[Nem]

*hugs for all*

Because we can =p

Unless people don't want them, we also have cookies and coffee.

[Allicat]

The only unis I've been to have been only a few months old (literally. Undergrad: confirmed university Feb 2011. Postgrad: confirmed university Jan 2011) so the organisation has been absolutely shocking. It's nice to be at the forefront of a new academic establishment, but majorly frustrating when the classes clash and you can't get any money from the £10,000 deposit you had to pay to prove you are able to support yourself.
_________________
He who does not eat cheese will go mad. ~ French proverb.

Keeper of the fallen leaves. 'Cos they're still pretty.

[Allicat]

Oop double post! Seems I feel the need to vent more than usual.
Transferred from the today thread:
Today I start my three day exam. So far it seems like they could have just given us an assessed essay and removed the extra stress of the time limit. If I were being trained to work under pressure, then yes, but being a scientist requires dispassionate, calm reasoning and hopefully one will have prepared oneself for completing any work within a deadline long before attaining MSc level work.
Also, BORING. My goodness. We've been given the task of summarising and reviewing a paper selected by our (rather useless) lecturer. The paper we've been given isn't even interesting. Lobster shell disease, while relevant in its own right, isn't really my field of interest (I prefer things which cannot be seen with the naked eye) and the paper fails to reject its null hypothesis. While this is not in itself a bad thing (many exciting things have come from the acceptance of the null) in this case it means that all the research has achieved is telling us what is not causing increased rates of shell disease and offers very little specualtion as to what might be.
_________________
He who does not eat cheese will go mad. ~ French proverb.

Keeper of the fallen leaves. 'Cos they're still pretty.

[Nem]

While I can see the worth of that in sciency terms it does sound awfully boring as a project.

Then again I've never really got the point of exams. A lecturer I talked to once said that people trusted you weren't cheating in exams. But really - in the workplace cheating isn't called cheating, is it? When you work with people on something it's called communicating, when you read books it's called research.... And certainly no-one is going to praise you for remembering a list of names and getting only ten percent of them wrong. At least not when compared to someone who wrote the names down and retained all their clients....

Generally cheating in school is called intelligence everywhere else....

Still, only a couple more days left, right? And then you can go and decompress. ^^
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Allicat]

Hehe "decompress". That made me giggle ^_^
_________________
He who does not eat cheese will go mad. ~ French proverb.

Keeper of the fallen leaves. 'Cos they're still pretty.

[Nem]

[Tinu.]

Those sound like they came out of a fortune cookie or the mind of an overly-optimistic fourteen year-old.
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Nem]

-snicker- That's beautifully cutting, considering I heard it from and adult ^_^

#

Today failed yet another driving test. Four faults. Two serious - undue hesitation & observation.

The undue hesitation one was getting onto a roundabout - missed an opportunity to get on so that was that. You know how it is - people like to come round roundabouts with their indicators off, so you wait for them because you don't want to get in a side-on crash. But sometimes they're just crossing the roundabout, and if they are you can get on while they're screening you from traffic on the right.

Bleh.

The observation one was crossing a crossroads - the examiner thought it was a bit fast.... I think I could have stopped if anything was coming but. We shall remember it for next time. Can't have been doing more than 10 or maybe 15. Stopping distance at that speed's maybe a few feet. Had plenty of time to make the observation in my opinion. Still. Maybe I didn't turn my head enough or something.

You know how many faults you can get? Fifteen. As long as you don't commit one of the mortal sins. There are complete nutters driving around out there.

Wish they'd hurry up and pass a law requiring people to have computer controlled cars. The driver is the weakest link in the system these days. The tech for self-driving cars is at a point where the computer is unquestionably a better driver than any human in existence.

Vehicle accidents - the vast majority of which are driver faults - amount to, I believe, around 45% of all deaths in developed countries. [Edit: My mistake, as a percentage of accidental deaths it's around half. Still fairly huge though ]

And we wouldn't need silly driving tests - which I'm sure doesn't factor into my desire for our robotic overlords to get their act together at all =p
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Asa]

*shrug* I happen to believe them, though I know that the application is harder than the thought.


