Category: derick related

I’ll be the first to admit it, IT guys are arrogant. I can’t explain it; they just are. I think it may be the apocryphal notion that computer guys are smart, sometimes even dubbed as “geniuses”. Maybe this has got to our head? I’m lazy. I’m terrible at math. I sometimes spell ‘cake’ with a ‘k’, but I can probally fix your computer. Ergo…

I caught myself being that guy last night…

Sister: How do I do that thing again on the computer? You just did it so fast and left. I couldn�t follow.

me: man, you’re terrible with computers.

Mother: He never teaches me anything. Why can�t you teach me to use Excel?

me: Mom, you can�t ask a programmer to teach you to use computers. They’re too intimately involved with them. It�s like � hmm, how can I explain this without sounding arrogant. It�s like � Alright, suppose your lost in the city and you’re looking for a particular street, you’re not going to go ask the Mayor for directions are you?

Okay! bad example.

There’s nothing like the solidarity of students that know they’re going to fail a final.

During the few dwindling hours before my CSC final, a group of us gathered around the couches in the library and desperatly went over some looseleaf handouts and some badly taken, not to mention, hopelessly incomplete, notes from class. But surpringly ( when two or three are gathered), I think I may have learned more in that 2 hour study symposium, then I did all semester.

Well test-time arrived, I scrawled a few formulas on my palm (i need a bigger palm), and well… I think I got enough ink down to pass. Here’s hoping :-/

I remember as a kid growing up, having to be woken up ever morning at 6:45 for school. I remember being dragged out of bed, kicking, screaming, pleading, begging, for just 5 more minutes of sleep as though a mere 5 more minutes would be all I need to be somersaulting out of bed. If the begging didn’t work, I’d perk my ears out, trying to hear the patter of the shower, an occupied shower usually guaranteed at least 5 more minutes of sleep. A nod of acquiescence and I’d drop my head on the pillow, curl up, fetus-like, and as soon as I got comfy BE WOKEN UP SINCE FIVE MINUTES WERE UP. Ah, yes, what a miserable hour that “6:45” is. I’d then drag myself in the bathroom, to be even more depressed looking at the bathroom window. How can it still be dark out? Where am I, the moon? What sick maniacal joke is this, and who are the misanthropes that decided school should start so damn early?

Now here I am, in my last years at college, bit*hing about 10’o clock courses–fists in the air and grunting that their “too damn early”. But I think I’m alone on this one. Everyone I talk to, unless their lying (which is a reasonable explanation) asserts that they have no trouble getting up in the morning. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there is a certain quantity of hours set for every individual that you can’t exceed, or be delinquent of, to be able to jump out of bed in the morning, grinning like Bob from the Enzyte commercials. You know, Bob, the Once-a-Day tablet for natural male enhancement? –Don’t look at me like that!

I still haven’t figured out my optimal sleep amount, but one thing is certain, it’s not 11 hours. I had 11 hours last night and I’ve been a walking zombie all day. It’s not 8 hours either, that’s my average amount, and my eyelids still fall like guillotine blades.

So the question is: my optimal amount of sleep, does it fall in between 8-11 hours? Does it even exist? Or is it just a pipe dream.

“I don’t know, let me see what my schedule looks like.”

Okay, I have an enormous programming assignment due in 4 days that I havent started– for a class I’m almost failing. Um, what else? Oh, I have that 4000 word term-paper I knew about all semester, yep, still haven’t began (you know, I think it may count for 30% of my grade). What else? Oh, There’s that other project, in that other….

“Yeah, sure Nick. I’ll go to Canada.”

And that’s how it all started. lol

(to be continued…maybe)

* read the comment 😉

It’s decided. I think I’m going to make the leap and get a buzz cut. Having medium short hair has been such a nusiance. You fall into the vicious haircut cycle. See, a guy with medium-short fairly-thick hair like myself has hair that only looks good about one week after a haircut, and this lasts for about 2 days, 3 if your lucky. After your 2-3 days or so of bliss, your back to where you started, bad hair. You then have to wait an additional 2 weeks with crappy hair before you get another haircut, and start the process all over again– lest you get it too early and you really mess things up. Your hair won’t look good for 8 weeks then! This has been my miserable life for some time now. And, I’ve decided to vindicate myself from this quagmire, and defeat the enemy from the source; Take out the Hair! I’m gonna buzz it all off.

Yesterday was rather interesting. For years my friend Mark Laboss was labeled amoung us as the ‘Whitest White Man We Know’, but last night, through a unanimous decision, his title was recinded and cast upon me. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing, being now the “whitest white man’ — which in itself is ironic because, I’m NOT white, I’m Indian (okay fine, to be pedantic…. “Sri Lankan”, joyce)

Laboss’s new job with inner city kids was his vindication, and as I pleaded with this panel of friends to reconsider, or at least provide just cause and reasoning, I was dumbfounded by the list they produced, which I couldn’t deny, was pretty accurate. So, I guess that’s it. Until someone else joins the group with greater whiteness than myself, or if Laboss decideds to become a Tenor, or buys a yacht, I’m now “The Whitest Man They Know”.

Ahh… the drudgery of student life is beginning to reach its peak. The syllabus comes out from hibernation; plastic seals are torn off new textbooks, recreational beverages are sipped instead of funneled. Yes, mid-terms are upon us. It will be a grim and gloomy two weeks.