Should be fun times tonight! I invited over a few people from Pixar for food and hangin' tonight, not sure how many people are around but it'll be great to see a few people anyway!
I just went out to buy a whole bunch of food and stuff cause I have absolutely no idea how many or how few people are coming, haha gotta love the last minute planning for parties.
Should be lots of fun!!!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
Got all of my marks from school
Today the last mark that I was waiting to hear about showed up on the school website so that rooockkks. I wasn't sure if I did all that well on the Final in that class, but my Assignment marks were pretty good so it looks like it balanced out pretty well. My marks were decent for this term, it's usually hard to get super awesome high-school style marks in University, since the averages in all of my classes tends to be around 68%. So getting an 80% or higher in a CS class is usually pretty awesome, and my Networking mark was very close, so I am super happy about that.
It's great to get all of these marks back and now I am officially a 4th year CS Student!! Wahoo!!
I bought Napoleon Dynamite today at Best Buy, I don't know why I didn't buy it yet since I've seen it at least 10 times. Now I own it and I expect I will probably have to watch it again quite soon. :)
Looking for a Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR for my Mom, and I am considering the different places that I could buy it. Circuit City is a good price but unfortunately they don't take Canadian credit cards on the website for some reason, so I'll have to buy it somewhere else. I am excited to learn how to use a Digital SLR camera as they take really awesome photos. My buddy Jake has this camera too so I'll be excited to learn some details about how to use it from him. Getting some dinner tonight with Jake so that should be totally awesome.
Looks like we are staying in for New Years tomorrow night, probably just have some people over and party it up here. Maybe Taylor will bring his XBox as we kinda need to play some XBox I reckon. Mad music vibe is required tomorrow night, I think perhaps some Jake DJ action should be necessary.
It's great to get all of these marks back and now I am officially a 4th year CS Student!! Wahoo!!
I bought Napoleon Dynamite today at Best Buy, I don't know why I didn't buy it yet since I've seen it at least 10 times. Now I own it and I expect I will probably have to watch it again quite soon. :)
Looking for a Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR for my Mom, and I am considering the different places that I could buy it. Circuit City is a good price but unfortunately they don't take Canadian credit cards on the website for some reason, so I'll have to buy it somewhere else. I am excited to learn how to use a Digital SLR camera as they take really awesome photos. My buddy Jake has this camera too so I'll be excited to learn some details about how to use it from him. Getting some dinner tonight with Jake so that should be totally awesome.
Looks like we are staying in for New Years tomorrow night, probably just have some people over and party it up here. Maybe Taylor will bring his XBox as we kinda need to play some XBox I reckon. Mad music vibe is required tomorrow night, I think perhaps some Jake DJ action should be necessary.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Learning to program in Perl tonight
I need to learn how to program in Perl for this little assignment I am doing, so my buddy Matt gave me a good intro when I was at home and now I need to spend some more time on it. I am going to learn a few of the file handling features of Perl, and of course use a fair bit of Perl's fancy search and replace regular expression stuff. Should be a good review of regular expressions while I am at it! Yeah programming for fun!!! :)
All is going really well at the new apartment. I have unpacked everything and moved in all of my stuff, unpacked my clothes, packed away my suitcases, and pretty much everything else. It was great, I just spent a few hours on it this afternoon and now everything is done, so that rocks.
I'll post more when I have learned how to do some cool stuff in Perl.
All is going really well at the new apartment. I have unpacked everything and moved in all of my stuff, unpacked my clothes, packed away my suitcases, and pretty much everything else. It was great, I just spent a few hours on it this afternoon and now everything is done, so that rocks.
I'll post more when I have learned how to do some cool stuff in Perl.
Lunch at Pixar and a Cell Phone!!
Today was totally sweet, I got some groceries and then went to hang out with Taylor and Jake and lots of my friends from the summer at Pixar. It rocked and it was great to see everyone.
