My life's Adventure

My ambitious plans for our extra room.

I want to turn my office into a studio. This means I need to clean it up and put the music equipment in there and still have room for a musician to play. I paid for the rest of the 26 channel mixer and brought it home today. I have it on the desk next to me now. I have read the first few sections of the manual.

Because of this recent resergence of my musical career I am thinking of not studying an extra course in statistics or or legal studies but instead taking a music course.

There is one available in ethnomusicology on Monday late afternoons. This might allow me to wake up late Mondays around noon then attend the music course then stay up over night and attend my intellectual property course on Tuesday mornings then sleep at about 2 PM Tuesdays if I have nothing else to do Tuesday's. Then Wednesdays would be long days but I woulld sleep very early Thursday mornings. I can also wake up early Mondays and sleep early Monday nights. These two variations would be my basic schedule approaches this fall.

Helped R buy an X-Box.

I went out to Future Shop and bought R an X-Box system. His broke down. I got him a three year warranty. He will pay me back for this and we have done this sort of deal before for his computer.

I may stay up late today from yesterday and sleep in the day tomorrow.

I took my meds but if I don't become tired I will stay up and get some quiet reading done. I will also watch some sci-fi TV show DVD's. The only things I have to do today is attend a career counselor appointment at 9 AM and drop in on the union office for ten minutes. The career services and union office are beside each other in the same hallway at school. Then I could take a certain bus and go to the music store and pay off the mixer and come home and sleep. I will miss the Ph.D. defence but I don't have to go to that I had just though it might be a good idea. I might have to go to things like this if I was in grad school but for now I don't "have" too. This was one of the points to be thought about in relapse prevention. Determining the balance between "wants" and "shoulds". I will be really burnt out later this morning but can sleep all day and then be up early on Wednesday for my training course in non-violent crisis intervention. Another thing keeping me up tonight besides my desire for some quiet time is that today is a pay day.

Web surfing as window shopping.

I spent hours on-line yesterday window shopping at an electronics store web site. I was shopping for a laptop mostly but the prices are too too high. I also just looked at things and the prices. Besides needing a new laptop the only thing that really was planned recently was some sort of new cell phone. There are some cell phone walkie talkies with free text messaging, and nation wide walkie talkie service for one dollar a day when you use the walkie talkie. They also can be paid as you go. We presently have two cell phones with voice plans and one PDA cell phone with only a data plan. The PDA data plan costs 25$ a month. One cell phone which we never use costs about 25 $ every three months. The main cell phone we use costs me 35$ a month but it is on contract and that contract ends at the end of this year. So I am planning on some sort of change of phones and looking for a new phone and this Sanyo 2300 flip phone may be the thing. But looking at these bills it may actually be just as expensive to buy a Palm Treo and pay 85$ a month. No I must be doing some funny math because the Treo would be 30 dollars more plus tax and would have to be on a three year contract. Perhaps a Treo can be bought out right for 500$ and put on a simliar plan to paying for both the PDA I use now and the cell phone I use now. That means I would need a plan costing about 50 dollars to include the tax of ten dollars. There may be such a plan at one of the major carriers.

Scored another A in a law course

The professor emailed me my exam score which he said was excellent 317/350 and combined with my essay grade I should be getting an 84% grade which means A at my school. I really wanted to celebrate. But did not really do that. I did not work much on school work today after about 5 am or so. So I put in about three hours general studies this morning. I also put in about half an hour reading something for my intelllectual property law course. For statistics I surfed the school web site and may go to one of my former TA's PhD. defence later this morning at 10:30 AM. I also want to pay off my mixer and bring it home later today. Today is my last pay day for my summer teaching assistant work. The A in public law means I could also be asked to TA that course this year. I may just stay up all night and sleep at noon tomorrow.

My smoking cessation worked for a few hours then my boss called.

I was ok with smoking every hour for about three hours this morning. I got a little stressed out by using the computer to chat at yahoo. Then I was reading the relapse prevention article again and my boss called. This boss knows nothing of my mental health issues except for what he can figure out. I never tell him anything about this and other workers I tell about my mental health issues I ask them to keep it private. So when my boss called with some work and I was reading an addictions medical research book, I grew very stressed out and lit up right away. For the rest of the day I smoked as usual. My plan is to cut down for two weeks until Sunday September 12th and then try nicotine gum on the Monday. I was not smoking much at the computer later on as I surfed an electronics store web site. I was also stressed out trying to sell my broken computer over the Internet this morning and over lunch.

