Such a crazy day! First was class, then my 2.5 hour Sybase interview and then my Psychology midterm. But wait! That's not all! Between class and my interview I heard back from Apple! They want me to come to California for more interviews! So awesome! And, I finally got chat in Gmail! And I got dairy queen tonight! And Kellie's car got here! Way too much is happening! Hence the exclamation marks!
Crazy times lately, not much time to post.
Last weekend was fun, I mostly worked but on Friday I got to help push Keizo's car around the parking lot and help create a trap for a mouse we found in our downstairs bathroom. Both activities were successful, the car ended up in our parking spot and the mouse was put outside (alive).
Compilers is a bunch of work of course, but I haven't been able to pay enough attention to it because of job stuff and midterms in other courses. At the beginning of the term I applied for jobs at Sybase, Google, Apple and a couple other places. I got interviews for the three listed above: Sybase by phone last week, Google in person this week and Apple in person this Friday. I spent a lot of time preparing for the Google interview and it was still really challenging. Sounds like a great place to work though. The Sybase interview went well too and as a result I have an additional interview with them next week. Hopefully Apple goes well.
This term is disappearing really quickly, it's pretty nuts. I'm really glad that I'm taking an extra term for Real Time because if nothing else it will give me a few extra months to prepare for the "real world." Or something. I'm sure I won't be any more prepared by then but it's comforting for now.
I need to figure out what to do for housing next term. It looks like Kellie is moving out, so I need an extra person if I am going to live here with Mike and Matt. Anyone interested? If not, I will have to find a new place. Residence is pretty tempting since it's cheaper in the summer, it's close, it's air conditioned, and best of all it doesn't require any extra effort for things like utilities.
Update: This post seemed kinda boring without a picture so I took a couple with my camera using a fun new feature I found for using the auto-focus in a manual sort of way.
I suppose I should put in my two cents about the election, isn't that what blogs are really for? Valid social commentary from the point of view of real people? Haha, yeah, right. :)
Anyway, the Conservatives won a slim majority and I think it will probably be OK and even beneficial in some respects. They don't have enough hold on parliament to try anything too risky. Also, they get a chance to show Canada if they are a bunch of crazies or if they deserve to carry on the "conservative" name. My main issue with politics in Canada right now is the lack of a valid right-wing party. Social conservatism has no place in Canada, however fiscal conservatism is a very valid political ideology that can help balance the governing of the nation. Unfortunately social and fiscal conservatism have been merged just like in the United States.
On the positive side of things, the Conservative party has very tight ties to Alberta and so hopefully relationships between the west and the rest of the country will improve. I think that the west was really starting to get pissed off at the way they are treated. They generally feel that the rest of Canada benefits off the vast amounts of money generated by their oil while at the same time giving them essentially no say in the running of the country.
Also of note, the NDP made significant gains. This is nice because it means that we are not a two party system like in the United States. There is a third option that actually can have an influence. The success of the NDP was somewhat muted however by the disproportionately small number of seats they won compared to their share of the popular vote. A parallel of this issue can be seen with the Green party, which achieved the highest number of votes they ever have, but still failed to win any seats in the house. As someone who has never taken a political science course I don't know how to fix this problem, but I'm sure there must be a solution that merges the ideals of regional representation with the nationwide popular vote.
Finally, I think it is a good thing that the Liberals are not in power because a change is good every once in a while. Also, it is time for a new leader so that the party can become disconnected from the negative events of the past few years. While those events did not bother me personally, I think that I'm in the minority with regard to this opinion.
I do have concerns regarding the upcoming government. These include health care (the possible two-tierization thereof) and the various human rights issues that go along with the social conservatism of the hardline elements in the Conservative party. Although Stephen Harper has said that he will not pursue abortion or same-sex marriage related causes, I wonder whether the latent Reform/Alliance members of the party will really just let him go ahead with those plans. Finally, I am also saddened by the loss of a national childcare plan. While it very possibly would have failed, a success like the program instituted in Quebec could have really helped shape the next generation of Canadians in a very positive way. Remember everyone, children are important! Stephen Harper's tax credit is essentially useless. The free market philosophy is not perfect and this is one of those instances (like health care) where government intervention is required.
In other completely unrelated news, I finally tried a White Russian which was the drink of choice of the Dude from one of my favourite movies, The Big Lebowski. I must say, I'm a fan of the drink. Very tasty.
Just a quick update on this cold and freezing rainy night. Last weekend was pretty good, I went skating with Kim on Friday night which was really fun. On Saturday I managed to get a haircut, buy new jeans, finish most of my C&O assignment and complete a few other mundane but useful tasks that I can't remember anymore. Sunday saw the successful return of myself to Waterloo and me finally learning what terms like "1st and 10" mean in American football.
This week I am applying to jobs, making test cases for the compiler and hopefully participating in strange psychological experiments for the purposes of extra credit in my Psych 101 class. Good times!
Oooh, I remembered a picture that was worth posting. On the last day of work all the co-op students got to get their picture taken with the Oscar that Alias was awarded in 2002 for technical achievement for the development of Maya. It was VERY cool to get to hold it. A definite shout out goes to John Gross and John King for making it happen. Here is my picture:
So, it's been a long time since my last post and as a result I've forgotten most of what has happened. The quick rundown of what's happened is: more rock climbing with Alias folk, the Alias Christmas party (awesome!), Kim visited for a while in my last week of work, four holiday dinners (goose, turkey, ham, salmon), got to see Mike (and start him out on Perl) and KJ, hung out a bunch with Kim, saw a bunch of movies (including King Kong and Harry Potter), lots of fun Christmas presents (5 seasons of Simpsons!!!), moved from Toronto to Waterloo and probably a ton more stuff that I'm forgetting. I should post some pictures from the break, but I don't feel like formatting them and stuff so it probably won't happen. Oh well.
