Thursday

[robbat2]

Yet another day of school done. I had my Math lab at 8.30am this morning. All it was, was a MathCad worksheet, us not handing in homework (Yes, they told us we did not need to turn it in!), and doing the quiz for this unit. The quiz seemed really easy to me, it was on basic linear algebra (mainly vector operations), and me, with only a little scientic calculator and doing things by hand beat all the people with high level graphing calculators (that can just do the math for you!). So either I got everything wrong, or those others were really really useless at math. I think the latter is the answer tho.

After the math lab, I went back to my workspace with the FakeSpace, and today I was trying to get the MIPSpro compilers working, with the temporary license information that SGI sent us. It was quite useless. I got the license information in, but then I got a really weird error that the compiler could not find a certain file. I don't have the number for SGI tech support handy, so I go and ask Dave(one of the sysadmins), he says he doesn't know, but if I wait an hour, the other sysadmin (Patrick) would be in and he would know.

So in the meantime, I go out for lunch, and eat a chicken and beef teriyaki from the usual place. It was really good today. Get back from lunch, send an email to patrick, get the phone number, and call up SGI. Go through the normal "please press" routine for a while, and then it says please hold. I full well expected to be waiting a long time, being a tech support line, but I only waited 20 seconds. So anyway, I spoke to the first person, got them to change my details that they had from previously, as they were incorrect. Then she passed me onto one of the actual technical people, and he was really efficent. The just of the problem is that to get the compiler working, besides the software that ships with the system, you need the license keys, and an additional piece of software from SGI! Argh. It's now being shipped to me. Hopefully it turns up before Thursday as that is a major demo day, and it would be good to have some new stuff up for that.

After that, there were a couple more calls back and forth to SGI, to figure out exactly what versions should be shipped to us, and the end result of that was that I was 30 minutes late for my New Media Images art class. It didn't really matter tho, as they were just watching some visions of the future(s) videos while I was away. Some of the stuff was quite neat, scenes from Logan's Run, Jetsons, 1984, something else where a lot of stuff goes wrong with technology, Barberella, Planet of the Apes (the original) and all sorts of other things.

During the break in the middle of the class, since it's nearly 3 hours long, I ate my yoghurt and granola bar, and after that we formed into our groups and discussed issues about the future worlds and visions. Our assignment was also told to us, so right after class me and Thomas borrowed a digital camera from the library, and took a whole batch of photos of each other against a green motion capture scene in various poses that we can alter digitally to insert ourselves into scenes. I will put some of the shots of myself up on my photo gallery sometime.

After that, I found that there were a whole batch of leftovers from a function at TechBC that the caterers were solicting students to eat, as they did not want to just throw them away. It was quite a nice spread, primarily vegetables and salads (I think it was meant as mostly vegan), and a pasta with tofu meat sauce. The food was really tasty, and I was hungry so I had two good helpings. At the end of that, Patrick came look for people that were willing to go playing pool with him around 9.45pm, after he finished work. Brittney, Sarah and David declined, and left to go home after finishing their food. I was getting a ride with Patrick to get home anyway, so I accepted his offer. While I waited for him (he only gets off at 9pm) I went and did all the postings that I had to do for my various courses, and checked my email.

Anyway, I got a ride with him later, and on the way to the 8-Ball Café in Burquitlam he told me about his winter vacation that he had taken, and how things were basically going for him. We got to the pool place, and played for a bit while we waited for Micheal to show up. I'm really bad at pool, apart from a lot of my fluke shots where I miss the ball I am aiming for, but knock several other balls of mine into the pockets. After Micheal showed up, there was a lot of discussion about how things were messed up, and what Micheal had been up to over his vacation. (Including getting caught in a rockfall in Manning Park, and ending up in Hope in hospital for 3 days, quite full of drugs, and generally acting insane due to concusssion). On the way out of the pool hall, there was a magic 8-ball that I questioned. The question was "What is going to happen to the love lives of Patrick and Micheal". I know it's supposed to be a question with a yes/no answer, but I asked anyway. The answer was "My sources say No", which was quite insanely funny considering all the trouble they have been having.