My sanity is hanging by a thread

I'm completely burned out right now. I've been studying my ass off since yesterday's exam. Even after all that, I don't think I'll do spectacularly well on tomorrow's exam, but I'm sure the studying will have gone a long way. We'll see.

Crypto was a less than inspiring experience. I won't be getting any awards for my work, but I passed, and that's what I was aiming for. My dismal performance is what inspired me to work hard on this next exam.

Studying isn't the only thing on my mind. Rather, another thought that came about from a recent conversation has been unwilling to loosen its grip on my thoughts, making studying all that much more difficult. I don't want to get into details, but all you need to know is that something is plaguing my mind, and by all means, do your best to try to get my mind off of it.

After putting some thought into it, I'm not overly looking forward to moving back home. Though there are a lot of people there that I call friends, it's not often that I actually hang out with them. Here, I'm living with three of my friends, so every day is a new party. Also, living with my parents isn't necessarily conducive to the many romances I hope to carry out in the near future. The only thing I'm particularly looking forward to is the weekly game nights I plan to host. I think I'm either going to have to get a summer job to occupy my time, or else find some other reason to wake up every day.

I don't know what to do tomorrow night. I'll be done my last exam, and I'll have my car for the night. I hope I'm not left home alone again, like tonight. I wish I knew a few more single gals in the city, cause I could use a friendly date tomorrow night. There are even some decent movies playing in theatres this week; it's a shame, really.

Listening to... Papa Roach - Last Resort
Link of the moment... Nothing to look at now, but I should keep my eyes open in the future.

Sonic...he's the fastest thing alive!

Well, I've got one exam out of the way and another two to polish off my degree. I was most worried about the Network Design exam, but the exam went very well. I didn't ace it, but I most certainly passed it; I might even be in the 80-90 range depending on how he marks it. Of course, I only care about passing at this point, since I have no hopes of making the Dean's list. As a result, I'm not taking studying seriously at all. I've studied maybe a total of one or two hours for tomorrow's Cryptography exam since I think I know enough of the material to just wing it and pass. I won't know a lot of the definitions and more obscure things, but I can't think of an overly compelling reason to study for it. I think I might light a candle under my ass for Network Flow since I neglected the second half of the course, and I really don't even understand any of the algorithms or theory that we did. Well, we'll see what happens when Monday evening rolls around.

I beat Sonic 2 today, with John's help on some bosses. I have metal sonic down to a science now; I can beat him in about ten or fifteen seconds. I tried to beat the original Sonic yesterday, but I didn't have any continues and lost all my lives on one of the later stages. One day...one day I'll beat it.

I think I'm going to go through the US to get home, rather than going up through Sudbury. So long as I don't get held up at the border, it will shave nearly two hours off of my travel time. I've just got to make sure I have some US currency for food, gas, and tolls.

J&J still doesn't have Memoir '44 in stock, but they said they would likely get a shipment on Tuesday. I'll phone after my exam on Wednesday, and if they actually do have it in stock for a change, I'll pick it up as a personal graduation gift. At least then I won't have to worry about playing it when I should be studying.

Well, I've only got a little over a week left in Waterloo. I hope I can do something worthwhile in that week. I'm realy worried about becoming one of those people who just stays in Thunder Bay their whole life. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but I just feel so secluded there. There's so much to do *outside* of Thunder Bay.

Listening to... In Flames - Dial 595-ESCAPE
Link of the moment... They need to bring back the old TV shows.

Then I must be some kind of Genius

Well, I got my midterm marks back. I got a 90 in Network Flow...excellent. Network Design? Well, I got the second highest mark in the class! Unfortunately, that mark was 35%. The odd thing is that the highest mark in the class was around 75%, so there was a pretty huge drop-off. We're going to have a make-up midterm, and the prof talked to us all individually. I didn't tell him off or anything. What worries me is that it doesn't look like he's admitting that he's partially to blame for the class doing so poorly. Well, there's still 90% of the mark to be decided, so we'll see how this second midterm goes.

My sleep schedule is quite off lately. Lately, I've been going to bed between 4 and 5, and waking up at around 2PM. On days that I have class, I usually only get a few hours of sleep, and then crash when I get home. I forget what messed up my schedule. I was looking forward to attending a games day yesterday, but I woke up at 3 and realized it was half over, and by the time it would take to get ready and get there, it wouldn't be worth going.

I'm finally on the second disc of Shadow Hearts, but I think there's still a ways to go before I finish it. I beat the co-op story mode of Timesplitters: Future Perfect with Hugh, after some horrendously difficult stages. For Yoshi's Island, I've only got to acheive my goal of getting at least 80 on every stage for the last world, and then beat the last stage. I haven't touched FFVI lately. I have too many games started up already, so I'm trying to get SH and YI out of the way first.

