching bands ringing their bells, chanting and mocking my name... I'm no better than goddam Cujo... Because all I've ever cared about, is the fact that all I've ever wanted for the past ten years of my life, is to finish goddam second year of university without a goddam hitch, a goddam glitch, and a goddam bitch... unless that bitch is in my bed... And regardless of whether I'll finally finish my second year the same damn time I finish my third year, and regardless of whether my e-mail pleas to my professor will provide for me the 3% that I so desperately want, the truth of the matter is... I failed... I may not have failed the year, but I failed my dream... of actually deserving to pass... And that's something that I can never give back to myself. It's something that I can never redeem, not even for coupons. It's something that I can never live for again, or die another die... It's something that I can never, ever forgive myself for... and I guess that's my new dream. To never forget this day. To never forget the failure that I am.

I should've known that this would happen... I was so damn unprepared for the Electricity exam. I couldn't even do the examples in the book before the bloody exam... and I just knew that something went wrong after I left that examination room, but nobody bloody believed me... my friends simply scoffed me off and told me lies, the same true lies that never turn out true, but I'll save that little mental scuffle of mine for my MSN site whenever I have the time... But if there was any true indication that I was going to fail Electricity, it came just thirteen minutes before the goddam test. I was walking my way to school when a beggar conveniently leapt out of the shadows of a convenience store. Since I was in a rush, I simply waved him off, even though I knew something was Family Man peculiar about him. And normally, and nominally, when I brush guys like him off, they simply nod a polite goodbye and wish me on my merry way... making me feel extra guilty in the process, but I digress... And because of that, because of guilt, I had made a tradition. I now normally give a dollar to a begger every day that I have an exam, simply out of spite, simply so he can buy a Sprite, and simply out of hope that it would at least relieve my guilt and calm me down enough to think clearly for the goddam exam. But whether I'm now bloody superstitious or not is quite the amusing question I guess, as it just so happened that the only day that I did not give a dollar, the day that a beggar gave me the middle finger thumbs up, was the day that I ended up failing a goddam course... and potentially the year... I really should've known... Never cross a guy with a D cup... a Dixie Cup, I mean...

Or I should've known how things would go, considering how damn badly the course had gone for me all year. No matter what I did in Electricity, things simply would not go my way. I missed two easy questions on the mid-term, simply because I didn't read them goddam carefully enough, and I ended up getting 35% as a result. I may have taken the writing assignment as a joke, but I still put a lot of work into it to try to make it sound as passable and plausible as possible, only to receive a 60% in the end for my failed Engalish efforts... and of course, there was the notorious cheating fiasco, which ended with the TA docking off a percent or two from my final mark... and of course I agreed with him back then, since my course average was hovering around 60%, and I really didn't think that one or two percent taken off would make a great big, Jaw Wars deal in the end...

I should've known. The fates of this course had it bloody in for me since day one, since equinox one... since I bloody hell bought the book that said, "we're going to screw you over"... If only I had gotten those 2% back from that goddam TA, my professor probably would've passed me, as it's ridiculous to fail someone with a 49% or whatever... but it seems that I myself sealed my fate in stone, as it was I who never took the cheating issue to course court, and it's not like I can now rip out Excalibur from the damn magnets I could never goddam calculate in this Electricity course of mine, to save the world and to save my ass this time around...

I don't have many dreams in my life... I obviously have wet dreams though, as it seems my only remaining hope is to simply rekindle the lines of friendship or at least the lines of communication with the girl I talk too much about, who apparently isn't talking to me over the internet anymore... I obviously have dreams of being a famous psychologist or some video game programmer or some crap like that, if only because I so admire the men and women who do achieve such goals... we men are so goal oriented, yet I only had one object oriented goal... and it hurts to know that you can't even achieve that one, when others can achieve so many... To become what I want to be, to be the man that I wanted to be, I knew that I had to prove to myself that I am capable of such a feat, of commodoring such a fleet. And as a test, as my only true proof that I am the person that I say I am, I challenged myself to such a simple dare... dare to dream, I say... to finish second year engineering without a goddam failure... but apparently, the fates have a funny way of crushing every dream I have beneath their sandal feet, like the untied thongs of G-strings pulling on their goddam, zero G-spots, but that's besides the point...

Either that, or it was I who crushed my feet underneath my own 100 pundit pounds of weight... which is what I fear goddam happened... because, well... After I told my dad my story, and after seeing the look of dismal disappointment on his face (though he tried to hide it afterwards), I remember that I had promised to practice my driving that day, and I nodded my head when he asked if I was still determined to do so... I mean, I hate driving... and on a day when I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, akin to the one after my goddam OAC programming exam, I didn't think the two were really meant to go hand in hand, toe in toe, drinking and driving in tow... I was afraid that I so desperately wanted attention from my friends, I was afraid that I so desperately wanted to ruin my own dreams simply for the sake of a story, that I subconsciously allowed myself to fail that goddam, easy course... just so I could feel... and I was now afraid that subconsciously, just to get my own attention, just so I could feel some more, I would purposely make a mistake while driving... and take my father down with me... But I shrugged off the feeling, knowing that I wasn't stupid enough to let these thoughts get to me. I had been making excuses for God knows how many months to avoid driving, and I for sure wasn't going to let a goddam, nagging feeling get the best of me. So I took the wheel... and how did I fare?

I guess the better question is, how did I fail?... the same way as I did in my Electricity course... a crash and burn... or almost, if my dad hadn't stopped me straight in my tracks... I almost hit a car. Twice... in the same damn spot that I almost hit a car during my first days of driving... I know what I did wrong... I didn't slow down enough at a goddam red light to notice that I didn't have the right to turn right... all I can hope for now, is that I did not fail on purpose... with a purpose... I have a license to kill myself, it seems. Because that's the only damn license I can goddam earn with my goddam, failure skills...

But who really knows whether I'm the guilty partisan or not, right? Who really knows if I'm looking for a storming or a whipping in Bastilles? Contrary to the anesthetics of Anatasia, not even Freud has the answer... unless he's become some omnipotent devil down there in hell, next to Saddam and Kenny from South Park, but I digress... all I know is that sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar... a girl who talks too much is just a girl I talk too much about... and a failure is just a failure... and it was just a failure, when I could barely muster a 38% in Algebra last year... but I never much cared for single year... I only cared for second... because the second year was the real deal, the real McCoy, the real reason for me to belong... the real reason for me to exist, or at least, for me to dream... whether it was a stupid dream or not is not the question... because all I know, is that now I know, why so many goddam students told me that second year is the true test of who you are... the true test of what you're capable of... the true test of what you want in life... the true test of what you want to be... and now I truly know the truth...

Dare to dream, I say, but a dream is never just a dream... And all I had was a dream. And it hurts to fail... it chills me to the bone..."

Monday, May 5th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Apparently, I’m a googlewhack...

Of course, one can argue in the end, that not getting the answer book really didn’t matter for me, as somehow, I miraculously managed to pull an 85% on that Digital Hardware final exam. But still, that’s not the point... Because is it me, or do those Copywell guys really don’t like me or some crap like that?... but hmmm... maybe they’re the ones who found this website of mine, and DOS it all day long to the point where it actually ends up exceeding my pitiful bandwidth limits, bloating my ego and floating out my members.tripod to the point of no return... And who knows? Maybe they just happened to read all the positive press I’ve written about them over the past few months, and thus, I’m 100% beef sure they’ll definitely keep whacking off to the lovely notes I’ve posted about them today... Because I for one am definitely proud to say it, that I am a googlewhack, and that little girls and ten year old boys around the globe just love to googlewhack off to me. And I’m telling you, it all sounds like so much goddam fun, doesn’t it?... that even though nobody ever reads this webpage, I’m still so goddam, pimpin’ famous...

Saturday, March 29th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Hmmm... is it me, or does the counter at the bottom or middle or top d bottom of this webpage read zero hits? Because, um... it was at 200 500 or something just the other day... not like it matters though, between my muttering that is, because it’s not like anyone visits this site anymore. And for good reason. What’s here left to read? What’s there left to write?... except that I should’ve known, that one busted counter is just one small step and one small omen in a week of computer atrocities on my warfront... Or in English English terms, it hasn’t exactly been the best of blurst of weeks for me when it comes to computing, but that’s besides the point.

Sex? Yes, please!... oh, nevermind... who throws a shoe, honestly? Because it all sounds like so much goddam fun, doesn’t it?...

Saturday, March 15th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Okay, so it hasn't exactly been a good week for me. So sue me. Or actually, I know somebody that I'd like to sue, but that's besides the point... Today is March 15th. For the IvanFian impaired, that means it's the birthday and the birthright of this website. Tweakui.mycrowsoft.com is now officially three years old... break out the rice champagne, I say... or actually, I say, happy happy happy happy happy anniversary. But if you asked me, this week was anything but a goddam, happy birthday to my online self.

I guess from now on, I should take omens as... well... omens... Literally just hours after I uploaded my Tweakui update last week, the one where I complained about my cousin being too slothy and shoddy and lazy to get my stupid ATI Radeon card or whatever, it just so happened that fate decided to prove me wrong, and I ended up getting a call, with him telling me on the other line that my video card just came in... and, well... okay, I thought that weird at the time, and even somewhat ironic. But I only took it for what it's worth, and not what it may or may not actually stand for. I now look back at it, and see it as a warning... like a panic button... like a March 17th ultimatum or some crap like that... guess I like to connect the dots, after all is said and done, even if there weren't any dots in the first place. I'd make a great business analyst... because I really don't know a thing... and this week truly proved it...

