Coming out of Hiatus

After my last post about quitting Facebook I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe it wasn't just Facebook that I needed a break from, but all social media. For the first time since I started my blog, I couldn't find it in myself to keep typing. Little achievements and what not had occurred, "interesting" and "note-worthy" things came to my attention, but I stayed silent.

Or we can pretend I went temporarily blind and couldn't type.

But I'm back. Thank you to everyone who left comments wondering where I went to. It's nice to know that I was missed. It says something when more people via Blogger wonder where I went compared to Facebook. Seriously, only 2 people wondered what happened to my Facebook account.

Maybe I should have more of a presence.

Or do more horrible things.

But yes, stories. How the end of the term went, my non-stop workouts, my hunt for a job, plans for the future, and my cousin's upcoming wedding. All our family is coming to visit us and we haven't seen some of them in over a decade. This should be fun.

It's good to be back. Posting schedule is back to every third day. Can't wait to jump around and see what everyone else has been up to.

Off on Vacation

Another hectic week with neglect to my blog. This is going to happen for about another week as I disappear for a while to visit my friend Erin. I look forward to catching up on what everyone else's stories when I get back as well as sharing my own adventures including (but not limited to) my trip and how I (nearly) got scammed.

See you guys when I return.

Project Derp: Phase 1: The Blog

A lot of people have asked about these projects of mine and I've been scant on information for a reason. See, contrary to popular belief, telling people that you're doing something actually doesn't encourage you to work on it any harder. A lot of people get a rush of satisfaction from sharing that "I am working on X". So much satisfaction that they stop working on X because they got that mental award already.

So I try to not to tell too much so as to better deny myself from that false sense of achievement. However, seeing as I've already succeeded on a significant portion of one of my projects, I think I can safely share the details here.

Also because nothing else amazing has happened in my life and I need to maintain my posting schedule somehow.

I'm so clever!

You hear stories about people making a living off their blogs, and so with a little research I decided to try it myself. See if it was possible or not. Yes, I started this blog as an alternate means to make money. Yes, I'm one of those people, you can crucify me later. But unlike most of those people I actually stuck with it.

I had a set of endpoints, goals, terms of success, etc. etc. and they boil down to the following:

Expected costs: $0

Skills to be learned: Regular posting, understanding how online advertisements work.

Estimated time: 50-100 hours.

Terms of success: 50< Blog posts, $100< Earned.

Bonus skills: Web design, basic coding.

Fairly simply, I didn't expect to spend any money on just a "theory'. For all I knew maybe some idiot got lucky and everyone else failed. But not any amount of money would be acceptable. Who wants to put in 100 hours of work and get $0.25? Not me. But at the same time, if I never posted and didn't make any money, that's my own fault, hence the 50 post minimum requirement.

Internet coupons are also not acceptable.

This would also serve as a chance to get into the groove of posting online in some sort of schedule. I would need to learn all the rules and requirements of having advertisements. If I was really keen, I would also learn how to make my blog look pretty. I didn't succeed. My blog has looked the same since day 1. But it was just a bonus requirement so I can let that slide.

I can safely say that I made well over the $100 requirement. Way over, much more than I expected. I don't feel comfortable revealing the exact amount though. I'm also actually nearing my 200th post so I beat the minimum post requirement as well.

So for these reasons I can safely declare Phase 1 of Project Derp to be a success.

Also, if you're wondering why it's called Project Derp, read the name of my blog.

But, I can hear a lot of you saying "$100 for even 50 hours of work = $2 an hour! That's not even minimum wage!". I'm certain that I've made more than many bloggers but you're right, these aren't the most amazing earnings. In addition, my earnings have been dropping for a long time now. Blogging is not an efficient way to earn money, or at least, not the way I'm doing it.

However, remember, what was phase 1 about? Testing. Testing to see if it was possible to earn money online by writing. And I passed with flying colours. It's not efficient though, but what is?

How can I possibly expand from this point?

Hmm...