With enough hounding from my American buddies, I think I am going to get a Cell Phone here for the 4 months, especially because some companies here have really good deals compared to Canada, so for a fairly cheap price I can have a Cell Phone for the 4 months I am here which seems to be kinda expected in American culture these days!! Haha seriously it's totally different than Canada, as there are hardly any payphones around comparatively between Canada and the USA... I figure this will be easier and then I won't continually be lost in the city or unreachable since absolutely every friend of mine here has a Cell Phone too!! Very exciting/crazy but I am pretty psyched to get one. Haha I am SO Canadian. :)
With enough hounding from my American buddies, I think I am going to get a Cell Phone here for the 4 months, especially because some companies here have really good deals compared to Canada, so for a fairly cheap price I can have a Cell Phone for the 4 months I am here which seems to be kinda expected in American culture these days!! Haha seriously it's totally different than Canada, as there are hardly any payphones around comparatively between Canada and the USA... I figure this will be easier and then I won't continually be lost in the city or unreachable since absolutely every friend of mine here has a Cell Phone too!! Very exciting/crazy but I am pretty psyched to get one. Haha I am SO Canadian. :)
Moving to California!
The move today went really well. The flight was a bit delayed and took about an extra 30 min in Toronto, but we traveled pretty quickly and were only about 45 min late into San Francisco. Thankfully Taylor my buddy came to pick me up and got lost on the way so he wasn't waiting for a super long time.
I just got my my apartment and it is AWESOME. Here are lots of pics of my new apartment!!!!!!
Lots more posts soon after I get settled here. Cheers!
T-dawg and his girl at SFO
Crazy pic of us
Me on my new couch
Pensive photo on my new couch
T-dawg on the couch
Dining room table
TV and random DVD player
Sweet lounge pictures
Haha the kitchen is perfectly set up again!!
Sweet
New dishes
Brand new pots and pans
Brand new dishes
Perfectly stacked glasses!! This is amazing!!!!!
My bedroom
My dresser
Balcony outside
My sink area
Near sink area, our bathroom and walk-in closet!!
Walk-in closet
Huge Bathtub!!
Lounge photo
The other bedroom
The other bathroom
Balcony photo, it is awesome
I just got my my apartment and it is AWESOME. Here are lots of pics of my new apartment!!!!!!
Lots more posts soon after I get settled here. Cheers!
T-dawg and his girl at SFO
Crazy pic of us
Me on my new couch
Pensive photo on my new couch
T-dawg on the couch
Dining room table
TV and random DVD player
Sweet lounge pictures
Haha the kitchen is perfectly set up again!!
Sweet
New dishes
Brand new pots and pans
Brand new dishes
Perfectly stacked glasses!! This is amazing!!!!!
My bedroom
My dresser
Balcony outside
My sink area
Near sink area, our bathroom and walk-in closet!!
Walk-in closet
Huge Bathtub!!
Lounge photo
The other bedroom
The other bathroom
Balcony photo, it is awesome
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Chanukkah Day 3
Tonight was awesome, the Logans came over for Chanukkah dinner and so did my Mom's friend Doreen and also my friend Matt. It was super awesome and we had lots of amazing food again and it was a lot of fun!!
After dinner and after everyone left, Matt and I went downstairs for some random programming!! Matt gave me a 1 hour lesson in Perl programming, which was very useful. I wanted to learn this for something so it is useful to get a good introduction to it. I am pretty impressed by all the stuff Perl can do but there are lots of weird syntax things and tons of strange "special variables" that seem to magically get filled with certain useful values at certain useful times!! Haha awesome. I was pretty impressed and you can do some reasonably hard stuff with limited code, so that rocks too. It appears that learning Regular Expressions was very important for Perl as it is common to use a sort of search and replace function on strings and filenames. Very interesting stuff!!
Here are some sweet photos from tonight!!
Matt laughing
Doreen and the Logans
Doreen and Grace
The table setting
More Latkes!!
