Published on
February 17, 2003 in
General.
“Almighty Laura grants permission”
-Laura Watson
Today’s event went off without a hitch.
For the uninitiated, Tuesday is my parents’ 25th anniversary, and my siblings and I (mostly my siblings) arranged for a surprise party, featuring appearances by most of our aunts, uncles, cousins, and all our grandparents, as well as arranging a gift – a photo of all 4 of us, in a silver(ish) frame.
We managed to get them both to show up – kinda difficult, given the amount of extra time Dad’s been putting in at work – by alluding to the fact that something was up today.
They had no idea exactly what was going on until they walked into the community room at the library (where my sister works). Everyone had managed to keep the secret without drawing too much suspicion until the day of.
It was great seeing family and family friends we haven’t seen, in some cases, for years, and really great to see my grandparents from Sudbury again. We went out to dinner with them after hosting some of the Cambridge / K-W crowd at our house for a while.
Interesting note: the restaurant where we ate had CNN on the TV in the corner, talking about Robert Downey Jr. for long enough to make me think he had died or something. This is not the case, of course – it was just a People Magazine special or something – but it’s kinda weird, if you think about it, that if something like CNN talks about a person for longer than about 30 seconds, death is assumed.
(I reserve the right to edit this post for coherence at a later date)
Published on
February 16, 2003 in
General.
“What I did in there, I did for King and Country”
-James Bond, “Thunderball”
Just watching the underwater fight scene in Thunderball – and damn, does it look hokey. I mean, you’d think that the Marines or whoever went in to fight Largo’s goonsquad would have gone in with a bit more than harpoons, or at least muddied the waters ahead of them from the air. Maybe then they wouldn’t have been slaughtered quite so effectively. Add some truly crappy sound effects, and it’s laughable.
And what is that strapped to Bond’s back – a rocket? No, wait – it’s a diving tug with side-mounted harpoon launchers. Such an outlandish contraption I’ll only accept if I see Q himself deliver it.
Oh well – at least they’re showing Bond movies on TV again. It’s been months since I’ve seen one – I think the last one was Tomorrow Never Dies on CTV at midnight January 1 – the same movie, same time and same date as last year.
This pointed waste of database space, bandwidth, and your time is brought to you by insomnia.
Published on
February 16, 2003 in
General.
Blank conversation heart + geek + fine-tipped pen =
If you laughed at one aspect of this post, you’re a geek.
If you laughed at two or more aspects of this post, you’re as big a geek as I am.
If you’re still laughing… you need help.
Published on
February 16, 2003 in
General.
“When come back, bring pie”
-Weebl
The Count’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
It started with a simple affection for counting and
the terror it induced in others, didn’t it?
But now it’s turned into a full-blown life-
consuming chaotic nightmare of order,
repetition, zealousness, and perfectionism.
You used to be so grand, but now you find
yourself obsessively worrying over the littlest
things–like, maybe if you don’t check the
light switch at least once every two minutes,
the electricity will go out (and damnit, you’re
a vampire–that shouldn’t be a problem!), or
maybe if you don’t wash your hands until your
seams are coming out, you’ll get some fatal
disease. Get yourself some treatment.
Which Sesame Street Muppet’s Dark Secret Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Published on
February 15, 2003 in
General.
Published on
February 15, 2003 in
General.
“What the… where am I? Why is it dark?”
-Me waking up from a nap I forgot I took, about 2 hours ago
A quick run down of the list is, I think, in order:
- Rudie is Out East.
- Marc is in the Carribean.
- Kyle is in Paris (France).
All of these people are having more fun than I am. You bastards.
(Incidentally, I think most everyone else I know is either here or near whatever School of Higher Learning they attend, amazingly jealous of those who aren’t)
Found an interesting bug in OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 yesterday whilst taking notes in 2SI4 – it seems that if you have a certain number of equation editor objects that haven’t been saved yet, and add one more… they all get destroyed and replaced by question marks. Double-clicking brings up an OLE error.
So I now have a table filled with stupid icons rather than numbers in scientific notation – just what I always wanted.
Published on
February 15, 2003 in
General.
“So, we just take the Laplace transform of the output signal…” (Student in back drops coins) “And then make a donation to a charity”
-Prof. Tim Davidson, Electrical Engineering 2CJ4
Yeah, it’s Valentine’s day. Hurrah. You might find this (slashdot.org) interesting.
That oughta do it for acknowledging this annual occurence.
Oh, and unless it takes me 5 minutes to cross College Crescent or whatever it’s called, from IAHS to JHE, the clocks in JHE are 5 minutes fast. Which makes it difficult to gauge when to leave ITB, to get to 2CJ4 on time.
Maybe it’s just that we Engineers are so advanced, we live 5 minutes in the future. Or maybe Physical Plant, bless ‘em, screwed up. Whatever – discrepancy duly noted to be discarded later.
Published on
February 14, 2003 in
General.
“As I said earlier, I have to leave early today. I’m sure none of you will mind.”
-Prof. A.A. Berezin, Engineering 2H03 (Thermodynamics)
Reading week (aka “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Freedom”) starts, for me, in about an hour – that’s when I get out of 2CJ4, take a bus from McMaster to Burlington Station, a train from there to Oakville, then walk from Oakville Station, to home.
I’ll never make it.
Incidentally, I’m in the IEEE office, and it smells, strangely, of whiteboard erasing fluid. Hypnotically, even narcotically, so. Someone call a hazmat team.
2CJ4 in 7.5 minutes. Must run. Then I look at fax.
Published on
February 14, 2003 in
General.
Marc: “Now, diode… is in On position or Fax position?”
Brian: “Who cares? Replace with wire.”
Marc: “Yes, and replace capacitor with Boris Yeltsin. Is Vodka Storage Device.”
