Tim Hortons Study

Every now and then, I'll get in an argument over whose city has the larger number of Tim Hortons per capita. Thunder Bay is crawling with them, and I've always been certain that we have more than most cities. After some searched on google, I found no numbers to support my claim, so I figured it out myself.

Given the approximate population of cities using google, and the number of Tim Hortons locations in that city using the Tim Hortons Store Locater in the TH site, I figured out the ratios of many cities from Ontario and the Maritimes (I've heard they have the largest ratios in all of Canada). I advise that you take this with a grain of salt. For instance, while Brockville has the highest ratio, I would notice North Bay as slightly more significant, given that it has a population over 50,000. Anyways, here's the list (first Ontario, followed by Maritimes).

Note: Alright, I tried preformatting the text, but it wouldn't line up properly. Here is it in jpeg form from notepad.



Listening to... HorrorPops - Miss Take
Link of the moment... Tim Hortons

Just some catching up

Shame on me for not putting a title on the last post. It shall forever be known as the unnamed post.

I've got a million things to say, this post will either be immensely huge, or optimized for the ADD-riddled youth of today.

I seem to have a few stalkers on my blog. Well, that is to say people that found my site without me directly telling them the URL. If you check the comments below, you'll find an andidas fellow. From what I know so far, I like him. I'm surprised at how successful and talented he seems to be, all at the age of 21. He also has 6068 songs on his playlist, which puts my 3409 to shame. There was also some girl that commented on the March 8th post from Nova Scotia.

I did have a good post, mainly about games I plan on buying from quite a few days ago. Unfortunately, Firefox crashed before I could post, so it's gone.

I filled in my blogger profile, which I didn't know existed until recently. There are some cool stats on there, but it seems to think that November 2004 holds some of my recent posts. It's also a good start for people who stumble upon my site randomly and don't realize I'm a 20 year old university student from Canada.

I really feel like playing Risk lately. That's one thing on the list of things to do when I get home. I just have to find 1-5 people to play with. I came to the conclusion that the world map of Final Fantasy Tactics would make a fairly good Risk map. There are rough political boundaries, and 42 territories. There's another stupid project that I could do, but likely won't. Artsy stuff isn't my strong suit.

I also want to make a good gaming table too. When I say 'make', that may involve building one from scratch, buying a cheap table and altering it, or taking my existing poker table and altering it. We'll see. I wanna get a sturdy round (or preferably octogonal) table with some nice fabric on top.

It's getting hot. Not summer hot, of course, but when you're walking around on a sunny day with a winter jacket on, and get back to a stuffy room, it can feel pretty humid.

I was considering talking to 'the girl' today. Talking to girls does *not* get easier with age. I have a bad habit of thinking too much about what I should say. My plan was to say "Suppose I wanted to strike up a conversation with you. What do you think I should say?". And then we'd fall in love. But then I realized that I'm a wretched beast who should be further shut off from society, and that no human could ever be attracted to my haggard countenance.

At the moment I have a mullet and a nasty beard. I don't like it. I think a haircut is in store when I get back home.

There was a poker tournament last Thursday (not a big one, just $3). Only 8 people played. I put one person out after getting *really* lucky with a king on the turn. After that, one guy put two people out in two hands. I had a pair of aces and a six on the next hand, and he called me all in on the hand, and I was certain he was bluffing. Turns out he had aces and tens. That was three people he took out in three hands. He had a HUGE stack of chips after that. I placed fourth, and of course the top three got cash.

Hopesfall has a new cd out, and from the two tracks I've heard, it seems they're losing their edge. The Satellite Years is by far some of the best stuff I've heard. Ever. The vocals are great, the guitar is entrancing, and the rhythms are intense and atypical.

Happy birthday to Phil. It was his birthday on the 24th. I'm pretty sure he's 22 now. I'll be turning 21 very shortly. I'm convinced that my youth has been wasted. When I'm 30 and I look back at my younger days, I'll remember not associating with people because they drink, and sitting in my room sitting on MSN and playing video games. Shame on me.

