I tell you the worse currecy
that ever grew among mankind is money. This
sacks cities, this drives people from their homes,
this teaches and corrupts the minds of the loyal
to acts of shame.
- ANTIGONE, Sophocles

Written in 442 B.C., yet still applies every bit as much today.

Extreme Makeover: Website Edition

Ok maybe not "extreme" per se, but still, my website has been updated. It's bigger, a little faster, and now with even more hilarity, hidden easter eggs, surprises, and even prizes! Yes, real prizes. Take your time and check it out.

Christmas cheers everyone!

Merry Christmas !

Hope everyone has a fun holiday. While enjoying your fat, juicy, plump, turkey, I hope y'all remind yourselves what the meaning of Christmas is really about. Hint: contrary to popular belief, it's not centred around the Xbox360.

Oh, and happy Hanukkah too! (to all those who apply)

God bless.

Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia!

This has got to be the best pre-recorded piece on SNL ever. Big big props to Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. Just watch and see, you'll be impressed.

Chris Parnell & Andy Samberg - Lazy Sunday

The stache and the goatee is coming off

Phew... finally got through another season of playoffs of university. This was the longest exam period I ever had, 2 and a half weeks! My facial hair is even of, dare I say, "respectable" length?

What of the exam results? I really have no high hopes for it this term. Doesn't matter how well I do on the exams, I lost enough marks during the semester to bring down the final grade significantly. And I don't expect much from the exams anyway.

This is the problem/side-effect of doing well last year. Now everyone expects for me to be on that same level; my parents, my friends, even myself. Oh well ... at least it's not like I'm gonna lose a scholarship, since I never had any to begin with.

The only thing on my mind now is a whole lot of relaxation and going out to enjoy the season.

Christmas spirit

Everywhere I look,
On the streets,
In my neighbour's yard,
In the newspapers,
On my computer screen,
Over the airwaves,
In the digital coaxial cables,
All my friends,
and their msn names,
My parents,
Everywhere I look,
There's Christmas spirit flowing.
But here I am,
Stuck in the exam phase,
Shackled to my desk,
Bounded like Prometheus.
Help me get through this.

Procrastination is the Devil

So here I am wasting time playing with Photoshop, in the middle of exam period. This was fun. I made a comic-fying version of a photograph (an old one at that).

BeforeAfter

Hehe, Aanchal has a stache.

*much thanks to the Attack of the Show for the know-hows.

Exams, exams, exams

Exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams, exams,

Goodbye teenager, hellooo 20s

First, happy birthday to moi! The number 20 hasn't quite sunk in yet, probably need a day or two more.

Turning 20 is a big step. This means my years as a teenager are gone. No more excuses for stupid things, no more close relation to teen movies, and teen jokes. I actually remember how glad I was when I turned thirteen and how I wanted to grow faster. Guess I got my wish now. Looking back, I can say my seven year stint as a teen was pretty damn good. Probably not the most exciting one of block, but certainly not dull. Had some really good times and used it wisely.

So the 20s are supposed to be the best times of your lfe, right? Now I gotta start thinking about, in a more serious manner, moving out, careers, relationships,... family. Wow. Exciting, but scary, scary words. I'm looking forward to it and I'm going to make sure to live this time of my life to all that it can be. (lol. sounds like the Army ad)

What a night!

Yesterday was the ECE Dinner Dance and it was hella fun! Although there were a few minor glitches here and there, overall it was a very successful night. The fact that I organized to make it happen made it that much more rewarding. Reaping the fruits of my labour so to speak.

Photos from my camera are now uploaded on my photo blog. I know there were others taking pics too. Here is Danny's site with pictures taken from his crappy 3.1 MP camera.

More importantly, I gotta give shout-outs to all those who helped me greatly. Kharthick, in giving me directions and Hotel contacts, Jeremy for selling tickets, quite persuasively might I add, and Danny for helping me with advertising.

I hope all 125 in attendance had a great time. There are many lessons I learned from this event, one of which is wine and pop do not mix very well.

