Easter Egg Hunt Goes Awry

Guelph, ON - An Easter egg hunt organized by the City of Guelph ended in riots yesterday with two people sent to the hospital and three arrests by Guelph police. What was planned as a joyous day of fun and celebration resulted in a dark time for everyone involved and a black eye for the city's administrators.

"It wasn't until the adult egg hunt that things started happening," recalls a bystander, "they were pushing people around in the hay, and I'm sure there were some inappropriate language exchanged. "

"What kind of example are we setting for our kids here?" Asks police chief Rob Davis. "I cannot believe the behaviour of the parents. Nothing can justify what happened at the event in question."

The adult egg hunt, a first in Guelph, was included to "make the day enjoyable for parents as well as the kids," comments Peggie Reynolds, organizer of the event. But as soon as the hunt started, the parents began bickering about the lack of eggs, the overcrowded floor, and how their children are never as good as their neighbours'. Eventually words turned into action, and a riot ensued. Looters broke into several nearby businesses, and damage was estimated at $5, a record high for Guelph.

When asked whether this event will continue next year, Ms. Reynolds replied "definitely not, there's too much bad blood around here. I hope there weren't any mofia families involved, otherwise we can expect a scene right out of the Godfather."

The two people sent to hospital are still listed in critical condition for consuming too much chocolate, and those arrested by the police were denied bail for ties to local mafia. Several bystanders have also requested to be entered into the witness protection program. Eye witnesses are encouraged to contact the police at 1-519-LOCK-ME-UP as the investigation continues.

Students Cheer as Class Ends

Waterloo, ON - Students enrolled in a computer science course at the University of Waterloo let out a silent cheer outside of class today as they finished their last lecture of the term.

"Boy am I glad that's over," comments one student, "that's the worst class I've ever had. I'm gonna kill those lucky sons of bitches who won't have him next term."

That seems to be the common opinion among students. Many students said that with a midterm average of 50%, and no "mark adjustments" planned, this could bring down their averages significantly.

"I fell asleep in every class," recalls another student, "I don't know why I sit in the front row all the time. I think it's mainly because my friends who want to sit there." He then proceeded on a tangent about how ridiculous his friends are, and how he needed to find some new ones.

"I skipped today's class because I went out drinking last night," admits Ben Redman. "I know it's the last class," Redman laments, "but I just don't care anymore. I'll probably spend the entire weekend working on the last assignment, I don't need to spend another hour and a half in a boring lecture."

So if you meet a student today who spontaneously lets out a cheer or yelp, it's probably a poor CS student in that class realizing (s)he'll never have that prof again.

First Mingway Sold to Highest Bidder

Waterloo, ON - An anonymous patron has recently outwit, outlasted, and outbid 2000 other participants to become the first Canadian consumer owner of a Mingway at a hefty price of $15.

Mingway, the Canadian derivative of the Megway, is a Human Transporting Human (HTH) device. Using space age technology including neural networks, optical depth perception, and unartificial intelligence, the HTH is the ultimate way of getting from point A to point B.

"The Mingway is awesome," says the new owner, "he can take me anywhere, and all I have to do is feed him and pay his tuition. I can't wait until the Mingway comes out in full production, I'll get one for everyone in my family."

When asked about the shortcomings of the product, the designer, Ming Li, commented that "the Mingway is not yet a 24/7 operational HTH. He still has to sleep, eat, and spend the occasional time in lectures. But we hope that with version 2.718 due out in May 2004, we'll have at least the down time from lectures fixed."

If enough interest is expressed for the Mingway in the Canadian consumer market, it can be mass produced in the near future.

How would you like to be the first to own a consumer Segway? Well, if you can outbid $120 000, Amazon will sell you one.

Labs Closed Due to Messy Students

Waterloo, ON - At least one computer lab is closed at the University of Waterloo for cleaning today. The poster on the door explains that the closure is due to the "extreme mess" made by the students.

"This is an outrage," says one 3rd year computer science student, "we pay $3000 in tuition a term, and they can't afford to pay janitors to clean the labs at night? Perhaps they should take a course in Linear Optimization, and learn how to control their expenses."

Many of the other labs in the Math and Computers building are overcrowded due to the closure. Papers are flying as students scramble to find empty computer terminals.

"I can't believe this," laments a 4th year student, "I have to get this project finished or I won't graduate!"

