Tag Archives: Rudy

No Need to Complain

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This post is dedicated to my good friend Rudy.

As I drove back from work on Monday with Rudy, I drove poor Rudy crazy with my complaints about work. Sure there are less than ideal situations that I have to deal with everyday. But I’m sure that everyone else who works, also comes up against the same. True, I was and still am recovering from a nasty cold. And I tend to be crankier in such situations. Still there really was no need to complain. And Rudy sensing a good opportunity to jump, cut me short in his trademark style.

Dorian, remember how we talked about you complaining too much?

Yes?

You’re complaining too much.

And he was right. I do complain too much. Yes, I do have tight deadlines at work. Yes, Life hasn’t exactly played out according to my plans. Yes, everyday seems to pile on more workand things to do, on top of the existing staggering pile. Yes, I sometimes wonder if I’m not behind my peers on the important things in life. Still I complain too much. And I’m good at it too. But I shouldn’t…

When I look at the things I am complain about, they really are good things in my life too. All that work at work, means that I am needed to build these apps and solutions for both my firm and our clients. At home, all my tasks and projects mean that I have a full, abundant, un-boring life. Could life be a bit more relaxed? Of course it could! But it is nothing to complain about. It could be worse.

I could be living without all my comforts. I could be without the work and getting paid regularly. I could be without some many things, like so many other people in the world are without. And yet I am fortunate to have all that. Even if it brings the occasional headache.

And I’m fortunate to have friends like Rudy, who remind me to be thankful with what I have. Thanks!

In Search of Sanity and Coffee

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I slept in today. Yesterday turned out too crazy for even me. I started off the day with a single plan: catchup. So what did I do? I wrestled with Kontact to work with my Palm. I decided to fix things… by backing up and wiping out my old KDE settings. The wipe out worked, and the backup not so much. That is the way I started my day.

Next, I “chilled” out by blogging and trying not to freak out about the loss of all my emails, contacts, and pretty much everything else.

Audio Docs class followed, and a changing of groups. My group remained the same with Rob, Masha and Amanda (a totally unrelated new Amanda), and a new girl joined our group whose name I forgot. I got randomly picked to record a sound on campus. Fortunately my partner finished 3 years in radio, worked in the CBC and confidently recorded everything. I helped “assemble” the mini-Disc recorder. And I held the bag. And provided conversation. Yes, I am hopeless.

In my absence, my group decided upon on using my idea (my obsession with Ewa) for the documentary project. Apparently the prof used my story as an example, and my group understood it as good. Rob started writing up the script, Masha organizing the project, and Amanda helping Rob. Yes, I feel touched with their decision, but the whole thing just started so spontaneously. Anyways, I promised to contact everyone, as soon as I got my email back.

I asked Masha about meeting up after class, but she said she had work. I then bumped into Kat, and asked her for coffee after 4. She said maybe, as I should of expected. Next I ran off to my cryptograph7 class.

Professor Charles Rackoff had already begun explaining to the class, why Max’s idea of a project on quantum cryptography did not work for the class. Basically, he did not want us dealing with physics especially when the class dealt with “classical” cryptography. Max’s second idea of hard drive cryptography sounds better. I got assigned the task of looking up on it. Cute.

Charles then quizzed us on the “obvious” and beautiful definition of pseudorandom number generators. I am starting to comprehend it, and the rest of the course seems to follow suit. Now I understand the theory, but I can not see myself thinking in pure theoretical-mathematical terms. My cavemen mind can understand art, writing and programming. My learning of mathematics is similar to my learning of dating. Me thinks me thick-skulled.

After class I met up with Kat, who passed up my offer for coffee, free lunch and a pleasant chat with old soup. Yes that is right. She preferred to go home and eat old soup instead of my company. I passed by Masha again, and foolishly proposed coffee after she finished work. She works at one of part of the university. Proposal refused politely and with tact. And not over lame, old soup.

My day ended with Rudy and company working on the average run time of algorithms. Algorithms and statistics are even lower down my mental understanding than cryptographic theory. And I just passed the algorithms course (probably out of the kindness of my prof), and never ventured back into that neck of the woods. So I tried helping Rudy’s group, even going off to figure out combinatorics. I re-learned that part, but still was mostly useless. Eventually, Rudy decided to end my suffering, and go home.