I'm talking to Aly as we speak ('we speak', being figurative, of course). He reminded me that he has my Serenity DVD. I suggested that we actually do something, rather than just saying "hey, we should do something". It looks like I'll be going to see 300 this Friday in Mississauga (or Mrs. Sauga, as I jovially refer to it) at the IMAX theatre. I guess it doens't really mess with my midterms or anything, and the roads should be nice enough to drive on, so I can't think of any good reason not to go.

Katie was over last night, for the first time in a while. I was starting to get the feeling that she didn't really want to hang out with us anymore, but she initiated the hangout, so I suppose my fears were unfounded. She, Andrew and I played some NES (I have a NES emulator for PS2 with 900+ games), Scene It, and Carcassonne. As the night went on, activities included making spaghetti, and Katie falling asleep on the couch. I didn't know if I should wake her up or not, so I just played some Megaman 3 instead. Eventually she woke up (at 3:30 AM) and I kicked her out of my house. Good times, as usual! Unfortunately, she is babysitting this Monday and as such can not come over to watch TV.

I bought a Pitchshifter CD from those seedy guys that set up shop in the SLC the other day. "deviant", if you must know. It was a rare find, so I was happy to pay the eight dollars (sans tax). It's not as good as www.pitchshifter.com (the album), but I haven't really given it any time to grow on me. Now if only I could find a Bucket Truck or Chore cd...

The university had 1.5 snow days at the end of last week. They closed up shop at 3:30 on Thursday due to some pretty fierce snowfall. Overnight, there was really nasty freezing rain, hence the closure on Friday. It didn't mean much to me, besides letting me sleep in and saving me three hours of unenlightening class.

Well, that's as much as I'm willing to type for now.

Listening to... Reel Big Fish - Take On Me
Link of the moment... NES emulator for PS1. Needs a swap disc or mod chip to work.

Fun trip to Brantford

Well, I'm back in "the 'loo". Hugh was home first on the third of January, then me, then Andrew, and finally John the next morning. Our family is once again complete. We went grocery shopping, but I forgot to look at what I had left in the cupboards and freezer. Because of that, I underbought and now I'm very low on food and I don't think anyone else wants to go shopping.

I only got to see Holly once while I was home. We went to the mall together. It was a very nice mall trip, she definitely made it fun. I got some pants and a nice zip-up spring jacket for $20 each. The pants are too long, so I'm either going to have to hem them or just let them be too long.

My classes are pretty boring so far. I few times, I've been close to nodding off during class. James, who I know from the Euchre club, is in two of my classes. The other class (Network Design) has only seven or eight students, and the prof isn't really that good of a lecturer. He goes a little too fast and writes a little too small for my liking.

The other day, I tried to beat Hugh in Smash Brothers with one hand. Specifically, my right hand. I used my thumb on the analog stick and my pinky for the buttons. Had I been able to react quickly enough to recover when off the edge, I'm certain I could have easily beaten him, but inability to recover proved fatal.

I had an idea at the euchre exec meeting. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or a bad one, but I'm going to put more consideration into it. We're trying to find new events to have for the club, and I think we're a bit wary about how Warrior Weekends are being managed. One problem I have with WW is that they tend to have a lot of events running concurrently, so people have to choose between events. What I was thinking is getting a few entertainment-based clubs (UWGamers, WATSFIC, etc) together, and having a day-long event with lots of back-to-back events. Then people can participate in as many events as they want without having to choose between them. Of course, it might be more work than it seems, getting a lot of clubs to be on the same page, and co-ordinating all the advertising efforts.

I beat the Warriors. As you might notice on the sidebar, it didn't take me very long. There are still a lot of extra backstory missions I can do, and a few more modes I can unlock, but for the moment I'm done with the game. I've moved on to Okami, which hasn't really wowed me yet. It's pretty fun, but I'm gonna say that LoZ: TP looks like a better game.

Listening to... Three Days Grace - Scared
Link of the moment... My latest wallpaper...I like this art style

Back on my exam sleep schedule

I remember at the end of the summer term, I was starting to get my sleep schedule to the point where I would see the sun rise before I went to bed. I'm starting to get pretty close to doing that again. It's 4AM right now, and to be honest I'm not all that tired. Yesterday I was up til 4 as well. Tonight I slept from about 9PM to 11PM, knowing full well that I'd be screwing my sleep schedule up. I'm sure this will have dire consequences given that I have an exam at 9AM on Monday. It's no good to be falling asleep partway through an exam.

Linguistics went pretty well. I can't really predict exactly how well I did. There were a few questions I left blank, but I seem to have prepared well enough for it. I think I may have lucked out with Graph Theory. I only studied a total of about four hours for it, and when I started writing it, things were looking pretty dismal. There were a bunch of "give an example of a graph on n vertices which blah blah blah". Each was worth about 12% of the exam mark, and it was very much the case that you'd get either no marks or full marks. Either the right solution came to you or it didn't. Luckily, by the end of the exam, they had all come to me. A few of my other proofs were very sketchy, but I don't think they were looking very really high levels of detail. Only one question was left with an incomplete solution, but I'm pretty confident about the rest.