For some, it's the Road to Wrestlemania. For others, it's now the Road to War. For me, I was hoping I was on the Road to El Dorado, or that at least, all roads lead to Rome... but it turns out, I'm on nothing but a Highway to Hell, with a one way ticket to being the damned, damsel in distress yet again, but I digress... Was it Monday or Tuesday that I had my Electricity mid-term exam? I already forget. That's how bloody long this week has been. All I remember, whichever day it was, was me checking my Discrete Mathematics mark on the internet in the morning, and witnessing a bloody 58% next to my name... a pass is a pass I guess, even if the class average was almost 80%... The only problem was, I thought I knew my stuff. The Discrete Mathematics exam was nearly high-school quality if you asked me... well, a really, really, ridiculously hard, high school exam, but still high school level nonetheless... and yet I almost failed it. It seemed so damn easy, and yet I nearly failed it... I always feel so depressed when I don't meet my own criteria, my own lameass expectations, because my expectations are already so damn low. I thought I'd get a 70% at least, and yet I ended up getting so much more worse than that... and with an Electricity mid-term later that Tuesday night? I didn't know what to think. My confidence had been completely shot down. I was hoping that Discrete would prove to be an term average booster for me... and sadly enough... heh... who would've guessed that I was right?...

I was horribly depressed from my Discrete mark, and I got little to no tissue sympathy from anyone. The girl I talk too much about? She pissed me off that day when she shrugged me off, scoffing at why I'd still be depressed about my mark when we got it so many days ago... guess she didn't figure that I had just checked it, and guess she hadn't taken her consideration pills for the day... But I used my pent up fury and feelings of wrath to study for the damn exam. I drove my nails deep into my temples, and consecrated my concentration on the goddam textbook at hand. I've never studied that hard for that long in a single day before. I did not move from my place for more than half of the day. Whether that's nothing for some people out there, I don't really care. All I know, is that I was sure it was my first step, albeit a baby step, in the right direction... The only problem was, I had barely studied anything for my Electricity course the days before. I was too busy with more pressing homework to bother with a piddly, giddy, jiggly, little exam that was worth twenty times more than my lab... And when the mid-term finally came around? I sure as hell figured out that cramming for one damn day, no matter how hard you cram, just doesn't cut it in university... not in my university, at least... and not when you're me, one of the bloody worst learners in my class when I look around... I did horribly on that exam. I had hoped my trials and tribulations and terror from that Discrete mark of mine would get my mind racing to the point where I'd actually be smart enough to tackle the professor's insanely hard questions. But instead, my frickin' brain was too frickin' tired to frickin' think, and I basically just sat there in the exam room, hoping that it wasn't just me, staring at those papers with absolutely no thoughts in mind. It was clear as daylight in my temples. It was literally clear as mud.

And yet stupidly enough, in hindsight, or hind-legged retrospect, that Tuesday or whatever turned out to be a decent day... in comparison to the crap I had to face on Thursday, at least... I was depressed Thursday morning yet again, simply because I had hoped that my second history mid-term would go better than my first. But some things were just not meant to be, as my stupid history of science course actually asked science questions for once, not just historical ones... and, well... you know me... the no-name, no-knowledge engineer... I realized then and there, that now that even history had been sucked down a gutter, absolutely none of my mid-terms had gone the way I planned. I had high hopes for Discrete, only to be not so discretely shot down. My only remaining hope left was my Digital Systems course, in which the mid-term had been damn easy, but was simply too damn long for me to finish... I had one last hope. A new hope. Before this goddam university of mine strikes back, and makes me as sad as if I were watching Episode I.

And on Thursday, that's when I checked my e-mail... It was 10 am in the morning or whatever. I was preparing to cram for the Electronics quiz I had later that day, when I decided to check my e-mail at school, just to procrastinate for a minute or so... and I noticed something, something that I never thought I'd have to contend with in my life... because you see, I got a letter from my TA.... it wasn't a very good letter... it wasn't a pat on the back, or a St. Patrick's Day letter... To paraphrase, he told me that he needed to see me next week. We had done a little open book quiz the day before, and he noticed something odd about my answer... He said I didn't get the answer in "the right way", but he wouldn't talk to the professor about it just quite yet, not until I talked to him first... and he ended off his e-mail with a "Best Regards" kind of signature... it really made me feel all warm and sweaty and bubbly tea inside...

And the thing was... huh?... He claimed I didn't get my answer in "the right way", and, um... What?!... I couldn't believe it... he was accusing me of cheating... tell me he wasn't accusing me of cheating... And the penalty for cheating in our Electricity class? It's of the highest severity... well, next to having your hand chopped off at least... I now know that even if I do get booked for cheating, I will only lose about 6% of my final mark, meaning I'd have little hope of passing anymore (considering my lameass marks and remarks), but at least I'd still have a chance. On Thursday however, I only knew about the rule in which if you're found cheating on the mid-term, you'll lose 60% of your mark, causing you to fail the entire term, if not your entire second year of engineering... I thought I was on a collision course with a complete and utter, uber failure, for no apparent reason or fault of mine whatsoever. I felt like I had been castrated. I felt like I had been framed. I felt like I was on trial for witchcraft. I felt like some TA was waving around names of communist manifestos or some crap like that. I thought I was going to be hanged. I honestly didn't know how to tell my dad...

So obviously, I was freaked out. I had never been accused of cheating in my life before. And I for one have never cheated. And the irony of the whole ordeal was, my TA had picked me to be the sacrificial lamb, when if he'd just look across the room, he'd literally see half of the damn class cheating... because you see, he was accusing me of cheating in one of the weekly, open book assignments we have in our Electricity tutorials. On the website, it simply states, "open book assignment". There are no rules, and no fine print. In the early lectures (before I started skipping), all I heard was "open book assignment". I heard no exceptions, and no Clarica clarifications, just to be clear... At the start of the year, everyone played it fair. Each assignment question is an exact question from the textbook, although with a few changes to the initial values. So everyone at first memorized as many homework solutions as they could, hoping that we'd be given one that we do remember, and if we don't remember all of the ten or so steps involved? We would then take a look at the formulae and example questions in the book for help, and all of us would finish off by checking our answers at the book (where only the final answers are, not the full solutions which are required for marks). That's the way it's always been. Or at least, that's the way I assume it's always been, and the way it should've been.

Until the questions started getting tougher, and mid-term season starting making us lazier. Eventually, even (or especially) the smart people in class started to lose themselves for ways to cheat. Some write out all the homework questions on paper beforehand and hide it in their textbooks until it's time to hand in, and some just write the full solutions in their actual textbooks, so they can just copy, paste, and modify for the real answer. Others literally have the full solution manual in hand, and for some damn reason, the TA never notices a third of the class copying out of book that ain't the textbook... But the thing is, Ripley believe me or not, I never succumbed to these temptations. I literally did everything by the book, no pun intended. I never cheated. It just isn't worth it. To cheat on an assignment worth just 2% of my final mark? Why would I risk it? Why would I risk my priorities, my pride, my prejudice and principles? Even though I do have the motive that I am pretty much failing all my courses...

And you know why he thought I cheated? Or at least, this is what I thought he thought... I didn't know the answer to the homework question that he gave us this week. Out of all questions to give, he gave us the hardest one, the only one that I didn't bother to study because I had no time. No time. I had my frickin' history mid-term the period after, and since I had gotten home at 11:30 pm from my Electricity mid-term the night before, I had no friggin' chance to study for history. So understandably and undeniably so, I just wanted to get out of that tutorial room as soon as possible, just to study every damn minute for history that I could. I didn't care about 2 paltry percentages of my Electricity mark, not compared to 25% of my history mark, so I essentially left my page blank. But I did however, put something down... Realizing that I had no time to figure out the question, I just checked the back of the book for the former answer (the answer for the question before he changed the initial values). And from that back of the book answer, I made up a fake answer that could've been right for all I knew... I wasn't trying to get marks. I wasn't trying to smart, SMRT. I just wanted to put something down on the page, rather than not hand anything in at all. And you see, that was probably the problem... I had literally just two steps down on my paper for a 15 step question, and yet what if, just what if, I had miraculously guessed at the final answer correctly? And what if, since this all looks so ominously suspicious, what if the TA saw that I had the right answer, and reasoned that the only way I could've gotten it without doing the math myself is by copying off of someone else?... That had to be it. I knew that had to be it. That had to be the solution. That had to be the final answer. That had to be knell that sounded the noose.

So I wrote him back. I was honest and candid, and tried to be as polite and apologetic as possible. I openly explained that by checking the back of the book, I might've gotten the right answer by fluke. And if I did somehow manage to get it correct, I'm as damn shocked as he is... But I did not cheat. I have never cheated in my life... except on myself... And after I sent him that e-mail, it finally hit me. It finally struck me... I wasn't afraid of failing all of university because of one, stupid mistake by the TA and one lucky guess by me... I was morbidly depressed, because someone who doesn't even know me, actually had the audacity to question my integrity. To say I'm a loser of an idiot is one thing, because all the above is true. But to call me a liar? To call me a cheater? To accuse me of compromising my ethics? I'm sorry, but if you Y2kk readers haven't at least figured out by now that I'm a man of principle, no matter how dumbass my principles may be, than I guess these websites of mine are a complete and utter failure, three long years in the making. A happy anniversary indeed.

And the stupid thing was, I couldn't study. Because I was so damn scared and so damn insulted by the awfully polite slander of my TA, I couldn't study. I couldn't consecrate. I couldn't damn concentrate on the damn Electronics crap I had to cram for the quiz later that day... So I got up, and checked the internet again. I wandered over to that Digital Systems website for my course, typed in my name, routinely inputted my password, checked the grades, and noticed... um... that the mid-term marks were up... And I had told you readers earlier that I was hoping Digital would be an average booster. I mean, the mid-term was long, but it was easy. It was easy, and that's all that counts, right?...

