First of Many Ends

The end of midterms! I officially had my last midterm, computer science, on Thursday, and man it feels good! Not only that, but I think I did okay on it too! (well, okay being a very loosely used term) I celebrated the occasion by promptly skipping that class the next morning. Haha, it was an accident, though. I was up working on some homework till like 3:00, which, I dare to say, is the latest I’ve gone for homework-doing purposes. I really don’t like how I’m setting all these negative sleep records this year.

What I also did to celebrate was play Final Fantasy XII late into the night on Friday. My oh my, it’s such a great game. It might be reasonable to think it foolish to play games right before finals, but I think it actually helps matters. Gotta get some enjoyment sometimes, right? When I try to just work work work without balancing things, the work ends up going quite slowly and I still don’t get to play. =P

The rainstorm was crazy last week. Lots of rain just pouring down from the sky, and strong winds to boot. It really reminded me of the rain in Houston. Except there, that was pretty much the norm. Sad how with just a little bit of rain all of Vancouver seems to get all flooded. The drainage doesn’t seem very good. Come to think of it, none of Vancouver’s infrastructure seems adaquate. I blame it on you civil engineers… =P so you guys/girls who are in CIVL better improve it!

It was not a good day for my car… I was driving into shell to get some gas, but drove a bit too close to the island, where the curb had an oddly shaped outcropping that extended out on the corner. My rim slid up against it, and somehow the corner of the curb got wedged between two of my spokes. After getting out and looking at it a couple times and trying very very carefully to move it out without breaking the power steering, I finally wiggled it out. Final result? Some curb rash added to my already existing curb rash (which I think was there when I bought the car) and also scuffed paint in the middle of a spoke. Looks like I might be able to buff that one out through winter break…

With all the rain, though, comes snow on the mountains! Grouse and Cypress both opened this weekend. I can’t wait to go skiing again! We’re going on the YOURS trip on January 5th, 2007. Gonna be a blast! Maybe I should bring both my skis and my dad’s snowboard. I kinda want to learn to snowboard better since that’s what all the cool kids are doing. ^_~ But if I go to a resort, I don’t really want to waste it by falling all the time! So I’ll probably end up only skiing. Haha, I wanna try a double diamond this time… only done singles before. Hope I don’t die!

Canucks won last night. Against the Blues, that’s not the biggest surprise, but considering the fact that they lost all their games to the Blues last year, it’s a good sign! I find it really sad how the general Vancouver fan population seem to be bandwagon jumpers. As soon as the Canucks win a few in a row, they’re all happy and going “woohoo! Naslund for MVP!” Then as soon as they lose a couple, everyone’s saying Luongo sucks because he let in a few goals, Nonis sucks because he made trades, and Naslund sucks because he doesn’t smile.

Geez, give them a break! People are expecting these guys to be a cup winning team when they’re really in a transition phase! They just traded away like half their team, got a new goalie, new coach, and lost most of their defensemen to the cap! The team probably won’t be insanely good this year, but they’re not looking too bad, really. Outshooting their opponents pretty much every night is always a good thing.

But this team is going to shine in two or three years, when the Sedins and Luongo and Naslund will all still be signed on, and there will be Coulombe, Edler, Bourdon, and maybe Grabner and Kesler up front! Building a team doesn’t happen over night, or over a year for that matter. I think Nonis has done as much as a GM could possibly do. As a note, we have three second round draft picks at the next draft! Now there’s something we never had with Brian Burke.

Okay, last thing about hockey, I promise. We’ve got a pool going this year and it’s pretty exciting, actually. Everyone starts off with seven picks, and then we get two trades per week. Having all those players from other teams, it makes me actually interested in games other than the Canucks! It’s so addictive. I’m constantly looking for possible trades and moves that could make my team better in the future, even during labs when I have access to a computer. Sometimes it’s really luck, though.

I think there’s a curse on me. Whenever I trade for a player that everyone else has and is doing well, something bad happens to them. Like Martin Havlat. He was just lighting it up at the beginning, but I, as always wanting to be different, refused to get him. Then when he had gotten to like 700 points and grew by $2 million, I finally caved and got him. The very next day he gets injured. As a result, I lose something like $1.5 million, without getting a single point. See, this is why I always try to be different. It doesn’t work out when I don’t.