 

And that's what phase 2 of Project Derp is about. Testing is over, it's time to kick it up a notch. It's time to try and make things efficient. Using the earnings gained from phase 1, I've been working on the next theory. 

The idea is that (if done right) you invest time into something and it perpetually earns you money. Forever. How awesome is that? It's like working for a month, stopping, but still getting a salary for the rest of your life.

However, I've encountered roadblocks, lack of time and sleep, and progress has not moved as fast as I wanted. I've literally been stuck at this phase since last summer and only since January have I really been putting in a lot of work into this.

But the last two weeks have been excited, I've started to show signs of phase 2 working. I just need to find time to make that (hopefully) final push into meeting the requirements for success. But based on my track record I'm not going to have a chance of finishing before April ends.

Oh well...

Phew! This post went on a bit longer than normal so I hope no one minds the massive blocks of text. I'm hoping that some of my other projects start working out so I can share them. Really handy for days that I have nothing else to talk about.

Comments appreciated. Feel free to call me an idiot if you think I'm wasting my time.

Where has everyone gone?

I didn't have the good fortune to be invited to any exciting New Year's parties this year. So I spent it alone. I also was out of my favorite beer, Innis and Gunn, so I also spent my New Year's sober. And I spent it in front of the dull glow of my computer screen.

And I was perfectly fine with that.

Though a good beer to accompany you never hurts.

I decided to go and revisit all the commenters who left comments on my blog last New Years. It's was a bit of a humbling experience. So many bloggers gone, disappeared, or forever on hiatus. It's hard to believe that at one point, I was getting almost 100 comments per post, now I struggle to hit 30.

But it's not the quantity of the comments that matter, but the quality. It's really true because I find that bloggers who do take the time to actually read what you've wrote and write something meaningful back tend to have better blogs to read as well. Most of the dead blogs left generic and lazy comments.

So thank you for everyone who still stops by to say hi. It's nice to know I have a small core group of readers out there.

But another reason why I wasn't too disappointed was because I spent the entire time in front of the computer working on various projects. I was the kind of guy who would go "That's a really neat thing to do, I should go do it" and then never get around to doing anything.

I still sort of am like that, but I'm working on changing that. This blog is an example of a project that I would consider a success. If anything else becomes successful, you'll hear of it. Some are a bit ambitious, some people would consider them frivolous or a waste of time, but I think these are things worth looking into.

Meanwhile my parents think I'm just playing games.

Thanks for having so much faith in your son.

Seriously, the only computer game I'm touching until my computer gets upgraded is Starcraft. Which I hate by the way, I hate this game. Like I've said before, I can control my emotions fairly well, but nothing, NOTHING, makes me as mad as this game. I have an abusive relationship with Starcraft and I admit it.

In the meantime, it's back to work. More research, more typing, more thinking and planning. I have less than a week left before classes resume so I want to see how many of these things I can successfully get off the ground before then.

Hopefully they don't go something like this:

Happy (almost) New Years!

With the end of 2012 rapidly approaching I was planning on doing a look at the previous year, or go-over or renew resolutions, something simple and easy to do.

I opened up a new post and I couldn't write. It's not writer's block or anything, I'm not feeling well. I think the last few posts I did kind of reflected this too. I'm going through a few personal problems and I'm not sure how they're going to play out. And I'd rather not discuss them until the problems have run their course and I can determine the most appropriate course of action.

I try my very best not to let my emotions get to me. I try to be as logical and objective as possible but that only does so much. I've done my best to get out of the house as much as possible, distract myself so I feel less miserable. I don't want to be alone with my thoughts.

Virtually no one else knows about this, and I plan on keeping it that way. I hope things go in my favor but I'm not holding my breath.

Happy new years to everyone. I apologize for being so depressing but this blog is really the only place I feel comfortable enough to vent through.

End of the World Post

Assuming all the crazy people are correct, tomorrow marks the end of the world, meaning that this will be the last blog post I will ever write. Sobering thought isn't it?

