SFU is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

University drops crosses on coat of arms
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 | 1:59 PM ET
CBC News

Simon Fraser University is getting rid of the two crosses on its coat of arms, saying they sent the wrong message to international students.

The Burnaby-based university is replacing the crosses at the top of the coat of arms with images of open books.

A spokesman for Simon Fraser University says the two crosses on the 40-year-old coat of arms creates 'confusion.'

Warren Gill, SFU's vice-president of university relations, said the crosses created the wrong impression.

"For some people, particularly internationally, the crosses were seen to identify us as a private religious institution as opposed to a secular public one, and a lot of our international folks were getting that back.

"If our name was the University of Burnaby, it probably wouldn't have conveyed the same thing, but named for a person it caused some confusion internationally."

Gill said the new coat of arms will still have the Fraser shield, in honour of explorer Simon Fraser.

He also said the old symbol will remain on the university's buildings.

The current coat of arms was approved in 1965.

The new design has been in the works for 18 months, said Gill, and is expected to be approved by the Canadian Heraldic Authority by May.

I'm so sick and tired of all the BULL SHIT that SFU whips up. You are wiping away what little history that SFU has build up in 40 years just so you can get a few more international students? Why do we need international students who are so stupid that they think SFU is a Christian institution, just because we have two crosses on our crest? Why do we need international students who are that ignorant of the impact of Christianity on western civilization to see past the pair of crosses as religious symbols? Why do we need even more international student who are too wussy to ASK the recruiter about our crest?

SW:Kotor beaten

W00t, I've completed Knights of the Old Republic as the Light side. I have to say, I really enjoyed this game, especially the story. I definitely know how to tweak my character now for my second run through it as the Dark side.

I thing I didn't like though is how useless a lot of the characters are. Blaster become absolutely useless once the game leaves Taris so you will ignore all the non-Jedi characters (with the exception of Zaalbar--that thing is a TANK). This also makes all the armour useless as Jedi robes are so much better for Jedi's. Even so, all the upper class armour gives pitiful dexterity bonuses that it doesn't make sense to use them even if you non-Jedi.

I also had gathered up such a HUGE bunded of items that it got pretty ridiculous--99+ first aid kits for example. Nevertheless, I never would've beaten the game if it wasn't for all the stims I've collected throughout the game. It was only during this last battle that I figured out I can pause the action, go into the item menu, and use an item INSTANTLY!!! OMG I would've NEVER beaten Malak without know this. Hahaha, the whole battle went something like Force Wave/Critical Strike, use a stim/Force Shield/Force Immunity, Force Wave/Critical Strike, use a stim/Force Shield/Force Immunity... ops my character got stunned, use a a med kit :). All the other boss battles were similar, except my Wishdom was high enough with the Star Forge Robes that I can put Bastila on Stasis and whack away at her. Damn Malak's DC is just too high for Stasis.

With the exception that there is too much (slow) walking in certain parts of the game (ahem... Manann Underwater Station and Tatoonie desert), Kotor is great game.

4.330 Semester w00t!!!

Haha yes you DO have a sexy limp; sorry for not going to class but your lectures were just too boring :).

Man 2006 has been a pretty sweet year for me. I got a cool co-op job, survived ACMA, won a whole bunch of contests (Xbox 360, SFU Co-op), and most likely passed 3 SOAs. Hurrrah for me!!!

To a great 2007 and Merry Christmas to everyone :).

Star Trek Legacy

What a shitty game. Why is it so hard to get a decent Star Trek game?!?

It is a stupid simplistic game wrapped up in some pretty graphics; that is it. the gameplay is boring and I have no idea why we don't get to see INSIDE the ships during the cutscenes. Instead, we hear Scott Bakula's ugly voice while the camera pans around the Enterprise... oh I meant the Akira class rip-off. Why did they cripple the skimish mode? Why didn't they allow me to set up the ENEMY fleet for scenarios? Why is sub-system targetting so farked up? Why is there only one shield quadrant and why do shields magically goes back to full power when the hull is at critical? WHY IS THIS GAME SO SUCKY!?!??!!!

EDIT:
So now I've finished the campaign and beat the game. Wow. What a sucky story, not to mention that it makes little sense. Nor the fact that the game is surprising short. And of course, I experienced some of the suckiest gameplay. The campaign can be summed up in something like this: transfer power to weapons, use WSAD to move ship to enemy, warp if desired, then hold left mouse button to fire phasers once target is in range. You can pretty much fire continously since you've transfered all power to the weapons. Oh fire some photons too when there is a red reticle. Lastly, that shoot the planetary debris mission SUCKED ass!

And oh the Borg has no shields!!! Photons eat through their ships like what the rain does to snow in Vancouver.

Ups... and Downs

Ups:
1) I finally for my Xbox 360 in the mail!!! And I'm going to get TWO games instead of ONE because Forza has been delayed.
2) I won $50 bucks from SFU Coop Community!!!
3) I get a sick day!!!


Downs:
1) I had an extraction of my #1 and #16 molars. Owwie...
2) Another firm decided that they don't wanna make me an offer. Damn.

LOL - Sledgehammer + WD40 = BOOM!!!

Man I hope people like him don't live long enough to reproduce.

A weekend of movies

I feel so spoiled.

Instead of studying like all my other SFU buddies, I spent the whole weekend watching movies. As a matter of fact, I'm watching Battlestar Galactica on Dailymotion right now. And in the language of Galactica, it's facking awesome.

Let's do a run down of the film I watched/rewatched:
1) Spaceballs
Some parts of it is cute, borderline funny, though definitely not out right hilarious. Dark Helmet is probably the star of the film. What bugs me though is how Vespan's dress manages to keep her breasts covered, despite always having one shoulder strap down on her arm :).

2) The Returner
Deliver these line in Engrish: "Our most powerful weapons are having no effect!" and "I am on my return." However, if you ignore dumb lines like these and the apparent illogical plot, it's actually a pretty cool gun flick. The one thing that the Japanese know how to do well is transforming X into Y and make it look cool. From Macross to a harrier/747 to a alien space ship in The Return, no one does transformers better than the Japanese.

3) Star Trek: First Contact
Clearly First Contact is the most balanced Trek film of all the Trek films. It has cool action and a good delivery of Roddenbery's vision for the future of humanity. Seeing the warp ship's nacelles extending, Data saying "Resistance is futile", or Worf saying "Assimilate this" before blowing up the deflector dish, just almost makes me want to cheer "Yeah eat that BORG!" I know people always like to make fun of the scene where Lily confronted Picard about his drive for revenge. Personally I thought that scene was great. I think people are just not used to seeing dark side of Picard, who is usually portrayed as the captain that is furthest to the "light" side of the spectrum. I guess I'm just not a true believer of an utopian future. I loved it when DS9 explored the darker sides of humanity and likewise in BSG.

In closing, here is a excerpt from the awesomeness that is BSG:
"Let me be straight with you here. The human race is about to be wiped out. We have 50,000 people left and that's it. Now, if we are even going to survive as a species, then we need to get the hell outta here and we need to start having babies."

Transit Blows

With the recent snowfall and today's fresh snow, I've realized how fragile is the Vancouver transit system! Okay fine, on Monday the Skytrain slowed to a crawl because they were wary of ice on the tracks. It took probably double the amount of time to get from Braid to Gilmore. Granted, the trains began going faster the next day (though still not regular speed), but what they failed is that they ignore the massive influx of new riders due to the snow. Trains running during rush hour are now PACKED!

And today... Man oh man... It took an hour for me to get from Brentwood to Production! The damn train stopped for like 15 minutes between EVERY station along the way. The controller on the train--oh yeah, they started putting a Skytrain attendant on each train now; really I don't know what good he is for, other than making silly announcements. He said that it was because a de-icing train got stuck around Sapperton. Some nutty woman called the cops on the de-icing train because the person inside wasn't wearing a Translink uniform and she was shining lasers in the driver's face. WTF is with that!!!

Finally I got up to SFU, got my quiz (aced it btw... hooray for never going to class!), and got on the 143 to go home. It went down Gagladi no problem but the articulated bus got stuck trying to go up Como Lake LOL! The driver was flooring the beast and it was inching up the hill a bit at a time, not to mention the whole bus was swing back and forth the whole time! As luck would have it, the next 143 caught up with us and picked everyone up. It was one of the new, small, New Flyer buses; I guess Translink made a good investment in those new buses :).

McDonald's puts patent on sandwiches

McDonald's puts patent on sandwiches
Tuesday, November 21, 2006

McDonald's wants to own the rights to how a sandwich is made.

The fast-food chain has applied for a patent relating to the 'method and apparatus' used to prepare the snack.

The burger company says owning the 'intellectual property rights' would help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.

It also wants to cut down on the time needed to put together a sandwich, thought to have been dreamt up by the Earl of Sandwich in 1762.

The 55-page patent, which has been filed in the US and Europe, covers the 'simultaneous toasting of a bread component'.

Garnishes of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, as well as salt, pepper and ketchup, are inserted into a cavity in a 'sandwich delivery tool'.

The 'bread component' is placed over the cavity and the assembly tool is inverted to tip out the contents. Finally, the filling is placed in the 'bread component'.

It explains: 'Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich.'

Lawrence Smith-Higgins, of the UK Patent Office, said: 'McDonald's or anyone else cannot get retrospective exclusive rights to making a sandwich.

'They might have a novel device, but it could be quite easy for someone to make a sandwich in a similar way without infringing their claims.'

McDonald's said: 'These applications are not intended to prevent anyone from using previous methods for making sandwiches.'

It's either this story or the China jails porn site operator for life story. I decided this one is more amusing :). Oh what the hey, let's blog both!

Porn Site Operator Jailed in China
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 22, 2006; 12:11 PM


BEIJING -- The creator of China's largest pornographic Web site was jailed for life on Wednesday, state media reported.

Xinhua News Agency said judges at the Taiyuan Intermediate People's Court in Shanxi province gave the life sentence to Chen Hui and handed down terms of 13 months to 10 years to eight others after they were convicted of profiting from pornographic dissemination.

