Fail semester... sorry, fall semester

My school started on Monday and it feels good to get out of the house regularly again. I missed seeing people and having conversations without the trouble of inviting friends to come over. Though I don't have many friends at school, due to my weirdness, but at least I think that I have all the right friends around me. I wouldn't even want to be friends with everyone in my class. By the way, there's some changes in our class dynamics. There used to be more girls in our class, but now there's only three of us. I kinda like it. When I studied dentistry, there were only girls in my class and it made me feel quite insecure. I feel better now when the vast majority of our class is boys, because I don't have to care about how they feel about me. Girls are more critical and gossip-y and they easily create an unhealthy study environment. Or at least that's how I felt studying with only girls.

Anyway. I have four new courses to study. On Mondays I have a course called "Developing Data Network Services". We don't have any lectures in it, just a few seminars. We should watch some virtual lectures independently, but I still haven't installed that vpn-client on my computer which makes it possible. I read the instructions for Linux OS and there was an end-note which said it doesn't work on Ubuntu. And currently that's the only operation system I have in hand. J.R. said that there is a change it might work, because my Ubuntu is a newer version than the one mentioned in the instructions. We'll see. And oh... of course we have to do some big project. Laurea is all about making projects. We still don't know what our subject will be, though.

On Tuesdays I have some bullshit called "Managing Business Performance". I know I shouldn't be so judging, since our teachers probably mean well. But the last time we had the same teacher it was real pain in the ass. Seriously. Some people just shouldn't be teaching. Thank God we have two teachers in this course, and the other one is more pleasant. We were actually able to a) understand what he was trying to say and b) listening through the lecture without falling asleep. That's really special in Laurea.

On Wednesdays I have "Managing Information Security". It's the first course that actually sounds important and useful. And the teachers seemed OK too, like they actually know what they are talking about. We also got some books for free in our first lecture. That was cool. Free stuff is always cool. And it's quite amazing that finally some teachers actually believe that we're capable of like a) reading a book, b) learning something and c) being truly interested. Whoa!

On Thursdays I have a second part of an "Analysis and Design" course (I couldn't find a matching course in English and the Finnish name was absolutely impossible to translate), in which we are supposed to continue our project. In the last course our team designed a booking system for a hotel and in this course we should execute it. On the first lesson our team found out that we were the only team who managed to pass the last course completely. Talking about having the right friends... It feels good that everyone in our team is equally motivated. Or motivated in general.

And on Fridays I have NOTHING! Hooray! Anyway. You could probably hear my negative attitude towards my school through my post. It's justified. If my school was a person, it definitely wouldn't be the sharpest Crayola in the box. It wouldn't even be in the box, it would be too second-rate for it. I think the main problem with my degree program is that anyone can get in. Even monkeys. And monkeys aren't motivated to study, which doesn't make teachers exactly motivated to teach us. We do projects after projects without proper guidance and the end-results are poor (except in our team, of course). And the monkeys also have low moral "oh, let's plagiarize everything, that's why we have Wikipedia in the first place". Argh. Enough said.

And now you probably wonder why I keep studying in Laurea. Here are my reasons:

a) It's very close to my home, it takes only 15 minutes to walk to school.
b) I have a few good friends in my class that makes it worth the whine.
c) Despite all the bullshit, it's still about computers. And that's what I wanted.
d) It's only 3,5 years, 3 years if I keep myself busy. And I just started my second year.
e) Business Information Technology sounds good. I might actually get a job after I graduate.

EDIT: I have changed my mind. I said that one of our teachers is real pain in the ass, but now she's quite good at teaching accounting. I have absolutely nothing to complain about her way to teach in this course.

Papu doesn't give a rat's ass...

...because she most likely eats it.

Hairy happenings

There are things happening in Amoena's world. First, and most importantly, Papu has lost her first canine tooth. Our hairy baby is growing up!


Canine tooth of a canine.

Secondly, we've been hitting dog parks. We like to visit them more than Papu does. She's very wary around strange dogs, especially if they are bigger than her, but we want her to get socialized. Dog parks are pretty much the only socialization option, because we don't have any friends with dogs. Anyway. Sometimes Papu is feeling more brave and she might actually try to play with other dogs. You know, if and only they happen to be almost the same size as she is.


She's gonna catch you, J.R.

Sometimes, quite often actually, the dog park is empty so J.R. has to play with Papu. They run around in circles. It's nice to watch, because they both run so fast. Papu obviously runs faster, though. She's a little lightning. And when she's not running around, she's jumping around. She's good at that too.


Jumping off the picture.

