Well, I was supposed to go skateboarding today, but I lost track of time while I was going through the exercises in chapter 1 of French Without the Fuss. I'm on a crash course, because I think if I want to work here I'm going to have to become convincingly bilingual. That was the plan anyway, but I was hoping to not need it to happen so urgently.

Oh, and a pervert called me. At least I think it was a pervert. He had very bad English, so I couldn't really tell what he was trying to say. At first all I could decipher was that he thought I had called him last night. Then it seemed like he was giving me directions. Then he started asking me things like 'how tall are you'. I was pretty confused. I kept saying "pourquoi?" and "je ne comprende pas" but he kept asking questions. Then at one point I think he asked "what is the length of your prick? 10, 9, 8 ..." and that's when I hung up. I guess maybe it wasn't a pervert...maybe it was a recruiter for a porn company. Or maybe that's some kind of standard procedure for responding to gay personal ads? I don't know. I wonder how he ended up with my phone number though...

I also installed Visual Studio .NET. Lots of the job ads have this as a requirement, so I decided to use it a bit before I claim I have a few years experience. This experience BS is very frustrating. I can see the HR people now:

AUGH! I had a headhunter call who asked if my Websphere experience was in industry. I said it wasn't, I was paid to use it by a professor. She said that she needed someone who had used it in industry. Like it bloody matters - IT'S A TOOL. In industry, do they click on buttons differently? !!@$@!@!

Ok, something less rage-inducing. There is an article in the Boston Globe about this MIT grad student who won $30k for some robots that do swarming. This is what his mom had to say about him:

The dude called back again this morning. I missed the call, but he left a message in French. I got someone to translate it. Apparently, his name is Vince and he is looking for 'Francois the Sensuale', who gave him the number on a web chat or something. I hope he stops calling, it's kinda creepy.

I talked to the landlord about my mold. I think he said that when the walls are dry, they will be replacing the moldy walls for the whole column. Of course, maybe that's not what he said, since his English isn't so good. My walls are dry, so I guess some people above/below me must have a lot more mold. Excitement!

And my IKEA clock doesn't work. But I did get an email asking me for my transcripts, so maybe that will turn into an actual interview (fingers crossed). Todays score: 2 good things, 1 creepy.

Neat. When I cross my pointer & middle finger, I can still have a finger on each key in the home row. I wonder if I could learn to type that way. I sorta hope that I never find out...

I suck at replying to email. To all of you who send me email and don't get replies for a week (or longer), I'm terribly sorry. It doesn't really feel like I've been here very long. It took me almost a month to reply to a mail that MikeP sent me. It did not seem like a month. I think I need a job, or a hobby that I'm more dedicated to, or something...

I was up until 5am last night playing on topcoder.com. It's Devon's fault, he told me I could probably make some cash in the contests there. And maybe I could, but you can't get paid if you live in Quebec. Because of gaming laws. Nice.

So I'm sleepy, and not really in the mood to do anything productive, so I read slashdot. Found two really neet articles - the first one is on applying the scientific method to prices. Once companies start using all this stuff, it'll be a lot harder to find really good deals, etc. But the article gives me hope at the end, where the guy mentions that they don't have to jack up prices to cover over-discounted stuff. Hopefully, it'll be harder to get soaked, too.

The other one was on visible-light wireless networks. To simplify, you put a LED up somewhere high and point a camera at it. Then you blink out your data. They are getting like 400MBps over 4km. Which is nice. I think they should set something like this up in Montreal. Here they have 'the mountain' in the middle of the city. It's basically a big hill, but there are some laws that say nothing can be higher than the mountain. So you set up a star-topology network of visible light transmitters, local repeaters for neighbourhoods, etc. Free (relatively) internet for everyone! Maybe. As long as it doesn't snow too much, LIKE IT IS NOW! ARGGHAGH##@%@!

I'm staying inside today.

I went and saw an exhibit at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal yesterday. It was called Voyage into Myth: Gauguin to Matisse, the French Avante Garde. It was pretty good - lots of neat paintings. There were some cubism Picassos that looked kinda like random geometry at first glance. But when you really looked, there were buildings there. There were also a few I really liked that had nice water-reflections, but I can't remember who they were by.