Went home, eat dinner and crashed into bed. Depressing dreams of living in a dystopian universe followed. I ventured out of bed late morning. Watched some old BBC Narnia stuff, cleaned around the house, and now in the process of resurrecting Kontact. Next I must undertake the task, of catching up two lost days and tons of homework.

I guess this puts off my writing my first epic scifi novel, and my blockbuster game. Tomorrow promises to keep me busy, until late night today. Yummy.

Easter… and Life After School

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Happy Easter! I would say more, but it seems awkward. I’m try not to flow all over the place with emotions if I can (Yeah, whatever dude one glance at your blog is like listening to a emo-kid.), and so… If you are not the religious type, I hope you enjoy your time off and that one day you find the meaning for life. If you are religious, I hope you find the way for a peace-filled, prosperous and happy life. If you are Christian (just like me bro…) well we already know about God and Jesus, and how cool He is, and is love… in that case may He bless you and keep you this coming year. After all Easter is about His undying love for humanity. (And if you feel awkward, and are looking at me awkward, then go read G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. And stop looking at me that way.)

This Easter was a time of contemplation, self-reflection (Hey, its dark and empty in here!) and a soul-washing. Needless to say, after some scowling from my folks for past wrongs, an awkward confession with a priest, and some quality sulking (And depression) I feel much more empowered and tranquil. I know exactly what I need to do and how about dealing with my issues. So I’m in a bit of zen-like state. Only its not Zen, Buddism or anything resembling an Eastern philosophy. Nope, it good ole’ bible thumping (As if he reads the Holy Scripture.) Christianity. Now if only I could stop feeding myself on cake, and bouncing of the walls long enough to actually, like concentrate on prayer and stuff…

Its been 6 days since the last day of classes, and 5 since my last assignments. I feel very, very relaxed by those thoughts. I mean I just have 3 exams to deal with and then I will be done by Computer Science major. I’m debating whether or not to do either a major in Biology or a specialist in Bioinformatics or just finish university already. I’m leaning toward bioinformatics though… cause micro/cellular is flipping cool.

I actually have done work since my last post. I’m so impressed. I am productive, things are getting done, and my boss (and good friend) Keith is no longer unimpressed. I just need to keep this up. I got a unique job at my previous employer. Its not a development position, rather an office-rat job but I can try my wings at living/working in an office. Fortunately I already am familiar with the people I will be working with/under, so I will feel like a pea-in-a-pod. Awesome. I am thinking of getting a future job as a part developer/specialist in biology. I think that a synergy of biology, informatics, cybernetics and engineering will happen real soon in the future. I want to be part of it. Either that or get a job at NASA as a mission specialist/drone consultant. 😉

OK, this being my last semester of computing, programming has reached the natural and normal peak of being enjoyable work. I’m no longer obsessed by coding, yet I am still willing to develop useful applications as a hobby. I final realized what I thought was unobtainable. I’m competent in a number of languages, both ordinary and exotic. I can develop complex applications in the fields of Web, Internet, database, graphics and entertainment programming. I can think methodically, in a mathematical manner. I’m organized enough handle various styles of development. However, I still think my talents in biology, and communication could definitely use some work. And my personal and business skills need some polishing.

Talking about personal skills, I’ve picked up some tips and hints about dating. Definitely want to try those out sometime. I may not be a Don Juan (yet), but I think I have enough charm to keep a girl distracted long enough that she might tag along with me. (My calmer and less clingy self has gotten more looks, even from Kat… which she will deny to no end.)

In other news… Rudy wrecked his old Saturn and recently bought a “newer” Saturn wagon. Now the questions are has he learned his lesson (turned over car and upset but mostly unhurt friends inside) about “racing”, will those 6 demerit points make him a cooler headed driver, and how long will his new set of wheels live? My friends are begging me to enroll in a summer course with them, cause I would be ever so cool to be with. My financial outlook is looking very good, meaning I’m seriously looking into getting a car and pay for the insurance myself. I’m going to triumphantly return back to developing one of my started open source projects. Also plans are underway to finally write one or two novels this summer. So things should get interesting very, VERY soon.

Finally a shout to shaka0070. Thanks for telling me about Content-Type.com I will definitely take a look at that site. And thanks for reading! Now I got to run, I need to prepare for tomorrows’ Operating Systems exams. [Dramatic music.]

