pso!

A long time ago, a friend of mine, gha5t, brought up the idea of modeling a brain using computing clusters for things like research. The rest of the group balked at the idea, including me. Well...

"Prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them along with this slice of humble pie, that comes direct from the oven of shame set at gas mark egg on your face."

Or what I was thinking when I read this article.

So I've got a week off, which means I have time to actually cook for myself. This time around, I decided to make a roast. More specifically, an oven roast of Berkshire port butt.

( Click on for some hot pork ass. )

I have a hard time believing that it's been 8 weeks since I've updated.

( Two months of yakking begin now. )

Since arriving in Toronto last Sunday, I've managed to get some furniture, set-up my entertainment center and install a new toilet. I've still got 7 boxes to unpack.

One thing I've noticed about this place it that it takes forever to get something done. I went to the closest mall three hours ago just to physically handle cell phones. (BTW, I'm eying a couple Samsung models so far.) Yesterday, all I got done was getting 2 bookshelves and buying a toilet! The day before that, I spent an entire afternoon just buying one air conditioner!

If it wasn't for the food, I'd go completely nuts.

So I got a PS3 today and I'm happy with it.

I've only spent 20 minutes with it and my initial impressions are the following:
-It has the highest framerates I've ever seen in a 3D graphics system, ever.
-Media sharing is just as crippled as the XBOX360.
-The only piece of equipment I've ever owned that sounds good through my stereo system.
-The video playblack isn't choppy or laggy like other media players I own.
-No noticeable noise from the cooling system.

I encourage all HD junkies to hop to your local EBGames and get one while their promotion's in effect.

Until June the 15th, you can trade 10 games worth $8 or more to have their value modified to $26 if the proceeds go towards a new 60 gig PS3. (Any game that is worth more than $26 will not be dropped in price.)

Your alternative to Expose sucks! Why would you summon all the windows from BOTH monitors into the main monitor for my scrolling "pleasure"? GAH!

BTW samosas in Fredericton suck now. Because both Patel's and Samosa Delite are gone, these inferior samosa vendors are creeping out of the woodwork! SUCK!

That's right, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate out of complete boredom.
At this point (4AM) I can say the following:

-It's pretty.
-The animation is incredibly smooth for my 4yo+ computer.
-Had to disable the User Access Control and all the other "protective" software.
-Ridiculously easy to crack.
-A little upset that I can't have 1366x768 on my old TV.
-Probably not going back to XP. :)

It's 6AM and I'm sitting in the window of Wal-Mart. My feet are resting on a snowblower while I type. As it stands, we have 24 people in line for the most anticipated game console this season.

I started in line at 6:30 last night. Through a series of miscommunications and blindness to bigger picture by management, people who got in line at 9:30AM yesterday are staying until 11:00AM today to get first dibs.

Fortunately, I went home at 11:00PM Saturday and slept for 6 hours. Upon return, only 4 extra people showed up.

Several Wal-Mart employees are in the line. They keep reassuring us that there are enough to go around. I, already weary of events transpired, brought my McDonald's hat. EB has 47, after all.

Some guys have set up a TV with a GCN and XBOX to pass the time. Card games are prevalent. At least a third of the line brought a DS.

They dismantle the console setup at 6:30.

I try to play my DS, but I can't focus out the crowd around me. I remain silent because I don't want to irritate anyone. The next five hours pass quickly as I watch movies and TV shows on my iBook.

10:30 comes around and the morning crew come in to organize the release event. Staff come out to give us tickets. I'm #26. My hip joints are aching. I've been standing for 2 hours. Finally at 12:00, they take us in groups of five to get the console. Suddenly, a guy trades me his ticket. I'm #16. He says that it's on account of my great customer service at McD's. I remind myself that the wheel never stops turning.

In less than half an hour, my group is called. They decide to use the customer service desk to serve us. Completely bypassing the 10 cart returns lineup, I'm given my prize.

I quickly rush to all the mall stores and come out with Zelda and 3 more Wiimotes. It's a good day for gaming.

One of my roommates has recently gotten me to play StarCraft. I was initially hesistant, but after a trial run it seemed that I was actually able to play without cheating! I attribute this ability to multitask to my job at McDonald's.

