Happy (Real) Blogoversary!

Ok, I'm doing structured procrastination. I'm procrastinating writing.... by writing :). But this is fun and less pressured. And hell, I don't really care what you think about what I say or how my writing sounds b/c you're not making a 1 second decision as to whether or not I should get a scholarship for the rest of the duration of my phd studies. On the other hand, you very well could be if you're holding my application and googled my name. Well, honestly, I've blogged so much, what's the probability that you actually got to this post? I'm sure there's tons of other incriminating stuff on my blog. Quoting from my favourite comic: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

Anyways, the real reason for this post, is to celebrate the "true" anniversary of my blog! Back in April, I celebrated a fake birthday for my blog. It's fake, b/c I didn't really blog for 2 years. I really started blogging 1 year ago (ok, 1 year and 1 day ago b/c I was too busy procrastinating my work yesterday and couldn't justify blogging when I had writing to do).

Blogging is viral. Once you start reading friends' blogs, it makes you want to blog (I blame Sarah, Rob, and Nusraat). When I started, I had low expectations that it'd last. I have previously kept a journal, but I stopped b/c I would like go on vacation, miss a week or two of writing, and then I wouldn't want to write in the journal unless I wrote about everything that happened in the vacation, but I'd never get around to that, so then I just stopped. That almost happened over the Christmas break, when I went down to LA and Mexico. I kept saying that I was gonna blog about it, but I was too lazy, so I didn't. It was really because of my readers that I had to continue blogging despite missing some stuff. It's a good motivating force to have people breathe down your back and pestering you about blogging when you haven't for a few days.

I'm quite surprised that not only have I been blogging for a year, but I have been blogging a lot. I blog constantly. In the past year, I blogged 367 times!!! Yes, that's really an average of 1 post / day. And it's not like I posted a billion times in one month and then didn't for a month. The longest period I went without blogging was I think 11 days, and that was b/c I was on vacation. Other than that, the biggest gap was probably less than a week. I feel that I have an obligation not only to myself to blog, but also to my readers. But don't get me wrong, I enjoy it, unlike other kinds of writing.

Ok, so why do I blog? I think I've talked about this several times, but I'm writing it down here anyways. It's good to reflect after blogging for a year.

1. I blog for myself.
   • It serves as a record of what I've done in my life. It's something that I can look back upon later (a week, a month, a year, 10 years, 25 years, etc.) and remember what I went through or look up something I did or figure out when I did something. To tell you the truth, I have already looked back at my blog for this purpose.
   
   
   • It's therapeutic. Sometimes I just need an outlet to rant.


2. Connect with friends.
   • I lived in Winnipeg for 18 years (Thompson for 4). I've been here in Toronto for 3. I've gone to Seattle and San Francisco for internships and literally met people from around the world. This blog serves as a conduit for me to communicate with my friends in a broadcast manner without the need to repeat myself.


3. Establish an online presence
   • It was an unintentional consequence, but my blog helped me secure my place as Amy's roommate in her condo in California because it served as a sort of background check / character reference for Amy and her co-workers. I also post a link to my blog on social networks. I figure, I have nothing to hide.


4. Dispense useful knowledge
   • Sometimes I like to write about things that randoms can find useful as well. The main motivating factor is to record it for myself and also be something that I can refer my friends to, rather than repeating myself over and over, but it has the added benefit of gaining some traffic for my blog and attention for what I'm writing about.
   • Examples include several of the top posts listed below.
   • Shut-up Sarah.

But really, it's mainly #1 and 2.


I don't blog to:

1. Make money


2. Brag (some random commented saying this. I couldn't find the comment just now, but my reply was that I don't brag on my blog b/c my blog is for me, I leave the bragging to my school website)


3. Serve as an outlet for you to procrastinate


4. Get attention (ok, well, I'm not complaining, but it's not really why I blog)


5. Ruin peoples' reputations. Ok, maybe I do do this :). Sorry Mike!

Here are the most viewed posts over the past year. Most of them are boring and not reflective of my typical post, but I'm too lazy to make any other list of posts.

1. Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better.


2. Encrypted blog posts


3. Why anyone cared about my blog and how my post got famous


4. Escaped, but without my dignity


5. Ultimate Skirt Pictures


6. Dollarama


7. OMG, STOP PEEING IN MY ROOM!!!


8. How I Met Your Mother


9. Orange Juice Fermenting


10. Recent Comments in Blogger


11. More Blog Eye Candy


12. RSS is key – c’mon, everyone’s doing it, why aren't you?


13. Blogger comment feed and comment posting improvement


14. The greatest video of all time


15. Korean food, oh how I've missed you!


16. Converting Java to C#


17. All girls slumber party


18. RIP Mailblocks


19. Off-site and Gay Pictures


20. Not your typical board games

The majority of the traffic to my blog (~100 - 200 unique visitors / day) come from search engines. I get some weird searches. Here are some of the most popular search terms (from people using Google, Yahoo, MSN search, Google image search, Google blog search, etc.) that get (or have gotten) to my blog:

1. waking up


2. vincent cheung


3. dollarama


4. how to wake up in the morning


5. alarm clocks


6. nusraat


7. all girl slumber party


8. peeing


9. skirt pics


10. google benefits


11. gayglers


12. natalie dee


13. fob hairstyles


14. gay pictures


15. fermented orange juice


16. jumping higher


17. u of t ski and snowboard club

Here's a map of the top 500 places my visitors came from in the past year. The size of the orange dots are proportional to the number of page loads from that location. For those with poor geography, the two massive dots are Winnipeg and Toronto, with Winnipeg slightly edging out Toronto. Can you find yourself?



Here are the top 20 places my visitors came from in the past year (20 biggest dots from the picture above). The numbers in brackets are the number of visits from the place, whatever that means (it's not always easy to determine when to count a visit as a visit if a person comes back, like when does one visit end and the next one start). Caveats: this does not include people that read my blog from feed readers and larger cities are sometimes broken down into suburbs.