Hugh says that my blog isn't very interesting as it stands; he says I need more opinions or something. I've been trying to keep my opinions to myself lately because it seems like every time I give an opinion, someone proves me wrong right away. And I don't like being wrong. That, and outside of video games I really don't have much else to talk about (sadly enough).

I don't know what I'll be doing for New Years 06-07. I'm half considering having people over to my house (dare I say, a party?), but my parties are usually dry events, and people like ot get shit faced for the new year. What usually winds up happening is that everyone either goes to some private party, or a family party, and that leaves me with a very small invitee list. Don't get me wrong, hanging out with the Jurcik-Stilla connection is fun, but I don't like doing the same thing year after year.

I think I'm gonna go to a shag (bottom definition) on the 29th. I've never been to one, but there's no time like the near future, right? Besides, poor Chanel has to sell 48 more tickets for her friends.

Listening to... Primus - Southbound Pachyderm
Link of the moment... Almost reason enough to buy a PSP!

PHYS 121 destroyed me

Well, one exam down. It was physics, and it was gruesome. I'm not looking forward to what my mark will be in that course, but I can't say I care too much. It's just an elective, and even beyond that, what's the worts that will happen if I don't get a good mark in some course this term? Nothing.

I've got a few days until my next exam. The next two are Linguistics and Graph Theory on Wednesday and Friday respectively. I think I'll mostly wing it on those exams. I'll review all the linguistics slides, but it will all be multiple choice and T/F, so it's nothing worth wracking my brain over. Graph Theory will mostly be about memorizing a few theorems, and being able to apply the rest of them. I've got a good grasp on the material, so I shouldn't run into anything that will disturb me on the final.

I went to J&J the other day, as I said I would. I found Bang!, and found Lost Cities after scouring the shelves a few times. Through the Desert, and Mystery of the Abbey, however, were missing. I figure MotA is a bit obscure, and they said TtD was out of print but they should get some more eventually. I didn't want to walk out of there without buying a $30 game, since I'm not often in a spendy mood and figured I should get something for myself. I wound up buying Carcassonne: The Discovery based on a review I found on Board Games With Scott, which says it captures the essence of Carcassonne while being more accessible to new gamers. TtD will have to go on my 'to buy' list for the next time I feel the need to get more games. I think the next time I want to buy some games, I might try out GermanGames.com which is local to Waterloo and has good prices and selection.

I won Megaman ZX off of eBay today for a measly $20 after shipping (it retails for $40). The only reason I got it so cheap was because I got it off a user with almost no feedback. It's probably a bad idea, but the price was right.

I think I might try to get involved in Watsfic and the UWGamers next term, if it fits my schedule. I stopped by the Watsfic office while on campus the other day to see if they were having any more games days. Turns out I just missed one last weekend. I also scolded them for not having their information more accessible, such as on their now-defunct website and perhaps over a newsletter. I'd join in hopes of playing games with people who play games. Similarly, joining the UWGamers would let me try out the new consoles and test drive new games for DS. Of course, walking to campus is such a pain in the winter term, I'm not sure I'd be motivated enough to go to events.

I'm almost done FF5! Isn't that so exciting? Although, I wound up exploiting a game feature to buff up my guys. I guess it takes some of the fun out of the game, but the final boss will still put up a challenge, and there's still an entire optional dungeon after that.

Only nine more days until I'm back home!

Listening to... Raised Fist - Illustration of Desparation
Link of the moment... I'm sure I'll buy from here when I'm back in TBay...no local shops there.

Sudden EMP shockwave?

I don't seem to be having much luck with electronic devices lately. My digital camera has recently been showing signs of being useless lately (fresh batteries usually take more than one picture) and more importantly, my cell phone isn't working. The inside display no longer shows anything, just a black screen. It would cost ~$100 to ship and repair it, and about ~$180 to buy a new rogers phone. I've still got 6 months left on my Rogers contract, so I'm going to try to get a phone off of eBay for less than $60 that will be able to last me the rest of my contract and however long I'll need a Pay as you Go phone after my contract is up. Thank god my DS and Zen are still in tip-top shape (knock on wood).

I've been sick as of last Tuesday night. I had a nasty headacke the first two days, and the usual congestion, but the thing that's really annoying me about this cold is the nagging cough. Most of the time it's a really dry cough so it really hurts my throat after a while. By the way, I recommend Halls over Fisherman's Friend by a long shot. It looks like I'm on the road to recovery though. I'm glad to get this year's cold over with, but that logic may be along the same vein as taking a bomb on an airplane because the odds of there being TWO bombs on the same plane is so drastically small.

