Ticket design. It was made for an event in residence. Mimics the official WPT design. I vectored the card logo as all originals were too small to work with.

I have a desire to visit that place called Sweet Dreams Teashop. I have it in my memory that they make these delicious drinks there that range from bubble tea to fantastic slushies that I think I could live on. They also have board games and we can play some cards! The point is, I’m looking for anyone who wants to come along. Leave a comment or send me an email. I’m looking at all of you commenters/lurkers/etc!

Second. I am feeling another dinner and a movie thing coming on. Someone pick a movie (or two), someone (maybe even the same person) pick what I should make for dinner (feel free to help out) and someone pick some date. You can see how this absolves me of almost all decision making, which is awesome! Do it!

To add a picture that has nothing to do with this, but since I was catching up on my cell phone pictures. Have my stats class evaluation:

So, you may remember my post about the first midterm in this class.

Here’s the one about the second one. I couldn’t have it any other way.

I pretty much studied for 3 days straight for this thing. There was a slight boo on the first one — I guess it could have gone better. I am feeling that this one went a lot better, which is good, but I’m cautiously optimistic only. I’ll find out for sure when we get the marks, but there were only a bare few spots where I may have been entirely making things up in a kind of sort of know it in an unrelated way approach.

You might be, I was certainly, glad to know that we didn’t have to sit through another 10-15 awkward minutes. The test would start at 7:05, it was still supposed to start at 7:10, but I think the prof finally figured out where that direction was going.

That girl. Oh, that girl.

Professor: “Here are the midterms, make sure your books are away, don’t start writing yet. Just put your name down and count the pages”
Girl < gets exam >
Girl < flips the page and starts to write >
Maybe a minute later.
Professor: “So as I mentioned, don’t start writing”
Girl < oh sigh, hair throw, hissy fit, stops writing, opens her notes and starts going through them >
Sergey < o.OWTF! >
Another minute maybe.
Brave Girl in the back: “Ok, I thought you said close your books. So maybe like she can stop reading”
Professor: “Let me repeat again, close your books, put your notes away”
Girl: “But…”
Girl < defiant sigh, hair fling, sigh, hair fling, closes book >
Sergey < Bravo Brave Girl in the back, bravo. If I could stand up and bow to you I would. But the thing is, I'm too chicken :( >

I felt like writing some rants. Why? Because they’re short and they’re usually fun to write and I don’t actually have to think much about them.

I ended up in Toronto again, that’s twice now within less then 2 weeks. Adam Hewgill, Greg and me went to a Microsoft TechNet Security conference. It was a pretty cool experience, but I don’t really have too much to say about it, except it’s the source of 2 of my rants.

Most of these were from the Q&A session that happened at the end of the presentation. However the first one was from before we got seated. We decided to go to the balcony seating of the theatre like room. And you have to go through these 2 doors to get to the seats on the balcony. But here’s the catch, there are also stairs all the way up and down right next to the seats on the sides of the balcony, but they have bars, literally, every 2 rows that stop you from going up and down them. The hell is that? What sensible purpose is there from making people go back out through 2 sets of doors and go in through 2 sets of doors and you better hope you counted right how many doors you should have gone down, or you’re going to do it again.

Answer: we just jumped over the seats, yep, betcha they didn’t see that one coming at all =P

So, back to the Q&A session.
There were 3 guys, probably around my age, that played on their Nintendo DS systems through pretty much the entire day. I had my DS with me, but I didn’t play it Then at the end, they asked a question about Linux that was a very thinly veiled attempt at a dig at Windows. Then, when it got answered, they pretty much repeated it again. Shut up, k, thanks. If you’re going to go down this path, at least think through your question first. I hoped they would join my PictoChat session, so I could elaborate, but they didn’t

Then someone behind us stood up with another question. He was definitely older and seemed more mature, I was prepared to be impressed and educated. “Hi… uhm… so I came here to see the latest and the greatest from Microsoft” — it’s a security focused conference, not a product showcase — “and I have to say I’m greatly disappointed” — oh fuck me — “because BLA, BLA, BLA” — answer from the presenters — “Yeah, I’m going to talk over you now and start an argument” — presenters try to answer again — “But, but, but, but, if you did this” — Adam Hewgill: Dude, shut up! — Presenters: *sigh* — “I’m still not done with my completely annoying talking” — Presenters: you know, that’s great, come down here and we can discuss this more, but we have to move on for now. Thanks — “I’m so angry, I’m going to storm out of the room!”. Seriously now, please follow this easy pattern: if the rest of the audience, including the presenters are looking at you like you’re a complete idiot, you are. Honestly.

