November 1, 2000

00:56

As you may or may not have noticed, my blogs for October are all gone.

I archived them on the October archive page. Hopefully, this will be less cluttered than before. And I can start a fresh new month with many fresh new thoughts. :)

Hope to see you around!

November 2, 2000

01:53

It's slightly past half past one.

I just got home. ACM can be a real pain sometimes... but it's fun. All in all, it's worth it, and I really think you should take a look at doing this kind of thing.

Except it's quite difficult to keep up with school and practice 20 hours a week.

17:36

The return of the adventures of Matt.

So Matt shows up at my door with a tub of ... something ... wanting a second opinion on whether not this ex-food could be classified as a new species of living organisms. I'm no microbiologist, but from the way it sloshed we could never be sure... Those darned mathies.

"I'm overworked and underslept. I'm going insane!"

Welcome to the world of engineering.

November 3, 2000

11:59

Our little second row group has a slight obsession with scotch tape. When our professors get boring, we find it mildly amusing to scotch tape things -- writing utensils to desks, signs to people, erasers to everything. Scotch tape is good.

And then there was the time...

Professor Scholz (hereafter known as Gunter): And now, let us take a look at applications of torque.

Guenter picks up the applications of torque overhead, and attempts to remove the current diagramatic overhead from the project. Keyword: tries.

He tries again, to no avail. Lifting it straight off doesn't work. Pushing it around doesn't work. And then he notices...

Gunter: THERE'S TAPE ON THIS! WHAT THE HELL? SOMEONE'S BEEN GOING AROUND TAPING THINGS!

Ahhh, isn't scotch tape fun? :)

19:14

I always wondered why they called graduation commencement. Well, other schools atleast, my school never really did.

The standard response to that question is "life". Well, you're not quite beginning life in university, you're just beginning a new phase in life. One that makes you sleep less and work more, and thus much closer to dead. So how can it be the beginning of life?

Anyhoo, commencement is tomorrow night. So I'm leaving Waterloo (finally) and I'm going to jet down there. :)

See you soon.

November 6, 2000

01:25

Yes, I guess I've finally come to the sad realization that my high school career is over. Just our valedictorians sad:

If Marc Anthony was giving this speech, he would say, "Friends, Teachers, Family ... Lend me your ears. I come to bury UTS, not to praise it."

In a way, he's completely right. It's time to move on, forget about the past, and ... like he said in his valedictory... bury it deep in our hearts. :)

I guess high school will always be a treasured place for me, and I was glad to be a part of it. But university is fun, great, and a totally new experience.

Life goes on.

19:08

This made my day. It's a great song, go hear it if you haven't.

c/~ Listen up brothers and sisters, come hear my desperate tale... I speak of our friends of nature, trapped in the dirt like a jail... Vegetables live in oppresion, served on our tables each night... The killing of veggies is madness, I say we take up the fight... Salads are only for murderers, coleslaw's a fascist regime... Don't think that they don't have feelings, just cuz a radish can't scream... c/~

CHORUS

c/~ I've heard the screams of the vegetables, Watching their skins being peeled, Grated and steamed with no mercy, How do you think that feels, Carrot Juice constitutes murder... Greenhouses prisons for slaves, It's time to stop all this gardening, Let's call a spade a spade... c/~

November 8, 2000

11:58

I feel like an otter, or a dolphin, or some other animal like that.

Endlessly trapped in a cage of work. Forced to perform tricks for the benefit of others. Day after day, the same trivial tricks, to hopefully be fed by the end of the day.

You lose your individuality quickly this way. You're only a number, you're no longer an entity. With all the other creatures, you're one entity. Nothing more.

I think I'll go gorge myself on fish and sleep.

November 12, 2000

20:05

Since it's been a long time since I've written, I've got a -lot- to write about.

Well, I left on Friday morning, at 9 AM, to head to the ACM regionals. It's estimated that about this time ardant.net crashed... I couldn't get it back up until now... sorry.

So we piled into a van, headed east on the 401, in a van, headed on a roadtri..errr, uh, towards Cleveland, Ohio, where we particpated in the east-central regional ACM competition.

