Trip Timeline

• Saturday (PM) - 4:30 (EST) - Christina and Jake arrive to drive me to the airport.
• Saturday - 5:00 - Major third degree crossing the border
• Saturday - 6:00 - Check in and security check as normal.
• Saturday - 6:30 - announcement: the flight will be over an hour late... those making appointments will have to reschedule.
• Saturday - 6:45 - New flight booked for Sunday morning at 7:40
• Saturday - 7:00 - Emergency SOS call to Eric to come pick me up
• Saturday - 7:01 - The hunt to find my luggage begins
• Saturday - 8:10 - Eric shows up
• Saturday - 8:45 - Bags show up
  
• Saturday - 9:00 - Get back to Windsor and collapse in the house
• ...
• Sunday (AM) - 4:45 - Wake up, shower, dress and wait for Stacey
• Sunday - 5:35 - Get Gas with Stacey and head for the border.
• Sunday - 5:45 - Say slightly the wrong thing to the customs people and get some funny questions.
• Sunday - 5:47 - Holy crap the roads are bad!
  
• Sunday - 6:15 - Get to the Airport (again)
• Sunday - 6:16 - Holy crap giant line up!
  
• Sunday - 6:45 - Check in and security check as normal
• Sunday - 7:30 - Not boarding the plane yet
• Sunday - 7:40 - Still not on the plane.... Apparently theres Ice or something...
  
• Sunday - 8:05 - Attempt at rescheduling people, decides to do it for everyone while we are in the air.
  
• Sunday - 9:15 - Boarding the plane!
• Sunday - 10:15 - Taxiing to the de-icing area
• Sunday - 10:16 - Begin de-icing (should take 10-15 minutes)
  
• Sunday - 10:56 - Finish de-icing
• Sunday - 11:00 - Take off!
  
• Sunday - 12:45 (MST) - Land and find out that the reschedules are really bad!
• Sunday - 2:05 - Fight with the US Airways Customer Service
• Sunday - 2:35 - Find out that my luggage has been forwarded to San Jose
• Sunday - 2:45 - Break down
• Sunday - 3:00 - Eat something and find out there is free wifi
• Sunday - 6:00 - Line up for the Security Check
  
• Sunday - 6:30 - Security Check as normal
• Sunday - 8:20 - Boarding the plane!!
• Sunday - 8:30 - Take off! (I'm on time and everything)
• Sunday - 9:20 (PST) - Land and try to find Sean or my bags.
  
• Sunday - 9:30 - Find Sean
• Sunday - 9:40 - Head to the other terminal and find my bags
• Sunday - 9:50 - Get to Sean's apartment and have a sandwich

This was a very long trip... But I'm here and alive... and I'll post more later. I have one post from the last plane ride but it needs to be edited first.

The Study Break Tease

Woo! Spring break ... a week off from school. Isn't it fantastic to have a whole week off an not HAVE to think about school... What a lie! Over the break instead of just playing catch-up on my reading I have 2 assignments and a midterm to study for. Maybe it is a 4th year thing but many of my profs seem to enjoy in the fact that its called study break not spring break. Okay, FINE, but you all can't have the same plan. I would rather stay in school for the extra week then be expected to do all this extra work.

"But it's study break and you should be able to do lots of studying." "But we are giving you extra time to work on it" NO. It's not fair. Some people do go away for the break and like to have actual time of off to take the break that we so desperately need. It's like this horrible tease, that's the best way to describe it.

My spring break plans include: Assignment 1, Assignment 2, Midterm Studying, Going to Cali to see Sean, Thesis Research, Video Games (new DS games!), New textbook reading, and... maybe sleeping in... that would be nice.

Tea vs Coffee

So I've recently started a new addiction. I'm not talking about Heroes this time, I'm actually referring to my new Tea addiction. Over the Christmas break my whole family was drinking tea and Ruston7 drinks tea as well so I thought why not... I can learn right. I learned to drink coffee fairly fast. Tonight I'm trying Earl Grey for the first time. Its not bad actually... its one of the ones that I would add milk to tho.

In comparing tea and coffee they each have their strong points... like coffee obviously has major props for the caffeine factor. It's a definite pick me up in the morning and it has this ... deep down warm feeling about it, once you put the right amount of sugar in. It also carries with it the cool factor, the grown up university student factor. The negative is theres not much to it... coffee is coffee and it doesn't vary TOO much with the exception of some flavoring.

Tea on the other hand has SO much flavor and its just so good sometimes. My favorite part is there so much out there to try. With slight variations of sugar/honey/milk you can make it taste totally different. Awesome point number 2 its cheap. like, super cheap. If I bring my own cup and tea bag I can get a hot tea for free at the school any time I want. Hot water is free folks. The downside is that there isn't much of a kick there... not nearly enough caffeine to be functional.

Theres no real point to this argument. I just thought I would voice my opinions about them both. It was mostly sparked from a conversation that included the following...

"Coffee is like a hooker that you can have a good time with, but you gotta put a lot of make up on it, where as tea like that casual friend you have that isn't that good in bed, but she's just pretty cute" -- Ruston7

Additional Random Quotes:

• "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of Saturday Night Fever... do it John.. do it" - Tyler
• "I have to strut out of here now... " - John
• "SO High five worthy!" - Janna

My Celebrity Profile

Learning how to Juggle all over again.

I've always been pretty proud of my time management and personal organization skills. One aspect of it that I'm always been pretty good at is having all the food on the table, or in the case of Pizza Delight out to the dinning room at the same time... My mind very easily breaks apart multiple tasks and allows me to work on them in the proper order (or at least an order that works). I look a little crazy while doing it cause I'm usually going around in circles, but it works. In the past, with my school work and studying I been fairly good at balancing my work time and my play time, with the exception of Exam time when I'm always stressed and constantly studying. During exam time all of my energy is focused on exams and which one I should be studying for and what I should be doing next.

