Whoo-hoo!! I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeee

Today marked my last day of work at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

Started here as a desktop support immediately after the exams, and worked up until now the very end of August. Turned out to be 18 1/2 weeks in total, but it went by so fast. I still remember my first couple days on the job.

Overall, it was just an awesome experience. I learned a lot of things, both technically and socially. I met people whom I'll be friends with, and people who's positions anybody would envy. I've seen more Beemers this summer than most people see in their life. All the nights when the summer students gang (a.k.a. all-the-really-young-people) went out were truly the fun highlight of my summer. The technical knowledge I've gained will be sure to come in handy for future employment.

It was indeed a great ride. Sometimes tiring, sometimes exciting, sometimes fun, sometimes nervous, sometimes cruising, etc. As I sit here writing, iTunes just happen to shuffle and play Green Day's Time of Your Life, perfectly fitting my mood, I'm feeling sad the ride has come to an end, but concurrently I'm also really looking forward to the few days left before classes start, and to third year itself. I'm sensing it'll be an exciting school year.

A big, big thanks to EVERYONE who made this summer as good as it was. I'll be sure not to forget it. Thanks guys!!!

Jays Sunday

Today was another free-Blue-Jays-tickets-from-work outing. This pair of tickets I actually won from a draw with a pool of about 50 people. Coinsidentily enough, both Theo and Karyn were also attending that exact game. What were the chances of that happening?! Not surprisingly, none of us actually paid for our super awesome seats. Theo's pair were given to him by our supervisor Neil, and Karyn had connections to the co-owner of the Jays (I think??).

All was dandy until last night, when I learned that certain someone, *cough*, *cough*, couldn't make it to the game. She was actually sick, and I was just glad that it wasn't made up. (I had my share of those.) So a seat become available..... but jeez, no one wants to go to a baseball game these days. wut up wid dat? I'm certainly not a "baseball fan", but at least I'd like to get out and watch a game from time to time. Apparently I have quite a few baseball hatin' friends.

In a true last minute fashion, I got Dave from my classes to tag along. This was at 11:30, when he just woke up (or did I wake him up?) and the game starting at 12:30. I got down to the Skdome, ooops I mean "Rogers Centre", around1 and Dave finally arrived at 1:40, which was bottom of the 5th inning. The game itself wasn't too terribly exciting, but Karyn claims she was on the Jumbotron. I missed it.

After the match, Theo and his roomate Adrian, Karyn and her fiance Andrew, Dave and I all met up at the second level HardRock Cafe to have a pint. The view was amazing and we took in a triple A game that was happening on the field at the time. The greasy food was exactly what I needed too. Btw, big thanks to Karyn for the first round of drinks!

The group split up from then. Theo and Adrian went to see a movie, Karyn & Andrew went home, and Dave and I headed to Queen Street to look for shoes. It was purely my idea, since I'm the one who's anxious for new shoes and on two seperate occasions I asked him "are you getting shoes too?" and he said "no" very confidently. This turned out to be the biggest irony. Through all the shops we visited, there was only one shoe that I really liked, but they didn't have any of my size left; surprise, surprise. And out of nowhere, Dave sees a pair he likes and bought it. At the end of it all, I was like: Dude, I'm the one who's suppose to come out of this with new shoes in my hand, not you. It was funny how that turned out. Good day and fun times!

The company party

Yesterday was our company-wide Four Seasons Home Office Summer Party! I heard lots of great things about it before, and yes it was that good.

All decent looking photos from my camera are posted on my picture blog. It started off at 1pm with a private bout cruise onboard the Northern Spirit I. We received 2 free drinks and a meal onboard. The weather was excellent, and made the cruise a great time. I wished it lasted longer, but it ended at around 4:30. Sorry peeps, no pictures while on cruise; my camera had no batteries.

Next was our team-building event on The Docks. We were randomly split into 12 groups to play in a series of competitive events. It proved to be successful as we had good "bonding times". And having one of the presidents of the company, Katie Taylor on our team didn't hurt either.

And finally, the dinner and dancing. It was held on the brand new The Next Level. It had amazing views, patios, lounge, and tables. The food was awesome, and what can I say, with an open bar, you definitely can't go wrong.

It was so refreshing to get out on a work day, and this really recharged my internal betteries. I soooo needed this, and now I actually feel excited about working again.

The end is near,

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I just found out that my last day here at Four Seasons will be August 31. I am absolutely poofed, and have little motivation remaining. I would have really liked to have the entire week of Aug. 29 off, so that I can have one full week of rest before starting up school the next week. Considering how the original plan was to have me stay until Sep. 2, this isn't bad at all.

The important factor here is the cross-over between the next term co-op students, and current. I have to train the new guys coming in for September. They're starting Mon. Aug. 29 and usually this is a one week deal, but since my partner in crime Theo is getting kicked out of his Toronto apartment on 31th, my supervisors were nice enough to arrange just a 3-day cross-over for both of us.

I'll be in hibernation the four days between the end of work and the start of school. (Sweeeet.) Please do not disturb during this time.

When I grow up ...

When I grow up, I want to be a wedding crasher! Damn, that looks fun!