1. Winnipeg (2,614)


2. Toronto (2,234) <-- bigger than Winnipeg when you add in the suburbs, but don't tell Winnipeg


3. Los Angeles (446) <-- no idea who these are


4. London (413) <-- nosy Brits


5. Singapore (386) <-- randoms


6. Mountain View, California (345) <-- Google interns


7. Springvale South, Australia (314) <-- stalker


8. New York (307) <-- random, especially "team"


9. Vancouver(303) <-- I know a few


10. Madrid (300) <-- I'm popular in Spain


11. Montreal (282) <-- can't all be Adam


12. York Mills (250) <-- part of Toronto


13. Calgary (235) <-- I know 1 or 2 there, but I don't think they read


14. Seattle (231) <-- maybe from my internship


15. Chicago (226) <-- might know


16. Houston (221) <-- ?


17. San Francisco (214) <-- more Googlers?


18. Ottawa(210) <-- might know some


19. Downsview (199) <-- part of Toronto


20. Portland (191) <-- ?

I'm gonna keep blogging. Let's see how long this lasts. Thanks for reading!

New writing strategy

I like blogging. Blogging requires writing. The words just flow. I voluntarily do this.

Academic writing, I hate. I procrastinate it. I get writer's block. Words do not flow. It's like trying to force Niagara Falls through a straw held up by a cow trying to balance on an exercise ball.

Some people say that they start a blog to improve their writing skills. I don't think that's working for me (not that that was a reason for me to start blogging). Sure, I'm writing more, but this is just conversational writing and I already e-mail and IM quite a bit using similar writing, tone, grammar structure, etc., and none of it is really translating to my academic writing.

The problem I think is that when trying to write a paper, thesis proposal, scholarship application, or some important document, I focus too much on the words and not enough on just getting the facts, ideas, and concepts across. I need to do the "quick and dirty" draft and just get the ideas on the page and leave the fancy terminology, equations, and figures for when I edit it, because it's easier to edit than it is to create.

So, here's what I'm thinking. If I can put myself into the mindset of blogging while doing "real" writing, then hopefully I can just spit the words out. I think that if I'm writing in this little text box without spelling and grammar underlining and tricking myself into thinking that I'm blogging, I can overcome the obstacles that prevent me from just writing.


Here's my simple two-step plan:

Step 1: Create a new blog
Step 2: When writing boring stuff, "blog" it instead of writing it


I'm not sure if this is going to work b/c I won't have the readership that I do for this blog, which pressures me to write, but it's all in my mind. Just gotta put myself in the right mindset and hopefully putting myself in a blogging environment will help.

Blog post #400: Recent things I <3 and </3

Unlike my other claims of blog milestones, this one is accurate this time. The reason I prematurely announced say, my 300th blog post was b/c Blogger counts drafts as part of your post count. Funny, that last milestone also corresponded to the completion of a paper :p

Here are some recent things that I <3 and </3, not telling you which ones are which:

• Soft deadlines


• Hoping that it was a soft deadline


• Missing beach volleyball b/c I didn't finish my paper in time


• Not blogging b/c I was busy/procrastinating


• Finished the revisions for my paper


• More non-research work due this week


• Finding motivation from within


• Volleyball 5 times last week


• Men's intramurals and GSU volleyball teams are better than I expected


• No coed volleyball intramurals on Thanksgiving


• My new blender
  
  (PC blender for $40, a spontaneous purchase, but one that I've been wanting to make for a while)


• Bringing an empty backpack and duffle bag to Loblaws


• 3.78 L jug of Tropicana orange juice and 2.5 kg of frozen mixed fruit


• Fruit smoothies in literally < 3 min.


• 2-3 fruit smoothies a day


• Homemade gingerbread cookies that Elsa and I made


• Crossing things off my todo list


• Grey's Anatomy


• Jamie Ly for being the last straw in getting me to watch GA


• How I Met Your Mother


• Learning love as a second language


• Being trapped in a loop, living each day as a slight variation of the last


• New season of Battlestar Galactica


• Massive turkeys in the grocery store


• Ham for Thanksgiving b/c the turkeys were too big


• Thanksgiving by myself


• Cooking tasty food to procrastinate


• LinkedIn


• Ghost from the past


• Annoying people


• People that think they know everything


• Leaky volleyball


• Losing leaky volleyball into the bleachers


• Losing my TCard (U of T student card)


• Realizing where my TCard is


• Realizing that I didn't return the borrowed volleyball and can't get my TCard back


• North Korea's nuclear bomb test


• Artist of Nuit Blanche's Ballroom Dancing exhibit commenting on my blog


• Sexual consent forms


• Blogging


• Being single

Congratulations Sony and Andru!!!

These two don't take normal pictures, at least not at the same time

Congratulations you two!!! Everyone knew it was gonna happen, it was really just a matter of when. I'm so happy for you guys!

Andru organized a large gathering of his and Sony's mutual friends for dinner tonight at Marche (now called Richtree market). Didn't say what it was, but that it was a surprise for Sony. The addendum to the evite noted that it was not for her birthday (which is soon). I figured, it was then, either for a job or they were engaged, but she already had a job...

I have to hand it to Andru, he pulled the whole thing off pretty well.

Sony had no idea Andru had planned a big gathering of their friends for dinner. There were 30+ of us. It was crazy. She was really surprised that everyone was there. I guess Andru was quite confident that she'd say "yes" :)

Sony told the story to me and her other ex-roommates at the dinner first. Earlier that day, they went hiking and at a stop by a cliff with a great view, Andru starts reciting a poem - one that Carrie from Sex and the City read at Charlotte's wedding and Sony had liked, transcribed it, and sent it to Andru like 2 years ago. By the end of the poem, he was down on one knee and Sony was bawling. Sony told the story well and was so genuine with her emotions. She was so happy! My eyes were watery by the end of her story. Everyone's eyes were watery. Fortunately, Joyce drew the attention away from the rest of us as she was absolutely bawling.

I didn't know many people there. I knew like her ex-roommates, which was a bit awkward as they are also my ex's ex-roommates, and I hadn't spoken to any of them since we broke up. I knew like one guy from volleyball and then just recognized a few others.

Throughout the night, we were like making a scrap book for them. We were each writing cards and then they were put into a photo album with a bunch of pictures. This was organized by the pharmacy people. Some how Sony and Andru didn't figure out what was going on :p

Fun part of the night was when my ex arrived (she came late and missed the dinner as she had other dinner plans). We haven't spoken for like 10 months. Can you say awkward? It gets better. Since I was sitting with the ex-roommates (they actually came and sat with me b/c they didn't know many of the pharmacy friends either), my ex comes and sits at our table after one of the girls leaves. So, she's sitting diagonally across from me at the table. Fun times. She just pretended that I didn't exist and didn't acknowledge my existence. She talked with her ex-roommates completely facing them, with her back towards me. It was pretty weird, especially when Sony sat down across from me, and beside her and we were all talking. Took me back like a year and a half to when we last did that. Mimi's favourite quality of my ex was out in full form.

