Category: Uncategorized

AH THAT GOOD OLD FEELING

In my 310 class, George gave us our midterms back. George is the only prof I know who insists his undergrads call him by his first name. It’s one of the things I like about him.

Anyways, we’re sitting at the back of the class and he puts all the midterms up front. It’s like a feeding frenzy. I was hesistant to go get mine because I didn’t have a good feeling. I remember being quite stunned when the midterm was over.

One of the piles of midterms had thinned out with people. Curtis came back with his exam. He said that pile was S-Z. That was me. As I walked down the steps of the lecture hall, I remember thinking, I’ve done this walk many times. I’ve picked up countless midterms, always with apprehension. Some turned out to be good, some not so good. What would this be?

As I got to the pile, I didn’t see mine right away. Then, I saw my mine sitting there. Wow, it’s a marked midterm with my name on it. It’s been years since I’ve seen one of those.

I look at the mark… 39… out of 50. Hmmm… it could have been worse. As I walk back to my seat, I’m relieved that I passed, but then I realized I missed an “A” by one mark. Now I’m slightly miffed. I look through the exam and they’ve marked really leniently. Lucky for me. I see also that I missed one of the true/false questions. I had a 50-50 chance on that one and I got it wrong. There, there was the one mark I needed to get an “A”. Damn.

I don’t know if I’m just being greedy. I would have been happy to just pass coming out of the exam, but now I’m thinking I should have an “A”!!! What a strange turn of events.

HARVEST DINNER

We had a formal dinner on Oct. 24, 2002. I took some pictures and finally got them scanned in tonight. I just slapped it all together. It’s pretty crappy, but I have to go do work.

Take a look here.

WHO ARE YOU?

I love getting visitors to my site from all different places around the world. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been getting visits from Yugoslavia… wink, wink.

Do I know you? Would I know who you are? I hear the mechanical engineers in Yugoslavia are very talented… wink, wink.

SWISS CHALET

When I was planning my return to school there were a few things I promised myself I’d do when I got back. One of them was to visit the Swiss Chalet on Broadway on a regular basis. If you know me well, you know I love eating at Swiss Chalet.

I thought I’d break that promise in the first few weeks of school. For one, it didn’t seem I was going to make that many new friends and I didn’t want to go alone. As the weeks passed, I somehow managed to make some friends here at SJC. Great, I thought, I can bring these people to Swiss Chalet!

One day, I turned to Nicholas Clarke and Marcia George, and asked them about Swiss Chalet. Marcia, who grew up in Canada, seemed lukewarm. Nicholas, who’s from New Zealand, had never been. However, Nic and Marcia, are engaged, and if Marcia didn’t want to go, it was likely Nic couldn’t go either. Bummer.

Then I asked Kristina Deczky about Swiss Chalet. She’s from Ontario, and there’s a good chance she’s had it before. “Ewwww…”, was her response. Great.

One early Friday evening, I had nothing planned for dinner. Nothing. No one to have dinner with. “That’s it!”, I thought. I marched over to Nic and Marcia’s and gave them a proposal. I told them I was going to Swiss Chalet for dinner, they could come with me, and the meal would be on me.

Apparently, this was the right approach. We wound up at Swiss Chalet. I had the double-leg dinner and Marcia had the ribs. Nic doesn’t eat chicken with bones in it, so he had a messy chicken sandwich. The weird thing was we had another friend join us, so I didn’t have to pay for everyone. That was nice of Nic and Marcia to let me off the hook.

Afterwards, the assessment wasn’t that great. Marcia and Nic didn’t seem too keen on going back again, even though Marcia loved the ribs. Poopy.

The next week, I tried another approach. Instead of trying people who know of Swiss Chalet, I’d ask people who didn’t know what it was. I tried asking Lindsay Allen about going with me. Lindsay is from Kentucky, and there’s no way she knows of the Chalet. I told her it was a great chicken and ribs place. My sell worked, because she agreed. Yay!

Along the way, we also recruited Arash Farzaneh, who vaguely remembered having the Chalet a few years ago, but was willing to try it again. We got to the Chalet, and I ordered a quarter-chicken dinner, Lindsay got the same, and Arash had a chicken sandwich.