Chen, 28, and his accomplices started the Qingseliuyuetian (Pornographic Summer) Web site in 2004, and opened a further three porn Web sites, attracting more than 600,000 users.

Xinhua reported that police said it was difficult to know the exact amount of profits the Web site earned. Police found about 200,000 yuan ($25,000) in the bank accounts of the nine.

When the site was closed in October last year, it contained more than 9 million pornographic images and articles, the police said.

China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users after the United States, with more than 123 million people online.

The government encourages Internet use for education and business, but strictly controls content and tries to block access to material deemed pornographic or subversive.

The guy seems like such a small time; he probably just pissed off the wrong guy. Poor fool.

New iPod Shuffle

Mmmm... I saw a girl with the new iPod Shuffle on the bus yesterday. Definitely very small and snazzy.

Son yeh Jin - Art of Seduction

OMG she looks so hot in this movie!!!




The sort of gold I've been missing out on due to things like M :(. Anyone with the flick :)?

Stupidity

I thought today was Wednesday so I went up to SFU after work. Below is a list of alarm bells I missed:
1) See Julie at Production station when I've never seen her there before
2) The assignment box let out a crisp *clunk when I dropped in my assignment, indicating that the box was strangely empty.
3) Class was strangely empty.


*Sigh...

Remembrance Day

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


Canadian Deaths in Afghanistan to date:
Bombardier Myles Mansell
Capt. Nichola Goddard
Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer
Cpl. Andrew James Eykelenboom
Cpl. Anthony Boneca
Cpl. Bryce Jeffrey Keller
Cpl. Christopher Jonathan Reid
Cpl. David Braun
Cpl. Francisco Gomez
Cpl. Glen Arnold
Cpl. Jamie Brendan Murphy
Cpl. Jason Patrick Warren
Cpl. Keith Morley
Cpl. Matthew Dinning
Cpl. Paul Davis
Cpl. Randy Payne
Cpl. Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger
Cpl. Robert Thomas James Mitchell
Cpl. Shane Keating
Diplomat Glyn Berry
Lt. William Turner
Master Cpl. Jeffrey Scott Walsh
Master Cpl. Raymond Arndt
Master Cpl. Timothy Wilson
Pte. Blake Williamson
Pte. Braun Scott Woodfield
Pte. David Byers
Pte. Josh Klukie
Pte. Kevin Dallaire
Pte. Mark Anthony Graham
Pte. Nathan Smith
Pte. Richard Green
Pte. Robert Costall
Pte. William Jonathan James Cushley
Sgt. Craig Paul Gillam
Sgt. Darcy Tedford
Sgt. Marc D. Leger
Sgt. Robert Alan Short
Sgt. Shane Stachnik
Sgt. Vaughn Ingram
Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson
Warrant Officer Frank Robert Mellish
Warrant Officer Richard Francis Nolan


Lest we forget.
...

Cannery Fish House

Wow is that place crazy expensive or what! If it wasn't raining, the view of the stars would've been magnificent. The waiters were kinda weird though.

Exam M (again)!!!

29/40 on SOA key!!! Passed! w00t!!! But it looks like I guess wrong on every question I guessed and then some. Sucks.

Oh well, time to start studying for C.

Exam M!!!

I woke up today at around 5:15am. It was too early; my alarm haven't even went off yet. I tried to get another 45 minutes of sleep but it didn't work that well. Since my mom wasn't up yet, I just drank a glass of milk and nuked a little rice dumpling thing that I found in the fridge before I left. The stupid Westcoast Express website is wrong! An add-fare costs $3.75--a whole $1.50 more!!! I took the Westcoast Express to downtown and spent 4 hours in a room being tortured by Exam M. I'm pretty sure I passed; at least I did according to the PAK. I'll know for sure when the exam gets released later tonight. I literally LOL-ed when I saw "actuarial idol". Those crazy bastards in the SOA :).

iTunes v7.0.2

I finally decided to go to iTunes 7. I had the slightest hope that it will be able to pick up the album arts of my all my Chinese music, and of course, iTunes failed miserably--though it managed to get Ivana's first album's cover. Hmmm.

So here I am contemplating whether I should invest in the CRAZY amount time needed to put album art on all my 187 albums. Some of them will be impossible because I really have no clue what CD some of my classical stuff is from. Nevertheless, it would be so cool if I can scroll through cover flow with all the album art!!!

Oh wtf... iTunes 7 can't sync Outlook 2k to my iPod!!! It needs 2k3??!?! Damn you Apple!!!

Friends & A glass of Keith's

W00t that was a fun night. Congrats to all my accountant friends for their jobs; hopefully I can rebute by getting a internship at FFIC.

PICK ME!!!


Next beer to try:
Moosehead
Heineken
Carlsburg

Beers that suck:
Kokanee
Guiness (too bitter, no sweetness... kinda like Chinese medicine)

Personal Interests on Resume

I'm never taking this section out. I just had a pretty cool interview where we mostly talked about the Canucks and Magic. We also chatted about living in Vancouver vs living in the "The Center of the Universe". It was also my first telephone interview and I think it went pretty well :).

It's strange; I had two interviews in two days and both of them started with the interviewer fishing for my questions. Therefore, research people, research!!!

Olbermann on the military commisions act

Damn I need to watch the news more. How did I miss something like this?

"Hello my name is Keiko..."

Hello
Hello my name is Keiko and I live in Tokyo in Japan. I have a nice apartment in Ochanomizu and you are welcome to stay with me if you are UNDER 35 and YOU ARE NICE LOOKING and YOU ARE WHITE. You can save your hotel cost (a lot in Tokyo!) and we can have fun! – but ONLY if you are a white guy. I do not want asian men, sorry.

What do you get?
You can stay at my apartment – very nice - it will be living at home for you, only I may be your girlfriend. hehe. I have a nice bed what is very comfortable – and I also have TV (cable ) you can watch English language TV.

...

What do I get??
I can have some fun sex with Europen, and American guys… what I love – they are very sexy and yummy! - Japanese men are pigs. Also, I want to practise my English with you, please.

For full details, please visit http://www.keikos-homepage.jp/funtime.htm

I'm THE GOD of contests!

Booyeah!!!

Raymond, way to go!

You have been selected as a potential winner in the PEPSI® and DORITOS® WIN* EVERY HOUR Promotion! That means you could be the winner of an Xbox 360™ Game System Console including one Xbox 360™ Forza Motorsport™ 2 Game . In order to be verified as a winner, and claim the prize, you will have to complete the following steps within 4 days of this email notification being sent:

1. Please visit http://www.winEVERYhour.ca/claim
2. Enter the following Prize Redemption Code: *censored*
3. Enter your email address and password.
4. Correctly answer the mathematical skill-testing question.
5. Agree to and accept the online Release Forms.
6. Hold onto your original PIN Code, as you may need to submit it for Verification purposes.

Once you have correctly answered the skill-testin g question and accepted the online release form, we will do one final verification check, which may require you to provide us with the original PEPSI® product label or case, or DORITOS® or LAY'S® product bag containing the unique PIN code or the No Purchase PIN email that you used to enter the contest *censored* and/or proof of identification. You should receive an email within three (3) business days confirming if you are a verified winner. Then all that's left is to receive the prize that you chose to enter for!

Please allow approximately 8 to 10 weeks for verification and shipment of your prize.

Please keep this email for your records.

Sincerely,

The PEPSI® and DORITOS® WIN EVERY HOUR Team

What I've won:
- 20GB 4th generation iPod
- Bunch of Ubisoft Xbox games and headset; sold for ~$120 on eBay
- Free game from eVGA; dinged by customs, package rejected
- T-shirt from ATI
- Maxell toque and earbuds; the earbuds are absolute crap by the way

and now, a Xbox 360 which I'm hoping to flip for at least a cool $450 :).

Roh 'cool' on N Korea threat

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- -- South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has called for a "cool-headed and stern" response to North Korea's threat to conduct a nuclear test, his office said.

Roh made the remark after being briefed on the outcome of an emergency meeting of security ministers, the presidential office said. It was Roh's first comment since North Korea said Tuesday it would test a nuclear bomb at an unspecified date. (Leaders divided on NK nuke threat)

Further details on Roh's comments were not immediately available.

Earlier in the day, South Korea urged the North to withdraw the test plan and return to international disarmament talks on its nuclear program, warning a test could bring about a "shift" in inter-Korean relations.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho stressed Seoul is not considering abandoning its engagement policy with North Korea.

"There could be a shift in our policy toward North Korea if North Korea conducts a test, but that doesn't mean at all that we're going to abandon our engagement policy."

South Korea has consistently pursued dialogue with North Korea since their leaders first met in a historic summit in 2000. That approach has caused a rift with Washington that favors a harder line toward the communist regime.

Seoul is one of the main aid providers to the impoverished North.

North Korea said Tuesday that it would conduct a nuclear explosion to prove the country is a nuclear power. Pyongyang has since last year claimed it has atomic bombs, but hasn't performed any known test to verify that.

South Korea urged the North to renounce the test plan and immediately return to six-party talks on its nuclear program.

"We express grave concern and regret," said Choo, after the country held an emergency meeting of security ministers. "If North Korea pushes ahead with a nuclear test, North Korea should take full responsibility for all consequences."

The North's statement further spiked the already high tension in the region in the wake of the North's test-firing of a series of missiles in July.

Six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program have been stalled since November last year as Pyongyang refuses to attend in anger over U.S. efforts to cut off the North's access to international banking over the country's alleged financial wrongdoing. The talks involve China, Japan, Koreas, Russia and the United States.

The North's announcement prompted South Korea to raise its security level and spurred strong condemnation from countries around the world. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a North Korean nuclear test would be "a very provocative act."

The North Korean nuclear crisis flared in late 2002 after Washington accused the North of running a clandestine atomic bomb program in violation of its pledge not to do so. Pyongyang denies the claim.

The two Koreas are still technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. But their relations warmed significantly after the 2000 summit.

Oh my... where are the updates!??!

Short and sweet answer is that I've been so BOGGED down with work that I haven't had the time nor the mood to blog.

Finally after a whole friggin month, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But nope, back to square one we go! Haha it's not that bad but the next week or two will be hell. Study for M, get all stress out at work, and cramp pointless BUS 312 stuff into my head before the midterm = Fun^2!!! After November 7, I swear it will be nothing be booze and hockey for a whole week.