Saw my psychiatrist today.

I saw my psychiatrist today. I said I could be someone with schizophrenia and be respected in the community and responsible. He agreed that I was doing great. I was sort of dressed in freaky carpenter pants. a fishing vest, and an army floppy hat. I was wearing the pants because I was going to work on the bathroom this morning but did not. I wore the fishing vest because it has lots of pockets to carry my cell phone, PDA and agenda book. I also carry a first aid kit and CPR mask in the vest and a USB key. I was wearing the hat for sun protection as I am sun sensitive. I asked my doctor if risperadol caused sun sensitivity and he said no it does not. I guess there are some side effects that risperadol does not cause. I have a career counselor appointment at 9 am so should get to sleep soon. I woke up at 2 AM today so have been up almost 22 hours now. I should sleep. I need to take my medication and get my wife to wake up and take her meds for the night.

Smoking cessation.

I was just reading about gender. I woke up trying to capitalise on the school feelings of yesterday. So I began studying. I read some very interesting stuff about gender in social situations. I read about tokenism and ascribed characteristics like gender, race, and age. I reflected on my use of these characteristics both at the BBQ on Saturday night and within the school workforce and my other work environments. I then read a relapse prevention model in a medical research book. I stopped smoking when I read this book. I reflected on my non drinking and my non drug abuse. I thought of a psychologist I had worked with in the early nineties.

I saw this person recently in the community both at an event I could expect to see the person at namely a recovery forum, and I had seen the person at something else nanely a protest. I had not asssociated left wing politics with this person but I do know that the psychologist is a concerned individual. Finding this person at the protest was also chance because the person was not there for their own reasons but because of their relative being there. The psychologist was not there to express politicial views. The psychologist was not *working* at the protest which was a squat of an abandoned house.

I have not smoked now for about half an hour. I will try today to cut down my smoking.

The BBQ was ok.

I did not feel too bad at the BBQ. I met some new people and talked a lot. I brought food. I came home and talked with my wife. She went to sleep and I woke her up at 4 AM so she could take her pills. I am feeling pretty good about school today. I probably won't be working as a legal studies TA. If I am it will be as a TA marking the introduction to private law course where I scored an A in 2003. My essay in that course examined a forced medications case. I will though probably be working as a statistics TA. I spent another hour on Saturday morning studying probability basics like Bayes formula and conditional probability. I have really known this probability stuff since 1981 when I was first living with the schizophrenia label and studying in school in my last year at McMaster. I failed my second year in mathematics that year. I did not try mathematics again until 1984 and then not much until 1997 before finally graduating with my B.Math degree in 2002. I think my future is in math though and this is something that is genuinely me. It is my "self" as a statistician that I have discovered. In fact I am very in touch this morning with that back to school as a math student essence. This will mean fall weather cooler temperatures and other feelings I associate with my school and the fall term. I will aim for two A+ marks this term as it may be my last term in legal studies. I have three school applications to make soon, one for law school, one for statistics graduate school, and one for legal studies graduate school.

Friends having a BBQ tonight.

I am just heading out to a BBQ. My friends who bought a house are having a BBQ in their large backyard.

Zulu medicine

I am watching a health show on TV about Sangomas studied by Dr. Kipppner a US researcher. The Sangoma is a Zulu spiritual healing doctor or shamin. It is interesting. My wife believes her problem is spiritual. This is apparently available at www.canada.com on the show Body and Health but my Mac can't access it right now.

Out of class hours for homework this fall term.

This school term coming up I have a third year course with three hours of lectures a week. I also have one hour lab per week for this course. So four hours total. Since it is a third year course the multiplier is three. Thus out of class time should be twelve hours a week. With thirteen weeks I need one hundred and fifty six hours out of class time. For September I need about three weeks worth of this or thirty six hours. I have so far this past week done one hour and then last week another hour. Since I want to have my out of class time for September done as soon as possible I count down from thirty six. September is three weeks of classes. Thus I now have thirty four hours left to study.

In my other course I have a three hour lecture per week. This will be most likely a two and a half hour lecture per week. Since this is a also a third year course the mutliplier is three. Thus out of class time should be seven and a half hours per week. With thirteen weeks this becomes ninety seven and a half hours out of class time for the course. I have put in five hours so far. Counting down September's hours which will be twenty two and a half hours, I have seventeen aand a half hours still to go. I have now read everything required for the third week. The first week has no assigned readings. I have not been able to locate the second week's reading and must buy the course's reading text for these. So my homework has begun for the fall term almost two weeks ago.

