April 9, 2003

17:48

It's been a long while.

It's finals time. Which means traditionally I'd go and make those light-up lights indicating which finals we've completed and which finals we still have left to do, but unfortunately my internet is lagging so badly that I haven't had the urge to slug it out with vim for twenty minutes.

So what's new with me? I left for Beverly Hills, California, on March 22nd for the ACM World Finals competition.

It was boring, to say the least, although I did get to see the following trademark American things:

1. Movie stars. Well, a few of them. It was academy awards week and we headed down to outside the Kodak theatre for a glimpse of some limos. So we saw some limos. We can only assume there were important people inside. :P
2. A riot. An anti-war protest turned nasty, and then we saw about 40 riot police, 30 motorcycle police, 20 bike cops, and traffic officers galore.
3. Someone get arrested. Four gant/thug-looking guys pinned some other guy against a wall. People started shouting "police". Then the thugs took out their badges.

We did poorly. There -is- an interesting article about us in the New York Times. We got off to a slower start than we would have hoped, and it all spiraled downhill from there.

It's Final Exam time. Which means I'll probably come up with some cool project to waste my time on. Just wait and see.

April 28, 2003

02:17

It's 2 AM. I can't sleep.

I've got my first day of my next co-op workterm tomorrow, and that may be the reason why I can't sleep. Perhaps I'm too excited. Or I'm nervous. Or maybe I'm just used to the Waterloo sleeping schedule and this last sleep-in-until-2-in-the-afternoon week. Who knows. Whatever the reason, I tossed and turned for a few hours. Worrying about dune.net. Worrying about my cousin's wedding website. Worrying about work. So now I'm sitting on my bed at 2 in the morning, writing a blog entry.

After heading downstairs and consuming the better half of a box of cookies, I decide to make some productive use of my half-sleepness state. I decide to root around in my basement, in hopes of finding my friend's tax forms from last year. They're hidden somewhere in my basement.

So off I go, at 2 in the morning, to search for tax forms in my basement.

And what should I find? One of my boxes, a plain, red, box once holding paper from Staples/Business Depot, now recruited for a new task. What should I find in this red box?

A treasure trove of my stuff. A bag of goodies from the ACM 2001 World Finals, including IBM mini-hockey stick, IBM puck, IBM flashlight, and of course, lots of cds from IBM (I wonder who the sponsor is). Some old metal "remove the ball from this tangle of steel" games. My circa 1990 springy Super Mario figurine, probably from some meal at McDonalds. A Lt Cmdr Data Star Trek figurine. Assorted marbles, ball bearings. The missing piece from my connect 4 game. The case for my watch (I had been looking for that one). Some old tests from high school.

And under it all, my missing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I don't know how it got there. Atleast now I can read my insomnia away. Oh, and I found the tax forms.