What you did today

[Walsingham]

Valentines day thing here, with almost all of my friends, including females to the pub at my insistence. Went all awry. Hard to describe. Just total lack of oomph.

 

Worst bit today. My best friend got dumped. I thought they were going to get married.

 

Best bit. Some damn hippies were in the pub and invited us to sit in on their candle lit love poetry evening. I joined in in good faith, bt quickly decided it was far too pretty and nice. So I hit them with some old school classics full of pain and fighting and love and glory and so forth. Stunned their socks off. Chesterton would have been immensely proud. Then went back to my own group and proceeded to have far more hostile reaction from computer programmers. They claimed poetry was a bit like a weak kind of semaphore. And one should simply state in ideally mathematical terms what one meant.

 

...Which I suggested might explain why they were single.

 

All told, quite good.

 

Hope the relative quiet of the boards is not indicative of depression, but everyone being ensconced in the tender parts of a loved one.

[Hurlshort]

I did most of my Valentine's stuff this weekend. I made pork chops with apple sauce, cous cous, and veggies for dinner tonight, and my wife and daughter just headed out for a pilates class. Me and my son are just relaxing and enjoying the quiet.

 

The classroom was a bit crazy today, dang candy-centric holidays

[Orogun01]

Today was the continuation of my Valentine weekend or should I more aptly say the conclusion. Spend free time at school having some of the most interesting conversations that I've had in a while, a few which were with a girl I actually like. The rest where crazy ramblings with my friends, one of those really long ones where you stop at the middle and recap how you got there. We started with comics and ended up with the situation in Egypt, not without throughly discussing the NATO/Russia bullet conversions.

[Enoch]

I'm guessing that the dominant outlook on Valentine's Day around these parts is summarized

.

 

 

Wals' tale has inspired me to expand the repertoire of chest-pounding poetry that I can recite by memory. I think I've got a few anthologies around here that I can study from. (A college roommate and I always talked about crashing campus poetry-readings by doing a full-length dramatic reading of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," but we never actually pulled it off. Not least because reading the damn thing out loud takes about 45 minutes.)

[Kor Qel Droma]

I bought the missus some flowers, then she took off with the kids to go watch the BAchelor. We've been in our new place for just about two weeks, and we love it. Except for our crappy tv/internet provider. We're still waiting for our hookup:(

[Enoch]

FYI: Valentine's Day cocktail of choice:

 

The Jasmine

1.5 oz. gin

1 oz. Cointreau

0.75 oz. Campari

0.5 oz. fresh lemon juice

Garnish: either lemon or orange peel, as you wish.

 

A cocktail that is: a) pink, b) not sickeningly sweet, and c) not a Cosmopolitan.

 

Edit: I have to use nefarious methods to evade the spam filter in order to properly type the word for a pleasant mixed alcoholic beverage.

Edited February 15, 2011 by Enoch

[Tigranes]

Today I woke up, did my driving test, and 12 hours later, did my PhD app interview.

 

15 seconds into the driving test, the car randomly died at the middle of a roundabout, and I generally drive like a chicken on pot, but I passed.

 

The interview went pretty well with several good moments and no screwups, so we'll see. Wals, Monty, you folks owe me a drink if I get in, because I won't be able to afford one.

[Nepenthe]

The interview went pretty well with several good moments and no screwups, so we'll see. Wals, Monty, you folks owe me a drink if I get in, because I won't be able to afford one.

You'll be able to afford THE one. Every year or so. Which is why doctoral student/doctoral student romances are so common - you're both so skint it's not embarrassing.

[Walsingham]

I think you can be fairly confident about getting that drink.

 

BTW, if you blow people up in New Vegas, do the bits ever come down? I used about eight blocks of plastique to give a 'certain' bald dude a sudden case of death, and I'm very much afraid that he's gone into orbit.

[Syraxis]

Went to the gym after a three day rest; it's always difficult after a pause.

 

Looking into getting my license expanded to cover motorcycle use for after I graduate (plan on doing cross country route). Also reading up on maintenance.

[Tigranes]

Wals, normally the bits come down, but for that particular case, I never got the corpse either. Later, I discovered that offing him the 'normal' way does let you, well, wear his nice dress and parade around.

[Nightshape]

Wrote some code at work, got paid for it.

 

Came home.

 

Wrote more code, didn't get paid for it.

[Calax]

Got called by both my parents. One discussed my going home and was basically pretty aminable, then my dad called with

 

"Haven't talked to you for a while! Everything ok?"

I told him about my test and my job search and spent 8 minutes trying to stop him from giving advice and going off on a diatribe about how burdened he is about me not "Really hunting" for that job... Finally just asked "are you going to stop or am I going to have to hang up?" and he said "lets hang up, bye" and ended it.

 

Kinda frustrating when about all I get from my dad is an opinion and advice based around something he barely understands.

[Monte Carlo]

Wait until you become a father, things will become clearer.

[Calax]

I can understand being concerned, but launching into a lecture every time we talk (the same lecture that I've heard 18 times) is sorta kinda annoying. And yes, it's the SAME LECTURE EVERY SINGLE TIME, with the same five major points that he launches into never really paying attention to what I'm saying at all.