Pepsi hourly contest is back! Last time I was busy with ACMA, and this time I'm busy with M and work. I think I can sneak in entries during work though so maybe I'll win something this round.

Actually I think I'm making good progress on M. I've pwned the loss model and poisson process stuff and it's mostly the life con that I'm still having trouble with. Damn you multiple decrement models!!!


戴佩妮 - iPenny
Awesome album. Better than her last one. Songs are warm and cute.

Police: Intruder strangled by nurse was hit man

PORTLAND, Ore. - When Susan Kuhnhausen returned home from work one day earlier this month, she encountered an intruder wielding a claw hammer. After a struggle, the 51-year-old nurse fended off her attacker by strangling him with her bare hands.

Neighbors praised the woman for her bravery, and investigators said they believed the dead man — Edward Dalton Haffey — was burglarizing Kuhnhausen’s home.

But after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband — Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. — to kill her.

The 58-year-old husband was taken into custody Thursday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. He was ordered held on $500,000 bail.

Haffey had worked as a custodian under Kuhnhausen at an adult video store, according an affidavit filed by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office.

Kuhnhausen and his wife were in the process of getting a divorce, and she told officers “her husband was distraught about the divorce and wanting to reconcile but that she was insisting on the divorce,” the affidavit states.

A background check showed Haffey had served lengthy prison terms for conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and convictions for robbery and burglary.

Inside a backpack Haffey left at the scene was a day planner with “Call Mike, Get letter,” scribbled on the week of Sept. 4, the affidavit said. Michael Kuhnhausen’s cell phone number was jotted on the inside of a folder, it said.

An emergency room nurse who lives in a southeast Portland neighborhood, Susan Kuhnhausen arrived home on the evening of Sept. 6 to find Haffey coming at her with a claw hammer.

She was struck in the head and wrested the weapon away, but the struggle continued and Haffey bit the nurse, according to police. A large woman, she was eventually able to get the slight Haffey into a chokehold and police later found him dead in a hallway. An autopsy revealed the cause of death as strangulation.

Police say she acted in self-defense.

There was no sign of forced entry into the home, but according to the affidavit, Susan Kuhnhausen offered an explanation for the lack of evidence of a break-in: Her estranged husband had the security codes for the home’s alarm system, and would have been able to disarm it.

Michael Kuhnhausen denies any involvement, the affidavit states.

Susan Kuhnhausen was out of town attending a nursing conference and did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

She left this message on her voicemail: “I’m not able to answer all the calls that I’ve received in the past few days. I’m being comforted by your concern and your support. I want you to know that our lives are all at risk for random acts, but more likely random acts of love will come your way than random acts of violence.”

PWNED!!!! LOL

FLOOD!!!

Just when I thought my week wouldn't get anymore exciting. First of all there was a big car crash outside my office which mangled up the front of an Echo completely, and now THIS. I wasn't looking forward to today because I knew I wasn't going to get it done on time and I would have to lose a weekend of studying.

So I got to my office and saw the ceiling all bulged out and it was dripping water on to the carpet. There was already a pretty big wet spot (60cm in diameter maybe?) when I saw it so it must've been going on for a few hours. It was only 8 or so I decided to wait before I call somebody about it, but someone else noticed it before I remembered. Haha I was surprised it took that long actually...

So it went drip, drip, drip while I worked on my thing. Man I feel bad for the plumber guy that came in. The guy he was working with can't speak English to save his life; haha maybe this whole thing got started because of it. Anyways I heard the plumber said, "...I'm not sure where the water is gonna go...," and then GUSH!!! Water started pouring out from the ceiling; the guy was swearing and shit. When I saw droplets on my monitor and I turned to see that my papers were all soaked, I decided to walk alway from my cubical.

"GET ME A FLAT HEAD SCREW DRIVER!!! NOT THIS, A FLAT HEAD?!??!" As I watched, the carpet reached its absorption limit and water began accumulating. Shit! I quickly jumped back in, hit ctrl-s and held the power button long enough for my damn machine sitting on the carpet to shut down. I grabbed my bag up from the floor and put it on to my desk, shoved my iPod into the drawer, and covered up the financial statements with a calendar. By now there is a crowd gathering and I was trapped in the corner by the waterfall. The guy who can't speak English had ran off to try to shut off the water and plumber guy was wrestling with whatever beast that's in the ceiling while yelling "FUCK!!! YOU SON OF A BITCH!!! SOMEONE GOT A PHONE!?! GET ME A FLAT HEAD SCREWDRIVER!!!" The guy was completly drenched and the ladder he was standing on didn't look too stable; he was leaning well into the ceiling and was putting all of his weight on one corner of the top step. By now the water is flowing towards the filing cabinets.

We moved some computers up to higher ground and then someone pulled the fire alarm so we evacuated the building. From what I heard, the water soaked all the way through to the first floor and someone slipped on the way out and got injured as well. Ugh.

And of course, was it really just water? Some got my lip and it tasted pretty bitter. Moreover, when I got back to my desk, my soaked papers had a brown tint to them. On the other hand, the water didn't smell funny at all and it was also quite clear. Anyways, enough speculating and I should just go get a shower.


Oh yeah, I got my VSO pass today!

Weird long day

Woke up. Had breakfast: instant noodle and a glass of milk. Lunch: 2 cookies, estimated diameter 7cm. Drank about 500mL of water. And I just had dinner at 10:30pm.

Bus 312 is soooo stupid. The prof just follows the book pretty much exactly, including the exact examples. I guess that's because he wrote the damn book (AKA 'electronic book') himself. And what's with how he keeps repeating himself!!! Here's my paraphase:

"How do we measure the performance of an investment? The IRR. Internal rate of return. That is, the return that our investment is actually earning, the internal rate of return, when compared with the financial market. This is call the IRR, or the internal rate of return. So let's now go through an example of calculating the internal rate of return..."

OMG!

Working too much

I've been spending way too much time at the office.

Now that is out the way, OMG my funds lost ~$200 in one day of trading! Booooo :(.

CRA is making me mail in stuff. Bastard. Luckily I got a free stamp off my optometrist's reminder post card ;). Nevertheless I'll be still out on postage because I need to mail my confirmation of enrollment stuff as well. Bastard.

周杰倫 - 依然范特西 - 3/5
I don't like it. There I said it. I've listened to this CD like ten times and that's my final verdict. There are few songs that are pretty soothing, like track 1 and 2, but it lacks the ballads like I like. And is it just me or do some of the tracks reuse old melodies as their intro? Why did Jay Zhou get all these different people to sing for him? I digg the name though; that's gotta be a poke at all those who say his music doesn't change.

CCP being stupid... again.

國際比賽發生北京隊搶我國旗 北市府:嚴正抗議 要求道歉

正在泰國舉辦的少年運動會，台灣代表隊拿下3面金牌，頒獎典禮上，台灣選手披著中華民國國旗受獎，主辦單位沒有禁止，但是大陸代表隊卻動力搶下國旗，擔任領隊的台北市副市長金溥聰質問對方，「難道一定要使用暴」，大陸選手竟然回答「沒錯」。

這是台灣小選手李亞雯，在泰國曼谷的國際少年運動會上，拿下跆拳道金牌的光榮時刻。你看清楚，當台北市副市長金溥聰頒獎給他的同時，李亞雯身上，就披著青天白日滿地紅的中華民國國旗。

披國旗領獎很風光，但看在大陸北京代表隊眼中，卻很刺眼，當場就在頒獎典禮上用搶的，把中華民國國旗給搶走。

代表團團長，台北市副市長金溥聰，對北京的動作很生氣，立刻質問大陸選手，難道暴力是你們唯一選擇，大陸選手竟然回答「YES」，所以金溥聰立刻向大會抗議，同時要求北京代表隊要公開道歉。

經過連夜協商，主辦單位希望各參賽國都不要再帶國旗進場，只是兩岸的角力，總是連體育賽事，都無法避免。

Damn CCP bastards; show some class!!! Worst of all, this is a kid's competition. According to ICG, the competitors are children aged 12 to 15 for crying out loud! Running out of the stands to rip the Taiwanese flag off the shoulders of a gold medalist while she was receiving her medal is just absolutely repulsive in my eyes.

Until the sad, sad day of the CCP invasion, and the fall of the Republic of China, this crap just should not happen. They have no right.

First Grouse Grind

I went on my first Grouse Grind today. Damn it was tough--and I was crazy enough to carry a backpack with a five pound textbook! The trail just kept going and going. When I saw the 1/4 sign I was already pretty hard pressed to keep going. I drank half of my water before the 1/2 way mark and I started rationing myself. Note to self: 650ml of water is NOT enough. Though I did do something smart in the water department; I jacked a pack of salt from the Waterfront food court and added it to my bottle. After the 1/2 way mark it got pretty crazy steep and I felt both of my calves cramping: first my right then my left and I had to rest like five minutes. I should've bought more water and I need to get fitter.

I sweated so much; my head was floating; my entire t-shirt was drenched. My jeans were covered with dirt and so much crap came off my hands when I washed them at at the top. My bag turned pretty dirty too, and I really should wash my water bottle. I was using my hands to push my way up certain rocks and my hand went straight back to my water bottle. At the top we watched the lumberjack show along with all the tourists before heading back down. We thought about what to eat and decided to take the 160 back to Eagle Ridge for some Burger King. EXCEPT, sly Josh kept making us change our minds and we ended up back at Coquitlam Station. We went separate ways afterward, with me going to meet up with my mom. I bought her dinner and i replenish my strength by ordering a steak at China Palace. Of course she was giving my bad looks for eating meat that is not well-done... ugh.

I think my legs are going to kill me tomorrow :(.

UBC Walking Tour

Spent most of Saturday walking around UBC and watched a match of soccer with Josh and his friend Carson--Manchester raped New York.

I haven't went to UBC since the Physics Olympics. They have cheaper donairs than SFU, but the same crappy BBT, though cheaper. I guess you can't win them all.

Advertise on ME!!!

