F-Stop Blues

Finals start in 5 days.

Wed. Aug. 3 - ECE 231: Electronic Devices
Fri. Aug 5 - ECE 222: Digital Computers
Sat. Aug 6 - ENGL 306A: Intro to Linguistics
Mon. Aug 8 - ECE 204: Numerical Methods
Thu. Aug 11 - ECE 251: Programming Languages and Translators
Fri. Aug 12 - ECE 241: Electric Circuits


I have declared today a writeoff. I went to all my classes, even stayed for review. Tomorrow our class is having an André (Collectively drink 120 Beers), and EOT is that night, so i'm basically ditching all my classes and drinking all day and all night. Kendo get together on Sat., after which i'm heading home and I believe hanging out with Cas. Sunday is up for grabs for those who want it, and then i'm disappearing into my books for two weeks.

You'd think, this evening, now that I effectively have declared that I have nothing to do, as I have not started Finals studying, and all my labs and projects are handed in, I would be relaxed. But instead, i'm bored. It's 2am, I can't sleep, i'm just milling around. I have nothing I really want to do, nothing I really want to have, nothing compelling me forward. This always happens when stress factor drops suddenly. I think after two weeks of vacation (and subsequently, frosh week), i'll be just itching to get to work.

Oh, and another thing

As if I weren't a big enough geek as it is, i've gotten really obsessed with Chess. I've started playing against the computer several times a day whenever I have a free moment, the same way most people play solitaire (although I am also partial to spider solitaire). If you're a chess nerd, I usually get into some variation of the vienna game. Chess is one of those games that's fairly easy to learn, but very hard to master, and the more you learn about it, the more interesting it is.
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.

Another Friday evening

Had a quiz and a labtest today. Although, like the rest of the class, the labtest went terribly and is impossible to complete (Getting that god damn Threshold Voltage for the NMOS takes like, 20 different measurements, which you then need to plot and extrapolate. That takes an hour for just the one question, and you've got 25 minutes for that station. Screw off 231), appearantly I know way more about that shit than I thought I did. That would indicate maybe i'm not completely buggered. Hoo-rah.

Went to EngPlay tonight, and I must say that it wasn't as good as it was last term, which is unfortunate. I think the people did a good job, but the skits they picked weren't as good (read: hilarious) as they were last fall. After that, we went and saw wedding crashers, which I vote as the funniest movie I've seen since Dodgeball. Appearantly Vince Vaughan makes things into solid gold of hilarity. I'm not going to pull a 'lets watch this movie 5 times and be sick to death of it' though. Looks like i'm cooked for this weekend, so no BBQ in the GTA for me. Fortunately After this weekend, i'll have all my projects done except for one really ugly lab, and then class will be over for the term on friday, and i'll come home for a bit on the weekend, and then come back to waterloo and disappear for two weeks whilst cramming for finals.

And then I get my life back! Yeah!
Look out August, here I come.

In which Angus buys a lot of meat.

Last time I went home, my parents revealed to me that they have gotten into the habit of buying flank steaks, grilling them, and slicing them up, and making sandwiches out of them. They did this for my parting lunch, and it was delicious.

It rained all day today. I was awoken at 6 am by raging thunderclaps. There was glorious thunder and lighting for about 10 hours, with intermitten periods of not raining, but being very dark and overcast out, followed by more raining. I thought it had ended, but as I speak it is beginning to pour some more. There are only two ways I can be awoken at 6 am and be happy about it. That's one of them.

Anyway, after a day long filled with doing very little, other than a smidgeon of Coldfire Assembly, I decided to make myself a meat sandwich. Off to Sobe's. Do they have marinated flank steak? No they don't. Bastards.

But do they have grilling steaks in packages? Yes they do.
Are they 20 oz grillings steaks? Yes they are.
Do they only come in packages of four? Yes they do.
Can you get one for, for some reason, a mere 14 dollars?

Indeed you can.
Trotting home with an ungodly amount of meat, a french loaf, and enough seasoning to kill a small animal, I go home, literally cover the surface area of the BBQ with this meat, and procede to cook it all.

It was glorious. I should have taken pictures. Never before have I created so large a fire on a BBQ, and cooked so much meat for so few people. Namely me, Since other people I know have gone to a Pig Roast this evening and I'm fending for myself.

The rest of the evening was spent making sandwiches, slicing my meat, and watching the rest of House of Flying Daggers (which by the way, sucks).

I still have a heaping piled of sliced beef which I think will last me until about Wed. If anyone is in the area and is craving a red meat sandwich, you know who to come and see.

Tomorrow will probably be spent furiously trying to do prelabs and post labs, and other lab-type activities. 2 More weeks until I only need to worry about passing tests instead of completing projects.

Beef is your friend.

Friday Night

I'm enjoying a nice evening of solitude for once tonight. I was going to go on a Pub Crawl this evening, but I've had this sharp pain in my stomach for a few hours, and I decided to forgo it tonight. Sent Todd and Ruthanne on their way, Reed has either locked himself in the basement, or has gone home for the weekend. Drew is I think, out on a date. Who knows where Alanna is. It's nice to just be at home alone... quiet, and alone for once. Very peaceful. Tomorrow I may or may not go to a pig roast. We'll see how it goes.

The Joy of Linguistic Lectures.

