Trent's poor computers...

Be warned, this is primarily a frustrated rant.

This morning an assignment was due in one of my classes. It is worth 20% of my mark, although the course is only a half-course, so it's nothing huge. However, it was supposed to be over 4000 words long. That, along with its being a science course, made it a particularly arduous assignment. It was long, boring and not worth as much as the time put into it.

In my typical fashion it wasn't completed until fairly late the night before, which is OK with me. I am a little lazy and haven't bought new ink for my printer in ages and I instead use the printers at Trent to print off the assignments beforehand. It's a little annoying, but it always works. This morning, however, it didn't.

I took the early bus to give myself some leeway before class, especially since the computers have a tendency to take a little while to load up. I had roughly 30 minutes before class. You would think this would be well enough time to turn on a computer and print a paper off.

The computers at Trent are notorious for taking long to boot up, but the mornings are especially bad because the computers have been shut down all night. I'm guessing (I'm not a computer whiz) that as the computers are used throughout the day, they seem to 'warm up', like a car, and take a much shorter time to load up later in the day.

The computer finally loaded up with ten minutes left for class. Waiting for twenty minutes to have a computer load up is painful, especially in this day and age. I finalized some of the files and sent them to the printer, although the second file froze as it was loading (I imagine the computer was still feeling a tad slow at that point).

I then received an error message telling me that the print job didn't work. As I discovered a few minutes later, the printer wasn't connected to my computer somehow and the printer itself required maintenance. Several other students in the computer lab were in the same situation and equally (if not more) displeased. One student kicked a few chairs around. I don't blame him.

At this point class was starting, so I elected to run across the bridge to the other side of the campus to print off the paper in the library. It didn't take quite as long to load this time and I finally got into class ten minutes late.

I do take some of the fault for this silly situation, but it really shows how awful Trent's computer system is. Forty minutes to print something? It's a little reminiscent of print times circa 1982.

Trent has a lot of things going for it, but computers is not one of them.

Dear Facebook: You're no longer my BFF...

OK, so FB and I were never BFFs, but I think mine is a common sentiment among people who are beginning to realize that our relationship to FB may be a little too close.

Over the past few months I've been gradually trimming down my footprint on FB. Information regarding personal interests and whatnot was removed, then silly applications and the piece that seemed to grab the most attention: my relationship status. I had been listed as 'single', but I just removed the status altogether. But, FB notifies everyone that I 'am no longer listed as single'. Needless to say, messages came flowing in asking who my new lover was. Sorry, my real relationship status never changed.

Today I went on a greater rampage. Most personal information was removed, including my birthday (darn, I won't be receiving FB birthday messages anymore...) and work experience. I'm now one of those lame FBers who provides very little information about themself. Sorry, kids. I even elected to remove over 100 'friends'. Do I talk to them? No. Have I ever had a real frienship with them? Maybe, but not really anymore. Do I really want to know what's going on in their lives, let alone they know what's going on in my life? Not particularly. What a strange thing to do, but it's done.

So why did I do such a thing? Why am I shutting myself off from the world of FB?

I've mentioned the future risks of FB before. Photos could come back to bite us in 30 years when we're running this world; potential employers can peruse our profiles at their will; and stuff about us could get out there that we really don't need spread over the internet. These risks played a part, but it's really the present nature of FB that bothers me.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day regarding FB and we discussed how bizarre FB is. Yes, having 'friends' is strange, especially when we trust them to have a full-blown view of us. Posting our photo albums online for everyone to see is similar to inviting all these people to your home and going through your photo albums. That's kind of weird.

I have found that certain friendships have become de-personalized, whereby phone and lengthy email dialogue has now been replaced by 'wall posts'. What a shame. Sure, it's great for quick messages, but when it becomes the norm, the seriousness of the friendship degrades.

I do enjoy aspects of FB. I can look at pictures, advertise my blogs and keep in touch with some people who may not use email or phone. But that's about it.

Perhaps I'm crazy and am just trying to stop the inevitable. Maybe FB will one day swallow us all up. But I'm not the only one doing this, and I doubt I'll be the last.

Pierre McGuire is slowly ruining hockey...

Ugh. If any of you have been watching the World Junior Hockey Championship, or watch any hockey games broadcasted on TSN or NBC, you've been exposed to the long-winded and often ill-timed rants of one Mr. Pierre McGuire.

Considered to be an expert analysis, McGuire is far more annoying than even the likes of Don Cherry. Sure, McGuire knows his stuff, but his analysis during gameplay is often completely unnecessary. I'm quite sure he simply likes to hear himself talk. 

Apart from his silly "expert analysis", I have one primary bone to pick with McGuire. Now Pierre, I know it's very important that the viewer gets detailed information about the players, but it's way over the top when you mention a player and tell us their home country, junior league team (and former teams if you're really on a roll) and who they've been drafted by, especially when you give us the information before telling us about what the player might just have done. That information would be nice if it were given every once and awhile. But for each player everytime they're mentioned? Come on. 

And it is not as if he stops to talk about this information. He speeds through it as if the information is part of the players name. You'd think he had the info right in front of him. Perhaps he does...

In any case, as experts on junior league hockey go, McGuire may simply be trying to outdue his more respectable TSN colleague, Bob McKenzie. I hate to say it, but trying to impress us by adding in these unnecessary quips concerning the players certainly doesn't win you respect in my books; it simply irritates me to the point whereby I cherish the wonderful times when McGuire is silent. Even the repetitive and annoying Tim Horton's ads are less intolerable, and that is really saying something.  

Come on Tim...

I was sure I was going to win the brand spankin' new Toyota Matrix, or maybe even that boat. Hell, I would've been happy to win a donut; but sadly I got the ever so defeating "Please Try Again".

Tim Horton's Rrrrrrrrrrrroooooollllllll up the Rrrrriiiiim to Win (RRW) is back on and it means people are craving to settle their caffeine addictions at an even more remarkable pace than usual. I know Tim Horton's is known for having ridiculously long lineups at those peak hours of the day, but RRW fever has people lining up at all hours of the day. The Tim Horton's near our university library is as popular as ever, but it is here where I find my qualm.

During RRW season, Tim Horton's insists on giving customers a second cup with their hot drink purchase; one normal cup, the other an RRW cup. They also tend to do this from time to time during non-RRW season, but right now it is far more apparent that the customer has two cups. Tim Horton's will claim that this is to protect the customer from the dangers of the "very hot" beverage, which may be important to some. My problem is that they use a second cup to do this.

If you didn't know, Tim Horton's hot drinks cups are non-recyclable, which in this day and age is becoming quite the no-no. So rather than giving you something to protect your hands from the drink that can be recycled, they give you a second wasteful cup. Come on Tim, step it up. Even Starbucks gives out those little cardboard sleeves, which do tend to work quite nicely.

And one other thing: stop with those stupid little in-house ads about being environmentally aware. Giving people re-usable coffee mugs rather than 'to-go' cups when they're drinking in the restaurant is nothing new; look at every other non-chain coffee shop in the world. So stop patting yourselves on the back for being environmentally conscious; you're just making fools of yourselves.

Should we not have been able to use of technological praless to finally design a coffee cup that doesn't burn our fingers off?