DAVE SHU’S STAG #2

I just got back from Dave Shu’s stag number 2. I know it’s a bit early, but my ride had to go home early. The rest of the group are probably still having fun as I type this. I wanted to record this before I forgot all the events of the day.

About ten of us arrived at Granville Island to wait for Dave. Abby, Dave’s fiancee, was going to get Dave down to the Island, and we were going to surprise him. The plan was to rent two speedboats and then go to Indian Arm and have a BBQ.

It turned out Dave was about 45 min. late. When he saw all of us, he had the most confused look on his face. Ten minutes later, we were all on the boats, heading out into open water. Of the two boats, I got to ride in the good one. It went faster and used less gas. Several of us, including myself, got to wear nautical themed hats. I’m sure there is photographical evidence of this somewhere.

It was a beautiful day to be on the water. It was so fun to catch the waves and zip along the water. We wound up at a small island in Indian Arm. We took out the BBQ and had a tasty lunch.

After lunch we got back on the boats and zipped around some more. Coincidentally, we stopped over at Deep Cove, and managed to see Janice, Jason Grant’s wife, as she finished her boating lesson.

Coming back, we hit some huge waves, sending our boats high in the air. Dave lost two beers he was holding in his hands into ocean from all the movement.

After returning the boats at Granville Island, we went to Bridges for dinner. After dinner was finished, we made Dave get into a white slip, essentially a negligee. As he walked back to our table from the washroom, we hootered and hollered, and everyone in the restaurant was looking at him. We all had felt markers to let people write messages on Dave’s slip. We also decided to refer to Dave as “The Captain” from now on.

We tried to get into Sandbar because it’s a great cougar bar (this was for Curt Wong‘s benefit). Unfortunately, the woman at the door was a poo-poo head. She gave this excuse that the lounge was full already for the evening. This was at 9pm. Yeah right. I think she saw Dave’s negligee and decided we were going to be too fun for the bar.

Next, we tried to go to the Cecil. It was an interesting walk from the water to the bar. Anyways, the Cecil was packed with Indy race fans. So it was no go there.

Someone suggested we go to the Penthouse next, but I had my reservations. Everything I heard about that place was not good. When we got there, though, I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, it had been newly renovated, and it was actually decent. After a couple stage shows, everyone chipped in to get Dave a private show. Curt was very active in recruiting this one particular dancer who had impressive attributes. Dave went away for his little show and returned several minutes later. Remember, all he had on underneath his slip was his ginch. The potential for a visible tent was extremely high. As he sat back down, Dave said, “The Captain salutes you!“. Ha ha ha. The dancer then came over and signed Dave’s slip.

We left after that and wandered along Granville for a while. It was then my ride had to leave, so we left Dave in his slip, and the rest of the group wandering the streets of downtown.

It was long, but I had a great day. It was tons ‘o fun. Here are a few highlights:

Highlight #1

After Dave put on the negligee and returned to the table, this little kid at the table next to us was enthralled. He got out his digital camera and took a few pictures.

Highlight #2

After the little kid was done taking pictures, this American tourist came up to Dave and slipped an American dollar bill down the front of his negligee. It was then Dr. Shu realized he might make some money tonight.

Highlight #3

Dave frequently takes the water ferry across False Creek. We needed to take it to get downtown. Beforehand, Dave mentioned he was almost sure someone from the ferry service that he sees regularly would see him in his get-up. Sure enough, a cute ferry operator pulled up and she recognized him.

Highlight #4

At the Penthouse, a massage girl came up to Curtis and asked, “Do you want me to give you a massage?”. Curt replied, “No, but can I give you one?”. Curt, you’re one funny sumbitch. 🙂

Highlight #5

As Dave’s private dancer was trying to sign Dave’s slip with a felt marker, he said, “I guess it’s not hard enough for you”. Ha ha ha. I bet she doesn’t hear that often.

Highlight #6

As we meandered along Granville, we got to the Roxy line-up. We got to a group of three girls celebrating their birthday. They too had t-shirts that people were writing their comments on. Curt saw this and was all over it. He basically grabbed each girl’s boob and made Dave sign it. Curt was using Dave essentially to cop a free feel. This man has no shame!

NO-NAME POPCORN

Tonight I was at a RC Superstore and I bought a 290g bag of lightly buttered “flavour” popcorn. The bag is huge. It’s not as good as $6 movie popcorn, but it’s serving my purpose. I have bits of popcorn all stuck in my teeth now. I have a sneaky suspicion popcorn can keep me regular.

THE UNBELIEVABLE STORY OF THE DAY

So today, I’m at Lougheed Mall Walmart checking out their DVD section (please, no comments, there are no A&B Sound stores near my house). As I’m perusing, I overhear one dude talking to his buddy in the next section over, the video games. They were moving around slightly and a few displays were obscuring my hearing. Thus, I was not able to hear all aspects of what that one guy was saying. Nonetheless, I will attempt to transcribe his words here.

“Hey, I have this buddy, he’s twenty-five… (unintelligible) …his father… (unintelligble) EA Sports….”

“… architect… (unintelligible) …job… (unintelligible) …his entire job is to play games and tell the programmer about glitches and stuff… (unintelligible)”

“…he makes $113 000 a year just playing games all day… his first job at 25, and he makes $113 000 a year!”

