The Misadventures of Dan
Peer into the mind of Dan as he tries to build an MP3 Player for his PDA and searches for the next thing in his life be it an electrical engineering job or graduate school.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
.:1:39:37 AM:.
Today was Valentine's Day. A day in which years past, has been (obviously) uneventful and usually pretty quiet. However, this year, thanks to God, it was different. No, I didn't meet a girl, and no there was no date. Instead I spent the first morning writing an awesome midterm for C++ one giant guava moment after another. Then, in the afternoon, I spent it with a few friends, showing them one of my new addictions (tetrinet). Fellowship was pretty good, there were only four of us, and I was pretty late, but we spent it coffee talk'in instead of Skating as originallly planned. A much better location for taking the mind off many things :)
Thursday, February 13, 2003
.:12:42:00 AM:.
My tech rants have been garnering some attention, apparently if you search for windows 2000 multiple os installations on google my webpage comes up on the first page... keen. So many things-nothing has happened in that department.
I came across the National Novel Writing Month webpage while I was reading this new webcomic called Strings of Fate. Strings of Fate is a nice, clean art (a style which I really like, unlike disjointed ones, none of which I can really name. Anyways, the NaNoWriMo site is based on this premise that you won't get anything big done unless there's a time limit (cough mp3 player cough). So now, not only do I think it would be keen to try and do one (the novel in a month) but I think that may be what I need to finish this mp3 player attachment. The pieces are all here, I just need to assemble it. I heard from one of my friends that I can get a SOIC to DIP adapter at Digikey for something like $12 Canadian. I'll definitely take that after my adventures with the solder pen. So the mp3 player is sort of back in the napkin stages-whilst I find my job, write my labs, finish my homework, apply for Grad School, do that thang and perhaps this new presentation project that's coming up.
Deadlines definitely help me, I live on the adrenaline rush, the midnight gong just makes my mind go faster and all these guava moments start appearing. I think that's what's happening with my training for the 10mile race, the deadline (April 27th) is approaching and I'm pushing harder. At the same time, I think I came close to pulling something last week so I've eased off and tried to maintain my cardio.
I've been thinking about moving the main blog over onto the front page of the website. I'm not exactly sure what I'm using the front page for, but I don't know if people want the full Dan right out at front. Then there's the whole profesionnalism bit. I think I'll keep it here for a bit longer.
Monday, February 10, 2003
.:1:29:35 AM:.
I think its fitting that those two posts (although they're over a week apart) go one right after the other. Its not to say my mind was fixed on doing that. I'm writing this to prove contrary.
I survived skiing (yay), I didn't break anything (double yay), and I didn't kill/maim/hurt anyone else in the process (triple yay). I learned how to do that thing where your skis are turned inwards-whatever its called... snowplow!-I did that. By the end of the night, I was able to snowplow (slowly) down a hill skiing from one end to the other. Now I just have to get this whole stopping business and I'm set. The funny thing is that it just started to snow on the weekend (explaining the last post) and for the first time I caught myself thinking-is this good skiing weather. Yikes I may have caught the bug.
I was going to write about one of my friends from High School has come back from Eastern Canada. He was studying medicine there and now has come back to study medicine here (make sense?). Anyways he writes an article in the campus newspaper, and just last week he was talking about the fact that racial profiling exists (duh). On top of all of that he writes that he grew up in a city (the same city as me) where "the ethnic population was named Dan". All I could think of was I your only exposure to different cultures? How sad (for him) is that? But I've gone through that tirade.
As millions of Chinese people celebrated the new lunar year, The Columbia Shuttle caught fire as it was reentering the earth for landing killing all seven astronauts on board. I thought about the engineers. Last year, as part of a requirement, all final year engineers had to take a course in Professionalism and Ethics. One of the case studies was the Challenger incident where engineers had warned upper management about the faulty o-rings that weren't up to spec but somehow it never got through. You could feel the engineers frustration with the fact that they were ignored. One of my friends asked me if it concerned me that people's lives are at stake when engineers did their stuff. Of course it does, I think that's partially why most engineers live on the deadline-you have to produce work that not only is accurate, but precise. It HAS to work every time, it HAS to give out the same results. At first homework assignments may seem to be completely from another world than building a life support system or a bridge but now that I look at it-it was the beginning of the strain. I strive to produce the best solution to whatever the problem-be it the programming, to building a website. It is part nature and part training. You should consider every possible consequence and possibility that can happen and then prepare for it. I'm not complaining, but this is fact-people who design bear responsibility for the design and everything that comes of it. Everything everyone does, I argued, has some impact on someone's lives. When you greet someone-how do you know you didn't make an impact on their lives that day? When you go and drive, your car is spitting out litres of greenhouse gases, and yet you may be going to work-changing how the company works. Have you patted the back of someone today?
.:12:51:42 AM:.
The day after...
Yesterday night was the big night. We actually went to The Yardbird and listened some great Jazz. Despite the fact that the weather was horrible (snowing), and I thought I was going to be late-everything worked out! I mean I couldn't get over the fact that we were actually enjoying some music in this cozy little place. The end of the night came way too soon and we had to go. I walked her to her car and we said our goodbyes. Does she know?
I had a really, really, good time-I hope she did too.
