PDEng sucks.

Finally something has pissed me off enough to warrant a blog entry. PDEng. PDEng is Professional Development for Engineers, a new pilot program kicked off the year that I enrolled at UW. It is a series of 5 courses we have to take during our workterms as engineering students at UW. We were not told of the program during the application process, and it was not a happy surprise for most of the engineering class of 2009.

On one of the assignments this term I forgot to explicitly state how my recommendation would move an issue forward. For that reason I failed the entire course...I know, but the ridiculous marking scheme is the topic for another entry perhaps. If you attend a workshop in the area of your alleged weakness, they will give you credit for the course. Anyways, this morning (yes it's a Saturday) I dragged myself out of bed to attend a mandatory workshop on the assignment that I failed.

I submitted this assignment from my office computer and so did not have a copy of the assigment on my local computer. The "invitation email" asked that I bring a copy of this assignment which I could not do. When I arrived I was told that it wasn't an issue as long as I talked to the staff about it before the workshop was over. I attended the workshop, braved my hangover, participated in discussion and completed the group work and assignments during the workshop.

At the end of the workshop I was told that I had failed PDEng because I did not meet the basic requirements which included bringing my assignment. I cannot comprehend how that fact reflects my ability to write an opinion paper, but apparently it is reason enough to fail a student. Another student failed because he did not RSVP to the invitation email, although he did attend the workshop and complete the work.

I cannot comprehend how this ridiculous rubric was put together and the staff member that informed me of not receiving the credit seemed pretty confused himself. The reason this bothers me so much is because we have to complete each offering of the PDEng program before graduation. We have 6 co-op terms and 5 courses to complete which means that if I fail another offering I will not meet the requirements for my degree and will not graduate with my class.

It's not just me that thinks this is complete bullshit, the staff of PDEng requires escort to their vehicles at night and their offices have been vandalized every term since the program was created. It is the sole reason I would consider dropping out of engineering and into CS and a major reason that I would never recommend engineering at UW to anyone.

Shipping to Canada

Argh, why doesn't Amazon ship to Canada? Can someone please explain to me this logic? And if they won't ship to Canada, why doesn't Amazon.ca expand beyond books already? It is extremely frustrating to see the ridiculous deals Amazon can offer to the US and then refuse to ship to Canada at all. The jerks at Fossil are the same way. There are a few things I want from their website that I can't find locally for reasonable prices but they won't ship to Canada either.

I've settled on a pair of headphones...mostly. I am leaning toward the Sennheiser HD 477's, even though they're a bit pricey ($100 at Future shop). I found a number of better deals online but obviously from retailers in the US which means I would have to add customs, exchange rate, and shipping to their prices...and that is if they ship to Canada at all.

After listening to some music through my dad's cans I don't think I can ever go back to my little white earbuds again. Especially now that my good friend Phil has re-Africanized me and introduced me to the exciting world of rap music. Last time I listened to rap, I'm pretty sure Mase was topping the charts and Biggie was still kickin it.

Anyways, everyone please check out Black Star, it's an album Mos Def and Talib Kweli made at the end of the 90's. I forgot how fun good rap music can be. Also, I am very open to any suggestions for new music right now so please comment!

Break is over.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas break, I sure did. Here's a short update:

Christie and I were in Cuba from December 15 - 22 which is now a blur of mojitos, cigars, sunshine, and Hemingway. I did manage to cross 1 item off my list: smoking a cigar, drinking a mojito, and reading Hemingway in Cuba. Christmas celebrations ensued when we arrived home, sadly without snow. Christie caught some kind of virus from her cousins which she then passed on to me. I was fixed up in a couple days and we spent new year's at Caesar's which was as fun as it was expensive.

Yesterday was my 21st birthday which was fairly uneventful, but thanks to all who called or messaged to wish me a happy birthday, feel free to send gifts any time.

Yesterday was also the start of my 3A term here at UW. I'm taking 5 pretty interesting courses: Concurrent and Parallel Programming, Human-Computer Interaction, System Performace Evaluation, Cognitive Science, and Ancient Roman Civilization. The workload should be reasonable, but I don't have very much class which works nicely with my plans to work part-time for RIM.

Here are some pictures from Cuba!