Thursday, June 26, 2003

Okay, summer IS here in Montreal. You will not hear me complaining about my dungeon of a basement apartment again because while it is soo hot outside, my room is chilled. Also, I did my anti-casual day yesterday at work so I was dying of heat walking around in black pants and a shirt and tie.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Here's a weekend summary: Friday: Left Montreal pretty early after having gone to "Parking" (club) the night before with the housemates. Parking isn't technically a "gay" bar, but I did feel like I was in a QAF episode. Julie picked me up at the Winnipeg Airport after a long and unproductive, non-direct flight. That evening, I took both sisters to Earl's on main to see all of the Winnipeg friends. No celebs were spotted there, even though J. Lo. and Richard Gere were in town (as the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press reminds us every day) Walked around the forks, saw Caroline's new Kona, then went to Bar Italia where Rea was working. Saturday: Worked out at the YMCA downtown with Jackie, returned to Earl's on main for lunch with my Dad, met Julie and friends at Wolsley street festival and chilled for a while in the beer tent. Spent the evening playing cards with Mom. Sunday: Spend $300 at the mall on new shirt, tie, shoes, pants, belt for grad, did Andrea's birthday bbq, watched "Hollywood Homicide" with dad, AJ's for trivial pursuit and Coronas. Monday: Relived pretty much the entire grad ritual. Took pictures at the school, sat through the church service, watched the throwing hats, ate the dinner and listened to the tributes. I was recruited by the grad. organizers to deal blackjack at the safe-grad after-party between 3-5AM, so I hung out with AJ until 3AM then headed over to the hall. Of course, all the kids were too busy drinking and dancing to be interested in blackjack, so I just sat there looking uncool with the parents (who couldn't learn blackjack to save their lives). Tuesday: Lunch with AJ and Jam, then got back on the plane.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

I think Mira won again (over all 7+ games of pool) last night but we didn't keep track all that well. Beforehand, I was at the Y working out with coworker/friend Dave. I hadn't even recovered from Monday, when there we are, back at the gym. I did squats for the first time, and are they ever killer. I've never sweated more in my life. After that Mira and I went to a recommended sushi place and each got a $25 plate of rolls. We both barely made it through those, if you don't count the all-cucumber "filler" pieces. I give that restaurant ('Kanda Sushi' on Bishop) a "C" mostly because they put some kind of mayo. like sauce in the Cali. rolls, which just wasn't necessary.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Thanks for reminding me, commentors. I will be in Winnipeg this (long) weekend, for my sister Julie's highschool graduation. Here is my flight information: AC6043 ARRIVE: WINNIPEG FRI 20JUN03 1335 Jetsgo 132 Depart: Tue 24Jun03 Winnipeg 6:25pm
The office is empty this morning. I don't think there's one full time employee here today, and definitely no management. Everyone with that job description is either at an open source conference in Europe, or on vacation. How will any work get done ?

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Here's what's new (briefly): Last weekend I was in Waterloo just for Saturday because I was offered a free ride there and back by my coworker, so, what the heck. Last night my hostel friend Lidia said goodbye to Canada and went home to France after finishing her studies at UQAM. We had a little dinner with other random French people at her friend's place. Work is going okay but I feel like our stuff is a bit of a mess and we need to take a different approach to the problem to really make a solid product. (Reminder: the problem is adding shared calendar to outlook without an exchange server) I know a lot more now about ATL and windows programming. Tonight, I'm meeting Mira after the gym again for pool. Tomorrow 3623 St-Urbain is having a family dinner which is nice because I rarely see everybody. This weekend I may have another free ride to Waterloo, but I'd really rather be here I think.

Friday, June 06, 2003

For the last two days I've been working on the "spinning icon" feature of our Outlook add-in. We shipped 1.0 with no real indication to the user of what's going on during the sync. So, to avoid support calls to the effect of "How do I know it's working?" I made a little toolbar button that you can click for a status window, and whose icon spins while the application is working (think of the spinning "e" in Internet Explorer). I know this feature will be a hit, but is this really changing the world? And I'll be in Waterloo this weekend.

Thursday, June 05, 2003

I met up with Mira last night, as she is now living here and officially bored. I saw her new place and we played pool at "Sharx" (?) where I ate what must be the worst nachos for sale in the city. The salsa was made with tabasco sauce. Mira technically won at pool three games to two, but both times I lost by scratching trying to sink the 8 ball. And both times I *did* sink it, just not where I said I would. People sometimes ask me "John, what's the harm in 'spinning' your players in foosball?" Well, its the same reason you have to call your shots in pool -- good players like to take as much randomness out of the game as possible. Sure you could play a game of pool where you just hit the balls at random and hope one goes it, or you could play foosball just spinning your guys like crazy and eventually someone will score, but that doesn't prove anything about who was the better player!

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Sometimes I think that instead of being a Computer Scientist, I'd rather be a professional foosball player.

Monday, June 02, 2003

Me: "Hello there, I have an appointment to register for courses at 'Canada's top school for computer science' using your cutting edge student information system known as 'Quest'" Quest: "bea.jolt.ServiceException: bea.jolt.JoltRemoteService(MsgAPI)call()\nbea.jolt.SessionException: Connection send error\nbea.jolt.JoltException: [1] NwHdlr:send(): Network error"
F03 Plan: CS466 Algorithm Design & Analysis CS452 Real-Time Programming CS454 or CS456 Distributed or Networks? Which one? Both? ... Talk to me!
Lets start with Thursday when we had a little house outing to the Diable Vert, a club which is actually painted totally orange despite its name. Highlights included getting a free discarded drink from a girl who "didn't drink anything but vodka because of the sugar" (I didn't ask about date rape drugs) and playing foosball with someone random against the table owners (we lost), then again (lost again), then again later with Jamie, a UW math grad and one of the house's peripheral friends (we still lost, but it was close!). It's nice to find a club with foosball so you don't have to spend all your time dancing. Oh, and on the way home I learned that I had been eating at the wrong late night pizza place (Madonna). Less visible, higher quality pizza is available to those who know where to go (Cafe I----?). Prior to going out that night, I went to the Y with Dave from work. Working out with someone else makes a big difference because alone there's no motivation, no competition. I'm psyched to go back again tonight. Now on Friday night, my Dad arrived in Montreal and the next morning we drove down into New York state to go hiking in the Aderondacks. We stayed at the Keene Farm cabin maintained by the Alpine Club of Canada and only about 2 hours drive south of Montreal. The idea is that you bring your own food and sleeping bag, and the cabin provides all the cooking utensils and shelter. You base your hikes from there without all the pains of real camping. It was really threatening to rain, but we were able to quickly hike to the top of Mt. Hurricane (2000' ascent in 2 hours) before it really started pouring that night. We came back Sunday morning because of the poor weather and did the usual stuff in Montreal.