Oh man these Mainland torrent sites are just going nuts! At the beginning of the last episode 康熙來了 that I downloaded, there is an explicit ad inserted by the torrent server, looking for companies to put their ads in its shows. It even posted a price and everything. This of course, already ignores all the CRAP the server puts in the torrent file already. Thank god you can select which files to download with most clients--utorrent kicks ass by the way. OMG that is just crazy! You are going to hijack someone else's content and inserting your own ads?!?! You expect a respectable business will side with you and associate their name with this practice? Oh wait. This is China.


----------------------------------------

I wrote Exam P today. The questions were harder than I expected. There were a lot of variance calculations which were long and tedious. I supposed if maybe if you recognize the distribtions you can do it faster? I had to guess four. One was a probability question, one was a nasty integral that I had to do by parts twice if I bothered, one was an MGF that looked waaay nasty to differentiate twice, and I don't remember the rest. ARGH the SOA is SO GAY! I randomedly guessed all the leftover questions when I had three minutes left. During that time I had a last minute eureka on an integral and got the answer 5/36 on my calculation. WTF it's still wrong?!?! Then the damn "You've ran out of time popped up. And then I saw the answer 10/72. FUCK YOU SOA!!!! FUCK YOU!!! WTF man... And yes I didn't guess right for that question.

The testing experience actually sucked ass. The proctor probably isn't from the SOA and he didn't check anyone's calculator. I don't understand why we had to use their stupid blue Thompson Prometric HB pencils. Fuck HB pencils man! The got dull and nasty after like ten questions. I NEED mechanical pencils. And what's with making us stare at a low refresh rate CRT monitor for 3 hours with only like 30cm between my face and the screen? Bring back paper exams please SOA!!!

Space: Above and Beyond

I'm now the proud owner of the complete first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond--in TV rip. The quality is decent, probably off digital cable from Sci-Fi Channel, but I wish the sound is a little bit better. Gah! Must fight temptation to blow $50 + tax on the DVD set. I watched the first three episode so far, and man, some of the CGI are pretty cheesy, especially the Mars scene :). Nevertheless, it is still an absolutely kick ass show and everyone should watch it. I still remember the first time I saw it. It was waaaay back when SPACE was still good and it was free because Rogers (yeah, Rogers) is doing this preview thing for channels forty-four to fifty-something. I was channel flipping on a late night and BLAM it hit me like the first time I saw "In the Pale Moonlight". I don't remember what episode but the show resonated with me immediately. I wish there is still this sort of sci-fi on TV. Stargate is great but it's pretty light hearted. Battlestar Galactica *looks like it's on par with SAAB but it's not on basic cable. Global showed two episodes of it a while back; I wonder what the hell happened to it?

陶[吉吉] ~ 太美麗
It's 陶[吉吉] so enough said already. Great shit. Though I was surprise to hear Jolin (yes, it's THAT Jolin) on his album. And I really think he should lose lines like "XXX is in the house" and "I'm gonna take you back, all the way back... old school style!". That second line ALMOST make me literally, laugh out loud.

Seaons Hilltop Bistro

Wow! What a friggin amazing view. It's like 10x better than the foggy mess of Horizons up Burnaby Mountain. I gotta go back to this place sometime in the future.

http://www.vancouverdine.com/seasons/home.html

This is just so sad :(

B.C. man building school killed in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 | 10:13 AM PT
CBC News

A Vancouver carpenter has been killed in northern Afghanistan, where he had been completing construction of a school he had been working on for the past four years.

Mike Frastacky, 56, was shot to death on Sunday in a home he was staying at in the town of Nahrin.

Mike Frastacky had been building a school in Nahrin in northern Afghanistan. His sister, Luba Frastacky of Toronto, told CBC Radio on Tuesday that Canadian Foreign Affairs officials said her brother was shot three times in the head.

She said he knew it was particularly dangerous in northern Afghanistan this summer, and that there was talk of a $10,000 bounty being offered for the death of a Westerner.

She said her brother, who had been there since mid-June, had planned to cut this year's visit short because of the danger.

Frastacky also said the Vancouver carpenter was doing what he wanted to do by building and equipping the school.

"It was his sort of mission, I think. He found a need and he filled it by giving education to all the young people in the area."

Frastacky said her brother had discovered the community while trekking in the mountains where he met a guide whose family owned property in Nahrin.

He paid for the project with his own money and by collecting small donations from friends and family.

Nearly 600 students now attend the school.

But let's end on a cheery note: Avril Lavigne is a pretty hot bride.

Plan for New PC

My New PC budget (includes taxes)

mobo - $70
This is one is already finalized. I picked up a used eVGA NF41 from RFD at this price.

CPU - $210
I am aiming for the 3800+ X2. I think this price is NOT unreasonable once Conroe hits on July 23 because the current rumor is that AMD will slash the 3800+ X2 to ~$160 USD.

BOUGHT!!! $169.99 * 1.13 = $192.09 :) SWEETNESS! Decided to splurge on an Arctic Cooling 64 Pro cooler as well. Add $28.17 * 1.13 = $31.83

Video Card - $120
Looking for a used low-mid range card. Something like a X700/X800 or a 6600GT.

Bought a used Powercolor X700 for $70.

PSU - $70
I'll need a new PSU for sure because my old POS only has 12A on the 12V rail. I'll probably get an Antec SmartPower2.0 400W or an Enermax 380W - dual fan goodness ;).

BOUGHT! Fortron 400W - $42.57 * 1.13 = $48.10

HD - $100
I think I'll get a Samsung 250GB because all the reviews say it's really quiet. Ideally I want to get it used at $80. It's also pointless to consider the smaller drives because the saving is like nothing. Truth is I don't need that much HD space AT ALL; maybe I can find a 160GB for $60 by July.

Update: bought Samsung 160GB SATA2 drive from NCIX, $67.79 after 13% tax :).

RAM - $0
Planning to use my brother's RMA-ed TigerDirect stick; maybe I'll upgrade to 2x 512mb and run dual channel when the whole world goes to DDR2 and DDR becomes dirt cheap. I don't really need 1GB of ram; screw Vista.

Optical drive - $0?
Still thinking if I should buy my dad a DVD burner.

Update @ 7/15/06: bought a used Lite-On off RFD for $30.


Total spent: $509.81

What a shitty day

I dropped my U-Pass!!! Argh do I want to pay $20 for another one on Monday? I already had to waste $2.25 for the trip home today... Grrr. Today was also hot as hell as well. Supposedly, it is going to 'feel' like 41 Celcious. OMG!!! 41!!! Celcious!!! Oh I got a huge pile of work as well, not to mention I wasted quite a bit of time this afternoon thinking about why the number of members in an union of two sets is greater than the sum of members in those two sets, when it actually made perfect sense (but only in that context).

Oh AMD dual core price cuts are here!!! 3800+ X2 is currently at $189.99 at NCIX. I'll wait for ATIC and Anitec's prices before I buy.

Reformatted

So what did I get when I turned on my computer this morning? A fucking blue screen about stop 0x000007b! Looks like that bastard VIA IDE miniport driver finally decided to blow up on me after I tried to remove it manually from the drivers folder last night. Fuck. I made sure my drive didn't die by running SpinRite and then proceeded to repair install.

It did jack shit to the problem.

So the dreaded c: partition needs to be reformated. I wanted to backup my document and settings folder first, but thought that would be too much trouble. I would have to take the drive up, plug it into my dad's machine and hope Windows won't scream about missing permissions. Overall, I think it went well. I reinstalled and updated all the key things: Office, SP2, drivers, Acrobat, Messenger, Paint Shop, media players, etc. Except it took forever to generate a key using a 350mhz machine. I thought things were going to be smooth until I realized I had lost all my Outlook contacts, my calendar, and my iTunes database!!!!!! Crap fuck shit!!! I thought I could recover my contacts and calendar by importing them from the files on my iPod but damn Outlook doesn't seem to like them. It imports them but nothing shows up!

Gah my beautiful iTunes... The biggest problem is that my hard drive and my iPod are completely out of sync. There are a lot songs that are only my iPod but not on my drive. I think I'll wait for my new computer to get setup before I try to consolidate my iTunes--pulling 13gb of music through a USB 1.1 pipe is NOT my idea of fun.

I PASSED FM!!!

w00t I passed!!! At first I was like fuck where the hell is 31800?!?! Shit I didn't pass?!?!?! I quickly ripped apart all the zippers of my backpack and found my admission ticket, realized that my candidate number is 31008, and that I had passed!

I also finally got my candidate number for Exam P and registered for the 2:00pm slot on August 16. Thanks to the poster who posted an email address on Actuarial Outpost.

I'm actually very horrified by my schedule next semester. With Acma425, I'll have to work until ~6:00 everyday--not to mention the two nights with Bus312. On those nights I won't get home until ~9:30 and I'll probably collapse. And I still have to study for Exam M.

Too Much Syrah

A whole bottle between three people. Man I don't think I've ever drank so much. My head is absolutely throbbing right now.

It was a nice dinner though, best wishes to your future position at Mercer :) :) :).

SOA results in two days--gawd I'm nervous. I'm pretty sure I passed but man... what if I didnt?!?!

Actuarial Junk Mail Count: 4

OMG SOA must be selling the names and addresses of its exam candidates. Friggin bastards.

Loss Models

TRY AND BEAT THIS PRICE BITCHES!!!



$52.56 CAD


Oh photocopying doesn't count.

Still Alive

Weird. I thought after the BBQ today I would puke my guts out. Food safe be damned. Thank heavens for the human immune system.

Haha can you believe this email?

Hello,
the late fees were posted to your account because of the system; I could explain but I don't think you would care why , isn't it ?

Thank you for letting us know, I did reverse the penalty and if you incur more in the future, just let me know and I will take care of it.

Actually I AM interested at why the lousy system screwed up; in particular, I'm interested in figuring out who the heck did SFU (over)paid to setup this broken system. And why was this email not sent to my SFU email but the email I used when I first registered for SFU?

Wow man I feel like a pig. I spent so much money this month. Even after ignoring the mobo, I went way over budget (37.5% to exact). Though most of them are really gifts for people... hmmm.

