Voting, last day tomorrow.  Yup.  Got it?  Ok.

I picked up an Ubyssey and it actually explains most of the voting matters, candidates etc quite well.  So if you’re interested or confused, go check it out.

Note: I am actually voting as I type this with the Ubyssey infront of me as my guide.  So feel free to use this as your guide as well.

Some other things: 1. You can save and continue later.  2. You don’t have to answer everything.

I am up to the 3rd choice

Vice-President finance…
who is The Invisible Man?

Seriously.  Is this a joke?  Is it some sort of political term I don’t understand?  It can’t be a joke though right… because if AMS wants students to take this seriously… they wouldn’t do that right?  Imagine being Elin Tayyer, the actual human that is running for the position.  What if he loses?  For the casual voter… how tempting is it to choose The Invisible Man?

I might actually do it.

But it would probably burden me morally to choose the potentially non existent candidate over the one with an actual picture.

I’ve hit the Senate section and I realize I’m starting to get bored and am ready to vote based on a combination of who has the most interesting last names and interesting combos based only on their faculty and past experiences.  But I will try not to.

Onto the Legal Fund Society section part and the Ubyssey is now not enough.

And apparently neither is the election website because I still have no idea what they are talking about.   I’ll leave you to figure this out on your own.   Click. 6 choices, 8 candidates, 6 writes ups.  Kinda narrows it down.

Voter funded media: waaah?  Next!

Referendums: Finally!  Things where I will actually be able to tell if my vote made a difference or not!

Note: If you check both the yes and no box you’ll get a pop up!

Ok.  You can take it from here.  Onto the next ballot clicking… CUS.

Oh god.  Not more of this.  Did your head say that just now?  That’s how I’ve been feeling these days.

But I got an e-mail from this club I’m in, CVC, about voting and it was very helpful so I think I should share.

> This is where you go to vote <

> This is where you go to find the information on the questions asked and the candidates <

After taking a look at those two pages I can see why only 15% of the student population bothered to vote last year.

There is just too much going on and not enough care in my body to bother to read all those pages about candidates and so on.

Too many terms I don’t understand.

Too many things I never knew existed.

Too little time to care.

Why am I even bothering then?

I read in the Ubyssey  about this “referendum” that wants students to pay $5 at the beginning of the year and you can get it back when you vote.  And you can vote against (or for) it.

So really my only motivation to vote is that I want to keep my damn $5.

(I don’t even know what “referendum” really means but they seem to be rules or policies the AMS wants to change?)

Do you really know where your fees are going?  For people who miss out on voting and if this $5 thing passes I doubt most people would even realize that there is a $5 charge in our fees somewhere that we can get back through voting.  Sure, it would be these individuals’ own faults for not staying updated but seems like a cheap tactic to me.

If only 15% voted last year… that 85% multiplied by $5 is a lot of money…

I will talk about my other confusions of voting another day.

(like what does “indexing fees” mean anyway!?)

For now, sleep.

Because I seriously wished that someone told me before I spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out… I asked around and no one could help me either.

Step 1: The copy card.
It is a little-longer-than-usual-rectangle piece of plastic used for the print stations and photocopiers at the school.  There is a machine in Koerner and David Lam Library, maybe Irving but I don’t know.  In Koerner it is behind the main stairwell on the 1st floor when you walk in.  In David Lam it is in that little room left of the front desk.

Step 2: Purchasing and filling the copy card.
There are instructions on the machine.  I find that they do a very good job so I’ll just say BRING LOONIES AND TOONIES.  There are change machines but they won’t convert quarters and you don’t want $20 in coins.

Step 3 (maybe this should be step 1): Finding the photocopy machine.
I’m completely new to this so I only know 2 places.
1. Koerner: Go in, turn left where it says REFERENCE, it has it’s own gate thing.  Go straight, it’s in the back.
2. In the village next to the stairs that go to Discount Textbooks.

Let’s start with the most simple copying method…

Photocopying a book or manually scanning pages:
1. open the top
2. note where it tells you to put the pages so you don’t put it in the wrong corner and scan the wrong thing
3. open to page you want to scan and put it on top, close cover
4. press the start/copy button (the biggest one… typically green)

Onto the part I desperately needed help with!

Photocopying many pages of double sided papers:

There are 2 types of photocopiers that I know of.  If you want to do it the manual way, choose the one on the left.  If you’d like the machine to do all the work, pick the one on the left.