It was fun. And odd. And interesting. And strangely comical, like when the 8 of us tried to figure out if the van would fit into the parking garage. Or getting lost in Cleveland and making endless u-turns.

Irregardless of any such "fun", we had a challenging day at the actual competition. After about 3 hours both teams were below 20th place out of about 100, but we came through in the end :)

The Waterloo A team came in 2nd overall, and the Waterloo B team, which I was on, came in 6th. :) You can find all the final scores at the ACM results page. It was a great experience.

I got back at about 1 AM this morning. West 3, the place where I'm staying in Village 1, was in total disarray. NuBreed and Shaun's iron first rule had taken over in the abscence of the don and the various floor reps...

Funny guys, but construction equipment and bathrooms just don't mix.

November 13, 2000

22:01

It's Monday.

You just want to stay asleep in your bed... but it doesn't happen. I've been running on such low sleep lately, it's not funny.

Nothing more to say.

Except dumb GenE assignments. Why on earth are they posting them with Microsoft Word?

November 14, 2000

23:36

It's time to retract a few words I said on this blog earlier.

I did say: We're just numbers. No one cares about us. Quite some time ago. It's taken me almost 2 months to realize that they do care -- in different ways.

We really have a lot more respect and admiration for our professors. We now know they care.

They make that extra little effort to get the know the people in our class. They know our names now, they know who we are, and they know what we do.

Teachers are all different, and they will play different roles. But at heart, a teacher loves to teach.

November 16, 2000

00:32

Wednesdays are usually very long and offer much opportunity to make your day bad. Although I sound like I'm complaining now, lets run through the events of the day that makes Wednesdays bad:

7:00 - wake up to the brutal sound of your alarm clock.

8:30 - Calculus will make anyone depressed.

10:30 - Mergesort. Why are we writing mergesorts??

12:30 - Tasteless cafeteria food. I miss Brubakers.

17:30 - Physics tutorial over. Classes finally end.

19:00 - Realize you've missed dinner at Village 1.

22:30 - Break your keyboard by spilling water into it.

Wednesdays are bad.

01:14

A confused random stranger asks: Why do you stay up so late?

You know, that's a very good question. I just finished my daily load of homework and problems.

There's something about my life now that stops me from going to bed earlier. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Those nights I can I end up staying up late. I don't know why.

It'd be wrong to blame it completely on Shad but I think that it brought out a part of me that always did want to stay up late.

I'm not tired... I'm not overly cranky in the mornings. Just that anything less than a 20 hour day seems a bit of a waste of time.

I guess we should be thankful of living this life, no matter how much we complain about courses or workloads or crazy profs. The fact of the matter is, life is going to be boring after this. There won't be Matts stumbling in at 2 AM worrying about Calculus. There won't be Gunters and Scharers around to needle. Life will consist of 9 hours of work, 9 hours of sleep, and 6 in between making sure that you go to work in a manner that won't get you fired.

It's scary but true. These are the best times of our life.

08:36

I just woke up about 18 minutes ago. Looking at the clock, I realized I was late and still hand my damn GenE Ethics memo. And it's a 15 minute walk to GenE. Ewwww.

So I dragged myself out of bed. I stumble over to Roger's room, where I collaspe with a resounding *THUNK* on his door.

I don't know how, but I managed to drag myself to class on time and hand in my assignment.

Let this be a lesson to you, and a new rule to me:

If you finish an assignment after 12, walk down and hand it in -before- sleeping.

Or more importantly, if you can't survive without sleep, -don't- go into computer engineering. But otherwise it's fun. :)

November 18, 2000

03:03

Friday night means movie night for us, normally. So it involved me copying 1 GB of the newest movies (*cough*before they're out of the theatres) and then dismantling my computer, my speakers, and dragging the whole kitten caboodle downstairs.

Charlie's Angels isn't a very good movie. It's funny, somewhat, but it's corny and predictable. It might be good to watch on rental if you're into the The Matrix-meets-Austin Powers, but with today's price gouging at Famous Players, I wouldn't fork out 9 bucks to see it.

Oh well. It's funny, I'll have to admit. :) Matt is sitting here. He's getting annoyed now that I've started writing about him in my blog. Hah, hah...