This term is gonna be nuts, I've already put in maybe 15 hours on Compilers (the result being a mostly functional scanner for Ada, the language we have to compile). Also I have other courses (I think, haven't really looked at them yet). Plus, I have to get a job so that I can um...you know, become a real person or something.
The apartment in Waterloo is good as always, of course. I got my roommates to watch Grey's Anatomy, which means that we've been into the 4 or 5 episode marathon sessions already.
Last night Matt and I watched The Big Lebowski for no particular reason. Such a good movie. Interestingly enough I think Mike watched it yesterday too. Probably because it rocks.
Here are some pictures from the climbing gym we went to on Sunday.
So instead of just saying I should fix my site, I went and did it right after writing the last post. You can see that my site now displays the last five posts at any time. Also, the bottom link on the default page will show you all the posts for the current month, which conveniently activates the code to cycle backwards by month.
Long time since the last update, I really gotta change my backend code to show a set number of previous posts rather than the posts for the current month. Then I won't feel bad about long spans of time with no updates.
Last weekend Kim came up to visit and we had a pretty damn good time. Her bus was late on Friday (something about a gigantic multi-car accident on the 401) so we didn't do anything then other than get supper at McDonald's. On Saturday we went to the ROM and looked at a bunch of stuff. Kim really likes it there, and I had a good time too. The museum combined with Kristjan's website made me really want to go to Europe (ie. Rome) or anywhere that isn't North America. Hopefully once I finish school and get settled I'll have a chance to do a bunch of travelling.
After the ROM we got some Pizza Hut (sooo good, it's been too long) and then headed up to the airport (via TTC) to meet my friend KJ, who was coming in from a year long stint teaching in Asia (specifically China and Taiwan). While waiting we shared a $7 fruit smoothy that was really good (even though quite expensive). KJ was really surprised to see us and even though we only got to chat for 20 minutes I'm so glad we took the time to get up there. I really don't see her enough and it made me realize that I miss her quite a bit. I'll be seeing her again at least once before she heads back to the other side of the world.
On Sunday my mom (who was also in Toronto) came over and took Kim and I out to IKEA for $1 breakfasts. It was pretty good food for the price and afterwards we wandered the store for at least 2 hours. I was pretty tired afterward so I went home and relaxed for the rest of the weekend.
So, onto this weekend that is just finishing up. Mike came to Toronto to visit this weekend, and spent some time hanging out at Alias on Friday. I didn't get much work done as a result, but I did get to play some Xbox 360 for an hour, so I think it all balances out somehow. Friday was also the end of term lunch for the co-op students which means that I now have another Alias t-shirt. Sweet!!! Gotta love the swag!
After work on Friday Mike took me to the house of his friend Ya'el for a Shabbat dinner. It as pretty cool, lots of good food, about a dozen friendly people and multiple bottles of nice wine. I really enjoyed it.
On Saturday Mike and I headed off to Yorkdale mall for some Chirstmas/Chanukah shopping and just general mall stuff. I'd never been to Yorkdale before so it was pretty cool. In addition to several Christmas gifts I also picked up a new plain white button-up shirt for $19 (regular $70) at Club Monaco. Good times.
After the mall we went downtown and met up with Alex for supper at Spring Rolls. It wouldn't be a visit with Mike in Toronto without a stop at Spring Rolls. Fortunately their food is pretty good, so it's always a fun time. Later on we went and saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I thought it was really well done compared to the book and the graphics were more or less up to current standards. I have some minor internal conflicts with the whole Chronicles of Narnia stuff due to the intense Christian parables in the story (ie. the Lion, Aslan, is Jesus -- no, really, C.S. Lewis was intensely religous and did this on purpose). I don't have much use for organised religion and even less for Christianity. But despite all that I very much enjoyed the story in the movie. I think C.S. Lewis (and the creators of the movie) accomplished something very significant in their presentation of the whole Christian theme in a delightful and compelling way. This is not to say that I've hopped on the conversion train (next stop, self-righteousness and condescending attitudes), but it makes me wonder what the world would be like if the religious nuts throughout history were more open to creative manipulation and interpretation of the various sacred texts (despite the heavy Christian themes, there was much in the movie that could be seen as heretical). Hell, I wonder what the world would be like if the religious nuts were just more open in general. I also wonder if I would be more open to religion if religion was more open to anything else. Basically the movie just put me in a very thoughtful mood.
Please note that my use of the term "religious nut" in the preceding paragraph, is by no means a judgement on everyone who is spiritual...only those who proceed in religion with a closed mind. If I believe anything it is that we are meant to question everything and pursue truth in all aspects of life.
On a lighter note, today we went rock climbing! I love it! Mike and Alex and I met John and then got a ride up to a place in Newmarket. It was much better than the place in Scarborough that we went to a couple weeks ago, but not quite as good as the place we normally go to. It did have a really unique set of climbs though. They hand molded a huge wall of concrete to create a really realistic "chimney" section. A "chimney" is a section of wall that is closed in pretty tight on at least three sides. This one was cool because the molding made it like actual rock. They had some extra holds on the that part of the wall too, but it was also possible to do it without using the holds and just using the "natural" features of the wall. I managed to get to the top using only features and it was really amazing/fun. Totally unlike any climb I've done before. I would definitely be willing to go back there, just for the chimney section. I'll post some pictures later when I get them from Mike.
This has been a really text-heavy post, so I figured I'd end with a couple of fun photos. The first is an action shot of some pool balls being broke apart on the pool table at work. The other is just a macro shot of some of the random crap on my desk, featuring a Dreidel and a CD with some cool reflections. Enjoy.