The lack of computer terminals has been evident in previous terms, but as students converge in labs in this last week of school to finish their final assignments and projects, this problem seems to be escalating out of proportion.

"We know how students feel," says Maggie Thompson, the spokeswoman for the Faculty of Mathematics, "but they can't be bringing food and drinks into the labs, and just leaving them there. They have to take responsibility for what they bring."

"How would they like to come in at midnight and clean up this mess," asks Jackson J. Jackson, a janitor at the university. He points out the piles of garbage, forgotten jackets, and sleeping students left beside computer terminals, and some mysterious stains on the carpet and walls.

Several students are planning a protest outside the computer lab situated on the third floor of the Math and Computers building today at 4 pm.

Area Man Almost Steps in Mud

Waterloo, ON - A local man almost stepped in mud today after squeezing by two people who where walking side by side on the sidewalk near University Plaza.

The University of Waterloo student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that it was a "close call" with the sidewalk blockers.

"I saw them from far away, blocking the whole sidewalk, but I was determined not to budge", recalls the student, "I barely squeezed by them without stepping off the sidewalk onto the mud, and there was some shoulder contact."

"Sidewalk blocking is a big problem in the region," says planning expert A. Miller, "we've had a lot of complaints about them in the past couple of years, and they seem to be growing."

In fact, a recent study performed by the University of Waterloo STAT 231 class has shown that the number of such complaints have nearly doubled every year in the past 5 years. "It's incredible," says current student Ben Redman, "when you look at the curve on the graph, the growth is exponential."

"It will definitely be a topic in the next mayoral election campaign," says local music activist Matt Goyer, "it's on the top of my list of issues right now, even above the new levies on recordable media."

A sidewalk blockers awareness campaign is in the works by city councillors. Hopefully as people begin to realize this problem that is destroying our sidewalks, they will be more careful and considerate towards other pedistrians.

After a full night of scanning, I finally have some new pictures. Included are a completely new set aptly named Winter 02, some updates to old series, and a new series shot last Christmas.

Some quotes from RateMyProfessors.ca about one of my current profs:

"Has found the cure to insomnia, His lectures."

"Very good course, only because I only went to one class"

"why isn't there a 0 score?? skip the classes will put you in good shape..."

And I found this quote funny, though I've never had her as a prof:

"I would like to dequeue her stack."

A very exhaustive list of mathematics content appearing on the Simpsons.

If there's anything worse than mullets it's those jeans with no back pockets that so many girls wear. I find them despicable.

And my DSL connection feels slower than a 56k modem right now.

Since everyone has commented on their drunken experiences on St. Patrick's Day, I'll go on to something else.

I'm feeling a general trend of tiredness lately. I am more prone to falling asleep in class, and lacking energy for the whole day. I think I get plenty of sleep (for a university student anyways), and I eat healthy (except for today, Pizza Nova had the customer's appreciation day where a medium pizza is only $3.99, ummm, medium pizza for supper). I just don't get it. I need to go to bed.

I think that my problem is that I can't focus on only one thing. Whenever I try to focus on something in particular, I always get sidetracked by something else that comes along.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Let the drinking begin.

Trying out a new layout.

Another year has passed since the last St. Patrick's day. Oh, how I remember getting into the Bomber before 12 noon, and drinking until 2 in the morning. Green beer always does that to you. Well, this year, we're going to be even earlier. I just got tickets for the 9:30 breakfast at Ground Zero, and then we go into the bomber right away, but we'll have to wait a while until they start serving at 11, that's right, 11 am.

This could be the epitome of the university student lifestyle.

funny

The computer science program is not very forgiving to its students. Students never seem to have the benefit of the doubt, instead, they want to assume the worst about us.

At the beginning of every term we get this speech about plagiarism. It scares us to the point that some people will never ask another classmate for help in fear of "excessive collaboration". I don't copy assignments, but I shouldn't be terrified of asking someone else how the problem can be solved without getting blacklisted. I often feel that the cs department promotes too much competition between students that are marred by a lack of cooperation.

The courses are not as coherent as we believe they should be either. I realize that in the computing world, the technology is dynamic, and paradigms are always switching. But is it too much to ask that the profs or TA's actually do the assignment before they assign it? Too often have we been on the receiving end of ambiguous specifications, condescending remarks, and cryptic and conflicting replies to newsgroup postings.