Matt: "The only thing going for it was skin tight outfits."

That's great, Matt.

November 19, 2000

21:15

I found this really neat place. Called Mel's Diner, it's about a 10 minute walk from where most of my classes are.

All day breakfast, almost double the food you get at V1, for the same price. $2.99. Wow. I have this slight feeling I'll be eating a lot of meals there eventually. Especially in second year, when I have to cook for myself. Now that won't be a pretty sight.

I'm getting a little bit scared about second year, mostly because it means moving out and -really- living on your own. Village living isn't living on your own completely.

But what scares me most is the thought of me having to eat my own cooking... You'd be scared too...

"So who made dinner?"

"Gordon."

"Anyone up for Mel's?"

November 21, 2000

02:04

I must be...

I can't sleep for more than 4 or 5 hours a night now. I just can't. I'll end up waking up in 4 to 5 hours, unable to sleep. Then I'll just get up and do some homework or something along those lines.

This is a crazy way of living, let me assure you. When you don't feel tired and instead start doing more physics at 2 in the morning, you -know- you have some sort of problem.

Now that scares me.

22:21

Yes, now that I've done slaving away at physics for the night, I have a shamless plug to make, and that's of this blog. :)

I know you've heard this many times before, but please please place links to me. :) I'll even link back to your sites on my link list, and I'll put a banner in there for you (88 x 31 pixels please). You see that nice image to the right? Feel free to take it and use it in linking to this blog... please! :) The more visitors I have, the more likely I am to write nice things for everyone. ;)

Wow, wasn't that painless?

November 22, 2000

19:24

Just as you get used to something, your life changes. I'm used to university, I guess. It's taken some time, but finally I feel comfortable and "at home". Hey look, the term's almost over... finals in two weeks... when did -that- happen?

Just as well. Everyone just wants to get finals over so we can go home for Christmas. Skippy.

I was reading through the server logs for www.ardant.net. Can you believe it that someone found my webpage by searching on Google for "chemistry instant noodles"? If you don't believe me, see the search page for yourself.

That's just odd, too odd...

[Addition: Thanks to Roger for pointing out that searching for "physics instant noodles" gets to my site too.]

November 23, 2000

02:03

It's about time I told everyone about my neat little online playlist (I've been testing it out on a few people over the last few weeks).

It's an addition to the little module that shows what I'm listening to... this lets you choose a song for me! :)

It's at http://www.ardant.net/playlist.shtml. Enjoy!

17:49

I'm off to the Engineering awards banquet... gonna be fun. :)

I'd wear my nice little trenchcoat I bought for engineering, but it looks too much like I'm going to go and kill someone. Not to mention, it's so cold here I'd freeze to death.

There's so much snow...

November 24, 2000

22:16

It's another one of those crazy engineering Friday nights.

Lets see -- playing "uhhhhh -- arrrrh -- fet you" in the great hall of village 1 (if you want the complete rules, I'll write them up). Watching movies. Playing duct-tape soccer in village one. Playing wacky ping-pong.

Fridays are a release from the ordinary, a time when we just all sit down and relax, and rest a bit, before the next week of classes comes and smites us.

I went to Mel's again today. I had a brain-freeze on the chemistry quiz during tutorial -- I got it, eventually, but it took me longer than I should have taken. A strawberry milkshake will always console a person...

It's kinda quiet around here. Waterloo, as I've probably already told you, is dead the weekends. Sometimes you feel like you can scream and nobody can hear you.

Sometimes when I'm working on my computer, I focus a bit too much. I'm sure Roger can attest to that one. And sometimes I think I'm back in my room at home. I turn around and I'm somewhat surprised to see my residence room.

Experiences became so much more vivid after Shad. A bit surreal, distorting the four dimensions of space and time. I warp space by sometimes imagining I'm somewhere so vividly that my mind believes it. And sometimes I warp time too by imagining it's at a time that I felt most comfortable in. When I sit in bed late at night, sometimes I think I'm back in Rundle Hall in at the University of Calgary, during Shad, summer of '00...