This semester however, classes are harder and more demanding and I feel that I've gone into exam mode far too early and its lasting far too long. I'm slowly working on a new system so that I can still study as much as I feel I need to but at the same time I don't completely crazy and I can still talk to people without biting their head off. So I can have decent conversations with Sean again. The change is going slow... but I'm trying. Right now I don't have any other midterms till after spring break I just have assignments to do.

454 - Update

It was worse than I thought...
... I guess I'm just not cut out for this university thing...
Think I can get into College?

Anti-Valentine's Dinner Party

The theme wasn't my idea but I liked it and thought it would be fun. The basic ground rules were, no PDA and no sitting beside the person you came with. We also asked that people wear dark colors, no pink or other valentines day colors were allowed. We played sad emo music to add to the mood. But all in all I think everyone had fun.


I got to try my hand at making dinner for 10 people. What did I serve? It was quite a feast... we started with Caesar salad from Matt, It was very good. Then we had Beer Butt Chicken, that got drunk too fast and kept falling over in the oven. The second chicken cooked in similar style was made with white wine and a little lemon... absolutely delicious, I can't wait to try it on the BBQ sometime.For the people who don't like chicken, we had rotini pasta with a veggie and tomato sauce, with just a hint of the white wine in it. Also made fresh meatballs for on the side. The other sides included Mashed potatoes with a little garlic, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, swiss chalet sauce, garlic bread and orange Jello with pineapple in it. Everything was hot and on the table at 5:58... it was awesome.

We followed the dinner with tea, coffee and some light dessert. Nathan and Jaclyn brought some really good ice cream and Jen brought some two bite donuts and carrot cakes. It was a really nice touch. Including what went into the food we went through 3 bottles of white wine, 2 bottles of Wild Vines wine and 1 non-alcoholic wine. I was very excited to see that Eric who brought a bottle of wine even managed to match to the menu.

We capped the night off with new episodes of Simpson, Family Guy, King of the Hill and American Dad; It seemed very fitting considering the theme.

Four-Fifty-Four

Postmortem of this past week

454 - Algorithm Design and Analysis, quite possibly the hardest course I will take in my undergraduate career. The prof encourages us to aim for 40% and if it is your last semester you should be able to appeal the mark and still graduate. But at the same time you probably won't get into grad school. This has been the worst week for me because not only did I just finish the first midterm (on a Saturday) we also had our first assignment due. It has been brutal and I truly apologize to anyone that I was outwardly angry at because of it. It's just the mathematical theory getting to me. -- The test however didn't go as badly as I suppose it could have. It was a rough test of only 5 amazingly hard questions. One of them was "prove or disprove ______" I choose to disprove which I'm confident in but I know I'll get zero if it was supposed to be prove.

On top of that! I had my practicum assignment and midterm which really isn't hard... just more work. Sigh ... woe-is-me.

Tomorrow we are throwing an anti-valentines day dinner party... just for fun, I'm not bitter. There will be pictures... But I'm kinda nervous cause this will be my first time cooking for so many people.

What?! I'm a grown-up?!?

Do you ever have that moment when you look at your life and think "Holy crap grown-ups are valuing my opinion?"

I know that not many people in my school really understand what usability is and the more complex functions of my job are beyond what they have heard about it. But because I feel so new to the subject matter I still find it amazing sometimes when my opinion is valued as much as it has been. Profs and people who know infinity more than me actually ask for my opinion. I shouldn't be so surprised but I like to still think of myself as a kid and I'm afraid I've already grown up. I'll be finished my undergrad soon (Dec 07 - Tsin pending) and the possibilities that lay in front of me are daunting. Makes me wish I could just go back to making pillow forts!

Reference the Comic: http://xkcd.com/c219.html

Quotes of Recently:

• "You know what....... I run into things...." - Michelle
• "Love is like a hourglass, as the heart fills the head empties" - Tyler

Also:
Happy Birthday Sean! You are getting old too!

Online "Get-to-Know-You" Questionnaires

Okay, this morning in my random Facebook probing I was reading someone (who should remain nameless, cause it could be anyone) and they had completed a random "Get-to-Know-You" questionnaires, which are usually pretty interesting to read, but something struck me as odd.

Who needs a phishing scheme when you can just start a new survey! These survey things seemed to be okay when passed as email, not totally secure but definitely not right out there on the internet. All someone would have to do would be cleverly hide the important questions in the middle of a bunch of dumb questions.

Among the 200 questions on this survey were:

200. My middle name is:
199. I was born on:
197. My cell phone company is:
192. I am allergic to:
191. I was born in:
190. I live in:
179. My favorite Holiday is:
89. Who makes you laugh the most?
67. People call me:
59. I have gotten a speeding ticket:
56. My zodiac sign is:
50. What is your dream job?
49. First job?:
47. I have these pets:
33. My favorite piece of clothing is:
32. My favorite sport is:
29. My computer is:
28. The school I go to is:
22. The all-time best movie is:
21. The all-time best thing in the world is:
12. I want to be:
10. My favorite words are:
8. My favorite celebrity is:
5. My weakness is:
4. What I like about the opposite sex:

Like really... they could ask about your car, license plate, do you prefer visa or mastercard...
I'm surprised that "Whats your mother's maiden name?" wasn't on there... With identity theft running rampant all this information can be used against you. I think in the next couple of years social networks like Facebook and MySpace are going to have to consider the implications of their services.

On a related note, it's going to be an interesting day when the teens that used myspace at the height of it existence are trying to get a job... with ALL of their dirty laundry online, trying to make themselves look cool will give their potential employer a much more complete view of who they are hiring.

Post 150 woo!