I updated my school home page.

I haven't updated my school web page in four years. I wasn't working too hard on the web back then. I did some more of that four year old page today according to the plan I had four years ago. I also updated it a bit and made it a bit more neutral. Visit it here http://chat.carleton.ca/~ptimusk/. I should still make links from my home page list of school courses to calendar course descriptions but that might wait until another day.

I did some union volunteering this morning in preparation for the up coming school year. I have been listening to the CBC locked out workers radio on labourstart. You can listen too on iTunes at http://www.live365.com/play/labourstart.

I won a Pepsi bowling bag.

I was buying pepsi at the 7-11 as is my usual habit and there were some pepsi workers entering people in a pepsi contest. I entered and won a Reebok, pepsi branded classic bowling bag. It is perfect for holding smaller school books.

My sleep is off my plan again.

I had planed on sleeping at 8 am yesterday morning and going out to a green party event, Thursday evening. I had to stay up and buy smokes though. I stayed up and went to school and took back about 8 books to the library. I also got a course outline for a music course. I also bought a used textbook for my stochastics course. I am now this morning going to start reviewing basic probability and statistics in this book. Also yesterday when I bought the smokes I paid a little more for our new PA mixer. I owe less than 200 dollars for it now. I slept at 3 PM Thursday and woke up at 1 AM this morning Friday morning.

I met other TA's in our union at our summer meeting.

I attended the summer meeting of our union membership. I met TA's from China studying in chemistry. I met a new Law TA. I also met a geography TA. I talked with all these people for a few minutes each. I also met the usual union members and we chatted a little. I took minutes at the meeting and then we had a BBQ.

Our usual role playing game night.

We changed who would be dungeon master but still played Dungeons and Dragons last night. I have been playing this with these friends since September 1998. I met them through another schizophrenic musician/mathematican, H, who met through a musicians wanted add at a local vintage instruments store.

Our air conditioner was not set up properly this summer.

I don't really know much about air conditioners. I did not hook up a hose to drain it and it leaked on the living room floor this summer. We are not needing it much these days so I am running the fan to dry out the living rooom. I cleaned up a bunch of water soaked newspapers the other day. We are behind on the dishes too. They tested our fire alarms today in our building. Ours is ok. They have to go in each apartment and test each alarm in the build so all day long we hear these beeps.

I was a little stressed out today.

I had to wake up with only a few hours sleep this morning. I needed to be at a union meeting to take minutes. I did this ok. I then needed to be at a self-help group meeting. I did this too. I then bought us groceries and have come home now to relax again. Tomorrow I am on call but then don't need to be anywhere unless there is a page. Also I have a BBQ and union meeting tomorrow but later in the afternoon. Then in the evening I will play Dungeons and Dragons with friends. But tomorrow is also accessibility day so I may attend some event.

I am really relaxed with the break in school work.

I am having a great time now that the summer term is ended. I am reading most of the day now. Our money is holding out not bad. I just have to report income today and will start to get to that this evening. I bumped into the president of the university today and joked with him a bit. I didn't know who he was at first and I was forward in a friendly way. I bought some on sale books and borrowed some books for my fall term course. I have two meetings tomorrow and a BBQ on Wednesday. I also volunteered ten hours today but was only on call and their were no calls. So I had yet another easy day. I took my laptop in for repairs and got some quotes on memory for the laptop which aren't too expensive and I can afford them perhaps.

I am just checking my schedule and applying for mathematics and statistics teaching assistant work again today.

I have just printed my tentative schedule. I leaning towards the stochastic processes course now. Based on this I will submit a TA schedule for the mathematics and statistics school today. I will have about a week to apply again with changes to my schedule. I have not yet heard about being hired as a legal studies TA but should hear about this soon. I have a career counselor appointment tomorrow and a union meeting Tuesday and Wednesday this week. I may got to campus today to use the library and take my laptop in to be looked at by the hardware repair services.

Doing a little bit of course changes

I am just this morning searching courses on the school's registration system. It looks like I am studying the course in intellectual property law for sure.

Volunteering today and tomorrow.

I will have volunteered about 34 hours at least this coming week and perhaps 44 hours if I also take an open shift on Wednesday. I am also volunteering at our self help group this week for at least two hours. I also this week will volunteer at my school union for perhaps 5 hours. I also will volunteer with the green party for perhaps 3 or 4 hours on Thursday evening at our school's green party club.

My laptop was recoverable.