Listening to... Kittie - Spit
Link of the moment... Risk 2210 AD - this might be fun to play someday

I found this at http://www.ingenial.com/. I'm sure it's not the original source, but I figured I should quote my source anyways. Enjoy.

Literary Advice

1. Avoid alliteration always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid clichés like the plague.
4. Employ the vernacular ad nauseam.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbrev., etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't acceptable.
9. Foreign words are not apropos.
10. As Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
11. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
12. One should never generalize.
13. Don't be redundant; it is highly superfluous to use more words than necessary.
14. Be specific, more or less.
15. Understatement is insipid.
16. Exaggeration is infinitely worse than understatement.
17. One word sentences? Simple. Eliminate!
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Bad analogies are like feathers on a snake.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Colloquialisms are grody to the max.
23. Abjure polysyllabic obfuscations.
24. Finally, chech for pselling errors and typeos.

Listening to... System of a Down - Spiders
Link of the moment... A great colleciton of wallpapers.

Statistics to Kevin: "PHAILED!"

Turns out I failed my Statistics midterm. I'm not upset about it, especially since the class average was 47%. They say it's representative of previous terms, but something is horribly wrong when the class average for a required course is a failing mark.

Still waiting to hear about the economics midterm...slow marking. Exams are gonna be a bitch for me. I'll have about two weeks to study, and then a week to write everything. Of course we know that I won't study for the first week...who would? Long story short, I'm going to be home in a little over a month.

I've been playing a lot of poker on Yahoo lately. They give you $1000 to start off, and I'm currently at negative $121. Perhaps poker isn't my best game. Hopefully I'm starting to get a better feeling of general probabilities and what hands tend to win at tables of a certain size. I lost $10 playing with Ryan and his friends last Friday. At least it wasn't $20, right?

I'm getting close to beating FFT. Right now, the second last boss is handing my ass to me, repeatedly. He's way too fast, has way too much health, and way too much strong magic at his disposal. I may have to tilt the odds more in my favour to be able to beat him. I've been looking at Suikoden 2 lately...I might start up a game in that soon, although I've said that about a bajillion games so far. I started up a game of Viewtiful Joe. I figure I can have an RPG and a non-RPG going at the same time without much interference. Once FFT is out of the way, I don't know what's next on the priority list. Likely either FF2 or Suikoden 2.

I think I'm going to have to borrow Chrono Cross off of Turner too. After my years of experience, I'm going to have to say that sprite based RPGs feel so much more polished than polygonal RPGs, especially from the PSX era. I was looking at screenshots of FF8 the other day, and I remember when it was first released, it was one of the most graphically impressive games out, but now it just looks so jagged and blech. FFX will one day look old and dull to me, but I still think it's got a fluidity in it that I haven't seen in many games.

I miss the days when RPGs were much less focused on the characters themselves, and made you feel more like you were in charge of story. In FF1, you get to choose a party of four generic characters. No backstory, just distinct abilities and sprites. I like that about FFT too. There are story characters with some background, but the heart of the game is in the generic units. You can make your own characters, and even give them personalities in your own head. I would apologize for rambling on about video games, but this is my blog and you can skip it if you want :P

I bought and watched the incredbiles...what a great movie. I plan on watching it again when I get home, probably with Vicky, and maybe Christina. There are things you can do with animation that just aren't possible with live action. Animation has the ability to take realism and exaggerate it. In Hellboy, I never really got the impression that Hellboy was as big and bulky as he should be in the comic. In the Incredibles, you can see that quality in Bob Parr whem sitting in his compact car or cubicle. It's great.

