I'm at the hair cutter's today. I figured that I should get a trim before the holidays.

It's going to be so strange this year I've been away for over 3 months now it's bound to feel a little wierd to be back in the T.O.

I guess while I'm in T.O. I'll try and keep myself busy by applying to CO-OP positions non-stop as the chances right now look bleek. The goal is this approx 1 new position per day. On top of that I'll be practicing for my driver's examination on the 10th. So these two things should keep me busy.

We'll see what else happens during this break hopefully it wont be too dull :-)

I started creating a personal website today and was infuriated by the fact that MS Publisher in all their wisdom creates pages that won't render on the Gecko engine.

It's basically WTF?

Anyways I'm looking into some open source W3C compatable packages now to be able to do this. Mainly I want to start uploading all my random code snippets up to the internet.

Construction is in progress for the ghetto tree 

Duct tape is your friend! 

Another "Family" style pose 

And here we present for you the tree ala ghetto 

The finished tree! 

Aren't we just picture perfect! 

It's so grotesque we are fainting....  

You know how they always say it's the calm before the storm? To that I say.... What calm?! 

It's 11:00pm and the lan party is about to get underway. All participants are eagerly booting up their systems getting their stuff set up. Next to Jay in the upper left sits a 2L CocaCola bottle, when asked he replied "it's about quantity not quality". 

At 7:00am it seems most are half asleep or fully asleep. 

Some it seemed were a little to tired to even accept their prizes... Yo! wake up and get your damn prize! 

Best described as Mr. EnemyYo he went home with the coveted "prize" having beat 8 others in a ladder style tournament of UT2004. 

It's like the a race where you get no pit stops and one tank of gas.

If you haven't figured it out already I'm talking about Dr. Kahl's test, miraculously the test is 10 pages yet we only have 50 minutes to write these 10 pages.

This was in all of the classes' opinion an impossible test.

There a a few basic rules for a Kahl test:

1. If you start on page one then your already behind, and your'll run out of time.
   
2. If he gives you one page, you'd better write two, and you'll run out of time.
   
3. If you have to read things, you'll run out of time.
4. If you go at your fastest speed you'll run out of time.
   

Well I thought it was a fitting way to end our long stream of mid-terms with one that was simply just not passable so the feeling of doom looms over us constantly. As we all prepare to work hard for the comming week so we may attempt to do well in 3R03, along with finishing the assignments (including yet again an impossible to finish one). We remember that in engineering getting dismal marks is the way it's suppose to be.

My roomate "Maddy" conned me into taking a picture of her, and after one really bad picture (not show here) I managed to catch her in between talking thus giving us Maddy's first photogenic picture! 

So the story goes our house decided to try out grocerygateway since No Frills closed down in Hamilton, being our only source of cheap food we were concerned. After looking for alternatives and how much travel each of these require we decided to give grocery gateway a shot. 

The Grocery Gateway delivery guy commented on how we were his second biggest order today, his biggest order happened to be a Hospital. If you remember last year some of us referred to this place as St. Glenmount's Mental Institution so we're pretty close.

There's the logo GroceryGateway.com 

Apparently at the end of the day we realized some of the food that we ordered wasn't around so here's Greg working hard at making sure he knows exactly where to stab them if need be.

3X03 here we go!!!!!!

Well done the mid-term samples gotta work on two more things before the mid-term but I think I can squeeze it in.

1. Errors where Condition Number = | Rel Forward err / Rel Backward err |
2. QR factorization using A^T A x = A^T b
2. QR factorization using householder equations.

Well hell week will officially begin starting tomorrow. 5 Mid-terms 4 assignments all due within the 2 weeks of each other one of which is Programming Languages course this will not be fun!

Yay more work for me! (sarcasm)

Apparently I forgot my Driver's licence expires at Dec 23, 2004 so you know that means! not only do I have to finish assignments on the weekend. I also gotta arrange for driving lessons from a driving school so I have enough practice in to pass this blasted exam... Joy, so come exam time I have oh let's see 7 subjects to study for and a roadtest sweet! (sarcasm)

This probably won't be my term. Hopefully next term will look brighter.

Crappy marks seem to be the theme this time of year, I know i follow an exponetial curve when it comes to my marks but my recent preformance was pretty depressing. I say this because I base my preformace on those of my peers, meaning if all my peers do crappy then I feel less bad about doing crappy. However this time it seems all my peers did maraculously well and I did crap-tacular. It's really unnerving when you realize that your fellow students did at least 10% better than you in all subjects. Sure there's going to be those that have done worse but I bet anything your really going to have to look long and hard for them.

Anyways just kinda concerned for my educational health now.

3I03 9/20/04 12:13am

I've just completed the lecture slides for the presentation, I've tried to follow some of the philosphy that have been handed down to us in class.