Mom and Dad
Salmon and grilled vegetables
Matt and I looking crazzzzy
After dinner and after everyone left, Matt and I went downstairs for some random programming!! Matt gave me a 1 hour lesson in Perl programming, which was very useful. I wanted to learn this for something so it is useful to get a good introduction to it. I am pretty impressed by all the stuff Perl can do but there are lots of weird syntax things and tons of strange "special variables" that seem to magically get filled with certain useful values at certain useful times!! Haha awesome. I was pretty impressed and you can do some reasonably hard stuff with limited code, so that rocks too. It appears that learning Regular Expressions was very important for Perl as it is common to use a sort of search and replace function on strings and filenames. Very interesting stuff!!
Here are some sweet photos from tonight!!
Matt laughing
Doreen and the Logans
Doreen and Grace
The table setting
More Latkes!!
Mom and Dad
Salmon and grilled vegetables
Matt and I looking crazzzzy
Shopping
Today was sweet for shopping, Alex and I went to the Mall and got lots of cool stuff. I got another stripey shirt, and we all know how I feel about stripey shirts. I got some super cheap Joe Boxers too which rocks as I totally needed more boxers (and I am sure you all totally needed to hear that!!) :)
Anyway lots of good shopping today and got to see Alex again and hang out for a bit so that was fun.
Anyway lots of good shopping today and got to see Alex again and hang out for a bit so that was fun.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Chanukkah Day 2
Tonight was super awesome. We invited over a bunch of people, friends of mine, my Dad's students, and my sister's friends for Chanukkah dinner. We had really good Ravioli and Latkes (Potato Pancakes) and lots of other good food as well.
We then taught the guests how to play the Dreidel game and ate a lot of Chocolate Money as is most definitely required at this time of year. Sweeeeeeet!!
I went Boxing Day shopping today and it was nuts, I totally bought a whole bunch of junk that I didn't need and way too much Chocolate. I found the Hulk DVD for $5 so I figured it was the same price as renting it, and I heard the effects were totally sweet, so for $5 I figured I should just buy it!! Insane.
Probably some more shopping tomorrow, I like the long sleeved stripey shirts so I think I am going to try to find another sweet long sleeved stripey shirt tomorrow, cause they rock a lot.
Talking about sweet effects, I saw War of the Worlds today and maaannnn it was awesome!! That little tiny actress Dakota Fanning just might be the cutest thing ever and you can see she has a marvelous acting career ahead of her. Tom Cruise was pretty good in the movie too and he always does those crazy action movies really well. We all know how I feel about Steven Spielberg and his huge amount of awesomeness, so he made the film even more impressive. The characters were really scary and weird-looking, and I thought the houses being crushed and the cars flying around all the time looked absolutely fantastic. There were some pretty fierce explosions that sounded really good on the Dolby 5.1 system I was watching the movie on and once in a while there were some noises coming from around you so that added to the excitement... it was a really awesome movie, I knew I would like it but as usual I am blown away by the creative abilities of the people who worked on the concept art and 3D development. It was really amazing and I noticed that it appeared that they were using Maya for some of it (from the DVD extra videos, it appeared to be Maya software) so that is always incredibly exciting to see the software that I helped develop at Alias being used for such awesomely impressive creative ventures. Rock on!!!!!!!!
Here are some pictures from dinner tonight.
Table setting for dinner
Alex, and Norm's friend Victoria with her husband Paul
Alex, Mitchell, Victoria and Paul
Mmm... Latkes!!
Learning how to play the Dreidel game
Dreidel game rules
Dreidel in mid-spin
Another dreidel in mid-spin
My Dad's grad student and his winnings
Dessert
Cookies and Tea in a RenderMan Teapot container!
We then taught the guests how to play the Dreidel game and ate a lot of Chocolate Money as is most definitely required at this time of year. Sweeeeeeet!!