Okay enough about hockey, my video card’s fan is dying. I don’t know what it is with small fans in computers, but they have a habit of doing that. It’s making a lot of noise and generally sounds like it’s in a lot of pain. One day I took a nap, and woke up to the sound of barking. I looked all around, saw nothing, then went to the source of the sound, and sure enough, it was coming from inside my computer. The video chip fan had somehow transformed into a dog.

I called ATI and they gave me an RMA number for it, but I really can’t afford to be without my computer for ten days or more. I then called them and asked if they could cross-ship or send a fan or something but they refused. I think I’m going to have to just replace it myself. But the problem is that no one seems to make a fan that can fit around that big All-In-Wonder TV tuner that’s on my card.

That thing has caused me nothing but trouble. ATI’s software is absolute crap and has never worked properly, except way back when I bought it. After seeing that it worked well, they released software “updates” that promptly killed it. I actually recently found a solution to make it work on Windows Vista! Posted it on some forums as a HOW-TO and it actually helped some people! Hehe, feels good to be useful.

Ahem… so… midterms over, but everything else is far from over. Our collaborative research project for APSC 201 is due this Friday. We’re a bit behind and need to get quite a bit done, but we’re pretty much done writing the actual report, at least, which is good. I must say that being the group leader, I’m kinda disappointed in myself for letting us get behind like this. I said we’d stay ahead of the game and get things done early, but still here we are working on it during the last week. It’s going to need to be bound, and copyrighted (poorman’s method) and hopefully that all goes smoothly because there’s not a lot of time to fix mistakes.

In addition to that, our first Final is officially this week! It’s a lab course so I guess they’re allowed to put it before finals period. It’s a good thing, though, for the most part, because it means we only have to take six finals later instead of seven. Haha, the lab was actually a pretty fun experience this year. It wasn’t overly hard, and I think I learned quite a bit about electronics/electricity, in a practical sense, rather than in theory like from other courses.

Having just replaced my lowbeam headlights with Osrams ordered from England, one of the old lights I pulled off still worked, so I took it to the lab, and hooked it up to the power supply! We were surprised to find that the PSU could only squeeze out 2 amps, which was not even enough to get the bulb red, so we put two of them in parallel and ended up with a blinding light.

University makes life goes by so fast… I feel like summer didn’t end too long ago, yet here we are, with finals coming up fast. I have to wonder, is life passing me by? I’m really the type who wants to do as well as possible on everything I do, which in the case of school means focusing on it and working like mad most of the time. But what’s the point? Am I really better off trying to get decent marks than just making sure I pass, but also going out, having fun, you know, doing all those things you non-engineering students do?

Students seem to be afraid of changes. We’re young. We’re not too sure how to deal with them. But before long, life is going to become very constant and mundane (if we so choose), and we’re going to wish sometimes that we had these days back. Some say that we never really learn how to live a certain part of our life until that part is almost over. It’s a sad view but it seems rather true so far. I don’t want that to happen.

Well you’re magic he said
But don’t let it all go to your head
‘Cause I bet if you all had it all figured out
Then you’d never get out of bed

I can’t help but feel that with all these constant changes I just want something constant in my life that I can fall back on. Don’t know if it’s realistic to ask for, don’t even know if it really exists, but if it’s there then I want it…

But for now I’ll have to dream
About your smile cause you’re not
Here and all I want to say is
That I really miss you

Why does thinking about life in general cause so many headaches? I know that life is great in many respects and I’m quite thankful for that, but certain things are just troublesome. I used to just look away from those things, but that doesn’t solve anything, just makes me blind for a little while. So I’m trying to solve things and take control. My, I HAVE changed.

Are things really worth thinking about? Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m just wasting my time but somehow I think it’s worth it. Don’t ask me why, I just know. Haha, sounds hopelessly lost, doesn’t it.

1:40 AM and I still have 50 contacts online on my list. It’s definitely exam season…

The sun peeked out a little bit this morning, and I took the chance to go to Richmond Park with my stick and skates. I got the stick extended last week and have been waiting for the chance to try it out. It was pretty wet so it was hard to really skate around, avoiding the puddles, but it still felt good just cruising around. Those things I take for granted during the summer suddenly seem so valuable.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder… =P

Oh, almost forgot to mention! WongFu, the guys that produced “Yellow Fever” and some other possibly well-known internet videos are coming to UBC, and they’re bringing their feature length film, “A Moment With You” with them. I’ve got tickets to go! Wheee!