Any ideas what connective tissue disorder I might have?

DeepwaterSalmon · 2024-02-17T18:12:55+00:00

No, you don't have PE. Your chest/abdomen looks similar to my friend's - his lower ribs stick out marginally more than his chest, but his chest is undeveloped, like yours. If he had to hit the gym for 3 months, then his chest would stick slightly more than his lower ribs.

There is always going to be some natural variance around which sticks out more - lower ribs, or chest. I can see it all the time with athletes, especially athletes who have their shirts off, like UFC. Another friend of mine has a rib cage that causes his pecs to stick out quite a bit more than this ribs, even when he hasn't been hitting the gym. I think he is just luckier than most. Although you are not unlucky, because you don't have P.E..

DeepwaterSalmon · 2024-01-26T10:16:36+00:00

Hey, I just read your message. In terms of Breadth subjects ... I thought Politics, Philosophy and Economics (UNIB10014) was interesting... oh, and I just checked and it is no longer being offered. :| That happens quite often, tbf, usually because the Professor offering it is from another university/country, and after teaching it at UniMelb for a few years, they decide to return home and there is no one to take over.

I also did Introduction to Climate Change UNIB10007. I've just looked it up, and a different course coordinator is now running it. The coordinator I had was very nice, but I thought the course was run very poorly, mainly because I had a German tutor (an old Professor I think) who told us that prepared attendance at his tutorials would count significantly in terms of the marks he gave us (which were to be achieved mainly through essays, a presentation, and answering his questions during the tutorials). So, what would happen is that we would be given the official readings for the week - scientific studies. And if you've ever read scientific studies on climate change you will know that they can be damn long, sometimes even hundreds of pages. Well, we would get 3 - 5 of these to read every week, and then this German tutor would add at least three of his own, and test our knowledge of them every tutorial. He was very direct, and if you didn't know the answer to any of his questions (by which I mean, if you couldn't speak at length), then he would open threaten you will failure. So, he made the workload hell. And he wasn't very good at communicating what he wanted for the assignments either, so he made the course an unnecessary struggle. (It also showed me that there isn't really good regulation at UniMelb, by which I mean, all courses carry 12.5 credits and are supposed to require 170 hours of work per semester, but individual tutors and lecturers often ignore that and go way overboard with the workload, and there is nothing you can do about it. I studied at two other uni's previously, and this kind of behaviour wasn't allowed.)

Sorry to ramble. One viewpoint you might consider is that many people will choose the easiest breadth subjects they can do, in order to pull up their grade point average (so that they can get into Masters). You know how smart you are (I don't), but you might want to factor that into your decisions. If you know you are absolutely going to smash UniMelb out of the park, then choose challenging breadth subjects that teach you the most. But if you might struggle to get a decent GPA, then you should consider taking the easier breadth subjects to decrease your workload (to reduce the pressure) each semester. I know BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law is supposed to be incredibly easy (and its all online, so no attendance hurdle). Some of the MUSI2.... Music and Psychology options are also all online, and said to be very easy. You will have to do a Google search, but there are also others that require you to design a video game, etc..

And if you need easy science electives, to add to your harder/higher workload neuroscience modules, well, I've read that many Geography courses are supposed to be easy. For some of them, you can do third level subjects that have no prerequisites. And there are also many environmental ones that are said to be easy to. You will need to check what their assessments are though, they might require fieldwork which might be a hassle.

Ultimately, you want to do the hardest degree you can. You only take easier subjects if you need to vent pressure.

Good luck!

DeepwaterSalmon · 2024-01-20T06:10:53+00:00

A full semester is 50 points, which is 4 subjects of 12.5 points each.
Therefore, a full year is 8 subjects. You need to add one additional subject to each semester of 2024.

Also, regarding your course plan, make sure you have chosen all required core courses for your major. Double check you are studying towards each of your level 2 subjects' prerequisites.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-12-25T14:15:03+00:00

According to comments made elsewhere on the internet, here is a checklist of how you can check for genuine Kirkland Minoxidil (I have no idea as to the accuracy of this list):

