Tag Archives: university

Sabbatical Day 11 – 2 Work Days

Yesterday, Monday the 10th, the Partners of BERTEIG met with our financial advisor Don.  We discussed a number of strategic topics including how to deal with a gig that is not even breaking even due to unexpected costs.  Overall it was a good meeting, but I had forgotten about it so it actually annoyed me quite a bit.  Today, I was at the first day of my CSM.  I decided to commute by rail to and from Toronto same day.  I enjoyed that.  Tomorrow is the second day and I will go in again, but this time I will drive.

Yesterday I also had the second of my MATH 2155 classes.  I’m _really_ worried that it is going to be extremely boring.  The textbook is easy, the classes are super easy, and the pace is slow.  Now, it’s only been two classes so I’m going to give it a bit more time, but I’m also going to talk with an academic counsellor tomorrow morning if I can to ask about other options.  The MATH 3020 class is much more interesting.  So that’s good.

I’ve also started doing a lot more biking and I’m finding it both challenging and enjoyable.  My fitness is okay, but my strength is still low so hills are challenging.  Today on my bike ride I felt serious burn in my quads because I really pushed myself to run up the hills.  I’ll see how they are tomorrow!

A friend of mine on Facebook doxed a public figure.  I found this to be offensive, so I reported it as not meeting the Facebook community standards, and they removed the post (Facebook did). It only took them a few minutes to respond.  I was actually quite impressed with how responsive they were.  The reporting system is anonymous and I haven’t told my friend that I did this (and I won’t identify that person here).  However, I felt that no one should go through a doxing, regardless of what they have done, and in this particular case, it was really a difference of opinions, not even a matter for semi-justifiable vigilante justice.  If that friend figures out I did this, I hope they will ask me for a discussion about it, but I suspect that person will just unfriend/block me.  I hope not, because I appreciate our discussions and seeing their posts.

I listen to the No Agenda podcast and I finished listening to episode 1067 while on the train today.  Excellent episode, but not their normal thing.  They did two interviews including an interesting interview with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, in which he explains a bit about his perspective on Trump as a master influencer.  I found it fascinating.

Sabbatical Day 6 – First Day of Class

I attended my first day of university classes since 1995!  I cycled to class.  It took about 35 minutes which was 5 minutes longer than I planned.  I showed up about 10 minutes to start and there weren’t too many spots left so I ended up at the back of the class in “Mathematics 3020 Introduction to Abstract Algebra”.  I intend to change that for next class on Tuesday – hopefully I will be able to sit in the 2nd or 3rd row instead of the 5th.  I am the “old guy” in the room.  Everyone looks very young.  There was a guy sitting almost right in front of me who answered a lot of the questions.  I answered one, but otherwise shut up.  I took seven pages of notes.  So far, it is stuff that I already know.  I’m trying to decide if I work ahead in the textbook or if I just follow along.  The textbook is pretty well-written (I’ve read up to where we ended the class today) so I could really leap ahead without too much trouble.  I cycled back home immediately after class, ate a terrible lunch, and then fell asleep for four hours.  My day hasn’t had much else to it.

Tonight I’ll do the last little bits of my leadership book:

  • Write acknowledgements
  • Get an ISBN
  • Start the project on lulu.com

I’m expecting I will get final edits tomorrow and be able to finish the export for lulu.com at that time… and then it will be published!  I’ll have completed one of the projects on my board.

Sabbatical Day 3 – The Book

Well, I’ve had a few hours to work on the book this weekend, but it’s still not ready for final review.  I probably have between 2 and 5 thousand words left to write before it’s properly done which means it’s going to end up being somewhere between 25000 and 30000 words.  Longer than I anticipated – I guess that means I have lots to say?  I’m a bit frustrated because I really hoped to have it out of the way before my sabbatical started (3 days ago), then I hoped it would be done by the end of the long weekend.  Now… I’m going to give myself just two more days to finish the writing.  That takes me up to the first day of my classes on Thursday.  Here’s hoping!

Today was a nice day.  Verity and I cycled to her school as practice.  I hung back about ½ a block so that she would have to lead the way completely.  She had no problems and is now confident about cycling to the school.  It’s a bit far: about 3.5km and at her normal pace about 20 minutes to get there.  I’m sure she will speed up as she gets more familiar with the route and her own capabilities.  Tomorrow we will go again as it is her first day and I promised that I would ride with her.  We have to leave pretty early.  School starts at 8:30, I want her to be there by 8:15, and I want to leave a bit of a buffer even so.  We will leave the house at 7:50.

Justice and I went to the Western campus to pick up our student cards.  It was super well-organized and quick.  We were in a long line, but it only took about 5 minutes to get to the front and just a few seconds for the staff to retrieve our student cards and give them to us.  I’m now the proud holder of a Wester student card which gives me access to a bunch of university services and facilities.  I’m hoping they have a swimming pool that I can use during the colder months when our home pool is closed.  Anyway, Justice and I also had a bit of a laugh at some campus graffiti about “speciesism” with a drawing of a cow.

One of my main administrative wrap-up tasks is complete: I finished submitting all my receipts for my work expenses.  On sabbatical, I hope I don’t have many and so it will be pretty easy from here on out.  It’s also our business’ year-end so it feels good to have them done in a timely manner.  It took a couple hours this afternoon to finish.