Apple and U2: More Like Apple and Not Again

Upon hearing that U2 and Apple have collaborated again, I thought back to a paper that I wrote last year for an English course that I took. I wasn't a huge fan of the course content, but I really enjoyed my professor and she gave me a lot of confidence in my writing abilities. Ever since I wrote this paper, I've been proud of it. It got me a really good mark (93% thank you very much) and my professor loved it. She said I had a good use of subtlety and could get a point across clearly. So I'm going to share it with you (I suppose now would be a good time to mention that the paper I wrote is about when Apple gave everyone with iTunes U2's album Songs of Innocence).

As if my english professor wasn't awesome enough already, I get an email from her saying our quiz is cancelled and we get 100% on it. Sweet!
Also, I've lost my October. If anybody's seen it, I would greatly appreciate its return.

Essay (and QOTD #10)

My astronomy professor just assigned us a new essay. This the second essay we've had to do. The first one was 500. It was a bit of a struggle for me to condense it down. But that will be nothing compared to this next essay. He wants me to "Describe three ideas astronomers have proposed to explain dark energy and the methods used to test them." In 250 words. So:
- 3 ideas
- why those ideas
- methods used
- plus your standard into/conclusion. 
IN 250 WORDS OR LESS. 
250 WORDS. 
I CANNOT DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

QOTD #10
10. What is the last beverage you had?
The last drink I had was water but that was only to take some medication so it doesn't count so I'm going to go to the drink before that. I was at the mall and I was craving something creamy and chocolate. I wanted a milkshake, but milkshakes are hard to find in Waterloo (at least in my experience). So I was walking around the food court and Cultures had smoothies and I figured that was as close as I was going to get. So I ordered a chocolate smoothie. I knew it wasn't going to be exactly like a milkshake, but I figured it would be close. I don't know why, but it tasted kind of funny. Maybe that was just the smoothie being itself. But I think that there might have been some residue in the blender from something else that got into my smoothie. In the end I ended up drinking most of it, but the entire time I couldn't help thinking "there is something wrong with this". (What a coincidence that I would have a drink story to tell on a drink related QOTD!)

 

Showers

For the second time in the past month, my floor does not have hot water. I've even heard that one of the showers has brown water. Which I would rather not think about. Thankfully I took a shower at home on Tuesday, but unless this problem gets fixed, I won't be able to have my Thursday shower. So apologies to those who are going to see me on Friday! At least before I get home again and I can have a shower. Weird, right?! I'm going to be home again this weekend after a whooping two whole days back at res. On the plus side, I have my two midterm reviews written up. Now all I need to do is actually go over the stuff. Which, I have to admit, is the harder part. Ah well. For some reason my astro prof wasn't in class today, so the TA was giving the lecture. He did a good job, but you could tell he wasn't going into as much detail as the prof would, simply because he doesn't have the years of experience. The TA had such an innocent lost and worried and nervous vibe about him that I found adorable. I can't really explain why. Anyways, since he wasn't going into as much detail, he got through the slideshow pretty quickly. I'm talking, we were excused at 8:30pm. The class starts at 7 and goes until 9:50pm. With the delayed start because he couldn't figure the projection system out (there's the innocence again) the actually class probably lasted about 75 minutes. Hehe.

Movies

Today in class we were talking about different types of animation. The teacher (a guest prof, I guess), used Tarzan, Tangled and Avatar as examples. They use 2D, 3D and motion capture animation, respectively. Each time he brought up a movie, he would ask if anybody hadn't seen it. There's this one guy who put his hand up for each movie, and I'm like

UPDATE:
He has seen Snow White, thank God.

Posters Make Me Happy and My Room Prettier!

Since I don't have Adobe Illustrator, which I need for an assignment I'm working on, I thought I'd search out the lab on campus that does have it. Of course, it would be in the building that is on the exact opposite end of campus from me. So I packed up my laptop and camera and hiked across campus. Only to discover that a professor had booked the lab and I would not be able to use it. It looks like there is a time when I can use it tomorrow, but using this lab is going to be more difficult than I thought. My back hurt by the time I got back. Cameras and laptops are heavier than they appear. Renison, the building I live in is also the home of Waterloo's East Asian Studies and there is currently an East Asian Festival going on. The floors have been challenged to fold the most paper cranes. The prize is sushi for the floor. At first I didn't think my floor was actually going to try but then our don said that we were. So I was folding paper cranes in all my free time today. I've folding over 30 so far. We have until the 26th to hand them in. It's one of those things where you think you're doing well but there's probably somebody on a floor somewhere that has been folding cranes non-stop. Oh well. My hands are getting sore.

