Good news everyone!

I made Laurier's SBE Dean's Honour Roll for 2005-2006!

Huzzah's are in order! Huzzah for me!

I didn't make the UW faculty of math honour roll though. Nevertheless since I go to two schools I can still list myself as a "Dean's honour roll student 2005-2006."

It makes sense that I made Laurier's and not UW's though because Laurier has a grade point system instead of a percent system. A fail is worth 0 and an A+ is worth 12, with the appropriate values in between. This type of system is more punishing of outliers (Like a 55 or something) than a percent system is, and my lowest mark last year was 75. If you don't understand what I just said, then take that average of 95 and 55, and then take the average of 12 and 2 (the corresponding grade points). The first averages to 75, while the second averages to a 7, which translates to 70%.

In other good news I got the job that I wanted in my interviews! It's a ten minute walk from where I live, so I'll still be able to do all my extracurricular stuff in the winter term. I'm excited!

The only thing I don't know is what it pays, because very few jobs tell you that in the interview and apparently its a faux pas to ask. Given the range of pay available through co-op I really think they should tell you, after all you've got to decide between a number of jobs and pay is a big factor. Either way I should be able to save quite a bit of money this winter since my expenses will be about $1500 to $2000 less than what they were in Toronto.

Weekends Past

Okay, so I've been meaning to post about some stuff for a little while, but the fact that such stuff was happening at that time meant I was rather busy. I shall commence.

The weekend before last was the karate tournament. At 4:30 on Friday I gathered my necccessary supplies and headed to the CIF parking lot. There were 8 of us going in 2 rented vans, so there was plenty of room and we divided up and headed off.

The first half of the trip was fairly uneventful, watched some Jackass 2 and was thoroughly disgusted with the antics of what I must grudgingly refer to as fellow human beings. We stopped at Mandarin's, an expensive yet delicious chinese buffet style restaurant. Having anticipated our stop at a buffet I hadn't eaten lunch and was appropriately hungry for the situation. However my ample portions and frequent trips back to the buffet earned me a reputation as a big eater. That will be relevant later.

For the second half of the trip I switched over to Sensei (Will) and Sempei's (Devin) van which was a bit more lively for conversation. We stopped over at Tim Hortens and were overtaken by the other van (Andrew's) before getting on the highway. Some time later we passed Andrew's van, which was sitting by the side of the road, with a police car. Ouch.

Fast forward for a bit. We got to Sudbury at midnight. We stayed up until about 3:00. Woke up at 6:30, at the tournament by 8:00. The tournament itself probably won't interest you, and it was fairly underpopulated at my belt level and age. I was garunteed to place at all 3 of my events, 'nuff said. It was good watchin' at the other events though.

So after the tournament we went to East Side's for dinner. I'm an idiot and forgot about my gift certificate when I paid. Anyway, as we were sitting down Will said he'd never seen eat like me, and jokingly raised the question of "who's going to eat the most tonight?" Sempei Andrew immediately made his claim at the title, and our eyes locked in cheesy western showdown fashion. When our food came we split every garlic bread in half and each took one and we split each salad similarly. That bastard put so much cheese in our salad! I didn't want to say anything though, because then he'd know it was a good tactic. It was getting pretty bad for me by the end, but the bills were coming so we called a tie.

The competition was enthusiastically cheered on by our fellow club members, except for Nancy who was sitting at the head of the table between us and seemed thoroughly disgusted by the both of us. Quotes such as "it's like a train wreck" were common, but neither of us gave up. When Andrew went to go pay by debit I admitted to my significant discomfort and got a laugh with the comment "I could have done garlic bread all night but that salad was friggin' rediculous!"

Sigh, alright, fast forward the rest of the night because I have to do a few things before going to class today.

Went to LCBO. They picked up a shitload of booze, me and Andrew didn't drink. They drank in the room until 11:00, then we went to a bar. Played a lot of fooseball, which was fun, then left when it closed at 1:00. Went to a club downtown. A brawl started in front of the club as we went in, but the bouncers handler it pretty good. The club was basically a meat market, but I sat in the back with Phillip while the rest of them danced. I don't really dance, and Phil was tired but I figured I shouldn't leave him alone in such a sketchy place. When the club closed they went back to the room and finished their booze.

I was fine in the morning, one of the few that could make that claim.

More stuff later but I've got stuff to do now.

Pending

I have a few interesting things to post about, but I lack the time right now. An interesting cause and effect relationship to be sure.

