Geek on Two Wheels

It seems I’ve actually managed to recover fully from my seemingly-disasterous semester start. Things are looking up now that I am no longer behind on school work and the fact that this is very easy semester has finally sunk in, lifting a lot of stress off of my head. The bad news, however, is that I may be starting to fall into my slacker mentality once again. Time to work on that…

Chinese New Year celebrations has come and gone, and, despite being a rather small one (only two families) it was still nice to be celebrating with family and old aquaintances. My mom also invited Missy over for the festivities. I’m glad she handled the vegetarian thing so well, especially considering it was hot pot. It’s really hard to keep all forms of meat out of food in Chinese and Japanese cusine.

Finally, lets talk about the weather: it sucks. So far, since coming back from Toronto, it has been nothing but rain, except on the few days when I couldn’t go biking due to having just finished an overnighter or busy for the entire day. There had better be some good snow up on the local mountains.

Joel Spolski seems to be writing a series on usability, and the first draft of the first article, Introduction to Great Design, went up today. Should hopefully prove to an useful or at least interesting read.

So, I voted today. What an adventure that was. (Although not as adventurous going through an ice jam.)

Due to the way my neighbourhood is layed out, even though my nearest polling station is, oh, roughly a kilometer away, it is at least a 15 minute walk due to the lack of connecting streets and my lack of knowledge regarding the allyway network in that direction. My schedule for the day, as it turns out, does not allow me to be absent from campus for more than an hour at a time, and still be able to take care of everything I’m booked for with comfortable amount of time to actually transit to and from campus. And I sure didn’t want to wake up before eight in the morning to cast my ballot.

After much prodding from Dan and reassurance that I can, in fact, vote for my own riding from another, I planned out my Monday such to allow myself to be able to attend to every scheduled meeting and class while still giving me time to vote, eat, and still have time to sit around in the common room.

Despite a minor setback of missing my morning bus, my plan was executed perfectly — until it came time to vote.

As it turns out, the voting station they have set up at the SFU residence dining hall does not carry ballots for ridings outside of Burnaby-Douglas. Defeated, I headed to the MBC atrium to get on the wireless and come up with a backup plan. Failing to locate the nearest Burnaby-Douglas polling station outside of campus, and not wanting to risk being denied my vote yet again, I decided to do the responsible thing and head to my local polling station. This was at 16:20, only just an hour before my CMPT 320 class.

Luckily for me, all of my bus transfers head down the hill worked out perfectly, and without much wait. I arrived at my destination at roughly quarter-to-five. (I also managed to spot one of those new Nova Busses servicing the 97 line, and that Civic Si police car the VPD has, twice, on my way there.)

Having not received my voter registration card, and hence unsure of my voting eligibility, I was directed to the registration table where a nice lady found, upon my presentation of driver’s licence and bank statement that, according to the list, my address does not exist. Apparently, there is a gap in the street number listing where my place of residence should be. Clearly baffled, the nice lady then sent me to the booth I would be voting at, just in case, to see if I was on the list there. Well, I was, so I voted, thanked the poll station workers, then quickly hurried back to the bus stop, hoping that I would not miss the transfer and end up half an hour late for class.

Much to my delight, the transportation gods were still happy with me, and I had an uneventful ride back up to campus, arrving at my 320 class with ten minutes to spare.

Hooray for increased bus services.

On another note, during my search for an optimal path from campus to the polling station, I discovered that Google local has added two additional levels of detail for its satellite and hybrid views. Think what you will, but I’m almost ready to reach for my tin-foil hat…

Unfotuantely, you won’t be seeing a play-by-play of CUTC here, nor a long write-up of its ups and downs, as other folks have already done a far better job than I will ever put enough effort in doing. Basically, it was a slightly better conference, but worse overall than last year. Look at Eugene’s post as to why, and Simon’s blog for daily breakdowns.

Instead, I’ll talk about something I haven’t really thought about for a while: school.

Barely two weeks into the semester (and having attended less than 4 days worth of classes), I already find myself weary of this academic routine. So far, I have a prof who would be much more appropriate teaching highschool, another who had been absent everytime I was able to attend her class (and have a grad student sub, much to my horror), late Monday evenings, and tons and tons of group work to look forward to. Compound that with physical fatigue, being behind, non-school commitments, taking care of the society, temptation of more community involvement, and random family-caused annoyances, this semester is looking to be heading towards a repeat of what happened an year ago.

