Yearly Archives: 2003

Lamplust, Formatting, Basic

Studying has not been going well. I find it dif­fi­cult to get moti­vat­ed, both exams being a week away. I’d much rather be try­ing to improve my win ratio or work­ing on my book, than learn­ing about orthog­o­nal view math­e­mat­ics or mesother­mal vein deposits. I might just write off the rest of the after­noon as relax­ation.

Using my tax return as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I bought a set of Candela’s a few days ago. After see­ing a movie in which a restau­rant dis­plays a beau­ti­ful set of mood light­ing, I was inspired to give some more per­son­al­i­ty to my rather drably room. My Christmas lights do add a bit of mood, but they are too bright to feel com­fort­able. I also bought a blue sin­gle, in case one of them burns out, and so that I can have a bit of colour at my dis­pos­al. I don’t like the fact that they run on NiCads though, mak­ing them have the trou­ble­some char­ac­ter­is­tic of mem­o­ry. I’d like to just leave it on until I go to bed, but I’m afraid I’d have to let them “burn out”, although I’m sure that lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies would have dou­bled the price as well as the weight, and halved the lifes­pan of each Candela.

My com­put­er des­per­ate­ly needs a for­mat­ting.

I caught Basic this after­noon with Aaron and Chris. It was­n’t very good; the plot had way too many twists to it. I spent the entire time try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell was going on and admir­ing Connie Nielson’s dis­tin­guished and weath­ered face (oh my).

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

Quixotic

People who know me know that I gen­er­al­ly tend not to get my hopes up. I nev­er see the point. If I get my hopes up and things work out in my favour, then I would have expect­ed such an out­come, and I become unap­pre­cia­tive. If things don’t work out, then I feel even worse than had noth­ing hap­pened. On the oth­er hand, if I don’t get my hopes up, I’ll feel great when I get my way, or I’ll feel fine when noth­ing works out.

Yet I can’t help but get my hopes up for what the future may hold. Lately, things have been going well in such a way that I feel com­fort­ed. Jonathan has made a great attempt at try­ing to get me a com­put­er relat­ed job with a decent salary. I applied to a beau­ti­ful apart­ment with Nick which, I was told, I should have no trou­ble obtain­ing occu­pan­cy. I will be grad­u­at­ing soon, and free to live my life with a free­dom only matched from the sum­mer days of my child­hood.

But most bright to me seems to be the future with my friends. I’ve met a great bunch of peo­ple, of which I immense­ly enjoy hang­ing out with. They have offered to help me move. They enjoy the same things I do. They are peo­ple I can con­fide in. They have got­ten excit­ed about my ten­an­cy with Nick. Who else do I know is inter­est­ed in my hap­pi­ness? What oth­er friends that I’ve had are so keen in spend­ing time with me?

My friends make the future seem warm and bear­able. Even when I admit to myself the way the future may work out, the fact that I may not get this job and indus­try con­nec­tion, the fact that my rental appli­ca­tion may be denied, I can’t imag­ine any­thing going wrong with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t feel this way, that I could keep my mind in check. But I can’t.

And I don’t care.

Essays, Rock Climbing, Etc.

I was­n’t going to write today, but the gen­tle light from the set­ting sun, along with the mild, wind­less chill, has affect­ed me in such a man­ner that I wish only to speak of the bound­less beau­ty that the weath­er can pro­vide. I’m remind­ed of the spring walks home from Ashley’s house, feel­ing the cool air through my hair with the pale orange sky above my head. Pure con­tent­ment.

Progress on my essays has not been going well. I have spent the last half week on geol­o­gy, and still have less than two pages done. I wish the ter­mi­nol­o­gy was­n’t so mar­ket based. Fuck.

I was able to go rock climb­ing for a sec­ond time with Trolley, Cristina, Aaron, Wheaties, Nick, Greg, Amanda, and Simon. It was great to have so many peo­ple go at once, so that we could just won­der around and see how oth­er peo­ple were doing. I was able to scale three more walls that I was­n’t able to last time, which were all 5.6’s. The tips of my fin­gers were raw at the end from belay­ing so much. My fore­arm strength is cur­rent­ly the first thing to give, so I was­n’t very sore the next day. We head­ed out to Perkins after and pigged out on good food. What a great fuck­ing time.

I was able to ask Simon about his tongue stud, and he told me that out of all the pierc­ings he’s had (ears and eye­brow), the tongue was the least painful by far, due to the fact that the nerve end­ings are all on the sur­face of the tongue. Once the spike goes through the tongue, noth­ing is felt after­wards. New infor­ma­tion that I’ll have to con­sid­er.

Tuesday. Brideshead Revisited. Jeremy Irons is one sexy, sexy man.

Dolores has been extra cud­dly these last few days, and I’ve been wok­en up by her turn­ing a few times, before nestling on my legs or stom­ach. I feel bad that I feel so con­strict­ed every time she set­tles down, caus­ing me to toss and turn. It’s as if itch­es only come once a cat has found a pil­low in your lap.

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sent­ed to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynam­ic as well as math­e­mat­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­t­ic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that oth­er projects con­sist­ed of. I think I had one of the less­er ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much hard­er than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lat­ed me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spo­ken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funer­al, actu­al­ly clapped at the end. It made me fair­ly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye can­dy in a fac­ul­ty of the aes­thet­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a suck­er for a pret­ty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tive­ly next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rent­ly using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript view­er. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vid­ed to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weak­er body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extreme­ly impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rent­ly in, yet $50 cheap­er. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larg­er liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.