Summer Nose Bleed Count: 2

It was a minor bleed, but I decided to count it anyways. I went downtown to get chocolates as planned. I bought 6 boxes of hedgehogs and a bucket of assorted, or 1280g of chocolate; total was ~$23. Good deal says my mom.

I got chapter 5 of Probably Models copied for free; daaaym I'm smart ;).

Summer Nose Bleed Count: 1

Damn you SFU. I can't believe they didn't just reverse the stupid interest charged for my award. They have to "investigate further" before reversing it. They better resolve this before I have to pay the deposit because I know as soon as I pay that $3 of interest, I'll be screwed; I'll never see it back.

Haha I saw Peter on FTV today. He's being interviewed for PNE. I also saw Erica, some girl I remember from one of my business class... 251 tutorial I think?

OMG I dropped my iPod.

Raymond's iPod was left undamaged today after hitting the hard pavement outside Braid Skytrain Station. It happened at approximately 5:30pm. After having disembarked from a skytrain, he saw the unexpected image of the 159 Poco Station bus. Excited, he rushed down the stairway while weaving through a crowd of slow moving people. At ground level, he broke into a jog and disaster struck. His iPod flew out of his vest pocket, leaving the earbuds still anchored to his ears. THUD! It landed screen first. His heart skipped, though he quickly picked up his iPod, noted that the LCD was still displaying the information of the current track, and ran into the waiting bus.

He was scared as he plugged his earbuds into the iPod's headphone jack, but was relieved when music began blasting his eardrums. There was no damage to the screen. Raymond believes his iPod was unscathed largely due to his iPod's silicon case, along with Apple's ingenuity.

China - from Justin

Yesterday I went to Justin's house to pick up the shirt he bought for me in China. He showed me all the pictures that he took and we had a nice long conversation about our motherland. There are for sure a lot of "problems" in China. The poverty gap is very apparent. On one hand, there are people living in crappy concrete/brick boxes with mouse turd on their beds. But on the other, you have people living in high rises with a $300 RMB maintenance fee (most people make ~1000 RMB a month). Pollution is very bad in the cities. In all of his pictures of the cities, you can't see the blue sky at all. It is basically a grayish brown NO2 haze during the day and his night shots look like the result of a Photoshop blur filter. He told me stories of how his families and coworkers were all amazed by pictures of the blue Vancouver sky on his laptop. I think the people there are just ignorant because of all the censorship that goes on in China. Apparently they are lucky enough to get HK news. BUT, it is dubbed, traditional changed to simplified, and censored! Whenever an "inappropriate" story is about to air, it will get cut off, and a totally different news clip will get inserted, with a different anchor and a different set! The Internet there is also censored as everyone should know. Haha, he had such a hard time with the Internet. In additional to all the 404s, he had weird people who kept trying to add him to their MSN.

I think the biggest thing that irked him is the whole facade that the CCP maintains to glue it's regime together. He volunteered at some government organization that visits orphanages, senior homes, and other needy places during his stay. Everything there was for show; everyone was there for the final photo op. Most of the effort was spent setting up the donated goods, the food, moving children to the right places, etc., and then *click! Immediately after that, everyone runs away and some even with the stuff that they supposedly "donated". At his office, everyone was so relaxed; the guys play MMORPGs and the girls eat junk food and talk on their cellphones. Communist complacency at its best, though government jobs here are just as bad ;).

Anyways there are some good things: cheap counterfeit goods :). He showed me some of the funniest pictures, like a fake Chinese Echo and a fake Benz haha.

CD reviews

范瑋琪 - 我們的紀念日
Another GREAT album by Fan, though her last one is slightly better. But seriously, her last one was sooo good, with songs like 如果的是, that this is to be expected. My biggest peeve about this album is the last song: it's terrible mess of stupid lyrics and a lousy percussion track. Oh in one of the songs, there is a background vocal that says "Ooooh la la" , which made me burst out laughing the first time I heard it.

謝安琪 - Ksus2
Something good from HK? I guess it's still possible ;). Great lyrics.

Another Week

Man this blog is turning into a weekly journal.

Hmm, I guess this wasn't a bad week. Work is tiring but bearable; even though it's a big stack of stuff, at least I am progressing through them a bit at a time. I have a nasty habit of being stupid, which causes me to crawl along tasks at a snail's pace and making me frustrated. I really should slow down and think before charging into a task, think about how to "get Excel to work for me instead of me working for Excel". On Friday we went to Fish on Rice for lunch; I don't know why they kept calling it Sushi on Rice. The building looks pretty delapidated but the food was cheap and the portions were big. Service was slow, however. The seafood udon was not bad, but I wish they would use more seafood than just salmon cubes, three pawns, and a cuttlefish.

Weekend was spent watch football. I watched the entire Sweden vs Trinidad and Tobago match on Saturday morning. Trinidad's defense was excellent; I really liked the plays of Edward Carlos, Whitney, and Yorke. Hislop, their keeper, was also spectacular and robbed what otherwise would have been a beautiful goal by Wilhelmsson. Great game. Tried getting Joyce to watch Cars together but no luck--ended up BT-ing it. The rest of my weekend was about moving tables and cleaning my basement. See flickr for photos of my new work area. It's pretty gnarly and spiffy, especially with the chess set ;).

Oh I almost forgot. I played quite a bit of Total War as well. And it FARKING SUCKS MONKEY BALLS!!! My king will always die the turn after my last save and my oldest heir is only 12. That means civil war and kissing half of my empire good bye. Who the fuck designed this game!!??!?!

Also check out flickr for my new Logitech Flight Force Force Feedback joystick!



$9.99 at XS Cargo on Lougheed and Westwood. It says 'for Playstation 2' but it works fine on the PC; basically it is the Wingman Force 3D but for much cheaper!

Eventful Weekend

I am feeling that I am falling behind in work. I have three tasks piled up at the moment. My biggest peeve right now is that there is just no end in sight for the quarterly report: I'm missing data; my numbers aren't balancing, though that might be due to the missing data; and I still can't exactly see what the end IS yet--and this thing is supposed to be on RUSH. As for the other two tasks, I'm not too worried about them--I think I can finish them both in a day, though that's assuming everything I've done so far is correct. Gawd please balance!

Anyways this was a pretty good weekend--up til the ride home on Saturday night I guess. On Friday night, I went to George's CSMA choir concert. It's pretty funny watching little kids sing and remembering the similar experiences when I was an idiot in elementary school. Watching a kid looking confused as the kid beside him pulled him into position just made me realize I am such an old fart now--I wish everything can still be so innocent and direct. The latter performances by the adult choir was very good as well. There were selections from Les Miserables and the woman from Nova Scotia had a very powerful voice.

On Saturday I woke up at 5:40am to go volunteering at SFU Open House 2006. Waking up at 5:40am was easier than I thought. So after grabbing my T-shirt I went to the ASB looking for my station. I talked to a lady who looked important because she was wearing a sash and she directed me to table full of boxes. Confused, I opened them up to find, OMG, instructions! Other people showed up later on and we got everything setup. Amy the extrovert was great and broke the ice around the group; nice meeting you! I met up with Ryan and George and got lunch... hmmm donairs. I actually began to feel pretty tired from all the standing so I went to IRMACS to watch the presentation on open source. It was average; the presenter wasn't too charismatic and the information wasn't really 100% correct either. But hey, at least I got to sit for about 20 minutes. Afterward I walked around the campus and took some pictures and met up with Joyce. We walked around, dinner at White Spot, VSO (Very nice pieces by the way, I only thought the last piece was weak and the 'Avant le Descente' had too much dissonance.), blah blah blah, okay let fast forward the part where I was weak and the evening fell apart.

We were walking to Burrard, trying to find a bus home. Ugh gutless. It was a silent bus ride and I didn't even sit with her. I was tired yes but I was even more nervous. See the real sad part is it didn't really hit me until George said, "Why didn't you talk to her at all on the bus?" Ugh. Last time with Jenn I was a lot bolder with the compliments and the flirts; I don't think I've even told Joyce once that she's cute. WTF happened to meeeeee :(.

FARKING TROJAN!!!

I spent the entire day cleaning this nasty POS:

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/trojlegmirbz.html

off my dad's computer. There were SO MANY times that I thought I had NAILED the sucker to it's source but it KEPT FARKING POPPING BACK UP! Safe-mode? Fucking useless nowadays. It's simply ridiculous how smart these trojans have become. It hooks into all of the most common file types in the registry and hides multiple copies of itself all over the windows and program files folder. Even though you might have found one source, smss.exe under win_dir, and figure out how to kill the process to delete it, it still has like 10 copies all over the place; all of them ready to respawn all it's other neighbours when you run an HTML file, use the 'find' function of Windows, starting a screen saver, or even opening a shortcut! Ridiculously clever how it hooks into the registry and modifies all the run commands of Windows. Ridiculously annoying to remove. I would've never been able to do it without that Sophos entry. Special mention to all the great freeware by Sysinternals.

Work woes

Right arrow, right arrow, right arrow... Shift-pg down, shift-pg down, shift-pg down, shift-up arrow, shift-up arrow... Ctrl-c. Alt-tab. Alt-e, s, v, enter. Alt-tab.

Repeat. For oh... say 4 hours. This project is totally killing all of my enthusiasm for work. Actually I wonder if I had any left after the first week; well, it comes and goes depending on what I am working on I guess. It's not that I don't like the work, it's just the type of work they got me doing. Argh what a shitty day. I got home all moody and killed time by going through blogs, forums, and a little bit of TV. When my mom got home I acted pretty cold toward her, by either not answering her questions or giving her short, crude replies. I didn't really mean to do it; it was a sub-conscious thing. I realized that I was being an ass when she starting comparing me to my dad so I excused myself and told her about my crappy day. Of course, she said that's what work is like and blah blah blah I should expect this cuz of all the $$$ I'm making, blah blah blah. *Sigh... she meant well, but she didn't help. Boooo... why isn't Joyce online when I need to sulk?

An aside:
You know I'm pretty sick of getting a slap-in-the-face-greater-than-thou-tease in response to a simple question. I mean, WTF mate? Is it really necessary? Maybe that's why I like to keep my mouth shut!

