Next term will be my last term. I was debating what to take, and not to take, for some time now. I've decided I may as well take all the things I had planned to take way back when, be they hard or not.

So what am I taking? Compilers (CS444). That will be hard. Very hard I think. It is one of the holy trinity of hard computer science courses here at waterloo. (The other two are graphics and real-time operating systems.) They make you write a compiler from scratch in this course.

The other course Marxist Theory (PSCI 321). I took the follow up course, Marxism after Marx when I was in 2A. The professor who taught me Marxism after Marx teaches Marxist Theory. He also taught me Political Science 101. He's a nice guy, and a really good Prof. I'm pretty sure he kept on giving me A's in the Marxism after Marx course because I was in Computer Science and he felt sorry for me. I'm not 100% sure mind you. I don't think I write essays that deserve A's personally.

The other two courses I'm taking are Statistics (STAT 231) and Network Flow Theory (CO 351). STAT 231 will suck, because statistics sucks. Network Flow will probably be as boring as Linear Optimization is this term. Though, I'm hoping since it involves some graph theory and algorithms it will be a bit more interesting.

Four classes. I get Wednesdays and Friday's off. I think it's not the worse schedule i've picked for myself. We'll see.

And I will start posting stuff people will actually want to read soon.

PowerBook and iBook: Resetting Power Management Unit (PMU). This is how you reset the power management unit in a iBook. I'm sure most of you don't care. I just wanted to make a note of this incase I need to do it later.

We Must Abuse the Broadband. My online gallery is back up. I'm hosting it on the same server this site is on for the time being. I hope to find a place which has plenty of web space for free in the near future. Till then, enjoy the photos.

The weekend begins today. I don't plan on doing much at all this weekend mind you besides getting some work done. I've been up here for a few weeks now and haven't had to do any serious work just yet. A few CO 350 assignments so far, but that hardly counts as work.

I've been running around trying to figure out what to do after I graduate. Been talking to professors to figure out what I should study. Or at least say I will study. Forms for NSERC and OGS are due quite soon. I don't think I can get either scholarship, but I feel I may as well try. It would be nice to get something to say the least. My current plan is to "study cryptographic algorithms and their security".

The first KONJA (Japanese Club) meeting for the term was yesterday. The turn out was quite large to say the least. I think next week, when we go to McGuiness, should be an entertaining. Apparently 40 odd people plan on attending the dinner. I think McGuiness must love, and hate, us.

I have 3 assignments that I am stressed about, CO 442, CO 485 and CS 462. They are all due next week. Let's see what happens shall we.

Just saw Underworld. Damn that is a good movie. Go and watch it if you haven't already. It is very excellent. I'm not one to say anything more about a movie lest I give away some of the plot. Just go watch it.

Moonlight in the sky
On the Forest Trail the Scent of the Leopard
My Heart is like Deer
In the Silence of this night, which way am I going?
The silvery shadow of leaves on my body
No more deer anywhere
As far as I go I see the moon bent like a sickle
Cutting the last golden deer-grain
Then sinking slowly
Into the darkness of all the sleep
In the eyes of a 100 does

- Akashe Jyotsna by Jibonananda Dass. (I heard the poem translated as above in Hey! Ram.)

Shima told me I should look out of my window. She said the sky was pink. She was right. I snapped this picture shortly after her message. I can't even imagine what would cause the sky to look like that. It was quite pretty though. This was yesterday night, thursday night. Other highlights of the night included a nice time at Fed. We didn't have to line up to get in. We saw so many people we know. We saw lots of pretty people we didn't. I'm not using the royal we here. When I use we I mean Gary, Victor, Pheobe and myself. The Royal We didn't come out that night. What a shame.

E.W. Dijkstra Archive Very cool site that contains many manuscripts written by Dijkstra. (Dijkstra is a famous computer scientist for those who don't know. He's famous for his algorithm for finding shortest paths in a graph.)

I finished my CO 350 assignment this morning. That's linear optimization for those who aren't in the know. The last time I took this class I didn't feel like doing the first assignment, dropped the course, picked up CS 466 (Advanced Algorithms), and had a bitch of a school term. It was worth it though. This class that boring.

I'm in class right now. My poor prof, Romy Shioda, has spent a good part of an hour talking about how to prove a linear program is unbounded. Example after example. I could smash my head into my chair's armrest. I've spent most of the class writing emails. I'm glad I brought my laptop to school today.

And our class ends. I'm so happy.

J-Dogg cyber sessions This has to be the funniest thing I've read on the internet in a while. It's 8:00 in the morning. I'm trying not to laugh so loud my housemates wake up.

Spent the afternoon tutoring in the First Year Tutorial Center. What a tiring experience. No one else showed up to tutor. Well, except Ju-Lian, who wasn't even working today. The TA for Math 237 was helping out as well which was quite nice.

It's been a good week in Waterloo all in all. I've managed to finish my Work Report, so with that behind me I can focus on school. (Of course that is the only thing stopping me from focusing on school!)

The weekend was a bit dull. Spent Friday night trying to get into Rev. That ended up getting dull fast, and the rest of the evening was spent at Linh's house. Saturday I had Hot Pot with Ju-lian, Pheth and Linh for Ju-Lian's birthday. Dinner was good, though a bit messy. We watched Pulp Fiction after. Such an entertaining movie. Sunday I spent finishing up my work report. Well, that is to say starting and finishing my work report. Gary, Steph and Shima came over in the evening.