We had some champagne (well, technically "sparkling wine" as it didn't come from Champagne, France). Funny thing was that one of the bottles was from Domaine Chandon, which I went to when I was in California :). It happens so often now that I have been to the winery of wines that I see on a restaurant wine list or am actually drinking :)

Me, Natalia, and Natalia's purse

Oh, and if you're keeping track, this is the 4th engagement announcement on my blog this year...

Still waiting for the day where I blog about mine. Or perhaps when I propose on my blog :p

New Blog Feature: The Wall

I have added a "Wall" to the sidebar of my blog.

It's a text box where you can write whatever you please. It's similar to Facebook's original wall. Anyone can change it and you can do whatever you want to it.

The only thing is that I don't have any way to keep a record of it, like Facebook had, where it tracked the changes each user made. I have no idea who wrote what, who changed what, or who deleted what.

Not sure what's going to happen with it, but I expect a chaotic mess. It's something for you readers to play with and entertain yourself with.

Go ahead, give it a try. Leave your mark and vandalize my blog!

Passing of an academic grandfather

One of my academic grandfathers passed away recently. Howard Card lost his battle with cancer. He supervised my academic father, Brendan Frey, for his Master's at the University of Manitoba.

Ordinarily, academic grandfathers are pretty distant from you, as they shouldn't be at the same institution, and you may never have the chance to meet them, but in this case, I was quite familiar with him, as he taught me Electronics in undergrad. Even back then he was winding down and reducing his activity at the university as he was battling cancer. I don't know if I ever told him that I was doing grad school with Brendan.

Funny, I also know another one of my academic grandfathers, Geoff Hinton, who was Brendan's PhD advisor when he was at the University of Toronto, and he is still in the machine learning group here, the meetings of which I ordinarily attend. Plus, I took his neural networks grad course.

Actually, I know yet another academic grandfather, Thomas Huang, who supervised Brendan during his post-doc at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I met him at CVPR 2005 (conference on computer vision and pattern recognition) in San Diego. Coincidently enough, he was on the committee that awarded me my best paper award.

I joke that my whole grad school experience is a family affair, as I was taken care of by my academic uncle, Nebojsa Jojic, for my internship at Microsoft Research, and then another academic uncle, Ashutosh Garg, who took care of me when I did my internship at Google, where I also worked with yet another academic uncle, Nemanja Petrovic.

Talk about incest!

I don't know any academic relatives on the Kinsner side of my family.

Kicked out of my bedroom before 9 am!

Tony's knocking on my door before 9 am and won't stop. I'm like DOUBLE-YOU TEE EFF???... The super intendant and his minion are in our apartment to fix the water damage in my bedroom and the bathroom.

They always do this to me!!! I'm like half naked and it's before my alarm clock is set to go off (fortunately, not much earlier this time). There should be rules against coming into my apartment before like 10 am. Preferably noon just in case.

I didn't know they were coming today, b/c I put in that work order a couple weeks ago.

So, it's before 9 and I'm out of bed moving stuff around in my room so they can get access to where they need to go.

They only scraped out the peeling paint and plaster and put in poly filler. They had to let it dry and are coming back tomorrow, presumedly early in the morning, to paint it. Fun thing for me is that they took my blinds down to fix the water damage (ceiling by the window), so I get to wake up with the sun tomorrow...

Anyways, if I sleep now, I can get 6 hours in before they come knocking.

The start of volleyball leagues

Today was the start of coed volleyball intramurals. Both Skule (engineering) teams are in the same pool this year and pretty much all the good teams are in our pool. My team is really solid this year. I have been reunited with Rob (engineering Rob, not but that engineering Rob or that other semi-engineering Rob, it's the Toronto engineering Rob), Kevin (not that engineering Kevin, another one), and Robyn (Kevin's sister). We picked up Afjal, Siobhan, Chelsea, and Sarah (it's a different engineering Sarah).

We played our mortal enemies, Law, but they have a shitty team this year and we won in 2. Not sure how they got like 21 points in both games, but I never felt like we were in jeopardy of losing. I was impressed with our team. We played smart and gelled quite well considering that it was the first time playing as a team.

Highlights of the night included Siobhan pounding a hit off a guy's head who was trying to block her, my two consecutive roofs on guys (I almost had a hat trick), and every one of Afjal's hits.

Both Skule teams won their games! Against our traditional foes, Law and Phys Ed! Now that's how you start the season!

As per our ritual, we hit the Firkin for some beers after the game, though it was a pretty bad showing from my team, actually, it was just me and 5 from the other Skule team. My team complained of "tests" and "exams", those words are no longer in my vocabulary. It's actually kinda funny who's playing on the team this year. Out of the 16 people playing for Skule (supposedly undergrad engineering), 5 are grad students :p (me, Nastassja, Kevin, Ron, and Bu).

Men's intramurals and GSU league also start this week. Wwwhhhheeeee....

Nuit Blanche

"How to respond in an emergency"
"Cops" dancing on the street

Position Yourself in a Network of Possibilities"
Light up dance floor with Steve doing the robot

"Ballroom Dancing"
Thousands of rubber balls, 10-year-old DJs

Rubber balls everywhere! I think I'm about to get hit...

"Fog in Toronto #71624" - University of Toronto, Philosopher's Walk

Knitted Cupcakes (for Sarah)

More Pictures

So I have realized that I don't really understand contemporary art.

I woke up at 4 pm today after going to bed at 8 am. I was still pretty awake and up for breakfast after the sun began to rise, but Tina and Rob were pretty done :p. I had prepared for the night by staying up until like 5 am and sleeping until 2 pm the night before.

So, the evening started with me meeting up with Rostecki, who was visiting Toronto from Winnipeg for his last time as he's moving here in a month, near Yorkville around 10:30 pm, though that didn't turn out as easy as it should have been b/c the info booth wasn't where I thought it was supposed to be (it was on Cumberland instead of Bloor).