I wouldn't mind automatic cars, myself, having a phobia of driving. Though I suspect that there would still be driver qualifications, in order to have control of the car. I would want there to be a driver qualification. What if the system breaks down or goes haywire? A virus? There should still be a manual override, because humans - for all our faults - still have the capacity to think and innovate in a way no computer can.
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Nem]

Innovation in driving is, pretty much without exception, a result of failing to plan your drive so that you can respond safely to the unexpected. If you needed to do something more complex than step on the brake to avoid an accident, then you were too close to the car in front, going too fast for the corner/weather conditions, had failed to take adequate observations before beginning a manoeuvre, weren’t exercising proper control of the road around you, were going too fast for the distance from the car behind, failed to maintain your vehicle....

And so on and so forth....

If you couldn’t plan safety into your driving habits I don’t think anyone who wasn’t a maniac would ever throw a ton of metal around at 70 mph with all those squishy humans inside. ^_^;

The flipside is when something does go wrong it’s generally something you haven’t noticed for yourself - (so a lot of the safety comes as a result of experience that varies your environments enough for you to notice things that might become problems and correct them) - and it’s generally going to be fairly catastrophic since human decision loops aren’t brilliantly fast at 30 miles an hour.

---

Computers can be made very reliable, and your driving computer shouldn’t be on an open network where it could catch a virus anyway. I’ve never heard of a computer built for a specific purpose and isolated from open networks crashing. (Home computers - sure - they've got loads of different drivers and programs written by loads of different people on them; it's not surprising. Even there though most of my computers have been fairly reliable - this one hasn't crashed in years.... Touch wood. <<; ) And you could always use a voting system - have three computers voting on the best course of action and if one goes wrong the other two will over-rule it... the odds of two computers with a relatively (at least compared to a home PC) limited code base crashing at the same time seems like it should be fairly remote.

If it goes wrong people die - potentially - but I think you can make computers more reliable than the chances that some guy’s going to drive on the manual over-ride just because they like driving, and commit some error that gets folks killed.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[treasuredluv]

Doing so many stupid things today that it all just makes me want to flop onto my bed and sleep it off. It won't fix anything but it'll certainly make me feel better. :( But since this is the venting thread, might as well post my main problem here.

My mom was mad at me for something I've been screwing up for a while and made a resolution to fix it. I got mad at her because I really believed that that wouldn't help me AT ALL due to other circumstances. I was going to keep my mouth shut and hope that she would forget about it by tomorrow... Until my sister (uggghhhh) piped up and wanted to help my mom with her decision and I felt betrayed. I thought she would understand and not butt in but she's bad at reading the mood. So then I got mad at her and my mom got mad at me for getting mad. But I was already mad at my mom so I made the whole thing worse by saying some things I didn't mean. Now I feel awful. And I'm starting to feel less and less angry as I type this and more and more guilty. :( ... No, I'm not ready to apologize. I know it's my fault but my mom's wrong about what we should do about it. I think she knows too now that we've all cooled down. I'm not ready to talk about this with my mom yet though. I need to do some homework first. But now I feel so much better. :) ...........


/falls over in exhaustion

[Tinu.]

I offer hugs and cookies.

Whenever you're ready to talk to your mom about it, why not try to explain to her why you're getting frustrated, and asking if she'll lay off and let you go about this your way, for a while and if she'll refrain from interfering. I know even getting to that point in a conversation with a parent is tough, but give it a shot. I once managed to talk my mom into doing something similar for an entire semester, and it was a great load off of my back. Neither of us was right, in the end, but I got to try things my way and I learned quite a bit from the experience.

Everyone deserves the chance to learn from their own mistakes.

Good luck when you do have a chat with your mom, no matter what the outcome is.
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[treasuredluv]

Thank you. :) My mom and I made up already and we're fine now. That problem I had is still there but we're making progress.

Lol it wasn't really a big deal now that I think about it. I was just really mad at myself, mostly. I'm kind of embarrassed now but I'm really grateful for your support. :)

[Tinu.]

I'm glad it's progressing well (or I hope it is, yes?). ^^

Haha, it's ok. I've said my fair share of stupid or silly things in this thread (and just in general). Don't let it embarrass you, think of it as catharsis. A lot of venting ends up that way. Never feel silly about it--it's better to let it out and tell someone who will listen and not judge than to keep it bottled up. That's what this thread is here for.
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Asa]

Unless, of course, the people involved also have access to the venting thread. Then it can either be a quick and dirty way of letting them know how you feel, or it can be horribly embarrassing and possibly harmful to the situation.

But, you know. Usually it helps to vent to a neutral third party.

That's one of the great things about the forum, I think. How supportive we all are of each other. ^_^
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.