Beartracks... how I hate thee

It's the most wonderful time of the year... wait, no it isn't. I often try to make my ranting and raving as non-specific as possible so that everyone can understand and sympathize with my burning hatred towards subjects that I cover, but alas, this one will only be understood by those of us doomed to walk the hallways of a 97 year old university... yes, that's right, today I shall complain about school and the infuriating system that is BEARTRACKS.

It seemed like a good idea, although I always preferred the phone system. Oooh, looking to waste a few hours? Ask any person who attended the U of A, circa 10BC (er, before Carly), and they will go on to complain about 'back in their day...' where there was no new fandangled system for registering and you had to run around campus like a chicken with your head cut off and plead with each individual Prof to take you, and if your schedule conflicted - guess what? You get to start all over again. Granted, it was probably a pain, good exercise, but all in all, not the most fun thing in the world. Of course back then downhill hadn't yet been invented, nor had sliced bread so people stood around contemplating what the invention of velcro was better than.

These simpletons never had the benefit of talking to the phone lady, or learning that a rotary phone just doesn't work, best of all there was no internet! What a glorious time it must have been. Mail took weeks, and got lost (so you always had a good excuse for not paying that bill in time, or not keeping in touch, "because I hate you" doesn't have the same ring as "oh, your invitation must have been lost in the mail"). Enough about the internet in general, aside from online radio, I can't find anything good on it.

Beartracks is deceptively nice. I think that is the biggest problem I have with it. With nice pretty colours, easy to read fonts, and self explanatory buttons, I begin to feel at ease. No problem, I think, it's designed to help me out. They want my money, so obviously it will be easy for me to register...

The Byblis is a plant found in Western Australia. It produces small, but beautiful purple flowers, while its stalk is covered with fibers that give it a 'rainbow' appearance in the sun, lending to its common name of 'The Rainbow Plant'. It produces a sweet smell that effectively lures in insects, unfortunately for the insects a prize of sweet nectar is replaced by a gruesome death of being slowly digested, caught on the attractive fibers found on the leaves.

So it tells me that I can register for up to six, count 'em, six classes at once. I don't intend to, only taking five-ish classes a term, but in theory it should be quicker. Good, great. I can go home sooner. So I go through all the classes I want to take, throw them on the list... oooh I just need one more. Alright, so all I have to do is skip back to the search page, and wait... what's that? Error? You need to resend data? Alright, go nuts, resend it... and now it's back at the home page. But where are my classes? That's right, they've been devoured by the gaping void of cyberspace and no longer exist. Yup. So I'm back at square one. Since when did hitting the 'back button' make me want to kill myself... or better yet the creator of Beartracks.

I think that this is part of a test, some kind of crazy psychological experiment is taking place. They are watching everyone signing up for school, testing responses, waiting until you are close and then wham-o, everything disappears and you are left with a feeling of inadequacy at your inability to understand how to sign up for classes.

And the worst part of it all? At the end of this maze there is no cheese, just a long year of masochistic tendencies and depression... I love school.

Adventures in the key of 'C'

In light of controversial bloggness, I shall now delve in to the mindless world of recent adventures I've partaken in. I'm fairly easy to please, just send me on my way with a car, a tank of gas, and maybe a juice box and I'm happy. Saturday was such a night, and hopefully if my computer holds out long enough to post a few pictures, I can even illustrate how I spent money this weekend.

It all started when picking up a co-worker in the morning, mind you I was up at 5:00am to make it to his place on time, and woke him up at 6:35 so that he made it to work... grr. But even more upsetting was the car sitting in his driveway. It was a Chrysler 300, something not uncommon where I work, but what was surprising was the little HemiC emblem on the side.

Long story short, my boss left early and a coworker gave it to me for cheap. I hauled around friends, went to a party, but it wasn't until 10:00 that night that I finally had some fun. I drove nice, surprisingly enough, (the car runs around 350hp) I think it was enough knowing that I could beat out anything on the road.

I decided to hit up some common landmarks around Edmonton... oooh, the picture worked, okay, since it's really small and kinda crappy (I was taking pictures with my palm pilot - give me a break) I'll now go through the pictures:

1. I'm in the car, on Whyte ave, and that car in front and to the right is a cop...
2. Here I am downtown
3. Oooh, in front of the Leg. building... mostly legal, well, that gate arm was up so I'm guessing it was okay
4. Here I am next to SUB, I figured since we rent to the U of A anyway, it would be fine if I kinda went on the sidewalk
5. This is me in the River Valley with a nice city skyline in the background
6. Good old WEM
7. Me in the world's second biggest parking lot (Disney World is the largest)
8. In front of the Pillbox... I mean Rexall Place
9. This is at the Muttart Conservatory
10. Here I am close to a Refinery...
11. ... and kinda in the Refinery, I like to think that I'm invisible
12. Ah, the inside
13-15. And pictures of the hotness. FYI, I lived just behind the car in that Valley area when I was born... or so my Dad told me.

I know, this has nothing to do with anything, but I thought that I'd update you all anyway in feeble attempts to make my life seem more exciting then a garden gnome's.

Then there comes the danger in getting into one’s own car and sighing… wishing for more. I must say that this experience opened my eyes. It was like being at a really fancy hotel, it was nice, but it felt better to be home. Yes, while the umpteen way adjustable seat could be set to automatically conform to me when I got in the car, the lights, windshield wipers and mirrors all worked on their own, and the car did its best to meet my every demand, I missed my Civie… in fact, after cleaning it and driving into the Park, I realized that I did many illegal things to avoid puddles, something I didn’t do so much while driving fatty. Sure, I do the quarter mile eventually, and my stereo doesn’t render the rearview mirrors useless due to vibrations, but I can’t imagine opening the garage door and seeing Behemoth there instead of my car.