We then tracked down Jamie Ly (she needs page rank, and you can read Jamie Ly's post) by the "Garden of Light" (plastic water lillies that lit up when in the water, but not when they were out of the water, which we figured out to be b/c there were two electrodes at the bottom, which needed a conductor, like your finger, or the water). Turns out that she was part of a mob, an art mob if you will. They already had a group of 14 (16 with us), with no one person knowing more than like 5 people. I only knew Jamie and Rob, and knew of Richard. There wasn't much direction in the mob and were at the mercy of any one with a desire to see a particular exhibit. It was a blast with the wide diversity of people in the group.

I soon develop a reputation of being a source of unreliable information as Tahir tells me over the phone that there is a giant teddy bear on Baldwin, but it's just neon red signs of words from Elvis Presley's songs, such as "Let me be your teddy bear" in restaurant windows. I did run into Tahir on Baldwin b/c he heard people cursing my name for lying to them :p

One of the best exhibits were the dancing cops on the street. A car would just pull up at a street corner, roll down the windows, and blast music. Cops would approach the car in what looks like a take down, but then embrace each other and begin to dance. People start surrounding them blocking off traffic, people in passing buses plaster themselves against the window to see what's going on. And as quickly as it begins, it ends, and the cops walk off to some random location for another performance. I was fortunate to catch them twice.

We visited the Village Idiot Pub for a quick drink. Someone ordered 5 beers, and with 16 people we had to struggle to finish them! It was insane.

We saw a number of "projection" exhibits, which basically consists of a video projector and some random video sequence (blurry bugs, an ultra slowed down 3 Stooges video, sheep, random rectangles, shadows, water, a video of people puking white stuff and poking puking people, a video that gets you motion sick, and a crazy guy wanting to burn down Paris so his dad couldn't take him to get his hair cut). I didn't understand most of these, though I didn't really have the patience to watch much of them.

The light up dance floor was pretty cool. It was right by the corner of Queen and University. Part of the whole Nuit Blanche thing was to break down the barriers between art and public space, so it was cool to see a dance floor with people dancing outside in just a random corner in downtown.

Tina finally met up with us at this point, which was just after midnight. Rob remarked that it was weird b/c his last girlfriend was also Asian and named Tina.

There was a lot of talking with random strangers that night. Rob picked up 3 girls that he was playing dominos with (I was playing a giant game of twister). He got them to join our mob (~19 at that point). At the dance floor, we were talking about the ballroom and how long the line was and two people told us that it was only a 15 min. wait, so we went back.

The ballroom was amazing!!! Thousands of rubber balls in a gymnasium with 10-year-old DJs. If you stood in the main area, you just got constantly pelted with balls. It was great, though I'm sure that I'm going to develop some sort of eye disease since I got hit in the face so often and the balls were kinda nasty as you could feel grit on the balls when you picked them up. So much fun!

Funny part was when Rob was telling me how great it was to just pelt completely random strangers with balls and some girls just walking in were like shocked at his statement, but I told them that they'd understand once they got into the mayhem.

Walking over to the last zone in Queen St. West was a bit of a hike. Right when we got there (2-something), our group got severed in half as a bunch just jumped on a bus apparently wanting to go to the Drake Hotel and the other half didn't know what to do b/c some people didn't want to go and the girl that Rob had been flirting with for the past half an hour turned out to be 18! (Drinking age in Ontario is 19)

With our group now of just 5 people (Jamie and Richard, the Jeffs, and a few others left before we left for Queen St. W), we continued on. The two people in our group that I didn't know left when we were waiting to go into "Night Swim", supposedly a bath house, but really it was just a swimming pool and people swimming, and hardly worth the half hour wait. Monia's departure was a bit odd, as she said something about Rob being rude to her (which he was confused about) and didn't want to walk with him, which we thought she was joking, but she just took off, and her 18 year old roommate soon followed b/c Monia apparently didn't have the key to their place. So, with the clock somewhere between 2 and 3, it was just me, Rostecki, and Tina.

"Freeze" was pretty cool (ooh, brutal joke). It was a large ice sculpture of slabs of ice with letters cut out from each slab, that read "STONECHILD". It was in a car wash.

The point at which I really began to doubt the whole contemporary art thing was when I was listening to an artist talking about one of his works about the seductive nature of the States for artists in Canada and John A. Macdonald was portrayed and was said to have a lot of wax in his ears so that he didn't hear the seduction and wasn't lured down. I then go and see the piece and it's like a cutout of a skyscraper scene, with 3 naked girls cutout and pasted on top with balloon text above them and then a cutout of John A. Macdonald. I forget what they were saying, but I was like, "double-you tee eff???" and walked off.

We ran into the other half of the group (I think degraded to about 5) around 4 walking the other direction. We then stopped off at the Beaver Cafe for a small bite to eat. We then wanted to go back to Yorkville to check out some things there that we missed. Waiting at the Toronto Performance Transit System stop. Two girls were also waiting, and we found out that they wanted to go back to Yorkville too and also check out the fog at Philosopher's Walk, so we split a cab.

At Philosopher's Walk, they had installed a bunch of fog machines, which was pretty cool, but muddy.

The sites in Yorkville weren't that impressive, though the Dr. Mario exhibit (that's what I like to call it) was fun. It was around 6ish and it was pretty dead (Queen Street was pretty lively when we left at 5ish. I think the typical thing to do was progress from Yorkville, down University, and then across Queen). We went to this "Bedtime Tales: Fables and Fantasies" thing where someone was just reading and the entire audience was just passed out on the floor. It was pretty funny.

After visiting all 3 zones, seeing most of the exhibits, walking a hell of a lot (which is something I've been doing a lot lately, with the whole walking from the Distillery District to Korean town two weeks ago), and with the sun about to rise, we called it a night and headed home.

I Survived Nuit Blanche

It's 7 am, and I just got back from Nuit Blanche, "a free all-night contemporary art thing" from 7:01 pm - sunrise, though I only started around 10 pm.

I walked a lot, saw stuff that was supposedly art, and talked to a lot of randoms. Full post to follow whenever I get up.

Sarah and I have switched places

Sarah's gone, but funny thing is, is that nothing's really gonna change. While we met in person in Toronto, I feel that we didn't really become good friends until we were in the reverse positions that we currently find ourselves in. I was in Seattle working at Microsoft, and she was at school in Toronto. In the approximately one year that we have been good friends, we have been in the same city for only half of that (MSR, Google, Winnipeg), and even then, it was chopped up into small chunks.

