chat, feelings, and random discussion thread

[hyena]

nf: random.

yesterday i demonstrated my presentation on the subject of inequality and happiness (duh) in a lunch seminar at my home institution, and "smashing success" is a gross understatement. quite pleased with that. but life is a climb to unexpected heights, and it's always lonely at the top.

in response to a very feel-good message of congratulations from my head of department, i made the stupidest typo ever: i wanted to write "scopriamo lunedì", which means "we will discover on monday", in reference to the fact that the presentation has to be given in an international conference and we will discover if it runs smoothly with a public of specialists as it did with a public of non-specialists. but i was half-asleep and wrote "scopiamo lunedì", which means "we will fuck on monday". i like him a lot so it must have been a freudian slip. i didn't get any reaction to this grand plan yet.

anyway, tomorrow i have to give another presentation, this time on a different theme altogether (industrial districts), in the context of a conference in memory of my father. i also have to give an eulogy. neither is even remotely ready, i have a plane to catch at 4.40pm, and i honestly cannot stand, since i slept about 11 hours in the past 96. then on thursay it's back here and final refinements to the paper before "fucking on monday".

it's also quite cold.

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

^ Hahaha so are you going to get lucky?

Hope the presentation will be fine .

 

[La Rocque]

Everything is beautiful

 

[Kovenant84]

Wow, quite the typo, Hyena

Hope everything winds up ok, though. Take some time out for sleep. I wound up sleeping most of yesterday, and I feel much better because of it. Although I was also feverish that morning, so perhaps it's all relative.

~kov.

 

[Taliesin]

I have the 4th best exam in electrotechnics out of 72
Bad news is, only the first 3 passed.. it's just ridiculous. I can pass later by an additional oral exam, but it's still pissing me off.

I just wish elitism was at times spontanously fatal. My life would be so much easier, in so many ways..

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

holy crap! Damn now that is bad luck! Poor Tallesin, what was yer grade?

 

[Siren]

@Taliesin: that's wrong in so many ways. have you people ever considered riot as an option?

 

[KitKat]

NF: Exhausted.
Just got back of Dt's gig in Mtl.. Awesome, as usual ! They were as happy to be here than the crowd I guess... Maybe some pics later! \m/
New York City tomorrow morning yay!

 

[Taliesin]

@Taliesin: that's wrong in so many ways. have you people ever considered riot as an option?

It sounds more tempting every day. Our Dean (if that is the right term ) knows about it and is pissd off as well. We'll see what he can change about it and then maybe there'll be a riot after all

 

[Kovenant84]

It sounds more tempting every day. Our Dean (if that is the right term ) knows about it and is pissd off as well. We'll see what he can change about it and then maybe there'll be a riot after all

I was absolutely shocked by what you said about only the first 3 passing, until I read it was electronics. I second your motion of elitism.

In my first electronics class, out of about 20 people, the top 4-5 got in the mid 70s to mid 80s, the next 10 or so got around a 50, and the lowest 4-5 got in the teens. Guess which bracket I was in...

Turns out, it was part of the mentality of the EE professors to grade ridiculously harshly to cut down the number of people who made it into later years, due precisely to that elitism. Pissed me off to no end. I know I did poorly, but I knew a lot of people who wound up doing badly who did not deserve to.

~kov. (The former EE.)

 

[marduk1507]

@Tal: Its quite the same here (which is of no help to you, I know, but still...) - technical universities and colleges here seem to accept applications from so many students only to have some trash to throw out every semester. But there is no way the 4th out of 72 could be called trash. Its outrageous.

I was lucky that the college I graduated from did the throwing out part at the very beginning - the entrance exams. There were about 200 applicants and only the first 8 of those who passed were admitted. I was the lucky no. 8.

 

[hyena]

today: royal fuckup at work. HUGELY royal fuckup.
the joys of not sleeping.

 

[Kenneth R.]

fuckin EE, i know exactly what you guys are on about! This is my final semester as an EE major, and I'm determined to graduate

 

[Kovenant84]

Dude, if you make it through in one piece, I have to respect that. It wasn't my thing at all, but it was still damn hard.

~kov.

 

[La Rocque]

I'll be headed to Millvale aka Pittsburgh to see DT for the third time on this tour in a few hours
I was going to attend some DT shows in the midWest but going to pass at this time as
I don't want to bump into a forum member who has a problem with me, just
because I asked to her to a concert last summer, don't want to ruin my DT/UM pristine reputation and read some more of that stalking nonsense plus she's always dissin' folks -

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

today: royal fuckup at work. HUGELY royal fuckup.
the joys of not sleeping.

che pasa?

Scopiamo Venerdi?

I'll be headed to Millvale aka Pittsburgh to see DT for the third time on this tour in a few hours
I was going to attend some DT shows in the midWest but going to pass at this time as
I don't want to bump into a forum member who has a problem with me, just
because I asked to her to a concert last summer, don't want to ruin my DT/UM pristine reputation and read some more of that stalking nonsense plus she's always dissin' folks -

Lucky bastard, 3 DT shows... damn ye're lucky :Smug: .

So I guess we'll never know who that other forum member is, will we?

This just came to my mind, but are ye a guy or a girl?


Anyway, is EE that difficult? We have a lot of those in here, and really good ones hehe. . Education is really cheap here anyway, and if ye know yer stuff ye'll manage quite well .

