Ottawa was fun, except that I was sick the day I left, bad headache and unpleasant stomach issues and stuff. Very not nice. I managed to make it to the train and get on without dying, but I think it was close. I should have taken a taxi to the station. Trains are fun though, never been on one before and it was very amusing.

I met Adrienne in Toronto since I had an hour and a half stop over there and we had some lunch at Harvey's, mmmm...meat. She gave me candy and a toy truck that when you pull it back it goes forward. It's really cool. :) Union station was pretty impressive, I wonder what the outside of it looks like?

In Ottawa I didn't have any trouble getting a taxi and I got to my hotel and got checked in without any problems. Then I went and had supper with Laura and Curtis and Aunt Joanne at a restaurant called the Black Tomato. I had Caribbean Jerk Chicken which was really good. It was great that they all came to see me, it was kinda lonely in my hotel room. The room was nice though, like a double but with only one bed, so lots of space. After supper I watched TV and went to bed early because I was still feeling pretty ill.

I checked out in the morning and went to the conference and stuff. It was pretty good, I knew most of the content already, but they still did a really good job of presenting it. I left early to get to the train station on time, I wasn't sure how easy it was to get a taxi in Ottawa. It turns out that it was really easy. I walked out of the building and got right into a taxi, no problem except that I was pretty early getting to the train station. The train home was uneventful and late. I was still feeling sick on Thursday so I stayed home and slept, that was fun.

The weekend was alright, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean with Matt and Kim on Friday night but that's about all we did because I was still feeling pretty crappy. My brother was really sick too (much worse than me), he had a fever of around 104 and he looked really bad. So I pretty much stayed away from him for the weekend. I don't want more illness. I hope Kim doesn't get sick at all. On Saturday night I went with Kim's family to Stratford for supper, and that was pretty good. I also got to meet Kim's new cousin this weekend, she was very cute. When I got back to Waterloo on Sunday I spent the whole night working on my last 370 assignment, stupid course. I made a "rocket" chase a "target" using the ordinary differential equation solvers of Matlab. Here's a picture (meaning not gauranteed):

Matlab 3D plot of a pursuer (O) and a target (X) with a helix-shaped path

Just a quick correction to the previous post...Jen's new toy is a "massager," not a vibrator. :)

Fun weekend, I got to see the extended version of the Two Towers which was pretty good. Most of the added scenes were useful to have in the movie, but not for anyone who doesn't care. Which is a lot of people unfortunately.

I go to Ottawa on Tuesday! It's going to be my first time on a train and I get to stay at the Lord Elgin hotel. I don't know if that is good or not but I guess I will find out. On Wednesday I'm going to a conference on "Common Look and Feel and Accessibility Guidelines for Government Websites," no comment.

When I got back to Waterloo today, Jen's mom was just leaving and I got to see the new toy that she bought for Jen. It's a dual function (vibrate/pulsate) vibrator with three speeds and three region settings. It is leather and uses rechargeable batteries. I tried it out but it was a little two weird for me, so I will leave it with Jen to enjoy.

Just a quick update, I'm currently making my room stop leaking water.

On Monday Jeff, Kenny and Brad came to Waterloo and we (Jen and I and them) went to Morty's for wings with Chris and Rob, then we went to Rob's house and played Chez Geek 3 while watching Family Guy and Futurama. At Morty's I had a suicide wing for some reason and it just about killed me. Very hot. But tasty nonetheless. :)

I think my Linux system is useable finally. If you like you can see a screenshot of my desktop. I'm running Fluxbox as my window manager and the 2.6test9 kernel.

Back to stopping the water. I don't think I can win. I will post a picture whenever Jen gets her roll of film developed.

Not too much exciting happened this weekend, but I did spend a lot of quality time with Kim which was excellent.

Days since Jen last updated her website: 31.

Double plus good weekend, very tired today though.

Matt and Keizo came to our place and them and us and Wilson, Angela, Chris, Sean and Greg went to see Matrix Revolutions Saturday afternoon. It was an alright movie, lots of cool action and special effects, but the explanations and plot left something to be desired. Saturday night the four people staying in our apartment as well as Angela and Ian went to the Bomber and that was fun, but I think it is the reason that I will not be able to do anything productive today. Still sleepy.

I switched the positions of my dresser and desk in my room on Saturday as well and for some reason, doing so caused my root filesystem to become corrupted. This is not one of the identifying features of a healthy Linux system and so I took the oppourtunity to completely wipe my OS drive and do fresh installs of Windows and Linux. Neither are very complete yet, no apps installed in Windows and I am trying to install the 2.6.0test9 kernel in Linux without any success. Bah.

Today at work we got to finally move to the new building, and it is pretty nice. The offices are not very well set up for computers and stuff but I think it will work out. Finally a nice chair and proper computer desk. I now have the ultimate workstation if you combine that with my fast computer and 17" LCD monitor.

Good luck to Adrienne and her tattoo-to-be today!

I'm sad. As I mentioned earlier, the third largest solar flare ever recorded occured on my birthday. That was pretty cool, but it turns out that it was just the start of the most active period of solar activity ever recorded which was topped off today by the largest solar flare ever seen, one much bigger than the one that occured on the 28th. At least this one wasn't pointed directly at the earth. Stupid Sun, now if I ever mention the solar flare on my birthday (which is now the 4th largest ever recorded) people (who care) will say, "oh, but a bigger one happened a week later!"

I just finished watching the the 3rd Indiana Jones movie: "The Last Crusade." I'm so happy with the DVD set. Hopefully the original Star Wars movies come out on DVD soon. I don't think I care about the new ones though.

On my birthday, the third largest solar flare ever recorded occured and today the the 2 tons of "coronal mass ejection" will hit the earth. Fun! Apparently the effects will include satellite and cellular disruption and aurora borealis type events in the Southern hemisphere.

View from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope which shows light from a specific type of iron ion formed at 1.5 million degrees Kelvin. Taken at 11:12 UTC. Given the size of the sun, that white spot is pretty big. Image courtesy of the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory

On a possibly related note, my CS370 exam sucked ass.