Got wood for sheep?

Ugh. I'm feeling a bit down at the moment. Not really any particular reason, I guess. Just got the "every day is a waste of my life" doldrums. I guess I'm happy to be doing nothing instead of having too much to do, though.

I haven't done anything towards my idea of getting a bunch of clubs together for an event. I was aiming for February 3rd, but I think things would be too rushed if I tried for then. Everyone I've told says it sounds like a good idea, and I seem to have some support from other euchre people.

I've had only one assignment due so far. Network Flow has weekly assignments due on Fridays, and the other two have an assignment each due on the 24th, a Wednesday. What I'm hoping is that I can finish Okami in about a week and then just not play any video games until I'm done my assignments. That way, I won't have any distractions.

I finished season 2 of 24 the other day, and today was the premiere of season 6. There seem to be a lot of Canadian actors on the show so far. I'm excited to see Shaun Majumder on the show tomorrow night.

I made chili and it didn't turn out very good. I'm really sick of eating it, but I can't let it go to waste. So, I've got to pound down some crappy chili and rice for another few days. I treated myself to some McD's the other day, since we were out and about on the town. John, Julie and I went to Williams for a while to people watch. There wasn't really anyone interesting.

I've had a twitch in my eyelid for over a week now. It's intensely annoying and I'd like very much for it to go away. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to gouge my eye out, quite possible with a spoon.

Lately I've been sleeping for 11 hours when given the chance. Often, when I don't have school the next day, I'll go to sleep around 2AM and find myself waking up around 1PM. I don't mind sleeping in when I need to sleep, but sleeping that much on a regular basis probably isn't a good use of my time.

Nowrthern Ontario is so secluded from Southern Ontario. Once I move back home, there's not a very good chance I'll be seeing any of the people I met from University again. It's not really worth $350 in airfare or 14 hours of driving to visit friends for a few days. Looks like online communication is about as close of bonding I'll be doing with my friends. Of course, I might very well wind up getting a job in the GTA. It almost seems inevitable; there aren't many jobs that make good use of my degree that aren't in the heart of the country.

Maybe I should give Nathalie a call one of these days...there are a lot of people I should be calling: Phil, for instance. He called here the other day and said that he seems to do the same thing day in, day out, and doesn't really talk to any of his friends.

Listening to... Orgy - Fetisha
Link of the moment... I think I'll attend this event. At least it'll get me out of the house.

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...

"They taste like burning..."

Weirdest thing happened last night...I was playing Super Mario Strikers with the roommates (which seems to be a nightly event these days...Andrew and I ALWAYS manage to beat John and Hugh by one or two points), and I suddenly got a slight stinging pain in my stomach. Over the course of a minute, the pain grew ever more painful until I thought I was going to explode. I had to call a timeout midway through the game and take a breather. It went away through some processes that shouldn't be discussed in public, but the rest of the night I was still a bit woozy (luckily this was before bedtime so it didn't cause me any downtime). Today I feel better but my legs are oddly sore. I suppose it doesn't sound like that odd a story to you, but I've never really had that sort of pain come from out of nowhere and build up so strongly over the course of a minute. I hope it doesn't come back anytime soon...

After class on Thursday, I told Nathalie that I would have one of two weekends. Either I would find some motivation after taking the week easy and study for my midterm and get lots of progress on my CO485 assignment, or I would do absolutely no work over the weekend. Unfortunately, this last weekend fell under the second category. I'm just coming off about 84 hours (three and a half days for anyone who doesn't feel like dividing by 24) of doing no work. Normally I have class Monday, but yesterday was just midterm review, so I decided I wasn't about to wake up at 8:30 for that. I wasted all that time, but I'm not too disappointed about it. I mean, what's going to come of it? I really don't think I could fail any of my courses unless I really let myself go. If the graph theory midterm is half as easy as I hope it will be, I should be able to do it all on the spot without studying (unless we are asked to recite a proof or definition, but it's only 45 minutes long so I doubt it).

I'm in a different lab today, the MFCF Unix lab on the third floor. It's much emptier in here than the 2nd floor, but they have the air conditioner going all the time and it's effing freezing in here. I'll head back to old faithful next week, I think.