Andrew and I (aka Smith and Wesson, he was Agent Smith and I was a cowboy, get it?) did alright in the tournament, but we caught an unfortunate break. We placed fourth out of ten in the pre-ranking games, so that got us started off in the quarter-finals in the knockout tournament (four teams had to compete to get in the quarter-finals). We beat the first team pretty easily, and in the semi-finals we held a two-point lead for most of the game. Unfortunately, they caught up on a couple of good hands and wound up beating us 10-9. I picked up the nine of hearts to give myself the Jack and nine of trump and some black kings. It wasn't a very good hand, but since I was the dealer I was more worried about being stuck and having to call one of my really weak black suits. The team that wound up winning was the one that was ranked tenth in the ranking, so good on them.

I was too lazy to update the euchre site this week since there were only a handful of new scores, I was hard up for a strategy article, and I didn't have any pictures of the tournament. This wekend, the club is holding a euchre tournament at the Warrior Weekends event (about time WW got back to us), and of course we'll be having an end-of-term club tournament at the last meeting in three weeks, so that's a pretty tourny-filled month for the club. I'm not sure if I'll be able to participate in the WW tuornament since I should be the one keeping score for the night. Such is the life of a club executive!

Looks like Guitar Hero 2 is currently carrying a 99% ranking. That $90 is looking like a pretty good investment for my Christmas holiday. Maybe (pimping DS) + (Guitar Hero 2) + (Buying Wii at presumed price drop in 2008) = success. It's not even a matter of having the money; I definitely do. It's a matter of not having the time for so many games.

Congratulations to John and Julie who have been together for a year now.

I looked at my notes and I've skipped four Linguistics classes that deal with the midterm on Thursday. Meh. I'm really not taking school seriously at all anymore. I have a crypto midterm in two hours that I'm very unprepared for. I don't know much about any of the signature schemes, or attacks on any of them, or any algorithms dealing with some attacks. My only hope is that the midterm is strictly easy number theory and hopefully an algorithm that is somewhere in my accessible memory. Looks like it's only worth 20%, but I suppose a bigger concern is that I'm even less prepared for the 50% final exam.

I don't know what to do for reading week this year. This is the first year that math students actually get a full week off, so I feel like maybe I should treasure it. Andrew is going on a ski trip and John and Julie are going to Las Vegas. My dad will have a condo in Florida again, but I feel like the trip is wasted unless I go with someone. My big plan was to have a girlfriend by now so that by mid-February we'd be in a position where we could go on a trip together and let our winter love blossom in the warmth of the Florida sun.

It was my mom's birthday on Sunday. I ordered a bunch of CDs and a Sudoku book for her. She went to the casino with some people (she only goes about once a year no gambling problem), and she wound up winning $1000! She was playing video poker as always, held the Jack of Spades, and wound up getting a royal flush! Good birthday gift, eh?

I really should find a second day a week to set aside time to make a post. Trying to sum up all the meaningless events of a week makes for too large of a post. Besides, as someone who checks for blog updates many times a day, I can understand that sometimes you people out on the interweb need something to keep yuo entertained throughout the week.

Listening to... Closed Captioned - Fugazi
Link of the moment... Honestly? Not entirely impressed with this either. Super Mario World was better...

Cowboy? Again?

Well, here I am, in the lab, dressed up like a cowboy. It's not nearly as good as last year. Last year, I had a much better hat (I waited too long this year and wound up with a pink mylar hat, but it's the only one that fit!), and wearing a recycled costume isn't as fun as wearing one that you've never worn before.

This halloween seems to have been a bit of a bust. Last year, at least I went to a party in CLV with a bunch of foreigners. This year, we attempted to go to Rev(olutions), but no one there was dressed up. There were just the generic "sexy angel", "sexy devil", and "guy wearing a fuzzy pimp hat", and even those people made up less than a quarter of all people there. Well, maybe next year.

Tonight is a euchre tournament. I'm a bit skeptical about what the turnout is going to be. I guess we'll probably get the same turnout as regular meetings.

I tried sniping some eBay auctions the other day. One (for New Super Mario Bros.) got really pricey. I'm suprised that the other guy that was bidding on it went as high as he did. At that price, it's just about the same as getting one new from stores. I did, however, win Super Mario Kart DS for under thirty bucks after shipping (it's $45+tax in stores). I also got Donkey Kong Country in the mail the other day...good game, but it's very difficult to play on a handheld system.

I tried to trade in my Mario vs Donkey Kong at EBGames, but they would only give me a paltry ten dollars (TEN DOLLARS!), so I put it up on ebay instead. At the moment, it's up to $6.50 US, but I expect it to get up to at least $15 within the last 24 hours. I was just going to get in store credit at EB anyways, which would have one towards an overpriced new game, or an overpriced used game. eBay is the way to go, my friends.

I have only seen two other people on campus dressed up. Supposedly Molly and Quinn will be dressed up tonight, but I guess it's a bit weirder during the day. I like Halloween. I even like the fact that not many people are dressed up, because it makes my costume all that much more entertaining.