 

[hyena]

che pasa?

Scopiamo Venerdi?

Haha, no, nothing related to fucking this time. More of the fucking up variety.

Incidentally, I'm listening to "Punish Nintendo" live.

Picture this.

Today. 5pm. Hyena and five guys.

Guy one. Hyena's direct boss. Average good guy, if a communist.
Guy two. A researcher from another department. Ok guy, quite smart, slightly awkward socially.
Guy three. Hyena's head of department, of "we will fuck on monday" fame. Wonderful piece of work, in all senses.
Guy four. Head of the whole research area. Laid-back, accessible guy. A bit of a snake oil vendor, but a successful one.
Guy five. Real big shot. One of the 5 board members of the bank. Pleasant with an edge. Cutting edge, as it were. Fine piece of work too.

Context: Hyena is supposed to brief guys 2 to 5 on a conference that she and guy 1 have been organizing alongside a bunch of international institution. She's supposed to really know her stuff; after all, she was in the organizing committee, and she also wrote a paper (an ok paper). And since guy 3 and 4 are attending, they should know about what is happening in detail. Guy 5 is not attending (fuck me, would have remedied my fuckup if he were), but he wanted to know.

Start of the story. The topic of the conference is the economics of happiness, so it sounds a bit silly, and it is easily the stuff of jokes. At some point, guy 2 and 5 start volleying back and forth with impressively amazing literary references about the theme of happiness. They quote to each other a sonnet from the fifteenth century more or less completing each other's lines in a random, fascinating way. Hyena wants to give a standing ovation, just sighs and comments "How wonderful".

Then she thinks: hey, i want to play too. Occasion is served quite immediately. Guy 5 mentions something from the Gospel about happiness not belonging to this Earth. Hyena makes the home run quoting the "[SIZE=-1]He who follows me has eternal life and the hundredfold here below", because after all apologetics is her strong suit and she's spent some 7 years meditating the passage... and completes the style exercise with a reference to the "hordes of immanentists spawn by this line to this day" (to which, incidentally, she belongs, but didn't say).

All being well, she cracks a couple of successful jokes and is feeling in a peculiar "Hey! Look at me! No hands!" way. Playing with the big leagues. International superstar and all. Knows stuff! Can make friends in high places! And, especially, might get people who actually make sense interested in her conversation. New friends ahoy!

Well, just no.

The conversation switches back to the topic at hand, ie the conference.

Bigshot guy asks the difference between guy A's (one of the conference speakers) approach and guy B's (another one) approach.

Hyena assuredly proclaims that guy A is a sociologist and guy B is an economist, with all the attached differences. Everyone looks at Hyena asking mutely "Are you stupid?". Bigshot guy says: but not at all. And proceeds to lecture Hyena, who was supposed to know everything about the conference, about the contributions offered to economic science in the past 20 years by guy A, who always was an economist, and the contributions made in sociology by guy B, who always was a sociologist. Hyena does not have the presence of mind to say "Of course, you're right, I was confusing them", but aptly comments "I want to disappear". Honestly, everyone knew. But I had my economic history all fucked up. I, the avowed specialist. Don't even know who the fuck we invited - well, of course I knew about their papers, but I had no clue as to their background, which is something that you just can't ignore in such a contest.

Well, guy 5 makes fun of hyena, in a "he, he, you slipped" kind of way. hyena laughs despite herself because he's a fun kind of guy anyway. but it was a royally reputation-killing moment.

And I'm back to the little league field, humiliated and scorned.

[/SIZE]

 

[Taliesin]

I have lots of respect for the Electronic Engineers, too. I just cant get my head around Electronics the way I can with other stuff. The most basic of example would be why the tensions in any given mash in any given network sum up to 0. It's just a fact, it always works.. and I will never understand why :Smug:

 

[afz902k]

Well I recently dropped out of electronics, mostly a decision based on choice though. Now, I'm getting into some IT Major which is amusingly called "Computer Engineering", though It doesn't really have anything to do with design of computers, instead it is more about programming and networking, and that kind of stuff.

Oh and hyena, don't worry, It is lonely at the top anyway.

Taliesin, if you are talking about Kirchhoff's loop rule, It is because of the principle of conservation of energy!, if it wasn't Zero, it would be possible to build a machine that would perpetually pass a current in a circle around the circuit, which is not possible.

 

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

@ Hyena: poor hyena!!!

So you confuesd the guys backgrounds huh? That must have been terrible! Damn that sucks, I know how ye feel, it happens to me a lot, but thankfully enough not in such an important context.

What always happens to me is that there are some older people talking about something, I think "This is cool I'll join in," but when I join in I always kick it out of the stadium and everyone just stares at me with that face like "Areyou dumb?."

Damn I hate that face , especially when it's coming from a relative. :zombie:

Anyway, I'm sure you'll make it back to "the big leages" in no time, considering the titles of the conferences ye make I know ye're a smart girl .

About EE, well it seems fun but I not for me hehe. My grandpa (RIP) was an EE, and he actually created (with about 3 other guys), "opened" is actually a better word, the faculty of EE in some university in Canada, and he was the boss and all. I'll ask my father exactly what he did, don't rememeber well :Smug: , but it was something quite big *feels proud*.