My only complaint is that they made the women so goddam thin. Like TOOTHPICKS I say. Otherwise Violet would be awesome hot in the first half of the movie (I've brought this up before). I figured out it's the eyebrows. I think expressive eyebrows are very sexy on a woman. Tunde was wearing contacts for a few days, but I think she looks much cuter with her glasses, because it accentuates her eyebrows. Likewise, in the movie, Violet has this look of concern/worry on her face for the better part of the first half of the movie, and I just think it's cute :P

The cute girl in my math class was looking extra cute today. She had these two braids in her hair, one on each side. I was trying to find a picture on google, but nothing came up. Well they're like small braids in, with otherwise normal straight hair. I was glancing over at her a few times during lecture. I think I wanted her to notice me looking...and look back and smile...but now if the world were perfect, then the streets would be paved in chocolate, wouldn't it? I'm not entirely sure what that means, but she won't give me a moment's notice so there's no point in dreaming.

Listening to... Final Fantasy Tactics - Decisive Battle (MIDI)
Link of the moment... God of War - Good review from Gamespot, I'll have to give it a rent&burn

*yawn*

After getting raped in counterstrike for the last half hour, I realize I have nothing to do. First we'll talk about one awesome run I had.

I was playing terrorist and had the bomb, and arbitrarily chose one group of guys to follow. We went through the tunnel (on de_dust for those who play), and I actually made it to the bombsite alive to plant the bomb. So me and another guy are camping the site for a few seconds, then he starts moving around, so I walk away to find someone to kill. I hear gunshots behind me, and realize the other guy just died and there was at least one counter-terrorist at the bombsite. So, I double back and walk through the doors to find one CT hunched over the bomb defusing it, and another watching his back. Luckily the guard didn't see me and I killed him, then turned my attention to the other CT ASAP (since he was seconds away from defusing), and SOMEHOW I killed him before he defused! Another CT came and killed me, but by then it was too late and the bomb exploded. Mission accomplished. This was one of the first wins for our team, and I can't believe I played such a huge role. I got a few "gj crow"s out of it :)

I've got two assignments due on Friday and a massive assignment due on Sunday night, but I still contest that I have nothing to do. Either I'll finish these assignments or not, I really don't care. I've really got not much to do though. I'm not really in a game playing mood lately, no one is online to talk to, I've got nowhere to go, and I'm too unmotivated to work or clean. This will be a pretty wasted week I think.

I went to bed at about 10 last night and woke up early enough to get a glass of apple juice. It didn't really help too much in regards to paying attention in lecture though. I think I might have some sort of ADD or learning disability. School sucks. Work sucks.

I'm awfully tired lately too. When I have nothing to do, I just nap, and that makes me even more sleepy. Most of the time I force myself awake, but like I said, I have nothing to do (especially when I'm tired, I'm not in the mood for much of anything).

Fuck. My computer clock is unsynchronized AGAIN! It loses a minute or so every hour. Must have been the ATI software I installed yesterday (because of course we know how graphics software fucks with internal clocks).

Right now I'm sporting my new Thunder Bay tshirt that I picked up at the airport overtop a green longsleeved shirt. The two colours look really good together.

My mom was talking some smack about how me and my sister have to help more with housework this summer (although my sister is moving out, fuckin HOORAY bitches!). I don't think my mom understands that I just don't care about how the house looks (to a certain extent!). I would certainly help out around the house way more, it's just that she does it all before it gets to a point where I think it's necessary to clean. I put landry off until I have three loads worth. I wait until there isn't enough space on the counter to put more plates on to load dishes in the dishwasher. I wait until the dishwasher is full to load it up. I wait until I can see the dust to do any dusting. Crazy woman.

Listening to... Death by Stereo - Feeding the Fire
Link of the moment... Gonna go buy this tonight, watch it on Friday

Feeling pretty shitty

I'm seriously considering not handing in this assignment worth 5.5% of my mark. I could still pass the course if I don't do it, but the final exam will have material pertaining to the assignment, so I'd take a hit on that. I might be able to pull off 70% if I skip this assignment.