To be continued…

A Scheme for Work, A Scheme for School

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Sigh… can’t really sleep. So I guess I might as well post a blog entry about this pas week. Funny, come to think of it the reason why I blog. Its not for money or popularity since nobody really comes to see this. In fact since comments are the only really way I can judge things, literally nobody comes. I told my friends, but they probably visited once. Shame really, I would not have to repeat myself in questions like “So how do you feel?”, “What’s up?” and others. Oh well, maybe I’m too whiny or too verbose. Anyways, I just blog to keep a memoir of my own activities, so that I don’t feel like if every week is the same, and that I didn’t do anything in life. So essential a memoirs. (I wonder if I came/come off like a emo-kid…

This week I was sick. I started feeling “sniffly” Sunday evening, and I barely made it through the 324 midterm on Monday. Most of Monday was spent on trying to focus, doing a bit of Datasphere, and mostly feeling bad. The last lecture of the day (Web Programming) simply became unbearably long. Tuesday was abysmal. I just simply slept, ate tiny meals, and force-fed myself Mom remedies. It became painfully obvious this was not going to be a 24-hr disease, like many of the ones I had in previous years. Wednesday things started to level off, and by Thursday I was “able” to do work. Mostly I was so distracted by my attempts (mostly failures actually) of working on a potential commercial project, and by playing the two N64 Zelda titles on an emulator.

So now we are up to today. Today was much more eventful. Started the morning off with a meeting with Dr. Jeff and Arun. Played a bit with MathFactor, and listened to some of the requirements. Actually with Arun all I am doing is designing a bit of things. Completely apart from Datasphere, and can’t even see what direction we are taking. Not to mention, we found out that there is a new product called Blackboard, that might a good chunk of Datasphere redundant. Honestly I feel sortta disappointed, and useless. Or maybe Arun is taking the awkward way of trying to make Datasphere to his own liking. Me, I’m adaptable and I just want to see some results.

I started work on the 309 assignment today in class. Much nicer, and I know my way around web programming in general. I just need to hack some Perl along the way. No issue there.

Later on Rudy, Albert and I went to the Gym. Originally I didn’t want, because of an assignment being due in a few hours, and not feeling especially well. They convince me to go, so I did. We ended up watching the end of the soccer game. We then played a very strenuous round of basketball with some other guys. Not fun, especially I never really had the height or talent for that game. After a short break, I joined in a volleyball game that just started up. Now that was fun. Rudy and Albert unfortunately were the anti-talents of the game. I thought that I would be bad at it. Considering how many serves I had and how many times I managed to get the ball over, I would say I did rather well. Some much fun…

I arrived home with an hour to spare for the Scheme assignment. I actually started it after the “official” due time. I only finished three questions, but this is the last Scheme assignment for this class. Actually I got tired of Scheme, especially since I am finding thinking in it very difficult. Most of the time, dealing with nothing but functions just get in my way. It just a big puzzle that I am stumbling blindly throught. A far better excuse is the mere fact that I was sick this entire week. On that note I am ending this, since I need some shut-eye. The coming week is shaping out to be a busy one, but at least I know where I’m going. Good night fellow blogsphere wanderer.

Here’s Some Snow For You to Eat, Mister Groundhog

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It decided to snow yesterday night. Which meant the first thing I did this morning was shovel the driveway and sidewalks. Apparently something got messed up, since on Groundhog’s Day the prediction was that spring was to occur the next day. The winter had been ridiculously light this year, so everyone expected a soon spring. Even mother’s snowdrops burst out of the light snow cover around the old pine tree’s stump on the front yard. They are probably still there. Under around a metre of snow. I have yet to see metre high snowdrops.

As is the custom of Saturday mornings, the rest of the day has started off slow. No real surprise there. My folks have come up (dreamed up for the sarcastic alter ego in me) with a number of tasks that I have to complete today. I reiterate; no real surprise there. However, I plan to finish my journal entry as I promised yesterday.