Sometimes, not so often this time, I'm worried that the other dog owners won't like us. Papu is not a good playmate for bigger dogs or for dogs that are too eager. They make Papu scared, and when she's scared, she does nothing but hides behind our legs. And we let her. She can choose if she wants to play with other dogs or not, we're not pushing her into anything. Anyway. If the other dogs get too near her or try to approach her too eagerly when she's scared, she shows off her teeth. I don't know how the other dog owners feel about that, even though there's a very good reason for it. Papu's not aggressive. She just wants the bully dogs to leave her alone.


Papu looks funny when her eyes are closed.

Hmph. I can't believe I just wrote another Papu-related blog post. I wasn't supposed to. I was going to blog about the My Little Ponies I bought for my mom from the flea market we visited today. She collects them and I'm a good daughter. Here they are:


I'm pretty sure she doesn't have these ones yet.

Elina's annual visit

Last week Elina visited us. She's my friend. I've known her for a long time now. Our mutual online friend introduced us. He thought we might like each other, and eventually we did. Though it took several years before we met in real life, probably because Elina thought I was weird. Anyway. I like Elina because she's a girl. And before you think "that's the most lamest compliment ever", let me explain; She's the only girl friend I have, the rest of my friends are boys. So it feels really good to hang out with a girl for a change.

I didn't do anything special with Elina. I asked her earlier what she would like to do, but she said that she only wanted to see my family. She did visit me last year, but J.R. got sick when they were supposed to meet and Papu obviously is a newcomer. So meeting one new person and one new puppy would be enough entertainment for two days.

So we didn't do anything special, but we did knit. (Knitting is cool, kids. You should try it too.) Elina chose some super bulky yarn from our stash and started to knit mittens. She's not very experienced with knitting, so we had to help her. She knew how to knit and purl, but not how to read knitting patterns or how to decrease and stuff. But her first mitten turned out great! Like seriously great. She should be proud of it. At least I'm very proud of myself , because I was able to help her to make it. I thought I couldn't even read knitting patterns. It's proved now that I'm not so hopeless after all. I'm getting there, slowly.

Elina was also very generous. She brought us three skeins of Novita's 7-Veljestä wool yarn: one dark green, one lime green and one natural white. She also brought me her old fashion magazines, because she knows how much I like to read them. They probably weighted like hell, so I really appreciate the effort.


Papu says "thank you"!

Anyway. I had fun. I always like to spend time with Elina, and I'm a bit sad that we weren't able to move to Tampere. It would have been fun. We could have visited each other more often and make some tea and knit and watch TV. That's all I've ever wanted. A friend who likes to do everything that I like to do and vice versa.

Amoena @ Assembly 2009

Last Friday I got my laptop back from Sweden again. We had to send it back because some new problems occurred. Anyway. This time they didn't just replace some components. They made a recovery. Of course I had backups of all the truly important, irreplaceable files, but I lost my whole movie and music collection. I also have to reinstall all my programs again, which is probably the biggest nuisance ever. I just keep remembering new and new programs that I had and still need. It feels that I'm literally building my laptop again. But hey, at least it boots faster now!

On Saturday I visited Assembly with J.R. And I'm once again unable to describe what it is, so I quote their website:

Assembly is a four day computer festival, in which thousands of people and their computers spend the long weekend by meeting friends, playing games, surfing on the net, talking on IRC and enjoying the great productions from the demoscene. The idea is to be there with or without your computer and enjoy the great atmosphere of being with likeminded people.

Though for me it means spending several days by myself, because J.R. is one of the voluntary organizers. I'm glad that this year he didn't have to work during the event, just before and after it. I was able to spent time with J.R. like normally. Anyway. I'm quite envy of the nerds who are actually able to participate Assembly. It seems like fun. It really does.


Click to enlarge.

I don't think I'm too old. I think I just lack basically everything it requires: nerd reliability, nerd skills and, most especially, nerd friends. Wouldn't be much fun without them. I only dream about being a nerd, as sick as it may sound. But at least J.R. makes me feel special. I get a free entrance to almost every other nerd's wet dream. How cool is that?


Even Papu thought it was cool and tried to steal my ticket.

So we visited Assembly together. We saw a prize ceremony and it was nice. Though I would have wanted to hear the winning songs completely. It's easier with still graphics because they don't take time to show. Anyway. After that we watched short film compo, which was the reason why we got there in the first place. It's J.R's favorite and I can understand why; It doesn't take much background knowledge to understand. And most of the short films we saw were funny.

And I got a new Assembly T-shirt to sleep in! It's not black, because organizers are not worthy enough to get T-shirts in cool colors. They get only this weird dirty-looking wine red. I'm not complaining though. It will look black when it's dark.


Papu liked it so much that she got an urge to lick her personal parts.