Also, I felt bad for Dreas last night. He seemed nervous about going so far away from everything he knows for something that is completely new and unpredictable. I hope he's okay.

Plus, did Jordan and Blake ever come back last night? I didn't see them along the most direct route to Scotiabank when my dad picked me up, and I ended up waiting about 10 minutes because he did something else first. If someone else picked up their tab I offer my services in helping you collect, mob style.

Interesting List

I sometimes just read wikipedia when I'm bored, and I can across this list that I thought was interesting.

Signs of approaching death

1. reduced verbalization (speaking less) and reduced responsiveness
2. increased lethargy and sleep
3. confused when awake
4. decreased intake of food and liquids with difficulty swallowing
5. periods of paused breathing which may alternate with rapid breathing
6. noisy breathing ("death rattle") from accumulating throat secretions
7. hands, arms, feet and legs become colder
8. darkening and/or blotches may appear at the extremities
9. loss of bowel and/or bladder control
10. blood pressure begins to fall

Anyway, comment right when you read this! Just say a crazy word if you want, I'm trying to measure my blog traffic. If you're a super secrective spy reading this then I feel free to badmouth you at my own discretion.

It was an early morning yesterday, I was up before the dawn

So after a tic tac toe of midterms (Th, Fr, Sa) I had a pretty laid back weekend.

After my 8:30am BUS 288 midterm on Saturday I came back to my room and decided I'd earned a chance to visit an old friend. I played Civ III from 10:45 to about 4:30. I have rarely played anything for 6 hours straight, but we were getting along so well! I could seriously write about 2000 words on the experience without breaking a sweat, but I'll exercise some self control and simply say that I'm nearing the Modern age and victory is looking quite attainable, though far from guaranteed playing in Demi-god mode. This would be my first victory at that level.

I went up and went to dinner with Amy in V1. We borrowed "Scarface" from some guy in her house and watched that, because it's a classic I'd never seen before. We also ended up watching some Comedy Central videos online because I love watching those and my internet is too slow to stream it correctly here. She went and did something with some friends at 11:30 ish and I said I should go home and get some sleep since I'd slept less than 6 hours per night for the last 3 nights.

However, once I was outside again I felt much more awake, so I called Jordan. We ended up LANning it up at his place, though it took us an hour and a half before we both had the same version of either Starcraft or Warcraft III. I chalk it up to the fact that we were mostly talking and not paying attention to what we were doing. We ended up playing Starcraft from about 2:00 to 5:15, since after we had played 3 games it was already past 4:00 and we figured if we stayed up another hour we could get breakfast because its Ramadan.

So I didn't end up getting that sleep I planned on, but I did take a "nap" from about 6:30 to 11:00, so that's not bad.

I'd write more, but I have another midterm tomorrow, then I'm home free for 3 weeks. Well, I have assignments, but those are routine.

I'm also proud to announce that I too can pwn with the Terran, thanks to me playing with them a lot against Stu back when I sucked with them to create a handicap.

Also I would like readers of Jordan's blog to note that Stu has never beaten me in a game that lasts more than 30 minutes, because the only way he wins in when he zergling/lurker rushes me. I'm a slow starter with the terrans!

Funny names

Binks posted this thing on his blog for seeing how many people in the US have the same name as you. You can access from his blog here:

http://redcardgroup.com/binks/

and I decided to do some "research" regarding how many people have unfortunate yet hilarious names. Here are the results:

There are 34 people in the U.S. named Harry Dick.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Ima Dick.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Dick Ryder.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Dick Rider.

There are 9 people in the U.S. named Harry Butt.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Seymour Butts. (be careful with your prank calls!)

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Seymour Dick.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Long Dick. (That's right ladies)

There is 1 person in the U.S. named Harry Moron.

I tried quite a few, but those are the ones that had hits. See if you can find any more!

Early to rise, late to bed

Well it's been a long day, but eventful enough for a brief bit of blogging to keep the updates flowing.

7:30 - I woke up and turned off the alarm. I don't have anything today until 3:30, but damnit I'm not sleeping in!

8:15 - I'm up , fed, showered and dressed and I grab my napsack to head to Sobeys to pick up some food for the week. I saw Liam riding the yellow bastard crossing Colombia at UW research and technology park but he was too far away to see me and was probably in a hurry anyway.

9:00 - I just finished picking up my groceries was leaving Sobeys when I got the idea to get Amy some flowers while I was there. I already picked her up some milk since it was closed when we went on Monday, so I was going to swing by her place anyway. I got some flowers and a glass vase to put them in, and then broke the vase 2 feet from the counter while walking away...
The bag that was holding it had broken, so the girl at the counter gave me another one free. Hurray for good customer service!