I got lucky and did most of my physics assignment in about an hour and a half. At the moment, I'm in the clear, but I've got midterms on the 7th and 9th, so I should get ahead and study for those. Especially because one is Crypto, and the other is Linguistics, the class that I've been regularly skipping. I would not be surprised to find that I have skipped about half of the classes that deal with material that will be on this next midterm, but I should be able to extract all the information I need to off of the class slides. It's just a matter of actually gathering the motivation to do so...

Tomorrow I'm going to go to the mall after class (about 11 AM) and load up on cheap halloween candy, a tradition that I hold dear to my heart. I seem to be using my car quite a bit lately. I have this system worked out: I take my bike to school, then after class I bike to the parking lot, leave my bike chained to a no parking sign, and then drive my car to my house. When I bring it back, I ride my bike back home. It saves a fair bit of time.

Even though there will be no new scores from euchre tonight, I guess I'll still have to update the website with the results of the tournament along with pictures. I was going to bring my camera, but it's really messed up. I put in fresh batteries about a week ago, and today I turned it on, took a picture, and it turned off (meaning the batteries are dead). I think it's beyond all help. Sooner or later I'll buy a new one, but I use it so rarely that I can't imagine spending too much on one. I really, really hope that someone else at the club has a camera, or Andrew gets my message and brings his own if he has one.

I'm getting really, really sick of the same old food these days. My pasta always smells like it's mouldy. Pasta sauce just tastes terrible after having it all the time. I'm too lazy to make 'real' food, and it would yield too much anyways (like meatloaf of shephard's pie or stuff like that).

Ah, back to that time again...still lots of time before Crypto, but nothing else to talk about. What to do, what to do. I guess I'll head over to RCH and play games like I did last week. Yup, sounds like a good plan.

Listening to... Refused - Liberation Frequency
Link of the moment... Time to start thinking about next year's costume!

Whatever happened between you and me?

Jeez, I'm starting to get lapped in terms of blog posts now. It's been one of those "busy weeks followed by apathy" sort of things. Last post I made was talking about my SQL assignment...I've already got that back, and I'm about to hand in the NEXT assignment for that course, so shame on me.

Haha...I keep telling myself I'll proofread my posts before submitting them...I put some pretty godawful mistakes in the last one. "Luch" instead of "Lush", and "phong" instead of "phoning". I'll try to be a bit more careful this time around.

Well, my case study is handed in now. That's what the "busy week" was. I think my entire group was working for the week straight on that thing. I'm proud of the final product, so that means it'll probably get a miserable mark. It's not completely done though; we have a fifteen minute presentation to give on Wednesday. I think for the most part we can wing it since we know the material of our own sections pretty well. I actually had to go buy some clothes for the presentation, cause I don't have any 'business casual' clothes.

I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Let's see how far back I can remember:
-Pirates of the Caribbean (Curse of the Black Pearl, on CBC)
-Saw
-The Ring
-Seven
-Mad Max
-Kung Fu Hustle
-Old School
-Three Amigos

Of those, I'd like to comment on two. Please don't see Mad Max. It's an hour and a half introduction, five minutes of his mission of revenge, and then the credits roll. Terribly paced movie. If you think you want to see Kung Fu Hustle, then I recommend you see Shaolin Soccer instead. If you've already seen Shaolin Soccer, then Kung Fu Hustle likely won't live up to your expectations. It's not bad enough for me to recommend you not seeing it, but it's not as funny as I thought it would have been.

Guild Wars is getting really hard. I'm in the second area of the game, and my party size has increased to six. That just means 1.5x as many enemies to team up on my character and kill him. I'm going to play through the game with my monk character first, and hopefully accumulate items for my other characters to help them out.

Andrew has got me hooked on Smash Brothers Melee lately. Thing is, I suck at it, but it's good times anyways. We've got two characters left to unlock, plus a bunch of stages.

I think I'm going to bring Trigun back from home. I think Andrew would appreciate it; I remember when I got into Firefly, I noticed a similarity between the two, and Andrew likes Firefly, so hopefully he'll like Trigun as well.

Only a week and a half left in the term...then exams. Nearly there! I only have two exams to write as well. Still two CS234 assignments to start and finish, but I don't really have anything else to get in the way of them, so it should be smooth sailing for the rest of the term. I just hope Wednesday's presentation goes well...

Listening to... Trigun - Yellow Alert
Link of the moment... An old Dragonball Z fight video with an awesome song...brings back my childhood

Let's try that again

So here's my first interesting story: last weekend (namely Sunday), we realized there was no hot water in the house. We put up with it for the day since we couldn't call anyone about it. The next day, I phoned a few places that were no help to me. I left a message with my landlord, who I STILL have not heard back from. I decided to try anything I could do by myself; namely check the fuses. We have an old style fuse box, so without a voltmeter I can't actually check the fuses myself. I popped out the fuses for the hot water heater and brought them to Canadian Tire. They were different amperages, which was odd, and the 30A fuse was blown instead of the 15A, even more odd. Anyways, I bought a new 30A fuse and popped them back in when I got home, and that seemed to do the trick. Later that day I had a shower of both cleansing and victory.