"It has to pick out the relevant salient characteristics of something, so that it can be identified. The intension is what allows you to pick out something in the world and say 'Lo, Chair', 'Lo, Rocket Bra'"

Of parchment and vellum

I love books, and I love reading. One of the reasons I enjoy having a PDA is that I have at any time with me a shelf of books at my disposal, for perusing during any spare minutes I may have, time wasted waiting in line, on a bus, between lectures. This time can be absorbed into worlds imaginary and very real. Characters and subplots and twists and turns. I love stories, I love telling them and I love hearing them. There is something intimately appealing about libraries, even though I tend to frequent book shops much more often. My father wants to build himself a library, curious as he doesn't read. For him it is simply a place to relax when he retires, among dusty tomes and mahogony and a Grandfather clock, chiming relentlessly away at each hour. My father is, I think, the type of man who would smoke a pipe in days gone by, when such habits were not known to be harmful. But he too senses the appeal in being surrounded by such volumes. When I am done here in waterloo, I think I will spend a great deal of time reading outside in the sun, worry free for a couple of weeks, before new worries claim me once again.

There and back again...

It occurs to me that in the last few years my family is always much more pleased to see me should they ever have the opportunity to. I'm realizing that I am really quite fortunate to have the family that I do. I think having a family that's stable and doesn't bicker is an important life feature.

I was listening to A grand don't come for free by The Streets on the way back up here. Hiphop/Garage isn't usually my bag, but Mike Skinner has some really scathing lyrics that are so clear and poignant, I can't help but like it. For example...


She brings her hands up towards where my hands rested
She wraps her fingers round mine with the softness she's blessed with
She peels away my fingers, looks at me and then gestures
By pushin' my hand away to my chest, from hers

She pulls away, my arms are tightly clamped round her waist
Gently pushes me back and she looks at me straight
Turns around so she's now got her back to my face
Takes one step forward, looks back, and then walks away


It's not ... eloquent, it's not profound. It's just very real, very picturesque. I have a deep appreciation for words that bring the scene to life, not detail unto the nth degree, but enough, specific points of detail.

Home for an evening

Got LS2 over with, actually left early. That lab is so atrocious. I can't wait until course critique time for 241, I'm going rail out the stupidity of those labs for pages.
One more to go.

Came home for the evening, went and had Waffles and Movie with two lovely ladies by the names of Cas and Jo. A pleasure as always. Also got my haircut, bought new glasses to replace the ones I lost in Montreal, and washed and vaccumed out my car. Tomorrow is Hanging out with Whitney, and hopefully Jon and/or Randeep, then heading back and plowing out some Lexical Analyser and Parser for Todd/My Oberon Compiler. Sunday is the Engineering Frosh Retreat. Tomorrow it'll be time to pay the piper. Hope the weekend bodes well for all.

Stuff that happened today that was of note

• I had my interview with Epson


• Epson offered me the job, and I graciously accepted


• I don't have to pay rent or food in the fall, because i'll be living in Richmond Hill again


• I made you smile


• I discovered a bigass coolant leak in my car, which requires my water pump to be replaced


• I wrote a quiz in 241, and I understood everything that was being taught today


• I generally feel on top of things in my life, and have gotten most of it under control


• I'm going to continue reading some Ken Wilbur now

Interview day!

It's officially interview day. Wish me luck!

Oh, what a weekend

Friday Morning, up at 6, pickup a bunch of kendoka at 8, begin the long, long drive to Montreal. Took about 8 hours, if there's anything of note in particular that happened, I can no longer remember it.

We got to Montreal just before dinner. It turns out the International Montreal Jazz Festival was happening this weekend. They had fenced off like, a city block or two, and licenced the whole area, so people are just wandering around in the streets, drinking Stella Artois, and listening to the different Jazz artists playing. We had St. Hubert's for dinner (Like Swiss Chalet but with better sauce, we used to have them in Ontario, but I think they're only in Quebec now), and then chilled out at this giant block jazz fest until the wee hours of the morning.

Got up on Sat., after sleeping all night on the floor, went to the Kendo Nationals, our guys did ok, but we didn't take home anything unfortunately. One of our guys, Taro, went into the selection round robin tourney on Sunday for Team Canada, but I don't know if he's in or not, as we left before then. After the tourney, we went out for a bigass kendo dinner, which was expensive and shitty, and then went club/bar hopping.

Angus goes club and bar hopping, in which:

Angus is hit on by a hot 30 something chick
Angus is offered a strawberry condom by another hot chick at a bachelorette party.
Angus and Co. get drawn into following some guy who's offering Free drinks and no cover into his club. Ever see the first Blade movie? It was like that. I thought we were going to get fed into a hamburger thing. We got the fuck out of dodge as soon as we could.

After that, we went back to the hotel to drink with Huen and Sung-yong. Now, you must understand, these guys are our sempai, our instructors, and they are infamous for getting everyone trashed and puking out of their minds. I've heard stories, and I decided to provoke them. This was perhaps not the best idea, but they were quite impressed with my ability to drain alcohol. At one point Huen, SY, Lisa and I were all drinking something like a carbomb, except light beer instead of guiness, and whiskey instead of bailey's. Huen, Lisa and I drained ours, and then SY turns to me and was like "Angus, all gone already? Ah, I missed it." and then slides his towards me to drain. Funny guys.

Oh, and Sat. night they also shut down the main highway out of the city for a huge fireworks thing.

Woke up mildly hungover this morning, and proceded to drive for ELEVEN HOURS back to waterloo. Why must people run their cars into dividers and cause huge backlogs in traffic, and large explosions. Went to Fairmount Bagel for some "Montreal-style Bagels" for breakfast. I must say, they were quite good, but I wouldn't recommend driving all the way there just for a bagel.

Ah well. I'm back in waterloo at last, lots to do this week, my interview with Epson is on Tuesday, Projects and Labs and quizzes, oh my!

I'm out

Alright, i'm about to head out to la belle province for the weekend. Have a good Canada-day folks.