10:30 - Arrived back at my room fully intending to get some good studying in for that "Quiz" today. I skimmed through notes for an hour, ate lunch, did some basic practice problems but by 2:00 I was feeling so lethargic from the stress of this coming week that I didn't end up doing much useful stuff between then and 3:00.

3:30 - Wrote the "quiz" (worth 10% of my mark). It was two questions split into 4 parts, and I didn't have a clue how to do it when I first looked at it. I think I worked things out pretty well though, I always seem to preform better under the right kind of pressure. I find I can usually obtain a solution by posterior extraction when the chips are down.

I should mention here that my less than full night's sleep resulted in me being a fairly flatulant fellow all damn day long. That always happens to me when I sleep poorly!

4:30- had a DD meeting about program requirements. Nothing I didn't know before was said but there was pizza, and I ate 6 slices. I wasn't that hungry, but I'm really cheap so it balanced out.

6:30- I came back to my room and did some of my required reading. Once I was done that I watched "The Big Fat Kill" from Jordan's Sin City recut version of the movie.

9:00 - went to Karate. There's a tournament on the weekend of Oct 21/22 ish, don't rob my place while I'm gone. Should be good fun, I hope Sempei Andrew comes even with his injury. You guys won't know who that is, but since this is brief and I'm tired I'll probably elaborate in a later post.

I also saw Brenda from S2 on two separate occasions today. She seems pretty busy. Still dating that Mike fellow too.

11:30 to present - I finished my LinAlg assignment and handed it in, then took Sin City back to Jordan. Hopefully there's no late charges on my account, since I was hoping to borrow Resevoir Dogs in the future.

Okay, that's it, it's 2:00am and I'm tired.

I also need to change the time setting for this blog since it seems to be 3 hours behind me.

BANG! KAPOW! BLAMMO!

There are your promised explosions.

Entertainment Value

Hello readers!

This comic basically says what I'm going to say in a nutshell, and I wanted to post it at the end but it wouldn't move there effortlessly so here it stays. Click on it to see it properly.

Since most of you have blogs, please try not to be offended by this post, which is something of a reflection on the nature of blogs in general, and in which I will simply use people as an example. It's not so bad, just a disclaimer, after all I realize that this is just my 5th post.

What makes a blog a good read? What makes it exciting, and gets the readership posting? Well I'd say when you're dealing with a readership that knows the reader the best way to get people reading and posting is with conflict and drama, people don't care so much about timid opinions or organized and responsible daily schedules.

Here come some examples...

When I first found Jordan's blog he was currently posting about courtship difficulties with some misterious women and later on relationship difficulties with Sam. Everybody had something to say on the subject, the posts in the comments section would be numberous and lengthy. The other key factor was that this was somewhat dangerous information, it wasn't something he could say to just anybody.

Contrast that with the video game reviews and previews he was writing at the same time. These posts may have had strong opinions, but he could express them to the general public without too much fear. There was no personal drama, so it was boring and the posts were shorter and less numerous.

Binks's blog seems to suffer from the same symptoms. I know he's a private guy, but because his posts never deal with personal drama his readership never comments much. While other things like how frequently one posts would of course affect readership interest and the number of "post more loser" comments you get, I'm also kind of basing this off my own entertainment value.

So what's my point? Well if any of you bloggers want to increase your readership just increase the drama in your blog! But that's probably not a good idea from a safety standpoint, but it would increase reader interest. I notice that I myself don't post anything much about Amy, so I'm certainly not pointing the finger of blame at my fellow bloggers. I doubt you'd appreciate a mushy post when things are going well and I don't think writing an angry post if we were arguing would make things any better.

Anyway, that's just something I found interesting.

Next time there will be more explosions.

Mini update for a chuckle

I just finished my assignment at 11:45 and decided to poke around Wikipedia for a few minutes before I headed out to hand it in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Russia_spying_dispute

I came across this article. Just scan the top to get the gist of what's going on or you might not the punch line. Did you scan it? Got a rough idea of the problem?

Now scroll down to "internet reaction."

It made me laugh.

If you don't get it you don't have to admit it, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt.

Also I never knew that the discovery of extra-solar planets was so recent. I'd read about them before but never took note of the date of discovery. Or perhaps I did and forgot about it, either way it's pretty cool stuff.

Okay, that's it.