We're basically Internet friends, regardless of where we are. We talk pretty much every day, but by "talk", I mean instant message, or occasionally e-mail. Plus, we communicate in several other alternative forms such as msn or gtalk status messages, blog posts, blog comments, del link sharing, etc. Of course, we do speak in person as well :p. But, of all my relationships, this one is the most robust to long distance as our forms of communication are well adapted to such situations.

I was checking my instant message chat history the other day, and I have something like over 10 MB for just Sarah! By far the most out of all my friends. Do you know how much text that is??? That is 10 million characters!!! Of course, a lot of that text is our obscenely long MSN names, but still, that's like close to a million words exchanged, almost all of which has happened in the past year.

Yesterday (Thursday) was her going away party. She was concerned about "worlds colliding" in that it was a huge mixed bag of friends - high school friends, egyptian family friends, eng sci friends, grad school friends, and probably others. Quite a number of people showed up (like 40+). I think things went pretty well and people were inter-mingling. The highlight of the night had to be the semi-nude photo of Gaj, Ana, and myself with Sarah (no pics as Sarah hasn't posted them). The security guard got dispatched surprisingly fast...


Here is my analysis of why we are friends: In short, the Princess Principle. The extended version follows.

We're in the lab room together working on a course project late at night (circa Fall 2004). Just the two of us (*imagining Dr. Evil and Mini Me and singing the song*). I had like no intentions on making friends, though I think it was partially because I thought that she was in the clique with Spikes and Brownie, whom I had decided from the start to be (and ended up being) biatches.

So, we're just silently working away in the lab. The project was a competition, so she was in fact, the enemy. She finally cracks and talks to me. She actually seems normal! Then I teach her Matlab (like how to make code that takes an hour to run, run in 10 seconds) and LaTeX (omg, if you're thinking latex, google it), and we're friends.

Fast forward like 8 months. I'm in Seattle. I don't know how we got talking to each other again. After the course ended, we didn't see each other much and only occasionally chatted on MSN or e-mailed, but communication was quite sparse (heavy course load, papers, conferences, workshops, vacations to Egypt, ex, Seattle). Somehow I started reading her blog and we talked about Internet things. She taught me blogs, delicious (though really, we independently discovered this), domain names (though I got her her CIRA USB key), and how to run Matlab on alpha. I taught her google reader, cvs, grad school, and how to love Google (previously she distrusted Google).

Then, I started my blog, well, I already had this blog, just that I didn't use it, and this was basically a complete revamping of the blog to make it about my life. She read my blog, I read hers, we shared del links, and the rest is history.

Oh, when I came back, she had moved into my office, under the guise of Guangji and literally on the other side of my cubicle wall. With her close proximity, we saw each other quite a bit, though not that much b/c I don't go into the office much, or at least, I didn't use to.

As I said earlier though, it's odd that we're friends considering that we have spent relatively little of our communication in person and being in the same city for a very little amount of time.

So why are we friends? I guess I didn't answer that question. It's the Princess Principle. (OMG WTF IS THIS PRINCESS PRINCIPLE????)

Fine, I'll tell you. It's this theory that I have about Sarah's relationships. I had witnessed, and she had complained to me about, the excessive number of random people that approach her. Guys, girls, everyone. Randoms love her. "I love your voice". "You are Egyptian". "Can I buy more of your clothes?". "Do you speak Hebrew?"

I heard many stories of random guys approaching her and they all get kicked into the abyss (ladder theory reference if you didn't get it). I conjectured that we were friends b/c she talked to me first. This is the basis of the Princess Principle (named b/c her online nick is Princess Sarah). The Princess is so elitest that she cannot be bothered with peasants pestering her. The only people she will associate with are those who she hand picks and initiates first contact. Those that force themselves upon her will be executed at a public hanging. Those that ignore her intrigue her (as if they have the nerve to ignore a Princess and not shower her with praise and worship the ground she walks on!)

My theory has been surprisingly accurate and has described an inordinate number of her relationships, both old and new. It's accurate to the point where Sarah has cursed the PP for being so right all the time.

So I still haven't answered the question of why we are friends. We obviously share a similar educational background and have shared academic experiences. I like to consider us as "abnormal" grad students, which means that we're "normal" people. Neither of us allow ourselves to be defined by our studies, as it is only one of our dimensions. When you first meet Sarah, the last thing that you think of is Master's in Electrical Engineering. Other things that I think make us stand out in a grad school setting are that we can both have a normal conversation about non-school subjects, don't have incomprehensible accents, don't smell, dress decently, have a sense of humour, and have common sense. A lot of trust has also been built up and I feel that I can tell her anything and rant to her (online) at any time.

The other part is the flip-side. Our inner geek. Our shared passion for the Internet, particularly in things that have centred around its social aspects: blogs, chat, e-mail, social networking, collaborative things, webcomics, spying, web 2.0, website design. We find ourselves reflecting on the impact of many of these aspects of the Internet on real life. We both have a foot firmly grounded in reality despite being online so much.


Sarah Ali, you will be missed. See you online!

Reminder: Janna owes me

1. I got you your ring back


2. I got you re-elected as one of the comp sci undergrad reps (video proof)

Hard evidence of my Internet problem

The two highest hours are 2 am and 3 am :s
I'm also not up before 10 and even then, just barely :p

So, I go into my Google Personalized Search, which basically keeps track of all your searches when you are logged into Google. I am always logged into Google now b/c of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Blogger, all of which automatically log you into Google. You can tell if you are logged in if your Gmail address is in the top right when you are on Google.com.

I check out the "Trends" in the search history, and see some shocking things...

Take a look at the image at the top of this post. It graphs the number of searches I did on Google during each hour of the day over the past year. I do more searches at 2 am and 3 am than at any other time!!! That is ridiculous. I'm also not very active before 10 am, and even then, not very much.

Ok, a few caveats about this data though. One, I'm not sure if time zones are taken into consideration b/c I did spend like 7 months in the West coast (3 hours behind) time zone (Seattle and California) and like a month in Central (1 hour behind) time zone (Winnipeg) in the past year. Plus, it's searches, so I could be up at 10, I just don't do any Google searches b/c I know where I'm going (e-mail, reader, slashdot, news, weather, chat, etc.)

I Google a lot

On average over this past year, I did almost 30 searches a day!