University is the life for me, yahoo! Right… Third year course in Computer Science are starting to become interesting fortunately. (Side note: mom bugged me about undoing the 2 metre high snowbank on top the snowdrops. I guess we will get to see the snowdrops this year. That and seeing a grown man using his hands to move a 2 metre high snowbank, 3 metres to the right of its current position.) This semester will be probably be my last in the actual CS major program. Which means I will have the opportunity of maybe TAing next year, and be in class whose girl-to-boy ratio is not worse than 1:20.

This semester I am taking Web Programming (to satisfy the hacker in me), Programming Languages (adventures in Scheme and Prolog) and Operating Systems. All of these I find interesting, and I have yet to actually fall asleep (from boredom that is) in one of the lectures. Web Programming being taught be Arnold Rosenbloom, means that are assignments will mirror the real world applications. That translates into massive code-monkey projects, which we can’t open source or subcontract to others. Lazy me. As for Operating System Fundamentals are being taught by G. Scott Graham. This results in a lot of technical details, derailing of lectures by introducing tangent topics, and assignments that may or may not be explained in the course content.

Programming Languages is being taught by an amiable younger (younger than most of the older faculty, if that means anything to you) professor by the name of Richard Kruger. This course I call my Adventures in Scheme. Now there is a language thats different. I really feel like I am learning programming all over again. Which is a nice feeling, I guess. I keep on having to ignore the itty-bitty nonsense of thinking in imperative languages, and dealing with memory issues. In fact, I found that thinking in “Scheme” alone helps alot with the assignments. Programming in this LISP derivative, sometimes feels intiutive and sometimes counter-logical. So I get this love-hate type emotion when dealing with this language. The best way of describing this emotion is with a mind-image:

Imagine being placed in an abstract world. One of those checkerboarded, cubicist, and colour-uncoordinated worlds of dreams and freaky puzzle games. Experiencing such a world in the first person, would be at time totally familiar. At others totally alien in the most mentally alarming manner. That is how I feel about this course. Since I would enjoy such a trip (prefer the land of the Sentinel over Hawaii); I find the entire course as a novel, refreshing adventure.

Now to crashland into Reality’s lap, I want to discuss my impressions on the people around me. I have been getting along much better with my family generally. My brother is becoming as a irritiating and obnoxious like I was at his age, only much less rude and in a much more lovable manner. This week being Reading Week, I decided to go out on Wednesday to meet some of the leaders of my brother’s Polish scout troop. So I went with my brother to the scout meeting, just to find out almost none of the leaders were there. For some reason, I volunteered to deal with the “Zuchy” (read as a Cubs/Brownies). Damn little brats. I had the honour of working with a girl from the older Girl Guides, Gosha as the leader of “Zuchy” decided not to show up. So I had the experience of being a teacher-substitute of Kindergarten/Grade One class. Yummy. Which basically meant extracting troublemakers out of trouble, yelling my voice off, and dealing with silly conversations with smart-ass mini-punks. One of the best conversations/rumors was that I was either the boyfriend, fiancée or husband of Gosha. Righto… like I would be married to a 15 (maybe 16) year old girl. Not that she was bad looking. But WAAAYY too young for an old fart like me. Too much of an age difference anyhow. Damn kids. In a funny way I did enjoy myself. But I made sure I never showed it.

The next day, Rudy invited me to go go-karting. So he picked me up around 9:30, and along the way there we find out that his “so-called” ex-girlfriend Shelly was not feeling too hot. So we ended up going to her house. I never really liked Shelly, but since Albert and Rudy were there I obliged. I probably shouldn’t of gone, since my opinion of Rudy and Shelly went down a few notches that night. So we talked a bit, over wine and beer (hated the wine, and I never tried Corona). After deciding to hit a bar later on, Rudy and Shelly decided to get stoned. Since I was there, and I hate the smell of weed, they decided to go outside to smoke. I am totally against getting intoxicated in any manner, I found their actions very childish. Since they didn’t want to take their precious bong outside, and Shelly couldn’t roll to save her life; they made an improvised bong out of a small plastic water bottle. Sigh… since I never liked Shelly, her smoking up just added to my abysmal impression of her. And Rudy… he is simply immature. I don’t know who was more immature Rudy or those “Zuchy” that I had put up with yesterday. I vote Rudy. That is just sad.

