October 7, 2003

01:12

It's the fourth week of the term, and walking through the E2 building at night is like walking through the classroom. The labs are filled with 3B comps, busily working on their projects. It's going to be one hell of a term.

Eight hours spent today writing and debugging vhdl, to build a hardware memcpy(). You know you've lost all enthusiasm and spirit when the completion of a lab or project is greeted with "Ok. Now, let's go home and study."

And a quotable quote from one of our profs. "The second half of 3B is one of the most difficult times you will experience." And if it's bad now...

We bought another case of Nestea today. That makes for a total of 60 cans this term, or 21.30 litres, and counting. At $4.99 for 12 355 ml cans, it's $1.17 per litre, only slightly more expensive than gas. Now, if everyone in Canada drank as much Nestea as I, it would account for 0.12% of the Canadian GDP.

12:55

And October 7th has no real meaning.

Except that three years and five days ago, I started blogging. I hadn't noticed until someone reminded me to update my archive above. And yes, it is updated.

Ahh, October 7th. It's the day of California Recall stupidity. I have been following, with some interest, the campaign trail of Georgy Russell, the 26-year old software programmer from Mountain View, California, who knows how to use both vi and emacs! Mind you, that's not why she's a remarkable candidate: she actually has a platform. <plug/>.

Speaking of elections the Ontario provincial elections were last week. Crappily, I didn't get much to exercise my right to vote, due to technicalities regarding my "riding of residence". Nor did I want to drive all the way back home to vote. Although all you need, technically, is a piece of paper with both your name and address on it (hydro bill), being a co-op, moving every four months, I have yet to receive any paper with my name and address.

So much for democracy.

My friend was supposed to receive a letter today, via an unnamed courier (which I will keep anonymous. In today's world of expedited shipping, one cannot fanthom tracking millions of packages around the world without a plethora of barcodes, tracking numbers, and satellite-linked scanners.

And we received a handwritten note in our mailbox.

"Tried delivering your package today but you weren't in. Please call my truck at 519-555-1234 and I can redeliver later."

Aren't dinosaurs extinct?

So much for technology.

October 28, 2003

04:15

After another two flats of Nestea (48 cans) were purchased last Monday, bringing the total consumption up to 38.34 L. Today, Monday, one week after, the Nestea is gone. The midterms and projects due last week propelled the Nestea consumption forward. Analysts predict this now-record rate of consumption to continue.

We tried to figure out exactly how much 38.34 litres is, in a quantity we could relate to. With guestimates ranging from "a bathtub" to "a 17 inch CRT monitor". A few very practical experiments later and we settled on "a bathtub for babies", or "a 19 inch CRT monitor".

On a odd tangent, looking at 38.34 L of water makes you realize how little $32 of gas really is.

04:50

I am deeply disturbed that since my last rant about fieldberry on this blog (read below for the details), searching for 'fieldberry' on google returns this blog in the third position (beating out Dairyland's List of Yogurt Products, mind you).

I am also dismayed to report that four unlucky individuals searching for "fieldberry yogurt" on google clicked their way to this blog as it was the #1 result. To these people: I'm sorry.

I think Google likes this webpage too much (it doesn't yet like the ArdantWiki).

So, it's time for a little game: I'm going to try to steal the Fanny Ardant keyword. Fanny Ardant is a moderately-known French actress. Fanny Ardant has no relation whatsoever to this site. But it would be interesting if this website started showing up on searches for Fanny Ardant, not to mention annoying for those actually trying to find information about Fanny.

Let the games begin.