Sometimes I feel a little unappreciated around here. No one will ever do anything with me. All I want to do is play a game of cards instead of watching stupid TV, but no one around here will co-operate. Andrew would play but he's always too damned busy.

The other night I fell into a state of borderline depression. I got back my process paper from ENGL 119 and got a 60% on it. I'll admit I didn't put too much effort into it, but I feel I deserve way more than a lousy 60%. Between 8 and midnight, I waited. I waited for one of my roommates to acknowledge my existence. I played solitaire for a while, slept on my desk for a while, sulked for a while, and the whole while, no one came. I make a habit of it to wander the house every now and then and asking people how their days have been going.

I think I'm going to stop giving them so much credit. No more free dinners, no more "I'm going to Sobeys, do you want anything", no more "sure I'll do whatever you want to do". More than anything I'm sick and tired of getting my hopes up, thinking that maybe something will actually turn my way one of these days. I think maybe it's about time I start looking for someone who can sympathize with me. Sometimes I feel like I just don't belong in this world. People will listen to me blather on, but they certainly don't enjoy it. I think my only real saviour is Nathalie, god bless her. She will always lend a compassionate ear, and I think she really understands me.

Well it looks like my schedule is picked out for next term for the most part. As expected, I'll be taking
CO 342 (Graph Theory),
CO 485 (Public Key Cryptography),
ENGL 306A (Intro to Linguistics), and
PHYS 121 (Mechanics and Waves 1, by distance ed).
Overall a decent term. I was hoping to take classical studies, but it is only open to first year arts students. I'm glad to be taking the Physics course, as mechanics is the only real branch of it that interests me. I wish I could have taken an on-campus section with a good prof that fits into my schedule, but unfortunately no such section exists. I was also slightly interested in the intro to cognitive science course, but I think it might be too much work and thinking for my liking.

Don't you wish you could set your body like an egg timer? Tell it exactly when you want to go to sleep, and tell it exactly when you want to wake up, fully refreshed. I went to bed at about 11, but as I hope you are able to conlude, it did not work.

I've had games on the brain lately. I'm still not sure if my schedule is clear enough for me to start playing, but I think I've more or less got the time. So long as I work efficiently when I do work on my assignments, I can finish them all pretty quickly. I wish I could waste this weekend playing some games, but this is the weekend I go to Windsor with my mom and sister for my cousin's wedding. It's a four hour drive to Windsor! I guess I'll just have to speed. I've already got a playlist queued up on my Zen. All I need to do is make sure I put some good tv episodes on there too for when I get bored and I'm set.

Well I'm still not tired, so I guess I'll peruse the internet for a while, read up on some games perhaps. I certainly hope my lack of sleep doesn't cause me to crash while driving tomorrow.

Listening to... The Police - Fallout
Link of the moment... Hopefully I can secure this for less than $20 on eBay

I can hear again!

I woke up the other day unable to hear out of my left ear. I've had this happen once before, about two years ago. Last time I went to Health Services on campus and they flushed my ear out. Unfortunately this time it was 4:45 on a Friday (I awoke from a nap, you see), so Health Services was closed. I went to the walk in clinic on campus but the wait was too long. I suffered the annoyance through the night and went the next morning, and they cleared me up again. I fear this may be a regular occurrence now.

My PS2 has been veru finicky lately. It will no longer play burned DVDs, and for some reason it won't read my Firefly disc either. I'm still waiting for Future Shop or Best Buy to have ANY sort of a deal on PS2s, whether it be a small discount or some special offer.

I'm also still waiting for my Zen armor to come in the mail. Pretty slow, if I may say.

I dragged Andrew out to a Euchre night last Thursday. I was shocked to hear that a fair handful of people felt that calling trump and then leading with the right bower from the first seat is a bad play. I argued my case but I don't think I convinced anyone. Perry, if you still read my blog, please back me up. Sadly, their argument is that you're drawing out your partner's trump, which may be a lone left bower. I tried to convince them that there is twice the chance that a lone left is in one of your opponents' hands than in your partner's. I also argue that if you have an off-ace and the right, it's far better to play the right first, as it will draw out trump that might have been used to otherwise cut on your ace. Bleh, whatever.

I have barely started on my process paper, and it's due Wednesday. That is, I have to present it Wednesday. For my topic, I chose "how to use mathematical induction". A bit simple, perhaps, but I couldn't think of anything else very relevent. I keep telling myself that even if I wing it, I can get a passing mark, so any actual work I do on it should be gravy. I'm not sure if I'm taking this term very seriously, but that was sort of my intention to begin with.