I'm fine when it comes to learning stuff in lectures, but when it comes time to actually apply it all, I get nowhere. Unfortunately, CS is all about applying what you learn in class. Can I even last long enough to get a degree?

Since I can't get fucking anything done on this assignment, I shuffled my courses around so that I can take five terms of four courses, instead of four terms of five courses (I'm still convinced that two degrees will somehow be better than just one). Maybe I should look at what my course load would look like with just one major.

I've decided I'm gonna buy the Incredibles DVD when it comes out, and watch it this weekend in the lounge. Maybe I can convince the dons to order pizza of my liking this time.

You know, I'll bet if I died in my room, no one would find out for at least a week. No one comes by, and if they did they would knock and go away if I didn't answer. My mom would phone and think that I'm just out or in class if I didn't answer. I'll bet I could go two weeks dead before my mom would phone the residence to get someone to check my room, or perhaps I would be drawing a stench by then...although my room and the hallway tend to have a stench anyways, it's just a matter of which is stronger.

Here's hoping the stress from the assignment doesn't kill me. Here's hoping that next year is infinitely more fun and easy than this term. Here's hoping that they turn Operating Systems into a baby course where all you do is circle "windows" or "MacOS" based on a screenshot.

Seriously, handing in less than half of this assignment is looking like a really good option.

Listening to... The Weakerthans - Reconstruction Site
Link of the moment... Fuck you, A5.

Title? Oh I hate this part...

I feel the need to post, although I've not much to say.

Turns out that the prof got next to nothing done in CS241 last week when I skipped, so I'm pretty well caught up. I'm on to assignment 5. For anyone who hasn't done assignment 5, let me sum it up for you. I have to translate the programming language SL into language MIPS, using Java code embedded in a CUP file. That's 4 languages. Including English, that's a lot to know for just one assignment. This is the one that is supposed to make or break all 241 students. I tried to start early, but I just don't know enough from lectures to get very far. Until I get some guidance on making a hash table, I'm stuck at one of the earlier stages.

That's all fine and dandy anyways, since I have three assignments and two tests between now and the due date, so I have enough to worry about at the moment. By the looks of it, I think my 'I don't give a shit' approach will get me through until exams, when hopefully I'll have accumulated some shit to give.

I'm still pretty well obsessed with RO, I play way too much. I should uninstall it for my own good. But I won't. Cause I'm an ass. I'm getting ever closer to finishing FFT as well. Then I'll only have about a dozen games on my list.

In fact, let's go over the list once again:
Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Viewtiful Joe
FFT (again)
FFT:Advance
Disgaea
Legend of Mana
Diablo 2
Suikoden 2
Final Fantasy 2,3,6
Wild Arms 2
Final Fantasy 10, 10-2
Xmen Legends

That makes an even...14. Although I did put on a few games just to inflate the list. Regardless, I love video games. Aside from playing those games, I still like to set aside time for making my own game. Admittedly, I haven't done much yet, but I do intend for it to be more of a summer project, to keep my java skills sharp. We did something in Graph Theory the other day that I can acutally apply in my game.

I wonder what kind of job I'll get when I get my degree, and I wonder where it will be. I'd love to live in Thunder Bay a few years and get work experience, but there's nary a shred of demand for computer and math related work, especially for someone with no work experience.

Listening to... Prodigy - Breathe
Link of the moment... Oh graph theory...I hate you, I really do.

Motivation near zero

I really don't think I can handle it anymore. I think I've snapped. I don't understand any of the material in class and on the assignments, and I don't care about any of it either. I've got two assignments due tomorrow, and literally no idea how to do either. I've decided I'm not even going to do one of them, and I'll probably only get about 50% on the other.

I skipped my entire morning of class today. I read over the slides in the course notes, and it really just looks like jargon to me. I look at it, and it doesn't look like anything that I could possibly comprehend, like I was reading slides from some fourth year course, and have no idea what any of the notation even means.

