A Few Quick Notes 516

-We are back down in the -12 range. After some above freezing temperatures yesterday it means that we have a fair bit of ice.

-A few years ago I sold some of my footage the Montreal hockey riots to an American reality TV show. This morning I received a message from this television show soliciting submissions of videos of pranks. As I don't have any prank videos (and I don't plan on making any) this message won't be of much consequence to me, but I was somewhat taken aback by the description of the types of videos that they were looking for.

It’s called Practical Jokers Gone Wild and we are searching for the craziest tricksters who’ve ever turned unsuspecting punks into chumps! We want the kind of devious
masterminds that would dupe a pal into sprinting across a greased floor, trick a buddy
into thinking they’re headed to jail, or slip a slithery eel in the shower with a family
member!

-Neil and I have a DAGS meeting tonight. The anticipation is building, or not.

-I guess I should get down to work.

A Few Quick Notes 482

-Though I don't know that it actually rained today, it was certainly almost as wet as though it was raining. Unfortunately, this condition of proto-rain (the drops weren't quite large enough for me to feel comfortable calling it rain) was just about as wet as rain and certainly as unpleasant.

-I had a series of student society meetings today. Just after noon I had to attend a departmental level student society meeting to amend a constitution. Fortunately we were able to deal with these changes in about an hour. Later this evening, after my three hour seminar, I had to attend the monthly university-wide grad student society meeting. Fortunately, this meeting was also only about an hour.

-The seminar I attended this afternoon was the second last such seminar I will have to attend before I head home for Christmas. Actually, there is a chance I will miss the seminar I am scheduled to attend on Monday so that I can attend a Ph.D defense.

-This evening I encountered the really neat do-it-yourself animation site Xtranormal. Using this site one can crank out quick one or two person animations in no time. Though I will probably be foolish to waste my time playing around with this site in the coming days, I haven't yet produced any web-filler yet.

-I am incredibly tired. Hopefully I will be able to get some sleep tonight so that I can crank out a good day of work tomorrow.

A Few Quick Notes 464

-Today, like the past few days, has been relatively warm and incredibly humid. As I am writing this Environment Canada is reporting that the humidity is 99%, one of the few statements of their's that I am willing to take a face value.

-Neil and I had another brutally long DAGS meeting this evening. Hopefully the upcoming meetings won't be multi-hour drudgery sessions, though I guess these things tend to be a little like this. And, to be fair to those involved, the meeting went relatively quickly considering the quantity of business that we had to get through.

-We won another Ultimate game yesterday. Some how, even though we lost four players to injuries, we managed to gather enough people to field a successful team.

-I recently learned the creative force behind one of my favourite podcasts, Stephen Tobolowsky, signed a book deal based on the content of the podcast. I presume that this development isn't particularly surprising for regular listeners, the content always struck me as something that could easily be converted into a great book. Anyways, if you are into podcasts that transmit personal stories The Tobolowsky Files is definitely worth checking out.

-Through he reality show The Amazing Race our apartment has been introduce to the videos of KevJumba (AKA Kevin Wu). Over the course of the past few days I have been subjected to gales of laughter as a result of viewings of his videos. I guess that such reactions are an indication that I might consider checking them out.

-Apparently, after thousands of years without them, Newfoundland is now home to a breeding population of snakes, garter snakes to be specific. This is quite a development, and follows on the heals of the relatively recent introductions of squirrels and coyotes. What else will be living there by the time I next visit?

-While on the subject of snakes, Newfoundland seems to have recently introduced changes to allow its police officers to snake their way around probable cause when stopping cars. Apparently a reason is no longer needed for a police officer to pull a driver over to determine whether or not they have been drinking or committing some other infraction. While I suspect that this change won't receive too much press, I hope that this is either rescinded or challenged. It is not a minor change to remove probable cause from the range of considerations police must deal with before engaging in searches.

-It seems that the Western portion of the US, including Phoenix, is presently in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave. This should be fun. At least I will get to experience this 'dry heat' that I have been hearing so much about.

Big day for Dal Grad students

After a year-long wait, today is the day that the new DAGS Grad House is set to finally open.

Unfortunately, rather than the expected capacity of 110, it will initially only be able to hold 50. Furthermore, it is unclear to me whether they in fact yet have a liquor license or whether they will just be open for food service.

Either way, DAGS is kicking off the opening with a free BBQ this afternoon. While I hope to at least swing by for a few minutes to see the new facility, I suspect that I won't be able to stay for long because of a pre-existing commitment at the time of the BBQ.

A Few Quick Notes 395

-We seem to be in the vicinity of 0, one of my least favourite temperatures, particularly when there is snow on the ground. As much as I would like it to drop again, I am quite aware that such a change is likely to come with quite an ice build-up.