The screen is broken on the laptop but I was able to hook it up to an external monitor. I was able to get all the saved email and all other documents copied off of it and into the Macintosh computer or stored on a USB 20 GB hard drive. So my back up techniques are ok. Maybe I could work in computer security. At least I seem to be able to secure my own computers; at least, as far as, saving data. I can do some type of data protection or consumer level data recovery. But one technique is not the whole pie.

I installed a new 60GB hard drive in the laptop and tried unsucessfully to install both WinXP and Debian Linux on the new 60GB hard drive.

Internet studies continue.

I read some more of the community networking book. I have completed the introduction for a second read. I read it first in the spring. I also read a demographic study of my cities high tech firms.

Bought some new jeans that actually fit.

I went downtown right after helping with the newspapers. I had to be at this department store just when it opened. The reason was that they gave the first 200 shoppers a 10$ gift certificate. There was also a jeans sale today. So I got two pairs of jeans. One pair are a carpenter style jeans. I like these style and they are different. I actually have lost weight and now fit into a smaller pair of jeans. I had been wearing the bigger size and they were always slipping and got all torn at the bottom. So now I am in a good fitting size. I also bought new underwear and some socks. I also bought us some new coke a cola glasses. I avoided buying any books or music and also avoided buying a camcorder and a new TV. These two electronic devices were on significant discounts today. But I avoided buying them because they would have been bought on credit.

I got the hard drive I bought in the mail on Friday. I also got an iLife 04 DVD and CD. I was able to install Garage Band, the Apple music making software. I also updated iPhoto to version 4.

My laptop screen was all that was broken. So I was able to run the laptop with an external monitor. I also got a USB 20 GB hard drive. I used the USB hard drive to get the data off the broken laptop. Things are fine here for computers.

I am just going out to buy tomatoes for supper. I will also buy toilet paper. I am going to be able to go by a toy store and buy a toy. The toy is a Barrel of Monkeys. It is for a nephew.

Reading a variety of books but concentrating on Internet studies.

I did some studies of the networked society by Manuel Castels in his book The Power of Identity. I also was reading some post studies to his epic study: The Information Age,whichThe Power of Identity is the second volume. I also read a basic Introduction to Time Series from an early edition of the Time Series course STAT4603 textbook. I borrowed a few books for the fall term yesterday. I was able to implement a back up process and have most of my files accessible again after my laptop broke down. I also just now after reading the newspapers for the past week or so read a statistical report on a study into substance abuse self help. I also read the beginning of an intellectual property law lecture and this covered patents.

I helped with the newspaper this morning.

I helped with the newspapers again this morning. I do not have any work in teaching right now but am applying to work as a teaching assistant in legal studies. Legal studies still feels novel for me and now that I have learned some law I can read more of the daily newspaper. I should find out about being hired next week in this work. Also next week I can apply again to be a teaching assistant in mathematics and statistics. I have no scheduled security work coming up. I did send a few emails last night to some union comrades. After my exam and a regular nine to five day I stayed up late.

Exam went well this afternoon.

My public law exam was not too too difficult. I know I passed and I think I may now have another A or at least B in another law course. Of course I won't know my mark for weeks now. I borrowed some books to prepare for the fall term. I am relaxed and at home now with the summer term studying and work now completed.

Stressful day passes by.

The most stresful part of my exam day had little to do with the exam and a lot to do with my schizophrenia. I woke up at about 9:30 this morning as planned. I went to turn on my laptop and found it broken on the floor. I had left it wired up and my wife had accidently knocked it off the coffee table. My messy apartment caused the accident. So I spent an hour dealing with this and was fairly relaxed and not angry. I emailed a few people who are doing important emails with me this week to let them know I would need emails resent. I am just now checking out my Palm and my back up CD's on my eMac. May be it is time to say goodbye to microsoft operating systems and use only linux and mac OS from here on in.

Quiet slow day studying.

I am having a slow day studying. I did watch the first ten minutes of the exam review lecture again. I then watched some lectures to learn the topics again. I ended up rereading almost the whole course notes today. I need to start memory jamming to get some things memorised well for tomorrow's exam.

Time management improving.

My time management has improved in this summer course. And my work tasks time management has also improved. I got my summer work done only two days later than was desirable by one supervisor in one course and the other courses work met the other supervisor's expectations. In simple terms I met the deadlines in one statistics course's teaching assistant work load. The other course was a bit late. I also am cramming days before the exam rather than the night before.

I have not quite read as much of our source books as I usually have done in these second year courses but I am doing well today studying the course notes. I hope to watch the exam review lecture tape again before noon today.