ECE Dinner Dance

So as this year's Social Director of the ECE Club (that's Electrical and Computer Engineering, NOT Early Childhood Education), my main duty is to organize the annual ECE Dinner Dance.

It was supposed to be a partnership venture, along with my Comp counterpart Rob, but he ditched it. So basically I have to organize the entire thing by myself. I'm really diappointed at him, because he has done absolutely nothing towards this event. I'm a little bitter because I had to spend quite some time on this during that crazy 2 weeks with midterms. Now that I'm getting the results back, I'm ticked, because I know the time I spent on this could have gone to studying that would lead to better results. However, other execs of the ECE Club have been very helpful and supportive though. Organizing an event like this is a hell of a lot more involved than I thought. I have to think about and arrange everything, down to the smallest details which no one attending the event would even give a thought to. It's a lot of work that's for sure.

In any case, most of the organization has been done and tickets are on sale now. It will be on Saturday November 19th, at the fabulous Novotel Toronto. It is on The Esplanade, right on the waterfront, a 2 minute walk from Union Station. The night will include a 3 course meal, 2 bottles of wine per table, and unlimited soft drinks. The Skule Jazz Combo will also be gracing us with their performance. A DJ with lighting effects is in order. All this is only $35 per person. Tickets are on sale in the Atrium at lunch everyday. Last I heard, we're already 75% sold out.

I just have a few more things to finalize this week. I'm hoping for a sell out event of 130. Quite a lot of time has gone into this, so I pray everything will turn out great and everyone will have a blast.

In your face, midterms!

Boo-ya-ka-sha! In your face, midterms! for throwing me three of you in a matter of 35 hours. Do thy worst, for I have seen Hell itself.

Ok, maybe I shouldn't sounds so cocky. After all, I didn't do that well. But at this moment, it really doesn't matter, because I just finished 3 phuckin' midterms in a row.

It wasn't just those 35 hours that was intense, it was all of the last seven days leading up to the midterms. I never had to study for 3 different midterms at once. Coupled with things that I absolutely had to take care of from my extracurricular side, colliding right in the middle of all this,... it was stress and intensity at its best. In retrospect, I can now say good times, good times.

Facebook addiction

Argggh!! I'm hooked on the facebook again! This occured last year smack in the middle of the final exams, and now that I have 4 midterms coming up in the next 2 weeks, it's happening again. Gotta love my sense of timing. I'm spending around an hour a day surfing the facebook, also known as the "facebook trance". Sh**, why did I let it happen to me again?

A wise man (a friend from Cornell) once told me that the facebook is more than a site, it's a drug. And oh, how right he is. This has to be the biggest waste of time, ever! and yet, it's so addictive. Those of you who don't know what I'm talking about are probably thinking I'm on crack, but most of you do, and know how they hook you back again and again. Look, it's 2:20 right now, and I'm still up doing it. I got work to do, damnit!

Why do you mock me, computer? why?!

You know you're an engineer when . . .

This is a classic. I found this cut-out of an article I kept from first year. It's from the faculty student paper The Cannon (which I was a part of in the last 2 year).


In case you're wondering, yes I did post it on my door.

1000 Visits

Yaaayyyyyyyy!... Today marked the 1000th visit to my blog. Awesome!

It's good to know that I'm at least putting out content worth viewing, and that this isn't a total waste of time. It took exactly 3 months, since I started this blog back in July. Not too shabby, I think.

Word of the day

I came upon this word during my readings. I thought I should share the knowledge.

buttress (btrs) n.

1. A structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement.

2. Something resembling a buttress, as:
a) The flared base of certain tree trunks.
b) A horny growth on the heel of a horse's hoof.