-Neil, Rebecca, and I (along with some friends) attended the DAGS AGM last night. To get people in they provided pizza, which the executive only released after the important votes had been taken. The rest of the meeting was a bit of a re-hash of a number of the items which we have discussed all year (which seems to be the point of such meetings).

-Today seems to be laundry day. What fun.

-I am not sure how it happened, but I think that I may be a fan of, or at least appreciate, the Governor General's reserve powers (which are those prerogative powers of the Crown that have not yet migrated to the Executive/Cabinet). Who can guess what I have been reading about recently?

-I have been very generously granting Neil some extra time on his big news. He doesn't seem to be as appreciative of this as I might have expected.

Blog-off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron: 20

A Few Quick Notes 390

-We enjoyed another below freezing day today. Things were a little enlivened by some mid-morning snow, though this didn't seem to do much to ease the temperature.

-Neil and I managed to do quite a good job extending tonight's DAGS meeting. Though I might be a little biased, I think that most of our interjections were pretty reasonable and, hopefully, helpful.

-A few days ago I received my new Canadian passport. It seems pretty similar to my old one, though with an updated photo and expiry date.

-I feel as though I should have more to say, but I guess when one crams out three posts the night before they have likely used a fair portion of their content allocation for the following day.

Blog-Off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron:6

Back in Halifax

As Cameron has informed you I arrived safely back in Halifax yesterday. The city appears to be fine and also happens to be totally snow-free. Both Rebecca's and my apartments are still here and in good shape. The maintenance guys came in and left one of Rebecca's lights on costing her what I estimate to be $2. I have a new roommate whose name I believe to be Mark. He's a fourth year mechanical engineering student from Cape Breton. He seems like he'll be a fine roommate. Our apartment now has a TV and George Foreman grill. The downside of this is that Rebecca can't borrow one of the two couches from my room.

I don't really have any new year's resolutions, but I am going to try to blog more. To paraphrase my Uncle, "my blogger was busted" in December (and maybe longer).

My school schedule is pretty open as of yet. I am taking one class, Functional Analysis, from 8:35 - 9:55 TR. I am again working in the Learning Centre for seven hours. Those hours will be set tomorrow. After that I'll do up a nice .pdf schedule and post it for all to see. This semester I'm really supposed to be going hard at research. I'm looking forward to it, but I'll really need to buckle down because I want to have lots done by the end of the semester.

My most prized Christmas gift is the Canon PowerShot A630 (digital camera) I got from my parents (I mention the model mostly for Graham's sake). For the average Montifax blog reader, this just means you are likely to see an increase in pics from me.

We all know the bread and butter is this blog is mundane details and stories of thriftiness, so I feel I should let you know I'm planning a trip to the mall (Halifax Shopping Centre) here very shortly, so that I can hit up the calendar store for discounted games (especially a Go board). I've been planning this since early December. I'm mostly sure that if Go is there it will be cheap because the store is probably packing up after this weekend.

Now I'm off to clean up and head to school. My first DAGS meeting of the semester is today. Yay free pizza!

P.S. After finishing the previous line I spellchecked to see if I had typed roomate instead of roommate (as I tend to do). I had done so once, but more importantly Google flagged the word blog and the word blogger. I can't believe they haven't added those yet. I don't think I'll send them an email about it because I know they are reading what I've typed anyway.

Snow in Halifax

Today Halifax had its first snowfall in which there was any sort of ground covering. In exchange for working for me last Wednesday night while I was returning from Banff, I was supposed to work for Rebecca this evening in the Math Learning Centre. To be sure that Dal was still open (it was quite a snowfall) Rebecca and I checked the webpage. The conclusion we came to was that we would have found any reasonable attempt to post news on the page that the university was closed. Hence, I dressed up and walked to school. Traffic was backed up everywhere, and I saw a bus without any standing room parked on the side of the road, unable to go anywhere. As I approached campus it seemed surprisingly dark. As it turned out, about half the buildings had lost power. This included the math building and the library, where I was supposed to work, so I turned around and came home. The hour-long trek was nice, but I probably could have done without it. The power is on here at Fenwick though which is good.

The semester is coming to an end very quickly. On Wednesday, the Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students (DAGS) is having a general meeting. As I am the DAGS representative for the Math and Stats Grad Society (MSgrads), I will go. Rebecca will go as well (also potentially some other MSgrads exec members). Next week I will also mark some first-year calculus exams. I think that'll be about 6 hours of work. As well, I have my last 7 hours of work in the Learning Centre for the semester. The rest of my commitments are more academic. In my three courses, I have an exam on the 12th, a take-home due on the 11th, an interview in two days (for a project I have already submitted), and I have a project to do (in Game Theory). After that, I come home on the 15th (and I will come back to Halifax on the 3rd or so of Jan).