Which means I should probably put some effort into this thing.

Probably.

HAHAHA. NOPE.

Yeah, I'm not taking the whole apocalypse thing very seriously and neither are most rational people. I'm spending the day with Theresa and at a party. You know, so if the world does somehow end I'll probably too boozed up/unconscious to care.

Anyone from Australia? How you guys handling so far? Europe? Anyone not from North America still alive?

They'll be fine.

Anyways, I'm off to waste enjoy my last moments of existence. If you want to join me you can start by watching stupid videos of stupid video games doing stupid things they shouldn't be doing.

It's pretty stupid.

Enjoy.

Final End of Term Update

One last exam and one last paper. Almost done here. I'm seriously running out of motivation to keep working though. Or maybe I'm running out of energy, especially considering how much sleep people get when they keep pulling all-nighters.

I also think I've completely ruined my sleep cycle now. Yep, I'm running on Hong Kong time or something because I'm sleepy and brain dead from 10AM to 6PM but after that I'm wide-awake and ready to take on the world.

And by world I mean my notes.

Can't wait to be done. I'll see you guys Thursday and I'll revert back to my usual schedule of posting every 3 days and visiting everyone nearly every day.

Also it's snowing and windy over here. Hope you guys have better weather.

End of Term Update 3

Looks like I unintentionally changed my posting schedule to every 4 days instead of 3. I've got two exams for tomorrow and hopefully they'll go alright. I've got plenty of time throughout the day to review so I should be fine.

Hopefully.

If you want to read something more interesting, my previous post about the GRE is up. Go read and comment on that post instead, it's better than anything I'm sharing today.

The GRE

It's about time a proper post has been done. It's also a day late so my bad. I'm almost in the clear (for this week) but earlier this week was not so much fun for me. Mainly for one reason, the Graduate Record Examinations or GRE. If you want to get into any English speaking graduate school for your Masters degree, you're probably want to take this exam.

So while we're on topic, let's take a look at what this exam entails. The trials and tribulations of this stupid test that requires you to pay a third party company nearly $200 so you have a chance of advancing your education.

I was forced to to do this if I wanted to have a chance at Speech and Language Pathology.

Can't say I was pleased.

There are multiple variations of this exam. I only wrote the Revised (aka. general) version so I'm only going to be talking about that one. But I know friends who wrote Physics or Biology orientated versions so those exist too.

Basically, 7 parts: 2 writing, 2 reading, 2 math and the fake part. You have half an hour each of those parts and you can't go back once the time is up. They're all pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the "fake" part. In order to test new questions for future exams, they throw in an extra reading or math section that's worth nothing BUT looks identical to the other parts.

You're wasting time, energy, and effort on a worthless section. You're paying to help them screw over future students. That's so nice of them.

Thanks a lot, jerks.

Writing is writing. Nothing special here. Here's a topic, argue for or against it.

The reading sections consist of reading, vocabulary testing and sometimes both. Reading passages and answering questions is fairly standard, it's the vocab that's annoying. So for example, you'll be given a passage like "Abraham Lincoln was known for his _________ personality." and then you have to pick two words from a list that not only make sense with the sentence, but mean the same thing.

So your word bank will be like "GREGARIOUS. EQUIVOCATE. VICARIOUS. PROSAIC. EGREGIOUS. BLINKERED." Also, you have to get both words right to get 1 point. No half marks here.

Math is math. High school material really. You know, Train A is traveling 50km/h and Train B leaves in the opposite direction at twice the speed, Circle D has a circumference of 9x, determine the diameter of the square inside it, a company's value goes up 10%, how much more funding does Department X get compared to Department Y?

Derp derp.

So comes test day. You'd think I was going to prison or something. Photo ID required, picture taken, dumped in a small room with cameras observing me at all times. They really take this test seriously.

The writing portion is easy. If there's anything I can do it's pull a coherent mass of words out of my butt and have it sound amazing. The first hour is uneventful. Actually I'll be honest with you, the whole 3-4 hours was uneventful.

