I think this could possibly have been one of the worst days I’ve ever had to deal with. To start I woke up at 8:00 – which meant I had really only 2 hours to do my calc homework before I hit the tutorial. Luckily I had done half over the course of the preceding week and I was pretty sure I could do three questions without issue. That left the final, horrible three. But I also had to write my letters. I rewrote the Sun letter and focused it. I think I got my determination for the job across. At least I hope so. I was about to start on the next when I made the bad decision to run acme (a program that allows you to set the multimedia keys). It crashed X (first time in about a year…). Ok, being a Linux user I immediately Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc and restarted the Xserver. That’s when I hit my second logjam. GDM mysteriously stopped working. What? I thought it might have been because I upgraded to the newest pam in experimental – but that didn’t make sense. At any rate, I wasted the next hour trying every single combo of gdm (from testing + experimental) and pam (testing + experimental) that I could. All of them came up with “Authentication Failed”. Aight….so with twenty minutes to go before my tutorial started I installed plain old xdm. Of course – that magically worked. (Hint: its not pam). Then, I tried to run gdmsetup. No no no…apparently Xlib can’t create a connection to my display when I’m logged in as another user and su. WTF? Oh yeah – forgot xhost +locahost. Run that – no dice. Now I’m really concerned cause things that I took for granted aren’t happening. Time to tutorial – 5 mins. Rushed out. (Still haven’t figured out what I did wrong – the penalties for running a bleeding edge desktop :) ). Rode to school, arrived 10 mins late. Did the tutorial w/ Allister, Barry and Geoff. It worked wonders and I was able to finish 4 questions. Which left the hardest. Finished part of one before I left. I was over schedule. Talked to Jennifer Fleet about the raffle. So, now I was 1 hour over schedule and I still had not written my last cover letter.
And this was when it all went horribly wrong. I raced back home on my bike. On my way there is a slight incline on which I usually go top speed. It was blocked by a mass of schoolgirls. So of course, daring as usual I decided to cut through the grass. Silly me. Apparently the lawns there aren’t level at all. I was over the first lawn and the second one was a good two feet lower. Slam. Knocked the wind out of me and I was very concerned about the bike. But I was still upright and riding (pretty fast too). Then another pedestrian was in my way. Decided to cut around her and miscalculated. Thr ground was pretty wet so when I hit the ground at a slightly weird angle I skidded. That’s when I hit the grass and it all went to hell. I pile drove myself head first into the ground at some speed, rolled and the next thing I know I’m facing up thinking “I hope the bike’s ok”. I hear the girl ask “Are you ok?” to which I reply – “Yes, of course” (?!). I jump up and attempt to roll the bike. Which won’t roll of course. That’s when I notice I’m bleeding profusely from my palm, my head feels okayish (headache now), my lip feels cut, my hip is sore and my shin hurts like hell. I walk the bike back home (getting blood over it) and stash it in the shed. Go in, wash up and come out to investigate the damage. Realize the reason why it was so hard to roll was because the front wheel was turned around twice and all the cables were tangled. Untangled them. Checked the shifters and brakes (hope everything is ok). Noticed the seat is out of alignment, the brakes themselves (not the pads etc) have been knocked out of alignment. Striaghten everything and clean the mud off the bike. Put the chain back on the sprockets. Realize now that the brake bads are touching the rim…. Oh man. Ask Justin to help and we adjust the bike and get it working somewhat ok. Now of course, I have one hour to write a cover letter and another half an hour to get back to Waterloo, post the resumes and get to my next class. Of course – now I’m sore all over and I don’t want to do anything. Struggle and write my cover letter. Attempt to print out and realize that I’ve run out of exactly one sheet of my series. Print out a copy – but now the font is smaller so the page is mismatched. Have to log on to quest and reprint my transcript 3 times. Print out my resume. Realize something that is not supposed to be bolded is and vice versa. Sigh. Reprint my resume. This takes a long, long time. Get to university and hand in all my resumes. Realize that I handed in a resume + another job description (Company Y) into the bin of (Company X). GROAN. Met Kyle and made it to the movie on time. Nice movie – “Vertical Limit”. Get back home at 9:05 and have to make myself dinner. Cause you know – I haven’t eaten very much. Realize I have one last question to do. Oh man… This day should end….NOW.