I just watched the movie last night, and this one is actually as funny as the critics acclaim it is. There were soooo many great moments in the film. I will not spoil anything. The story moves along very well, and the chemistry between all the casts works great. Well worth checking out!

Ads by Gooooooogle

Yes it's true. I have sold out, and displayed ads on my blog. The main reason for doing so is just to make the sidebar look more interesting. And besides, they're ads by google, so they're not very protrusive.

.... ok, ok, I also admit to adding them because of revenue. Google's AdSense program sounds enticing and the more people click on the ads, the more pennies go to my bank account. To be honest, I'm just experimenting with it. I doubt my account will ever reach $10 in earnings. And these ads are pretty damn random; like Sexy girls and Sexy guys at Webconference, or Iranians in Toronto Join us.


*****

In other news, five of us Four Seasons summer interns went out tonight for Ian's goodbye dinner at Crazy Sushi. He's a really nice guy, who was good to know. The poor finance kid had so much trouble with computers though. But it's good to actually help someone who appreciated it. Back to Cornell University in New York next week. Hope to keep in touch with ya Ian.

And one by one, our big summer interns group is dwindling down.....

Timetabling

This time tabling thing is such a pain in the bee-yu-tee-tee! After 2 years of being spoiled of having a perfectly fitting timetable spoon-fed to me, the sudden freedom of having to choose every fine detail of my courses is overwhelming. This is one of those situations when you don't know if you should be happy or sad.

One the one hand, in first and second year, I had absolutely no choice of what courses I would take, but at least I didn't worry anything about conflicting classes. Now, all of a sudden, I can take whatever the hell I please, whenever, wherever, with whomever. But the task of making my own individual schedule is a big ass headache!

Scheduling both fall and winter term courses to have no conflicts, under this new "flexible" ECE curriculum, with a whole bunch of rules, is not how I liked to spend summer nights. The good news is, they are coming along. But I still need to spend a few more hours on it. And everything is dependent on every other section; if only one section fills up and I don't get in, my entire timetable collapses. This drives me to the conclusion that I should wake up at 6am, the day of registration, when the online ROSI registration opens. *sigh*

I have to plug my super-programming genius Mueez for making this timetable generator/conflict resolver thingy. Yikes! if you can make something like this, you're pretty much set for graduation. The tool really does make things easier for ya. Check it out.

Farmer's arm

Why won't this nasty farmer's arm from the last long weekend go away?!
I'm wearing long-sleeves for the rest of this muggy summer now.

Uber good podcasts

I just added a new section to my right column, of all my favourite podcasts and online shows. I'm deeply entrenched within pocasts right now. They just exploded in popularity in the last while, and they're filling my iPod very fast. Although I should really be taking them off, since i only listen to them once, but hey, I still have over 10 gigs left, so what's the rush?

As a techie and geek, these podcasts top the list.
TWiT - Headed by Leo Laporte and the rest of the TechTV gang from the good ole' days. Listening to them reminds me of the best times in television, when the greedy Comcast thugs hadn't infected the Shire of TechTV land.

command N - A surprisingly good quality podcast. Hosted by Amber Mac and Mike, "the Man Lazzazz". Aimed towards a more Canadian view, Amber and Mike really work well together. I watched all 8 episodes last night at once though a mini command N-a-thon.

Diggnation - One of the three ventures Kevin Rose is involved in. Funny man Alex helps make this tech-news-cast more enlightening than usual.

Systm - A devoted online show. They show easy and detailed tech related topics on hacking. Very high quality video and Kevin Rose & Dan Huard actually try to be professional in this one.

theBroken - Totally wacked out, relaxed, half-illegal, half-underground hacker show again with Kevin Rose and Double D. Not so good quality, but I hear they're revamping this series soon. *Ramzi iz da man!*

Check these out, they are well worth the time. TechTV was a big influence in these selections; all the hosts are/were involved with the channel at one point.

Oh and btw, I'll be adding more sections to the right column soon. It's so boring having the usual 3 sections.

Camping trip

My family and friends headed up to a place near the infamous town of Bobcageon, ON. for a campin trip this long weekend.

The place itself was called Pigeon Hollow. It was a trailer park slash camp site combined together, like most camp sites these days, and there were quite a few interesting characters I saw.

Needless to say, it was tons of fun, and wish it didn't end. I guess we did the usual list of activities this time around. BIG picnics, volleyball, soccer, fishing, kayaking, boating, swimming, and of course camp fires. Most people were gambling inside the kitchen tents at night, but I chose to sit around the fire, cooking corn and potatoes, and wonder aimlessly at the burning wood. The brand new 7-person tent we bought this year (for my family of 3), was soooo comfortable and pimpin', we could have held a party in there.

We caught a LOT of fish. Taking a rough estimate, at least 30-40 of them. Here's the kicker: all of them were the size of a man's hand. I probably contributed around 5, my dad around 20. We kept most of them, cleaned them, and cooked it all right there. They were actually not bad; being fresh and everything.

If camping was a man's fight against nature to prove himself worthy of being strong, I lost that fight this weekend. I got severly burnt all over the place and my knees and ankles are soar and bruised up. It's the first time I've been so knocked up from a camping trip, but me thinks it's due to tiredness and lack of preparation prior to leaving. (Damn you, work! damn you)

It's all good. I loved it! Hope to do it again soon.