I feel like I need a break, but Christ, I just got back from home. I'm very worried for the next month and a half. I'm not sure if I can get through the rest of the term, learning so much useless shit, and showing an understanding of it to boot. I can't fucking work eight months straight, I just can't.

The sad thing is that the next two years will be much, much harder than what I'm doing now. It's a good thing I didn't fail any courses yet, since I'll likely need them in upcoming terms.

You know what I did yesterday? I slept until about 11, then had a shower and lunch. After class, I came back to my room. I was fucking starving at 3 PM since they feed us shit lunches here. I figured I'd stick it out until supper. My hunger was unbearable, so I tried to sleep it off. So I slept until about 5:30 and had supper. I tried to read and understand my assignments, but couldn't, and actually tried going to bed at 8 PM since my head hurt from all this shit piling up. I got back up at 10 because all I did was sleep all day. I did nothing until 1AM, when I went back to bed and slept until 11 AM today, skipping my CS classes. That means that yesterday, I was awake for about 10 hours. Doing some simple math, that's 14 hours I slept, and I still had to take time to rest this morning.

Please let the rest of my life be fulfilling and worth living.

Listening to... Raised Fist - Silence is the Key
Link of the moment... Three cheers for escape from reality

It's an update!

My god, so much to talk about that I don't even know what's worth saying. I really hope someone comes on MSN so I can talk and remember all the crap that happened while I was home.

On Friday night, I went to Ryan Holms' house and played poker with his crew. I was a little nervous since everyone else knows what they're doing since they play so much, and this was for relatively big money. Grant went with me, and Chris came later on, but I only got to play with Chris at my table for about twenty minutes, then he went to the table downstairs with Grant. I cleaned up a pretty nice pot on one hand. Everyone had two pair or something else decent, but I lucked out and got a full house and probably collected $10-$15 on that one hand. A few hands after that I cashed out since the table was getting a bit emptier, and I figured Chris and Grant would be near rope's end.

On Sunday, my last day, I watched the original Star Wars trilogy with Adam and Vicky. Good stuff. I'll have to watch them again sometime soon. My favourite was probably the Empire Strikes Back, but they were all worth my six hours.

I want to talk about Vic, but I shant. I'd like to have a nice all-night chat with her sometime soon though.

I just wrote a nasty midterm. I think I'm looking at about 65-80 before any curve. They adjusted the marks pretty dramatically last term, so who knows what will happen. I just really hope that my theory holds true: low midterm average means easier exam. I noticed that sort of trend in first year, but last term threw me off a bit. All in all, I don't care much what I get on the midterm. So long as I pass my courses, nothing else really matters, right? If I can pull off a 70 average, I renew my scholarship, so that's another $1000. Really just icing on the cake though, all I need is a degree in two and a half years. My god, I can't believe I'm not even halfway through my degree yet, when will the pain be over?

The trip back home was painful. I had to get up at 5:20 for my 7AM flight. The shuttle got me back in my room at 11:20. I unpacked, then had lunch and went to two hours of unbearable class. Then I slept. Oh boy was that nap necessary. Then I had supper and went to a review session for the midterm that I was murdered by today. Not a good day, not one bit.

I've been back, oh, about 34 hours, and I really can't wait to get back home. At home, I have friends to be with, I have places to go, I have things to do, I have food to eat, and some of the time I even have a girl or two to woo. Most importantly, I have no work to do. Hmm..well no work that I get marked on or stressed over.

Last night I had a dream that Chris and Rachel Dratch made an RPG, but the enemies were too hard.

I've been looking into cell phone stuff. It's expensive. I'm probably best off getting a pay-by-the-minute deal. While most of my talking will be done on evenings and weekends, I'll likely not talk enough to justify the cost. I'm sure I could get by with the cheapest pre-paid plan, especially when I'm at school. The only time I touch the phone is to make reservations or phone home, and for that I use a calling card.

It seems I should restart Firefox now, so I'll make a post.

Listening to... Chavez - Lions
Link of the moment... "No, I am your father."