Diving!

I went to Cuba with my family back in May 2003. While enjoying the sailing and free drinks at the all inclusive resort we were visiting my sisters (Felicia and Lisa) had been chatting to this fellow running a dive shop right next to the resort. Together with my sisters then I did a Discover SCUBA diving course at the resort, and the next day the guys from the dive shop took us out diving around a nearby coral reef (not quite legal since we were not certified divers, but nobody seemed to mind). Well a lot of fun was had by all and we, well I, had been considering going on to do more diving.
After finishing my thesis then I came out to UBC where I promptly found the UBC dive club in the Student Union Building. I quickly hurried by making a mental note to get back here, but for now I had a quantum assignment to do. So on it went; a summer came and passed, until finally two friends of mine (Shawn and Marie-Andree) twisted my rubber arm into taking the Open Water course offered by the UBC dive society. I just returned from my first lesson, which was pretty much a reiteration of the Discover SCUBA course I took before. I thoroughly enjoyed the lesson, and am looking forward to more (on coming Monday). But what really has me excited is the open water dive at the end of the month (30th and 31st) I just can't wait for to see what the waters of BC have to offer below the surface (yes I did a good bit of sailing here last year, and there was much rejoicing).

Long Time No Post

It's been a busy few weeks, I have a lot of data to analyze so I can finally start writing my masters thesis. On top of that I started worrying about what to do for my PhD, and have concluded that I am totally undecided on this subject. I am feeling tempted to do another masters or try this 'job' thing for a while.

On the "social life" side of things the return to Vancouver has been very nice. It feels good to be back in action at SJC putting on movies, enjoying cartoon-filled weekends and gaming whenever I find the time.

My friend Shawn had found a free 14 day trial of this MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that let's you play as a superhero. The ability to modify your character in this game is just amazing (I hope my character at least kind of looks right). Of course the game did get into trouble with Marvel since a lot of players imitated their favorite superhero in the game. Following that they started erasing characters that closely resemble any copyrighted material; luckily my character has not been deleted yet. How good is my modeling? How obvious is it what this character is based on?

Back in Vancouver

After a very busy but fun trip to Japan I am back in Vancouver. WeI left KEK (the research facility I was staying at) around noon. We had some lunch in Tsukuba before taking the bus to Narita Airport. There we finally boarded our flight and headed beack home at about 5pm. I got me some good duty free liquor at the Airport too :)

During the flight i finished reading "The Face" by Dean Koontz. A quite creepy antagonist, but aside from that a marginally allright book. Good enough to keep you reading but not to get you truely absorbed in the story.

Shawn picked me up at the Vancouver airport on Sunday morning. Big thanks man, I was in no shape to bus back home. I was slightly intrigued by hearing Nena's "99 Red Ballons" (If I remeber correctly we listend to the English, not the German version) since it seemed to fall somewhat outside our general Heavy Metal/Punk Rock cuisine of music. But hey it's retro so I didn't think too much by it. Hence I was pleaently suprised by finding my closet filled with 99 red ballons supplyed by Aleks, Shawn, Calum and Parie (I hope I included everyone involved). Thank you guys for the welcome home. That was awsome! Here is a shot Aleks took when I found the ballons, too bad I was turning my back to the camera, so he did not get the look on my face, which must have been pretty funny :)



Afterward we had the Anime movie night, also great fun. We whateched Neko no Ongaeshi (The Cat Returns) a fun little anime. Wierd, but I enjoyed it either way. Amber braught some pie to share during the movie, damn that pumpkin pie was good. Thank you Amber, you're best!

Tonight (in case you were wondering where I was) I went to visit Lauren and Jason, two friends of mine living in Surry. They are both working at The Keg, in Surry relatively close to the Surry Central Skytrain station. I had what must have been the best steak of my life after, especially beiing beef-deprived for about two months. Damn that was good! Thank you guys for having me over :)

U.S. credit card breach

This article by CBC is another story of our credit card records being acessed by hackers. This apparently happened a few times over the past year or so ... what I find scarier then some hacker getting into another database, is the fact that our purchases are monitored like this. But hey who the hell cares, soon enough they will also know that the internet is used for two things only pirating and pr0n ... well and gaming, but that is a just a small fraction occupied mostly by geeks like me.

Free Beer!

Thanks to Rich my flight back to Vancouver was upgraded to first class. Right now we are chilling out in the "Skynet Lounge" at narita airport, an area for first class and eliet travellers. They give you free wireless acess, muchies, and most importantly BEER! Only have about 10 minutes left to use all this though. Damn.

And all will turn to silver clouds.

Well It's time to go back to Vancouvers white shores. I'll make it down there about now (Vancouver time) meaning it just a short 16 hr sprint home, fun!

Empire Earth II

So we are currently on the HARP section of the K2K experiment. If tht does not mean anything to you that's ok, you are not missing too much. So for the last few hours i sepnd my time half listening to the speaker half reading about Empire Earth II. I am very impressed with the review of the game. I played the demo, and I got a glimps of what they meant with the long learning curve the article is talking about. I was however very impressed with the game, and the previews and review I have been reading very much motivate me to pick up this sequel to the old RTS gem.
Sadly this means I will likely let my WoW accound run out (o.O), but I am just not playing that game enough to justify spending $15 a month on it.