Autumn

It smells like fall.

CSIS is hiring Waterloo Coops for next summer. Both of the job postings require Top Secret Clearance, and the recruitment process is 'lengthy', so you have to apply now for the position, because it'll take them until next summer to finish the testing and screening. Appearantly the following are involved:

• Technical Interview to assess skills and eligibility for the positions.


• Psych assessment for futher assessment of personality and abilities.


• Security Clearance which involves interviewing referees, checking of all information supplied, police checks, a security interview, polygraph test, fingerprints, and declaration of net worth

...

There's no way they're going to want to hire me. =op

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In other news... Not a lot. So far no plans this weekend other than banging out PCDEP code, and a lot of it. Perhaps doing some 241 questions. Feel free to pipe in if anyone needs me to entertain them. Skydiving got cancelled, so that's not happening. Weekend after next is a double whammy with Jon Stewart and Turkey Day. Booyah.

Weebls Stuff - Magical Trevor 3

Dear Diary,
Chinchilla sure are nocturnal.

Summation

Last week kicked ass, and ended with a lovely toss up at 36 which got shut down before the cops shut it down, nevertheless I managed to not get home until 615.

Work is awesome, I'm in the imaging group developing an API for a graphics chip, and despite the fact I don't know C, i'm making quite good progress on it already. The work environment is friendly, and I like the people there. They've invited me out for a poker game tomorrow night, so i'm just going to stay late and bank hours, then thu. I have a welcome party (for me and the other coops), so more banking hours, and then i'll cash some of them in on friday so I can leave early and head to waterloo for BOT.

Other new things, appearantly i'm going to a Matt Good Concert with Kate, that should be awesome. Kate's coming down from Peterborough one of these weekends to visit as well, that'll be a drunken festival.

Jon Stewart, of course, if I haven't mentioned it, on Oct. 7th. That should also be amazing.

This weekend: Post-BOT, Coffee/Brunch with Iris on Sunday, Kristin is down from Hamilton, so i'm chilling with her at some point this weekend. Edit. No i'm not, Kristin is coming down next weekend. No word from Cas, but I may have mentioned doing something this weekend with her. Julie wants to hang out as well, but that may not happen this weekend specifically.

So all in all, busy in a very good way. PCDEP work is being done as we speak, so i'll probably ship off the next version before next week.

If anyone else is interested in seeing me, let me know, i've got a whole term and i'm happy to pack it as full as I can.

Oh, Passed last term by the way. Not that you read this Karim, but thanks for vouching for me at the committee meeting, and thanks to Strick and Nick for talking to him. Now I just need to write two supplementary exams, read: this term is also filled with 241 questions and reading that HOWTO site for 204 that Kate sent me.

In other news, I'm also thinking of running for FOC for next years Frosh week. This year was amazing, and the FOC did a terrific job, so next year is going to require some really crazy planning for the new FOC. Thankfully, there's a lot of people running who would do a terrific job. So far I've heard of people considering it:
Me, Todd, Andrea, Kate, Fitz, Glenn, Murph, Carla, Pieneman, and Olenkis.

That's a crazy list, and the competition will be rough. I think I have a good shot, but I care more about frosh week being good than being FOC, so if I end up running and they don't give me a position (preferably as HeadCom, but even so), at least I know that they found 4 people who are going to do a better job than I am, and if that's the case, next year will be sweet.

So in summary, things are great for the moment, hopefully any terrible badness will hold off for a while and I can enjoy this.

Comedic mention of note

At opening ceremonies for SCUNT last night, HeadCom is give a speach about what the rules are:

HEADCOM: Thou Shalt not break any laws of any kind, only EDCOM can break the laws of nature
HEADCOM: Thou shalt not drink alcohol
Grad Students on nearby rooftop patio of Grad House: Come up here and we'll buy you a pitcher frosh!
HEADCOM: Thou shalt not listen to the Grad Students over there.
HEADCOM: Thou shalt go to all events
Some Frosh in the crowd: Can I take off my pants!?
HEADCOM: If it pleases EDCOM
*At this point, half of EDCOM turn away from the ground and face RCH, cracking up*
HEADCOM: Look away from EDCOM, EDCOM is having a religious experience.
HEADCOM: This is a very important wall to EDCOM. It is where the first EDCOM was born.

