Bell Sports has come up with arguably one of the most ingenious methods of bike-lock security I've ever seen - a bike lock that often refuses to open even when the correct combination is entered. The lock looks like the standard 3-number combination lock, where you spin to the right, then the left, then the right. Based on several months of experience, I estimate the lock fails between 50 and 75 percent of the time when the right combination is entered. It's a very touchy lock, and today I had to have tried at least a dozen times before I could finally get it to unlock.

Now granted, this kind of system could foil crooks pretty easily, since even if they did know the combination, they might not be able to open the blasted thing. But it foils me just as often, and there are times when I really don't want to be standing around for five minutes trying to unlock my own bike - particularly since it probably appears, at that point, like the bike isn't mine.

Posted by Justice at 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I've never known the title to this work until it happened to be cited on the back end of a Buffalo Sabres tribute video on the web, even though I've heard the chorus numerous times and do like O Fortuna, the opening piece. I can't be sure, but I've always thought Liberi Fatali, another favorite Latin chorus of mine, was influenced by it.

Anyway, I purchased a recording of it, so I may post a review at some point in the future.

Posted by Justice at 10:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hmm...well, I do live within spitting distance of West Virginia at the moment, but otherwise, I've hardly spent any time in the South. I probably wouldn't want to either, since the South in summer reminds me of hell on earth.

HT: Cacciaguida

Posted by Justice at 9:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GOOD REPORT

I just did a periodic checkup on my credit history and found everything to be in order. There were two items I didn't immediately recognize, but a quick check in the wallet and a phone call revealed what they were. In other good news, I had no record of any delinquint payments on the report, which is certainly a plus.

I also got very good news by escaping my two core theology classes with an A- in each, which is quite good, given both professors are rather stingy with their As. A pre-req course also came out with an A.

BAD REPORT

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, one can bite off too much in a semester, and I paid for it this time out. Oddly enough, the course that suffered was the one I least expected to be a problem, yet another argument for avoiding courses that appear to be soft (see Mathematics of Voting course from last year). My one elective just missed the mark, falling short of the required graduate threshold for credit toward the degree. While the bad news from this is that I now need to take another course down the line - and pay for it as well - while having a bit of dead weight in the GPA, the good news is that it isn't really doesn't hurt that badly, coming as it does in a non-core course. And as a side benefit, the course becomes ineligible for comps, which is just as well, since it would have been a difficult question to prepare for.

Basic lesson learned - 2 to 3 grad courses in a semester is a wise maximum. Right, Andy?

Posted by Justice at 9:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sweet! The Buffalo Sabres are moving on to the Eastern Conference Finals, the first time since their cup run in 1999. I'm a bit surprised the Ottawa Senators collapsed in just 5 games, but Buffalo really seems to have their number in the playoffs, as the Sabres have taken the last 3 series in which the two teams have met. The likely Buffalo-Carolina matchup should be quite entertaining.

GO SABRES!!!!

Posted by Justice at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In light of recent calls by the Vatican to boycott and take action against the DaVinci Code movie coming up, a novena seems like a good idea leading up to the movie.

The movie opens on May 19, so my plan is to pray a novena of the Divine Mercy Chaplet from May 10-May 18, the 9 days just before the movie opens. To any of my readers out there, consider joining in this novena, or saying some other sort of prayer, like rosaries. We may not be able to keep people from seeing the movie, but prayers can definitely help depress the film's revenues. I'd like to see another news story like this in 2 weeks.

Posted by Justice at 9:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Having just finished the semester, I finally got a chance to do an inventory on my assignments to see how I did. All of the papers got done on time - with the exception of one in which I had a 1-day extension - and my grand total there was 107 pages double-spaced on 17 papers.

The reading went less well, as I only read just over 4000 pages of the 7000-7600 pages assigned (the variance is due to one book that was more "suggested" reading than required). The word "overkill" comes to mind when looking at the reading. Actually, that should be reserved to the professor who assigned over 4600 pages in his class. The other three averaged only 1000 each, and even Dr. Hahn, normally considered among the more reading-intensive professors, paled this semester in comparison, as he assigned just over 1700 pages.

Anyway, this summer, I will get to work on clearing the roughly 3600 pages I didn't read, mainly since almost all of this stuff looked good, but there just wasn't time in the semester to manage all that reading, all those papers, and the reading and research required for 3 term papers.

Posted by Justice at 2:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

For some odd reason - poor economy maybe? - Steubenville has some of the cheapest gas in the region. One of the local news stories this week was about a station that was selling gas considerably lower than in other locations, and thus was drawing a line.