I finished most of the sections with time to spare and check over previous answers. Now, the thing about the GRE is how it grades your exam. The writing is marked separately out of 6. The reading and math are out of 50 marks and are converted into a score out of 170. Only the grade out of 170 matters. So you could get 27/50 on the math part and that could translate into 146/170.

ME NO MATH GOOD.

The best thing about the GRE is that at the end, they give you your score for the reading and math portions. The writing gets sent for marking and that mark comes 3 weeks later.

I got 156 and 159/170. The average varies from 145-150.

The funny thing is that the GRE study guides have schedules for people to study months or weeks in advance. I started studying for this thing half a week beforehand.

Not bad for half a week of studying.

End of Term Update 2

Hey, for once I have something worth talking about. Unfortunately I have about half a dozen things due this week (half on Tuesday, the other half on Thursday) so the time it takes to write up about whats been going on is being spent working.

Yeah, more all nighters. I haven't even had time to publish comments yet (thanks to everyone who's been dropping by!) but I should be safe by Wednesday.

See everyone then.

Nothing Substantial

Yeah. Nothing interesting going on. Just more work and more studying.

A blog post will go up when something worth while happens that doesn't involve papers or other academic nonsense. My life gets pretty boring when school takes over.

Here's a picture of a corgi driving a car. I'll see you guys when I see you guys. Will try and visit everyone when I have a spare moment.

Projects Galore

The great thing about this term is the general lack of final exams I have. Technically, I only have 1 but one of my classes has an unofficial final so I have only 2 finals to write in total.

The catch? I have a ton of papers and projects that have deadlines that are slowing approaching. And I've barely started on any of them. Which is not good, but I'll survive.

I hope.

Aging Psych:

I mentioned in a previous post how I was doing volunteer work instead of a paper. It involved helping out with some online stuff, writing things up. No problem there, I thrive online and I own a blog.

But it took until mid October for me to get in touch with the coordinators running the thing and I didn't start any work until early November. That, is a problem.

So now I'm kind of rushing here to get enough things done so I can get a decent grade. I think I'm going to need roughly 3 more blog posts for them before the end of the month. They're only 300-400 word posts each so I should be safe. That'll take an hour each to write.

Total time = 3 Hours.

Conservation Psych:

Got a paper here, 2500 words. Not too heavy though I really should get started on it. Probably take me a solid 5 hours to get this done. Basically, take an issue in the world related to conservation, suggest a way that would fix it but then outline all the issues that would prevent this solution from being implemented.

The biggest problem I find is not say overpopulation, but rather over-consumption. What if half the population of the world was wiped out but the remaining populous started using/wasting materials at double the rate? We haven't solved anything have we.

I've actually been meaning to have a post dedicated to this class. It's an interesting course.

Total time = 3 +5 = 8 Hours.

Social Influences:

Here's where things messy. We got two projects here that are due. 1 is a group project that has not been started but (hopefully) on Sunday my group can finally meet. I have no idea how long this is going to take. We're filming something that doesn't have a script written yet.

Second project is basically a massive paper. I need to research and create a hypothetical textbook chapter. This includes graphs, pictures, researching the topic and seeing as a textbook chapter for this class is roughly 30 pages long, this will not be a walk in the park.

Total time = 8 + ???? + ???? = ????

BONUS:

I still have the GRE exam to write at the end of the month. I haven't started studying yet. Yes, this is the 4 hour long exam I have to write to apply to for Grad school next year.

No I have not started studying.

If it's any consolation it's supposed to be easy. Interpreting chunks of text, impromptu papers, that sort of thing.

Still, I should probably try and take a look at what's to come. I didn't bother buying the help guides. Not when there are free ones available and what not.

Total time = ???? + ????

Better get started.

So if you rarely hear from me in the next few weeks. These are the reasons why.

I am not looking forward to this.

Status Report

Hello hello. Again, I apologize because I think this is the longest I've gone without commenting on another blog. And at this rate I'm going to continue breaking records until midterms are done. Actually, because of one midterm but we'll get to that in a moment.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Much appreciated.

Online friends are the best. I love you all.

In good news, my lung has (mostly) recovered I think. Just a brief case of things being worse than normal. I honestly can't tell if poor sleeping causes my lung to collapse or the collapsing of my lung taxes my body so much that I'm more tired than usual. Or maybe it's sudden waves of stress. That can causes both so let's just blame University.

Speaking of University. Midterms are slowly being written. Social Influences and Aging psychology has been done. I'm not sure if it's me but the midterms feel harder. I'm doing alright in them but I really want to be hitting A's and A-'s to increase my chances of getting into Speech Pathology. Conservation psychology DOES NOT have a midterm which I am so grateful for.

And then.

And then we have Cognitive psychology.

Yeah... I really, really, really wish I could have crammed a different Science course into my schedule because I am getting torn apart in this class. It's not that the prof is bad, he's enthusiastic, knows the material, he even wrote the textbook and gave it to us free online. Anyone who saves me a few hundred dollars is a friend of mine.

That being said, the material is still very dense, very hard to get through, and the weekly quizzes are kicking my butt. Let alone what the midterm will do to it. It's all written, no multiple choice. The last time I was required to write anything for an exam was years ago. All that training from High School is gone. I am not looking forward to writing a short essay on comparing the theories of how the brain may comprehend and understand the world.

I guess I shouldn't have assumed that a higher level Cognitive psychology course would be similar to the lower level ones. Or maybe I've been studying for this class all wrong. I know a girl in my class who is getting by quite well just by reading the notes. I've been doing the equivalent of slamming the textbook PDFs into my eyes until something breaks.

I still have a day to try and save myself. Wish me luck, I'll see everyone Friday.

Generic Midterm Post

I really do wish my life would be more interesting during midterm weeks. Would give me more to talk about and more time to do my blogging round.

I seriously have just sat on my butt and stared at a computer screen and various notes for the weekend so far.

If something worth talking about happens by Tuesday, I'll do a post about that until then.

Don't worry, the thing most likely to kill me is sleep deprivation.

The Last Week before Classes

It's hard to believe 4 months of freedom have gone by so quickly. But with just one more week before classes resume I can't say I feel excited.

Theresa already starts on Monday. She has orientation sessions to go to now that she's in Med school. So it's not like I can spend this week with her. It was unfortunate that she spent so much of her summer working but hey, medical school debts aren't going to pay themselves.

Basically.

So I have a week left to myself. And I have a fair idea of what I want to accomplish with the last of my time. I have a project or two I need to finish. Such as the hollow book. Yeah, this one has been on the backburner for a long time. It's almost done but I'm picky and trying to get some of part to look a bit nicer.

There is also a little kit that I got in Hong Kong that I found that I want to get around to doing as well. I'm hoping to get started on it and maybe post my progress on that too. Can't exactly outright say what it is though. It's a little something for Theresa.

What's inside? Only I know!

Speaking of Theresa I wanted to bake her something this week as well. She's fond of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese. So I'm going to try my hand at those hopefully on Tuesday. Pictures of that potential disaster will be posted.

And I also wanted to take her out for dinner as well. Thing is, I'm not sure whether to take her to a restaurant we've been to before. OR I could risk taking her to some really high-end French restaurant. I never really did do something to congratulate her getting into med school. Though, she kind of dislikes high-end dining because she thinks it's overpriced.

She might kill me but it be worth it.

Lastly, I still have a lot of games to finish. Unfortunately most of them are not going to be beaten in a week. Therefore, a review of Dear Esther, the acclaimed Half Life 2 mod, will be up sometime in the near future.

I've also been reading The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. They're great books and I'm contemplating giving them a review. However, they're extremely popular and I'm guessing many people have already read and/or watched the series. And I don't generally enjoy talking about things that people already know about, feels kind of redundent.