Yesterday's plan worked well. I went to the store and then only to the meeting at our self help group and only for an hour. I then came home and slept some 13 hours. I woke up this morning around 4 am and have basically been studying all morning. I also this morning got more bread and pop for our house.

I completed watching 60 hours of lectures early this morning.

I did it I watched all the lectures in time with my Sunday plan. I then did some chatting at Yahoo for a few hours. Then I began my notes review and case reading. I got the most important case read. This case concerning Quebec secession was covered in numerous lectures. But I only read that one case this morning. I also printed and read some articles for my fall term course. So I have lost out a few hours I could have spent studying public law on other studies.

I won't be fooled though by my present plan for the day. I was thinking that it is 11 AM I could easily go to school and borrow books for the fall term course, put up some posters for a union event, and then take a bus to my self help group for a meeting. But instead I think I will only go to this meeting in about an hour. I will spend the next hour doing a little recycling and get back to the books a bit. In fact the computer is wasting a lot of this time for me so I am going to shut down this computer.

Possible topic for graduate school in biostatistics

You may remember that I was keen on studying biostatistics a few weeks ago. Well this morning while taking a break from my public law course note review I picked up one of the books I borrowed on Biostatistics. This one is Chiang, Chin Long. An Introduction to Stochastic Processes and Their Applications (Huntington, NY: Robert Krieger, 1980). My topic idea is this: Statistical Risk Models for the Geographic Diffusion of Pandemics.

I am up in the late afternoon.

My sleep plan worked so far. I slept at about 7 AM and woke up at about 5 PM. I am studying tonight. I read a little more about gender and violence being mostly caused by males in all the world's societies and in animal species. It is because we must complete for many females whereas females only need one male. This relefects the biological property of many sperm and few eggs. This was an evolutionary biologists view in the book on gender I am reading.

I am just going out to buy some pop and eggs and also get my wife a chocolate bar. She cleaned our bathroom today. I need to take out the recycling.

I talked to everyone in my nuclear family yesterday.

I was able to talk to everyone in my nuclear family yesterday. I called my mom long distance to let her know we are financially ok this coming week.

I also talked to my dad using the internet application Skype. I talked about computers but then asked him about people he works with that I have known all my life. He said they were all well but did not have much information about the generation of kids who were my friends when young. I am the only one in this group with schizophrenia although the others do have mental illness problems of their own. This community was all based on my dad's workplace at the university.

I only talked with my biological brother by email and he is going to help me with the PA equipment expenses by at least buying my older PA power mixer for his own use. You may not know this but my brother and I are also musicians. We are though not at the moment making much money from this work.

My wife also talked to relatives yesterday. She was given permisson from her father to not attend a family reunion, because as she says, she is very uncomfortable in crowds.

I seem to have developed a shell of confidence for working in crowds but deep in my heart I have the same feelings about crowds and excessive social environments. This is also a disadvantage in terms of being a musician. But in fact, my present money making jobs are mostly people oriented jobs, and I in fact, am complimented on my people skills these days. I have come a long way from an isolated science student. But in fact, I still spend a great deal of time alone to recover from these excessive social environments. And I still make a great deal of social mistakes out there in the world of "others".

Studies progressing nicely, another lecture completed watched.

I guess I am cramming now. I watched lectures for the past two days now. Today ( meaning Sunday/Monday 20 hour day so far), I have watched two complete lectures or 5 hours of video. I was able to do some reading of our source books too. I also was able to make some notes as I do when I watch the lectures but I also made review notes today as I meantioned in the last post. I will now try to read some more and also try to watch another half of an unwatched lecture, before sleeping. If this continues Monday afternoon/evening I will be done all the unwatched lectures by Tuesday morning and then only have readings and review and will have done enough viewing of tapes.

I did manage to watch the final lecture today.

I did watch the new material in the final lecture, today. I also watched the half hour exam review at the end of the final lecture and got the main points on the exam into my brain. I then copied the professor's power points slides concerning topics on the exam for the first 3 of 24 lectures. So I am about 1/8 done this copying. This so far is about 40 or so slides. This will give me one long power point slide show with only the exam topics.

I still need to watch about three lectures and I will start that now as the clock strikes midnight. I will try to completely watch one lecture then do one more 8th of the review power point then sleep at 4 or 6 AM. I might also read a chapter or two of the source book this Monday morning.

I got to sleep at 11 PM last night but am staying up late tonight.

