Category: my ramblings

Ugh. Okay. So I almost lost my sanity a few times last week. But things are pretty much back to order now. The Arts Pub on Wednesday was not a total failure. In fact, in many ways it was a success: people came!
Bands didn’t start over an hour later than we had scheduled! The sound guy randomly disappeared to “get more mic stands” but eventually came back with even more sound guys! Who eventually got all of the monitors working, and didn’t want to murder the bands! And the bands didn’t want to kill me for having no sound checks! Yay! And I didn’t have a nervous breakdown, although I was pushing it for a little while there. Dear Jordan: when you say you are in one place, and I say “I’m coming to get you, don’t move” then DON’T MOVE. Really. Losing friends is stressful.

OTOH, Erin Smith Band played at our event. Somehow I’ve been turned into a total fanboy in a matter of weeks. They’re awesome. Erin didn’t care that things ended up going late, and they were really cool when they went on and played a great set.
And although there weren’t so many people watching by that time, the people who were were all dancing. That was awesome. It made the night for me (and I think for the band too) that the people who had stayed were hardcore and really enjoying their music. I so wanted to go to their show at C’est What in Toronto last night but it didn’t happen.

The other stressful thing going on the last week was Newtontalk related. And the topic was simple: T-Shirts. You’d thin that the lowly t-shirt would be a simple discussion for people; oh no. Lots of people wear t-shirts. There are many many different kinds of t-shirts out there. Therefore, everyone wants a different thing printed on their t-shirt. Also, there are more people out there with t-shirt shops than you think. And they want a piece of the action. This all turns into a Bad Thing for yours truly, List Dad extraordinaire. 1300 people are hard to control in a discussion, let me tell you. So. Eventually things got sorted out, I’ve gotta order a bunch of t-shirts sometime soon. Sigh. Took too long to come to that conclusion, let me tell you.

So Festival of the Arts is over, I kept my sanity through two assignments and a 2500 word paper (oh yeah, gotta print that now), so things are at a decent level of goodness. Maybe I’ll write here more often. That would be nice. I’ve been trying to carry my camera around to take more photos, but it just hasn’t been happening and also campus has been pretty ugly lately. But I’ve got a few ideas for pics, so hopefully they’ll make it up. Just FYI, I’m stealing this idea from Grant, ’cause he’s such a cool guy.

Here’s the Cannon photo:

That’s the name of the country band Dave and I are going to start, we just decided.

Today is going to be a damn long day. After 5.5 hours of sleep. we got up at 6am to go out and paint the cannon. For those of you who don’t go to Guelph, this needs an explanation, so here it is: “The Cannon” is an old cannon which dates back to apparently the War of 1812. It was left behind and has always been around campus since then. It’s been moved to various places (a few times to the top of the engineering building…) and fired a few times, but now it’s filled with cement and sits in Branion Plaza, the main crossroads of pedestrian traffic on campus. For as long as anyone can remember, it’s been painted with messages for all to see, sort of like a sounding board. Sometimes residences do it for fun, sometimes groups do it to promote events. In any case, it’s sometimes painted multiple times a night, and sometimes guarded by painters who don’t want their hard work to go to waste. The only rule is that the cannon must be painted at night.

I’ll have a photo of our handiwork up here later (didn’t bring the damn CompactFlash adapter to school).

next year, paperless office, man. I hate all paper-printing machines.

Everyone should go out NOW and get a copy of any album by The Avalanches, probably Australia’s best musical export. (No, I’m not a Kylie Minogue fan, unlike George Stroumboulopoulous on MuchMusic). They’re amazing.

Geez, a week since I’ve written anything. Last week was assignments and mid-terms all over the place; this week is, happily, not. This weekend was spent relaxing in front of the computer, collecting various pieces of data. Once this CD is done burning, I think I’m gonna crack my case open (again!) and see if there’s room for this 64MB stick o’ RAM sitting here on my desk.

Generous hardware donations are awesome. Thanks to everyone who’s thrown me:

• three sticks of 64MB SDRAM DIMMs (two PC133, one PC66)
• a Yamaha CRW6416S 16x6x4 SCSI burner
• an Apple Extended Keyboard, mouse, and AAUI->RJ45 adaptor for my soon-to-be-alive PowerMac 6100/66

And just in cas you think I’m a greedy bastard, I’ve already given away one stick of that RAM to a poor K6-2/500 machine in need.

Other that that, there’s only:

• my CIS443 assignment (Info Systems)
• my PHIL211 assignment (Logic)
• my CIS443 midterm (Info Systems)
• my MATH215 assignment (Matrix Algebra)

to finish this week. That’s all! Good thing I rested up in Florida.
Which was great, thank you for asking. Although I don’t think I could have stayed more than four days at Disney World. It was interesting, and a lot of fun. My favourite ride was the bed. It was comfortable. In case you’re not getting it, I slept a lot 🙂 But seriously, Disney World was a lot of fun. I just let Sandy drag me around, and so I think I saw all the best parts and skipped all the crap. Which was good. Yes. Good.
Look, I’ve had 12 hours of sleep for the last week, and last night I got 7. I’m adjusting, alright? Excuse my incoherence.

I like Java. I hate C. I’m of the opinion that fugly system I/O calls and such garbage should only be written once, not over and over again my sleepy programmers and students. I want my Java back.

… more details to follow.

…it’s because I’m damn tired. While the plumber’s banging away, I might as well take this time to update this oft-neglected space.

But first, a quote from our current fav band:

If I seem strange to you today
Different than I ever have
And if I come to you in waves
Waves that break and fall before you reach them
Perhaps I’ve found a way
A way to get is out of this
Or maybe it’s my fault again

Not meant to mean anything, I’ve just been listening to it a lot.
Anyways. The past week. Yeah. There’s a lot of schoolwork going on, which I suppose is a good thing. And it’s all getting done, that’s a good thing too. So it all got done. Which was good.

On Friday we had a big early birthday party for Sandy’s 23rd. Lots of people came, and there was excessive amounts of having fun everywhere. It was great, and she had a great time. I will have to put up my photos sometime soon. I’m lazy.