Oddly enough, gas this afternoon at the station that I pass by most days was $2.60, down nearly 29 cents from a recent high, and 4 cents from Friday. Other locations in Steubenville were $2.75 to $2.81 at that time, though by the time I came back home, a pair had dropped 10 cents to $2.65. Based on past trends, this means that there will likely be a 25-cent jump coming up in the next week or two. Gas just never moves smoothly in price here, and the spikes can make it seem like playing Russian Roulette - that $2.89 price noted at my baseline gas station this week was a spike that lasted less than a day before dropping 24 cents.

One other oddity - taking into account the $2.60 price, gas in Steubenville is only about 10 cents higher than it was when I first came here the week before Katrina.

Posted by Justice at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I kept thinking so often tonight that the Sabres were going to lose. Silly me, I should have more faith than that, but this was a wild game that kept giving hope and taking it away. And leave it to the online radio feeds, they failed just before the game-winning goal. I got the feed back just in time to hear the post-goal excitement.

Lost opportunity for the NHL too - this probably would have been a great game to see on national TV. Instead, like every other playoff game save one this year, I have had to settle with listening to the radio.

Posted by Justice at 12:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

An extra day or so would have been great, but life is what it is. The finals went decently well, I suppose, as I wrote roughly 32 pages worth in blue books today in about 4 hours for a pair of exams. My writing hand is shot, as is to be expected. As it was, I moved one exam to give myself a 2 hour reprieve in between, bought a new pen with a comfort grip, and also violated my usual policy of no painkillers by taking a total of 2 Advil during the course of the day to deal with the pain in my writing hand. And it still almost wasn't enough. I hope I don't end up with this type of situation again in the future.

On the whole, however, the exams went reasonably well. I am only uncertain of one question out of 5 on the morning exam, and though my afternoon exam was a bit iffier in terms of details on history (I drew none of my strong questions, though I avoided having to do one of my weak ones), I think I wrote enough to get by. Thanks be to God - I'm pretty sure I had some help from on high untangling St. Bonaventure's theology today, as well as help in not freaking out.

Posted by Justice at 8:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In about 11 hours, I face the first of two grueling finals, a 2-hour long series of essays in Theological Foundations. Depending on which set of questions the professor selects, I'll write either 5 or 6 essays in total.

About 17 hours from now, I will finish up a 2-hour long essay exam in Historical Foundations, which will involve 3 essays in total out of a possible 16 selections on the study sheet, of which 6 will appear.

Thereafter, the semester is done. My ability to affect the outcome, at any rate, will be. Grades will probably take another 2 weeks to come through, and hopefully, they will be good.

Ora pro me!

Posted by Justice at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yes, yes, finals are still pressing, but I am due to be liberated shortly. In the meantime, prayers are kindly requested owing to the freakiest coincidence that has ever occurred during my academic career. In a relatively small class, where we had carte blanche in picking a historical event/person to write a 15-20 page paper on, I and a colleague happened to select the same topic (Eastern Schism) and rely heavily on the same two books. Odd as it may seem, Franciscan has only 7 books on the subject in its library, and of these only 4 are pertinent to 1054.

Naturally, relying on the same two principle sources, we had a lot of broad themes in common. I think that since we wrote independently of each other, that fact will reveal itself in the details of our papers and the different secondary sources used. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that the professor may feel that something fishy is up, given he has 2 papers on the same subject in a class of less than 15 drawing the bulk of their arguments from the same two books. Note to professors - this is why it is a good idea to have students clear their topics ahead of time, to avoid this kind of a situation.

Posted by Justice at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well, this time around, it appears that over the course of the semester, I left myself about 10 to 20 hours short of what I would need to get things done. This relates mostly to the one remaining paper I have that isn't done yet, and which ought to be done tomorrow at roughly 9:30 in the morning. I have a little extension on it, which I will probably exercise, but that will take away from study time for finals, both of which fall this Friday.

At least in some good news, I was able to convince one professor to move his exam from the 8:00 slot to the 2:30 slot in my case, thus avoiding the disaster of 4 hours of essay writing broken up by only a 30 minute break. As it stands now, I will get a 2 hour break to rest my hand. And just in case that's not enough, I bought one of those fancy comfort-grip pens to be on the safe side.

At any rate, there will now be a blogging break the rest of this week to write my last paper and study for my 2 essay finals.

Posted by Justice at 7:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack