Ah snap!

So, what has happened since Tuesday? I did well playing euchre...won my first game by going alone. Out of the four games I play I won 3, and I think the last won was a one-point loss...if I was able to call it, I would have had a guarunteed one-point hand (both bauers and and an ace). It's a lot more fun when you win.

I just had one of the most painful showers in my life. I squirted some shampoo in my eye, and I haven't felt pain like that in ages. It's like I dropped a piece of hot, broken glass in my eye. When I got out, I banged my elbow on the corner of the wall. Not my finest moment.

Well, I survived the week. My CS assignment is shit, but I think I won't get any less than 10 of the 15% it was worth. Mat helped me with my Real Analysis assignment again, god bless him. This week won't be a walk in the park either, since I have a really large real assignment. Then the next week is the start of my midterms. Once Feb 22nd rolls around, though, I will be sittin pretty. I'll get two days off, and I'll be able to relax and play some games.

//this is the point where I go to do laundry, but I'll likely resume posting when I get back//

Yup. Spent some time folding laundry, and helping Don John put up announcments, but I'm back.

Valentine's Day is coming up. I like it. I like being sweet on girls, I guess. Smiles make me feel fuzzy. Steffi was supposed to come watch a movie with me and some friends, but she had other plans. We were also supposed to work on uor CO 350 assignment tonight, but it was easy and we're both done. I'm never going to get to see that girl outside of class and CLV events. I'm wondering if asking her to do something for Valentine's day would be a good idea or a bad one. Well, one way to find out, right? If that backfires, I could always try Tunde, I haven't seen her in ages. I feel a little guilty saying that, like as though I have some sort of ranking system for all these girls. I really don't, I'd just like to spend some more time with them all.

Oh! I went to the mall on Thursday. I returned my unopened Deluxe Scrabble, and bought a smaller Scrabble board from Zellers. I also bought new socks and a new pair of jeans. Anyone who knows me should know that it's a momentous occasion when I buy new jeans that aren't on sale. What can I say, they looked nice, they were inexpensive, and I was in a mood to buy new pants.

I've also done some comparison shopping, and Zehrs is not any less expensive than Sobeys. In fact, Sobeys had about half the items I bought on sale, cheaper than Zehrs (of course, I found this out only after I bought everything at Zehrs).

Yesterday, I was a bit bored and tried to find a game to play, when I realized that (besides emulators) I have no games installed on my computer! I installed Warcraft 3, Prince of Persia, and San Andreas, but haven't really played any of them. I think once I beat Resident Evil 4 (I know! I'm taking forever, but I rarely have time to play!), I'll try to play PoP through to the end. That's two Gamespot games of the year back to back! Maybe I'll track down another one and play that.

Well, that's all I've got in me. Gonna play Cities and Knights of Catan tonight, it's been ages since I've played.

Listening to... Death By Stereo - Forget Regret
Link of the moment... No-CD cracks for just about every PC game...no more switching CDs (also good for piracy)

Quick political comment

So, Canada now has a Conservative minority government. This disappoints me, but not because I'm a liberal. No, rather I'm disappointed because Stephen Harper looks like a dork. Yes, that's right, let it sink in. We have a dork for a Prime Minister. Behold the face of Canada.

Paul Martin is not much better. He looks like a nervous old man. Well, he is a nervous old man.

Gilles Duceppe is good looking enough. He looks psycho...like Pacino in Scarface. He looks like he could snap if provoked. I think that could do good for the Canadian image. Like our PM would hunt you down and choke you if you made fun of us or something. But let's get serious, when would Bloc ever win?

Jack Layton? Now THAT'S the guy I want representing me. He looks like the kind of guy who takes Harper's lunch money and then knocks his books out of his hands when he walks away. He looks like he would suplex George Bush if they met. No, he'd go to shake his hand, then do a big wrestling clothesline. It would be awesome.

All in all, one day I hope to have a PM with a moustache. Mustachio'd leaders are among the best.

Listening to... Death By Stereo - Feeding the Fire
Link of the moment... Don't trash the 'stache

Sweet Jesus! Turn down the German music!

Today was a long day. Last night was the party. As usual, everyone bailed on me. I don't know what those people have against socializing. Every night, we sit around and complain about we never have anything to do, and then when something actually happens, they prefer to sit around and complain about how there's nothing to do (well, for all I know, they had a hoot of a time watching TV and playing twister...who am I to judge?). It's like...what's the term, self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps?

Anyways, the party was pretty good. I saw a few people that I wasn't expecting to see. For a good portion of the night, however, I felt out of place. It seems like everyone had a conversation going on but me, and I hate to barge in to conversations. As usual, Steffi humoured me and talked to me for a while. When Andrea was there, I was talking to her as well. Later on in the night, it was mostly Germans left, so even if I wanted to butt into a conversation, I wouldn't have understood it anyways.

As the night rolled on, I got tired (as the human body is prone to do). I decided to head to bed at 3 AM, thinking that the party wouldn't last much longer, or that things would quiet down enough for me to shut out. Oh, how I was wrong. The party went until 5 AM, with loud conversations, and blaring music. I wouldn't care so much if it was a Friday night or Saturday night, but when I have to wake up at 7:30 the next morning, I appreciate my sleep. Between 3 AM and 9 AM, I got about 4 or 5 hours of very sporadic sleep. Thankfully, Elementary Algebra helped me catch up on my sleep.

Hopefully tonight I can get nice and fully rested. It's 9:30 now, and I'm pretty tired, so if I head'er at 10:30, I should be nice and conscious for class tomorrow morning.

This is going to be a pretty heavy week for me. I had a quiz due tonight, two assignments due Wednesday, an assignment due Friday, and an assignment worth 15% of my mark due on Thursday morning. I'm almost done the stuff for Wednesday, so hopefully I can devote tomorrow and Wednesday night to the large assignment, and Thursday night for the last assignment.

Ideally, I can get out for supper tomorrow night at Boston Pizza, and sometime during the week I hope to go to the mall, go grocery shopping, and of course spend some time having fun and relaxing.

Listening to... All - Romantic
Link of the moment... I think #1, #72, or #354 is next on the list.

Thanks for the weather update, Dennis

Yesterday morning was absolutely wonderful weather (well, I suppose it's terrible in the grand scheme of things considering it's January, but you get what I mean). I walked to class without my toque, since I was too hot with it on. It cooled when I came out of the MC 5 hours later, but still a good temperature.

Last night I decided to make those biscuits. In my opinion, they were a little dry and not nearly buttery enough, but I think everyone gave them a good review and enjoyed them thoroughly. I might make them again, but with more butter, or perhaps I'll just try a different recipe.

Yesterday in class, Steffi invited me to a party in unit 2. Everyone was over at my house until about 12, then when they left I decided I'd go (since Steffi invited me personally...). I went there and there were about 10 people, half of which were pretty plastered. Steffi seemed sober enough, and she stuck around and talked to me the whole time I was there, with her friend Christine. It was worth it even just to meet the handful of people there.

Seems like I've got a fair amount to do this weekend. This afternoon, I'm playing Axis and Allies with Andrew and his roommate. Sometime in the early evening, I'm going to go to Value Village and scour their clothing. I don't really know what's happening at night, but I got the general impression that people wanted to do something. On Sunday, Christian is having his party, so my house will be full of people til about 2. Hopefully some of my friends will be coming as well.

I'm talking to Sivji now, and he's saying he wants to be an exec in my club. Score! He even wants to play euchre, but the euchre club isn't running in the summer. Maybe I should run that as well and embezzle the funds into the board gaming club.

Listening to... Killswitch Engage - Life to Lifeless
Link of the moment... Great site where you can make your own surveys

Is Euchre worth the freezing rain?

Inevitably, the answer was yes. Oddly enough, I went to the English Society Mixer. I gave my drink tickets to Hugh, but got some free fruit, meat, cheese, and ample desserts for nothing (next to a slow, wet, and arduous walk to a building on the other side of campus in the freezing rain). I only really went because I was planning on walking to campus for the first euchre meeting anyways, so I figured I'd walk with friends and get some free food out of it.

Euchre was ok. I think there were 16 people when I got there, for a full four tables. I think I may have come to the conclusion that Molly's a cutie. I also had a sneaking suspicion that a blonde girl was casting looks in my direction, but I think it was just one of those moments where both people are thinking that, when in reality, they're just glancing at the other person to see if they're looking at them. Damn, why does everything I ever talk about always boil down to girls? Well I suppose it would be boring if I didn't.

I took Paul's suggestion and decided to meet him at the Design Symposium today. Unfortunately, he had no idea I was coming. Haha, I found him after looking around for a while, and he gave me this huge shpiel on their project. After spurting forth quite an interesting project, he realized I was still standing there, and made small talk along the lines of "what sort of stuff are you studying?", followed by this huge double take. I could tell he had an epiphany at that moment that I was me. We chatted it up a bit about staying in the summer and such. By the way, Paul, my msn contact is tatoolo@hotmail.com.

I'm trying to think of something I could do to see all the people I rarely have a reason to see. Paul, Steffi, Sivji, Dennis and Shannon, Andrea, Rafael, Tunde, Adrian, and I'm certain there are others. Quite a list, eh? The problem is, I know them all from different places, so there's very little they have in common with each other, and on top of that, most people don't have a warm method of transportation, so even inviting them over to do nothing would be iffy. I suppose I'm too used to hanging out with my "primary" friends; that is, the ones that live in CLV with me.

I plan on making cheese biscuits on Sunday. I have an excess of flour, so I figured biscuits would be a good way to get rid of some.

I think when I resort to talking about biscuits that I intend to make in the near future, it's about time to wrap up the post.

Listening to... Gorillaz - 19-2000
Link of the moment... My biscuit recipe...you were expecting something better?

Signed a 12-month lease!

Yesterday was indeed a big day.

The first house we looked at was ok, but wasn't really ideal for the three of us in the summer. The second house we looked at, however, was much better than one would expect from the price. The master bedroom is likely three times the size of one of the rooms in CLV for only $300/month. The other rooms are at least as big as those in CLV for between $235 and $265. During the time we were there looking, there were three other groups of people looking at it. I was pretty well willing to sign a lease then and there for fear that someone got it before us, however John and Andrew thought it would be a better idea to at least talk to Hugh about it before we make any decisions.

When Hugh got back, he agreed that we can't let such a filthy deal get away from us, so I made a last call to John and Andrew to confirm that we're all in on the lease. I called the guy back, and we made an appointment to meet later that night to sign the lease. We all signed, I gave him a cheque for $2360, and we're now the proud tenants of 239 Cederbrae, Unit 34 from May 2006 to April 2007.

To celebrate, I bought a Boston Creme Cake, and of course our trip to Abstract was now in celebration. We got there around 11, a little later than I was expecting. When we got there it wasn't empty per se, but rather not too crowded. After a while, Mat humoured me and went on the dance floor with me, and then dragged Carissa and her friend along as well. Only about half an hour passed before Nicole came and told us that she, John, and Hugh wanted to go somewhere else. It's almost as if they were looking at us and said "hm, Kevin seems to be enjoying himself, we should probably leave". I was a little offended, but I guess the chips will fall where they will. Even worse is that they left without telling Carissa or Mat. For all I know, I was the only one who was actually enjoying myself and everyone else wanted to leave. I guess I'll have to be a little more selective about who I invite next time I want to go somewhere.

After we left, we went back to John's where the rest were playing a drunken variant of Trivial Pursuit. I guess Hugh and Nicole succeeded in finally getting John trashed. They ordered pizza, so I claimed a piece for myself, and I left shortly afterwards since there wasn't much in terms of entertainment.

I went to the sale at Nexus, but it turns out the opened up at 10 AM instead of noon like I expected, so a lot of the stock was already gone. I did manage to pick up Saboteur and High Society, but Bang!, Bohnanza, Guillotine, and Fluxx were nowhere to be found (I hope you appreciate the time I put into finding decent links for those!). I wonder how much money I've spent on board games in the last year alone...certainly not too much! Never too much. At least I'll have a good collection to maintain in my lifetime.

Well, it seems I've failed in the pursuit of doing something productive today. I slept for three hours in the afternoon; I guess my body needed it. In about an hour or so, I think some people will come play games. I suppose since I slept so much, I'll be up late and can do homework until 1 or 2.

I think I'm having second thoughts about staying here in the summer already. By taking courses in the summer, I'd definitely be shooting myself in the foot for getting a job. I really can't have a full course load and maintina a job at the same time. I guess I don't really need the money anyways, but the ~$4k I made last summer definitely isn't hurting me in any way. Well, I have my whole life to make money, I'm only a student for another year. Well, I'll just let the chips fall where they may (if I may use the same idiom twice in one post).

Sorry for having such large posts lately...but what else do you have to do than read up on my life?

Listening to... System of a Down - Hypnotize
Link of the moment... Watched this the other day.

Alias, aka "That Show"

I know stuff happened, but I didn't keep track of what all of it was so I could type about it. Let's just see how much I can come up with.

I suppose the biggest news is that I bought Ticket to Ride the other day at J&J. When I went there the first time for this term, they didn't have anything I was looking for. This time, though, they had almost everything I was looking for. I decided to only go with Ticket To Ride, and I guess that's a good thing. It turns out that the place that Hugh Andrew and I went to (Nexus, with the cat) is going out of business. Today they're having a liquidation sale and everything in the store is 50% off (if the WatWars newsletter is accurate).

Today is going to be a pretty big day. First the Nexus sale, then we go look at two different houses in the afternoon. At night, we're going to go to Club Abstract. We would have rather gone on Retro Friday, but Nicole works this morning, so Alternative Saturday will have to do.

Thursday night, I convinced some people to go to Fed Hall, for the New Year's Reunion thing. The music was shite, and the place was really empty when we arrived. I think that everyone had a sort of negative attitude about it (except you Hugh, you were the "bomb-diggity"). I only really went because I felt like dressing up. If I may say so, I look pretty fiiiiiiiine in my little getup. I'll post a picture after Abstract.

We've already played Ticket to Ride six times. Well, I've played it six times, I don't know about everyone else. Last night was my best win (and only second win, actually). Whoever has the longest continuous path gets bonus points, and I had a path that used *all* of my train pieces but one. It's completely unheard of that someone can actually get a path of length 44, but I did it without really trying.

I seem to be leaning more and more towards staying in Waterloo. Andrew says that a company he used to work for wants to hire him again for the summer, so I really hope he doesn't decide to go home for the summer. That would be the sort of thing that could change my mind.

I was manning the Euchre booth with Molly the other day at the campus clubs days. Not really much to speak of, we didn't have many people come by.

Well, I can't think of much else worthy of noting.

Listening to... Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Link of the moment... Still considering it...

Congratulations, Steve!

Get this...Steve Paul-Ambrose has won the Carribean poker tournament. For coming in first place, he's won free entry into the WPT tournament, and $1.3M USD. In the matter of three days, Steve has become a millionaire. Idon't even know the guy, but I'm still excited for him. Maybe I'm moreso excited for Nathalie, his girlfriend. I'm sure she'll get some good compensation for not being able to go with him.

Listening to... Soulfly - Living Sacrifice
Link of the moment... The liveblog with which I followed the tournament

Which city gets me this summer?

Still trying to make a decision. The odds of me being a CS tutor are nearly nil. They hire only co-op students except in certain cases, and I'm not even in the CS faculty anymore, so I doubt I'd have a snowballs chance in hell. I suppose there's still a chance that I could be a Math tutor, but even then I could only get one of the part time positions (which is probably for the better since I want to take courses anyways).

So here's a little story. Nathalie's boyfriend plays online poker (and makes a killing at it, I hear), and won entry to a tournament in the Bahamas or Caribbean or some exotic location. I think there were about 700 players to begin, and by the end of the second day, he was chip leader out of 66 players left. He's currently in second place out of 6. Right now, he's guaranteed to leave with no less than $177,000USD. I think Nathalie will be getting a nice gift for not being able to get time off to go with him on his all expenses paid trip. I don't know the guy, but it's pretty exciting nonetheless.

Also, I heartily welcome Emiko and Nathalie to the world of my weblog. I would be overjoyed if you decided to leave comments on a regular basis.

I didn't get much sleep last night, and no opportunity to doze off this afternoon. Ideally, I'll get to bed early tonight and sleep like a log so I'll be refreshed for my 8:30 class tomorrow.