3. Something that serves to support, prop, or reinforce: “The law is by its very nature buttress of the status quo” (J. William Fulbright).

tr.v. but·tressed, but·tress·ing, but·tress·es

*courtesy of dictionary.com

Buried under a giant pile

It's only been 2 and a half weeks, and already SKULE ate away all my free time. This past weekend, I was busy doing nothing but my homework. Yet still, I have a giant pile of work lined up. It doesn't come as a surprise to me or anything, just that a part of my fantasizing brain was actually hoping it wouldn't come this soon. Haha... ya, that was real wishful thinkin' there. And, as I anticipated, I haven't been keeping up with this blog. I think there were 2 posts in all of September, yet so much was happening to blog about. =(

In other news, I finally decided on my one elective for the fall. It's gonna be..... drumroll, please! ..................... Intro to Classical Mythology. I heard from a few sources that Mythology is an easy, yet interesting class. My friends had good experiences with it, although I think the one I'm taking is actually different. Anyway, sure beats Philosophy of Science, where we wasted 50 min. arguing about one insignificant point some dude wrote in a paper somewhere. Argh!! that class was totally not how I imagined it to be.

Fall term timetable

For those who are curious, here's my 2005 Fall term timetable.

I'm still "shopping around" for my Arts elective. It's actually quite hard to chose an elective. I mean, I've been waiting for this for 2 years now, so I really want to put it to good use. Preferrably something with interesting topics, no essays, as little reading as possible, and the female sex occupying more than 10% of the class would be supremely nice for a change!

The courses that I'm considering are: Philosophy of Science, Ancient Greek History, and Cognitive Science. Currently I'm officially registered for Phil. Sci., but I have a feeling I'll be jumping around a lot for the next week.

Site feed

Who-hoo! This site now has the RSS feed working properly. Yep, that's right. Now, not only can you just visit my blog, you can subscribe to it as well. Oh ya, I see all you ladies jumpin' off your seats!

So, if your using Firefox (which all y'all should be doing), just click on the little satellite dish icon at the bottom-right corner of this window, and Subscribe. If your still using I.E. (shame on you!), syndicate to http://individual.utoronto.ca/william_s/lookatmeblog/atom.xml in you RSS client.

And the best part is, this subscription won't end in a year. Have fun!

F!rosh week 0T5

F!rosh week was hella tight this year!

For the second year in a row, I participated as a F!rosh leedur. Already exhausted prior to this week, but Frosh week brought my spirits right back up. Physically, I'm still tired, but mentally, very wired. I went too crazy last year, so I tried to be more reserved this year. For example, I didn't do full-body dyeing of purple, kept my voice for a little longer, and didn't attend EVERY single event.

Still though, I was fully into all the important/fun events, and all were well worth the energy and time. Again, I was a leader for Gamma group, and again, our group was awesome! In my opinion, the 0T9s seem more spirited than those of last year, and my year. It's just plain fun to hang out with old friends, meet new first years, act crazy, and cause havoc all at the same time.

Pictures of the madness should be coming soon. And I really should be getting some rest.

Whoo-hoo!! I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeee

Today marked my last day of work at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

Started here as a desktop support immediately after the exams, and worked up until now the very end of August. Turned out to be 18 1/2 weeks in total, but it went by so fast. I still remember my first couple days on the job.

Overall, it was just an awesome experience. I learned a lot of things, both technically and socially. I met people whom I'll be friends with, and people who's positions anybody would envy. I've seen more Beemers this summer than most people see in their life. All the nights when the summer students gang (a.k.a. all-the-really-young-people) went out were truly the fun highlight of my summer. The technical knowledge I've gained will be sure to come in handy for future employment.

It was indeed a great ride. Sometimes tiring, sometimes exciting, sometimes fun, sometimes nervous, sometimes cruising, etc. As I sit here writing, iTunes just happen to shuffle and play Green Day's Time of Your Life, perfectly fitting my mood, I'm feeling sad the ride has come to an end, but concurrently I'm also really looking forward to the few days left before classes start, and to third year itself. I'm sensing it'll be an exciting school year.

A big, big thanks to EVERYONE who made this summer as good as it was. I'll be sure not to forget it. Thanks guys!!!

Jays Sunday

Today was another free-Blue-Jays-tickets-from-work outing. This pair of tickets I actually won from a draw with a pool of about 50 people. Coinsidentily enough, both Theo and Karyn were also attending that exact game. What were the chances of that happening?! Not surprisingly, none of us actually paid for our super awesome seats. Theo's pair were given to him by our supervisor Neil, and Karyn had connections to the co-owner of the Jays (I think??).