Maybe I just cling to the past, but I can never get a sense of completion. If we moved out of our house, I'd feel bad leaving it behind. After Shad, it was hard to realize that it was indeed over and in 11 months, another group of 60 cheerful and energetic youths would once again romp through Rundle. And it's hard to realize that in 8 months, another Waterloo frosh will be taking over my room and having the time of their life.

It's time to move on.

November 26, 2000

23:27

I'm always forgetful when it comes to laundry.

I was doing laundry. Now, laundry in itself is a completely interesting and long story. Laundry is such a slow a tedious process. It's like an unwelcome guest, it takes up so much time.

"Hey, do you want to go to V1 and get some food?" No, I'm waiting on some laundry. "Lets go find something to do!" Sure, but I need to go feed coins to a box.

Unfortunately, humans are transfixed on always wearing clean clothes. I don't blame them. But surely there must be some better way of wearing clean clothes than every single week dumping gallons of fresh clean water, weird chemicals, and dead plants (that is, after all, what clothes are) into a huge bin which oscillates and agitates for half an hour. It's a real time waster. Anyway...

During one of these laundry excursions, nearing 3 AM, on Friday night -- errr, Saturday morning, on the way to fetch my laundry, I decided to drop by the lounge to see who was there. Last I knew, they went there after our little duct-tape soccer match. They were still there... studying... physics... at 3 in the morning?

Well it turns out they were planning on staying up until 11 AM, after some obscene and idiotic dare/bet/thing. So being the sane, rational, and completely normal engineer I am, I joined them.

So for the next we sat there and did physics. And we talked. And we did calculus. Then we started getting bored, so we found other things to do. To make a long story short, the night finally wrapped up around 11 AM, after physics, calculus, contracts, slippers, super mario 1, 2, 3, super mario world, Final Fantasy 9, Secret of Mana, and good wholesome engineering fun [That's what you get when you put to 6 compies and a chemie in a room.]

I fall asleep in the lounge sometime after 11 AM. I got too comfortable in my chair. I wake about an hour later, with a massive headache, hungry, in need of a bathroom, tired, and quite perturbed.

Then I realized that my laundry was still in the washing machine, quite wet.

I'm always forgetful when it comes to laundry.

November 27, 2000

18:37

Well, it just so happened that Roger got a digital camera. Yay for Roger! :) You know what this means...

Yes, I'll be posting funny and wonderful pictures from my life here on this webpage.

We went to Brubakers for lunch again.

Brubakers has the best food on campus, tasty, and with an excellent place for eating. The picture to the right is taken from the balcony of the cafeteria. Do check it out if you're ever in the area. :)

To fully appreciate the dedication of our professors, you really have to see them. To the left is Ed Moskal, our algebra prof. Critically acclaimed for his handwaving, and his ability to make all our proofs "2 lines" long. (Yes, two lines long, and 4 pages of handwaving). Regardless, algebra is fun, even if most of it involves watching Dave sleep.

Now I wonder what Dave was doing all last night that made him so tired? Hmm, maybe an answer will be below. Regardless, it's not too hard to snap up pictures of your classmates. The profs, well that's another things. Just use zoo animal rules: don't tap on the glass, don't use flash, and don't make any sudden movements.

Gunter pauses to field a question during our little jaunter into the world of angular momentum... He later goes on to point with that finger violently, exlaiming, "EXACTLY!!!". Would you ride a rollercoaster designed by this man? It's really funny how these profs teach us things that are in no way related to their research fields. Gunter's a quantum physicist, an overall nice guy, and dedicated to his work, just like most professors (or atleast the ones I've seen) seem to be. Rest assured, you'll have excellent faculty.

After class, we registered three domain names :) rowspace.com, rowspace.net, and rowspace.org. If you haven't guessed yet, we have a little group called "rowspace". I'm surprised that the domains weren't taken. And we finally figured out why Dave was so tired during class today. Guess what he was doing all night!

The regularly scheduled blog will return tomorrow.

November 28, 2000

21:41

Yes, I got a lot of e-mail yesterday. Most of it good, people saying they liked the new pictures. As a result, I'll offer another little view into my life, as well as let you see the rest of my professors.

Now that our GenE course is officially over, no evaluation at all, we get to sleep in on Tuesdays. Just this once. Nevertheless, my day began with Professor Morton trying to explain classes and inheritance in my ECE (programming) course. Not overly fun, and most of that time was instead spent thinking about the up and coming ECE assignment.