When they finally finished, we hit the road to get to a bar. Poor Albert had to get directions from those two crack-heads. After a near hour of rather pointless circling, we arrived at a sports bar ran by the father of one of Albert’s old acquaintances. We played a few rounds of pool, in which Shelly even in her state beat us down badly. Since it was late, I found it a little difficult to concentrate on the game. I think it was more of the late hour than the single bottle of Stella Artois beer I had there. Around half-past midnight, we left the place, and had to stop by a Tim Hortons to satisfy some folks’ munchies. Again another long sigh… I ended up getting a ride home with Albert at one in the morning. Overall it was a waste of a decent evening.

To end this entry in a positive note, I am still working in my work-study job on Datasphere. I was supposed to have a nasty meeting Wednesday morning, but that by the grace of God was cancelled. So I have recently buckled down and done some serious work in that region. I am hoping to work off an fair number of the hours I owe them in the next couple of weeks.

Well I better be off, since I have a number of tasks I want to complete today. Till this evening’s post, farewell fellow blogspherenaut.

A Near Icarus Flight

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We will be returning to normality. Once we figure out what that exactly is.

— The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Yup. Normality, that would be nice. Relaxation would also be welcome. Yes, the universe is not letting me experience either of the above. This week is the final critical week in my semester. And the amount of stress is leveling to its normal high plateau. Again, my own fault for everything that has transpired. Last week was probably the worst.

Last week was work like no tomorrow time… I had three assignments, all due on Friday. Visual Computing naturally took the longest, and I had to iron out bugs. I hoped to finish it at latest Thursday 6 PM. When everything was said and done, I had completed it on Friday @ 2 in the morning. Right after I got to work on the Requirements Engineering spec that was due in the morning. Regardless, it took me up to 5:30 in the morning. That was a record time, because everyone in my group actually worked on the assignment. With a tiny bit of sleep, Rudy and I arrived at school to hand that in. In the process we interrupted a first year CS class. I felt like such a prick, but hey, I am third year. Everytime I talk to a first year CS student, I always come off like some “Zeus” of programming. If I want to light up my listener’s eyes like First of June (Canada Day, you hopeless Americans), all I have to do is slip that I am a hacker. Which is more or less true, both by the 1980’s coder definition and the more modern non-techie defintion (Don’t worry all your base safe with me… right…).

Databases was last. After a short nap, I viciously attacked that assignment. I actually figured out how to do most things in SQL finally (me == slacker), after a semester of procrastination. I knew it, but never really sat down and actually wrote the stuff up. Theory always has been my weak side, so I never really finished that part. I had done enough. And enough damage I had done to my lack of work on Datasphere.

So here I am employed at school, in this Datasphere project. I told my project manager that I would get something done two weeks ago. I did it yesterday. Later I encurred his wraith due to my keeping a low profile. And not answering his emails. I got an earful today, about it. I will admit it was unprofessional of me. However, I didn’t want to fess up that I had not touched it. To make things more interesting, there was supposed to be a meeting this morning. And yes, I showed up. Just to save my skin, and hopefully my job. No else did, cause it was rescheduled for Friday. Bummer. Nevertheless, I saved my skin, and despite the stern warning today, I still get to keep my job.

Yay. Tomorrow I have an exam first thing in the morning. Databases. Yummy. Friday is Visual Computing. After that I can actually take a short breather… err… I mean attend Datasphere meetings. I can probably expect another scalping for my previous behaviour… On the positive side, all my hard exams will be finished, and I will go shopping for a new box. I am still debating whether or not to build the system from scratch or just go with a prebuilt package. Considering that I have to basically get one from the ground up (with the exception of the mouse)… both options are expensive. The only great thing about a self build system, is that I can mod it to my heart’s content. Hmm…

Mayan Nightmares and Lazy Dreams

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Yesterday was both a rather eventful and uneventful day simultaneously. I did not get much done, but instead I had a pleasant chat with Mike. The usual science fiction, writing, and social issues chat, which I enjoyed greatly. I think I might have come off as conservative, hardhead… and there is nothing wrong with that. We discussed everything from the state of fiction, the state of states, and just other random stuff. Anyhow, this chat was a welcome change in mood for me. Earlier that day I tried to catch the attention of Katarina, and while for a moment I thought I had gained some ground. Then it died off again… oh well. Rudy told me to let her go, but she is only person I can actually practise on. No I am not the person to just go up, and serendipitously ask ladies out. Anyways, talking with Mike cleared my head of those thoughts. I actually want to go off and write a novel now too. (Alas time where are you?)