All was dandy until last night, when I learned that certain someone, *cough*, *cough*, couldn't make it to the game. She was actually sick, and I was just glad that it wasn't made up. (I had my share of those.) So a seat become available..... but jeez, no one wants to go to a baseball game these days. wut up wid dat? I'm certainly not a "baseball fan", but at least I'd like to get out and watch a game from time to time. Apparently I have quite a few baseball hatin' friends.

In a true last minute fashion, I got Dave from my classes to tag along. This was at 11:30, when he just woke up (or did I wake him up?) and the game starting at 12:30. I got down to the Skdome, ooops I mean "Rogers Centre", around1 and Dave finally arrived at 1:40, which was bottom of the 5th inning. The game itself wasn't too terribly exciting, but Karyn claims she was on the Jumbotron. I missed it.

After the match, Theo and his roomate Adrian, Karyn and her fiance Andrew, Dave and I all met up at the second level HardRock Cafe to have a pint. The view was amazing and we took in a triple A game that was happening on the field at the time. The greasy food was exactly what I needed too. Btw, big thanks to Karyn for the first round of drinks!

The group split up from then. Theo and Adrian went to see a movie, Karyn & Andrew went home, and Dave and I headed to Queen Street to look for shoes. It was purely my idea, since I'm the one who's anxious for new shoes and on two seperate occasions I asked him "are you getting shoes too?" and he said "no" very confidently. This turned out to be the biggest irony. Through all the shops we visited, there was only one shoe that I really liked, but they didn't have any of my size left; surprise, surprise. And out of nowhere, Dave sees a pair he likes and bought it. At the end of it all, I was like: Dude, I'm the one who's suppose to come out of this with new shoes in my hand, not you. It was funny how that turned out. Good day and fun times!

The company party

Yesterday was our company-wide Four Seasons Home Office Summer Party! I heard lots of great things about it before, and yes it was that good.

All decent looking photos from my camera are posted on my picture blog. It started off at 1pm with a private bout cruise onboard the Northern Spirit I. We received 2 free drinks and a meal onboard. The weather was excellent, and made the cruise a great time. I wished it lasted longer, but it ended at around 4:30. Sorry peeps, no pictures while on cruise; my camera had no batteries.

Next was our team-building event on The Docks. We were randomly split into 12 groups to play in a series of competitive events. It proved to be successful as we had good "bonding times". And having one of the presidents of the company, Katie Taylor on our team didn't hurt either.

And finally, the dinner and dancing. It was held on the brand new The Next Level. It had amazing views, patios, lounge, and tables. The food was awesome, and what can I say, with an open bar, you definitely can't go wrong.

It was so refreshing to get out on a work day, and this really recharged my internal betteries. I soooo needed this, and now I actually feel excited about working again.

The end is near,

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I just found out that my last day here at Four Seasons will be August 31. I am absolutely poofed, and have little motivation remaining. I would have really liked to have the entire week of Aug. 29 off, so that I can have one full week of rest before starting up school the next week. Considering how the original plan was to have me stay until Sep. 2, this isn't bad at all.

The important factor here is the cross-over between the next term co-op students, and current. I have to train the new guys coming in for September. They're starting Mon. Aug. 29 and usually this is a one week deal, but since my partner in crime Theo is getting kicked out of his Toronto apartment on 31th, my supervisors were nice enough to arrange just a 3-day cross-over for both of us.

I'll be in hibernation the four days between the end of work and the start of school. (Sweeeet.) Please do not disturb during this time.

When I grow up ...

When I grow up, I want to be a wedding crasher! Damn, that looks fun!


I just watched the movie last night, and this one is actually as funny as the critics acclaim it is. There were soooo many great moments in the film. I will not spoil anything. The story moves along very well, and the chemistry between all the casts works great. Well worth checking out!