I need to spend some money to cheer myself up.

Post FM Thoughts

I have to say it was a little harder than I expected. I can't believe I had to guess on q24, that stupid time-rated rate question. Grr, not sure why I wasn't getting an answer for that question at all. Nevertheless, I'm pretty certain I have the 18 or so that I need to pass this crazy thing. Hehe Parker was funny today; he spoke a lot of bureaucratic rhetoric before the exam, such as, "You may now break the paper seal on the exam booklet by sliding your pencil across the booklet." I was going to sneak answers out using my calculator but I got scared. This damn proctor kept standing beside me for the last minute or so and it totally freaked me out and I started punching random things into my calculator haha. It was nice to talk to Joyce again (so soon!) and some of the ACMA gang as well.

Afterward I bought a donair--my first time buying food at SFU. I have to say everyone is so right about these donairs. OMG they are soooo good; a tad expensive though as it sits at $5.34 with tax. Then off to go back to work, stopping in Brentwood to deposit by scholarship cheque so I'll have enough liquid cash to send an EMT to pay my brother back.

AHHHHHHH!!!! I now have so many things ongoing at work that it's starting to scare me! Well I least I whooped Kyle today in Magic: 3 for 3 ;). WHOOPED HIM!

Woah I almost forgot. I saw Helen at Braid today. OMG she changed so much after going to UT! I didn't recognize her at all! She's much prettier now (not that she wasn't before); it must be because she is now an arts student :). I also saw Michelle and Anto. And I finally have confirmation that they are, indeed, a couple. Damn I'm slow.

Medieval: Total War

After spending probably ~20 hours over the last weekend playing Total War, I think I should at least blog about it so it wouldn't seem like I completely wasted my weekend.

With my joystick broken, I decided that I should install another game to replace Freespace 2; I picked Medieval: Total War. So I installed it and decided to conquer Europe as the English. It went pretty well at first, took the British Isle and Ireland, wiped out the French, and then expanded across the North Sea to take Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The Holy Roman Empire was my ally so I was able to keep my eastern front lightly defended. As I was trying to be a goody two-shoe Catholic, I decided to charge down into Spain instead of taking out the Roman Empire. This is where I wasted ~10 hours, trying over and over to beat the fucking Almohad, or the much cooler sounding Arabic equivalent: Al-Muwahhidun. Actually, Spain was basically gone by then, wiped out by the Almohads. I was completely surprised to see ~4-5 stacks of troops along with the Almohad king and princes, which are all 4/5 star generals. My crappy English king was only a 2 star! On my first try, we fought to a stand off, with me desperately trying to hold on to Aquitane and Toulouse. The Almohad just ended up crossing the Mediterranean and took Provence and at that point I decided to give up. My German ally was building crusades into Spain at that time as well; needless to say they failed miserably and he just ended up pissing me off by stealing my troops as his crusade passed through my provinces.

On my second try I decided to tech before going into Spain; the Almohads didn't let me. With too much focus into teching and not enough into troop building, the Almohads charged in and I quickly lost continental Europe. I said fuck it and loaded.

During my second try I noticed how the Muslim infantry was able to plow right through my spearmen so I decided to go full infantry; I teched to Swordsmith and then pumped out feudal men-at-arms like crazy. I charged into Arragon with ~1400 men and faced the Almohad king's army of ~1300. And I RAPED him! It was a classic pincer attack, not to mention I had a nice map. I lured them uphill to face my infantry head on and then bought in my knights to flank them. The result: 1200 men killed compared to my 350 and I even captured and killed their king! The rest was basically mop up at that point and I just let auto-calc play for me. At around 6:00pm Sunday night, I killed the last Almohad heir in battle and destroyed their empire.

Oh yeah can't you tell I'm addicted by now?

A dream

This morning I woke up to a funny dream--it pretty much summed up what I was doing the night before. I was chatting with Joyce on MSN and apparently she is having some sort financial difficulty (ok that part is false). And the numbers were exactly the same as one of the bond questions on the May 2005 FM!

LOL Perfect May 2005 FM

Hehehe... I just did the May 2005 FM in 69 minutes. And got friggin perfect!!! What a joke; no wonder all the forums say that particular FM is an anomaly. Hopefully this is good sign for tomorrow's work day :).

Note to self: never run while wearing dress shoes, else the ball of your feet will hurt like a bitch for the rest of the day. Ugh...

First day of work

Aiya... I barely had two hours of sleep last night because I took a giant 3-4 hour nap during the night. I don't think I fell asleep until ~4am and I had to wake up at like 6am. Feeling all groggy, I managed to get myself ready and caught the 159 without problems. I think I'm going to dread the daily morning commute. The 159 takes like 20 minutes to get through the Mary Hill Bypass because of the insane amount of traffic; I can probably walk through it faster than the bus.

Once I got to PBC I got my ID and had a chat with Rene about what I will be doing. Apparently my task of the day was to read a HUGE binder of stuff. So that's what I did for an hour while waiting for my computer and phone to arrive. Guess what? The lady was setting up MY computer in the cubicle NEXT to me! And she was setting up the wrong computer as well! After that mess got sorted out I got introduced to Kyle and I had to do some data entry for him--fun eh? It was especially fun because he forgot to say that I was only supposed to enter the 2006 data :). Afterward I had the opportunity to learn how to use vlookup in Excel. I had to pull data from an Access database and match them up with the appropriate entries in an Excel spreadsheet. Armed with only Google and Microsoft Help, I think I did quite well, as in almost figuring out the whole thing by myself. Rene offered to give me a ride when he leaves but I felt like going so I left--probably should have waited and did some Actex, I would've got home at the same time.

Raymond vs 3 comps in Blood Bath

I just took out three computers in Blood Bath. Barrack, bunker, tank, and SCV wall protected my base until I cranked out enough BCs to wipe them off the map. I don't think I've ever beaten 3 computers at the same time in Starcraft before. Nice :).

United 93 and dinner @ Anducci's

The first word that comes to my mind about United 93 is chilling. It succeeded by portraying the traumatic event of 911 without any Hollywood stylization. I admit that parts of it in the beginning was a little boring due to the amount of military and FAA jargons. Some of the cast seem a little sloppy as well, particularly that weird asian guy at the FAA who looked funny in every scene he was in. Nevertheless, the film evoked a great sense of confusion, helplessness, and desperation faced by the passengers during the final moments of United 93.

Afterward it was dinner at Anducci's. The plates were huge, and no one got close to finishing except for George. Conversations, good food, Annie complaining about the lack of prawns on her plate... it was fun. We saw Ingrid there as well. The girls and I walked around Safeway before we went separate ways. Oh man that stupid driver of the 160 that leaves at 10pm is such an ass. He was leaving his bay just when I got off the 97 so I ran to the stop sign and waved; there was another lady there as well. The bastard didn't stop! I had to wait for the 10:30 bus and when I fianlly got home I finished the leftover pasta with my parents.



Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11835130@N00/

Next up: WORK!

w0000!!!! DONE!!!

Three weeks of insane studying. ALL OVER!!! Oh man it felt SO good when I handed my paper in at 6:30. I'm pretty sure I did well. Parker actually gave me hints on a question! Holy crap I was like "Uh I guessed." And then he told me a hint and I was like booyeah I guessed right lol!

So by the end of today's afternoon, I've done 3 old UT finals, 2 old UT midterms, all of the chpt7 questions from Bowers, ~100 old SOA multiple choice questions (again, Veeh you are farking awesome), all the old midterms from Parker, and still managed to squeeze in a couple games of Starcraft :).

Liu you @$$!!!

Why did you only give me an A damn it!??! Grrrr... There goes another ~.02 points of CGPA.

Two more days until I get raped by Parker's final. I've been doing so many questions it's not even fucking funny any more. Jerry Alan Veeh you are my hero. The world needs more profs like you who don't frigging password protect everything that they post online.

Canucks are out.

WTF. They blew it. I can't believe how lazy they were in the third period of a must win game. Damn damn damn. The Canucks sucked this year.

What a funny week. Study acma, study acma, study acma, ad nausem. It feels pretty weird actually. I would sit in the library, do some questions, look at my iPod / phone, and go OMG it's like 1 already! Jeebus. I feel all acma-ed out already and I'm starting to run out of questions to do as well. I guess I should spend some time on econ...

Man those UT finals are easy! Sure there are the occasional good questions, but 90% of them are pretty elementary! And they don't even do chpt 7! SFU acma is definitely more hardcore.

I had pho today. Oooo... pho is so good. I also realized that Pho Hoa's soup actually doesn't have too much MSG. I've had instant noodles that leave a worse after taste.

A+ #1 Beeoootch!

I am still in shock because of the number of A+ Randy gave out. EIGHT A+. In a class of ~40. Remember his name folks. Remember. With that grade settled, I can actually get into honour roll if I pull an A- in acma; econ is pretty much a for sure A+. Gawd I'd KILL for a 82%+ final for acma--if 80%+ is the A range again. KILL!!!!!

So today I went up to SFU to study for acma. Damn library was so damn hot! The mint chocolates I bought were actually melting; I had to put them by the window to keep them cool. Turn down the friggin' heat!!! Stop wasting my tuition!!! Anyways I managed to get through all of the chpt7 questions so I think I made decent progress today while listening to Samuel Barbar's Agnus Dei looped over and over. I also saw Joyce in a funny floral shirt in the library so I bugged her a bit as well. I think our hour long chat about random things had a bigger impact on me than on her. Whatever. I will go through the old midterms next and then the old UT finals. Must. Get. A-. At least.

For some unknown reason my parents are thinking of selling and getting a house again. They were actually interested in Pitt Meadows out of all places. Move WEST, not EAST! Especially not into some flood plains area that is only protected by a bunch of fifty year old dykes and pumps!

Oh I almost completely forgot. Isn't this the most ridiculous thing ever: 澳門旅遊博彩技術培訓中心. Now you know why Macau is a dump.

Aprilus fallacia

Argh Quirks and Quarks tricked me!!! I totally believe that last story on this week's Quirks podcast. I was gonna show it to other people as well; luckily I decided to visit the Quirks website before sending the link to everyone.

