Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Written Test

I haven't got my oral results back, although I am quite sure that I did well on that. I wasn't so sure about my last written test. I had somehow managed to miss an entire section of the chapter when I was studying and I had trouble with a couple other sections. The saving grace was that I thought I did very well on the parts I had prepared for. I thought the mark may be as low as 65ish but it turns out I got a 74 and the teacher actually said to me that it was a good mark. I just thanked her so I'm not sure if she meant it was good compared to other marks or if she saw my holes and considered that I had done well despite them. Either way random encouragement from a teacher is great.

Now I have a quiz on Thursday, it seems there's always some test pending and I only have one class. Others have commented that they have multiple midterms and tests or long papers shortly after the midterms finish, so I suppose I shouldn't complain about a quiz.

A friend of ours from France is living with us and I've impressed him with my ability to understand his conversations. That's encouraging too, that I can actually hear the words is impressive to me considering I knew next to nothing 6 months ago. I can't quite converse, mainly because my thought process is too slow but I'm slowly noticing phrases that I don't bother translating to English in my head so with three classes to go after this one I'm feeling good about my ability to pick up French by the end of next year.

There's a Re-Store 100 meters from our house so I've decided to volunteer there. They need office workers and store workers at the Re-Store, which is also the Montreal office, and they need builders on the weekends. I haven't got a schedule or discussed where they want me but I'm glad to have a chance to learn a bit about building and the various aspects of it. I already know a fair amount from work, friends, and various home projects so hopefully I'll be an asset for them.

The new house is coming along and we had our first get together this weekend past. We had a poker tournament. I don't think I've played poker in two years, it was more fun than I remember it being. Possibly that's because I won 60 bucks.

So that's some of the crap I've done of late, and here's some of the crap I had to hear today:

Q: What do the Raptors, Argos, and Leafs all have in common?
A: None of them can play hockey.

and

Q: Why won't the NHL let Hamilton have a hockey team?
A: Because then Toronto would want one too.

It's hard living behind enemy lines.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Oral Exam Over

Well that may have been the easiest exam I've ever taken in my life although I'll wait to see the results before I get too excited. Last semester the oral exams were one on one with the prof. She would ask questions and I would stumble through answers. This time I had to record a story of the past in the lab. We all went as a class and each had a desk. We weren't allowed to bring anything we had written in but I memorized my piece. So the first thing I did when I got in the lab was write out my entire oral. I missed two small parts but they were both only information pieces the gutted sentences still made grammatical sense. I also flipped two sentences but of course that won't matter. So I think I did extremely well except how can it have been that easy?

Maybe my classmates slacked off and didn't memorize anything or prepare in a significant way. I know one guy forgot to do any prep. I feel like I got near perfect although I'm sure there were some tiny errors. I'm more concerned that she'll say the oral was too easy so the next one is back to the one on one which I suck at. Anyway we'll see. I also saw her marking my written exam from last week but she wouldn't give me any hints on how I did so I'll have to wait till Thursday.

Well that's about it, my abs hurt from the gym yesterday and the cats are doing well, rats too.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Askipedia And Other Stories

Years ago I started a company with my friend Chris called Askipedia. We had a website that makes money still and we had some fun with it. Then we decided to get serious and start an SMS service which didn't take off quite as well as we had hoped. After running out of money we put it on the back burner. The original website kept on trucking but we weren't really maintaining it. Now we're rekindling the old flame.

Kate has been more than fantastic getting some of the business aspects together that I sorely lack the ability to do, maybe the desire but it amounts to the same thing. Her initiative has made me excited about getting the site moving in a forward direction again.

The site will stay basically the same but we're going to be pushing for people to sign up to be question answers, we still have plenty of people asking. We'll be starting with a contest, details to follow, and we'll be adding a couple items to the web page. Hopefully we'll get the ball rolling and the questions being asked and answered at a regular pace without too much work from us. Then we can invest our time to other improvements to the site.

Askipedia is another topic I will be adding to this blog so check back for more crap about the company and what we're doing with the web site.

Some other notable pieces of information.

I had my third test in french last night, I think I got perfect or close to perfect in some sections and close to zero in other sections. Hopefully it will average out high. I bombed one of the oral sections but I think I actually got perfect on the other oral section. I think it's a good sign that I can at least some of the time listen to people speak in French and understand what's going on. If you ever need someone to translate directions for you, I'm your man.

I have a new workout at the gym but have been quite busy so I've not been going as often as I should. We were in Mississauga/Hamilton this past weekend for a wedding and with renting Halloween costumes for it and then being in a new place that needs work the Gym has been low on the priority list but I am still going. I have noticed a different although I'm not paying too much attention to that, I'm in it for the looks and the strength to beat people up, not the health.

We had Thanksmas this past weekend. We were there for the wedding so it was a good time. Uncle Morris and Aunt Irene were in town for the wedding so they stuck around for it all. It's always good to see them. Hopefully we'll be able to make a trip out west again soon and head down to California to see them. One trip at a time though, it's Texas for us next month.

Doran would not do well in my current apartment. He's got this sick sound system that will pretty much destroy everything you love if you turn it past 16 and he likes to play it on 18. He gets the odd complaint, although they are consistently coming in. I have a standard tv with no extra sound stuff, just the plain old tv speakers. Two days ago Ludo and I are playing Gears of War at a loud volume but we could talk to each other without raising out voices. It was also 6 in the evening. We're playing and I can hear this constant pounding, the guy above us is always making noise so I ignore it as long as I can. Finally I'm sick of it so I pause the game, the pounding stops. This guy is pounding fro us to turn the game down? It's 6pm, it's not really that loud and he's the noisiest person I've ever lived under. I can tell we're not going to get along. He even looks like a doofus. The guy below us seems fine though. He told us that we didn't actually have a parking spot like the landlord said. Turns out he tells everyone in the building there are three spots, one for each apartment, when in fact there are only 2. There are a lot of jerks in the world and it seems like I am their fluorescent light.