I've started looking at my courses for next term, and it looks like if I take CO485 (Public key cryptography), CO342 (Graph Theory), CLAS100 (Intro to Classical Studies) and ENGL306A (Intro to Linguistics), the schedule would work out pretty well. Those are pretty much all the courses I wanted to take, so it looks like things are working out nicely with my planning ahead. I'm almost done!

Listening to... Helmet - Wilma's Rainbow
Link of the moment... *Thumbs up*

Need a touch of humanity

I've got that feeling that I'm going out of my mind because I haven't have any human contact for the last 6ish hours. I did some marking (and found my first set of cheaters!), and I'm not in the mental condition to get any work done. I think I'd like to fire up a game like Dragon Quest 8, but since it's burned I'd rather not put up with the possible frustration of trying to get it working.

Well, I got Tunde's bike. It's definitely a piece of work. The back tire is not on the wheel, the front tire is dead flat, the chain is off the gears, and the gears look pretty rusted. I'm really hoping that both bikes have the same size wheels so that I can take the good wheels off my other bike, put it on the newer bike, and then clean up and lube up the gears and chain on the newer bike. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll have something that is workable. I realize now I should have just bought a new one to save myself the torment that I'm going through now. Let that be a lesson to me.

Well it looks as though my ENGL 119 class should be...interesting. Most people take it expecting it to be less work than a "real" course. Unfortunately, the term-long case study project works out to be quite a bit of work. Well, it subverts a final exam, so I guess I don't care one way or another. Me and Sivji were trying to recruit competent members ahead of time (that is, people who will be easy to communicate with and will do well in all oral aspects of the project). However, we still got stuck with two ESL girls, which may but a barrier of communication in the group. We'll still do well, it's just a matter of having to take more time to make sure everyone is on the same page. I've taken the responsibility of being the team project leader for the first week, meaning I have to have a formal status report ready for next Wednesday. I really don't know what they expect out of the people who are doing it the first week as we have no real progress to report on. All we'll have accomplished by next week is whatever brainstorming we get done on this Monday (we arranged an extra out-of-class meeting to get an early start). Not only that, but I have no idea what the layout of the report should look like.

Andrew and Hugh came back a while ago. We chatted, but as I expected we didn't really have anything to do. Andrew is tuckered out and has to get up early tomorrow. I could go to bed myself, but I never feel right going to bed before I feel like my day is over with.

I'm hoping tomorrow will be productive, though I say that every day. I hope to work on my bikes, go shopping, go to Value Village, and get either my marking or my CS338 done. Beyond that I have some lower priority things that I've been putting off for a while such as talking to people at the plaza about securing a parking space for John, doing my laundry, and recycling all these boxes stored in the basement.

Next Saturday (May 27), Julie and I are going to Niagara Falls. I don't know who else is coming, though I suspect John and Andrew are in the "maybe" pile. If you've ever been there and know of some good attractions, stores, or cafes to visit, then let me know.

It's sort of a shame, as there is a Warrior Weekend that weekend. I'd like to go to some of the events on both the Friday and Saturday, but I suppose my Niagara plans will interfere with that.

Well...I guess I'll get back to sitting on the computer wasting away my youth. Blah.

Listening to... Death From Above 1979 - Cold War
Link of the moment... I've been looking at recipes. Maybe one day I'll actually have the time and effort to make something.

Mario Party 6 must go

Andrew's home for the weekend, and Hugh, John, and Nicole went to some bar last night with John's sister and her friends. I took a stand and stayed home to get some work done (in lieu of being able to get a hold of Laura). I did some marking (which I actually find enjoyable), and got to bed at 1:30. They came back at 2 AM, and started playing Mario Party with what I am certain were not their late night inside voices. For lack of being able to sleep through it, and not being one for asking anything for myself, I went upstairs and watched them play it out until 3:30. So much for getting up early today to get some work done.

I feel like I have an awful lot of work considering I only have three classes, but I guess it's mostly just this one assignment for ENGL 119 due Wednesday worth 10% of my final mark. I can't believe they'd only give a week's notice for such an assignment.

I think I may have changed my mind from a Zen Vision:M to a Zen MicroPhoto. The differences include ~$100, 22GB, and the ability to play video. With 8GB I could store 1/3 of my music collection, which is likely all I'd really need. I doubt I'd watch much video on the go, but I suppose $100 is a small price to pay for staying on the cutting edge of technology. It all depends on if my parents are willing to shell out a nice gift for me. Hell, if it weren't near my birthday, I'd buy one myself (to hopefully make me seem like less of a spoiled white boy).

We're still waiting on furniture, but Andrew says his dad can drive down next weekend with a van, so hopefully that pans out. Until then, we continue to use cushions on the floor (generously donated by Julie).