Now the big hurdle I have to overcome is the problem when external clients connect with multiple internal clients. I have found an iptables script that solves it, and I still have my faithful Celery 600, which used to be my wired router.

So it's time to set that thing back up again. I guess I could build a mini-itx computer so I can have a machine that has little noise and power consumption. However, there was the LinkSys WRT54G router that was fabled to allow Linux to be installed on it. That would be the best solution, really.

What do you guys think?

Despite various suggestions by shanmonster, I've decided to make my next knitting project the "Swiss Miss" hat from Lion Yarn's series of knitting and crocheting books called Just Hats. I love the incredible layers of cheesiness in the pom-poms.

(Actually, I wanted to do the Jayne Cobb hat, but the only patterns I can find are commercial. And I'm too lazy to devise a pattern for a Link hat.)

I'm still at a roadblock with my scarf (which was supposed to knock socks off) due to the fact that it really lacks the awesome factor that my hats seem to have. What can I do? I really want to showcase the intarsia method and have a progressive pattern. Maybe I should try some pencil drawings first?

Either way, it's time to get the knit on!

(Donate blood!)

So another month is over, and I'm nowhere near getting my credit cards paid off... But who can really complain when you had to buy a new pair of glasses because the old ones burned your face?

So basically, the plan is to stay with McDonald's for the time being. I want to propose to my bosses that I work at Wal-Mart as much a possible so that I can get a Wal-Mart discount card! (I think it's a 10% discount.) I need to call NBCC and iron out my fall schedule, then I can formulate an availability schedule.

On to other things, I decided to stay at my current residence for the time being. We'll just take it day by day. Renovations will have to wait until next year, at which I'll have to find new roommates... :(

So yeah, getting my driver's license seems so much harder to obtain. I wish there was a cost effective way to get practice and still live your life. I don't have a car I can practice with and there's no way I can afford one. Nobody has time to actually practice either. It's a pain.

I guess that's all for now. Hopefully things will pan out as I plan.

What a great weekend! I got myself a copy of New Super Mario Bros., Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, Wario Wares Touched, Meteos, a back massager, a dual handset cordless phone, and a copy of Scrapland for the XBOX. Whew!

I also went to see Cars (twice), which was great on many accounts. (I teared up a little bit both times.) What struck me was the fact that they could take a relatively boring subject of Nascar racing and make a well rounded feature film around it. (Probably due to the fact that the Nascar portions were kept to an absolute minimum.)

On the way there, Dmitri noticed a 1974 Beetle, and I jotted down the phone number.

Afterwards, we went to Justin's to barbeque. And it was there that I learned a few things: namely the true meaning of ruining your appetite. For some reason, I wasn't really satisfied with the burgers I made. Usually, they hit the spot every time. It later hit me that I drank 80 ounces of Fruitopia at the theatre and was probably in a fruit/salad mode for dinner.

Thanks to Justin, I'll be collecting all sorts of Black Sabbath. I didn't realize that they had relaxed tracks at all! That'll teach me to make assumptions about music.

And this brings me to something I knew all along but was too proud to admit. I really do want to persue the massiotherapy route.
I'm going to cancel the Moncton mission altogether and take Biology 112 and 122 here.

That's all for now!

Hey all,

I've been pretty unavailable lately since I started working at McDonald's. I wish that I could synchronize with you guys, but my schedule's pretty haphazard.

As I've told people before, I don't think that McDonald's is a bad place to work at all. I enjoy the fast pace and the people who work there, but I still can't get cones right though. Things were going well tonight until the end of my shift, because I was threatened with a write up. I only got away with it because of a technicality. *Cry*

I went to the doctor's to get a cholesterol check done. At the same time, my urinalysis came back with a moderate amount of blood in it. Basically, I'm getting a scope up the urethra. Fun!

On top of that, I have a road test coming up on the 8th. I still can't parallel park worth crap. Oh well, I've always learned everything the hard way, what's a few failures?