The critical moment came when I asked Lindsay to try the (in)famous dipping sauce. It’s been my experience that people either love or hate the sauce immediately. There’s no middle ground, nor do people migrate from one position to the either. I’ve never seen such a polarizing effect from a single item of food. For the record, I love the sauce. Anyways, I watched nervously, as Lindsay tried the sauce. Her assessment… thumbs down.

Arash didn’t like it either. Would this be another failed attempt to convert more people over to Swiss Chalet? On a good note, Lindsay gave Swiss Chalet an overall positive assessment. She said that it reminded her of good old, country style cooking from the South. We then had a discussion about the merits of white gravy, country-fried steak, and biscuits.

That dinner was about three weeks ago, and I’ve been wondering when we would go back. Just yesterday, Lindsay asked me when we were going back to Swiss Chalet! Yes! I might have a Swiss Chalet buddy!

I’m hoping we can go soon since everyone is going to get really busy and it’d be nice to have that sweet, over-roasted, savoury chicken again.

Swiss Chalet!!!

I CLEANED MY ROOM

I had more visitors in my room today that I’ve had in a long time. My room was a mess. Three girls came in to use my microwave. I was not pleased about the state of my room. After they left, I vacuumed, cleaned the sink a bit, and moved some stuff around.

It’s a bit better, but there’s still some work to be done. I think inherently, I like a bit of clutter in my life. That is all.

THE HEAT IS ON

As the days and nights get colder, I’ve discovered a problem here in my room. As you might expect, this place isn’t centrally heated. Each room has one of those baseboard heater thingys. It’s located underneath the window. Unfortunately, my desk is also located near the window. When I turn on the heat, it travels up underneath the bottom of my desk, along the bottom, and then up into my face.

As you can imagine, having a face full of hot air isn’t making studying very comfortable. I have a problem with dry skin too, so my legs get as dry your mouth gets when you eat like 10 crackers in a row with no water.

However, it gets cold when you turn off the heat (boy, I can see the Nobel committee getting my award ready with revelations like these). I figure I have to move my desk away from the window a few more inches, so the heat travels through the gap between the desk and the wall. Which essentially makes my room smaller if you think about it.

I’m probably going to start adding moisture to the air in my room soon as well. I learned a neat trick from Cory, one of my old roomates from Fairview. He told me to keep a kettle boiling continually in a closed room, adding water every few minutes. I tried it and it worked like a charm! My room was like a tropical rainforest after a while and it was so good for my skin.

Well, I have to get some more work done. I’ve accomplished nothing tonight thus far, except for finishing a really bad essay and baking a batch of cookies. See ya.

A KILLER MONTH

I must say time has just flown by here in the last two months. I think it’s done that because I like where I live, the people I live with, and what I’m studying.

As I look ahead to the month of November, I’m marvelling at how quickly things have gone. Essentially one more month and the term will be over. I have only one final and its on the first day of the exam period.

November, however, will not be a cakewalk. I have two heavy duty projects due at the end of the month (right when I should be studying for my final). I also have that stupid presentation that I should have completed by now. My friends, the last two weeks of November should be a lot of fun.

Now this is gonna sound stupid, but I’ll also have some distractions from the entertainment world too. Attack of the Clones comes out on DVD on November 12, the new Bond flick comes out at the end of November, and Medal of Honor : Spearhead gets released on November 18. The smart thing to do is to wait until the month of December, when I have nothing to do, and then partake in some fun. But the smart thing isn’t always the most fun thing isn’t it?

LONG FUCKING DAY

Yeah, I know I swore, but it was a long day. It started at 8am and that’s early for me. It is when you don’t fall asleep until 3am. Anyways, I got up and went to my 9am meeting with my research group, the fine boys and girls of the Industrial Automation Laboratory.

At 10:30am I went back home and briefly thought about napping, but didn’t feel tired enough. I did some random surfing until about 11:20am and headed off to my one class of the day. Today we had a workshop on shooting video. The guy that runs the Imager lab at Com Sci showed us how to use all the video equipment. The class I’m taking is requiring us to videotape users for our projects. As I sat there listening to this guy describe all the digital video equipment, I thought, “I wonder how all of this could be used to film porn?”