From the university scene, the requirements engineering assignment is due this Friday. No I have not really worked at it, and I am not motivated to do extremely well on it. I will probably end up staying up tonight to do it. Databases nothing exciting happened. We finally got our assignment for visual computing. One of the parts we have to do a 30 min. short animation in Maya. Not too impressed since I have to use the Personal Learning Edition to do this. I am familiar with Blender, and would rather use it. I stayed up yesterday figuring out a way to use Blender and final work in Maya. Alas, the PE version does not have a 3DS plugin, and Blender does not yet support Alias’ FBX format. A real shame. The only positive light to all of this was, the fact that I can still make my models in Wings3D. That is good… unfortunately I still have to learn how to use Maya PLE. I have not decided upon an animation as of yet either.

Finally I actually did some Datasphere yesterday. Not a gigantic amount, but still it is progress. I will do the bulk of my task today. The rest of the time I will delegate to the 340 requirements report. I will have to continue reorganization first, before I get serious with any other work. In the gaming universe, I killed my first Yeti yesterday in Kingdom of Loathing. Then I noticed the Bounty for Yeti and Penguin fur… and I went nuts. I am proud of being able to level up, and to increase my meat amount by 100% in one day. 😉 Now I will probably continue with one quest, and level up so that Yeti hunting is a single strike issue. After that I am planning to open up a store, and upgrade the clan with the gained meat.

Other all I am feeling in good spirits, but extraordinarly tired. I assume that my writing shows this. Anyways, I have to run off to do some chores, and work on all this stuff.

Putting the Edge Back into My Sword

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He ran softly down the tunnel, morningstar sword in hand. The passageway in the caves had begun to twist in a myriad of directions. He stopped to listen for the monster’s footsteps. A few days earlier while exploring the cave system, he had stumbled across an orc patrol. He then smote the first one that got in to this path. Apparently that one was the orchish commander’s lieutentant. Oops. Now there he was the great Adventurer… hunted like a rat by an entire orcish army.

You know those days that you feel like our Adventurer? Well it seems that this month has given me nothing but those kinds of days. Yeah those days. Sort of like perpetual Mondays. 😉

Course work and midterms backed up on me so much, that I had to drop my philosophy course. Did not really like anyways… but I sure hell could you the money. Also I must admit that I have fallen behind in Datasphere work. I was hoping to catch up on that this week, unfortunately I stumbled across my own orchish army. In my case, it was the departure of my laptop’s late chipset. Yup. My chipset of all things. My fan, and HDD are intact. But the machine’s performance has ground to a near P2 halt. Oh, and did I mention that I run modern software applications??? After a number of tests, and reinstalls of my new Linux distribution to no avail. I think I have to “acquire” a new modern system. Unfortunately I have about $100 in my account. So a purchase is out of the question, even off a self-constructed rig. Without the 3D graphics card. Right now I have borrowed my Dad’s laptop. Windows 2000 sucks, and getting the whole system to my liking is a pain in the… neck!

I finally left Gentoo after 1.5 years of continuous usage. I realized that I spend more time configuring my system and hacking then doing school work, house work or even hobbies. Also I don’t have the time or the patience of building a distribution. So hence, enter Ubuntu, or more specifically Kubuntu. The system looks nice, the installation is easy (for a non-RPM system), and is hacker-friendly. I am looking forward to using it, along with setting it up. I hear there a huge variety of packages. So we shall see… I still think Gentoo Linux is the best out of all them. The most flexible, configurable and the nicest package manager. I just don’t have time to do that anymore, besides my configurations often turn out disastrous. And the package release is too fast. But the community is the best I have seen anywhere on the web. Kudos to the Gentoo developers, maintainers, and community for making those 1.5 years the most colourful, exciting and informative years in my Linux experience. However I think I will be more use to you and the OSS community as whole, as a developer. Thanks guys!