Frosh Week Finale

I could continue to elaborate on all the shit that happened in the last four days, but I don't really give a shit anymore at this point. If you actually care, come and ask.

Tired and grumpy. Adios.

Frosh Week Zeitgeist so far.

It's wednesday night, and I've finally gotten home and I thought I'd do a little writeup of what's been going on in frosh week so far this year. I have photos, but haven't uploaded them yet. Photopost to come. After the relatively uneventful evenings on Friday and Saturday, most of sunday was spent preparing stuff for Meet EDCOM, Earn your hardhat, and Junk yard wars. Sunday night was the big leader party, that went off well, usually the other faculties hate us, and most especially EDCOM because they think we're a bunch of assholes, well we tried to show them otherwise, and seemed to work. Everyone got nice and smashed and I ended up crashing at about 2 am.

Woke up at 6:30 am on Monday, spent the day preparing for Junk Yard wars (which todd and I were somehow now running part of), and preparing signs and crap to put up around EDCOM head quarters. Monday night meeting, followed by EDCOM initiation, which I thankfully didn't have to undergo this year as I'm a returning EDCOM. I won't go into specifics, but it was fucking gross, although not as gross as mine last year I think. This was in no way followed by traditional EDCOM gets tanked out of their mind night, in which I no way proceded to get totalled. That was a very good evening, had some pleasant chats with some people, and made some new friends.

Tuesday:
Frosh week starts! I stayed up chatting (in no way drunk chatting) until 4 am, and got up at 6:30 again, so now i'm on 2.5 hrs of sleep. Sweet. Meet EDCOM (A spectacle of lights and sound in which we scare the living shit out of the frosh and lay down the rules for the week) went off pretty well, better than last year I think. When meet EDCOM was over, the frosh began earn your hardhat, in which they do different challenges that earn them their yellow hard hats for the week (Hardhats often attemptedly stolen by U of T). The things this week were AMAZING. So much better than previous years, and the frosh LOVED them:

- Get across Mud Pit thing.
- "Obstacle Course" which was really just and excuse to make a giant ass water slide on the side of a hill using a fire hose and hydrant.
- "How many frosh can you get in this beat up old 200$ car"?
(We got a deal on both of the cars from the dealer by agreeing to put his dealership name as a sponsor on the side. 100 bucks was budgeted for towing them over, the bill was 107, so we negotiated a 7 dollar discount by putting the towing company on too.)
- Wall climb, an old favorite
- Some form of "Leadership" thing which is an excuse to take the other frosh leaders and purple them and/or cover them in water and/or mud.

Next up was the Arial Photo, which is what I was working on, basically we get the frosh to all sit out in a bigass pattern on a field, and we take a class photo of them from the top of the math building. It's pretty slick this year, turned out really well.

Admin went ballistic on the FOC (The four guys that run engineering frosh week) at the FOC meeting that night because of the waterslide and mudpit, etc. which we weren't probably supposed to do. They went to town on them. The phrase "It causes me physical pain to see you as a FOC" was used. One of them was asked to resign. All four stood up, stripped off their red vests that designate them as FOC, and threw them down on the table, fully prepared to quit on the spot. The net effect of this would be essentially that frosh week would be over for all engineering students this year. Admin basically ate it, nobody got fired, and we kept going as usual. (I don't understand why they hate things the frosh enjoy so much). The evening was spent doing "nothing" and "nothing" kept me out until 4:30 am where I eventually crashed on Shubert's couch because we didn't have time to drive back to guelph, as we had to be on campus at 7, so another day where I got 1.5 hours of sleep.

That was yesterday, i'll elaborate more in my next post, plus what happened today, in glorious technicolor and surround sound. Maybe even photos.

Frosh Week

So far I haven't really done anything that contributes to frosh week in a real way. We had a brief organizational meeting on friday, but it was only an hour or so (so we went out after instead). I completely missed all the work yesterday because I was out with Todd getting stuff we need for later in the week, and getting his Mohawk done (so we went out after instead). Today begins the real work then, and is also the first day people start moving in. There's actual frosh here now, fancy that.

I like real conversations that are about stuff so much more than idle banter I think. Most conversation is idle banter, and that's fine, maybe the fact that there's so much idle banter is what makes the meaningful conversations more worth it.