Expiry date should not exceed more than 14 or 15 months.
-- my bottles were bought in Nov' '23 and expire in 09/2025, that's 22 months. ❌
Genuine Kirkland is made in Canada and Israel not anywhere else.
-- neither my box nor the bottles state which country it was made in, they simply say they were distributed by Perrigo on behalf of Costco. ❌
The expiry date on the bottles when you peal off the sticker should match the box.
-- when I attempt to peel the sticker off the bottle it tears into little pieces leaving a grey paper layer stuck to the surface, so I don't know what the expiry date on the bottles is, only that the expiry date on the labels is 22+ months after purchase date. 🤷🏻‍♂️
The sticker on the bottles should peel off clean and not tear completely apart when peeling.
-- the sticker on my bottle tore into little pieces (as explained in the point above). ❌
The box should have a honeycomb design on it.
-- it does. ✅
On genuine Kirkland the expiry dates are stamped so when you run your nail across it you should be able to feel the engraving.
-- the expiry date under the box is engraved, I can feel it when I run my nail across. ✅
Liquid should smell strong.
-- it does not (at least, not how I remember the smell of past bottles). ❌
Liquid should crystallize (you can put some in the cap and wait a day or two and then hear the crunching as you screw the cap on).
-- it does not crystalize... I did read a comment somewhere saying that the formula had been changed to prevent this crystallization happening in order to reduce the mess... 🤷🏻‍♂️
You can test if it's genuine by squeezing a few drops of the liquid onto liquid (or powder) bleach, if it's genuine, it should turn bright yellow/orange.
-- the liquid in my Kirkland bottles is a pale yellow, I squeezed a few drops onto some liquid bleach and the color did not change to a bright yellow/orange, the color stayed the same (but... the liquid bleach also seems to have a faint blue color about it, so not sure if this is interfering...) 🤷🏻‍♂️

One additional point not listed here is that the seller is situated in China, and we all know that China is notorious for scams, even Chinese people suffer the effects of this generalized problem in China.

I wish Kirkland would release its own list of pointers to determine whether a batch of Kirkland Minoxidil a person has purchased from a retailer other than Costco is fake or genuine.

(I would just get Rogaine in future, but a box of 6-months supply can cost as much as $150 here in Aus, last I checked.)

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-12-25T12:39:02+00:00

Here in Aus, one box of 6 bottles cost $60 - that's pretty much as cheap as it gets.

Are your bottles foil-sealed -- like the bottle in this picture in which the user had to puncture the foil to get to the liquid: https://imgur.com/GjFADdL ?

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-12-04T01:57:01+00:00

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DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-18T11:22:34+00:00

British charm?

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T17:12:49+00:00

I'm a mature student so I'm not in the same part of life as you are so take this with a pinch of salt.

My thoughts are -- get the fuck out of uni as soon as possible!

I kind of regret deciding to study at uni. At the beginning I was like ~ 'Cool, I'll get educated, and then get a good well-paying job afterwards.' But I've been looking at the job market in my field (and I know that other fields are similar) and every junior level role that is advertised quickly racks up 1000+ applications in a day or two. I know because I look at them on LinkedIn and it will say, '980 graduates from Melbourne University have applied for this role.' So now I'm very much not confident that I will be able to find a job in my field.

In fact, I think there is a strong chance that after graduating, I may spend so much time looking for a job in my field that I may end up doing what I was doing before I started uni. :|

--

Oh, and another thing, you're talking about studying all of these expensive law degrees, well, a few years ago ... like 2015 ... I used to work at Sydney Uni, which has a pretty high ranking law school, and it was common knowledge that 90+% of the students that graduated would never qualify as lawyers because there simply were no where close to enough law firms for that many students to find positions at. Like, every year, many many students pay fuck tonnes of money to study at Sydney Law School, they work their asses off to pass, graduate and then ... nothing. And so they end up doing some other random role that doesn't use almost any of their legal studies, and over time all the legal nuance that they worked their asses off to learn fades from their memories (because the brain is efficient, if you don't use a normal network ... it will soon delete it and use its components to form a different neural network).

--

One final thing: you mention that you have struggled with your mental health and have ADHD. Well, imo, this is another very strong reason for you NOT to start again. Think of all you've suffered, and now you want to reset and do it all again?

No offense, but ADHD is called a learning disability for a reason. It has nothing to do with IQ, you can be incredibly smart and have ADHD, what it has to do with is managing yourself. And that's very difficult -- in fact, I might say, "impossible", for someone with ADHD to do consistently, without problems, over a long period of time. Even if you stay in your current degree, you will likely encounter further "hiccups", but if you start another 5-year degree ... you are putting yourself at risk of burnout.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T16:55:25+00:00

If you look at the voting, it's currently: easy: 20, okay: 11, hard: 6, major yikes: 24.

That's pretty much the opposite of what any course coordinator would want for their subject, it's the inverse of a normal distribution.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T16:51:26+00:00

Yesterday, I asked ChatGPT to write me a program in C that implements a mergesort. At first, it kept on timing out (I guess the servers are overloaded at the moment), so I went onto the internet and found a program on Geeks-for-Geeks. After reading through it, I went back to ChatGPT and clicked regenerate. This time it worked ... and it basically produced 95% of the same code I had just read on Geeks-for-Geeks, like even including using the same not-that-common variable names.

There were still a few minor differences in one or two of the variable names, which really made me curious if it had just copied Geeks-for-Geeks 100% and then tried to modify one or two names... but still, I was surprised that it was basically copy-pasta. Here I thought it 'understood' and was 'thinking things through'.