I have yet another brainchild (is that a word? I don't think it's the word that I'm looking for) that I'll likely never get off the ground. I figure if I stay here in the summer in a vain attempt to lighten up my course loads, I should start up a parlour/card/board gaming club. The university has clubs for wargaming, euchre, bridge, go, and video gaming, but I think there might be some value in having a generic gaming club. Instead of the playing the same game every week, each week would be a unique set of games. Ideally, if 10+ people came, that would result in at least two ~5 player games being played. If you don't want to play one of the games, then play the other, or recruit other people to play something you want to play. Basically, it would be doing what I do about once a week, but on campus and potentially with more people. Of course I'm trying to think of all the problems I could encounter. For one, the $50 funding I would get from feds would only buy me one game, so I'd have to put my own collection up as collateral. I would not want to rely on membership fees, since that would cut back on the number of people who would join, and I'd want as many people to come as possible. I can convince Andrew, Laura, and John to join, even if only out of pity for me, but I'd still want regular attendance of over 10 people.

Well, it's just a thought.

Listening to... Blur - Theme From Retro
Link of the moment... I'm five hours away from winning the series as well as the movie. Reminds me enough of Firefly and Trigun to hope that I enjoy it.

Standing on the fence

I have quite the decision to make sometime soon. I have the option of either going home to Thunder Bay for the summer, finding a job, and having a grand old time as usual. Otherwise, I can stay in Waterloo, get a part time job, knock some courses out of the way, and have a grand old time. I'm really stuck on the options, let's try making a list of the pros and cons or each:

Going home for the summer
+get to see all my friends I don't usually get to hang out with
+get to see Phil when he visits
+can knock off an elective by Distance Ed
+free rent
+free meals
+my awesome basement /w bigscreen TV
+will make my parents happy
-4th year will be a lot of math courses
-I usually spend more on fast food than I would by cooking for myself
-job base might not be as good or relevant
-would have to worry about storing things in Waterloo over the summer


Staying in Waterloo for the summer
+knock off some math courses for three light terms instead of two full ones
+get to feel independent and live with friends
+more time to have the "student experience" (lighter terms = more clubs joined)
+get to see Laura
+possibly more relevant work experience
-expensive (for my parents)
-not a lot of time to relax
-don't get to see old friends that often

I've got a lot of considering to do, I suppose. Or coin flipping.

Listening to... Static-X - Structural Defect
Link of the moment... I'm willing to dress like a woman for a good deal

Why not

And a new design just for kicks.

Where is everyone?

I think my eyes might be melting out of my head soon. Since noon, I've done nothing, and it's 5:30 now. Odd thing is, I'm still tired. It find it hard to concentrate on anything. I only have a morning class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so my whole day is free. Of course I don't have any homework yet, but when I do, I doubt I'll do it in ther afternoon. I'm more of an evening worker. Something about the sun keeps me from doing work.

My Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is chock full of four hours of math classes. None of them are extraordinarily interesting, but I think it should be a good enough term. I was at first enrolledin basic french, but it wasn't as basic as I was hoping, so I switched out of it and into CS 330 - Management Information Systems. It may be labeled as a CS course, but so far it sounds like a business course. I absolutely dread business-like stuff. Too many flashy diagrams that don't make sense to me, and buzzwords like "global economy" and "supply chain". Paired with the fact that it's at 8:30 in the morning, I'm gonna have a hard time staying awake to learn the material. Hopefully, four math courses and a business-CS course will be managable.

Unfortunately, my 4A isn't looking as empty as I want it to look. Most of the decent introductory electives are offered only in the Fall, so I was hoping that by taking all core courses this term, I could take two electives next fall. Unfortunately my classes are pretty well pre-determined since four of the eight courses I need to take in fourth year are offered only in the fall. Of course, if I stay in the summer, that could all change.

I've been trying to find any sort of student housing in Waterloo through the internet, but there are very few resources. Living in CLV is looking like a better idea each day. I know Andrew wouldn't mind living here again, but John and Hugh will be heartbroken if they don't live with me (poor kids). I've still got a few weeks to keep searching, I think I'll have to hit up newspapers and maybe even look around town. Of course, no one will be advertising an open house this early in the year.

