I find myself unable to stay up late nowadays, the time that writing comes easiest to me. I wake up in the middle of these summer nights and can’t fall back asleep. In the end, I regain lost sleep by taking mid-day naps, a habit I’ll have to break once I find a job. My parents would ask me whether I slept well, when I was younger, and being a child at the time, knew nothing but exceptional slumber. “Of course”, I would tell them, with a confused look on my face. To me, naps were always a sign of old age, and perhaps I’m getting older.

I’ve recently switched from having bacon with egg on toast in the mornings to having a bacon and egg sandwich. The difference in preparation lies in the style of eggs. Whereas sunny-side up compliments toast with it’s oh-so-dippable runniness, a pair of over-hard eggs go much better in any hand held meal.

I had some white cheddar KD for dinner tonight. I have to admit that it tastes better than regular KD. It seems to have a “higher class” cheap taste.

Blizzard has me addicted yet again. At least Dina is addicted too. And Trolley somehow made the FT beta, which is amazing. I feel like I get to say, “I know a guy who made the beta!” When I tell people they look at me funny.

I almost completed my graphics assignment. The only thing that’s missing is the object motion along the conveyor belt, and some polishing of the collision detection. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get perfect collision detection done, but I doubt that I’ll lose too many marks for that. I think I’ll just leave it the way it is, since I should be working on other projects, and I need to prioritize.

Mel is having a birthday party on Saturday at the Honest Lawyer, and I’m looking forward to going.

There are a few things I want to with this page, like add a feature that will separate archives into different pages, if it finds more than 100 results from a database query. I suppose I’ll find the time somewhere.

I got my mouse in the mail today. It has stiffer buttons and a stiffer scroll wheel, but everything is more responsive. I don’t like the fact that a part of the design isn’t flush with the rest of the mouse, so my pinky will catch on it. I’m not sure if that’s part of the design, or just something that happened to mine. The back thumb button is also a bit too small and sunken when pressed. The precision of the mouse is dead on though, even with extremely fast motions. I can now retire my old mouse. I should have given him a name.

I don’t know how Trolley seems to drink every night. Some weeks I wish that I had nothing but alcohol consumption, but my conscience always prevents me. I guess the idea that it’s costly and not-so-deleterious really prevents me from taking shots as dessert. Yet Wheaties just tells me, “drink for fear of being upset do to lack of reason to drink. this way, you can drink before you get upset, realizing there really isnt a need to drink, and you’ll be a peaceful alcoholist - better than a ragin one.. honestly, its for your own good”. I think I’ll heed some of his advice.

Leave it to a single phone call to fill me with worry. Now I’m anxious about my marks, my mid-terms, my projects, my graduation, my life. Pat gave me a pep-talk yesterday, and it helped. Graduation seems uncomfortably close. I’m dying to know how the story ends.

Patrick was nice enough to come up to me and start a conversation the other day. I asked him how his work was going, and he told that he’s really enjoying it. He let me know that the Montage project in becoming really big, and they might be looking for more workers, and that if I send Chau my resumé and let him know that I can work full-time during the summer, I might be able to get a job in development, instead of informatics.

God, my sentences are becoming more and more structured like something Henry James would have written, although I’m sure I’m not able to be as descriptive, or as brilliant, since he’s a well renowned author infamous for being garrulous, whereas I’m simply a computer science student, only able to write when necessary.

There seem to be a few Five Alive flavours on the market, such as “Tropical”, “Citrus”, or “Peach Passion”, but none taste as good as “Berry”. Aaron, Trolley, and I all agree that it tastes like Skittles. The juice from concentrate has a slightly varying taste from the one in the bottle; I find the latter to be a little more tart and a little sweeter.

I’m getting a new Intellimouse Explorer sent to me via snail mail, thanks to Trolley. I called up Microsoft, told them that my mouse button was double-clicking when it should have single-clicked (as instructed by Trolley), and they told me that they would send a new one, free of charge. I don’t even need to send my current one back. I got my current one four years ago, and I remember spending $100 on it. The pads of it have been worn out unevenly, causing a noticeable wobble. The latest design of the Intellimouse Explorer has a lower, sleeker profile, and more easily accessible thumb buttons. Yay.