Wrong. Ease doesn't count But my mark does. On the record. For the record... I got 21 out of 60. That's 35 damn percent. I'm now barely passing Discrete Mathematics, and goddam failing a goddam Digital course that I thought I'd have no trouble with... And the saddest part of it all, was that I actually thought I did well on the exam... and, well... After seeing my Digital mark, I didn't feel as bad as I did after I failed the programming exam last term at least, but I felt bad. Real bad, when I realized I had cheated and slighted myself yet again... the Rattlesnake strikes again... I had studied for that course, but not in the right way. They wanted precise answers. I gave them... well... answers... And now that I've gotten my exam back, I now see that they gave me a hell of a whole lot of zeroes thanks to little mistakes here and there... I gave away marks, and literally gave away whatever was left of my pride in the process. I had overestimated my abilities yet again. I thought 70% for Discrete and 70% for Digital was fair for a fare... and, well... I don't really care when I get a failing mark. I just care when I see the mark I deserve is so much damn less than the mark I thought I deserved... and I usually think I deserve so little, and so few...

And to put it mildly, I was so damn pissed at that point. If Mr. McCarthy of the TA doesn't crucify me to the point of failing the term, I'd probably pull a Crucible on myself by flunking myself in every other damn course, and finish the job for his capitalist ass... And after suffering through all the above? I just couldn't muster the mustard or the gall or the strength or the fortitude or even the courage to study for that damn quiz of mine later that day, so I just picked up and left the library... I walked for quite a few hours that afternoon, just trying to cope and figure out what the hell I was going to do. Or actually, I didn't really care for the future... all I could think about was the here and now, and how I felt about me. What it meant to be IvanF, I mean... A mark may be meaningless, a mark may be meningitis, but the way my friends look at me when I tell them my mark? Priceless... or at least, if only it were priceless... The only problem is, none of them care. Especially the girl I talk too much about, none of them care... well, up until this day at least. I squandered and pondered and wandered for 40 minutes and 40 more minutes until I found some of my friends outside the classroom I was supposed to be in. I told them about my Digital mark. Of course, they shrugged it off, since how can they care for a mark that isn't theirs?... But when I told them about my ordeal in front of the Communist tribunal?... for once, they actually listened. Or actually, they always seem to listen... but for one moment, just one Lilo and stitch in time, when I was most small and broken, I had their undivided attention. For just one minute, they stared at me in system shock, because they actually cared about me, or at least cared about what I had to say, for one brief moment in the anal annals of time... And after that, I was able to concentrate. After that, I was able to consecrate. I really should thank them for that... not like any of my cramming helped me for the quiz to come, though...

But a little something came first. This day of hell of mine would just not end. Thursday the 13th literally seemed like it would go on forever. And I think it did, according to my watch, which oddly stopped ticking like a time bomb when 3 o'clock came roaring along... The thing was, I had already gotten two horrible sunrise, surprises for the day. It only took one more to complete the hat trick... It was finally time to get back our Electronics mid-terms. I noted on my download site a couple weeks ago that I knew I did horribly on that mid-term, that my work was so damn ugly that I'd be lucky to pull a 20%... and, well... I wasn't lucky... So sue me.

They gave me 4 out of 40. That's 10 bloody percent. It was almost as if I didn't show up for the damn exam. It was almost as if I didn't even exist... The day before, I had heard the class average was just 45% for this mid-term. For the first time I can ever recall in my university experiences here at University of Toronto Engineering, I have never once had a class average less than 60%... well, maybe just one... But the day before, when I learned of this failure of a class average? I was all class, and did the class act, and I simply could not help but wince and smile, because for once, just for once, I thought I wasn't the only one who was dragged down, deeper and deeper into cruelty and oppression... but when you compare my mark to the class average? God... I had less than a quarter of the damn insurance marker, and the only consolation I got was that one of my friends, that one friend who actually did truly care about me being accused of cheating... well, he did almost as badly as I did... Sure, he more than doubled my mark, but him being the genius that he is, I knew he deserved so much more. I know it's so cruel to be pleased that a close friend did almost as badly as yourself, but... well... honestly, that's what friends are for, I guess... because all I want is to feel even... the only problem is, the only thing I can brag about, is that I got an even number for a mark... and that I got the first digit of a perfect mark as my mark, but I digress...

And the thing was, there was the hat trick. Hats off to this day of hell, this Friday the 13th a day before, because that was it - three strikes for that day alone, and five strikes for the week, if that's base-ballian possible... I nearly failed Discrete. I mercilessly failed my Electricity mid-term. I was blamed for cheating on an absolutely worthless assignment. I did horribly on my Digital exam. And I couldn't even meet my 20% quota on the goddam Electronics mid-term... I felt like I was living out the goddam Crucible or some crap like that, or a Death of a Salesman, or a Day in the Life of IvanF... I guess either one's the same... I then trotted out into the hallway, where the girl I talk too much about was complaining about her 40% or whatever... I tried to explain to her my predicament, about the whole cheating thing and how I felt. I was hoping that she would care, or at least listen to me for one damn minute when I didn't have her cornered. I just prayed to God, that if she won't listen to me about my marks, at least she would care about this... But instead, like I noted on my download site, all I saw was sadness in her eyes. And when I realized that she was trying to get away from all the guys who were complaining about their 50%s or whatever around her, I simply left her alone for a moment, turned my back, and eventually turned back to notice that she was there no longer... because she really doesn't care about me, not even as a friend, does she?... I honestly don't know what's worse... besides a knife through the heart and being stabbed in the back, but I digress...

And oh God, I guess five strokes to the heart and five strikes to the gut just wasn't enough for one fine day, because fate just had to go for the grand ol' Oprah, the vexing vice city of six... When I finally got home that day, after most likely failing without qualms that damn Electronics quiz of mine, I checked my e-mail once again, and noticed that my wonderful Electricity TA had e-mailed me back so soon... The thing was, he called me a cheater again. Obviously, my alibi didn't touch his heart... but what I couldn't figure out, was why he now sounded so damn more sure that I cheated. Where was his proof? I had told him the truth, that I had made up a stupid, fake answer from the back of the book, and that'd I never do it again. What more could he want?

The problem was, he didn't want anything more. He didn't need anything more. Because goddammit, I had just signed my own destiny and indictment in pen... I had sworn to him that I've never cheated in my life... turns out now, that I've never cheated in my life... purposely, that is... Even though it says nothing about this anywhere on the website (I've now checked twice), and even though my entire tutorial class does this for every damn quiz, whether they knowingly cheat or not, my TA has made it official... or at least, claims it's official... He claims that looking at anything but the question and the formulae in the book, is cheating... And by revealing to him that I had checked the back of the book, since that was the last thing I considered to be cheating? And by signing my name on the damn e-mail I had sent him that morning?... I was now officially fucked...

I've never heard anything so ludicrous in my life. I've asked ten or more classmates on Friday about this whole back of the book issue, and none of them knew anything about it. All of us had assumed "open textbook" had actually meant you could friggin' use the damn textbook, but apparently, we were all wrong... I've asked the TA through e-mail to please send me the link that directly tells me that checking the back of the book warrants a would-be failing and caning of me in the course (since I'd be lucky to pull a 50%, even without this cheating crap), but besides all that, all I can do is ask for a meeting and beg him to let me off the John Proctor and gambling noose, if only because I didn't know better... I never once thought that actually using the textbook would've gotten me into trouble like this. And I never once thought that telling the truth would've poured goddam gasoline on the goddam flame, nipping at my rosebuds... But if there's one thing I've gotten out of this, it's support. All of my friends told me to warn my TA that almost nobody knows that checking the back of the book is a violation of the rules. If a true poll is taken and the rest of my tutorial class is as clueless as I was about all this? Then, well... then my TA will be officially fucked, for not clearly outlining to us what's legal, and what we simply cannot do... But I don't want to play this trump card yet. Not quite yet. Not until TET. Not until my TA proves to be a good or evil man... and besides, if I did play this card, the way my week's been going? It'll probably come back to haunt me, and knife me in the face... yeah, that stabbing in the back thing I talked about? Knowing my luck, it'll probably come true...

And I couldn't even get support from whom I consider my closest friend, who I know will read this update sometime in the next few days or so... I don't how to say this, so I'm just going to write it... I'm not trying to throw a shoe or a juice box at you or anything, so please don't take this the wrong way. But yesterday, instead of just listening to me and giving me support, you criticized me outright, telling me that you probably would've known better if you were in my position. You told me that in your Stats course, in words kinder and gentler than mine at least, you were smart enough to know you can't look at any part of the book besides the parts you were allowed to look at. But you didn't even try listening to me, about how I never even knew there were parts of the book that I wasn't allowed to view. I can't ever remember being told we can't look at the back of the book. Hell, the TA even once told us that looking at the back of the book is useless, but said it in a way that made it sound like it was legit... But you never once bothered to acknowledge the fact that I'm in trouble, real trouble, and that it's all by accident... even if only 6% is deducted from my mark, or even if I'm lucky enough that the TA only gives me zero on this assignment, how can I cope with my name being on the Dean's record instead of his list? I'll never be on his list... except his hitlist, but I digress... You did acknowledge the irony at least, that all the cheaters in the class are getting away with their crimes, yet I'm the one who gets booked all because I was the one who was being honest. But honestly... you're one of my closest friends, so why did you tell me I should've known better, at a time when I'm obviously in deep shit and scared? After we talked, I felt as badly as I did after September 11th, when so many people blamed America for their crimes at a time when people should've just shut up and mourned. Of course, it's obvious that my life is nothing compared to the 9-11 tragedy, but honestly... I know that you were right. Maybe I should've known better. But I don't really care who was right and who was wrong - it doesn't really matter. What should've mattered was that I'm your friend, and that I was trying to tell you something. I know I'm exaggerating, or just being an IvanFian idiot, but honestly, this is how I felt. I didn't just feel like you didn't care. I felt like you were acting as if you were better than me.