No funny stories to share. Well I'm sure there are some. I think I'll change this site up sometime soon. Posting inane messages like this seems a bit stupid. Such is life.

I've been in Waterloo for 3 days now. I'm all settled in and things have been nice so far. I got in on Saturday afternoon. Alex and Tan-Ieu are still living in this house with me, along with a few new housemates which are friends of theirs. It's nice being back. Tan-Ieu packed me a lunch on the first day of class, illustrated in the attached picture. (it was actually just a snack and drink, but it is the thought that counts. She made little pack lunches for all us students.)

I walked to school a little bit early on Monday. I had errands to run, and I am still used to waking up early because of work. I bumped into Ju-lian and Nabeel in the computer lab. We loitered for a bit before heading off to class. Ju-lian came to the Math of Public-Key Cryptography class Nabeel and I are in. He was less then impressed. I think the class will be interesting. The professor is the same one who thought me Classical Algebra and Applied Cryptography.

I had Graph Theory after that which is being thought by an Australian professor. This class, as well as the crypto class are tiny. I love small classes.

I only have 2 hours of class on the Monday, except for a night class. After my two classes I bumped into Nabeel and Ju-lian again in the computer lab. My friends Chris and Matt showed up shortly after and we all left to go to the bomber. The afternoon beer was nice. However, we did get a midget pitcher, and had to pay 12 dollars for it. That's just not cool. I think that was a sign of things to come.

Gary showed up at the bomber, and, along with Ju-lian, we left to do some shopping after. I bought a new Game Cube game, Rebel Assault 2, which is a lot like X-Wing, only with really nice graphics.

After shopping, we went to Morty's for wings. I got suicide wings, which were damn hot. My lips and tongue were in some serious pain. That said, they were really good. Shame they are so expensive. Their wing deal is such a scam.

I have 4 math courses, and one elective, which is History and Film. I skipped the elective to go to Fed last night. Gary and I picked up Yang, and came back to my place to wait for Steph. Once she arrived, we walked over to Fed.

The line at Fed was huge. Worse of all, it moved incredibly slow. I don't know what they are doing now. I think perhaps they are trying to piss of the students. I hope there was a real reason the line was so slow and the whole thing was not just some sort of incompetence on the part of the feds. We were in line for 2 hours. The only legitimate way to get in quickly was to just walk to the front of the line and step in front of people who had been lining up. None of us were in the mood to go clubbing once we got in, but at least we got in.

Two my surprise, Fed was not packed at all. It was busy yes, but not the way you would expect it to be after lining up for 2 hours. Not the way you would expect it to be for FED 101. I saw friends of mine here and there, which was nice, but for the most part the night was disappointing. The most memorable part of the night was the line up. That's not good. We left at 1:30 quite disappointed.

Today I had my Linear Optimization class. I knew it was being taught by R. Shioda, who I hadn't heard about before. I was surprised to find that the R. stands for Romy, and Romy Shioda is a cute Asian lady from New York city. She seems thoroughly out of place when I think about the other professors who have taught me C&O. I don't know if I think she's cute because she's teaching a math course, or because she actually is cute. I'll need a third party to decide. She lectures quite well, although awfully quiet.

After that I had Formal Languages and Parsing. The class was busy, which was surprising. I brought my laptop to school today to try out my wireless card. It works like a charm. So I spent the few minutes I had before class started to check my mail and use MSN.

And that has been the past few days in Waterloo. If you read carefully, this whole post could have been replaced with the following, "I went to class today and saw this hot girl."

But, I've been told no one likes those stories.

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You? The first time I did this test I was Megatron, as illustrated to the left. Doing it a year or so later, I end up being Optimus Prime. Screw that. I am Megatron god damn it.

The Crazy Engineer - Projects: Skittlebrau. It's stuff like this that makes the internet worth while. Skittlebrau is
that beer that has candy floating in it. Of course, such a product does not exist. So this guy has set about to create it.

Moved back up to waterloo yesterday. I've gotten settled fairly quickly. My room is fairly barren. I'll have to bring up posters or something to add some colour. It is incredibly empty. Things at my old house are the same as usual. I'm living with two of my old house mates, Alex and Tan-Ieu, and then 3 new ones, Catherine and her sister, Barbara, and Barbara's friend, Lenny. I haven't met Lenny yet, but Barbara is my new best friend. Should be an entertaining term. I moved back to find myself in the middle of a huge bbq.

I could speak at great lengths on the joy that is Korean bbq. The premise is the following: you go to the restaurant, they bring you plates of raw meat, you cook the meat at a grill in your table. The whole thing is all you can eat. It's fun to go and do. I don't think there is anything all too Korean about it though. All the Korean BBQ places in Toronto are run by Chinese people.

My friend Zeyd is leaving for Kingston soon to head back to University. Actually, we all are going back to our respective corners of Ontario. Zeyd wanted to meet up before leaving. Our original plan was to get some sushi, though those plans changed quickly enough. This whole dinner was almost a debacle.

Talking to my friend Dave in the afternoon, I got the impression no one was going to show up. Mez was out trying to get a new computer, and word on the street was that he wasn't interested in sushi for the third day in a row. Prasanna's car had been stolen. (His damn old accord taken right from his driveway! The car won't even drive on the highway.) Carvill didn't know there was a dinner to attend at all. Somehow things worked out, and when I got home from work people trickled in one after another.

This picture is of Mezan and Prasanna as we head to the restaurant.