I did get to sleep as I planned last night. I woke up at about 8 am this morning. I am going around the clock one more time before my exam. My exam day will be basically a nine to five day on Thursday. This is the next big date on my calendar. The night before is another game night with Star Gate character creation most probable.

The weekend after is nothing special. The following week is busy with BBQ's, in fact three BBQ's. One for a union, one for a self help group and then one at some friends' house. I also have a board of directors meeting that week. And I have one volunteer shift that week during the day of Monday. The weekend of that week I have more volunteer shifts and the following Monday night too. I also have a psychiatrist appointment on Monday the 29th. Then the week is fairly quiet then labour day weekend we visit our mom in the country for some swimming and outdoor life in the country. I will chat with my mom and her roomate. Then I come home to a pre-school week where my TA union volunteer duties will be called upon.

I have to settle my course choices for the fall term before August 31st but most of the fees have now been paid. I will have to get books during the first week of September or the second week.

Then after the first couple of weeks of school my own TA duties may start in mathematics and statistics, but if I am hired as a legal studies TA, my TA duties could start much sooner. I find out about this new appointment on August 22nd of there abouts.

Going to sleep after a 20 hour day.

I need to get some more sleep so I am going to sleep I hope after a 20 hour day. I just need to take my meds and turn off all the appliances and then sleep.

I did some market shopping today.

I have only used our fruit and vegetable market a few times this year. Today I spent about 20$ on fruits and vegetables. I also bought our usual diet pepsi. I also bought some sandpaper for smoothing the bathroom wall where I had put polyfila. I also bought six face masks in case the sanding brings up polyfila dust into the air.

I ordered chicken for delivery. I also sold some computer parts for 18$ and spent about an hour with the guy buying this old motherboard and chip and RAM. He tested it and did a lot of inside the computer work. I am left with a decent case and a 20GB hard drive and floppy. As usual I felt robbed by selling something. I feel like I was taken advantage of in this deal. But this is a learned helplessness response. I did bargain for three extra dollars in the end. I can now buy a new motherboard, processor and RAM and put these inside this nice case I have left.

I had a quiet day studying.

I did a fair amount of lecture watching today. I watched about one and a half lectures today. This was about 3 hours of lectures. Basically I watched the indroductory lectures in the Charter section of the course. I also read a little of the source book.

R and I discussing the operating system wars.

R often needs my help with computers. He has another friend who helps him too. I sold him my copy of Win98. I had spent three or four hours installing Linux on his computer but then his other friend installed Win98. I was a little angry at this but I over came this feeling.

I am going to install WinXP and Debian Linux on a new 60GB hard drive for my IBM Thinkpad Laptop. This is my major computer project that I must complete before school starts.

My marking is done and another term passes by.

I am done the marking. I have fufilled all my duties in my teaching assistant work. I just need to print a hard copy of the marks and take the marked assignments back to school and I can come home and study my own course.

My plan will work fine.

I will be able to get the marking done this morning. I should also be able to watch some more lectures on tape and also today's broadcast. I am going to relax for about 15 more minutes. I need to eat something too as my last food has only been chips since that pizza last night at about 7:30 last night. I chatted at yahoo for a few fifteen minute sessions this morning. Just before making the pizza I was chatting there too. Just now people in the room were people just waking up for the day. The previous fifteen minute session was people going to sleep late. I am up since about noon yesterday. I hadn't planned on being up over night tonight but my awake hours increased on Wednesday and Tuesday now I am going to miss some things today and Saturday but I am putting the priorities on work and school for today.

I just have a little bit more marking to do.

I did a little marking today while in the school's computer lab. I am half way done a certain section of the marking. I hope to be done by tomorrow morning. I am staying up late tonight. I might stay up to do the marking and then go in to school early in the morning and take the assignments to the professor.

Studying public law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I watched some public law lectures a little and will stay up and watch more. Tomorrow is our last lecture broadcast. The professor emailed me telling me to pay attention to the last lecture in particular. He will review the exam and in fact might even tell us the questions. The broadcast is tomorrow at 13:30.

The lecture I am watching now is about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). I did a little reading from our source book on this part of the course this morning before sleeping.

Quiet night at home. Pizza and beer, TV and studies.

My wife and I had a quiet night at home. She drank some beer and watched TV. I did a little writing and chatting on the computer then made pizza. Then I studied and will study until late tonight after she goes to sleep.

I am buying a 60GB hard drive, a 20 GB USB drive and a 16 channel mixing board.