Anyways, after the class I met with my group members to about our project. Turns out were really far behind, and we basically left it at that. Ha ha ha…

I again come back to SJC and I make lunch. After that’s done, I head downtown. Usually, I have one more class on Tuesday, but the prof is chairing this IEEE conference on intelligent control. He cancelled the class today, but said we should all come down to take in some presentations. He didn’t explicitly say we had to come, but I kinda felt like he was going frown upon us if we didn’t. I played it safe and decided I should go. However, I was going to be damn sure he saw me there. That’s what they call face-time baby!

So, I left campus around 1:30pm. I totally fell asleep on the bus. I was doing that head snapping thing. Anyways, the hotel the conference was at was way the hell down the West End, near Denman and Davie. Before I walked down there, I stopped off at Banana Republic to exchange a shirt. When I finally got there, the conference was almost over for the day. They had one final set of presentations. I saw a few of the guys from my class there.

One of the presentation tracks left was on mobile robots. That sounded interesting enough, so I headed off to the right conference room. I sat down and there were many seats left. Then, to my surprise, my prof poked his head in and we made eye contact. Yes! Face-time acheived!

A few minutes later, I had a brush with greatness. Dr. Lotfi Zadeh sat down in my row, just across the aisle from me. Who the hell is Lotfi Zadeh you must be saying. Dr. Zadeh is regarded as the father of fuzzy logic. He is the man who imbued a new form of intelligence into machines and devices. The way rice cookers, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, bread makers, braking systems, etc. all work has been influenced by Dr. Zadeh. If your bread is fresh, your rice is just right, and your floors are clean, it might just be because of his work.

Sure, it’s not like meeting Steven Spielberg, but for control geeks, it’s pretty cool. So, the presentations start and I listen for about 10 minutes. I look over to Dr. Zadeh. He has fallen asleep. Even the man who has left an indellible mark in the world of intelligent control is not exempt from a dark room, some toasty temperatures, and some boring Powerpoint slides.

Dr. Zadeh woke up and left about five minutes later. I only stayed for one additional presentation and then left. It took me an hour to get home and it was about 5:30pm by then. At 6:15pm I had dinner and then left to meet with another group for an assignment. I spent about an hour at Gage Towers. I will say one thing, the chicks at Gage are hot… lol.

I got home around 8:30pm and did some other crap, and next thing I know, it’s 11pm. And, I have more work to do. Long day indeed.

THE BEST FILMS ON THE INTERNET

BMW is back with a new season of their wonderfully entertaining set of BMWfilms. If you didn’t catch the first season, do so now.

These short films, produced expressly for the Internet, feature big name stars, high profile directors, and lavish production values. Previous participants include John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, and of all people, Madonna. The newest film was directed by John Woo.

All the films star Clive Owen who is superb in the role of The Driver. Yes, it is a big commercial for BMW cars, but honestly, these are really excellent films.

If you have the time, space, and bandwidth, make sure you choose the downloadable formats for the movies. Streaming is convenient, but the bigger file allows you to view the movie in full screen (but still in widescreen, ha!).

ROCK ON!

It’s been a painful day. I have to write this essay. Before I started writing I had to read these five papers on this subject I’ve never heard of. Some of those papers were difficult to read. They used really academic, leather-patches-on-a-tweed-jacket type of words. Anyways, I’m supposed to summarize and synthesize the contents of the paper in my essay. The length is supposed to four pages, single-spaced, and 12 point font. I’m going to go over that right now. I just summarized the first paper and it’s almost one page. I usually like writing, but this is causing me pain. My gut feeling is my essay is going to suck because I won’t be able to tie all the papers together. Poopy. Oh well.

I thought I’d take a break from my crappy writing and post something. I haven’t shared my MP3s in a while. Here’s what I’ve been listening to lately. The first two are certainly timely, but the third one is a blast from the past. I vaguely remember my Mom telling me I used to listen to this one Bay City Rollers record over and over again when I was a kid. That’s strange because I don’t really remember listening to all that much music when I was a kid. I guess I was really young then. Anyways, if I liked them then, I think still like them now. Have you really listened to some of their stuff? It’s really good! Have a listen for yourself!

Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr. – 4.0 Mb

Thriller – Michael Jackson (pre-freakshow days) – 5.7 Mb

I Only Want To Be With You – Bay City Rollers – 3.5 Mb