And I thought I had learned my lesson…

All is not lost, however, as I’ve discovered that my PSYC 100 prof is actually interesting, 320 is definitely worth its ridiculous hours, and hear that my 371 prof [is] cool. Plus, I’ve actually managed step away from a few things that had previously eaten up quite a bit of my time, even stopping myself from committing to roles that I, a year ago, would have jumped into without a second thought. I’ve passed the ball to Max in regards to the Outdoor Resource Club, have mostly put my choiring days behind me, at least for now (sorry Ben and Leanne), talked my way out of being a ChicTech mentor (sorry Diane), and will most likely not be an orientation leader come Summer (sorry Candy, and, Sepand: you’re crazy).

Ironically, my reason for doing so is not to return my focus to school, but, as I’ve realized recently, is that I’ve moved on to different roles—bigger roles that no longer focus on the student society that have become my closest circle of friends and the undergraduate student body at SFU.

I’m not sure if I had told anyone, but I am currently a director for the Burnaby Mountain Biking Association, have been working—albeit, so far, only with words of support—with the SFPIRG on setting up a bike coop at SFU, and am beginning to become indirectly involved in SFU Recreation’s effort in its push to bring back outdoor recreation. Although it is true that none of these commitments are time intensive, I have a feeling that they are about to become more so, and, in my current situation, are more than enough.

However, being the kind of person that I am, I inevitably end up putting more into my already-overflowing plate.

Just yesterday, it was brought to my attention that the school may be wanting to hire undergrads to TA for some of their more popular courses. Although no formal announcements have been made, becoming a TA was something I had always wanted to at least try ever since I was a first year. And, hey, I am all about making money doing things I like. On a more political side, I am also seriously considering running for the SFSS Forum as well, as Dan had just recently resigned due to time conflicts.

Decisions, decisions…

And, with that, I will close this entry as I’ve got to arrive at school somewhat early in the morning to make sure that the society does not lose out on its Clubs Days table again. Lets hope that my four or so hours of napping today will prove useful in finally overcoming the fatigue I’ve accumulated over the last two weeks.

It is now noon at Toronto, and, through some miracle, I am conscious and awake, after spending quite some time praying to the porcelain god. Ironically, having passed out, I actually slept quite well, and am currently feeling awesome. My head hurts slightly, but it’s still awesome.

I’m sure Noah would be proud.

Today, sadly, is the last day of this fine conference, and also time to take care of some unfinished business (wink wink). Yes, it has been brought, and, yes, it was inscribed, in glorious Sharpie Black.

Finally, it seems my attempts at prodding people to actually upload pictures to the CSSS Gallery has mostly been in vain. For that, I apologize. I promise I’ll do some more prodding.

Ahhh… Sweet, sweet intarweb…

I don’t feel like writing a long post, so I’ll try to keep this brief.

First off, the Sheraton hotel we are staying at is quite nice, with big rooms, good service, and the catering are fairly good, when they are provided. At the same time, this venue sucks, because we are in the middle of no where; Richmond Hill is quite literally the counter part of Richmond, B.C.

Our first night was spent, unforunately, sober, because there were no obvious pubs within walking distance from the hotel. Things were much more lively the second night when alcohol consumption was returned to a more appropriate level.

Equally bad, there is no wireless internet provided during the conference, most likely due to how much the hotel charges for meeting and conference room wireless access. Although wired connection is provided, having to share between four people, plus Marcel having to work on a website job, means that intarweb access is quite limited. Hence, of course, the lack of updates.

Oh yeah, and being toasted.

As far as the conference itself is concerned, it was fairly tpical. A few entertaining sessions, a couple boring mostly-sales-pitch seminars, and tons of craziness both from the delegates and organizers. I am happy to report that SFU is, once again, known as the-school-with-the-hats, and we’ve easily out-cheered every other delegate groups here.

Once again, Microsoft provided tons of software to give away, namely Office and Encarta. The expression from the google rep when she found out she was to hand out a copy of Encarta as prize was priceless.

Ah, the ironies of CUTC…

It’s barely two weeks into the new year, and I find myself travelling outside the grater Vancouver area yet again.

Stay tuned for updates from CUTC—assuming, of course, that I’m sober enough to write when and where wireless is available.

Wooooo! Apex!

I think I can actually pull off stuffing everything I need into my 28L backpack, plus some in the ski and boot bags.

It was either the scurrying rodents, itchy throat (worst time to catch a flu, ever), or excitement, but I somehow managed to wakeup and stay awake since before eight this morning. Naturally, I’ve spent the last hour on the computer and generally being lazy.

Alright, time to start my day…

And, to reiterate, yay Apex!