I did a fair amount of shopping today. I won on ebay a 20GB USB hard drive for a fair price. I also put a down payment on a Behringer 16 channel mixing board. I also must now pay for a 60GB hard drive for my IBM laptop and from this same ebay seller I bought an iLife DVD. It is difficult to manage all this spending and money. The mixer will possible make money for me. I was able to make 40$ this past month with our PA system. I will have spent about 550$ on this PA by the end of the summer. But my original PA system has paid for itself. It originally cost about 1600$. I have earned this much with it from about 1993 to 1999.

I resigned from our cities accessibility advisory committee yesterday.

I just did not have time any more to attend meetings of our cities accessibility advisory committee. So yesterday I resigned. Another disabled student at school H was saying it was a good move considering the amount of things I do these days.

One more task accomplished one more contract completed.

I got the statistics test I was marking fully marked. This ends this contract with the school of mathematics and statistics. I now have to mark some assignments for the other course and I am done for the summer. My public law lecture is starting in two hours.

I am up early today marking tests and assignments.

I am up early today marking tests and assignments. I am almost done marking the test. The students did much better this time. This is a good vibe to leave the students on. I got an email from one student thanking me for my work. This is nice and appreciated. He offered me help with anything if I ever need it too.

I am learning that teachers also function in an emotionally supportive role. I continue to read other studies and have been continuing to read about gender, GIS and GRASS and also biostatistics. I just took 1 gram of niacin and 1 gram of vitamin C for my morning medication.

Morning happens around here.

I got my wife off to the foot care specialist. I got some pop to drink. I said a few kind words to someone whose husband has just died. I got another question marked on the statistics test. I have two questions left to mark now. It is a hot day here. I will be sleeping in about two or three hours.

I got the minitab questions all marked now.

I am feeling fairly nervous or as I call it wired. I mark fairly intensely when I am like this so I try to not mark much like this. I am usually at past a 16 hour day when I feel this way. Food can bring me down out of this mental-physical state of being.

I read about addictions and writing. I read about GIS and GRASS. I also browsed some math books. I read more about gender in an individual framework.

I marked all the minitab questions. Now I just need to mark the textbook problems for this assignment. I will space out my marking with reading and watching lectures and sleep at about 12 noon or 1 PM or maybe 2 PM. I want to watch he remaining parts of lecture #17 before sleeping. I made my lecture viewing schedule goal for today already.

I wrote a resume for my friend R.

R has mostly worked as a cleaner. I did a resume for him on my laptop. I printed him four copies. He bought me coffee. I tried to get one of my Thinkpads working with a win98 hard drive and was offering him this older Thinkpad computer for purchase. But it is broken, so I did not push it.

R is coming over and I am helping him with his resume.

R needs help looking for work. I have agreed to help him update this resume. Of course I can't help but offer him career advise that sometimes I myself can not follow. He should be here soon about 3:45 am.

I am watching my public law lectures in review for the exam.

This is lecture #15 that I am watching this morning. This means about 3/5 of the course have been watched. I only need to record two more lectures this Wednesday and this Friday. I have about 20 hours to watch still out of a total of about 60 hours.

I completed my last class room duties as a teaching assistant for the summer term last night.

I am home from a rough last night at the school. I gave two labs and one tutorial. I even got a thank you email from one student I had helped out. I have some marking to do now by Wednesday. I have no security work scheduled.

I got my grading work done now.

I spent about four hours solving statistics problems and marking assignments but it is all done now and I can give the assignments back to the students. I have to do more marking tomorrow after I get home tonight from the labs and tutorials.

I took my meds about three hours ago and should sleep now.

Actually I am staying home and not going to the school library today.

I have too much marking and my own legal studies, so don't have time to go to the library today. I will instead get back to marking. I have 5 Q's left to mark in one course and 3 Q's left to mark in another.

Busy study day today.

I watched some more lectures completing lecture #4 and lecture #9 viewing this morning. I still want to view lecture #10 today and maybe lecture #11 and lecture #12. I did some searching both at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca and then the school library for biostatistics books. I found one in the library so am just going out in this hot weather to borrow the book and return some books.

I also did some marking today and will continue to mark tonight.

I am certified again for standard level first aid.

My training yesterday went well. I trained with coworkers in standard level first aid. This will now be valid for three years.

I achieved my short term relaxation goals.

Yes, even relaxation is a goal to be achieved. I was able to watch some TV and also get some first aid studied. I am going to catch a bus to my first aid training in one hour.

