Today Is A Good Day

But not in a Klingon sense.

This morning, I got the results from one of the scholarships that I applied to back in the Fall and, as the Klingons might say: Qapla'! (success!) It's the more valuable of the two scholarships so I'm quite happy about that.

Of course, the best part of this means that I won't have to TA if I don't want to (and I probably won't want to)!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Sound of Silence

My graphics card has been dieing a slow and rather noisy death - or, at least, the fan has been. Last night, the way it was acting up, I decided that it's final death was probably imminent and that it should be replaced as soon as possible.

Now, I've been putting off replacing it for a few months or so now because getting a new graphics card necessitates upgrading my PC's power supply as it's a lowly 300W and most new-ish graphics cards seem to require at least 400W. This increases the cost of replacing my ailing graphics card (approximately doubling the cost, depending on power supply/graphics card) and, as a student on a limited budget, I have been hesitant to spend the money to upgrade even though it was fairly obvious that I would have to sooner or later.

However! I recently received word that a funding application my supervisor and I put in over the summer was approved so now I have some confirmed funding for next year, and a decent amount more than what I've been getting to date. Thus, I decided now was the time to go ahead and upgrade. I went out today and bought myself a new graphics card (Radeon 5670, for the curious) and a 700W power supply. And it's so quiet! I can barely hear anything at all! It's so wonderful.

I also noticed, whilst I was buying the new graphics card, that there were some 24" widescreen Samsung LCD monitors on sale ($70 off) so I decided to pick one of those up as well as I've been kind of itching to upgrade my monitor. Yeah, I'm splurging. But it's worth it! The new monitor is so glorious! I'm running at a resolution of 1920x1080 and everything is crisp and smooth. It's freaking fantastic!

That is all,
-Freak Out

NSERC Update

I got an e-mail this afternoon from the associate provost for graduate studies here at the university (don't ask me what a provost is, I haven't looked into the details) regarding my NSERC application.

My initial reaction was "uh oh" since the first two paragraphs read like what I would expect from a standard form rejection letter. Then the third paragraph was "I am pleased to inform you..." and I sighed a bit in relief. The e-mail itself is really nothing exciting. It's just informing me that the application made it beyond the university level and was sent on to NSERC itself. While this is what I was expecting, it's nice to get confirmation of that, even if it's coming later than I was expecting. The actual scholarship results don't come out until March so there's still a few months to go for that.

So, fingers are crossed (metaphorically speaking).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

'Tis the Season... Not

So, I was at the mall today to get some thank you cards to send to my references since they were pretty awesome about getting the reference letters in for the Vanier scholarship on such short notice. When I went into the card store I couldn't help but notice that they ALREADY HAD CHRISTMAS STUFF OUT. And it's only early October. I mean, cripes! I know capitalism/materialism is getting a bit out of hand these days, but still, couldn't they at least wait until after Thanksgiving? (*)

Sigh.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

(*) And by Thanksgiving, I mean Canadian Thanksgiving which is this weekend.

Showmanship and Other Ships

Coffee hour in the graphics lab is Friday afternoons. It doesn't actually involve coffee, but there are generally snacks. Today, one of the lab members came in wearing a chinese shirt with a book (it had "Bible" on the cover, but that's inconsequential to the story, really, but it did create an interesting image) which he then proceeded to open (the book, not the shirt) and which then burst into flames (doused upon closing it). It was certainly a flashy entrance. He also tried to do something similar with a wallet, but it didn't want to cooperate.

In non-fire related news, today I was asked by the computer science department to submit an application for the Vanier Canada Graduate scholarship (as a follow-up to my NSERC application which was submitted last week). This is a good thing. The Vanier is rather prestigious (not to mention valuable) and whilst I have no idea what my liklihood of getting one is, I think that this development bodes quite well for my NSERC application, if nothing else.

Freak Out,
-TFitC