NO MAIL
UPDATE: My mail is working again.
The damn hard drive on my mail server is full again. That means I haven’t been able to receive mail from about 8pm on from last night.
If ya gotta send me stuff, send it here. That is all.
Month: July 2003
I GUESS IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS ARE BETTER
I was in dire need of a laugh tonight. I managed to dig out this piece of comedy I found a few weeks ago.
At most universities, when students graduate, they have a commencement address given by (hopefully) a distinguished guest. The more prestigious the institution, the better the speaker. Some US schools get former Presidents, famous authors, or news people. At a few universities, they have what’s called Class Day, it’s usually a day before graduation. The day is much more light-hearted than the formal proceedings of commencement.
This year, Harvard got former SNL funnyman Will Ferrell to give the Class Day speech. In my opinion, the speech he gave was a knee-slapper. There’s an on-line video of his speech. It’s in Real Video format and you have to move the time marker to about 1:30:00. If you don’t, you’ll be watching an hour and a half before he comes on. Try watching right to the end when he receives his gifts from some students. Hi-lar-ity!
Click here for said video.
By the way, I had no Class Day when I graduated.
ON RESERVES
I feel like crap right now. I am soooooooo tired! I had a horrendous time getting to sleep last night. My room was extremely hot and muggy. Despite avoiding caffeine all night, it did not help. I tossed and turn in discomfort. It didn’t help that I was bothered by some weirdness developing in my left ear canal. Either it’s an infection, mosquito bite, or live flies are gonna start emerging from there. Anyways, that meant I couldn’t lie on my left side, which I tend to favour.
For minutes at a time, I’d lie with my eyes open, watching the lights from passing cars along SW Marine dance along my far wall. I eventually got a little bit angry with the fact it was taking so damn long to fall asleep. I was fearing that I’d be really tired in the morning. I was going to work out my aggression by going on a starlight run, but thought better of it. If you got the Star Wars reference in the last three sentences, give yourself ten points.
Anyways, I must fallen asleep around 4am from pure exhaustion. I got up at 8am and made my way to work, skipping breakfast entirely. Oh well, there goes my streak.
I felt great all morning, even better than usual. I had a meeting at Brock Hall and the brisk walk did me some good. When I got back though, that’s when the damn wheels fell off. I feel like putting my head onto my keyboard, closing my eyes, and just letting sweet sleep wash over me. Of course I can’t and of all days, I have a playoff softball game to play right after work.
Stimulants. I think I’ll be hitting the caffeine hard today.
THESE AREN’T THE DROIDS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
It’s around 11:30pm and Adrian, Pat, and I are leaving Calhoun’s for Safeway. We’re on MacDonald when Adrian notices a police cruiser behind us.
We continue along and turn onto 4th Ave. Not long after, the cruiser flashes his lights. We think he’s just trying to get past us. Adrian pulls over to side, except that the cruiser doesn’t keep going. The police car pulls in behind us and stops. A spotlight then shines onto us.
“Aw man! What the hell did I do? I didn’t do anything wrong!” protests Adrian.
“Nothing man, you didn’t do anything.”
“This is going on my blog.”
After what seems like an eternity but in reality was about 30 seconds, a policeman finally saunters up to Adrian’s window.
“Good evening officer.”
“Hello gentleman, where are you guys going?” the officer inquired. He looks at all of us and around the car.
“We’re just going back to UBC.”
“Ok, um, I was thinking you guys were someone else, sorry for the mistake, you guys can go now”
The officer walks back to his car. We look at each other and I’m thinking this is pretty damn anti-climatic.
“That guy saw three short nerds and he knew instantly he had the wrong car!” explained Pat.
We drive off and I realize I haven’t been pulled over by the cops in years, probably like 20 or so. What a weird traffic stop.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
I was just digging through some files on my computer when I came upon this photo of my sister and myself. It was taken at my father’s staff Christmas party where children were given awesome presents. I think I’m about four or five and my sister can’t be any more than two (if that). Ah memories.
BIRTHDAY PICTURES
We had a huge (by our standards) birthday party here at St. John’s in early July. I finally put up the pictures. Take a look here.
ERWIN TANG!
I was walking downtown today. As I passed the Virgin Megastore, I heard a voice shout out.
“Erwin Tang!”
I looked to my right and saw where the voice came from. It was a former junior high classmate of mine, Rob. He was walking to a Capoeira demonstration. I had last talked to Rob about three years ago. He was heavily involved in Capoeira then and I saw he still was.
We exchanged pleasantries. He then mentioned that he saw my web site. I asked him how he had found it. Rob told me he Google’d his own name and found some Capoeira-related stuff. Then he tried some other names and mine was one of them.
I thanked him for visiting and that he should leave me a message some time. At that point his group had to move on and we said our goodbyes.
What a random encounter. I know from web tracking tools that some people have put my name in Google, but I never knew who was doing that. Now, I know who at least one of them were.
AND BACK INTO THE POOL YOU GO
Probably none of you realized it, but on Friday, my ownership of the domain erwin.ca expired. I had it for one year and when I registered it, I did so on an impulse. I really had no plan for it and anyone that went there was just re-directed to this site.
I believe over the course of 12 months, perhaps 10 people came looking. I guess it didn’t help I didn’t submit the address to any search engines. I was also able to receive mail at erwin@erwin.ca. Strangely, I never gave out that address to anyone and continued to use my old one. Several months down the road, I began receiving spam on erwin@erwin.ca. Those were the only pieces of mail I got on that address.
The domain will be held in limbo for about 30 days, after which it will be available to any Canadian resident again. Good luck future owners of erwin.ca!
CLEAN
After promising myself two weeks I’d clean up the area around my desk and computer, I finally got around to it today. I started by clearing off my desk of everything, papers, pens, my monitor, speakers, and my desk lamp. I then took apart my computer. Well, actually, I just unplugged all the cables from the back, which were a lot in total.
With my desk cleared, I proceeded to clean the cables of all my peripherals and the peripherals themselves. As I wiped them down, I was amazed at how much dirt and grime had accumulated on just the cables themselves. The paper towel was almost black. I’ve been living here less than a year and it looked like these things were relics of the last century.
After that, I took my Swiffer and Swiffered my desk. It was a real time saver. Not only is my desk clean now, it smells lemony fresh.
Pat then helped me move my desk so I could vacuum under where my desk and computer had been. There was a hell of a lot of dust there. Like a layer of grey snow. With my desk out of the way, I also was able to finally wage war on the group of spiders that had taken position above my window. Using a powerful vacuum without the end attachment, I was able to suck up six(!) spiders and their webs.
I was planning on re-positioning my desk, but I got tired and now it’s just sitting in the middle of my room. I had to check my mail, so I re-assembled my computer, so I’ve got everything set up in the middle. It’s not efficient use of the space, and some might even call it a gong show.
WANG FLIES UPDATE
Several days ago, I linked to a story about one Chandan Goswami of Bengal, India, who is suffering from a rare condition in which live flies are emerging from his body, near his crotch.
I was unable to provide any further details on his condition until today. After some intrepid ‘Net detective work by Mike Kelly, Garrett Knights sent me several lengthy updates on Goswami’s situation. Click here for the latest.