Geek on Two Wheels

If found, please return to Common Sense along with a note reminding of soon-to-be-due assignments and projects.

Thanks.

I put up my new NSMB calendar today. Strangely enough, adding these 6 sheets of stapled glossy paper made my room feel more homely than, well, ever.

Ever since I moved, I’ve never bothered to make the effort to make the room feel like mine. I try to make it comfortable, yes, but have done nothing in the ways of adding that touch of personality to the room. Why? Mostly because ever since the last half of gr. 12, I’ve become some what of a night owl, often randomly going out on late-night drives, sometimes even across town (for a chocolate smoothie.) This continued well into university until I began spending less time being out at night, but ridiculous amount of time on campus. Basically, I was never home.

Naturally, since I hadn’t bothered to decorate my own room, my mom will often do this for me, and always randomly. As much as I do like the greenery and two of the stuffed animals, everything else is either freaky or annoying. Especially the Miffy clock. God, why Miffy?

Hopefully, this putting up calendar thing is a step towards actually claiming my space as mine. Now all I need are some of those sticky things for putting up more bike posters…

I just realized today that I signed up to participate in a psychology experiment on the Monday for counting towards my mandatory research participation grade for PSYC 100. What I failed to realize when I made the appointment is that Monday is reading break. Since I must give at least 24 hours notice to cancel an appointment, I must now be on campus on Monday to take part in a short experiment.

God, I’m stupid…

Not that it actually matters, really, since I have midterms on the Wednesday and Thursday, on top of at last three assignments. I’ve so far managed to finish catching up on PSYC, only to realize that the upcoming midterm for the class is actually a day later than my LING 130 midterm, which I’ve yet to begin studying for. The material is easy, of course, but it’s still highly annoying.

This past Friday, instead of the usual common room hangouts, Missy and I took a trip to B.C. Place Stadium for the annual Outdoor Adventure Show. Swag were obtained, gear were ogled at, and even a little bit of test riding. Oh yeah, and we left with significantly lighter wallets and many more bags than we went with.

As good of a break as it was, it was a little dissapointing overall as there definitely wasn’t as much energy as I remember. There weren’t any exhibition by factory riders, the bike track set-ups weren’t very elaborate, and far too few bike manufacturers actually attended. Word on the internet is that, well, people agree that this has been a sucky year.

On the plus side, I did pick up a pair of these crazy Shaka Shoes, a water proof shell jacket at 20% off (although I had to pay tax on top of it), plus some eye-candy in dead-tree format, as well as a deck of cards that’s both educational and can be used to make horrible puns. Knotty cards are awesome.

What’s more, I also got the chance to try out some of the new 2006 bikes from Norco. It’s amazing how good 6″ of suspension feels, even when it hasn’t been properly tuned to your weight.

After the show, it was off to dinner, then back to school for some non-LAN gaming goodness.

All in all, it was a good friday.

Three hamsters, to be exact.

For some reason, my mom decided today that it was a good idea to aquire hamsters from someone that was getting rid of them because a litter was accidentally born, without prior consultation with anybody except my brother. IMO, all parties involved should never be allowed to take care of rodents of any kind until they go through an extensive rodent-care course.

Here are some fun facts about hamsters:

• Hamsters are nocturnal, and, unlike rats, will stay that way; sleeping hamsters aren’t very fun
• Despite being furry and cute-looking, hamsters are not very sociable, and most don’t like being handled
• Hamsters bite
• Hamsters bite each other
• In fact, except for one species of hamster, the Dwarf Campbell’s Russian, they become so solitary and territorial that keeping more than one inside the same cage will lead to injury and death

So, now we have three hamsters of undetermined sex living inside a home made cage of chicken wire and cardboard, already fighting amongst each other, making a lot of noise, and stinking the place up. Alright, so I don’t mind the latter two very much, but the fun doesn’t stop there.

Remember when I said all parties involved in the transaction of this trio of rodents need a metaphorical wack to the head? Well, this goes doubly so for the original owners, who: one, failed to prevent accidental pregnancy and production of a litter, and; two: constructed an entirely inappropriate habitat for the rodents. It defies description, really. This so-called cage consists of a large box, made from chicken wire, supported by cardboard and logs, and padded on the bottom by styrofoam. Yes, styrofoam. Big pieces of styrofoam form the floor and housing for these poor critters, and, needless to say, it’s a big white mess. Aside from block styrofoam, are also crumpled sheets styrofoam that are piled in one end of the cage.

Oh, the fun doesn’t stop here. My mom also aquired two hamster aquarium-type cages for properly housing the critters. This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that these things were made for dwarf hamsters. What we have are Syrian hamsters. Syrian hamsters are about ten times the size of dwarf hamsters. Not to mention that, naturally, the cages are far too small to even house these rodents.

For the record, I now count five instances of fighting amongs the family’s latest addition—I can hear them downstairs, from my room, even with the door practically closed.

Looks like I’m going to spend tomorrow morning convincing my mom to at least try and get rid of one of the rodents, and, if not, be ready to spend quite a few bucks so I can take care of them properly. Lots of bitching too, of course.

• Car football
• Indoor car football

• Awesome footworks
• Understanding Emo
• Bouncy!

Well, I’ve done it — I’ve signed up for hosting with Dreamhost and moved my website there. New DNS data should have propagated far enough by now, so everything is back to normal.

I’m sure a good portion of you would have seen this link by now via another blog, but I feel that it needs to be highlighted: The Effective Emailer.

After trying out apa.cls with LaTeX and some more tweaking, I’ve finally got it to work under both LaTeX and LyX. Turns out I also needed apacite, and it had to be put under the LaTeX styles as opposed to the standard folder for teTeX packages.

Now lets hope that I’ll actually write those papers on time.