And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being mad at you. I'm sorry for being selfish, wanting some sort of solace... I'm sorry for being stupid enough to make up a fake answer, one that I should've known would get me in hot water, regardless of whether there was this stupid rule or not that you can't use the textbook in a bloody, open textbook assignment... I'm sorry for not studying enough, to pass my Electricity mid-term, or to even come close to half passing my goddam Electronics mid-term... I'm sorry for underestimating Digital Systems, forcing me to relive the pain I endured from my programming mid-term the term before. I'm sorry for not taking Discrete seriously enough, leaving me with not just one course to fail like usual, but three... even four... I've never been in this kind of trouble before. I've never been this worried before. I can hope, and I can pray, that I will work hard enough from this point on that I will survive and prosper... only to be killed by the hell of the non-existent bell, and the knell of the kneeling noose some other another goddam day. To die another die, a John Wilkes Phone Booth death. Dare to dream, I say... But honestly, three years ago... who would've thought that I would end up like this? All I knew, was that no matter what would happen, I would always be sorry. Am I am. I always am.

And you know what? I laughed. Thursday night, when I laid on my bed and stared up at my ceiling, cursing at the girl who talks too much in my mind, and cursing myself for being so damn cursed... that's when it all hit me at once. The irony of it all. The sheer magnitude of it all. That man is not a piece of fruit, and that I am not just some damn student number... I am IvanF. I have no last name. I am the sixth man, with no sixth sense but the sick sense to actually laugh. And I laughed. I laughed so heartily, I laughed so vehemently, I laughed so viscously, that you could almost consider it a laugh... if it weren't so damn evil... but then again, I do share a border with the Dutch... or maybe not, but I digress...

But before I go, just for the record, at least one thing cheered me up before I finally laid my eyes to rest. By trying to defend myself against cheating, I stupidly enough indicted myself for cheating. The irony of it all, ironically made me laugh... but the reality of it all made me feel so damn much more secure about myself... personality wise, not academic wise... I will never know whether I would've told the truth or not if I learned beforehand (but after I got that first e-mail), that looking at the back of the book is cheating... I will never know whether I would have willingly been honest, even if it meant getting me in deep shit... All I know, is that I didn't know. All I know, is that for what did happen, for what it's worth, I stayed true to myself, I stayed true to honesty, and I will get kicked in the anus of my arse of an ass for it. But at least I know, that I'm no liar. At least I know, that I'm no cheat... purposely, I mean... except to myself...

And on one last, final, musical note... The next morning, I checked the online site for my Electronics course. And voila, a bientot, there was my mark in bold print, 4 out of 40, right next to my name, bon voyage and au revoir... I have no last name... and next to it, was my adjusted mark... 43%... and, um... what?!... 43 percent?... The thing was, they actually did a bell curve. For the first time ever in my university experience, the professors actually did a real bell curve... it was socialism at its best... I love it... and if they didn't bell curve? My mark would've stunningly jumped from a 10% to a Big Mac of a Whopper 13%... such a lucky number... but thanks to Mr. Bell instead of the sound of the gnashing knell? I more than quadrupled my mark, and my close friend who actually cared about my situation? He jumped to 65%, and he deserves it... or actually, he deserves 90%, him being the genius that he is... and him being the first friend I made in this university, a friend that I now see I made for a reason, but I digress... and when I saw my adjusted mark, I just couldn't help but laugh. Even when I met the girl I talk too much about again, told her about my cheating predicament, and realized that she still doesn't care, I couldn't help but laugh. This whole week has been just one, big, fucking joke. I'm one, big, fucking joke, so why shouldn't I laugh? To me, the pitter patter of my falling marks is akin to the sound of music. My only remaining problem is, how do I explain this all to my kin?...

I had been planning an amusing and uplifting update for this third anniversary update of mine. But I now see that the Big O, national notation of a rotation of a number three, is just plain, bad luck when it comes to piss, poor me... and in that limelight, I might as well say, I simply cannot wait until the sixth anniversary of this site... and the 13th... and the entire 40s decade, if I ever get there and still consider myself Chinese, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean... All I know, is that I've survived long enough to get this site to its third birthday. And if that ain't a worth a laugh and a shudder asunder, then at least it's worth an oh so welcome, and an oh so joy-joy, happy happy happy happy happy anniversary... and a God Speed, Good Will Hunting, and God Bless Us, Everyone...

... if only that "everyone" included me... if only...

Friday, March 7th, 2003

Y2kk Update: You'd think that service with a smile signifies that I'd actually get some service around here, considering him and I are family (whether I want to admit it or not), but noooo... It's been three months, three frickin' months since I asked my cousin for a Radeon 7500 PCI card order. I promised that when it finally comes in, I'll have cash to pay my cousin's uncle back, providing the card does arrive in a relatively short time... But it's been three months, three frickin' months since I made that promise. In the meantime, the video card I want has dropped $30 CAN in price, and they finally released the GeForce4 MX440 in PCI format for a decent price. I want a new video card, to play Unreal II and Command and Conquer Generals, and especially Master of Orion 3, the game that got the most horrible of horrible reviews from Gamespot since... well... since the last game they reviewed, considering they're trying to be as anti-IGN as possible and mark like the hardest of hardasses to earn online respect... But I can't. I both can't respect them, and buy myself a video card. Not really anyhew, since my order is still in, and I'm just too damn lazy and too damn principle based to cancel my damn order, especially for a damn nVidia card...

Nothing's really happened in my computer, herd of nerds world. I've bought a few optical mice to release myself from the burden of mouse balls and chains. I also feel like buying a new Logitech keyboard, for absolutely no apparent reason except in the hope that I can write a word or two per minute faster when it comes to my Y2kk Updates... There is one thing of note when it comes to the Linux systems at school, though. By typing in "switchdesk &", I can choose between three GUIs: the classic Gnome, the so-called god-given KDE, and a little thing known as TKW... or TKD, or TKM, or TKW, or TNT, or TTYL, or LINUXISACWOL, or whatever the hell it's supposed to be called. The thing is, as soon as people learned how to switch desktops, everyone went to KDE... but why?... Honestly, why?... It loads slowly on the computers at school. The Konquerer browser doesn't even print properly when it comes to course websites. Nobody but me seems to know about KGhost, as everyone else uses Mozilla's crap, default ps and pdf viewer instead. And for some odd reason, the StarOffice they've installed in KDE can't even refresh properly, forcing you to minimize your entire desktop if you want to see what you've deleted so far...

So honestly, why are people in love with KDE? Sure, it might be the best and most configurable GUI out there... as long as you get it working... But honestly, considering the trouble people are having with it at school, even for something as simple as default font sizes, it's no wonder Microsoft made the blantant (and quite challenged) assumption that Windows servers are cheaper to maintain than Linux ones. I mean, sure KDE costs almost next to nothing, depending on if you buy Red Hat or download a free copy or whatever. And sure, KDE has barely any bugs to mention... as long as you have everything in working order in the first place... But honestly, if we computer engineers can't find our way through the damn kernel without a damn manual, then what hope is there for a guy running a server, who isn't predetermined and absolutely set on loving KDE in all its glory, despite his inability to use it?...

Instead, I use the GUI that's so much simpler. TKW or TKM or whatever it's called, is as close to DOS as you can possibly get. It's literally just a blank screen, with a Xterm prompt to open up windows manually or whatever. My Gnome-sized friends and KDE clapping audiences keep bashing me for sticking with such a primitive, pointless interface... I mean, I don't even know how to access a digital clock from the prompt, and it does get annoying how there is no Windows-style, quick x-close button anywhere on any screen... But at least I don't have the crap that is KDE, although I do miss Gnome at times. So I guess in the end, I'm just as stubborn as the next Linux guy, except there is one, small difference... Sure, you can call me Linux-inexperienced at heart, considering I have yet to install it on any of my computers, let alone run a fifty computer database with it... but... um... Let the records state, that I, IvanF... officially... um, well...

I hate Linux.

There, I said it. Kill me. Kill me now. Strike me down, young Jedi... Give in to the dark side. I am unarmed...

Honestly, who throws a stone? Let the one who is free of Microsoft cast the first shoe... I willingly spent two days of my life, trying to install Windows2000 Professional over my crap laptop hard drive, which was riddled and rifled with bad clusters (I had to listen to cricket-like, hard drive clicking sounds, not to mention my friends complaining about Pakistan's loss to India in the Cricket World Cup, for so many damn days...), yet I refuse to install Linux, until I find a damn reason why I should install the damn thing, except for the hate of Microsoft, the love of being open, feeling like a source, and thinking that I'm different... even though in the end, everyone is the same for wanting to be different, but that's besides the point... However, since I have no point and absolutely nothing left to talk about, I thought I would copy and paste my download update here this week, just to be fair for what I did a few weeks ago. Give in to the boring side, and try to enjoy.

"I've never really been one for a good prank, but I do have to give props to the ones I saw at school the other day. Now, there's always been an annual bashing of a car with a sledgehammer in the front lawn of the engineering campus, so I didn't think much of it a few weeks ago when the cool geeks of engineering did the whole slew of things all over again... The Mechanical engineers however, did catch my attention this week, when I strolled into the front foyer one day, and sort of noticed that there was a car, bubbling with frozen water inside, just sitting smack down in the middle of the center of the place... Now, the car itself wasn't a very impressive feat of a thing. Anyone can buy a car for a hundred bucks and sink it with water. But I just couldn't help but give a thumbs up to the non-existent guys who did this, because unless there was a garage nearby somewhere, there was no way in Hogan hell that the mechanical engineers could've gotten the damn car into the building in the first place... unless they either screwed down a hell of a lot of doors, or they actually tore apart and pieced back together the car itself, just for shits and giggles... and did a damn fine job of we were soldering in the process... but either way, they deserve major props, for a prank that even impressed me.

