Those on the Environmental Studies mailing list received the following email from the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies:

This is a reminder that UWAce email is to be used by students to access course materials. UWAce is not to be used to discuss course issues that are best addressed individually with the course instructor. Students who make inappropriate use of UW computer systems, including UWAce, will be subject to disciplinary charges under the University's Policies 33 and 71, as well as the University's IST Directions.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or the Associate Dean (Computing) should you require clarification of this notice.

Just a little background about UW-ACE.

ACE stands for ANGEL Course Environment. ANGEL is a software package from ANGEL Learning, and it too is an acronym: A New Global Environment for Learning.

Anyways, UW-ACE is a web-based course management system that enables instructors to manage course materials and interact easily and efficiently with their students-- post documents, post relevant links, post grades, post attendance, the whole schbangle.

We were told that students started an informal conversation thread in the UW-ACE environment about some shit about a particular professor.

But little did they know that depending on the permissions set within UW-ACE, professors may be able to view material sent over the application even if it was not directly sent to the professor.

Although these students should know better, I have to say that I knew UW-ACE was evil from the get-go. It's ironic the software is called ANGEL.

It already logs (1) when I have read specific email over the ACE environment, and (2) the amount of times I have logged onto the site. I bet you it logs what websites I go before and after my session to UW-ACE, too.

Scary stuff boys and girls.

UW-ACE - [uwace.uwaterloo.ca]
UW-ACE Description - [ist.uwaterloo.ca]
ANGEL Learning - [angellearning.com]

The Site Planning Studio class just turned really uninspiring these past weeks. In the class, we are all given a site in downtown Kitchener, and our task is to rework and develop the site by considering urban design and sense of place theories, while also satisfying the wishes of the client.

Our client is a third-generation Chinese lady. She is an exact replica of Matet Nebres, a reporter on CFTO local news. Her family's history dates back to the days of the construction of the railroad and the imposition of the Chinese Head Tax. Listening to her story was like watching an episode of '???????' or 'Stories from Afar'-- a Hong Kong documentary series about Chinese people from foreign places around the world who have experienced unique lives.

Her grandparents were apparently the first Chinese families to have settled here in Kitchener. Perhaps systemically, they owned the city's first Chinese restaurant.

The existing structure of the Chinese restaurant, which has been out of business, is included in our project, as well as two adjacent land parcels. It is quite sad to see the rather shabby conditions they lived in. There is this really rundown shed in the back of the structure that were used to house immigrant cooks. They apparently stayed in makeshift beds in cubical like structures inside the shed.

Anyway, there were lots of ideas in my head, and all seems very neat and interesting until we realized that our client wishes to place a parking facility right smack in the middle of the three land parcels. Say goodbye to nice views.

Sadly, parking makes quite a lot of cash in downtown Kitchener. So parking it is. Now it's a matter of disguising this bugger as much as possible. But seriously dampens the any sort of grandness in the project.

I'm also very nervous about working in groups. I'm sure all planners are very used to group work by now, but urban design group work feels very different. This is my first urban design group project that I don't have the company of Shima. It feels so different; I feel inadequate. Team Success has unfortunately been dismantled. Anyways, because of my passively controlling ways, I feel really anxious when I cannot play some leadership role. And because my group consists of third years, who happen to know each other fairly well, I will definitely have to take a backseat for this one. The team seems pretty good, but I hate to feel uncertain about the outcome of our project.

Call me a queeny uptight bitch, but whatever. Someone find me a steering wheel.

It has been, and will continue to be damn busy these days, which I'm sure you can all appreciate. But thought I'd put down a few thoughts into my log for keepsake.

I feel like this very big log that's rolling down this really awfully bumpy terrain, and the end of the road is this place of uncertainty. It could lead to a place of planning paradise filled with transit-oriented developments, or some really contaminated pond, or worse, a landfill.

I'll leave it to you to decide that the heck my metaphors are attempting to represent.

Maybe I should be a planning poet.

It's been a constant go-go since the beginning of the term-- from finding a place to live, completing my work report, working on grad scholarships, in addition to ever accumulating work from all my classes. I thought I would be coping better given that I don't have to look for a coop job this term, but maybe because of the unpredictability of grad administrative work, I'm finding myself always feeling nervous.

Anyways, don't expect any interesting entries for a long while. I will continue to write about what's going on in the world of a older-than-everyone planning student.