I went Boxing Day shopping today and it was nuts, I totally bought a whole bunch of junk that I didn't need and way too much Chocolate. I found the Hulk DVD for $5 so I figured it was the same price as renting it, and I heard the effects were totally sweet, so for $5 I figured I should just buy it!! Insane.
Probably some more shopping tomorrow, I like the long sleeved stripey shirts so I think I am going to try to find another sweet long sleeved stripey shirt tomorrow, cause they rock a lot.
Talking about sweet effects, I saw War of the Worlds today and maaannnn it was awesome!! That little tiny actress Dakota Fanning just might be the cutest thing ever and you can see she has a marvelous acting career ahead of her. Tom Cruise was pretty good in the movie too and he always does those crazy action movies really well. We all know how I feel about Steven Spielberg and his huge amount of awesomeness, so he made the film even more impressive. The characters were really scary and weird-looking, and I thought the houses being crushed and the cars flying around all the time looked absolutely fantastic. There were some pretty fierce explosions that sounded really good on the Dolby 5.1 system I was watching the movie on and once in a while there were some noises coming from around you so that added to the excitement... it was a really awesome movie, I knew I would like it but as usual I am blown away by the creative abilities of the people who worked on the concept art and 3D development. It was really amazing and I noticed that it appeared that they were using Maya for some of it (from the DVD extra videos, it appeared to be Maya software) so that is always incredibly exciting to see the software that I helped develop at Alias being used for such awesomely impressive creative ventures. Rock on!!!!!!!!
Here are some pictures from dinner tonight.
Table setting for dinner
Alex, and Norm's friend Victoria with her husband Paul
Alex, Mitchell, Victoria and Paul
Mmm... Latkes!!
Learning how to play the Dreidel game
Dreidel game rules
Dreidel in mid-spin
Another dreidel in mid-spin
My Dad's grad student and his winnings
Dessert
Cookies and Tea in a RenderMan Teapot container!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Chanukkah Day 1
Today was totally sweet. As any Jewish person on Christmas Day knows, there is not much to do so the usual activity is to go to a movie because (for some reason) the movie theatres are always open on Christmas Day!!
So we finally went to see Harry Potter and mannnn it was soooo awesome!!!!!! Sweet movie and just totally rocked like the rest of the Harry Potter movies, good times.
Tonight was the first night of Chanukkah so we lit the candles, ate a bunch of food and both gave and received some good presents. My sister gave me a bunch of mini-travel things like gel and toothpaste and such for my trip which is very useful!! I also got a whole lot of candy and chocolate so that is always welcome!!
Anyway lots of cool pics today so here they are!
Norm and Dad
The Scrabble game that Norm and I played, check out my word "Vertical" - I used all 7 letters in one turn!!
Dad reading my art, music and computer science book
Me after just waking up
Sweet presents
Menorahs
Mom and Dad dancing
Me lighting the Chanukkah Candles
More candles
Mom and the Menorahs
Mom and Dad laughing about something
Thomas the cat
Thomas playing with his Chanukkah present, a mouse with catnip in it
More prezzies
So we finally went to see Harry Potter and mannnn it was soooo awesome!!!!!! Sweet movie and just totally rocked like the rest of the Harry Potter movies, good times.
Tonight was the first night of Chanukkah so we lit the candles, ate a bunch of food and both gave and received some good presents. My sister gave me a bunch of mini-travel things like gel and toothpaste and such for my trip which is very useful!! I also got a whole lot of candy and chocolate so that is always welcome!!
Anyway lots of cool pics today so here they are!
Norm and Dad
The Scrabble game that Norm and I played, check out my word "Vertical" - I used all 7 letters in one turn!!
Dad reading my art, music and computer science book
Me after just waking up
Sweet presents
Menorahs
Mom and Dad dancing
Me lighting the Chanukkah Candles
More candles
Mom and the Menorahs
Mom and Dad laughing about something
Thomas the cat
Thomas playing with his Chanukkah present, a mouse with catnip in it
More prezzies