It’s almost a week into Lent, the 40 days before Easter. I guess it has been tradition or something in which we as Roman Catholics would give up something for these days of repentance that lead to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I remember having to do it as a kid, but it is not something I really took seriously. I mean, nobody really ever told us just why we do it and such. I guess something that happened last year explains just why.

Last year during Lent, I attended an Ash Wednesday Mass up at SFU said by Fr. James Hughes. The thing from his homily that stood out is that just like how professional athletes train in order to do well, the Lenten seasons is special training for us Catholics such that we may be better people who can live more in the likeness of Christ. Well, it’s something like that; it is one year ago after all. It is quite an interesting analogy though, and it is quite true.

So this year during Lent, I decided to give up two things during these forty days: games (with the exception of the CSSS Games Night happening sometime in the middle of March) and alcohol (which I enjoy but refuse to over-indulge in).

After driving up to SFU Burnaby today so I can work on my CMPT 471 assignment in the networking lab, I figured that I should pay for parking.

Oh what a terrible choice to make.

Having overpaid for parking by a bit, the machine crashed. Apparently it cannot handle giving out change or something. And guess what?

The machines run Windows. That little screen on the display showed a Windows desktop, with icons for My Computer, Network Neighbourhood, and Messenger.

Oh how I wish I reacted fast enough to take a picture of it instead of staring at the machine in shock as I lost $6.40 on the machine.

Silly thing is though, after calling Campus Security about it, they told me two things.

1) They can’t refund me my lost money.

2) They weren’t going to check the lot anymore today, which basically meant I would have gotten away with not paying for parking.

Blah.

Curtis has started writing about the Tao of Sandwich Construction. If you like sandwiches, go read. Current part talks about bread, types and toasting levels.

Dang it. Now I’m hungry.

My parents, my dad especially, are TV drama addicts. Every so often, they get DVDs full of dramas from Asia, with a Cantonese dub and watch it for rather long periods of time.

Most recently, they watched the 2005 Japanese drama 女王の教室 (Jyoou no Kyoushitsu/The Queen’s Classroom), an eleven episode series talking about a sixth-grade teacher who is generally referred to as the teacher from hell. While watching only a very little bit of the series, mainly the introduction, a bit of the middle, the ending, and some of the specials which talk about the teacher’s past, one thing really struck me, especially from the specials: children these days are really sheltered from the world around them.

(Spoilers follow, but if you want to watch the series, you can go here and start off your torrents. I would recommend watching the eleven episodes first before the two specials)

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Wednesday was OpFair 2007, put together by both the Engineering and Computing Science Student Societies, where over 20 high tech companies in the local area, had booths set up to look for potential employees. As most of these places are also looking for co-ops, I just had to go out and see just what’s available. Going through most of the booths, I began to worry a bit as most places will be making use of C++. I will most likely need to spend some time making use of good old g++ and some good website to self-teach myself C++ from my light-to-moderate knowledge of C.

But the companies there are quite interesting. I certainly didn’t know that Sophos had an office in Vancouver until walking around. Computer security is interesting and doing virus research through reverse engineering viruses to see what they do and how to make fixes is even more interesting. Unfortunately, I only have interest, not experience, in the area, which is quite disappointing for myself.

Then there’s IBM. Having gone to their information session a week or so earlier, it would be a nice place to apply for. Knowing people already there (well, one really), is a big plus already.

Orbital Technologies does some contract work and such. The variety of jobs you might be doing sounds intriguing enough for me to want to apply and try it out. At least you’ll never get bored as what you’ll be working on changes in between projects.

There’s other companies there as well, but these three were the ones that interested me the most during OpFair. Other companies there that I would probably be interested in working for include Business Objects, Telus, and Electronic Arts.

But yes, I really need to take some time to go and do some things with C++ and reverse engineer some stuff. Thankfully, I don’t really need to look around to find things that I can reverse without getting into trouble. I just need time..

Which brings me to the next thing. Time. I just feel like I have way too many things to do. My parents kind of made me think about this when they gave me a good long talk, in which I felt irritated simply because it’s things I’ve heard before and am trying to change myself out of, including wasting time and time management and all that other crap. Let’s see now..

There’s school, work, Scouts, two websites, and WCCCLC promotions (which will include the website, not accounted for in previous count). I do feel like I have lots to do, but then again, I cannot really focus on one thing at a time these days, simply because I’m worrying about something else. I feel that I should drop some responsibilities, but there are some things holding me back:

• School: too high on priority list – cannot drop
• Work: also pretty high on priority list, mainly for the work experience that is involved with it
• Scouts: Several things holding me back on this one. 1) Attachment to the group, since I’ve been in the group for about 10 years.. 2) Guilt over if I leave, what will happen to the group? It’s growing these days and they say they might just start a Beaver Colony next year..
• Website 1 (99th SFX Scouts): I’m the only person working on this, so I can’t really do that..
• Website 2 (Pacific Coast Council): I’m part of a team of people doing this, but I value the work that we put into it, so nope..
• WCCCLC: it’s a great event and I would like to encourage others to go, as well as get more experience out of it, so nope..
• Gaming: my stress relief and what times turns into when I lose focus, although these days it’s mainly Minesweeper (in the form of Mines, part of the GNOME package) and Battle for Wesnoth.

So yeah, lots of things to do, lots of things to worry about simply because I care too much, which leads to a general inability to focus on things that really should be done. But what can I do?

I guess what I could do is hurry the 99th SFX Scouts website such that it’s complete, then I don’t need to do much for it anymore, leaving more time for other things.

But will it work? Will I be able to balance out my time between all these duties without breaking down? What will I drop?

I don’t know. I’ll need to think it through.

I always thought I was a decently organized person.

After yesterday’s Scouts meeting, not anymore.

We had our meeting outdoors at Warner Loat Park and it was raining. I was assigned to do collection of monies and forms for various events that we are having, including a camp at the end of the month and a ski trip next week. We also have a dues collection system for our outdoor equipment.

So that’s a lot of stuff, since it all went through me. The fact it was raining with no real dry area for me to write down who paid what didn’t help either, so I resorted to memory.

Turns out my memory isn’t that great so now I have a mystery $10 that someone used to pay for camp and I don’t remember who paid.

Ugh.