I changed my course choices and cut courses now rather than later. I am fairly determined to graduate with a good average, so I will study only law courses this fall. Also I have chosen an evening class in something I am interested in studying. So my fall term courses will be an intellectual property law introduction and a course in state security and dissent. Both courses are on the same day of the week. One is in the morning and one is in the evening. This may or may not work well.

I will not study statistics this fall term after all. I even considered not working as a mathematics and statistics TA this term.

I will study more first aid before going out to training.

I did not get yesterday's marking done so will need to mark more over the weekend. I have been up almost 24 hours and have a 6 hour training session to go through now. I did get some niacin and will take 1 gram of it now. I will pack for travel now.

I am fairly stressed out right now.

I did give labs last night and also a test. I just marked one question on the test about half an hour ago. I have three questions left to go. I chose courses for the fall and winter terms on Friday morning. I spent about 1.5 hours earlier this morning cueing up tapes and watching some of the tapes for my public law course. I also got an email from the professor agreeing to look at my spring term paper and give a re grading perhaps. But he also encouraged me to "stay the course" and this I am doing. I am fairly stressed out right now and am going to relax a bit with some TV watching for purely entertainment purposes. I will also read a little as that is also relaxing. I am training in first aid later this morning.

Working on my own studies today too.

I registered for courses for next year and studied my public law course today as it was broadcast. The professor has promised to re read my paper given that a TA marked it. The next two weeks will be full of study for my public law course final exam which is on the 18th. I want to be done study by the 16th. That means I have about 11 days. The only work I have is some more marking as a teaching assistant and I have some first aid training this weekend.

More about next years' course choices in a later post. I am rushing off to school right now.

I am going to buy some niacin on the way to school just now.

I am just rushing off to school to work in my teaching assistant job. I will go past the drug store and buy some niacin because I am all out of this vitamin.

Volunteering for 5 hours today.

I am volunteering for five hours today with our self help group. I will train in board of directors work than attend an offical meeting on behalf of our group.

Studying public law, nursing, terrorism, green politics and mental health.

I am hitting the books this over night day off. I have also done a little work marking students statistics homework. I need to get this marking done by Friday late afternoon. I hope to get it done this morning. I am not going to stay up Friday night until Saturday but instead will slowly move to a regular day by Saturday.

Slept all day woke up rested.

I slept all day and woke up rested. I am out of vitamins at the moment.

I am home from work.

I am at about a 20 hour day but feeling tired and exhusted. I worked a quiet shift over night. I went to school when I got home and took a book back to the library that was due today. I also picked up my spring term paper. I scored well enough on it. I am think the exam will be easy enough to score a high grade on so the lower grade on the paper is not really a problem. I scored B on the paper. I had hoped for A minus but must admit the paper was not all that great. But then this was an assigned topic with assigned references. It was easy for the marker to say I had missed points in the assigned refernces because I only touched lightly on these given our word limits. It seems degree mills are not my cup of tea. I would rather score B and write something original with power like my drug law paper.

I am up on time for work.

I am up about 4 hours before I have to catch the bus. I should be able to work 12 hours and then stay up a few hours when I get home and watch Wednesday's lecture on TV. Then I will sleep Wednesday and wake up late Wednesday early Thursday morning. I will then mark assignments. I am having board of directors training on Thursday at noon then must attend an official meeting Thursday late afternoon. I will stay up then until about 2 am Friday morning. Then I am seeing the professor of the public law course Friday afternoon then working in my teaching assistant work on Friday evening. Then I am staying up and helping with the newspaper on Saturday morning then spending the day training in First Aid.

I am working later tonight

I will be working an over night shift tonight. I am planning on sleeping in a few minutes and waking up mid afternoon. I am just watching a little of my school lectures before sleeping.

I also have some marking to do for my school job. This is due by Friday. I can do this on Thursday morning on my next over night day Wednesday night where I am not working at my other job. Then I am working at school on Friday night.

Then Saturday and Sunday I am training in first aid and back on the day shift. I will probably wake up late on Friday and then stay up until late Saturday afternoon.

I did a little Association of Internet Researchers study just now.

I did some internet researchers study just now. I read a bit about disabilities and blogging and I also read about ICT's and ICT's and disabilities at Gerald Goggin's blog ( http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~goggin/ ). I copied and pasted all my blog entries from www.aoir.org and saved them as a local copy on my thinkpad.

Set up Fedora Core 3 Linux on a friend's computer.

I helped a friend get out of his windows pirate copy of windows by installing Fedora Core 3 Linux on his computer. I think Linux pays a role in community development as least this is what some Linux gurus suggest. It seems true.