I still haven't made any progress with apartment hunting in Moncton. I've been accepted into NBCC Moncton for the Computer Networking Technology: Network Administrator Option. At the same time, I sorta want to take Biology 112 and 122 at the same time so I can persue the masiotherapist route. I wouldn't mind getting signed on with a hockey team. :D

I still haven't made any progress with the ECSES website. I haven't really had any motivation, I guess. I did get the logo approved though. Yay me!

So that's all that's going on in my life I guess. See you all in a month!

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Acts of Service
with a secondary love language being
Physical Touch.

Complete set of results

Acts of Service:		10
Physical Touch:		9
Quality Time:		6
Words of Affirmation:		3
Receiving Gifts:		2

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

( An now in the effort not to clog friend pages... )

Hey guys. In the last days of my office in the ECES, I've decided to post what I've been developing in the area of ECSES branding.

( Behold! )

Right now I'm going to enjoy a porkchop with sauteed veggies. What a great way to end a really productive 4 days.

On Saturday, I got a carpenter in to finish the kitchen job. Now the dishwasher has a counter on top of it and so does the 15" cabinet! I just need to woodfill the counters and get some melamine paint on it.

To f00dave, I want those pics from Saturday night!

On top getting things cleaned, I've been raking the lawn. After 10 hours, I still only have 2/3 of the place raked. Blah! Good thing I have until Saturday to finish that. Hopefully it'll be worth the 10 or so cuts I got.

So I wrote about the binaural beats last week. I've been using the weight loss one and the fall asleep in 30 minutes. The weight loss one seems to be working, as I've lost 2 inches on my waist. I'm guessing that my weight hasn't gone down, which is still good. I really need to get a scale.

I've basically gotten over my disappointment feelings by, guess what? Not caring. It's really easy to stop caring about people who don't give back. I'm hoping that he gets his Co-op job so he can move out. The other guy (I haven't talked about him here) still hasn't heard back about the Bermuda job. Either way I want my friends to move in with me, and he's getting cut first.

Now a days, my thoughts are occupied about the future.

I called NBCC and asked about the occupancy numbers. Apparently SJ is has a waitlist 181 long, and SA has one that's 61. I ended up cancelling my application to Electrical in SJ and applied to Electrical Engineering Technology there instead.

That move still squicks me. The whole reason why I dropped out of university was to get into a career that gets me off my ass. I don't want to sit at a desk for the rest of my life. I want to get out, and soon.

Questions still loom. What am I going to do about money? Will I get into NBCC this year? What will I do if I get in? How will I manage my life? I still have a plan, though. Get a driver's licence, get a summer job, and check the mailbox.

Life goes on.

I've begun using binaural beats after reading about them the other day on Digg.

Basically, the theory behind binaural beats is that the brain has beat frequencies for everything in its operation, such as awareness, alertness, depression, and even hormone release. Binaural beats are supposed to stimulate those states/functions by playing a frequency in one ear and playing another one in the other. The brain will then get the beat frequency by combining those two and will conform to the state/function that naturally comes with that frequency.

The article in Digg referenced a program that generates the necessary frequencies on the fly. A preset for say, falling asleep fast with dreaming, would have alpha beat freqencies slowly decreasing to delta and , if your headphones support it, theta beat frequencies. Throughout the night, it would switch between the different frequencies like the brain should in normal sleep. You can even get it to ramp up to alpha frequencies for a time of day you specify, like an alarm clock.

Normally I don't go for crackpot theories, but it was free, so I thought, "Why not?"

So far, I've listened to various types of binaural presets such as weight loss, human growth hormone, and a 30 minute demo of beat frequencies sliding from alpha to delta.

After feeling the results of the 30 minute demo, I'm a believer. I found myself getting progressively sleepier until I woke up to sunlight -- at 6:30 AM. I'm going to keep up with that and other dream inducing presets.

The program I used can be found here. Another program I've been using is here.

Oh yeah. You must use headphones. The brain must be the one combining the frequencies for it to work.

I originally wanted a letter like this to be put in the Pillar. By the time I got the gumption to write it, it was already sent to the printers. So I sent it directly to the EUS president's personal email address. Some footnotes are added for clarity.

( Get ready. This is gonna be a long one. )