Well, I 'beat' Mario vs Donkey Kong 2 yesterday (that is, I beat the last boss but there are extra levels I could do), and I doubt I'll play it again, so I'm going to trade it in to EBGames for $17US (or at least that's what they say they'll give me on the american website), and get a new game. I realize there's really not much of a used game market for DS games yet, but I only need enough games to play until Xmas, then I'll get hooked up from mom. Oh yeah, I exchanged my DS for one with no dead pixels (that I have noticed yet).

I don't know what's going on for Halloween. I still have to get a hat for my costume, and I've got less than a week to do it. That is, if we're even going out for Halloween this weekend. We really can't find any good places to go. The university only has something going on on the Tuesday. Rev is 21+, excluding Hugh, and the only other two places I've found events for are Abstract and Elements, neither of which exhibit genres that everyone else is very fond of (alternative and electronica, respectively). I'm not too thrilled about going clubbing myself, but I like getting dressed up for Halloween. Well, at least I'll have the euchre club tournament to dress up for...

This crypto assignment is just making me feel stupid. It's way too difficult. The difficulty of this course is one of the reasons that I feel like grad studies aren't in my future. I'll be meeting up with Nathalie today, and we'll probably talk about the assignment, but the poor girl can't work miracles. I think I'll just put another hour or two into working on this assignment and then submit what I have for whatever pity marks the prof wants to give me.

I'm really tired right now...but I know I'll never find a couch in the SLC to sleep on. That was one nice thing about the summer term: you could always find a couch to sleep on in the SLC. Now I've got to bring myself low enough to sleep in the Math Comfy Lounge. I've heard stories of the couches in that room.

Hence ends another summary of Kevin's life, one week at a time.

Listening to... FBLA II - Helmet
Link of the moment... Honestly? I didn't like it. Shame, Brett Ratner...

"Are you still serving breakfast?" "Uh, you mean right now, or in general?"

Well this should be interesting. Next Friday I have to pick up the M136 assignments to mark by Wednesday morning, I have a comparison paper due that same Wednesday, and a midterm on the Tuesday just before, and the entire weekend I'll be in Windsor at my cousin's wedding. What I hope is that I can get my paper done by this coming Wednesday (week ahead of time!), study ahead of time for the CS234 midterm, and then mark all the papers in the morning at the hotel room in Windsor. I hope I can stick to my schedule or I'm screwed.

I think tomorrow I'm going to have to buy a PS2 wether I find a deal or not. We need a working DVD player on the tv. Besides, I've paid off my credit card...we can't have me not owing money, can we?

Yesterday morning, I found something out: I have allergies. I'm not sure what to, but I'm willing to put money that it's to some sort of pollen from some tree, since this is my first spring in Waterloo. My eyes were really watery and itchy in tutorial, and Nathalie told me to go get doped up on antihistamines. I gladly obliged, and they seem to be doing something for me (I still felt it today after taking one in the morning, but to a lesser extent). It's relatively expensive, but I just gotta put up with it for a few months.

I went to Dooleys the other day; Mathsoc had a free night for math students. Andrew was too busy, but I met up with Gee there instead. I more or less kicked his ass but lost a few games by scratching, and he won a few games of nineball against me. Good guy. It's good to know that we're on relatively good terms with one another.

Gee, Trevor, Amanda, and Laura all seem to have good taste in nerd games. I never have a chance to play anymore. Andrew is usually willing to play when he has free time, but John is never around and Hugh seems to be too good to play with us anymore. Most games aren't really good unless you have 4-6 players playing them. Maybe I'll buy some card game from J&J and bring it around to lunch with me (though to be honest I'd like to play some regular card games like Spades or Euchre or Oh Hell).

This weekend, I really hope I can finish my CS338 and CS234 assignments due next week, start and finish my comparison paper, and make some sort of contribution to the case study. I've got four days, so hopefully I can just keep my motivation up.

Laura will be out of town this weekend, and I'll be gone the next. We never seem to have a chance to get together. It's a shame she's always so busy. It's the life of the student, I guess. It's almost like my time at University is just dead. Everyone is always too busy to spend any time with me.

Listening to... Metallica - Trapped Under Ice
Link of the moment... Maybe I'll get this after my BMath

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*