In Like a Pride of Lions/ Re-Evaluating Education

As happy as I am to see the wretched month of February pass, I can't say that I'm any more relieved that March has finally arrived. "In like a lion . . ." just isn't a sufficient enough of a simile to describe the coming of this month in this province. Yesterday was the coldest March 1st on record for many places in Saskatchewan, including here*. The extreme cold has been twisting a real crappy beginning into my string of days off in the weirdest and unexpected of ways. It is yet another proven case of the fates conspiring against me whenever I yup myself into doing any part of a night shift, or to try make some extra coin. I was already short of a lot of sleep as I worked overtime prior to the last night of my last evening shift. Hoping to just collapse into bed and go into some sort of coma, I instead was pestered all night by false alarms from the fire detection system. I don't take blaring fire alarms lightly, especially since after the building just across the street went up in flames last fall. For the first time, the residents evacuated and were forced outside to stand in the wicked -42 below temperature. It's suspected that the sensors downstairs were being buggered up and triggered by the super-condensed, car exhaust-laden cold air drafts coming in from the lower parkade entrance. Whatever the case, the alarm bells were set off several times over night, and for the day after; with cumulative loss of a night and a half of sleep, I was completely dead to the world throughout most of yesterday. I just got to be thankful that there was no actual fire emergency to contend with.

The exhaustion and the miserable frigidity outside didn't make me feel compelled to do much of anything; but I did make the effort to escape the place in late morning to avoid the noise from the service repair and system testing that they were following up with after that night's incident. I used that time to volunteer some help for my friend get some electrical supplies for a home improvement project. I thought the trip might give me some inspiration for doing similar stuff around my own home, but I was too brain dead to be ignited with any ideas for such things. My back and legs were stiffening up too much to do the running that I should have been doing as part of my training program. I could only handle absolute stillness and silence. It ended up being a wasted day for me.

Today, I've been trying to compensate for yesterday's lethargy. I occupied myself all morning with laundry, housecleaning, filing and taming of paperwork, and noting all my stock shortages to shop for later. Now that the slate has been cleared of that stuff, I'm now exploring options for the remaining week or so I have to be absent from work. It began with taking my head offline** to allow my brain to reboot itself. The insomnia left me stricken with a massive headache anyway, and my eyes were too sore for reading or viewing screens after I came back home.

Now that I'm re-invigorated, I'm going to share what I'll be doing this during frozen time off. If I can't physically go anywhere, I have to do different things with my brain to take it to different states and places. I've been thinking more about I feel I need more formal education to do any meaningful shifting of career, moreover, I've been wondering where in the hell am I going to find the time and money for it. I become very sickened and bitter when I start thinking about the current paradigm of post-secondary and polytechnic education for so many reasons: too many to list here. I predict a disaster coming ahead socially and economically if the universities and tech school administrations in this province don't pull their heads out of their asses soon enough, and start designing curricula and programmes that reflect the times coming ahead, i.e. considering the rate in which technology is changing things.***

For now on my personal time with no TV to distract me, I'm sticking to the fundamentals of staying sharp mentally for what ever is to come.

• memory (re)training/logic puzzles
• programming/language learning
• increasing my own general teachability index
• learning more life hacks/template creation for efficiency
• using Creative Commons and other free open source online university programmes 
• finding other projects and useful and demonstrable applications for them, and to make a recognizable portfolio in lieu of a certificate

How ironic it is that the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs: the richest and greatest technical innovators of our time, were college drop outs. Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on Earth, says "The best education you can get is investing in yourself. But this doesn’t always mean college or university".

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-trashes-higher-education-says-its-not-for-everyone-2012-5#ixzz2uxmqKzWu
He sent none of his three children to college. Even though he has formal university degrees, the only certificate he has on display is one for the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking Course, which only cost him $100.

*- With the wind chill accounted for, it was -52° Celsius here in this town.
** - I was strictly audio. No computer, no books, and no TV; I turned my cable service off for spring and summer.
***- Have you ever just looked at the apps on your smart phone and wondered how many human jobs these things have eliminated?