man -k woman: April 2006

Hockey

I know I've already had rants about sports but I figured it was time for an addendum of sorts. I must first re-state that I am a bad Canadian. I hate hockey. I hate all sports, but hockey holds a special place in my heart—a rather miserable place, if you ask me.

Seeing as the previous rant also contained my reasons for disliking hockey I'll get to some of the more specific rants.

The aspect of sports I hate more than the watching of the sports themselves is "sports fever." I don't care who wins. In fact, I hope the Canadiens lose as soon as possible. If they do, there will be much less playoff-watching around me. The other day at the dinner table, everyone had to be watching the game while eating, so I was the one who volunteered to take the seat with the back facing the television. The highlight of the evening was when the Canadiens score while I was in mid-bite, everyone jumps up and yells, while I don't even break the movement from my plate to my mouth. I just don't get why people care so much. All I ever get is "well, you get caught up in the fever!" But why is there fever in the first place? They're not really doing ANYTHING! Or sometimes I get the "local pride" sort of argument: does the ability of a small group of a city's residents to perform well in sports determine a city's worth? Most players aren't from here anyway! It's just saying "we bought better players than you!" It accomplishes absolutely nothing.

I don't really care too much what other people do, but it's when I'm seeing friends (and significant others) that it starts to bug me; I want to spend time with people where everyone can enjoy what we're doing. I'm always willing to accommodate others, but they use the excuse "oh, but this is only happening once! We can go out anytime, we can see that movie anytime..." Well, every moment of your life happens only once. So deal with it. Watch the highlights for the really "amazing" plays, see the scores, let a night of it go. For fuck's sake, it's just people hitting a projectile into a net! No story, no depth, no relevance...

I just want it to fucking end. Stupid goddamn hockey. I don't hate it so much normally, it's just when it starts to interfere with my life.

PersonalDNA

I took this fun test, albeit a little long, and here are my results (mouse over the various colours to see what they mean):

My Personal Dna Report

I'm a Free-Wheeling Leader! :D

Yet another BlogZOT!

Well, MacZOT has done it again. It's the brand spanking new BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com! Basically the way it usually works is they drop the price of software by $0.05 for every blog entry about the subject submitted. Now, I'm always glad to contribute to such things, especially if it's good software. However, this time it's not only good software, it's fantastic software.

The software of the day is SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys, which normally goes for $35 US. Last time, when they did this with AppZapper (blogged here) they gave away 5000 units of software. So, since this time they will give away 3000 units at $35 apiece, that means that MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $150,000 in Mac software to their loyal customers. However, to make things easier they've already discounted the software to $30 (MacZOT always discounts software when they sell it - that's their big selling point) and since they're dropping the price by $0.05 for every blog, 600 people must blog this in order for the software to be free. Furthermore, at a 5 cent drop per blog with 600 blogs, that means that 600 blogs will result in a total of $105,000 in free software, so every blog will result in $175 being given away.

I've only used SubEthaEdit a little, and it seems to be a really slick piece of software. I mean, it is a collaborative text editor, so you can edit a document simultaneously with a bunch of other people, it colour-codes your edits, and it works over the internet or over Apple's zero-configuration wireless protocol, Bonjour. I've only briefly tested it out, and while it sometimes gets funky with firewalls and stuff, it's pretty fuckin' cool. The only drawback is, most of the coders I know don't use Macs, but hopefully that'll change when I get deeper into the bioinformatics, since EVERYONE uses a Mac.

Anyways, I'm really impressed with what MacZOT! Is pulling off here, and I hope they continue the fantastic work they've been doing.

School

Well, I've done it. I've finished all my classes for my undergrad. Provided I passed all of my exams, I'll soon be a swingin' bachelor of science. I'd love to see the McGill sweatshirt for my full program. BIG LETTERS: McGill, Subtitle: Faculty Program in Biology and Mathematics, Sub-subtitle: Minor in Computational Molecular Biology.

Oh well.

So I've also been accepted into graduate school, and get this: I come home, find a big envelope on my bed that's torn open on top. So I think to myself: "Hey, what the hell? Who's opening my mail? Did my mother get too excited about my acceptance and open the mail for me?" No. I get the letters out and it turns out that they had been slightly chewed by my mother's dog Buffy, an irritating, hyperactive little west-highland terrier that urinates everywhere and chews up everything in sight. I'm still pissed about that. I mean sure, I'll never really have a use for this letter in the long run, but when I look at it, it just makes me hate my mother's dog more and more. But that's also due to the resentment I feel toward that horrid hound.

But that's a whole other story.

So yeah, I really hope I passed Stochastic Processes. If I don't I'll have to go speak with the professor, as I am sure I can argue my way through the exam—if I don't pass, I don't get my BSc; if I don't get my BSc, I don't get into grad school; if I don't get into grad school I won't have any clue what the hell I'm going to do next year.

I can't wait until the stress of not knowing is gone.

AppZapper Update

Holy crap! I'd just barely posted (and the copy of AppZapper was down to 65 cents) when I reload the site and it's not only free, but it's sold out too! Man, this sucks. :(

Edit: Turns out you just have to go to this page enter your info, and they give you a serial. w00t!

Free AppZapper

Well, this looks pretty interesting. I'll do what I can to contribute to the community! :D I've always liked the idea behind MacZOT.com, and support their efforts!

AppZapper 1.3 will be released today. The uninstaller Apple forgot has teamed up with MacZOT.com to run a special promotion for the release of their latest version featuring the new QuickZap™

AppZapper 1.3 is FREE! (or will be if we get at least 259 bloggers to mention it)

For each blog that posts a link to MacZOT.com, they'll drop the price for everybody by $0.05 (Blog links should be posted to the Comment section at http://maczot.com/discuss/?p=35#comments)

Our goal is to give away 1,000 copies of AppZapper to Mac users around the world. So, every Blog entry will be worth about $50.00 to the community.

Once they reach at least 259, AppZapper will be priced at $0.00 (FREE) to everybody who registers at MacZOT.com or sends a simple email to BlogZOT@maczot.com after the time it becomes FREE.

GET STARTED! Email your favorite bloggers and tell them to blog up MacZOT so everyone can benefit! And then: Grab your copy of AppZapper 1.3 with the new QuickZap feature from http://maczot.com