On the GO Train (by the way, absolutely no one actually came around to check our tickets on the way there or back) there were some sick people. Some of them made an effort to try and not get others clearly infected with whatever it was they had. Others didn’t. So the lady next to me was definitely sick, and after a while she would cough and cough on her jacket on her arm and then casually take her newspaper and wave it towards me. I’m not sure I could have given her a more unimpressed look then I did, but I didn’t say anything, thank you lady, I now have a sore throat. Thanks!

East Side Mario’s doesn’t let you change the number of people in your reservation. Yep, that’s right, they had to ask the manager to do it. They seemed to not be able to answer my question of what happened if I canceled the first reservation and just made a new one.

More as I think of them.

Welcome back from the intermission and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the first part that you’re looking for.

I actually had to do a double take on the closing of part 1 since I couldn’t remember where it was exactly that I stopped. So, with that done, here we go!

Indecision. It’s sometimes awesome, and sometimes it’s kind of annoying. Our plan was to walk somewhere, and do something. Which basically resulted in us talking and walking up some street just to do a u-turn because we’d realise there was absolutely nothing in that direction. There were several aspects of Toronto that I suppose are worth mentioning at this point. The taxi drivers are out to hit something, or someone, no exceptions. If they can’t accomplish plan A, then they will do their best to drive with a vendetta as plan B. There are a lot of homeless people who need some of your change for whatever reason they give you. I sort of like the ones that just don’t give me a reason at all, I want to believe them more XD

We found ourselves at the movie theatre, we actually came to this decision after Andrew insisted on us going to see the Much Music building because he hasn’t been there himself. I actually think I have. It was closed, and dark, and disappointing. We were going to make an effort to see Elizabeth, but since we lacked the power to traverse through time, and the last show was more then 4 hours ago, we opted for the only available option in American Gangster. Interestingly enough, someone has leaked a DVDrip version of this movie earlier last week and it seems that just about everyone had it before the movie was even out. We bought some drinks for the movie and bought our tickets, both of which made Andrew’s recent post on the value of entertainment that much more painful to our bank accounts

I won’t spoil the movie, but it was good. It is rated 18A and does live up to that rating in covering just about everything that those labels talk about as far as bad material. What was annoying is that there was someone’s car outside for large parts of the movie that was blasting music and it was really annoying! We joked about asking for refunds, then actually tried to find the customer service desk and failed =/
On the way out, there were a lot of flashing police lights, lots of police cars, lots of police on horseback, and eventually even 2 trucks from the special task force. A couple of guys were “spread” over the hoods of the cruisers and there was a large crowd. We didn’t stick around, but it was like the movie we had just seen continuing for real. It was based on a true story after all!

After getting our north/south direction (no seriously) figured out again. We went off towards Andrew’s place of residence. All the public transport had stopped, even though we felt since the clocks were brought back an hour the subway was technically still open. I guess the operators didn’t agree with us on that one. It was a pretty cool walk and it was around 2-3am, but we did visit Andrew’s campus, which he was so proud of, dodged some light posts in an apparent game that I’m awesome at, figured out what another building on campus was and finally caught a cab for the rest of the trip.

My name’s Bond, James Bond

Sometimes I like to think that I’m totally normal. And every second that I don’t have those thoughts something happens to prove otherwise. Since Andrew we couldn’t invade Andrew’s private sanctuary (I heard that he has an Apple tree there and keeps a caged Steve Jobs under it) we got a room for actually really cheap. The catch! The room was for one person, and for some reason having a second person stay in it was more then the room in the first place! So with a cell call initiating our dastardly plan and synching the timing I went to get the keys while Andrew and Alice snuck in through the back door. It was actually amusing because the person at the desk has all these camera monitors and he turned to check them out and I got his attention again by asking something I can’t even remember. Turned out the guy working the desk also spoke Russian. Mission accomplished and we were in the building safe and clear.

I guess we haven’t had any pictures yet, ok, here we go:

In the morning we discovered the TV had a choice of about 6 channels, which were really mostly static, but at least 2 of them were those channels where one guy sits in front of the camera and talks about something religious.