Carbon Producing Mammal

2 hours of econ and then my final stat midterm on Thursday. I guess I should get some sleep now.

"I'm selling my wif'e's box, my box won't fit NR"

Big picture warning (130kb):
eBay screen-cap
eBay questions screen-cap

I would've posted the image directly except it's too wide and messes up the Blogger template.

Birthday Splurging

I don't know who still remembers but my birthday is this Saturday! Yup. Time to spend some $$$ on myself. So after I got off school today I bought this:

http://www.bcliquorstores.com/en/products/131623

I told myself I'll wait til Saturday but I couldn't resist. That damn bull on the bottle just kept taunting me to uncork the bottle ;). It sells for $14.99 and it's a great tasting wine; much better than the $8.99 cabernet sauvignon my mom bought a while back. That stuff burned like Listerine--though I still drank it. It has a lot of flavour and a lasting after taste. I want to try some Australian shiraz next. It will probably be a Lindemans; there are lots of good reviews of it on the Internet and it's only $12.99.

Awww I just realized that I will lose an hour right after my birthday. Sucks.

Hat trick for Burrows!

Wow awesome energy by the kid to get his first career hat trick! Freakish break-down around the half-way mark of the second period that got me all worried but the Canucks managed to pull through. Bertuzzi seems to be doing stuff again with a point streak and fed a nice puck to Burrows. And again, second line is friggin' awesome!

Weekly update

So I guess nothing big happened during this week because I didn't bother to make any new entries.

I got the highest mark in econ for MT2. This is my second time getting the highest mark in an exam in SFU. I probably would've been more happy if it wasn't econ. What a joke of a course. The whole course is about finding intersection of lines and simple optimization. But I'll take what I can get; econ is my only for sure A+ course this semester--I guess it is still possible for me to rape stat MT3 and pull a second A+.

I wonder if I will ever get a "perfect" exam. Hmmm...

I saw Wei today on my way to econ and he told me he got elected! His party raped the Orange Revolution and EVERYONE of them got elected as well! Haha that's awesome. Remember, I got you 3 votes!

Okay I am definitely getting a wave of envy from my peers now for my upcoming position at PBC. People were asking me for interview advice and to remember their names when I become a manager LOL. You guys are expecting too much! I'm also getting stories about all these seniors students who can't find jobs as well. Lucky me :).

Plans for the weekend: read stats, read acma, fix acma assignment, pray Canucks will sweep the Oilers on Saturday, and hopefully squeeze in something else that is fun.

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

I finally figured out why sometimes it takes like 7 seconds to open up a damn jpeg in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer!

Ok I didn't figure it out myself but Googling yielded a post from a forum that contained a solution. Whenever there is a broken shortcut, ie. to a file/folder that's no longer there, a network drive that is currently offline, etc., Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will choke for a few seconds. What it is doing is that it's trying to test if the broken link is a picture to see if it needs to add it to the slideshow. Brilliant programming by Microsoft yet again!

ASNA Meeting

The good:
Food. Very tasty chicken burritos provided by Mercer. Though I wish there were more variety in beverages :).

The bad:
ASNA wasn't exactly what I expected. The meeting was chaotic because the teleconferencing technology wasn't very reliable. People would get kick off; some would complain they can't hear someone else; some don't even have a video feed, only the audio. Overall it was pretty dry as people just kept bickering on and on for 3 hours. Being completely new to the organization, I barely knew what the heck was being discussed. Anyways, I desperately need to recruit some people to support SFU's involvement in ASNA else the future seems grim.

IBT and SFU

Reading The Peak on the bus today got me all intrigued by the IBT issue. IBT, a for profit, publicly traded Australian company wishes to establish the Fraser International College on the SFU campus. The college is to funnel 30% of its tuition back to SFU and in turn, SFU is to provide FIC with space, equipment, and a cirriculum. FIC students will not be granted the same status as a SFU student.

Upon further reading, I am too opposed to the change. But firstly, the SFU International Student Association: they need to shut up. The IBT issue has nothing to do with them; they are just using the opportunity to stir up controversy. I'm not saying their points about the harsh life of a international student are not valid, but the whole IBT partnership is NOT about resolving "issues" about international students at all. It's about getting another boat-load of international students up on campus and milking them for their $$$--in partnership with IBT. Look guys, it's not the university's fault that you decided to come all the way to Canada to study. Suck it up. I find that most international students don't care about ISA's issues. It's partly due to their complacent attitude--the CCP made sure of that, but it's also because they care more about their grades than having a common room after paying a crazy tuition. The thing is, if SFU is really that dependent on international student's tuition, then you guys should have a lot of power. Rise up! But apparently, no one cares. So shut up ISA!

Returning to the IBT issue, SFU's reputation is going to go down the tubes after this agreement. And it's already pretty low in my opinion. Poor faculty, poor TAs, poor quality students with an inflated high school grade of 80%. And now we will get poor students from all over the world too!

IBT Education is an industry leader in providing pre-university and university pathway programs for domestic and overseas students, as well as Year 10-12, ELICOS and English preparatory courses, Foundation, Degree, Pre-Masters and Masters programs in a wide range of disciplines.

With a network of colleges situated around Australia, and internationally in England, Africa and affiliates in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, IBT gives you a huge choice of locations at which to study as well as a diverse choice of study programmes that offer a fast, affordable pathway into second year University, in association with leading English and Australian Universities.

Haha can you say "bull shit"?!? First paragraph actually says, "Even if your grades sucks, we'll help you find an university!" And the second says, "Our partner schools all suck and they are all desperate for students!" Don't believe me? Go to their website and check out their list of "institutes". Being affiliated with this organization absolutely disgusts me. Sure you are getting more students to milk, but at what cost? There is already a huge problem with SFU's image, even within Canada. Can we afford to cheapen it anymore with by sleeping with some shady business named IBT?

霍元甲 / Fearless - 4.5/5

Awesome movie. I can't believe I was crying in a Jet Li movie!

Jet Li plays 霍元甲, who transits from an arrogant pompous ass to an enlightened kung fu master. The screenplay is smart and poignant; the delusional bum on the street of Tianjin is a perfect example. It amplifies that 霍 is a fool in the beginning and that only fools care for titles such as "Tianjin's #1 fighter". It is definitely not a perfect movie though. Jet Li compensates his inabilty to act by overacting to force out the transformation to the viewer, and this is basically the biggest fault of the film: the transitions between the stages of 霍's life. More screen time should have been devoted to the blind girl to vivify the change. I heard there actually is more, but it was cut in the theatrical release. I also think there should have been something more pivotal than a newspaper headline to cause the newly enlightened 霍 to fight for Chinese pride.

Toward the end of the film, there is a scene between 霍 and the Japanese fighter which tells the viewer blankly the theme of the film. I actually didn't mind it because originally, I misinterpreted and thought the film was going to nose-dive into some sort of "Chinese aren't weaklings and we can kick ass too" drivel. That scene set the tone of the final fight and got my eyes teary at the end. The message also calmed me a little after today's Acma midterm. Okay I don't think I was complete raped by it, but I don't think I did well. There were two writtens I couldn't finish, with 2 MC I am not too sure about--one with no matching answer and one guessed because I didn't have enough time to complete it after realizing what I had to do.

Oh and I hate the tag line. Change courage to humility please.

Ah shucks.

Don't you hate it when you thought you did the question right but it turns out that you didn't?

At least I finally learned how to figure out the bounds after a transformation now. Gah, so simple too. Yet I totally missed it.

Acma on Friday; hope I can hit 80. Actually, I hope SFU remains closed on Friday haha.

LOL, this is why I don't play MMORPGs:
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1771.html

Oddly Depressed

I don't know what is wrong with me this week. I'm heading into my second stat midterm tomorrow but I feel very gloomy and lonely. I'm not worried about the midterm; I think I have done all I can do to study for it and doing anymore would just be a waste of my time.

It probably has something to do with how well this semester has been to me. Got my first co-op job after just ONE interview--not to mention that it is at PBC. Got the Alumni Scholarship despite my ACMA310 mark. Still on track to decent grades after the first round of midterms. I guess I really want to share my accomplishments with someone, but there really isn't anyone around. My friends from high school are all over the place now and there is a barrier between me and all the Chinese international students in ACMA. I sort of fit in with them and I sort of don't. Gawd I wish there are some white/CBC-ish people in ACMA and we can talk hockey or what-not. Gah I need to go out and some fun... with people. It's funny; this is my 5th semester at SFU and I've NEVER done anything non-school related with any of the new people I've met. Well... okay I guess not. I did play Magic with the CS guys. Okay, I get it: ACMA people don't have the time to have fun :(. Gah I'm going crazy from the lack of social interaction.

In addition to all of the above, I think I'm beginning to feel a little crazy about Her. Why am I waiting til the end of the semester to ask her out? Cuz she's always goddamn studying! Damn ACMA.


Reviews:
April Snow - Korean
Crap, crap, crap. What a load of crap. What a waste of a beautiful actress. I felt NOTHING from this film. The first half of the film was just a bunch of fragmented scenes and the blank face of Bae Yong Joon. Throughout the film, the dialogue was minimal, mostly short cliche fragments like "Thank you" or "Have you had dinner yet?". This compounded the complete failure of the screenplay to create characterization. Did those two actually loved their mates before the accident? Doesn't seem like it. Was Bae Yong Joon just using her for sex or did he actually care about her? Beats me because of his forever blank face. Why the hell was she always strutting around in a bra? Not that I mind seeing it. Even at the end of the film, I still felt absolutely no attachment between the myself and the characters. And it's supposed to be character drama with only TWO characters in the whole film! Abysmal. 1/5


談情說愛 ~ 安又琪
Wow. Absolutely amazing. I only grabbed this my accident because I thought it said 謝安琪. Her voice has great energy and so did the tunes. I recommend tracks 1, 3, and 6.

Gushue wins GOLD!

Kick ass! I only managed to catch the first end this morning. The Fins looked sharp during that first end while Gushue failed to curl around a guard for a take out. I was a little nervous but felt awesome when I found out that we won after 320.