Notice the dip on Saturday!

This graph is encouraging. It says that I have a life on Saturday!!! AND Friday nights!!! Apparently I have a social life :). I probably shouldn't celebrate too much since I only do like 5 fewer searches on an average Saturday than the other days of the week.

Top searches, top sites that appear in the search result, and top clicks

I love Googling myself, and recently I beat out the minister for the top spot!

These are some interest stats. I love Googling myself and also Mike Perrow. I also love Wikipedia and Google Maps.

Ok, some caveats. I use Firefox. The default search engine is Google. If you just type in say, "stuff on cats" in the address bar and click enter, what happens, is that it searches "stuff on cats" in Google and then automagically clicks on the first link for you (it's like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button). That is logged as a search query in the Google search history. Many of these spurious searches are because of that, for example, I never Google "facebook", I just type in facebook.com in the address bar, but that's not a valid address, which I think causes a Google search query. However, I just tried it and it didn't happen. Firefox may have changed something, b/c when I look at the last like 30 days, Facebook doesn't appear even though I have used Facebook more in the last 30 days than I ever have (thanks to the news feeds :)). I do (or did) however, go to the sites listed quite a bit. No porn showed up, yippee!!! (No, I did not doctor the results :p)

As with all stats, there is probably some truth hidden somewhere in there, but take it with a grain of salt.


On another note: it's 2 am, and I'm not sleeping yet :s. I did however, wake up at 7:30 today! (But snoozed until 8). I was home at 10 am back with $120 of groceries from Loblaws!!! Most productive I've been in the morning for a long time :) (probably since getting smoothies at Google for breakfast)

IAD

My name is Vincent and I have a problem.

I pride myself on not having many of the common addictions. I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I have no craving for alcohol, I rarely gamble, I don't drink coffee, I barely touch pop, I don't do fast food very often, and I rarely resort to cannibalism. Ok fine, sometimes I have a temporary gaming addiction, but it goes away when I finish (or hide) the game. I don't "crave" it. At least not right now. And yes, I watch TV, but not random TV, specific shows and I just get caught up in the story line. At least I'm limited by the number of episodes :p. Volleyball is not an addiction, it is a love.

I am quite sure however, that I suffer from IAD: Internet addiction disorder.

1. Tolerance (markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time on Internet). CHECK


2. Withdrawal symptoms. CHECK


3. Internet is often accessed more often or for longer periods of time than was intended. CHECK


4. There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control Internet use. CHECK


5. A great deal of time is spent in activities related to Internet use (for example, buying Internet books, trying out new WWW browsers, researching Internet vendors, organizing files of downloaded materials). CHECK (can you say "blog"?)


6. Frequent talks about the Internet in daily life. CHECK


7. Important family, social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced in duration and/or frequency because of Internet use. NO CHECK. YES! I GOT ONE!!!


8. Internet use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical, family, social, occupational, or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by Internet use (for example, sleep deprivation, marital difficulties, lateness for early morning appointments, neglect of occupational duties, or feelings of abandonment in significant others). SLEEP DEPRIVATION, DOUBLE CHECK

The first step is acknowledging that you have a problem.

Ok, I don't think it's a super serious problem, but it's a problem. Like, I get out. I will gladly leave my computer to go play volleyball, hang out with friends (if I had any here in Toronto), etc. But, if I am at home, you know where I am, and that's right here. Honestly, I probably spend like 12 hours a day online, if not more.

It's a waste of time. Reloading Slashdot, Google Reader, Google News, random browsing, checking e-mail a bazillion times, checking stats. Garbage. All GARBAGE.

Ok, there are some good things about the Internet, like keeping in touch with friends and family and blogging. Blogging is good. I enjoy it, it's therapeutic, and will serve me well in the future when I look back at this.

I feel that I could be spending my valuable time much more wisely doing more productive things. Productive coming in many forms - academically, personally, athletically. This (academic) year, I want to put more focus on personal growth.

Here are some things that I will try to do to reduce my Internt activity. I hope that by writing it down for everyone to see that it'll help me to follow them through. I encourage you to yell and scream at me when you see me online. Please do it.

1. No Internet in the morning.
   • This is a bad one. I waste a lot of time in the morning on the Internet. Even when I wake up early, I just end up starting my day late b/c I dick around on the Internet. I never used to do it b/c at least back in Winnipeg, I didn't have a computer in my room or a laptop. This one definitely has to stop.
   
   
   • E-mail is it. I'm going to cave and say that e-mail is ok. But nothing more than that. 5 min. tops to check if I have any meeting cancellations, etc. Everything else can wait until I get to my cubicle.
   
   
   • E-mail in the morning on weekends is ok, but still frowned upon. I should at least do the bathroom things and have breakfast first.


2. Stop checking e-mail 50 times a day


3. Stop randomly surfing.
   • I remember a time when I was so busy that I wasn't able to read every story on Slashdot. I will still read my feeds (blogs, comics, del) and read the news, but try to limit it to not much more than this. Activingly looking for new content (eg. digg and del pop) are a no-no.


4. Stop reloading Facebook to see what's new on the news feed


5. Stop going online so much at home.
   • I can blog. I can check e-mail, but not constantly. I can chat. Chatting is fine, surfing is not. I should be doing something productive while chatting, like cleaning, filling out forms and applications, doing work, etc.


6. Shower at 11, in bed by midnight, up at 7
   • As you can tell from the time stamp on this post, this one is going to start tomorrow.

Video Epitome Talk at the University of Windsor

Video Epitome talk - University of Windsor, Sept. 22, 2006

My talk at the University of Windsor was taped and I put it up on Google Video :). Here is the link to my Video Epitome web page (gotta get that pagerank!)

I don't like listening to my own voice. I think it sounds funny. I don't know how you guys put up with it.

Pride & Prejudice

Don't ask why I watched it by myself. Just accept the fact that I did. I would however, watch anything with Keira Knightley in it, next up being Domino, but I would have watched this movie regardless.

I was also feeling pretty sick at the time. I had eaten a MASSIVE pot of pasta right before a couple hours of volleyball and was seriously having indigestion to the point that I wanted to puke and I really needed to just vege and digest. Anyways, I'm getting off topic...

