This post was written by Karl.

I haven’t blogged for a while.

But, you know — today it snowed. It was, they say, a “snow day”.

Resultingly, classes were canceled. It happens sometimes. All the schedules enter disarray; syllabi are crumpled and rewritten.

I had a dilemma, however. I had a lab due today. A lab I had forgotten about until this morning. A lab, that is expected handed in by the start of the next class session — the next class session scheduled today, at 11:45 AM. And a professor that accepts submission by e-mail.

I realised this, and scrambled to finish (read: “start”) my lab in the two or three hours remaining.

Luckily, I had already stolen the appropriate logic gate simulation software off of the university computers, and stashed it safely on an eco-friendly usb key hanging from my beltloop. Dragging the folder out of program files was my interpretation of the professor’s recommendation to purchase it at home.

Starting a lab, for me, means shelling into “nine” (one of Brad’s servers), opening up vi or emacs, and pleasantly formatting a report with LaTeX. By focusing on coding the document format I manage to ignore the difficulty of creating the content.

I spent quite some time closely reading the lab report guidelines and translating them to document code. After an hour or so, however, I ran out of things to translate, and found myself needing to actually fabricate content.

The thing with this lab is that it was incredibly easy. I did it entirely during the lab period it was assigned a week ago. Unfortunately, because of its great ease, I saved none of it, figuring I’d just do it again when I was doing the report. There are things required, you see — things like circuit diagrams and timing graphs that are expected to be from a specific piece of software, and tentatively rely on actually doing the work.

Not a problem. I have my software. I put it in my local Program Files and boot it up. Whoops! Looks like I forgot to copy the preferences file. Okay, create a new one. See what we have to do… There are specific logic gate models with specific gate delays that are supposed to be loaded from the library. Man, where’s the library? There’s a menu item for opening the library, so I hit it. “Select library file…” Dang! Man! I don’t have the library file!

Okay, not a problem, not a problem. Still have an hour or two left. Just because classes are canceled doesn’t mean the public computers aren’t closed — when I attended UMO, I would use the public computers during a snow day all the time. So I set out to hike to school.

There are local buses that run to the university, but I didn’t know the schedules and didn’t know whether they were running or not because of all the snow (getting up to eighteen inches). So, rather than following the bus routes, I fast-walked two miles through back roads and along a highway to the university, slipping on snow-covered ice the whole way. By the time I get there, there are fifteen or twenty minutes left until my lab would have started, and my ankles are in some serious pain. Time is pretty tight, but I can do this, I can do it.

Head up to the campus center. Door is locked tight. Next door is locked tight. Cross the street, try the library. Locked.

Well, that’s that. Guess I can’t get this lab done. Maybe I can get a grade on the next lab. I’ll e-mail the professor and see how strict things are.

A bus drives by and I catch it back home.

At home, I open up my e-mail. I’ve been being pretty lax on my e-mail the past couple weeks, because of my high levels of schoolwork, so there’s at least half a page of unread messages there. Hey, there’s one from my lab professor — “Due to the snow day today, I have updated the syllabus. Lab 0 will now be due next week.” Oh. Okay.

In other news, I opened up my pirated logic simulator again in order to write this blog. There was the library, hidden by the edge of the window off to the right. The menu item I opened was for importing new libraries.

A word describes mornings like these: futile.