In other news, Vince called again. He wants to make the love. And I don't have a job. Pita Pit is starting to look pretty good...

mmmmmnnnmmmmmm....icing.

(I know you've all seen this twenty times. So have I. But i like it, so Piss off)

Posted on the McGill classifieds page (kinda creepy):

Sperm Available for Pregnation
Posted Friday, March 7, 2003
Hello ladies I am a young man looking for a woman interested in the bittersweet idea of procreation. My boys are getting restless and as I am growing older, I am beginning to worry about what may happen to them. If there are any ladies interested in taking in my sperm for artificial insemenation I would be willing to pay a large sum of money. I feel like Micheal Jackson when I say, "Children are my life". Please help me to reach my ultimate goal of bringing children into this beautiful world. Thank you.
Finn

I read lots of cool science stuff this morning. First, radio interference might be a myth. The guy (who was one of the 'inventors' of the internet, so he's not just some loon) says that the problem is just the hardware, and if we all used software-defined radios (SDRs) there would be no intereference. That'd be nice, my wireless router might work a little further...

Next up, NASA/JPL Planetary Photojournal. They have pictures of stuff in space (including Earth, which is also in space...). I like the sun pictures. And they have a 208 mb relief map of earth! 30m resolution! I'm such a nerd! I wonder if I'll actually be able to load that image....only 256 mb...=(

More space! The universe might be shaped like a donut. Tasty!

Right. It's warm today (finally) and it was snowing this morning but it stopped. So I'm happy. Sleepy, but happy. And I found a whole whack of job listings last night. Maybe I ought to go apply for them instead of writing on my webpage. Maybe...

Speaking of job listings. Friends in Calgary looking for work: Have you looked at flipdog.com? I noticed calgary jobs in their listings. It seems to be some sort of spinoff from monster.ca - the search isn't nearly as good, but I think monster makes companies pay for listings. Flipdog seems to have lots of lower-level positions. I'm sick of Monster - it's all headhunters. And stupid headhunters at that. Oh, the number of ads I've seen for '3 years of .NET experience'. Has .NET existed for 3 years? I dont think so...

The army gives you a $10k signing bonus to join up if you have a university degree. $20k if you are a tradesman. Too bad I'd never make it through basic training.

(I don't actually think any of you should join the army, but if you do, less competition for me!)

Argh. Peter just mailed me and said I left my OpenGL book in Calgary. Hope I don't need it for anything....not like I can afford a new one...

I think I'm going to move. To Nepal. And be a hermit.

I left the oven on night before last. Only for about 10 hours. In Calgary I would have felt bad about that, but not here! Utilities included in the rent! Woohoo!

Total time between me posting my apartment for rent and someone calling: 7 minutes.

It's nice out today. Hooo-ray. I just went to the TechMontreal Networking Group meeting. Or rather, I went to the room it was in. It was supposed to start at 3pm. At 2:59 pm the room was locked and there was one old nerdy-lookin guy lurking near it. So I went home. I stopped at this bookstore that has O'Reilly books for $9.95 a pop and picked up a C# book. There were these two guys there arguing about how functions get deprecated in the JDK. And, sad to say, I got sucked into their argument for a minute or two. Then I just couldn't handle it, and walked away.

I took the 'which operating system are you' quiz here. My result:

Well, I don't have good memory. But flaky? Well, maybe...

Anyway, I'm showing my apartment at 6 tonite, so I guess I should clean up and try to minimize the mold impact. Would it be wrong to spraypaint over it?

I get the imression that like at least 10 people read this pretty regularly. So you guys must be pretty bored. Want me to put up a forum where you can post stuff? Tell me.

...but have enough time to type in these things:

1) I rented my apartment. woohoo! Now to find a new one for me...

2) It was nice today. Warm. The sidewalks were soup. But it was nice.

3) I'm coming back to Calgary. Tommorrow morning. My flight leaves Montreal at 6:50 AM. Yes, AM. I'm on a secret mission...