But alas, I guess the prank impressed more than just me, because it was simply a stroke of genius what the chemical engineers did for their own prank two nights ago. I strolled once again into the front foyer early yesterday morning, expecting to just see the car there, still filled to the brim with semi-evil water of some sorts... when what do I see, but girlish balloons covering the entire deck of the floor, and a giant fountain made with a shower head springing forth the water that was contained in the car in the first place?... heh... the post-feminism girls at chemical engineering actually used the mechanical engineers' own prank against them, by using the car as the bottom of a bloody beautacious, water fountain. Twas a stroke of genius indeed, by giving the mechanical engineers a taste of honey and their own juices, and causing a few strokes in the process too... Although it's obvious how the Chems made the contraption (just take a shower thingy, drill a hole in the top of the car, and let succubitches do the rest), I still have to give them major credit for not just creative innovation, but for making a work of art. Somehow, just listening to the sound of rain clashing on metal, and the sound of rain drops keep falling on my head, has cheered up the entire engineering building by so damn much... It'll be a shame Monday morning, when I walk in to see the whole damn show gone... unless, of course, we computer engineers decide to build upon this engineering monument of ours in some sort of way, not that I'd know about it, of course... If I'm out of the loop when it comes to my own life, just imagine what it's like when it comes to others...

Anyhew, I guess you've figured out that I have absolutely nothing to talk about this week, considering I'm talking about a prank instead of my bloody self for once... The thing was, I'm ashamed to say this, but my damn bloody nervousness almost pulled a fast one over me too this week, as it was finally time for that god-awful History of Science presentation of mine. The thing was, almost as if by magic, just hours before my damn presentation was to start, my damn stomach started cramping up, and I thought I was going to hurl. I was honestly in a crapload of pain, and even though I knew deep down inside that it was all due to nervousness, I refused to believe that the "aforesaid" (or afro aphrodisiac) was the reason why. Because I mean honestly, sure I haven't done a presentation since high school, but I've been there and done that in front of audience. There was absolutely no damn reason for me to feel like I was going to keel over and swim with the fishes, and yet just to relieve the pain, I was almost willing to dunk my head in that fresco of a water car fountain in the foyer, and find out if it really was water that was bubbling in that glove of a compartment over there...

Of course, I finally got my medical explanation when I was finally up to bat as the skipper and slugger of the history world. I told the class right before the presentation that I wasn't feeling well, probably because of the massive torrent of snowfall outside, but just miraculously, just by a gift of a gust of God's wind, by the time my presentation was up, my gut wasn't feeling bad at all... at least, not physically, I guess... But mentally? Pathogenically? Psychologically? Supraluminally? My brain felt like sugar on ice, or like the coolest game on earth, as I couldn't have been more pissed, simply because I brought my unfortunate predicament all on myself... Because you see, I hate forced presentations, or at least presentations where the presenter seems to deliver every line with rehearsed forcefulness. I wanted to walk into that tutorial room of mine with a clean slate, and give the class the only honest and spontaneous presentation our stupid class of engineers has ever seen. I'm all about honesty, and so I walked into that war zone, hoping to strike a balance, strike a cord, and play the middleman between being organized and disorganized... but alas, even the hourglass is forced to follow the laws of men, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, because my goddam plan misfired and bloody backfired behind my goddam enemy lines.... You see, maybe because of sheer nervousness, or maybe because I hadn't even read the guidelines of my own goddam plan of action or whatever, I kept jumping from point to point, backtracking from here to there, unable to explain a single thing properly anywhere in between. At one point, I was trying to define how Descartes described the creation of fire from air, and then realized that I forgot to mention the difference between fire and air way back in my presentation when I was supposed to goddam introduce it all. So I backtracked, and started describing the Descartes crap that I missed, where I eventually lost track of myself again, and forgot to get back to whatever the hell I was talking about in the first place, before I screwed up...

But I guess you have to take the good with the bad, I, um... guess. So allow myself to introduce myself, because although I looked like a bloody idiot of a baffoon of a balloon fountain up there (especially considering the girl who went after me was so damn confident and so damn proficient that she seemed to have her entire half an hour presentation memorized to a goddam Mr. T), at least I woke the crowd... enough to see how much of a bloody moron I was, which has been always my subconscious gel of a goal, but that's besides the point... The point is, eventually halfway through my presentation, I said "screw it", both in my mind, and, um... just a little too loudly for the class to hear... Eventually, I just started complaining about the crap I was explaining, complaining about how stupid Descartes' theories were and how damn dumb it was that I had to read through 40 bloody pages just to learn bloody crap like this. And since I had gone off topic, and now was just frantically being honest IvanFian me, the crowd actually laughed. Nobody had ever laughed at a presentation before in our goddam class of engineers, but by God, I had done it... They weren't laughing with me. They were laughing at me. But goddammit, that's all I've ever asked for. They had me at hello. Almost brings a tear to the eye, whether it be happy or sad or a rain drop that keeps falling on my head, but that's besides the point... I started making no-name wisecracks about myself and about the crap I was talking about, and for the last half of my presentation or whatever, even if I couldn't explain the crap I was supposed to explain properly, at least I got people to pay attention. By calling Descartes' theory of whirlpool heavens my own, personal "funnel cake theory" (long time Y2kk readers will know about that), I even got the god-evil TA to crack a smile or two, as for some odd reason, he was the only one who got that bloody joke. Either way, like I said, you take the good with the bad. I completely goddam embarrassed myself for the first half of my presentation, simply because I was trying to be smart for once. But when I reverted back to being the honest-to-God idiot that I shall forever ever be?... well then, at least my stomach didn't hurl and hurt so much any gray poupon or whatever anymore... not until I see the bloody mark I'm going to get on my no-name presentation, but that's besides the point...

Anyhew, I really have nothing left to say, though I did run into my old, best, high school friend yesterday... literally, actually... I was running to catch the train when I saw him brush me by. We had struck arms by accident, and he still didn't recognize me? And sure, I felt stifled, almost like Stiffler, but I decided that I'd feel too damn guilty with myself if I just let this opportunity pass me by, so I caught back up to him, and we actually had a decent chat for the next few hours or so... One thing that bugged me right off the bat, was that even though he hasn't called me in God knows how many months (or even years), he was acting towards me as if we were still the best of chum radios. He had purposely ad purposefully locked me out of his life, out of fear that I would bring back sorrowful memories of his long lost love or whatever kind of crap, and yet he was giving me Geno beat hugs by the end of our conversation? Wasupwidat? A kiss of death?... But while that pissed the hell out of me, at least I felt reassured about one thing. He hasn't changed. He may wear the leather duster now, and have a fine beard or whatever kind of Sinbad crap, and may brag about getting hangovers and having the ability to get a date with any girl that he asks, but he's still the same geek from a remote, spoiled, smallville town that I've been friends with for the longest of times. I tried to talk about what he wanted to talk about at first, about him having difficulties in certain subjects, and of him still holding onto his dream of Harvard... but either because he knew I was faking my forceful listening to him, or because he himself is still a geek at heart, by the time we got back to his dorm room, he just started zanging and talking about the good ol' days of Star Trek, the new days of Stargate, and bloody hell, we talked about Nintendo and the Zelda series for a goddam hour alone... it was cool... And he never seemed to get bored of it, and because these were all my favourite hobbies in life, I didn't get bored either. I got scared that he was just being polite to me, that he really didn't care about these things anymore but knew that I did, but besides all that, I was actually happy. For a couple of hours of my life, I had my old best friend back... and now for God-knows-how-long, I'm back to being me, just Regulus IvanFian me, with university friends who like me but don't care much of me, and another best friend who'll be moving away soon enough, before we even get a chance in hell to see Wrestlemania X9, the showcase of immortal friendship...

And, well... at least I'll always know that when in doubt, I can probably fall back on my high school, best friend... I mean, I forgot that his birthday was last week, and yet he still didn't care much of it. I guess he called it even, considering he hasn't bothered to get in contact with me for almost a year, including my birthday, but that's besides the point... The point is, I've always seen myself as the old mare, not the bloody mary. I'm not cool. I'm not hip. I'm not ducka ducka. And I sure as hell ain't no drinking partner, or even a duck that keeps dunking his head in bloody car water... But what I am, is all I am. I am the guy friends fall back on. When their new friends ditch them, they come crawling back to me. It's always been that way. I may not be fun, but I am funny. I may not be Latin or satin, or even lactose intolerant, but I am loyal. And I may not be a whirlpool of laughs, but at least I can offer a funnel cake or two. And sadly, that just isn't enough for most of my friends... but at certain times, just at certain times, I can remember the good ol' days of so-called Chinese childhood innocence, and recall that at certain crossroads in life, I am the knave that people seek wise man council from... I am the old mare that knights and hopefully maidens fall back on...

Though God, he certainly didn't fall on me for advice in movies... I mean goddammit, he bought Crossroads... willingly... at full price! And I for one, sure as hell, won't forget the fact that he has a Walk to Remember lining and manning the frontlines of his DVD cabinet, behind enemy lines, but that's besides the point..."

