3MF

Desperate for a degree

Just as it happened last semester, many people failed to pay their tuition on time so i got to swoop in a add some freshly opened classes to my schedule. At this point i just need to take anything that will help me get my degree and not interfere with my work schedule. Unfortunately for me, this means i wound up with nature writing and the native peoples of North America. I felt nauseous when i added that nature writing class to my academic shopping cart on the registration web site. This darn degree better be worth it.

Murderball

I saw the movie Murderball this weekend. It's yet another documentary that follows athletes as they try to achieve national recognition. This time the sport is wheelchair rugby. Unlike movies such as Spellbound and Word Wars where most of the amusement comes from the absurdity of the competition and the participants, this movie takes seriously the sport of quad rugby. The game is played with two teams of four quadriplegic participants of varying ability. They move around in especially armored wheelchairs to get control of a ball and take it passed a goal line before a competitor can smash the ball out of their hands. The story of the team's attempt at gold in the Athens Paralympic Games is broken up with accounts from each of the team members on how they wound up in their chair. It's an eye-opening glimpse into the lives of those with disabilities that doesn't try to elicit pity, but rather tries to earn your respect. I strongly recommend you see it.

The Chronic - WHAT - cles of Narnia

In case you missed Saturday Night Live last night, you have to check out the SNL Digital Short Lazy Sunday (aka the Chronic - WHAT - cles of Narnia). It's the funniest thing i've seen on SNL in a long time.

Christmas cookies

This weekend i made Christmas cookies with my mother and sister. It's something we've done for the past few year. We're no experts or anything; we just cook up some cookies and glob frosting on them with all the spoons and knives we can find. We usually have a little competition as to who can make the best decorated cookie. We judge the winner by seeing which ones are the first to go at the Christmas day family gathering. Here you can see the results.

In the middle there, you can see the snowman i made wearing a purple suit and a green tie. After my sister saw that one, she made the one that looks like Shrek two over. I tried to counter with Mr Incredible there in the middle, but i still think i like Dawn's Shrek the best.

Traditions like this really get me in the mood for the holidays. That, and not having to work.

Calc exam prep

I spent this weekend going through my calc book doing an doing all the problems at the end of the chapters we covered in preparation for tomorrow morning's final. My teacher is really proud of just how hard he has made the exam. He guaranteed that our grades would not go down any more more than 2 "levels" (B+ to B-). We do have the possibility of bringing our grade all the way to up an A (although that has apparently never happened before). I really want to tick this test's ass. I've learned all i can this weekend. Now it's off to bed.

The end of my productive year

Tonight i had my last writing class. Since we won't be having a final, i can cross that off my schedule. Now i have just two classes left to wrap up next week. I wasn't sure i would be up to taking three classes at first. I only signed up for the writing class after i i checked out RateMyProfessor and saw that the teacher was an easy grader. The rumors proved to be true and i got through without too much worry.

I still have a good chance at getting A's in my calc and bio classes as well. In fact, my calc teacher posted the current class grades next to the last 4 digits of each students social security number. I spent the next five minutes making predictions as to which grade went to which person. I was happy to see that i had the best percentage going into the final but it's still not a sure thing at this point. I used Apple Grapher to determine that i can loose up to 18 points on the final and still come away with a solid A in my bio class. That's going to be a close one too.

Next week Monday is my final day of work this year. I start my vacation which lasts until January 4th. I don't have anything special planned; i just had to use up my remaining vacation days. It will be nice to have extra time to take care of Christmas shopping and perhaps get some book scratched off my to-read list.

My vacation from school and work is almost here. I can't wait.

Matthew on Rails

Encouraged by Dan Benjamin's tutorial, i finally got around to installing everything i need to run Ruby on Rails on my mew Mac. Everything went smoothly except for the curl calls which would occasionally never finish. When that happened, i just grabbed the file with the appropriate ftp command sequence.

The guide made it really easy to install everything. I just wish there were a Part 2 that made it easy to configure and test the installation. After spending some time bouncing back and forth between Google and the command line, i got everything up and running. The lighttpd had good documentation though i haven't found an easier way to restart the server other than kill-ing it. I grabbed YourSQL to get at the mySQL data. Then i started following the tutorial on the Ruby on Rails wiki to make sure everything was working.