Calgary people - see you tommorrow!

Oh, BTW, sources report that 'Afro' Mike stopped the war yesterday. More details will be forthcoming...

So I'm walking down the hall in the Montreal airport terminal, and I see a big black pillbox-shaped thing with a glowing blue dot on it. It's inside a phone booth. I look closer. It's a wireless access point. And it's FREE!

Something free at an airport. Neat.

I also had the closest thing I've ever had to a problem with airport security. There are some keys in my laptop bag, and I had to wait while they rifled through it. And, of course, there was the mandatory laptop-swabbing. What are they checking for? I think drugs...

It's bloody 5:49 in the morning! I should still be sleeping in a warm, warm bed. I didn't make it to the shuttle bus station in time (got lost. figures) so I had to spend $30 on a taxi. I hope someone picks me up in Calgary.

Wandering around downtown Montreal at 4 in the morning is great. The streets were empty, except for the occaisonal taxi. It felt kinda creepy. I was walking for about half an hour and I saw maybe 2 people the whole time. Not even street people. They are around all day...I wonder where they go at night.

Oooh. Boarding call. I hope they have this wireless deal in Toronto.

No wireless in Toronto. But they do have lots of moving sidewalks. Airports are the only place I've seen moving sidewalks. I always feel a bit super-human when I'm on one. If you walk (instead of just standing there and letting it drag you along) it feels like you're moving really fast. I'd like to be on one when it's empty, so I could run. Faster than a speeding bullet! Ok, I'm a huge nerd.

I need a coffee. Maybe it'll be free on the plane...but I doubt it. Tango doesn't feed you either. Cheapskates.

The fire alarm is going off in the Math Science building. Argh...

Now it's off (11:22 PM). Annoying. Anyway, I just had some really good Chinese food and I'm ready to explode. On the way back, we saw a single strip mall containing both 'HitMan Massage and Therapy' and a store that offered both menswear and video rentals. Sounds like an exciting place to me.

I spent a good part of the night trying to solve a puzzle. Here it is. Given three 5's and one 1, make the number 24. You can use only the basic mathematical operations add, subtract, multiply, and divide. There is no trick. This took me a while...one 'solution' I came up was to multiply 5*5*5. Then you have 125 - or one 25. Now subtract 1, and you have 24. But that's not it.

And if you're a computer scientist, you might notice that 5+5+5-1=14, and 14 in base 5 is 24. But that's not it either. Really, there is no trick.

Annie proposed 5*5=25, now subtract 1 to the power 5. Which gives you 24, but I didn't say you could use powers.

Oh, and I'm in Calgary. I'm helping a friend with a sort of last-minute panic project. Part of it is me designing large-scale computer display hardware setups, which is kind of neat. It might mean a return visit to Calgary to actually construct some of these displays. Which is also neat. Another part of it is working like crazy, which is less neat, and quite a change from my Montreal life. It's not a wholly unwelcome change, but I'll be happy when I get to go home.

I had my first conference call today. Excitement? I'm not certain...

Eyelids drooping. Time for some tea...

Well, my flight back to Montreal starts boarding in about 15 minutes. I left as suddenly as I came . But, seeing as I don't have a place to live come April 1, I figured I should, you know, try to find a residence. I'll probably end up getting shafted with another mold-infested closet. Oh well, my fault.

It was fun in Calgary. I got to pretend like I was going to spend lots of money, so the sales people from companies were nice to me. I didn't get a chance to chat with everyone I wanted to - there were just too many people and not enough free time. I worked a lot. A lot. But now I'm going home. Home home home. I'll be glad when I get there, at 8:41 am. Then shuttle. Then walking. Then bed.

It's neat looking out across the tarmac (tarmac - that's industry jargon for the place where the planes hang out. I'm "in the know"). There are planes. Planes are neat. I'm constantly amazed by planes when I'm in them. Kinda on-edge, but amazed as well. I mean - we got big metal tubes to fly. Hurray for triumph of human race. Now to lick that 'peace and goodwill' problem.