Ads by Gooooooogle

Yes it's true. I have sold out, and displayed ads on my blog. The main reason for doing so is just to make the sidebar look more interesting. And besides, they're ads by google, so they're not very protrusive.

.... ok, ok, I also admit to adding them because of revenue. Google's AdSense program sounds enticing and the more people click on the ads, the more pennies go to my bank account. To be honest, I'm just experimenting with it. I doubt my account will ever reach $10 in earnings. And these ads are pretty damn random; like Sexy girls and Sexy guys at Webconference, or Iranians in Toronto Join us.


*****

In other news, five of us Four Seasons summer interns went out tonight for Ian's goodbye dinner at Crazy Sushi. He's a really nice guy, who was good to know. The poor finance kid had so much trouble with computers though. But it's good to actually help someone who appreciated it. Back to Cornell University in New York next week. Hope to keep in touch with ya Ian.

And one by one, our big summer interns group is dwindling down.....

Timetabling

This time tabling thing is such a pain in the bee-yu-tee-tee! After 2 years of being spoiled of having a perfectly fitting timetable spoon-fed to me, the sudden freedom of having to choose every fine detail of my courses is overwhelming. This is one of those situations when you don't know if you should be happy or sad.

One the one hand, in first and second year, I had absolutely no choice of what courses I would take, but at least I didn't worry anything about conflicting classes. Now, all of a sudden, I can take whatever the hell I please, whenever, wherever, with whomever. But the task of making my own individual schedule is a big ass headache!

Scheduling both fall and winter term courses to have no conflicts, under this new "flexible" ECE curriculum, with a whole bunch of rules, is not how I liked to spend summer nights. The good news is, they are coming along. But I still need to spend a few more hours on it. And everything is dependent on every other section; if only one section fills up and I don't get in, my entire timetable collapses. This drives me to the conclusion that I should wake up at 6am, the day of registration, when the online ROSI registration opens. *sigh*

I have to plug my super-programming genius Mueez for making this timetable generator/conflict resolver thingy. Yikes! if you can make something like this, you're pretty much set for graduation. The tool really does make things easier for ya. Check it out.

Farmer's arm

Why won't this nasty farmer's arm from the last long weekend go away?!
I'm wearing long-sleeves for the rest of this muggy summer now.

Uber good podcasts

I just added a new section to my right column, of all my favourite podcasts and online shows. I'm deeply entrenched within pocasts right now. They just exploded in popularity in the last while, and they're filling my iPod very fast. Although I should really be taking them off, since i only listen to them once, but hey, I still have over 10 gigs left, so what's the rush?

As a techie and geek, these podcasts top the list.
TWiT - Headed by Leo Laporte and the rest of the TechTV gang from the good ole' days. Listening to them reminds me of the best times in television, when the greedy Comcast thugs hadn't infected the Shire of TechTV land.

command N - A surprisingly good quality podcast. Hosted by Amber Mac and Mike, "the Man Lazzazz". Aimed towards a more Canadian view, Amber and Mike really work well together. I watched all 8 episodes last night at once though a mini command N-a-thon.

Diggnation - One of the three ventures Kevin Rose is involved in. Funny man Alex helps make this tech-news-cast more enlightening than usual.

Systm - A devoted online show. They show easy and detailed tech related topics on hacking. Very high quality video and Kevin Rose & Dan Huard actually try to be professional in this one.

theBroken - Totally wacked out, relaxed, half-illegal, half-underground hacker show again with Kevin Rose and Double D. Not so good quality, but I hear they're revamping this series soon. *Ramzi iz da man!*

Check these out, they are well worth the time. TechTV was a big influence in these selections; all the hosts are/were involved with the channel at one point.

Oh and btw, I'll be adding more sections to the right column soon. It's so boring having the usual 3 sections.

Camping trip

My family and friends headed up to a place near the infamous town of Bobcageon, ON. for a campin trip this long weekend.

The place itself was called Pigeon Hollow. It was a trailer park slash camp site combined together, like most camp sites these days, and there were quite a few interesting characters I saw.