This week there is a poster sale in the SLC building. Some of my friends were going and invited me. I said I'd go but wasn't planning on buying any because posters can be pretty expensive. I took my wallet though just in case. They had tons of different posters: tv shows, bands, singers, quotes, art, typical poster things (like the Periodic Table). I was shocked. They had them set up in these zig zag rows. It was a little intimidating. The posters also varied in size. Most were standard poster size, but they had little ones, medium ones, skinny and long ones. And some that were huge. I'm talking 45+ inches across. And they were basically all under $24. That's how much the huge ones cost. If I had room, I would have bought a huge Starry Night print. The standard sized ones were $8-12. I was impressed. I ended up buying three. Two are small and one is long and skinny:

I love them. I bought them with some money I got for my birthday. I love them! They make me so happy. There was a Sherlock one, but I didn't like the design really. Shame.  One of the friends I went with was having trouble deciding which ones to get so she's going to sleep on it. She also wanted to measure how much wall space she had. There is a lot of wall space (relatively speaking, of course) but it's all very broken up, there isn't a lot of big spaces for posters. That's one of the reasons I got smaller ones.
I am going to see how many more paper cranes I can fold and then go to bed. I am going to try going to bed at a more regular time. I have a really hard time falling asleep here. It doesn't help that my roommate has gotten into the habit of staying out late. It's not like she's out partying or anything, she's studying or working. Sometimes I don't see her all day. But she'll come in and see that I've already gone to bed. And proceed to turn the light on and do various things. I'm ok with her turning the light on briefly to get ready for bed but then she needs to turn it off. She usually ends up doing more work. I'll have to talk to her about lights out again.

Astronomy

During my Astronomy lecture this evening I was trying to find the special characters in Pages and I came across "Start Dictation". What this feature does is it will listen to what you say and turn it into type in your document. Anyways, I started the feature and so it was listening to my professor speak. I was only a couple rows back, but the computer was facing the wrong direction, so I knew it might not catch everything. The way it works is you start it, and then it keeps listening until you click done. Then it takes a moment to translate it and boom, the text is on the screen. However, it is not always accurate. Actually, I don't think it is ever accurate! And much to me and my friend's amusement, this is what it came up with listening to my professor talking about eclipses:

Doesn’t generally doesn’t
One shadow
Players rail
Homestead always bye
Butter
Stays up all night since last just some opposite
Lettuce dressing see it on the size on the celestial sphere place near penannular distant
But what you notice a nice relaxing
Situated
The other leg
So
Why doesn’t insult someone. Jim
Son lives at the center of the solar system there was a prison
Yeah
This Wencella was Plaske
Your
As the most direct evidence motion of them around here
Show additional evidence yes
Son is
CVS and pressing for geometry

The words in bold are things my professor actually said. As you can see, there are not many. When it says "son" it was most likely when my prof said "sun". The funny thing is that sometimes I would record a minute but then it would only give me one word. My personal favourite is butter. :)

I Guess You Could Say I'm Officially A University STUDENT Now

So, I guess you could say this marks the beginning of my "mini" weekend. I have an Italian class on Monday 9-10:20AM. I don't have another class until Wednesday at 9AM, so it's a good chunk of time off. It's almost too bad that my first Italian class isn't on Tuesday afternoon. That way, if I was going home for the weekend, I could stay for Monday as well.  Speaking of class, I JUST HAD MY FIRST EVER UNIVERSITY LECTURE. And half of it was spoken in Italian. When the prof came in he started speaking in Italian and my thoughts were somewhat along these lines: "OH GOD (I know, I know, don't use the Lord's name in vain but it was MY FIRST EVER UNIVERSITY LECTURE and I was panicking a little) I HAVE MADE A MAJOR MISTAKE THIS ISN'T A BEGINNERS COURSE HE EXPECTS US TO KNOW ITALIAN OH CRAP I'M GOING TO LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT MAYBE I SHOULD DROP THE CLASS WAIT THEN WHAT OTHER LANGUAGE AM I GOING TO TAKE? DUTCH? FRENCH? LOLNOPE." That may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. In the end, the prof did say that it is a beginners course and when he asked, only one person has Italian experience. It is not a very big class, I'm guessing only about 35-40 of us. I now know how to ask you your name in Italian. Fun Fact: the direct translation of asking your name in Italian is "what are you called?" I could tell you that I also know how to tell you my name, but I forget and I'm too lazy to go look it up in my notes.  I'm planning on doing a review of everything he told us later on. Maybe while I'm waiting for laundry to wash/dry. I am going to attempt laundry today. I've done it before, but always just after my mom has told me what to do. Also, I have no drying rack and I am nervous about putting some things in the dryer. I'll get back to you on how that goes. I am 92% done The Help, so close!!!!!!! I wanna finish it tonight.