Rowspace strikes again! Here's Ankush, our class rep, showing off our wonderful little poster we made of our favourite physics prof Gunter. Our class eagerly awaited the arrival of the professor, while various people wagered money on whether he'd say "What the hell?" or "Suuure...".

Physics went by in a blur. Maybe part of the reason was because I fell asleep halfway through some problem I'd seen before. Instead of waking me up, Roger decides to take pictures of me. That's wonderful Roger, thank you very much.

Professor Scharer, the ever so wonderful Chemistry professor, was gullible enough to pose in front of the camera for us! For that, he gets a free trip to Florida, care of Photoshop Vacations, where he always really wanted to go. (The image above is our class prank for tomorrow, so don't go around blowing it. ;)

Hey, geeks need exercise too. Here I am, refreshed after my lengthy nap during physics, having an arm wrestle with Sorin (it eventually became a tie after 60 seconds of nerve biting action). (Don't worry, mom and dad, this was -after- class, yes, of course I was paying attention...) Yes, I know I'm scrawny. I don't need anymore spam to that effect. ;)

And just for kicks you can see the first and second pics in the duckboy series.

November 30, 2000

01:31

My day began with a phone call at about 8:22, 8 minutes before the Calculus tutorial started. It was from Roger, who had similarily slept in... hmmm... odd... Roger and I normally rely on probability to get us to class on time. Chances are, one of us will wake up in time to wake up the other. What's the probability of us -both- sleeping in?

Anyway, Calculus tutorials normally consist of 2 hours of hard labour involving one rather difficult problem set... Even though we were about half an hour late, we managed to finish in time -and- take this wonderful picture (the row in the front is the famed rowspace. That was our last calculus problem set! Woohoo! All we have to deal with now, are finals...

After our two hours of Calculus torture we headed over to the WEEF lab where we proceeded to work on our assignments. WEEF is good.

WEEF is very good.

Physics rolled on by. Dave re-asserted his scaryness. Roger re-asserted his ability to make fun of me by photographing me sleeping. The physics TA showed up for once. Gordon re-asserted his ability to make frivolous algebra mistakes. Gary re-asserted his ability to levitate objects (See picture below). All in all, physics is fun, except for the three hours of lectures and two hours of tutorials a week.

Another successful day in the life of Gordon draws to a close, with some heartfelt studying for finals. Someone told me something once... "The friends you make in university are the friends you make for life." How true it is. I'll be spending 4 years with the people you see gracing these pages, I think I can safely say that it's going to be exciting, interesting, different, and, most importantly, fun.

Thanks to a wonderful class. :)

17:49

Some people (you might know some of them) decided that it was high time our class did something fun.

You know, it's about a week before finals, course material is wrapping up, and the mood is a little tense. So why not lighten up the mood with a prank?

After the widely successful "Wanted Gunter" prank (which he took home to show his children, I might add), we set out to create the mother of all pranks: Letting Professor Scharer go where he really wanted: Florida.

So last night at 2 in the morning, as I was preparing to sleep, Agent Shaun delivers to me a beautifully colour printed version of the image I had previously made. After checking over the image one last time, during lunch, we headed over to the Davis Centre Copy Centre, and got it transcribed onto an overhead. (Side note: it gave the DCCC workers a good laugh. "Do you -really- want to find him?").

The class eagerly awaited the arrival of Professor Scharer. So eagerly that Dave "Duckboy" became more fixated than a deer caught in the headlights of a MAC truck. Sorin spent his spare time creating "art". Algebra and Physics quickly gave way to Chemistry, and hush spilled over the room as Professor Scharer entered through the back and made his way to the loaded overhead projector.

*flick* he turns the projector on. Ooooh.... ahhh.... Chao, Sorin, and Duckboy Dave admiring the beauty that is Professor Scharer. Elysium. The class erupts into applause. Scharer gives Puvi a hug. Roger tries to obtain one for me, but luckily I decline. Professor Scharer is speechless. Everyone is happy. And the next image is so touching it gets a paragraph to itself. I think I'll go do my chemistry.