I've tried to keep each line to a minimum, and although in the end I decided to take out most of my half-life 2 comparison for lack of content I'll leave that for if I have enough time.

The current draft 1.0 includes details about lisp and 2 slides on his page of AI. I'll be spending the most time on his AI paradigms it seems.

To me at least it seems most of his interresting work stems from this category, prehaps I can still salvage some of my Half-Life material to do real life comparisons with the theoretical AI. work that JM did.

So the slides have been completed things to do:
1. Get the slides printed at docu center.
2. Start working on speech connectives.

Once again Trail. 

Here's the view you get from the floating bridge below. 

Hmm... have to much going on in your head? Need to read something but can't seem to concentrate? Well here's my ultimate cure the floating bridge. Helps calm the soul (taken behind McMaster on the trail) 

It's a snake! (taken behind McMaster on the trail) 

3I03 9/14/04 11:52 am
Ideas for my speech:
Make sre to state the purpose of your speech within the first few sentances.

Make sure you list at least one application seen today from A.I.
(did he create the framework for valve)

Be sure to include his birth and death dates prehaps who he works with too.

Be sure to prepare filler material.
Construct a tree diagram for yor speech.

Do not forget to introduce yourself!

Play with the idea of role playing, act like this person's comming in.

12:05 pm
Formatting decisions 2 page transparencies.

1st page Introduction to yourself and your person.

2nd page key points of your presentation.

12:11 pm
Consideration of a credits page?

12:12 pm
How a presentation tree might work:
- You can go 'n' levels deep.
- You can choose not to branch off.
- You can build in alternate paths.

12:16 pm
Be sure to find interresting trinkets about your person.

3R03 9/13/04 8:50 am
Kedri is confusing me right now. What does "one person's roof is another's ceiling" mean? I thought the person that has a roof above his head was the same person that has that particular ceiling. I mean you could probably look at your neighbor's roof and have it not be your ceiling but that's a stretch.

I think the point of it was, the higher level in the waterfall design defines what you need to do and the lower levels deal with how. Each upper level defines each lower level's requirements.

9:17 am
things to look forward to: documentation, how to write req.

9/10/04 11:23 am 3I03

found out I read the wrong pages. Realized Shreaz wasn't kidding.



suppose to read VII I read VIII



11:35 am

prof confirmed mistake.



11:39 am

what is ACM?

association of computing machines.



11:40 am

Prof does a self promo.

On his website.



11:51 am

story time begins. David Parnes.



11:54 am

story time ends.



12:03 pm

prof reviews what we were suppose to read.



12:19 pm

class ends

read: 289-300

[SE BLOG]

9/10/04 11:23 am 3I03
found out I read the wrong pages. Realized Shreaz wasn't kidding.
found out was suppose to read VII I read VIII

11:35 am
prof confirmed mistake.

11:39 am
what is ACM?
association of computing machines.

11:40 am
Prof does a self promo.
On his website.

11:51 am
story time begins. David Parnes.

11:54 am
story time ends. Who was parnas?

12:03 pm
prof reviews what we were suppose to read.

12:19 pm
class ends
Gives assigned pages to read: 289-300

[SE BLOG]


9/9/04 3:33 pm
waiting in line for the 3I03 book.


4:08 pm
going to check out wifi site.


11:48 pm
just finished reading 3/4 of the readings really tired and dead now. Not to mention super bored.


11:50 pm
starting final reading.


11:59 pm
Finished final reading. Going to die now.

[SE BLOG]

9/9/04 11:55 am
Went to class.
Was bored.
Wanted to case bodily harm to prof.
11:59 am
Learned about Turnitin program to check against plagerism.
12:00 pm
Learned that attendance is manditory.
12:02 pm
Learned that this prof expects questions.
12:04 pm
Learned that the prf expects feedback: currently thinking this class is too harsh.
12:05 pm
Shocked by the fact you can't miss more than 4 classes. Anything else needs an associate Dean note.
12:07 pm
Added to do list: find associate dean address.
12:10 pm
I'm realizing this could be a tedious course. A very tedious course.
12:14 pm
1101 = 13 unlucky
12:17 pm
Todo added: read text book VIII 1,2,3,4
12:19 pm
First draft will not count to final grade.

And to the roomate that can live off a tub of peanut butter for months at a time (eating nothing else). What better house-warming-welcome-back gift could we give? 

We make reservations for Maddy's favourite restaurant MyThai, but much to our surprise when we get there they aren't ready for us yet. So what do we do? Well we wait sitting on Maddy's other favourite thing... rocks. 

Maddy's surprise Tim Horton's birthday cake! 

No more paying for bus fare we got the power of the Mac free buss pass... (points to Steph that paid $2.10 for a ride)