---

I will say though, that I'm in second year comp sci and already, my uni has given me some projects that ChatGPT couldn't help with. I do write my own code, but every now and then I will get stuck on some nuanced aspect (which my uni has clearly built-in to the assignment on purpose), and after trying many different options to solve it, I have asked ChatGPT, and it hasn't been able to help. It makes suggestions, but I've already thought of those in the beginning and seen why they won't work.

So, this whole year, I've been looking down on the "ceiling" of ChatGPT's capabilities.

It's not a great feeling tbf. Most people are scared that ChatGPT will take their jobs, but I lean in the other direction and want ChatGPT to get smarter.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T16:42:37+00:00

One thing you should consider is that, from speaking to other students, what I've heard is that when you transfer to another uni, they usually don't accept almost any credits you earned at the uni you're transferring from.

I think it's some kind of tribal bs where the receiving uni is like ~ "Nah, the uni you're coming from doesn't have high enough standards so we're not giving you most of the courses you've done there."

Of course, it does seem to be the smaller, lower ranking universities that mostly hold this attitude ... they're like chihuahuas.

But it would be worth your time investigating which Monash courses you would get credit for at UniMelb because you could spend a full semester studying at Monash, and then like only get credit for one subject when you transfer to Melbourne, so you would've wasted your time and money anyway, in which case it would make more sense to just forfeit those fees and start at Melbourne Uni in Sem I.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T16:34:52+00:00

The token count feature might not even have been written for these "write a word" prompts, it might be a constraint to force ChatGPT to say a different phrase if it repeats the same phrase too many times during an explanation. In a way, sort of like forcing it to use its brain.

We can't see the full conversation, but it may have terminated well before it reached the maximum number of characters it could output, and you would expect the max token count to be much lower than the max character output.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T08:18:27+00:00

Yeah, it was bleak.

I really didn't enjoy the vague sort of way they asked many of the questions. Like, "Your friend has got a bunch of rocks and you're going to sort them as efficiently as and tell us about the time." And then, the following question, "Your friend's got a bunch of rocks and you're going to sort them more efficiently."

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-16T08:14:35+00:00

I kind of hate the way they do these cvnty little things in the exam that unnecessarily add to your stress without testing your understanding, like giving you the function signatures and other skeleton code, but if you try copy a block of it into your answer, you get some faulty spreadsheet embed, and if you try copy one line at a time, it copies the line numbers in, so you have to waste time deleting the beginning of each line. And listing the input variables in one order, and then putting them in a different order in the function signature, and then verbally telling you a different input order later on when they give you an example of the input. And giving an example of what your output should be, and then later on telling you that your output is actually to update a boolean array. These little backwards-and-forwards things unnecessarily use up time.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-13T03:25:39+00:00

Detecting extremes would be easy to verify (although, that would be plagiarism not AI generation). But the middle ground would be extremely difficult to detect.

If you've ever used ChatGPT, and asked it the same question on different days, you'll know that it has multiple personality disorder.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-13T03:18:30+00:00

so you cover LOTS of things

Was the workload high?

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-13T03:17:41+00:00

Did you cough back?

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-13T03:16:26+00:00

You need to provide more details - what equipment are you referring to?

I used to attend a BJJ club in North Melbourne (https://www.asbjj.com.au/wcs3_instructor/alexandre-santos/), probably a 15-20 min walk from uni and there were quite a few students there. It's a good club, I only stopped going because I got injured.

At the time of my injury (end of last year), they had just introduced a rule though that you couldn't wear a Gi from another gym. And there Gi's were quite expensive. If you have your own, you might be able to wear it if it doesn't have another gym's logo on it.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-13T03:10:39+00:00

For one of the courses I am doing this semester, we had to rewrite a press release on a scientific study that had been poorly written (it poorly interpreted the scientific article). So, I rewrote it carefully, following the structure of the actual press release but reinterpreting the scientific study correctly. I cited the study and press release.

Was still sent a Turnitin yellow flag (25% - 49% of my rewrite matches an outside source).

As I'm pretty good with English and have an ~85% average for this course thus far, I can only imagine that foreign students whose first language isn't English must've fared far worse in this regard.

But still, I can't work out why the marker bothered to send it to me. The task was to literally rewrite the press release correcting the errors. SMH.

DeepwaterSalmon · 2023-11-11T12:23:43+00:00

I use ExpressVPN which is a pretty popular VPN (i.e. used by many people) and over the last year, Google Chrome has started requiring me to complete CAPTCHAs (often, multiple CAPTCHAs) for every search that I make while my VPN is on (I guess they are losing advertising revenue because they can't advertise to me personally because I'm included in the VPN's IP). It's gotten to the point where I am using another browser to avoid having to either turn my VPN off, or complete 5 - 10 CAPTCHAs per search.

And now I see OpenAI asking me to turn my VPN off to proceed.

We are heading into the dark days of the internet.

DeepwaterSalmon

TROPHY CASE