Friday, February 21st, 2003

Y2kk Update: At last, I can finally, officially declare myself to be the idiot that was, and the idiot that forever will be, not like that was ever in question, mind you… It's just that, I was trying to be the hero two Mondays ago. After my partner rescued me in the Electronics lab the Friday before, I pitied myself and pitted myself between the moth and the flame, or the bucket and the lopsided ball, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean… I stayed at school for the longest time that night, toiling in the computer mines at the Digital Systems pre-lab for God knows how long… and when the time finally came on Monday to show off my goods and prove to my partner what I've got? I know this may not sound too good, but all I wanted was to make myself feel like an equal, to stand high, proud and tall, for holding my own, no matter how hard it feels or may be…

Unfortunately, the extra two hours we spent in the lab that morning, all thanks to my dear, sheer incompetence, sort of throw me out of the loop, along with that last ray of hope of Mario sunshine of mine. Because, well… you see, if there was a problem with the Altera hardware we were using or something, I would've been real pissed, but at least I wouldn't have beaten myself over an ugly stick for it afterwards. But the truth of the matter is? It was my fault. It's always my fault. And it's always my fault, because I never seem to do anything Dudley do right… I was the one manning the computer. I was the one programming damn chip pins like a chimp into the damn program… For it was the best of times. It was the blurst of times. And yet throughout the three hours that I was sitting idle in the lab, I never once realized that I was reading the damn pin numbers wrong off the goddam sheet?… For three frickin' hours, all I kept doing was mistranslating and misplacing every damn number in front of me, in plain English English, as if I was some dyslexic fool or some schizophrenic psychopath, or just plain IvanF or some crap like that… Short story short, I was trying my best not to be useless. I was trying my best to be the best, to be the one on top, so that all things considered would work out for the best. But alack, and alas, and ay, there lies the rubbing of the balls… for all good things must come to an end, for all good things that goes around, cums around, harder and faster from behind than ever before… And although I know this doesn't sound too good, it's true, oh it's true, that it always seems, I save the best for three frickin' hours last.

Anyhew… enough with the no-name closet talk for one day… Getting back to IvanFian seriousness, I actually meant to write this Y2kk Update of mine about two weeks ago, shortly after the shuttle Columbia exploded upon reentry. The thing was, I used to be the biggest NASA fan back in the day. I wasn't quite on par with my cousin however, who seemed to memorize all the shuttle names and their commission dates by the age of 10 or whatever, but I did admire the space program in its entirety, simply because I've always been a sci-fi dreamer and a Sigourney Weaver at heart. But the thing was, the saddest part of it all, was when the space shuttle Columbia came crashing down to earth two or three weeks ago, I did what I hoped I would never do: I became one of those annoying pricks, those ball kissing hicks, that I kept bashing and blasting and lambasting and basting and complaining all about soon after September 11th… If you total recall, I sort of mocked all those who chose to mock America around and about the event that changed the world nevermore. Regardless of whether their criticism was right or wrong, the fact of the matter was, it wasn't justified. Not for the time, and not by me. Whenever I found a person using September 11th to their advantage, if only to prove their own points to make them seem smarter, then they deserved a spanking, or at least a stern lecture from me that I knew they would never no-name hear in their lifetimes… Of course, I was being a hypocrite too at the same time, criticizing them during an era that I myself claimed should only be for mourning, and not for verbal macking, or even Macaroni Cheese, but that's besides the point…

But you see, things were a bit different back then… not all that different, though. In which, I never cared about terrorism, and I never cared much about US globalization. I did care however, about all those damn people back in high school who goddam kept slurring and insulting me for my tolerance to both sides of the argument… I never chose a side, except to side against both of them annoying pricks. And life was good, sitting my ass on the picket fence, as pineapple painful as it was… And thus, I used September 11th to prove my own points and my own merits, that some people just won't keep their damn mouths shut, and yet I forgot all those Y2kk days of mine, to label myself as a perpetrator of intellectual masturbation as well… And apparently, things haven't changed very much since then, or at least I haven't changed much since then, because when I first saw the sight of the space shuttle hurtling to the hearth of the earth? All I could do was complain and whine and be the same damn IvanF that I wish I never was. I started yelling at the television screen, as if it would respond, for being damn dumb enough to think terrorism was involved, even if there was an astronaut from Israel on board. I started correcting my sister and mother, cutting them off as they got the dates of the Challenger explosion and the age of the space shuttle fleet wrong. I started preaching to the choir, or at least my own family room, that the shuttles have had micro-fractures in their fuel lines for the longest damn time, and considering they still use CPU chips that they bought off of e-bay, it was only a matter of time until a catastrophe like this one was bound to happen, regardless of whether it was hit by an asteroid or its own Styrofoam ass on the way up… and it was only a matter of time until I bitch slapped my forehead silly, and realized the hypocrite that I was. When it came to September 11th, all I could ever think about was how damn stupid nay-sayers were being, for squeezing their own pineapples and justifying their own principles with the charred remains of the dead, as if they were guilty of necrophilia in my eyes or some crap like that. And yet when it came to the shuttle explosion the other week? Regardless of how few casualties there were in comparison, I still had no right to became the same damn virus of a vulture that I labeled as a genus of a genitalia not so long ago. And, well… hell, AOL, I guess it's a good thing that I don't know anything about oil or New York or whatever, otherwise I'd be all over this goddam Staten Island explosion as goddam well… I'll never be rid of this intellectual masturbation, will I?… otherwise I'd have nothing left to write…

Of course, it's been a long Bay of Al Bundy time since Columbia was destroyed, and while I still fear that the space industry will not get the Fundy funding that I've always felt they deserved, it's not like I'm still kicking myself over how I acted anymore… except on this website, but that's besides the point… Some feelings pass with bitter time, yet some only get more and more whiny and annoying as iotas of ions and eons pass by, sort of like me, being an internet cancer I mean, or an internet Taurus who drives a Ford Taurus, and also as a certain other experience of mine seems to be. Because you see, I knew just by looking across my tutorial rooms in university that people were getting photocopies of textbooks from some secret store down the street from my school. I know that these photocopies were technically and literally illegal, but considering they cost about a fourth of what those goddam bookstores charge, I really didn't give a shit. So I waltzed up to that copy store one day, fully knowing that they had just sold a textbook to someone I knew a few minutes ago. I pleasantly nodded to the Chinese manager in style, as he uttered some Chinese diaphragm dialect to me that I couldn't get the gist of with my horrid, torrid linguistical skills. And as I tried my best to ignore his greeting of an insult, I opened my mouth to the sound of English and almost saw his eyes wince in traumatic, automatic, climatic, psychedelic pain … Ignoring his reaction yet again, I politely asked whether he had any copied textbooks on sale for the course I knew he was selling them for. But before he could show me the copy I wanted, he essentially slammed the book right in front of my face, threw his own book at me, kicked me out of the store, and slammed the door on my ass on the way out. He flat out rejected me, and after two damn weeks of pondering, with nothing left to ponder, I still didn't know why. I mean, I had asked politely. It's like I said, "give me the damn book!" or some crap like that… and I was willing to pay in cash. So why the hell did I just get rejected, like the NBA always feels against the Harlem Globetrotters, as if I was on some bloody first date? I didn't even get a peck on the cheek on the way out… or a biting of the ass… either one's the same…

It was about the time of the Columbia destruction that I mentioned this whole story to a friend (after he wouldn't listen to my space shuttle rhetoric any longer), and while I was slapping myself silly for being that damn innocent and that damn ignorant enough to not notice that he wasn't listening, he essentially slapped me in the face as well, for being so damn gullible and for being so damn naïve. I was his genuine Eve, but, um, nevermind… Because apparently, just from the tone of my voice (and the lack of tone in my muscles), he knew that I had asked for the damn copied textbook all wrong… I mean, I wasn't supposed to ask. I was supposed to demand a damn copy. The whole damn thing was illegal, and apparently, at least according to my friend, the Chinese manager probably thought I was some government spook or communist spy or some crap like that, although I would certainly hope that governments would get better inspectors than ugly losers like me… So in order to preserve his pride and prove me wrong, after an entire Buffy season and session of me trying to prove him wrong when it came to Columbia, he dragged me by the ear back to that photocopy store, and when we arrived, I expected some grand show or something, as if the owner would invite him to the back and make some dirty pornography deal with him under the table or some crap like that… or on the table actually, if you're into that kind of thing, though me and my partner aren't… my lab partner, I mean, but, um, guess I shouldn't refer to him as that anymore, should I? But that's besides the point… flying dick, my ass… But anyhew, while I was expecting the Usual Suspects 2 or U of T Registrar Dogs 3 or some crap like that, I got this instead:

My conversation two weeks ago sort of went like this:
Manager: "$%$ <censored Chinese>"
Me: "Hello there. Can I have a copy of the <censored for my Electronics course… oops…> textbook please?"
Manager: "No book for you! Goodbye!"
Me: "Ow, my ass hurts! It really, really, ridiculously hurts! What's left to ponder?…"

Um… okay, that didn't sound very good… But moving along, this is how my friend's conversation went the other day:
Friend: "Give me a damn textbook!"
Manager: "Yes, sir! It'll be ready for you tomorrow!"
Friend: "Yeah! My ass hurts! Boo-yah!"… or some crap along those lines…

So all in all, I had no clue what the hell just went on there. He entered the store, moaned one damn sentence, and then as if magic, or as if they were partners, I got the goddam textbook I needed the very next day. Now, I could attribute this to the fact that the photocopy store or that pornography store was empty when my friend and I went, thus eliminating any possibility of a CIA operative being there to illegally deport the manager or something… But instead, I'm going to use to my own sense of warped and speed logic here, and officially declare that the Chinese manager is racist against damn Chinese! Or at least, has seen too many Seinfeld episodes for me to even begin to wonder what the hell he said to me at first…

And, well… it's not like this Chinese store owner is the only one who seems to steer clear of me for no apparent reason whatsoever. The friend I used to help all the time with computers last year barely even says hello to me anymore, even when I'm flapping my arms and flubbing my gums at him like some not-very-wily coyote… although, um, that could explain why he doesn't exactly make eye contact with me any longer… along with the fact that I called him my lab partner, but that's besides the powerpoint… And then there was this other guy, who used to be so Luke Perry, lukewarm with me at the start of the year, like Princess Leia cuddling up to Luke Skywalker or some crap like that, as if he wanted to be my lab partner or, George not feeling well, some crap like that… But short story short, after being this no-name guy's friend for a couple of weeks or whatever, he finally came up to me and asked me a computer question that I didn't know. So I told him instead to ask the TA, and you know what he said?… "Um, you're not the TA? Um… sorry, my mistake"… and, um… well… oops… I should've said instead, "give me the damn book!"… my mistake…

And after that, you can sort of guess the outcome. He had been buddy buddy with me ever since day one, every single day that he saw me in the lab, laughing at my jokes while rubbing his own dick and squeezing his precious pineapple, all at the same damn time… and then suddenly, when he realized that I wasn't the one who was going to mark his projects and leave a mark on his ass?… He never talked to me again, except for that one time to yell at me for talking about Columbia… he would've preferred to see the damn black board over my damn black-haired head rather than my lack of pictures of the damn black box, or rather would've preferred to hear talk of Columbine and necrophilia over my goddam voice, as wonderful as that sounds… He was a decent Charlie chap, now wasn't he? But alas, I never got to know him well… and as it stands right now, he was the last guy who ever bothered to think of me as a TA. Besides all those other guys who thought I was the TA, I mean… And after that, I guess my intellectual prowess sort of lost its charm… as really, really, ridiculous as that sounds, coming from a no-name whiner like me… Who would've thunk?