I am at a part where lots of people are dropping like flies though.

Last thing to note, due to schedule changes I no longer have a 5 day weekend but a 4 day one. It's still pretty good, I can't complain.

Leaves me plenty of time to blog during the term.

One Year Anniversary

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my blog. To be honest, I wasn't sure I'd last this long, or have that much material to talk about. Most blogs have a tendency to die after a few months, especially personal blogs.

But I guess I have an interesting enough life to continue making posts. Or maybe I can make mundane events seem more interesting.

I'm hoping my posts don't put people to sleep.

I originally started this blog to chronicle the events of me trying to figure out what to do with my life, what I was going to do after University. I truly was hoping that by this point in time I'd have a clearer idea of what to do and expect.

I don't.

And that's kind of scary, at least to me it is. Especially since most of my peers know exactly where they're headed to.

At least I'm special?

Ok, that's not entirely true. I have some sort of idea of what I want to do, it's just not as set in stone as everyone else. I have half a term left until I can get my degree and I guess we'll go from there.

I'm cutting this post short in celebration of my little anniversary, and upon further inspection it turns out I'm a day late with this post. Oops.

But yes, over the year I have had many followers but few have remained with me for a majority of the ride. And I appreciate everyone who stops by to leave a kind message. So come with me as I go through another year of uncertainty. And let's hope by my second anniversary, I'll be somewhere more secure.

I'm Back and Somewhat Alive!

Hello! To anyone who may still be following and reading my blog I am back safe in Canada from my trip to China! Unfortunately, this will have to be a really short post. I got food poisoning and I'm still not feeling that great.

More on that story later. I'll see you guys on Sunday when I should have fully recovered.

Last Post Before China

Alright, so I have just a few hours until we leave for the airport. This post is going to be short and is just going to serve as a reminder that I will be on hiatus until at least Monday, July 23rd.

I think it's been rather obvious that I haven't been visiting many people lately but it's been hard what with packing. Things will be better when I get back I hope.

If I somehow get stuck in a hotel room I'll try and make posts and what not.

See you when return!

Not Feeling too Well

Missed a post yesterday. Wasn't feeling all that great. Kind of just passed out and woke up with a groggy head.

Normal scheduled post will be on Saturday. See everyone then.

No Motivation for Anything

I've been noticing this a lot around the Blogosphere lately, lots of people just not having the energy or in the mood to blog or talk about anything. So I guess that makes me feel slightly better when I say that I've caught this bug as well.

Except it's not just with blogging, it's motivation to do anything.

I even sit like this too.

I'm not sure why this is the case. It's pretty easy to occupy my time and attention with things. And I normally love my computer and just goofing off on it. But lately, it just hasn't been enough. I usually love visiting blogs and reading about people.

I genuinely like hearing about how people's days have been and the interesting things they do. I guess that's a given considering that I'm a Psychologist.

But I've been neglecting my own blog, I haven't been doing my rounds. And I don't know why I don't have the motivation to do so.

Be entertaining again computer!

Also odd is that I'm just running out of things to blog about. I try and do interesting things so I have things to talk about but again, I've just been on my butt this entire time. I'm not sure whether to attribute that to a lack of a job or that Theresa is out of town.

It could also be that I'm not sleeping well. Though that's probably just due to me staying up and and then sleeping in really late.

But if I had a reason to wake up maybe I wouldn't stay in bed for so long.

I'm hoping things will improve once Theresa gets back home. Be able to get out of the basement, burn in the sun and what not. And in a few weeks I'll be going to China for a few weeks. So then I'll have plenty of stories to share.

About burning in the weather.

I relate to this so well...

In the meantime, anyone want to suggest things for me to do? I really feel like I should be spending my time more productively. I tried making a risotto for the first time in months the other day and it was kind of a mess. Not looking forward to curry.

So, feel free to suggest anything for me to do. I'm up for ideas.