[Nepenthe]

I can understand being concerned, but launching into a lecture every time we talk (the same lecture that I've heard 18 times) is sorta kinda annoying. And yes, it's the SAME LECTURE EVERY SINGLE TIME, with the same five major points that he launches into never really paying attention to what I'm saying at all.

Maybe you aren't saying anything worthwhile?

 

Just throwing that out there...

 

Kind of related:

 

I just held a lecture for 25 stone-faced exchange students. None of my questions were answered. It was kind of like talking to a toilet wall by myself for an hour and a half. Meh.

Edited February 16, 2011 by Nepenthe

[Walsingham]

Got a card from my dad saying he feels proud of me. Very peculiar feeling. Not sure if I've been wanting him to say that all these years, or if Hollywood has just drummed it into me that I SHOULD have been wanting it.

 

Learning about marine engineering today. Also made mango, apple, blood orange, and carrot jam. Not sure how the latter is going to trun out, but I had all this fruit and veg about to go off, so in it goes.

Edited February 16, 2011 by Walsingham

[Rosbjerg]

Am becoming increasingly worried at the lethargy in modern society.. A school just started financially rewarding classes who attend school to battle absence (which had reached an overall 26%) - one should keep in mind that students are already getting 1000$ each month for going to school.

 

Also, saw a documentary about the state of some of the worst high schools in Denmark (our schools are divided into different areas - science, language, buisness etc - the worst are generally those that deals simply with sales and being a sales-clerk.)

Anyway, students in some of these schools couldn't, age og 17-19, say what 70% of a hundred was or what 9x5 is.. jeez.. Our overall standard in subject are usually in the top 10s, what the **** happened here?

[Malcador]

Realized that I end up doing work simply because I've nothing better to do. Although to be honest, most of the work at home is just reading poorly documented code, or code with misleading documentation hah.

 

Probably should find a hobby I suppose. And a 5 day weekend starting tonight.

Edited February 16, 2011 by Malcador

[Gfted1]

Anyway, students in some of these schools couldn't, age og 17-19, say what 70% of a hundred was or what 9x5 is.. jeez.. Our overall standard in subject are usually in the top 10s, what the **** happened here?

 

Thats very surprising to me. In my mind, Europe is usually an example of how education should be taught. My fifth grade daughter is already learning pre-algebra, a topic that wasnt tackled until the freshman year of high school back in my day.

[Nepenthe]

Anyway, students in some of these schools couldn't, age og 17-19, say what 70% of a hundred was or what 9x5 is.. jeez.. Our overall standard in subject are usually in the top 10s, what the **** happened here?

 

Thats very surprising to me. In my mind, Europe is usually an example of how education should be taught. My fifth grade daughter is already learning pre-algebra, a topic that wasnt tackled until the freshman year of high school back in my day.

I think the key difference that makes our education better is that we learn to not treat Europe as a single entity.

 

And to be less facetious, we have award-winning education systems here (ahem, Finland) and countries that probably have GNPs smaller than what the education budget in this 5 million inhabitant country is.

Edited February 16, 2011 by Nepenthe

[Gfted1]

Youre just trying to trick me. Its common knowledge that everything East of Maine but West of Russia is in fact Europe.

 

Kidding aside, these Google maps seem to include Demark in Europe.

[Hurlshort]

In all my years of teaching, the one thing I've learned is that the education system has little to do with student success. It's all about the parent community.

[Rosbjerg]

Kidding aside, these Google maps seem to include Demark in Europe.

 

Heh, he wasn't arguing against Denmark being in Europe - has arguing against the concept of arriving at European generalizations given data from a single European country.

 

Thats very surprising to me. In my mind, Europe is usually an example of how education should be taught. My fifth grade daughter is already learning pre-algebra, a topic that wasnt tackled until the freshman year of high school back in my day.

 

It is surprising (but keep in mind that this is worst case, not average) and frankly worrying, if the trend should precede.. the problem is, imho in itself, the overall direction that my society is taking - where we seem to want a decrease in spending, yet still demand the same quality service. We then get frustrated when, against all odds, efficiency falls as money is taken away and no effort went into trying to make better use of the limited capital.

 

we have award-winning education systems here (ahem, Finland) and countries that probably have GNPs smaller than what the education budget in this 5 million inhabitant country is.

 

You also treat teachers with much more respect than we do, which is so important that I can not stress it enough to parents around me.. This is something that we really need to learn from both Americans and Finland. Teachers are permitted extremely slackness here and parents are permitted to question and criticize teachers in very damaging ways. As hurlshot says "the one thing I've learned is that the education system has little to do with student success. It's all about the parent community." - and this is more true than most Danish parents wish to realize I think. A community that supports and positively interacts with a school, helps to breed confident in the authority of the teachers in the kids. And kids need to respect the authority of teachers, or they won't know what 4x9 is when they reach adulthood. At the same time however, kids also need to learn when to question authority - because in my opinion this is was is lacking most in some of the best schools of America, the students seem more interested in doing a test right, rather than thinking outside the box - which in the end won't help their country at all. In this regard some Danish students are far ahead, unfortunately at the expense of rather basic curricula.

[Calax]

I am debating changing my major away from Physics into history.

 

Starting to feel like I picked my major for the wrong reasons (was mildly interested in stars and knew that Physics was better for me in terms of getting a job), while History is sort of a passion (I'd jump for military history... probably focus would be on Japan and/or Chinese conflicts).