My first instinct was to approach this individual and get the name of the person he was talking to. I thought better of it, since I was still stunned by the contents of his words. I have several comments to make about what I heard. First, I can only assume when he said EA Sports, he means EA Canada in Burnaby. Most of the public can’t distinguish between a line of titles and actual studios. Second, I am highly skeptical of the salary he mentioned for what I can only assume is a testing position with QA at EA Canada. Having worked in the QA department at EA Canada for almost two years, I am almost certain no one is making $113 000 a year being just a tester. It’s just not possible. Perhaps he might have been talking about a project manager, but even for a PM, $113 000 is an extremely high salary. And no PM is only 25 years old at EA Canada. The QA manager probably makes the most money within the QA department, but that position is currently held by a woman who also isn’t 25 years old.

Let’s just play devil’s advocate for a second. What if there is a tester that is making $113 000 a year? Who would it be? From what I overheard, it appears that someone’s father helped this guy get his job. This is not unheard of, but from the instances that I saw while I was a tester, no one got special salaries or anything. I am slightly out of the loop with respect to EA Canada QA now, but those who are still there might be able to get to the bottom of this.

Logically, I’m inclined to believe that this guy at Walmart doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or that his friend lied to him. This is the simplest explanation. However, history has shown some unbelievable decisions have been made at EA Canada. Could this be another instance of that? Only time will tell. I hope I will have more to write about this in the next few days.

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

As part of my plan to spend money I don’t have I bought the movie Amelie on DVD a few days ago. I was able to watch the movie tonight. My first thought was, “How is it that the same man who directed Amelie, also brought us Alien Resurrection?” Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet crafted a wonderfully made film in Amelie. A well written and superbly acted piece of cinema, it’s a movie that develops a quirky personality to it, much like the title character herself. I thought Audrey Tautou was amazing playing Amelie, an introverted but imaginative young woman. The movie details her attempt to bring happiness to others while facing her own pursuit of love. And don’t get me started about Amelie’s haircut. I loved that little bob cut she had. Cute as a button she was!

Another thing Jeunet managed to pull off was to showcase Paris as city that I would actually want to return to. In all the movies I’ve seen before that had scenes in Paris, none of them really made me want to go there again. Jeunet’s Paris in Amelie had a small town feel to it. There was almost a warmth or comfort to it, which is surprising since we’re talking about French people here. Heh heh.

Overall, Amelie was an inspiring movie with a fascinating main character. With so many mainstream choices on the rental shelf today, it makes Amelie a clear winner.

AN IMPULSE BUY

So last night, I’m tired but I’m also wide awake since I drank a whole can of Vanilla Coke, leaving me in this odd mental state. I know I should be asleep, but I don’t feel like it.

Anyways, I’m meandering around the Internet, and somehow, I wind up at one of these domain registration web pages. On a whim, I try and see if a few domain names are available. Most of the ones I tried were already taken, but then I notice erwin.ca is free. Hmmm…. I wonder… The registration is quite cheap, about the cost of a DVD, but the other services are quite costly. You can register for just a couple bucks, but it just sits there. To do some with your domain, you have buy the other services which is when the costs really start mounting.

I almost gave up, but I started looking at other domain registration sites. I found one that offered free domain redirection and e-mail forwarding. That’s a savings of about $50 USD compared to other sites. So, at around 3am in the morning I registered for erwin.ca

I can tell you, registration is a lot faster these days. Only two years ago, it took me days to get the keys to erwintang.com. A mere hours after I registered for erwin.ca everything was up and running.

Go ahead, try visiting www.erwin.ca. You can also try e-mailing me at erwin@erwin.ca.

I really didn’t need this domain, but it’s kinda cool to have a Canadian presence now!

Ok, I promise no more impulse buys for the rest of the summer.

KIDS ASK THE DARNDEST THINGS

Taken from FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS BY KIDS TO THE UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE

11. Can you send me a sample bullet?

No, we are sorry that we cannot send you a sample bullet. The Secret Service feels very strongly about gun safety, and that includes being accountable for all of our ammunition. In addition, we encourage kids who might come across a gun to follow these rules:

1. Stop and do not touch the gun

2. Leave the area

3. Tell an adult what you have found

A POST-IT NOTE ™ MORE THAN A POST REALLY

Hey there, I just need to post this somewhere on the Internet just in case I need access to a course list and I’m without my notes. Disregard, this isn’t really interesting, then again, not many of my posts are.

TERM 1

MECH 523 Intelligent Control T Th 15:30

CPSC 352 Introduction To Software Engineering MWF 15:00

MECH 520 Control Sensors and Actuators T Th 10:00

CPSC 544 Human Computer Interaction T 11:30 F 10:30

TERM 2

MECH 563 Robotics T Th 8:30 (damn that’s early)

EECE 596 Human Interface Technologies

CPSC 522 Artificial Intelligence M W 11:30

CPSC 319 Software Engineering Project T 12:30

CPSC 544 Topics in Human Computer Interaction T Th 11:00

I’M FREAKING OUT!!!

Yes, it’s not pretty but I am. At this moment I’m composing e-mails to several professors where I’m trying to convince them to let me in their courses. The courses aren’t full, it’s just that I don’t have the exact prerequisites or I need they explicit permission before I can register. These are important courses, no one is making me take these courses, I truly want to take them. I won’t be happy with a list of courses that will sorta make me happy, it’s all or nothing.

In the many months of planning to return to school, this is the most important moment to date. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!