Which explains a lot when it comes to that Digital Systems lab of mine, but I'm sort of trying to lock that total recall out of memory. Besides, it's not like it was a pivotal moment in my life or something, considering I do a million idiot things a day to remind me of who I am… forgetting one damn memory yields no damn benefits for a hypocrite of a man like me, but that's besides the point…

And yet both knowing and not knowing, essentially half the battle of who I am, never seems to stop me from being the no-name writer, or being who I am. To be or not to be, I guess that was never the question, but honestly, who throws a shoe? Honestly? No shoe for you. And who would've thunk? Except that it all sounds like so much goddam globetrotter fun, doesn't it?… whatever the hell I'm trying to say…

Saturday, September 28th, 2002

Y2kk Update: Well, I'm spent, with my hands feeling soiled after spending more than a fair share of hours turning bread into butter, and wine into, um... more butter, so to speak... And oh, nevermind. I never manage to get my metaphors and smiley similes to work out properly anymore. I'm just lucky that I managed to get my brother's DVD-ROM working a few hours ago, all thanks to a very old friend of mine. You see, my brother bought the Pioneer 16x about a month ago so he wouldn't be reduced to watching pathetic VHS tapes at his university suite. The only problem was, he was still reduced to watching pathethic VHS tapes, simply because his PentiumII 266MHz and its Matrox G200 card were simply unable to run a single DVD movie at more than 10 bloody frames per second... And since I've always been the frames per second kind of guy, I was determined to get PowerDVD working at all costs, even at the cost of my own wallet...

So because I had absolutely no personal use for it anymore, I gave his computer my blessed be, S3 Savage 4, a card so ouvertly obscure, that even the videophiles in my computer engineering class still haven't heard of it to this day... and they dare call themselves hardcore computer gamers, but I digress... Anyhew, short story short, I was shocked as hell as anybody when my useless Savage card, the one that can't even run NHL 2000 properly on my Duron 1GHz, was able to run DVD movies at nearly 60 fps. Sure, there was the occasional milli-second jump in framework, but it's true when I say the S3 had rekindled and regained my brother's moviephile secular existence in just a matter of mere minutes... and now he's taking all my DVDs with him to university, even the ones I plead with him not to, but that's besides the point. Because lo and behold, at least I can finally feel smug that my $150 Savage4 card actually does something right... and what, it only took me about three years to find it? Will the wonders of the world ever cease?

And God, if only I was able to build those wonders of the world, maybe I wouldn't have been slaughtered so badly the other day at school... You see, the newest novelty for me at the University of Toronto is the network Civilzation game installed on every computer. And what really sucks the Big City apple, is that after three games against friends and the not so friendly, I have officially concluded that I suck, what? I suck, what? Hell, my only strength in the game is typing in messages, telling the enemy where I am, so they can wipe me out and put me out of my goddam misery...

So just because I had nothing better to do on yesterday (except study for my tests this week, but that's besides the point), I downloaded Free Civilization for myself, just to experiment with the game mechanics... And you know what? You know bloody what? In my first game against the "easy" computer, they were killing me with Howitzer tanks by the time I had just researched bloody hell horseback riding. And God, sure my little archers managed to beat back the enemy aircraft carriers for a couple centuries or so, but it really stung when they started launching cruise missiles at me in the 17th century... And you know why I sucked? Besides the fact that I just suck at every computer game that is... It's because my friends told me that researching new governments was useless, yet I figured out by watching the computer on Friday, that if you don't upgrade to a Monarchy or Communism right away, your tech development slows to a Cro-Magnon halt. And, well... what? My friends and not so friendly couldn't have told me that just a little bit sooner? Because God, if I didn't know better, I'd swear that were actually setting me up for a can of ass whooping, entrenching my folds in the art of trench warfare every single life wrenching game, but that's besides the point... Because I'll get them back someday. I may sound like a cliche cartoon villain right now, but it's true. I shall have my revenge, and show them the very bread and butter that I'm made of, although that doesn't exactly sound too good...

Well, anyhew, enough with the senseless, endless, pitiful whining and, um, buttery emancipation, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean... Let's just cut right into the bread and, um, more butter of the story of the week, that my Mycrowsoft.com redirection services have been down for the past two weeks or so. As far as I know though, as of today, the servers are finally working again, although there's not really any point anymore, considering my hits for this site have reached a stunning peak of less than ten hits... If I can bitterly recall properly, the last time my Mycrowsoft.com servers inexplicably shut down without warning, my hits dropped from 200 a day to a bloody hell 50 a day over the course of just a couple of weeks. And now? And now? It looks like my hits have been cut into a quarter pounder yet again while factoring in the Subway diet, because nobody, and I mean nobody is buffering and bothering to visit my noname sites anymore... just great... just dandilion, God-awful Mandolin great... I'm officially the Neil bore of the internet. Welcome to the web.

Anyhew, because none of Mycrowsoft.com sites were working for about a week, I decided to procrastinate from homework for quite a while by setting up a backup redirection server at Ulimit.com. It's a French company, and although they still might go out of business just like so many American sites have from the dotcom crash, I've got my fingers and feet doubly linked list crossed that my new Com02.com redirection will serve as an auxiliary address when push comes to Great Depression shove... Anyhew, for those of you who actually care, here's a semi-evil list of my new internet redirection addresses:

http://ivanf.com02.com = http://tweakui.com02.com = http://tweakui.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanftweakui.com02.com = http://tweakui.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanfnoname.com02.com = http://noname.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanfdownload.com02.com = http://download.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanfmsn.com02.com = http://download.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanfoffice.com02.com = http://office.com02.com = http://office.mycrowsoft.com

http://support.com02.com = http://ivanfsupport.com02.com = http://support.mycrowsoft.com
http://flame.com02.com = http://ivanfflame.com02.com = http://flame.mycrowsoft.com
http://ivanfarchive.com02.com = http://archives.mycrowsoft.com
http://development.com02.com = http://ivanfdevelopment.com02.com = http://development.mycrowsoft.com
http://cows.com02.com = http://ivanfcows.com02.com = http://cows.mycrowsoft.com

I doubt anybody will remember them, considering my download site is reaching critical hit lows each day, my noname site has yet to get even one microparsec of recognition, and my msn site has never exceeded the mark of five visitors a day... But sadly and strangely enough, a bunch of people now seem to remember me in the computer labs, simply because of one dandy trait of mine: I tend to walk around a lot, roam about, and simply pace back and forth, as if I was some important person, with something important to do... Now, any Y2kk reader will know the exact opposite is true. Afterall, I have literally nothing better to do in my life than rant and whine on this website of wine and, um, more butter, so help me God... But you see, since nobody ever reads this website, nobody at my school realizes know how much of a no-name loser I truly am. And strangely enough, that's why people actually seem to notice and remember my face... in fact, a least five people in the past week have asked me about that big black smerch on my face. Nobody's ever asked me about this bruise if a birthmark since Grade 9, when students were alerting the authorities that at home I beat myself up...

The thing is, I pace around the computer labs a lot, and I especially paced a hell of a lot this week after I finished my computer assignment early Monday. The thing was, since I was walking around, trying to help my friends before the deadline, it seemed like everyone else in the lab was taking notice how I was the only one in the room with the decency to help someone else out... You might ask where the TAs were, considering this was our lab session. And, well, leave it to U of T to pay a bunch of graduate students to leave their classes unattended and leave an idiot monger like me in unofficial charge... And to be honest, it was quite a funny sight. As I walked from friend to friend, there would always be a person inbetween who would cut me off, ask if I was the TA, and even when I would reply no, they would still jar-jar and beg me for hours and oodles of help... Most of the time, the questions were basic. A couple inquiries were about Java from the course I took last year, I had to give my own little tutorial on how to print in Linux a half a dozen times or so, and I especially admired the amicable guy, who even after I laughed in his face when he asked if I was the TA, still felt obliged to force upon me the big O question: where oh where, has the stapler gone?... and wow, that sounds good. That sounds wily. I feel so important...

But my favourite of the favourites has just got to be that one guy, that one first year guy who spotted me helping out one of my friends from across the room, and slowly began to raise his hand, imperial inch by inch, standard centimetre by centimetre, when he finally saw me lift my head up... Delighted that somebody out there had to decency to not tug at my hair for attention, I screamed out with a smile, "I'm not the TA!", and realizing that the dozen of so people that I've already helped didn't give a damn whether I was the TA or not, I just said screw that, I'm going to help this guy anyhew, and marched on over across the room, just to give him a tutorial on how to submit his project... Short story short, by the end of the week, I was used to be being asked for assistance from pretty much every able body out there, although that's still no excuse for standing up a certain friend of mine, but that's besides the powerpoint. And to be honest, when I first walked into university last year, the only thing that was on my mind was how I really wanted to be a TA sometime. Because I could never be a professor, since I barely had enough smarts to pass my first year. And yet the likelihood of becoming a TA is also as high as the Hood sinking the Bismarck, simply because unless I find some friends in high places, I need at least a B average in school just to sit idle in a tutorial classroom, like a screen saver on crack... or worse yet, butter...