I hadn't read the book since like Grade 12 when we read it in school, so I had forgotten many of the details, but generally knew what was going to happen, although I often only had like a 10 min. foresight (ah, yes, I remember that guy, he's not as he appears to be). I enjoyed the movie. It was one of those "feel good" movies.

The movie understandably sped up the story line, but I thought it did a decent job of translating the book into a reasonably length movie. I probably would have been a bit confused had I not read the book beforehand. The movie made it seem like Liz and Mr. Darcy were so much in love despite not really having spent that much time together, but I guess they did in comparison to say Mr. Collins and Charlotte and other couples that were like semi-arranged. Perhaps it was just the times. Though, I just looked back at this "Pride and Prejudice Summary (Chapters 28-33).doc" file I had on my computer and it became obvious to me that the movie cut out a bunch of stuff...

Another thing is that it's really interesting to revisit the story after such a long time and seeing things in a different perspective, backed with more life experience. I have 1984 sitting on my computer that I've been meaning to watch.

Windsor Recap

Toronto's Union Station

GReunion: Mark, Janna, and Vince

Mark experiencing some Canadian culture

More pictures

Now that I have pictures as evidence, I can post about my trip to Windsor.

As I mentioned already, I took the train. The whole travel experience was quite enjoyable. It started off in Toronto's train station. I don't know why train stations have to be so extravagent and have such high ceilings, but it was a nice feeling. It took me back to a more quaint and innocent time. The whole train experience is so much nicer than the airport. Getting my ticket was a 30 second affair. No security checks. No id checks. Just get on the train and take a seat. Train wasn't too full so I took a window seat and used the aisle seat for my bag. No restrictions on when your seat has to be in its upright position or when I can have the tray table down or when I can use my electronics. I didn't check if I could get it in comfort class, but I know that first class had wireless Internet. More legroom than a plane. I had a comfortable sleep. It was about a 4 hour train each way, a bit longer than my booking said it was supposed to be, but whatever, I was sleeping :p

Had lunch at the university with Janna and Michelle (Janna's rommate). The talk went well. The only hiccup was that my laser pointer ran out of battery like 5 min. into my talk, but I made do. My talk was taped, so that'll be interesting to see if I can get a hold of it. Weird moment of the talk was when one of the guys in the audience took a picture of me. I was like wtf??? He wasn't like part of the student society or anything, I guess my talk was just that impressive :). Funny moment of the talk was when I had a slide that said "Vote for Janna!"

At the end of the talk one of the student society people gave me a free pen (a nice one). After, Janna, Michelle, Jake, and I went to one of the pubs for some dessert and drinks. Then, it came up that Ann Arbor was like 45 min. away... MARK!!! I fire off an e-mail to Mark and leave a message on his voice mail. He calls back. I thought it was going to be a tough sell to get him to come visit us, but coincidentally, he was going to be driving in our direction anyways! He was dropping off Emine at the Detroit airport, which meant that he was like half way to Windsor and without plans.

He meets us at Janna's apartment and we chill there for a bit before going to Casey's for dinner. We drop the car off at my hotel and drop stuff off there, and then start walking the town. Windsor is a sketchy place. All these sketchy looking bars (with people on street corners telling you to go in) and "massage parlours". We walked to the casino. I wanted to do what I usually did in a casino, which is to get rid of all the coins in my wallet, but their slot machines didn't take coins! It was weird. You had to like use tokens, bills, or a card thingy. It was Mark and Janna's first time in a casino, so we looked all around, but we left without dropping any money.

The best was when we overheard this (obviously American) girl say: "My phone says 'Telus', is that a Canadian word?"

We make it back to the hotel and then introduce Mark to the fine Canadian establishment known as Tim Horton's. It was like 11ish and it was bustling. People watching was interesting. There were several couples finishing their evenings at this place. One "couple" was particularly intriguing. There was a mis-match. The guy was totally out of his league. He had a freakin' sweater vest. Then a group of like 4 guys sat in the table next to them. Next thing you know, the girl is like surrounded by these guys chatting her up like crazy. It was pretty funny. Mark takes off to go home after we leave and I go home as I was pretty tired.

Janna and I met up for breakfast at Lumberjack's and then played Gamecube in her apartment until I had to catch the train. The train ride back was uneventful, which is always a good thing while travelling, and that pretty much sums up my trip.

It was really good seeing you guys again! I'm still impressed that Mark managed to meet up with us. That was completely unexpected :). Throughout the whole planning of the trip, it didn't even come up b/c I didn't think that Ann Arbor was that close and that it would be feasible, but it's awesome that it worked out. I think I'm still in California withdrawal :p.

Blogger Beta Peek-a-Boo Comments

Update: There are some issues with this method and using the word verification stuff. Something about security or something. In Firefox, the first time you go to my blog, it would redirect you to the pop-up comments page. In IE, the word verification doesn't work, unless you first open the pop-up comments page. If anyone has a suggestion as to how to make this work, please let me know.

I've done more blog hacking to restore the peek-a-boo (show/hide) comments that I had before. It's similar to how it was done with the old blogger.

The problem with the new blogger is that you cannot access the comments from the main page anymore. What I did was (dynamically) load the pop-up comments window in an iframe and then had that show/hide using Javascript and css. The bonus feature is that you can now comment right from the peek-a-boo comment! IE is a bit wonky and sometimes doesn't like to show the word verification (you can click the "Post a comment" link). IE also partially hides the vertical scrollbar the first time the comments are shown.

One issue right now is that I couldn't get the iframe to resize to the height of the comments. The reason is because I'm loading the comments from an external url.

Here are some code snippets (refer to the instructions for the old blogger as a guide):

css styles. Put this in your style sheet.

.commenthidden {
  display: none;
}

.commentshown {
  display: inline;
}


Peek-a-boo Javascript code. Put this between <head> and </head>.