I seem to have lost my edge in programming and computer science. I remember being the second best in high school. Some of that elitism continued into university with being a Linux fan, and project manager of my own pet open source projects. Nowadays looking at my mark, and me being in the lower part of the class marks, I feel rather mediocre. In fact if it were not the valiant and determined work on my partner and friend, Daniel D’Alimonte, I would be doing worse. I know that this third year, and that I am in the top elite of CS. However when I am surrounded by such brilliant and talented individuals, a half-talent enthausist looks rather like a drone. Sure from the perspective of a high school student I may seem like a demigod. But I feel puny in my current surroundings. My midterms place me where I am supposed to be. Sorta sucks to finally meet your limit.

Now for more of my unhappiness rant. Dude, I feel so sucky. I am terrible at educational pursuits, as seen above. I don’t excel in art, or any of the other humanities. Social interactions are almost non-existent. Heck even my friend (you seems most unlikely) Rudy as a girlfriend. And supposedly a hot, cute, and almost-“perfect” one at that. I even tried asking out Kat again recently, to go out and do something. She was unfortunately busy with moving. I am not a great worker, in a rule-filled environment I seem out of place, I carry my memory in my PDA (which curiously lost its own… a lot of its own), bad organizational skills, and I can say the say thing about almost anything. I feel most uninspired, and not compelled to work at anything… since I am sooo sucky.

Sigh… I wonder why I even try sometimes. Well I got bored yesterday… and since my crap-box was hogging my wireless card, I did not get ANY school work done. Instead I managed to compose a shorty ditty in Fruity Loops… I hope to use it in my game project for Visual Computing. It will be on my school website, Gluppy Intro.

Well I have to get going. I have a lot to do… OH AND PLEASE WRITE COMMENTS. Most of the time I feel very lonely, it would be nice to know that I am not alone all of the time.

Paper Blogs in the Morning’s Gloom

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Its raining again. This is not at all unwelcome or surprising. Most people despise rainy days. I don’t. The gray cloudy skies above enhance the colors of the land below by throwing them against a canvas of clouds. Sure I get headaches sometimes with the changing pressure. Still a little bit of pain and discomfort keep you in touch with the reality of living in a shattered Post-Deluvian world. Besides I love the sight of rain. The beads of clear water clinging to the windows. The fog-like spray thrown up by passing vehicles. Just the silver curtain of rain bombarding the dry, crackled clay ground is a relaxing sight.

I had to start early today, as this time I will be commuting by bus. Not fun but necessary. I was surprised to find out that there is an express bus for Hurontario street. This discovery should cut my travel time significantly. Normally Rudy would give me a ride. Sigh… his dropping out courses has left me stranded with taking buses. The carpooling system is not being helpful either. I want a car. Naturally that is not going to happen anytime soon.

These past few days have been busy ones. Yesterday, I did a monumental backup and now I am rebuilding my Gentoo box. It works mostly except for the framebuffer display and the mouse under X. It will take time to get it in production mode. Also my Palm has been left stranded without a Windows box, and I deleted the evil Documents2Go program. Oh well.

I have a fair bit to do before I set foot in school, so I will leave of here.

Staring into the Endless Void

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The void stretched endlessly outward. Far past the insignificant planet, that he called his homeworld. Far past the distant gas giants. Far past even his own wild, mechanistic imagination. He stood there, the cold air condensing his warm breathe. Beside the glow of the fire, snuggled amongst the still river, and the dark forest, he stood. He stood there. A feeling of absolute insignificance in face of the grand scheme of things. He asked quietly, neither to himself nor to the silent, distant stars, “Are you there?”

First day of university, and already I feel about squished under the immense pressure. So much to do, so much to learn, so much to set into motion. And so many to greet again. I was in a stupid rambling mood… but still… I guess I was nervous too. Please forgive me. Anyways, this entry is going to be a longer one since it deals with the last three days… so here goes.

Saturday. I crawled into the tent when the sky became gray, and the stars had dissipated into the morning gloom. That was at 6:30. I got up around 9:30, and needed a few coffees to revive myself. After breakfast we packed up, as we had decided to head back home in the evening. Of all places, we found the outer covering of the tent, underneath the tent. We had been sleeping on it all the while. While the packing took some time, we managed to start kayaking around 2:00. This time we kayaked the lower part of the Masquash, below the Big Eddy generating station. There we encountered a long stretch of beautiful grassy banks, a half constructed bridge, and a not so amazing C1 rapid which handled like a swift. And I was hoping to have some fun on that one too. Anyways we paddled all the way down the river, and the adjacent Grey Lake all the way up to the falls.