But still, I've always had the innate desire to rant my ass off to anybody who demotes themselves to having to raise their hand. Basically, I want to be a TA just to deservingly lecture my students with God-awful Y2kk Updates, and watch them fraudily applaud at the end... just like how so many professors use their jobs to promote their books and papers, I guess I want to be a TA just to promote these sites... And to be even more honest, I did feel a certain element of power after helping out at least a dozen people on Monday. Because when it comes to life, when it comes to existence, it's not about right or wrong. It's not about better or worse. It's about standing high above the other's head, ready to give a stern lecture, when you suddenly and stubbornly realize, that the only thing that seems to come out of your mouth, is foamy, frosty, frothy butter... mmm, timbits covered in piss-poor, metaphorical butter, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean...

And okay, scratch one off. It looks like I'm never going to be an English TA...

Friday, September 29th, 2000

Y2kk Update: Geez, me haven't updated this page in a while. I've been too busy, um, doing nothing and, uh, thinking about doing nothing... I updated the Advanced Windows9x Tweaking guide with something about a Mapped Cache, but it's a crappy tweak that I just put on there for no reason... I do have a story to tell you about Future Shop, which is the equivalent of Circuit City if you doubled all of their prices... I bought a CL ModemBlasterUSB 56k V.90 from them for $150 Canadian bucks, brought it home, and it worked slower than my old Motorola 33.6 worth $25 bucks or something. So I repackaged the goods and prepared to return it a few days later to where I bought it. Afterall, I had bought RAM at Computer City before (which is owned by the same guy as Future Shop is) and I was allowed to return it with no problem... But that was because Computer City has competition here. Future Shop has no such thing like that... can you spell MONOPOLY?

I stood in the refund line for 40 minutes, gawking at that stupid, yellow sign that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed". And for crying out loud, there was just that one person in front of us, trying to return a Cordless Phone that didn't work... and, well, that guy in front wasn't really happy with the service, and I didn't know why at that moment, but... When I finally got up there, I was greeted by a phony hello and smile. I told my problem, that the modem wouldn't connect past 26400 bps, and she didn't understand a word so she called a computer sales rep over. He didn't understand a word I said either, so with those blank, staring eyes of his, he asked me if the modem worked at all. I honestly said, "yes". It just didn't work because of an incompatibility with my computer, and I'd like an exchange please. And how does he respond? He tells me I can't exchange it. He shows me my own receipt, and dimly in that spot where it's folded, it says in faded print I can't return any product that's been opened. Doesn't matter if it's worth $1 or $1000, I just can't return it. That's when my brother started screaming that he just lost $150. I called the manager over, and she looked like she didn't give a damn. She had probably had gone through this routine a million times that day alone. She told me the same stupid thing that I can't return it, because if I did, she wouldn't know what to do with an opened box... well, for a buck she could've just repackaged it for someone that it can work for, but I guess she ain't very managerial literate at all... so I tested her computer IQ, and started spouting out all the crap that I did to try to get it to work. Told her about the MTU, the RWIN, the Firmware Flash bios, and even the bloody 3Com V.90 protocol test site. No response. Not even a flinch in their eyes.

They then asked me which server I used. I said I tested it with Freewwweb, NetZero, Freei, iFreedom, 3Web, HomeFreeWeb, blah blah blah and another one I can't remember right now... heh, the two of them just stared at me with blank faces and told me they heard the modem works with AOL and Sympatico... geez, like I didn't know that... Eventually I revealed to them that the only smart guy actually sacrificing himself by working at Future Shop had opened the package for us to look at & inspect, therefore we had bought the modem with an open box. That's when she went into the back, pretended to talk to herself in a mirror, and then came out saying we can finally get an exchange - and that because of her generousity, she could get fired... Yeah, sure.. she should get fired for arguing with us for an hour and a half already... I was going to use that $150 to buy a 128MB module of Pc-100 RAM which should've costed $190 according to the weekly flyer... and what RAM does the manager bring me? A 128MB module costing $290... hmm... con-men, con-women all in little, red uniforms... We then decided to take the credits at the store and come back another day when they don't remember us and can't take as much advantage, but when we got back to the refund stand to get a new receipt, a new employee (actually, the 8th person I saw at that spot over those 2 hours) was gossiping on the phone. When we asked for our credits, what does she do? She asks us our story again, and we waited yet again for the manager to clear things up. It's a good plan though; keep switching the refund employees so their cluelessness can piss us customers off even more...

Future Shop took nearly 2 hours out of my life. I think I'll give those 2 hours to Best Buy, Circuit City, or even, if I'm that damned, CompUSA when they all storm the Canadian gates... heh, when I was leaving, I noticed a guy was bringing a defective DVD playing back to Future Shop... I sure wish I had stayed to see that machine wrapped around that manager's head...

Friday, August 11th, 2000

Y2kk Update: Well, today's the big day. I just uploaded a list of almost 100 Free Web Space Servers and a whole bunch of new advanced Win9x tweaks like how to double your shutdown speed and how to break through every Poledit security feature there is. But that's not the big news. Let the Armada community know that I, IvanF - the bloody no-name modder, am now submitting my resignation for modding retirement. Today I release my final mod: IvanF's No Name Brand Mod 0.60 for Activision's Star Trek Armada. The main new features are I increased the Z-axis space, I made the AI even harder, I added a complete uninstallation batch file, & I added in the Borg Tactical Cube to give every race at least 13 combat vessels. To install my mod, just extract all the files to your root Star Trek Armada directory. If that doesn't work, extract it to a temp dir and move all the files yourself.

Fragaday's VISE Exe Installer for IvanF's Last Mod: IvanFragaday-NoNameBrandSTA060.exe

Mirror Site for IvanF's 0.60 Mod Zipped: IvanF-NoNameBrandSTAMod060.zip

I have been modding for 4 to 5 bloody, long months now. Go ahead and read the bottom of this page if you don't believe me, but my first official mod came out on Friday, April 21st, 2000 with an update coming out every 2-3 weeks or so. I've given my sweat to this game. I skipped out on studying for my Physics exam just to get a new mod release out. As far as I could tell, I am one of the first modders; I released a full conversion mod while James Bryant was wowing everyone with his Cobalt Defiants. I added in the Romulan D'Kazanak not long after Jc did it to become famous. I was the one who made Scube a household name; it's not a SuperCube! It's a Scout Cube! And I paraded online for weeks back in April, telling all Borg players to try my Scube. Scube this, scube that... And yet no-one remembers me. No-one even bloody knows my name. The Sandman may complain about not getting instant responses, but I complain about getting none at all. I was the first to improve pathfinding. I was the first to introduce incredibly hard, cheating AI. I was the first to create a new detail level where even Pentium 166 users like me can play with good graphics. And you know what? I have gotten nothing out of this experience. Well, not much at least.

I cried out for game balance; the players cried out for sods. I had a dream for All Experience RTS Players to settle their differences out online with my mod; whenever there was a balance issue, I would be right there to fix it. They were to give me feedback, and unlike any computer game company out there, I would make their balance suggestion reality. But goddam, I can't even play hearts properly. What makes me think I can make a game more fun for others? I don't have the brilliant reputation of Jc. I don't have people drooling at my AI like Capm does. I don't have the legacy of James Bryant. I don't have the Sods of Sulu777. I don't have the hype of the Millenium Project or the Generations Project. I don't have the loyalty that binds together the Midas Array. I don't have the realism of the Ilu Maris Project. & I don't have the originality of Futility. I dedicated my mod to balance, not sods. I thought I released a damn, good mod, not just a flashy one with cute little advertisements.

But goddammit, no-one hears me now. No-one knows the name of IvanF. Very few care... But I'm sick of being a bloody whiner. If anyone wants to try my mod, please go ahead and accept my thanks in advance. I'd love it if you played it online with your buddies; it was meant to see the light of the net. I'd love it if you'd have the courage to post in the Official Armada forum and tell me how to make my mod more balanced. But what I won't do anymore is whine, complain, or grovel for feedback. I've spent too long on my knees, and now I'm just plain bitter. Kaleb, Marrel, Tim, Ares, the Prophet, Brazza, the Sandman, & all the other greats; geez, they're all so talented and all so very lucky for getting the feedback that they get. As for me, I'd die just for cynical criticism that would kill others or some other crap like that. But I'm releasing this last mod for 4 reasons, 4 horsemen: for fbrg, for Fragaday, for my cousin, and for you, Victor. Yes, you...

You know, I'm not really upset... I'm sorry if I offend anyone; I have a real habit of doing that. I'm just frustrated & if you ever take the time to read my websites, you'd know I love to go on tangents. No matter how pathetically down I may feel, I also know that at least a few of the 39 people who downloaded my 0.56 mod enjoyed it as much as I did. I remember that it felt good to hear that some of the 90 people who downloaded my 0.20 first mod had fun playing with the special weapons... and just because of that, I promise I will make sure I will not vanish in to the bitter cold night. I will write. I will respond. I will be remembered. I will bloody be known... Geez, aren't I the melodramatic or what? I'm really going to laugh at myself sometime for writing this all...

Um, and uh, oh... thanks for listening to me...

Sincerely, _________IvanF, the no-name modder, August 10th, 2000...

Thursday, March 15th, 2000

Y2kk Update: Welcome to the grand opening of IvanF's Tweak 'n' Dweak homepage at Tweakui.mycrowsoft.com, just one of oh-so-oh-so many sites on the Mycrowsoft Network! So far, the only thing that I have online is a S3 Savage page with Quake3 tweaks. Go check out the console commands and yadda yadda yadda on the left. Now who's better than IvanF? Everybody!... but not for long.

... Tweaking and Dweaking for the broadband-impaired since March 15th, 2000...