I've been waking up at 11:30 consistently these days. I'm going to start setting my alarm for 8:30 every day, but of course I couldn't get up today since I was up late last night. Hopefully that will benefit my sleep schedule after a week or so. I seem to keep falling asleep in the evening.

So I guess the big news in my life these days is that I got a shoe rack. Yup, big news. No longer is our closet plagued with unorganized shoes.

Listening to... Winamp Radio
Link of the moment... $20 is a small price to pay for long term protection

From 249 Cedarbrae

It's been a long time since the last post, and so there's a lot to talk about. However, since there's so much new stuff that has happened, it's too daunting to talk about any of it.

I'm in the new house now with John, Andrew, and Hugh. I think we're mostly settled in now. We each have a bed (I bought a futon), I've got enough furniture to store all my crap, and now all we need is to find a way to get some furniture from Guelph to Waterloo in a relatively inexpensive manner (we can rent a UHaul for the day, but that would cost near $80). For the time being, we're playing games and watching TV on the floor.

We found a tv near the dumpster by our house, and it works well enough for us to use. It's about 27", and is fine aside from the fact that bright colours bleed a bit, and we have to use the RCA input rather than regular coaxial.

I've been spending a lot of money lately as well. I bought Mario Party 6 and WarioWare Inc for Gamecube from Blockbuster, as well as a third controller ($60+tx). I bought the PS2 Slimline kit that allows you to mod new PS2s to play burned games ($40). Soon I'll be spending another chunk of money for the new PS2 itself (~$130+tx). I also bought some nice headphones with a boom mic for my computer (for it for $50CAD on ebay, retails for $100USD!). I went to the UW bike auction which was a bust, but got a nearly-working bike at a garage sale ($50). All that crap, along with furnishings for the house and groceries make for a hefty Visa bill.

I also plan on getting myself a Creative Zen Vision:M for my birthday. (If anyone spots a good price for a new PS2 (less than $130) or a new Creative Zen Vision:M (less than $380) at any retailers, let me know will ya?)

Turns out Andrew is the marker for CS 234. Nifty, eh? I don't expect he'll need to mark me any nigher than needed, since it looks like the course will be easy (and I can always legitimately ask for his help before handing the assignment in). CS 338 looks boring as hell, and ENGL 119 looks like it'll be more or less easy, but stressful with all the group work and projects. It should be a good learning experience though, since I'm not well versed on technical writing, and my oral presentation could use some exercise as well.

So far I'm enjoying being completely bored all the time. I have enough stuff to keep me busy at the moment. I hope once things with the new house settle down a bit, I'll be bored enough to beat a few games. We've mostly been playing Mario Party since I got it.

Well, that's all I care to talk about for the moment. I seem to be spending much less time at my computer, since there's usually somene else dicking around the house that I can hang out with. We've had some good conversations around the dinner table.

Listening to... Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc (Have you heard of this song, Nathalie? I put it on just for you!)
Link of the moment... You *should* have heard of them!

I'm just saying, the first thing I'd think wouldn't be "hey, I should spit on my wiener"

Ho hum. Things are a bit stagnant around here. I should have thought ahead and brought a PC game home to play. I downloaded a few demos, but this computer is a bit too dated to play them.

I had people over the other night. Sheena, Chanel, Grant, Martine, Christina, Adam, John and Julie. I rented 40 Year Old Virgin, but most people had seen it, and Martine had rented Brokeback Mountain, so we watched that instead. Good movie, but it was a bit too deep for me. Nice to watch them on my nice tv and surround sound system (the thunder was so loud!). After that, everyone was too tired to stick around, so the night ended relatively early.

Earlier that day, I went with John and Julie around some of the sights around Thunder Bay. We went for breakfast at the Hoito. She had her first taste of Finnish pancakes, and John and I got the deeeelicious hot turkey sandwich. We noticed some well dressed men come in, and then realized that one of them was none other than the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty.

Afterwards, we went to Eagle Canyon, which houses Canada's longest suspension footbridge. I'll tell ya...not the best place to go on a windy day for anyone afraid of heights. My legs were rather wobbly when we got off. After that, it was a short hop to Ouimet Canyon. Unfortunately, the park is not yet open, so we had to walk 3Km uphill to get to the canyon. That was intensely exhausting and time consuming. We saw the canyon, I threw a few coins off, and then we made the trek back.

Well, I have all my marks back. I got 80 in Real Analysis, which is likely more than I deserve, but about what I was hoping to get. After going into the Linear Optimization exam with a 70 in the class, I walked out with an 86! Much better than I thought. Group Theory is the big shocker: I knew I did well on the exam, but I never expected to get a 98! That lets my average rest at 87 for this term, and conveniently enough, my cumulative average is also exactly 87.

Well, enough gloating...I'm going to go get some lunch.

Listening to... Snapcase - First Word
Link of the moment... Maybe grad studies @ home are the way to go?