We actually examined the room in an effort to find something shady and wrong. But we were pretty tired so that didn’t last long. That brown blanket thing is a static making machine, it hurts!

The floor was nice and uhm, nice. It actually wasn’t too bad, except it was pretty cold. Also I snore, it was described as sort of like a “machine” that might be a “lawnmower”. That kinda sucks! XD

Andrew had left to perform at a church service, so we were on our own, and after sleeping in for a bit we finally made some plans. After having to unplug the alarm clock because through joking around about it having a USB port to charge a BlackBerry, Alice somehow set it off and we couldn’t find the off button!

We mostly just walked around and looked at things like tourists. It was Sunday morning and a lot of everything was still closed. Our only real goal was to get some breakfast somewhere, pickup some cakes for someone’s birthday and then catch the bus.

We finally decided on this nice, small place called who’s name I have now forgotten. It was “Samantha’s Place” or something like that. It was pretty nice and we got some breakfast there. One of the reasons it stood out was because I actually realised they had the Food Channel playing on the big LCD TV they had hanging above the counter area. I thought that was really clever and interesting.

It was seriously like $10.00 for that. I ate the pickle :p

The bread was the best part, but the chili was good.

Sorry for the bad picture, I chickened out when one of the people working there started to walk towards the screen. But the lady on the Food Channel was wearing this really low cut shirt thing, and it was probably not the best thing for a cooking show where you know, they show your midsection and what you’re doing with the food.

We walked around a bit more around the fancy and expensive part of Toronto where we found ourselves. I think I saw a lot of over $100,000 cars. Alice took me to this Italian style boutique food shop she found earlier. Everything was really fancy and pretty and expensive. I only got one picture off before we were informed that they were so exclusive that we actually weren’t allowed to take pictures there. So here you go sweet tooth lovers, rejoice:

At this point it was pretty much time to wrap it up. The cake lady opened her store on time at 11:30, we grabbed the cakes and made our way to the subway. I can actually say I’ve been on the Toronto subway now, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t before. The bus back was at 12:30 and was absolutely full. We grabbed a bus that headed to Kitchener instead and was almost empty, it even got there an hour earlier, I take that as an overall win.

Well, as they say all good things must come to and end, and so must this one. We were on our way home, tired, but happy about the weekend. Pretty much slept the entire trip on the bus. So here’s one for closing time (it turns out neither one of us has been to the CN Tower).

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Thank you once again for coming here and actually reading this junk and leaving your thoughts. I thought I would give you a fair warning on this one that once again this is going to be one of those patented wall of text performance style posts (although I do try to use proper breaks and grammar). If you’re ready for some of that, some fun and some pictures then please buckle your seat belts, remain comfortable until we’re well on our way through the first couple of paragraphs and that’s that

I didn’t officially have this weekend off from donning, but I did make arrangements that there was a very good chance that I won’t be around Saturday evening and most of Sunday. The story begins with a concert performance in Toronto of “St. John Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach. Through her intricate network of connections Alice managed to snag some tickets to the show. Originally Andrew was supposed to go, since he needs all the chances to see how it goes, since we expect him to be performing for us in the near future now! That plan was of course scrapped when it was beginning to look like Andrew would actually be performing in this show, as part of the main choir. Go plan changes! Of course it was to our great sadness that we later discovered that that would actually not be happening, guess what, plan change!

Alice left on the Greyound early Saturday morning, she had to meet some friends and I opted for the sleep in and catch a later bus approach. When I finally went to get my tickets around 10 I realised it was tour day here on campus. So many people, groups and families it was crazy. Our Student Life Centre (building to hang out at and do work at and live at) was absolutely packed with presentations from all the faculties on campus and people eager to digest that material. I weaved my way through the mass of bodies to the Turnkey Desk and got my tickets. They keep changing these tickets and how they work. Apparently now they’re technically for a specific bus, but at the same time as long as the source and destination is sort of the same you can still use them on almost any Greyhound, even though they say they’re for a time and a bus >.< They totally contradict themselves! Which did lead to a conversation with the girl who was working at the desk:

Me: "So, I don't know which bus I'm taking back"
Her: "Don't worry about it"
Me: "But this ticket says it's for a specific bus, which I'm not sure I'm going to take!"
Her: "Don't worry about it"
Me: "..."
Her: "There's another bus at 7pm"
Me: "Ok, so..."
Her: "Don't worry about it!"
Me: *blink* *blink* "Thanks!"