1. Loading the “originals” (what you want to copy): you would think it’s one of those 2 slots that stick out the side is the place to go right? You would just pick the one with an arrow -> pointing towards the machine <- rather than out of it right?  No.  You put it on the top.  The arrows are liars.  So if your machine doesn’t have that extra top thing and you put the paper somewhere else, you’ll just get a photocopy of dust and little stringy things.

(Load it on the slanted/on the right of the two top boxes)

1.5. Beware of the direction you load the paper, as in landscape or portrait.

2. Press 2->2 to photocopy double sidedly.  What does it mean?  I don’t know.  I would guess it is somewhere along the lines of you have 2 sides and you want it to become 2 sides on one paper.  That’s kind of confusing because there is also 1->2…

***note***:  Just believe in the power of 2->2.  I clicked 2->2 on a machine and it only copied one side and told me to stick the paper back in, so I tried 2->1 and the same thing happened.  Switched machines and it was fine.  I blame that machine.

3. Press the big copy/start button.  Sit back as the paper feeds through the machine on it’s own =).  Now all I need to know is how to photocopy double sided with single sided originals… maybe that’s what the 1->2 is for.

Troubleshooting:

Clear and cancel are not the same buttons.  Cancel is the C button.

When photocopying double sided the dreaded paper jam may occur.  It may also occur of you click stop.  Your first instinct will be to pull your paper out, see how much of it actually photocopied and count if the copier ate any pages.  You may find all the pages are there and proceed to attempt to photocopy the ones you still need to photocopy.

Back at the main menu it tells you a paper jam occurred.  Please open the top, remove the original and close the top.

Here is where I spent 5 minutes frustrated, cursing and asking what the copier wanted from me as I attempted to open and close the top at different speeds and to varying degrees.

By “top” the copier means the left box of the 2 boxes at the top (next to where you loaded the paper) and not the “top” of which you open to reveal the glass part.

Okay maybe I’m just stupid or had a bad day.  I used to believe I’m better than the average person with technology but now I’m not so sure.  Hope this helps save someone from the pain of photocopiers.

Final Note:

Where does the paper come out? Note the large chasm in the middle of the machine under the touch screen menu.  That is where it comes out.  So what are those trays on the side for?  I really don’ t know.  I guess out of experience though that they do not take paper in.

Nobody likes paper jams =(

(Office Space is a good movie btw.)

Stop, duck and cover.

Exactly where do we hide if an earthquake hits while we’re on campus?

Especially if we’re in a Buchanan D class room, or MATH 100 or WOOD [insert #]?

Really… I don’t know what I would do other than book it for the door but so would most other people right?

Do you ever notice that when you have a schedule for your life, you tend to cross paths with the same people?

I guess every student has a schedule for their life to some extent.

Back in the summer I thought about taking a different route to school everyday just so I could see new things but that never happened and I settled down for consistency (or is it laziness).  When I look around I notice I’m not the only one with the consistent flow of life.

For example:
– the same lady on the bus with the thick rims and trench coat
– the guy passing out the Metro
– the man who plays the guitar at the sky train station (his life is more flexible, he’s not always there)
– the 5 siblings walking to school who I always bump into at the same intersection of my route to school
– big guy with Elton John glasses who I always bump into at the other intersection

Do you have these people in your life?

If they suddenly stopped being there, would you be sad?

Sometimes it feels like I’m in the Truman Show… you know the part where he greets his neighbour every morning with the same actions?

I have this expectation that they will be there even if I’m not.  It makes the world much less lonely yet I’m sure such an expectation is extremely selfish.

When I grow up, will I still be selfish like this?

Speaking of growing up, I went to Chapters today.  COMM 299 talked about how people should build on their strengths because simply fixing our weaknesses will never be enough.  What if my strengths aren’t the things I want to be good at?  So instead I tried to find my interests and went to every shelf and looked at something there.

I got to the business section I thought “this is grown up stuff, I’ll check it out some other day.”  But I’m at Sauder, shouldn’t this be the stuff I want to look into more?  The only thing that caught my eye was a book on marketing tactics.  Could this be a sign I’m not at the right place?

What’s growing up anyway?  University student, parents will always look at their children as kids but shouldn’t I have almost reached that “grown up” stage by now?  If I weren’t at school, I’d be working. To me, a full time job is what I’ve always felt is the dividing line between adolescence and adult.