I wish the department would have a set policy on late assignments as well. Today, I forgot to hand in an assignment that was due at noon. I didn't remember until 12:30. That is stupidity on my part, but now I will get 0 on an assignment worth 6% of my final mark. That hardly seems fair, especially since I had it done last week. Some courses have late policies, and others don't. I guess the cs department is trying to simulate the lack of cohesion and standards in the real world.

We are students. We go to school to learn, and we pay a lot of money to be here. The least they can do is give us the benefit of the doubt that we actually do want to be in school. We're not ignorant cheaters who just want that piece of paper saying BMath on it (I get about 5 emails a day saying that I can get one for much less). We're here to learn, and the least the school can do is provide us with a helpful, friendly and supportive environment. I'm not feeling that right about now.

N.B. This is by no means a generalization on all profs or departments in this university. I've had many professors who were great caring teachers. But this term especially, I feel let down by the UW system. I feel there's too much unhealthy competitive spirit in the air, and not enough support from the teachers. I've never felt this way about school before.

I should have done work this weekend, but instead, I went to a New Deal concert Friday night, a keg party Saturday night (the walk home in the snow blizzard with 0 ft visibility was amazing), and a movie on Sunday (2 actually, now that I think about it). On the upside, I did almost finish one assignment.

So the new movie I saw was Men With Brooms, a truly Canadian movie with more beavers than I've ever seen in my life (real beavers, and get your mind out of the gutter). There was no Hollywood explosions or ground-breaking computer animation, but I was laughing the whole way through the movie, and Paul Gross is laughing all the way to the bank. It's nice to see a Canadian made movie succeed like this. No offence to Canadian filmmakers, but they don't exactly have the best track record.

So go pay 12 dollars, and see the movie. You won't be disappointed. The soundtrack is also spectacular, with songs from the Hip, Our Lady Peace, MGB, Chantal Kreviazuk, the New Pornographers ... I just might have to fork out the $$ and buy the CD (Matt, your ftp connection is too slow).

Mmmmm, street meat (or as I like to call them, vendor dogs). It never ceases to amaze me how satisfying they can be. I just can't resist the temptation to buy a sausage when I pass them by.

I am here to ridicule my education yet again, not to mention the fact that tuition is going up by a whopping 15% next year.

I find it hard to digest the idea that such a huge number of midterms and finals exam marking schemes *need* to be adjusted every year. For the past couple of terms, I have seen consistently low averages (50-60) on exams in the majority of my math and cs classes. Then they change the marking scheme so that instead of being out of 60, it's out of 50. With the years of teaching experience that most of our profs have, why can't they come up with a *fair* exam that they don't need to adjust the marks for? Is it that we are getting dumber every year, or is it a tactic used by faculty to make us write hard exams to uphold the UW reputation and weed out those in the lower margins?

I think it's the latter argument. If one looks at the adjustments carefully, one will notice that they don't really help the students in the lower half at all. It's not a bell curve adjustment, more like a increasing function adjustment.

For example, suppose student A got 25/50 (=50%), while student B got 40/50 (=80%).
After a mark adjustment from 50 down to 40,
student A gets 25/40 = 62.5%, a 12.5% increase, while
student B gets 40/40 = 100%, a 20% increase.

In fact, the lower mark you have, the less of an increase you'd get.

I've never experienced the frustrations of such a biased adjustment, and I hope that I never will.

We seem to have this little power struggle over the thermostat in our house. In that every morning for the past month I've woken up freezing in my bed. I then proceed to the thermostat only to find it at 18 degrees. I'm sorry to get all mathematical again, but if the golden ratio prevails in nature, then the optimal room temperature should be 37.5 * 0.61 = 23 degrees. I just want it to be above 20.

I guess the thing that really bothers me is, if you're going to pay $400 a month for rent, and another $40 for utilities, why not live like you have that money, and at least be comfortable?

Matt, you should take a look at this.

Wow, I never thought that filling out a (work) visa application can be such a drag. Well, actually, it was a breeze until I got to the part of short essay questions. I don't like paragraph answers, that's why I'm not in arts. If they asked me to solve an equation or something, maybe I'd like that better. But it has to be done, I have to hand it in tomorrow. I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather be doing an assignment than fill out an application.

Oh, and our house had our second triannual term party on Friday. It was pretty good I thought, but I was fairly intoxicated, and may not remember some minute details that could cause embarrassment. However, I did manage to keep all that alcohol down, which still amazes me.
For more out of context quotes, check these out.