I got to the bus stop about 30 minutes early. Good call me! By the time the bus left there were 5 or 6 people standing with the promise of more seats when we stopped off at Kitchener. By the time we got there and everyone who needed to get off did so, and those that were standing seated themselves we had 1 empty seat left and about 30 people who needed to get on. I felt kinda bad for them, but I guess they were going to have to wait for another bus close to an hour later. I did benefit from this a bit though as we weren't going to stop in Cambridge anymore or any other stops and headed straight to Toronto instead.

So there I was standing outside of the Royal York Hotel. Really expensive by the looks of the clientele. As Alice was bored in Toronto for at least the last 4 hours she was actually pretty close, in fact, she was probably inside of the Hotel. But it did lead to what I for some reason found to be an absolutely hilarious conversation.

Alice: "Where are you?"
Me: "By the entrance"
Alice: "Oh, ok, well, I'm kind of lost... no actually I'm totally lost inside"
Me: "o.O"
Alice: "So which side are you on, north, south?"
Me: "I see the, uhm, CN Tower from this side"

I don't know why, but when I hung up I was definitely laughing. The fact that Alice was lost and asking me which geographical side of the building I was on in a city where I haven't been for in a good year, so I definitely had no idea, to me it was hilarious. I'm easily amused, ok, I'm sorry!

Pro-dinner tip: if it says meant for sharing, it’s really meant for sharing. If it says it’s for 1 person, they’re lying (it’s for 3)!

From a quick conversation with Shannon, one of the awesome Dons on my buildings team, I was told you either “love it or hate it” about the building that the concert was taking place in. I’m going to go with the former. It looked really interesting in its design and was definitely different and lively enough to impress. I’ll save the detailed impressions, which will make reading this unbearable, and just stick to some pictures!

The performance was fantastic! I’m really not an overly religious person, and the theme of the performed piece was, but that didn’t matter at all. It was just nice to listen to and see. I’m sorry I don’t have more pictures, and especially didn’t get a chance to take one of the soloists, but there was a no picture rule in effect and I decided to obey it. Speaking of which, the last post was made from Alice’s BlackBerry. We’re such stereotypical UW students it’s amusing. But what we also found through this process is that as soon as intermission was over, that both our devices lost signal completely. They’re probably using some kind of signal blocker, which is curious for the geeky. The only negative I have to mention is that the gentleman who sat next to me was falling asleep for most of the performance, or at least listening to it with his eyes closed, which to me seemed to defeat the point of him changing his glasses every time the show started! I think he snored a couple of times, and he kept using my ribs as the stopping rest of his elbow!

Having fully taken in the performance we were on our way out and had a chat with Andrew! He was totally blowing us off and giving us such a hard time with where he actually was, bastard! XD It was easy though, as he was actually waiting at the doors where we came in. Making our way there we found him talking to some people who were in fancier dress then us. We just waited outside and had a fun conversation about how Andrew is now a big shot somebody and how we’re just his previous university friends from way back when. We thought of taking some pictures and taking bets on how long he’d be before he noticed poor us — but it wasn’t long, and some guy walked into the picture totally ruining it. The last remark is the trio was together!

Stayed tuned, or even better take a break, part 2 coming later!

From toronto, at a concert, with Alice and meeting Andrew-chu soon! Well, gotta go

So on a certain weekend day, I was just sitting in my room, doing some reading to music while my laundry did whatever it does in the magical machines that give me clean clothes for money. Steph, the Don above me was being very active tonight. It seemed kind of weird, and I thought I heard some other disturbances (no, not in the force), but I wrote them off to the strong winds we’ve been having over the last couple of days. This was after a while getting too strange (ok, who am I kidding, it was time to move my laundry to the dryer phase). Upon opening my door, I’ve discovered something…

After getting through this moment of WTF! I went upstairs as I was certain I’d find the perpetrator. I was half right. I did find the villain behind this creation, but it wasn’t Steph, but Andrew and a couple of his residents, who Steph was busy catching in the process of at her door. We promised to remain hush about it so several more targets could be hit. But that night we made a pact to get him back and get him back good. Today my GMail informed me this will be the subject of tomorrow’s meeting. Oh yeah, revenge is a dish best served by UW Dons who have far too many ideas! >:D