Would I ever trade in my Civic for Lardo? Not a chance.

Mmm 300... 

Hm, so that was what I last ate

Ah yes, the coveted 'sick day'. The day you get to lay around the house and learn precious lessons that you just can't learn at school. While I am sure that by the end of this blog you will be thouroughly disgusted by what I have to say, I have absolutely nothing better to do than to reflect on my experiences over the past day and a half, so sit back... actually, does anyone read this thing anyway? No matter, it takes up time until I start holding down liquids.

Lesson One: the digestive system and you
It takes a while to digest anything. I mean I learned in Biology how the whole process works, that we begin to digest sugars once the food enters the mouth, that an acidic stomach fluid helps to break up the food for the bacteria in your ilium, jujenum, and duodenum to digest, but it must take a freaking long time. I eat something, hoping that it stays around long enough for me to absorb some of the nutritional benefits or at least of of the water content so that I don't become too dehydrated, but no... all gone. And this is hours later! I mean how long does it take the gastrointestrinal tract to take in food?! Gah, why can't you hurry up!?!?

Lesson Two: the media is your friend
Ah, what better way to waste a day then to sit around and watch the boob-tube. I cannot belive what kind of crap compose movies and television. There are some good, some bad, and a whole lotta ugly shows available for viewing today. Oh, and for those of you who are keeping track, of my five channels, we recently lost sound on one, so that puts us to four, count 'em, four channels. During this time of illness I've watched many movies (spiderman 2, dinner rush (this was good, you should watch it), matrix: reloaded, lilo and stitch, and yes, Josie and the pussycats). Now I know why I don't watch TV, although the MTV awards video on the matrix was pretty funny, and josie and the pussycats taught me how to love who I am, and not what I try to be, she's so smart.

Lesson Three: stupid Americans
This is on a more serious note, there is a woman who is 'brain-dead' in Florida, although she responds to stimuli and is basically at the level of severe mental handicap. She has been in this state for ten odd years, and now for the third (?) time her husband has removed her feeding tube, leaving her to starve to death. I know how sick I feel after not eating for a day, there are headaches, no energy, and a nausia that won't let me sleep at night, and according to her doctors it will take her two weeks to slowly die. What the crap is wrong with people?!?! Apparently the government is trying to pass a law making this illegal, and trying to save this woman. I cannot imagine this kind of death. What about if it happened in a prison? Or a mental institute? It would immediately be found to be wrong, but in this case it's fine? It's enough to make you sick.

Oh, I feel another adventure coming on, ah, and back to the TV. Hmm, maybe I can write a book about my experiences, but replace my likeness with that of a wizard in training, and have a series of bad things, or unfortunate events occur, oh, but then Bruce Willis (he's so hot right now) will come in and save the day and everyone goes to the prom, hey, then I can turn it into a made-for-TV-movie, people will watch anything...

What a crazy trip it's been...

Wow, I can't believe that I haven't posted on this in over a month, I guess that it kinda makes sense seeing as how I posted on one of my many other sites almost daily.

What to talk about? There are infinite numbers of subjects to complain about... where should I start? Hey, guess who just realized she has a one track mind, aside from cars and school, I have very little to complain about, and as for the election, aside from it being so last week, I still have another two sites dedicated to that.

Today I'm going to focus on my issues with 'redheads'. Ah yes, tis a long and harrowing struggle in my everyday finding some way to live terrorized by those with red hair, well I guess it's not that bad, but it has always been one of those funny things.

It all started in kindergarten with a swathy six year old nammed April, come to think of it, I kinda hate the name "April" now too. She was quite the butch and I was anything but. She had the tight bright orange curls, freckles, and that pug nose that would haunt me in my dreams at night. She never liked me, I don't know why, there was just something. There was the name calling, the occasional 'bump' as we passed each other in the cubbie hallway, and even the dispute over whose turn it was at the waterworks station, but she truly reared her ugly head over a media dispute that spring, it might have even been in April.

We all had milk cartons, and each month, some student was 'lucky' enough to get to put the newsletters in everyone's milkcarton mail box. Ah yes, it was a glorious day, everything was coming up little Carly, as I grabbed a stack with a knuckless fist and began distributing them into their respective low fat, skim, and 2% cartons. I probably even was singing up a made-up song to celebrate the incredible event. Then, like that grey cloud of enivitable doom descending on the teddy bear's picnic, she came. Accusing me of 'crumpling' her newsleter before putting it in her mailbox he raised a chubby arm into the air and punched me in the nose. I bled, and cried, she got into trouble.

Kelly was the next one, in grade 6. She was one of those psycho-horse people. You know the ones, long straight hair, reading the 'horse club books' only drawing horses, and playing playground games consisting of prancing all over the place like idiots. I lost a fist-full of hair to that one, after she came up with a plan to frame me as a banana snatcher who left bananas all over the place (I know, it doesn't make sense, she was pretty dumb).

There have been others, but it wasn't until a recent candidate meeting that it all came flooding back. It was Sam Power, I know, wicked awesome name, but the whole meeting she just sat there, staring into my soul. She knew my issues with her kind and the orangeness, I'm fairly certain that she secreted some kind of orange-hair hormone, because before I knew it, there was another, this one was yelling at me to speak up louder, she couldn't get her fat fingers to type in what tables I booked fast enough, well, maybe she didn't say all of that, but you get the idea.

For those of you out there going - "Hey, wait! I have red hair!" No, not quite. I mean you do, but a: it's not natural, and b: it isn't that orangy-red, you know the colour.

That's about it for me now, guess I should get back to that reseach I've been ignoring... I can't wait until this year is over. Sayonora!