Needless to say, it was tons of fun, and wish it didn't end. I guess we did the usual list of activities this time around. BIG picnics, volleyball, soccer, fishing, kayaking, boating, swimming, and of course camp fires. Most people were gambling inside the kitchen tents at night, but I chose to sit around the fire, cooking corn and potatoes, and wonder aimlessly at the burning wood. The brand new 7-person tent we bought this year (for my family of 3), was soooo comfortable and pimpin', we could have held a party in there.

We caught a LOT of fish. Taking a rough estimate, at least 30-40 of them. Here's the kicker: all of them were the size of a man's hand. I probably contributed around 5, my dad around 20. We kept most of them, cleaned them, and cooked it all right there. They were actually not bad; being fresh and everything.

If camping was a man's fight against nature to prove himself worthy of being strong, I lost that fight this weekend. I got severly burnt all over the place and my knees and ankles are soar and bruised up. It's the first time I've been so knocked up from a camping trip, but me thinks it's due to tiredness and lack of preparation prior to leaving. (Damn you, work! damn you)

It's all good. I loved it! Hope to do it again soon.

Smallville

Why is Smallville soo flippin' sweeeeeeeet?! God!

I'm more and more addicted to it with each episode I watch.

an entry with a picture

I thought my blog looked pretty bland without any graphic on here. So here's a random picture I picked from My Pictures folder.


Grill those suckers, Mr. President of Worldwide Marketing, Sony Entertainment.

The PS3 Grill.

*coming soon in 2006*




Tip: For some reason, the name of the the image uploaded has to be one word. If it has any spaces in between, it won't upload properly. wierd...

Pimp my website

I just added hidden Easter Eggs to my website.

You might have seen one or two, on your way here, but I bet you haven't discovered ALL of them.

William's Store, you've been officially pimped!


X-to-the-Dubya signing out.

sweet sleep

There's nothing sweeter than sleeping for 12 hours on a Tuesday night.

Yesterday, after coming back from a long day at work by 7, I ate dinner, and went straight to sleep on the couch at 8. I woke up this morning at 7:30. that's 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep! I don't know how or when, but i ended up on my bed in the morning, although i don't quite remember making the journey from the living room to my bedroom . . .

disappointing Jays

My company's nice and likes to give incentives to employees. I received 2 Blue Jays tickets last week for Saturday's game against T.Bay DevilRays. They're really nice seats too, preminum dugout platnum section, $52 each. This was actually the second time i received free tickets, but seats are nicer this time and i was more excited, being it a Saturday game.

So me and my buddy Joe are all pumped up. But boy, the game was boring. A couple factors contributed to that. One: Jays were losing to the worst team in baseball, and two: with exception of a couple innings, the game was moving so slowly. I was all tired out and Joe was about to fall asleep by 5th inning.

But there were a few highlights. I got to play around with the mascots. There were a lot kids around me and the mascots were hanging around the area a lot. oh how sweet it is to punch the nose and pat the back of that big foam.

And yes, you guessed it, Jays lost. 6 -5 . in other news, we were caught in the rain, walking back. but it wasn't bad at all, seeing as it was 30 degrees out. Afterwards, we went to Montana's to catch some ribs and a couple Mooseheads. Had a little buzz in the end, and made the day all worth it. Good times, good times.

Accomplishment

Boo-ya! I got Blogger to be on MY website.

It was one day, and already i was tired of the .blogspot.com . And i am so proud to transfer the hosting duty to my site, and make this work. i'm no webmaster, and this is some accomplishment (even though Blogger had the super-easy intuitive guide to hosting on your own site.) Still, i was able to do something i couldn't do before.

I tried hosting WordPress (another blog) on this site, and it just didn't work. and they even claimed the 5-minute installation. took me over 3 hrs to play with it; and with no results!

Blogger does seem to be working out well. I'm likin' it.

w./

first one, baby!

alright, lets to this!

i hope Blogger will meet my intense blogging needs. lol

let's see how this turns out.

So first blog. exciting. i guess i finally joined a real bloging service. i hope to blog a lot so that when i look back at this account in a few year, the Archive actually is an archive.

Cheers,