The falls themselves were quite pretty, and dangerous but we didn’t go anywhere near them on kayak. We portaged ourselves (not our craft) to a lookout at the base of these falls. Quite a view. But the best was still to come. On our return trip, along the stretch of grass bank, we met up with a beaver chewing on fresh greens on the bank. Naturally my brother had to scare him, as my little brother is usually up to doing silly things. The beaver jumped into the water, but later emerged and swam along with us! Then we noticed another, and yet another swimming a bit further up. The creatures swam with us mostly, but occasionally waded unto the bank and after spying us jumping back into the water. I must say, that I felt privileged to kayak alongside such beautiful creatures. Of course, the beavers were sly enough not reveal their lodgings. But still… wow!

Due to the beaver incident, we got back to our car by dusk. We barely secured our kayaks to the rooftop rack before it got dark. After a short meal, we started on our long trip home.

Sunday. Fortunately not such a fast day, as I had expected. Still a worthwhile mention. I started off with mass as I have with every Sunday. This time the mass was held on the field nearby the construction site of the new church. Not a very interesting mass at that, since the pastor ranted the entire time about the “miracles” of preparations for building the new church. I will not state my opinion about the pastor, but it unfortunately leans to the negative side. Even more unfortunate, that most of the more “involved” parishioners have stronger, negative opinions. Sigh… Anyhow, leaving matters of religion and politics aside, my brother Martin’s dance performance happened later on in the day. Martin is in a Polish traditional dance group, and today he performed a number of dances. I am impressed with his progress, since he is one of the best dancers in the entire group. Go bro go!

The day ended in a disastrous walk to Heart Lake which ended up in me having some 12 crazy mosquitoes landing on my legs simultaneously. The walk cut short because of that, my parents decided to go to Professor’s Lake instead. I greatly enjoyed the latter park. When we got back home, I got started on preparing for school: getting rides, and fixing my wireless card. I gave up on the wireless card around 1:00 AM. I really don’t think its fixable.

Monday. First day of school, and I am ready for action. My lecture of the day was PHL245: Modern Symbolic Language. It seems incredibly easy thanks to all the previous intensive logic training I received. Rudy also found it simple too, and so instead of listening to the professor, Rudy attempted hacking my wireless card. Naturally after about half an hour, he gave up on the venture. When I talked to the head of computer services, Joe Lim about the problem with the card, he also remarked there was no way I could fix the problem… maybe the manufacturer could… or maybe not. After class Rudy and I drove to Chapters in hopes of purchasing of the textbook for our Information Systems Analysis course. We did buy them but only after searching for the store, then the book, and then paying for the books was fun too. The store price was too high, and they chewed up my gift card in the process. Fortunately they lowered the price and reset my gift card (hehehe funny little story about that too but I am not going to tell). On the way back to school, I grabbed a fairly inexpensive Netgear PCMCIA wireless card. It cost me less than the old one, and the new one can do the faster 802.11g protocol while being able to switch back to the older 802.11b one. Nice.

I arrived just in time for my next lecture: CSC320 Visual Computing. Yay! My graphics course. Well yay sort of… I mean the material is interesting, the professor is pretty cool as he seems to be one of those hacker-types, and a number of my school friends are in the class. The only problem is that the assignments are huge and technically difficult. Yes, I know its a third year level course… but still. The professor, Arnold Rosenbloom actually went through two lectures today. A song and dance about visual computing, the quality of the assignments, and a bit about image processing. Then on to the matting problem… which bewildered most of the class. When he asked for a show of hands who knew what was going on, about a third of the class raised there hands. Most of them were lying, including me. No, seriously I did understand it, but I had a bit of difficulty visualizing the solution, and its been ages since I touched linear algebra. Anyhow, no slouching in this class. No sir.

That was my last class, and it was time to go home. On the way out, I saw a posting for a student position in working on programming in the Psychology department. Very interesting, and I met the guy hiring. Apparently there is one more position, and I should bring in my resumée. I will try it out. I should be up for the job. I took the bus home since I have not gotten a concrete answer for a ride. Sigh… the rest of the day was spent resting, and preparing for tomorrow’s kayak trip. Looks like another busy, and interesting school year.