There is only one part about flying I don't like. That drop in the engines as the takeoff phase finishes. If you've never flown (like me, 8 months ago) you won't know what I mean, but I'll try to explain. When you first takeoff, it's kinda like a roller coaster - the acceleration pushes you back into your seat just a bit. Reminds me of my Fiero (yes, Fiero. You laugh. Fools). So you feel this force on you as you see the plane lifting off and climbing. Then all of the sudden, the engines seem to cut out (or at least cut back significantly) and it feels like the plane drops a bit. And I think we're just maybe going to crash. Not just crash. Plummet like the x-ty ton behemoth that we are and become a skidmark through the middle of Airdrie. So that's kinda freaky. But then the plane starts to climb again and all is well....this time....

The first time the landing was bloody scary as well. I didn't know plane wings were so...flexible. They wobble. A lot. And you see the ground getting closer and closer and shit we're going to HIT IT AT 700mph but it's ok because that's what is supposed to happen. Then the air brakes come out. I think the people who design plane wings secretly want to be designing Transfomers. The things unfold like a flying pteredactyl casette tape is going to land in one and give us a report on the Autobots location. I practically wet my pants with nerd-excitement.

First call for boarding. I wish I had net access so I could upload this....

Oh, and I dominated Tony in foosball. That is all.

Well, I arrived home to a disturbing growth in my coffee maker. It's a French press, and I guess I forgot to pour out the grinds last time I used it. Sick.

Anyway, I'm back. I barely made it home, then I collapsed and slept for a day. That completely screwed me up - I thought it was Tuesday today. But it's not, it's Wednesday. Which means I really need to find a new apartment. I may already have one, I'm waiting for a call back. But I may not, and this is the problem.

I also have some work to do, which involves trying to copy some bloody files from the UofC network. I think they are coming in at about 0.03 KBps, because I've been waiting forever. I get one or two packets a second according to the wireless network control panel thing, and I know those packets aren't very big. Someone should write a letter...

(I'm serious. Aside from me, it means that profs can't really access the uni network from afar, and having 'external collaborators' doing anything over the internet is impossible. And the UofC is Alberta's premier research university? It's an embarassement.)

I need more RAM. Swap swap swap. That's all my computer does. Someone, please, BUY ME MORE RAM!

Well, I found a month of work, so I don't have to sink down to telemarketing. I'm happy. I was kind of looking forward to the first few days of telemarketing. It might be interesting (but not for long, I suspect).

I have to go back to this recruiting company that's having an open house today. I went half an hour ago and I had to make an appointment. What kind of open house is that? I feel sorry for the shmoes that go later this afternoon when there aren't any appointments left. But not too sorry.

It's raining. Not snowing, raining. RAIN! Huzzah! I like rain. It smells nice, and the air feels good. I did get pretty wet. I think I need to invest in an umbrella. Or a waterproof latex body suit. I'm undecided. I could get both, but then people would probably think I was weird...

I found an apartment! Relief! I'm moving by Tuesday. Homelessness avoided by 3 days. I'm moving in with roommates, so no more naked cooking. Pity.

Know what I like? 7's. 7's are good. Let's hear it for 7's.

I moved last evening. Thanks to everyone who helped. I rented a U-Haul cargo van, which was a great idea until this morning when I smashed the passenger side mirror while I was driving down Sherbrooke. I was just driving along minding my own business when I whacked the mirror into a parked moving truck. The truck was 1/3 of the way into the road, and I had a bus on the other side of me. Oops. Scared the shit outta me, too. I had to pay a $150 insurance deductible to the U-Haul man, although the mirror probably would have only cost $50 to replace.

Moving was...fun? I don't really have that much stuff, but I am currently hanging on to a couch for a friend, and moving that was interesting. We had an elevator taking it down, but on the way up we had 4 flights of stairs. Since it was only the 30th the girl in my new room hadn't moved out yet, so all my stuff is crammed into the kitchen. I'm staying with a friend until Tuesday. I hope.

Oh, and I might have a job. A real job, not telemarketing! But I'm not getting my hopes up just yet...