<script type='text/javascript'>
function togglecomments(postID, commentsURL) {
  var divElt = document.getElementById(postID + "iFrameDiv");
  var showElt = document.getElementById(postID + "TextShow");
  var hideElt = document.getElementById(postID + "TextHide");

  if (divElt.className == "commentshown") {
    divElt.className = "commenthidden";
    showElt.className = "commentshown";
    hideElt.className = "commenthidden";
  } else {
    var iFrameElt = document.getElementById(postID + "iFrame");
    if (iFrameElt.src != commentsURL) {
      if (iFrameElt.contentDocument) {
        iFrameElt.scrolling = 'auto';
        iFrameElt.contentDocument.open();
        iFrameElt.contentDocument.write("<span style='font:small Verdana, Arial, Sans-serif;'>Loading...</span>");
        iFrameElt.contentDocument.close();
      } else if (iFrameElt.contentWindow) {
        iFrameElt.contentWindow.document.open();
        iFrameElt.contentWindow.document.write("<span style='font:small Verdana, Arial, Sans-serif;'>Loading...</span>");
        iFrameElt.contentWindow.document.close();
      }
      iFrameElt.src = commentsURL;
    }
    divElt.className = "commentshown";
    showElt.className = "commenthidden";
    hideElt.className = "commentshown";
  }
}
</script>


iframe code to include the comments. Put this where you want the comments to show up (probably after the labels in <b:includable id='post' var='post'>)

<script language='Javascript'>
  document.write("<div id='<data:post.id/>iFrameDiv' class='commenthidden'><iframe id='<data:post.id/>iFrame' style='width: 100%; height: 775px; border: solid #ddd 1px;' scrolling='yes' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>");
</script>


Hyperlink to do the toggling of the comments. Replace the "# comments" and "Post a comment" link with this code.

<script language='Javascript'>
  document.write(" | <a class='comment-link' href=\"javascript:togglecomments('<data:post.id/>', '<data:post.addCommentUrl/>')\"><span id='<data:post.id/>TextShow' class='commentshown'>Show</span><span id='<data:post.id/>TextHide' class='commenthidden'>Hide</span> <data:post.numComments/> comment" + (<data:post.numComments/> != 1 ? "s" : "") + "</a>");
  document.write(' | <a class="comment-link" href="<data:post.addCommentUrl/>" onclick=\'<data:post.addCommentOnclick/>\'>Post a comment</a>');
</script>
<noscript>
  | <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 comment<b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>
  | <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'>Post a comment</a>
</noscript>


Use at your own risk!

Please update your feeds

Because of my bug report, the comment feeds issue became a known issue and now it is fixed! Recent comments on the sidebar now work, and there are new feeds for both the posts and the comments.

Please update your feeds.

On another note, I am currently in Janna's apartment in Windsor and Mark is gonna be here in like an hour and a half!!! (from Ann Arbor, Michigan) Super GReunion!!! It's almost GReunion 64!

GReunion in Windsor!

Janna-Lynn Weber

Thanks to Janna, I'm going to the University of Windsor to give a talk. Hey, free trip, I'll take that. Plus, it'll be the first of, what will hopefully be, many GReunions!

My talk is in 12.5 hours... and I haven't even started making my presentation :p. Plus, I gotta pack, sleep, eat breakfast, travel, and have lunch before the talk. It's ok though, it should only take like half an hour to mod an old presentation and I have given this talk, or variants of it, so many times (close to like 10 times) that I don't really need to prep for it, or at least I hope :).

I'm taking VIA Rail, which is exciting b/c it'll be my first time taking the train in Canada. It's just over 3.5 hours each way. Anyways, if I don't blog tomorrow, then it's either b/c Janna booked me into a shit hotel without free Internet or she took me out onto the town for so much fun that I was so incapacitated that I couldn't blog.

4 different sports this week

5 if you count rollerblading (downhill on Bathurst is way more fun than uphill). 6 if you count beach and indoor volleyball as two separate sports. The others were ultimate, ping pong, and tennis. I don't play tennis, as evidenced by the blister on my hand, but I had fun anyways. Try new things, that's the new motto.

The end of summer volleyball

To me, the end of GSU pick-up volleyball signals the end of summer volleyball and the start of more organized volleyball. I first started going back in like 2004. Tiny gym, like there's no more than a foot and a half between the end of the voleyball court and the wall. Low ceiling. No air conditioning. No fans. It's literally a sauna in the summer. Like just going inside makes me sweat profusely. But, it's really good volleyball and the small gym means you don't have to chase down balls :)

I still remember the first time I went. I had read about it on the webpage and was like, sure, I'll give it a shot since I lived close by. I had low expectations. I get there and there's like only 2 or 3 other people. I warm up with Rod, an old, round, short-ish guy. He's got good ball skills, I am impressed. I later find out that he's a coach of one of the high school teams. Many of the people that go there are like varsity, ex-varsity, coaches, ex-junior national, etc. There are players that hit the ball so hard that it bounces off the floor, the back wall, and then bounces back over the net! It's like some of the highest level volleyball I have ever played. By far the best pick-up volleyball.

Even though I played throughout high school, I'm like the least coached player there (most played club, which we didn't really have in Winnipeg), and often the worst player there (well, not worst in every respect). It's great. It's how you become better.

So ya, today was the last one this summer. It kinda sucked this year (at least Sept, which is when I was here for). People didn't really go. At least not a lot of the regulars. Mostly the young kids. We would often play with less than 6 and I prefer playing 6's indoor so that you can run a proper offence.

Oh well, the GSU league starts up next week and that should be fun. I've put together a fun team this year. We won't win, but we'll have fun. Intramurals start soon as well.

Arrr... thar be treasure me matey!

Doubloons from me's Christmas LA trip

Plundered doubloons from de summer

Me homemade treasure chest!

Me life's trea'shur

Ahoy! I be meanin' ta post this fer a while, and wit' today bein' "Talk Like a Pirate Day", 'twas perfect!

Arrr, I always gets me flatten doubloons in me far away travels 'fer me ta remembers them by. Aye!

The theory holds true

Early courtship with Michele

Jenny liked to come from behind (she's not that short nor am I that tall)

Michele showing off his flirting skills

Nebojsa has this theory. Something about being in your last year of phd attracts women, women that want to marry you. It's like they smell success. It's all kinda shaky and uncertain up until that point b/c they're not sure if you will ever finish or if you will make anything of yourself.

Despite all my efforts to come in between them, Michele and Jenny are engaged! Michele, whom I thought would be like the last person I know to settle down. Shocking how true that theory is. I am truly happy for you guys! Congratulations!!!

First Mike and now you guys... what a crazy summer! I think you two (Jenny and Michele) should be thanking Adam for getting you two love birds together.

Michele had a good gtalk status message today: "Working for us".

I don't have any external pressure for me to really push myself to do work right now. But apparently if I get within a year of graduating, I will get a girl, so I better start working :p

Story time and reflection

Same key as last time.

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