Edit:
Wow! I just saw the CBC recap of the match. Amazing shot by Mark Nichols at the 6th end; even more amazing than Jones' winning shot at the Scott Tournament of Hearts. I was teary when Gushue was phoning his mom after the Fins conceded. Best moment of Torino 2006. Canada is proud of you Brad!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4748292.stm

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up". Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

LOL can you say DESPERATE!?!?!

Post Root Canal

It wasn't that bad AT ALL! I was very pleasantly surprised :).

Even the Xylocaine shot wasn't painful, though I still felt something going up my gum. I had one shot from the front and one shot from the back. The back one sort of made me jump a little because I thought it was over after the front. My dentist told me to relax the whole time because my gums are quite tough. The worst part of any dental procedure is that damn shot. I've had some terrible experiences with that freakishly long needle. I've tasted the crap; it's bitter as hell. I've had it go into my cheek for like 3 inches during my wishdom teeth removal and I even felt the liquid squishing out. Ugh.

The rest of the procedure was fine once the tooth was numbed. Drill, file out the pulp, stuff in rubber, melt rubber, pull in post, and put on filling. I Googled the steps by the way. Gawd reading them made me so nervous--probably why dentists don't explaining everything they do to their patients. I am supposed to get a crown as well, but it's not covered by my dad's plan; the dentist is hopeful that PBC will cover it once I start co-op. I'll have to be careful in the mean time.

Not related:
On the walk home I saw this nut on Mary Hill Road who suddenly opened up his arms and yelled, "Whoa!" I jumped off the sidewalk to avoid him and then he did it again! If my hands and sleeves weren't stuff into my pockets, I think I would've punched him in the face. Trying to pull out my stuffed-in sleeves made me hesitate long enough to regain my sanity.

Canadian Women's Hockey Team = GOLD!!!

Another awesomely played game by the Canadian women's team. They worked hard and played like a TEAM, exactly what the men's team isn't doing. The men's team can't setup plays like the women's. Under pressure, the women just cycle the puck around as if they know there is a team mate behind them--and there almost always is one.

Another positive note is that both Canadian curling team won today so no tie breaker game for us. And Japan beat Britain. OMG. Crazy.

GO TEAM CANADA!!! Come on men's team, pick up the slack!!!

Midterm Round 1 - Part 2

I got my ACMA mark yesterday. The raw score wasn't too bad, around what I expected, but I thought he would scale down the total more so the final percentage wasn't what I was hoping for (I NEED >B+ damn it!!!). Some of the worst mistakes ever. I lost 3 marks in total over two questions because I can't use my friggin' calculator right. And get this, s(x+1) cancels s(x+t). I also got another MC wrong, which wasn't a silly error. I didn't realize I need to bring the conditional probability at time x+k back to x. Dumb--I should've realized he would NEVER give you numbers that you can use directly. And I should've been able to do that other MC that I guessed. My last stupid mistake was that I drew an exponential curve concave down. It was the weirdest thing ever because I sudden popped up ~8 on Saturday morning, my mind completely clear, and I thought: "How the hell can an exponential curve look like this?"

Econ - well it's econ, what can I say. Not the highest mark but I should still be in the A+ range.

Oh man my reading break is ruined. I need to get a root canal on Tuesday. Fuck. Damn. Shit. The story goes all the back to 1999--no I didn't remember that; my dentist had records. My brother and I were fooling around, watching TV on the couch and for some reason, decided to chuck things at each other. I threw the remote at him and he threw my water bottle right at my face. It chipped my #8 incisor and I had to get some filling for it. Last week, I noticed that some of the filling was gone with my tongue so I went to the dentist today. It turned out that the tooth was dead. God I was scared shitless while he went on routinely with the tartar cleaning. *Sigh... life sucks.

Midterm Round 1

Oh gawd... the week of hell has just ended. A whole week of almost non-stop ACMA studying. Even my body has been complaining; my tummy has been rejecting food lately :(.

I think I did well today; I feel that I broke 70 at least--hopefully I'm right. What totally surprised me though was the question involving the gamma distribution. WTF man... I just learned the properties of the gamma function the day before in Stat330. I've NEVER worked with it before, in any ACMA or Stat class. Even in his office hour he said we'd only need to be familiar with exponential, uniform, normal, etc. But gamma!?! Damn...

Economics. I know I got the last question wrong for sure. I don't think the class average will be too high so I should be ok. Hopefully I won't get screwed by this class. I was aiming for an A+ in this class to cushion my (probably) nasty ACMA grade :(.

Damn I'm such a dumbass: 1/9*y^(3/2) + 1/9*y^(3/2) = 2/9*y^(6/2). I had like 1hr to check it over too. The sneaky thing is that the mistake can't be caught by integrating the pdf.... well... I guess I should've tried to integrate some aribitary region to make sure the cdf agrees with the pdf.

Bouncing!

Hi Raymond,

Congratulations! XXX has chosen to hire you for their actuarial co-op position. Do you accept their offer? Please let me know a.s.a.p. so that I may let them know that you will take the position.

I'm friggin' BOUNCING right now! BOUNCING!!!

Now back to studying for my crazy ACMA midterm :(.

Best Coop Job!

Arts 10 - Adult Video Classifier
Company Name: Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General

POSITION #1: Adult Video Examiner/Classifier

JOB ENVIRONMENT: The primary duty of both positions involves viewing sexually explicit motion pictures involving exposure to graphic and realistic depictions of violence, nudity, and sexual activity.... The successful applicants will spend at least 50% of every day viewing and working with this explicit sexual material (sometimes referred to as “XXX” video).

COMPENSATION: Wage and benefits for the positions total approximately $17 per hour.

Hahaha I actuall read about this on RFD last year. Funny that it's on the PlacePro system again.

Unsettling tale

On Sunday night I learned that I almost didn't make it into this world. Apparently my mom didn't know she was pregnant so one day some complication occured and she was hospitalized. The doctors at 鏡湖 had the brilliant plan of getting rid of me, while the doctors at 山頂 said, "Its heart is beating, why the hell would you wanna get rid of it?"

God damn, I gotta find that doctor and buy him dinner some day.

The military is checking out my complex!

So much weird stuff happened today that it deserves a blog about it. I was stopped by trains twice in one day, and I saw a black Toyota Yaris with a cool 007 plate.

But the weirdest thing is when I got home, I saw a whole bunch of guys in military uniforms standing around a Cherokee truck. I recognized Aaron from my middle school in the group--I know for sure he's part of army. They wanted to know the owner of the white van next to our parking stall. I had no clue; the only thing I know is that it is owned by someone my mom refers to as the Taiwan "Lo". My brother said we only know it's some Asian guy and Aaron is like "Yeah we know." I asked the other guy what's going on and he just sorta smiled and shrugged. They went on and began going door to door, asking them if they know anything about the van. Cally told me she saw them taking pictures of the van as well.

Weird. Why the military and not the police?

1-23 Federal Election 2006

CON: 124, LIB: 103, BQ: 51, NDP: 29, IND: 1

It was basically what I expected, even though I was really hoping for a miracle Liberal minority. The spread of the seats seem to be pretty bad either. The Cons need to satisfy the Libs or sleep with the damn Separatists. I don't know how they will get anything done. I wonder if any of them got the balls to stop the STUPID GST cut. Everyone knows a lump sum tax cut (ie. income tax cut) is better than a per unit tax cut. And it's a per unit CONSUMPTION tax too! As if Canadians don't spend enough already! Haha funny story:
http://www.src.ca/nouvelles/Politique/2006/01/25/002-audet-tps-rb.shtml

Anyways, the Libs were pretty disappointing in this election as well. Martin was just saying the stupidest things, promising all these ridiculous crap which just made him look bad. Hand gun ban? Changing your mind on head tax? Pay 1/2 my tuition? Get rid of the Notwithstanding Clause?

On the head tax thing, I don't understand why Martin made such a big deal about it. It was such a minor issue. It just made Raymond Chan look like a complete dog of the Liberal party. Sick. I don't know how the hell he got reelected.

Svend. Awesome. Send him packing.

Belinda... WTF. I can see her jump ship to the Cons any day now.

"Get a $500 college scholarship"

Yeah right.

Stop emailing me this crap. Read people!!! US RESIDENTS ONLY!

Also:

"Progressing Markets reserves the right to modify or amend this Agreement at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, at Progressing Markets's sole discretion. "

More on the election tonight... or tomorrow.

Pen spinning and other pointless endeavours

During Christmas break I revisited an old bookmarked site on solving Rubik's Cubes and got hooked in trying to learn to "pen spin". It's a pretty simple trick: hold pen between thumb and index finger, flick the pen with your middle finger, pen loops over thumb and you try to catch the pen. I can do it about 50% of the time now... depending on the pen. I think the key of the trick is to hold the pen at the right point to get the correct balance. Most of my failures involve the pen not wanting to complete the rotation and sort of "slides off" my thumb instead of going over it. I'm actually quite surprised at how far I need to hold it to make it work consistently, ~1cm from the very end.

So what else's been going on lately? With only three courses, my life actually feels pretty free--though I've been working hard to keep my mind sharp on ACMA. Still no assignment yet but I've been going through the textbook and working on the chapter questions. Yet I still don't feel overly comfortable with all the concepts. There are SO many different functions, RVs, and expected values to remember; they seem to connect in a certain way that sort of makes sense and sort of doesn't. I often need to break things down to the s(x) or f_X(x) level and I think this speed will totally rape me in the exams. I started to meet Annie after lectures to go over the notes; I think it helps. I wonder if I can ever get to the point of finishing all the chapter questions as fast as Joyce... gawd she must have no life haha.

The rest of my courses are not really worth mentioning. Randy cracks me up bad and econ is just boring. None of my TA this semester seem that good--just boringly go over assignments in a linear fashion.

Canucks pwned the Habs this weekend. I could barely believe it when I turned the TV on and it was 3-0 Canucks--first period! The Habs' D were doing nothing as the Nucks kept going in front of Theodore and totally raped him. I was even more thrilled when Linden scored. Of course that made the other two periods relatively benign as Crawford sent people like Brookbank and Ruutu on powerplays.

Got an interview this Friday. I would be ECSTATIC if I land this co-op job. Friggin ECSTATIC!