My efforts to find a new board game have been fruitless so far. Hugh, Andrew and I went to J&J's, but their stock seemed to be dwindling. They didn't have anything I was looking for. I'm quite certain that they carry Munchkin, Ticket to Ride, and Deluxe Scrabble, so I'm gonna give it a week and go back next weekend. The three of us actually scoured around town looking for other hobby stores. We found one that was really good, they had a lot of games I've never heard of or seen at J&J, but they still didn't have anything I was looking for ahead of time. The had a whole rack full of card games, but I didn't want to take a chance on something I've never heard of before.

The other day, I borrowed Munchkin from the Math Society office. Andrew, Mat, Hugh and I played last night. I didn't enjoy it that much, since nothing was working out for me. We'll play again tonight only because I have to bring it back sometime soon to get my student card back. Hopefully we can rope in another two people to play.

I haven't seen much of John lately. He said he'd play something with us last night, but I couldn't get a hold of him. I can only assume he was spending time with his girlfriend. I think that makes three nights in a row...that bitch is stealing our John!

I'm sure this is uninteresting to anyone besides me, but I like to talk about it anyways. I actually worked up the courage to talk to a random girl the other day! We were both standing in line waiting to see a CS advisor. I didn't talk to her in line, but rather after we were both done. She was leaving just as I was going in to see the advisor, so I figured she had a head start on me, but when I was leaving, she was in the hall putting on her jacket or something of the ilk. When I was checking her out in line, I noticed she had features similar to Tunde and another Hungarian girl I know, so I was actually curious if she had any Hungarian background. Yes, I know, it's an obscure question to start off a conversation with, but I was curious. After that, we wound up walking in the same direction for a while, so I kept the conversation up. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure if she was all that interested in the conversation, but I had a good time. Unfortunately, when we parted ways, I didn't have the testicular fortitude to ask for her number. Well, baby steps, right? I'm pleased with myself.

Listening to... Led Zeppelin - Black Dog
Link of the moment... Seems to have good reviews, but how often will I get 4 to 6 people together that want to play this?

Slightly serene

I'm gonna have to say I'm a little disappointed with Serenity. It pales terribly in comparison to the Firefly series. One thing I think that was sorely missing was the very impressive CGI effects that made things look like they were shot with a home video camera. Anyone who has seen the series should know what I'm talking about. I think they went kind of Hollywood with some of the characters, script, and plot. Right from the first scene inside the firefly, I just felt like some of the charm was gone. They even left a lot of loose ends, especially with Book.

Also, I'm very sad about a main character who may or may not have died.

Listening to... The Hives - Hate to Say I Told You So
Link of the moment... Bravo

Happy New Year, all

Last night in town now. Last night I went to Chris's house for about two hours, and hung out with that crowd. It was pretty boring, but there were some good conversations. I saw Jason there, I haven't seen him since high school. Afterwards, I hung out with the neighbours as usual. I actually convinced them to play a fair number of games that I knew. First, we played a few rounds of werewolf/mafia. Everyone caught on pretty quickly, but I think that even 8 people is a bare minimum for the game to work. 9 would make parity work out better, but I'm just lucky I found 7 other people who were willing to play it. On the one round where I was a wolf, John and I succeeded in massacring the village.

After that, we played charades with movie titles, song titles, and tv shows. I think the hardest one I had to do was "Passion of the Christ", and I got someone to guess it with a second left on the timer. After that, I got John, my sister, and John's parents to play a trick taking game that goes by dozens of names. I came in last, but had fun all the while.

I've flown through my entire Firefly boxset during the last week, and tonight Adam is going to rent Serenity and bring it here. I want to watch it before I have to say goodbye to the bigscreen TV. I'm looking forward to it, but I always get a little depressed when I watch the very last episode in any sort of story arc. It's definitely a good series to have on DVD, cause I know one day I'll have to have a marathon weekend to watch them all again with someone. Perhaps one day I'll order the Cowboy bebop boxset to watch another good sci-fi bounty-hunter themed show.

Oddly enough, I've been listening to a Daft Punk CD this last week, and it's grown on me. Some techno/electronica is well worth listening to.

Listening to... Daft Punk - Phoenix
Link of the moment... Might have already linked this, but nothing else worth linking today