After talking with my geology professor I feel dumb as fuck. I almost failed my mid-term; my mark was the second lowest in the class, even with a generous grade curve. I think I did considerably well, considering the fact that I had three mid-terms that day, and the fact that I find my mind to be dead when I have my Tuesday lectures after a 7:30am lab. Apparently, I have very little common sense. Although I know that zinc is the main ingredient is sunscreen, or that soft-drinks contain carbon, I don’t know that nitrogen is an important element in fertilizer or that graphite is a popular industrial lubricant. The list of what I don’t know goes on and on. I had no fucking clue that baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. To my prof, all of this is general knowledge, so it’s assumed when dealing with the course. I was never good at chemistry, and my programme of studies isn’t even close to related. I also took the prerequisite at the beginning of university, which is four years ago. Fuck.

I was exhausted yesterday. I worked almost all day on my graphics project, and Aaron came over to work on his Scheme assignment. I was able to talk to him for a few hours before starting the work. We caught Old School at the Coliseum near his place, but it was still a thirty minute walk in one direction. The movie was too predictable, but had some very well done scenes, such as Will Ferrell getting shot in the neck with a tranq dart. I thought some parts were almost insulting though, like a completely gratuitous camera shot of Elisha Cuthbert’s ass while she was laying on a bed. It’s not that I don’t find her behind to be a thing of beauty, it’s that it feels like the producers are adding shit like that in just to get more people in the audience. I guess it’s been happening for a while now; ever since Shannon Elizabeth bared her twins in American Pie, teen movies have been becoming more and more sleazy. I still enjoyed Old School though, and generally laughed my ass off.

Watching Old School allowed me to discover a decent song called Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I’ve also been downloading a lot of Canadian singer Holly Cole, who has a beautifully expressive, olive oil voice. I enjoy Bagdad Café in particular. I found two versions of the song, one live and one studio, which are good but with their own unique flaws. I prefer the live version because it has a simple piano and bass, instead of synth sounds in the studio version, but at one point she becomes obnoxiously loud, as if she was oversinging the notes, the way a trumpet would sound if the trumpeter was blaring. It makes her voice seem almost masculine, which is a big turn-off. The way she mixes her vibrato with her flaring is very seductive though. In the studio version, however, she seems to start off one line a little flat, before pushing her diaphragm to hit a note without going falsetto. It surprized me, since studio songs tend to be a little too perfect.

I finally put up my poster of Dominique Swain. Aaron helped me decide on the linen closet door, since the walls in my room are so big they dwarf my modestly sized poster. I haven’t put it up since second year because it didn’t seem to fit into the simpleness of my room.

I’m not especially happy with yesterdays entry, but I desperately felt like I had to get something down. It’s a little too trite for me to be satisfied.

I bought a bag of frozen carrots and pearl onions to try out the last time I went grocery shopping, since I’ve been trying to eat more vegetables. I found out today that I really don’t like pearl onions. They taste like what I imagine an onion would taste like after being soaked in water overnight. I tried to have the carrots only, but the bag is supposed to be a mélange of the two, and the taste of the onions ends up seeping into the taste of the carrots. I really enjoy having a bunch of onion slices sautéed before adding in a pork chop or whatnot to the frying pan, but pearl onions seem to be a different breed of onion.

I’ve been trying the regular Maple Leaf bacon recently, instead of the 33% less salt I normally buy. I wanted to see what I was missing out on, and it turns out that it’s just the salt. The bacon does taste better (it is salt after all), but that’s about it. I’ll probably switch back to my less unhealthy bacon next time I go shopping.

I still haven’t been able to accomplish a single bit of schoolwork so far in the week. Aaron, Trolley, and Dougie were all interested in my OpenGL assignment, so I feel like I’m more inspired to work on it to show them what can be done, maybe make them proud of me. I’d definitely want to create something that they would find amazing. Almost like quantum particle observers.

I’ve been getting a boon of games lately, such as Battlefield 1942. Battlefield 1942 plays fairly well, with decent bot support, but sometimes runs at terrible speeds, even on high-end machines. The multiplayer potential is amazing though. Pat also loaned me his PS2 for the week, so I’ve been trying to get through MGS2 as fast as I can. I have to admit that hiding in cardboard boxes is the best part of the game, which is saying a lot, considering how good a game MGS2 is.