So a new year is coming upon us. I’d like to take this time to share some wisdom obtained over the past year. Hopefully you find something in here useful for your own life.

Ever felt like you were doing way too much? Chances are, you are.

One of the biggest lessons learned this year was to make time for yourself – “me time” if you will. Time for you to do the things you want to do. Time to get yourself away from all the various things that you do. Time to wind down.

You may think that doing things on full speed would make you more successful. Yes, that is true, but only while it lasts.

A car can only run when it has fuel to get it to move. Once it runs out, you can’t use it anymore until you fill it up. Likewise, we only have a certain amount of energy. If we constantly go at things at full speed without taking time to “fill up” (ie. stop and rest), then we eventually burn out and we can’t do anything.

So take some time each week to stop working on your commitments, whether it be school, work, or something else, and have some time for yourself. Not time spent sleeping, mind you, but time spent for yourself.

You’ll thank yourself for it, and so will all those people you work with.

Vancouver does not know how to handle snow – at all. If you are one of those people, then you might learn something about how to handle things.

As you know, Vancouver had a pretty impressive snowfall these past couple of weeks. So many things that I noticed people doing were making me go, “What are you thinking?”

First off, notice how everyone just has a wide shovel for shoveling snow? That is not a snow shovel. That’s a snow pusher. As in, you use it to push snow off places like your sidewalk.

Yet, you see people use the snow pusher to shovel snow (ie. put snow onto the blade, lift, and dump it elsewhere. Not only is this bad for your back, it’s not the right thing to use the snow pusher for.

If you are to shovel snow, use a proper snow shovel, made out of metal. Admittedly, those might damage your sidewalks and such, so you may want to look into a plastic one. But for something that will last, a metal snow shovel would be something worth looking into.

Now that we have that shovel business out of the way and you are aware of what kinds of shovels to actually look for, please shovel and clear out your sidewalk. Walking around these days is ridiculous because some people don’t even bother to shovel, making their part of the sidewalk (ie. the sidewalk in front of their property) extremely slippery and dangerous. My solution to this problem? Walk on the street, where I can’t possibly slip. Dangerous, yes, but still less dangerous than slipping and cracking my head open because some lazy bum can’t be bothered to shovel their sidewalk.

Then we have the footwear. Rain boots are not something you want to wear out there! They may keep your feet dry, but leave close to no insulation for your feet! What you’d want to get are shoes that..

• have good grip to the ground, to keep you from slipping
• will keep your feet/socks dry, to keep you nice and warm

Once you accidentally step into a puddle of melting snow in shoes that are not waterproof, you will start feeling cold. Not a pleasant feeling.

And finally, the getting around in the snow. If you aren’t comfortable driving in snow like I am, simply don’t drive! Take transit to get around. It may be inconvenient, but if you properly plan things out, I’m pretty sure you can make it work. Things to get you started would be making use of Google Maps to look for public transit travel directions.

However if you are brave, have a shovel with you at all times in your vehicle. That way, you can at least dig yourself out of trouble. I did that recently for some strangers whose car was stuck.

Managing your time wisely is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. Also learn to prioritize things.

Time management is important. Probably the best set of tips I found all year came from Eugene’s blog, in an article called The “Not To Do” List. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it seems his server’s down. On the bright side, it’s archived on my Google Reader, so I can read it again and share my thoughts here with you.

Of particular note to the topic of time management is points 1, 2, and 5, which are

1) Check e-mail at schedule points of the day, or to a maximum amount.

2) As a caveat to the first one, don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed.

5) Stop checking your feed reader so much.

In essence, keep the distractions to a minimum. I do depend on email a lot – it’s my first line of communication with most people, but looking back, there is just so many things that should have just waited there until I am actually ready to handle them (ie. done whatever I was working on). Thinking it would be a good break, it destroyed my focus on the subject at hand and I can not go back to what I was working on.

Take advantage of your opportunities or you may just regret it.

I’ll admit I’m someone who would rather be 100% sure of success before taking a chance on something, but I’m pretty sure this has screwed things up for me at some point this year. I can’t think of any examples at this time, but yeah. Take more chances for things you want to be successful for!

Having a job is a good thing.

Ever since my co-op term ended in April, I have been just doing school. I really wish I got a job, since at least I can have some steady income. But then again, time, my worst enemy, stands in the way. Hopefully I will be able to work something out and get myself employed at a part-time job in the near future.

Computer graphics is hard.

As some people know, I took the computer graphics class offered at my university and was practically given a thorough ass kicking. The most important thing I learned from that class is that I will not go into the area. It has scarred me for life.

So as the clock rolls down to that time when the ball drops and a new year dawns upon us, it’s a good time to look back on the year and think of our successes and failures. Some resolutions for myself for the new year (because I know that I’ll probably fail to follow through) include:

• Get a part time job.
• Manage my time better and make it more controllable.

A fairly short list and realistic. Should be doable, right?

Have a happy new year!

For this semester, I am only taking one class. However, in an attempt to restructure my life and its priorities, some things have changed to move towards the goal of better academic performance.

I started to get restless over my mediocre grades sometime between the break, considering how most of the people I know get fairly decent grades. By decent, I mean that their GPA is at least above 2.4. I am pretty sure it’s not because I am a poor academic by any means. At this point in time, however, after reflecting on just what I have been doing in the past few years in university, I have concluded it might just have been my lack of focus on school and too many other things to do, which contributes to stress levels that get me burnt out to do well.

So what I am trying out this semester is a strong focus on school with ample amounts of time to destress to prevent the burn out. Unfortunately for other commitments, this just means less time for those. After all, personal/professional development tops my list at this time, given my desire to get some unique experiences in before graduating, like international co-op opportunities like Coop Japan or various co-op experiences in government and public service in places like CSE. Places outside of Vancouver and outside my comfort zone. Places that challenge me in various ways and give me opportunities to be truly independent, fending for myself and such.

I don’t exactly want to continue being in the CS academic probation either. Despite our academic advisors being awesome people, I don’t want to have to talk to them every semester just to register in upper division CMPT courses because it means there is a chance (although admittedly a very low one) of not being able to register for the courses I want. But yet, having mediocre grades (C range) keeps me nowhere near getting out of CS-based AP. Hopefully my greater focus on academics would help with getting myself out of this and towards a better GPA.

As for the one course, this of course is CMPT 419, Special Topics in Artificial Intelligence, with the topic being machine learning. It’s been quite interesting thus far and I hope to be able to maintain my enthusiasm for the course throughout the semester so I can accomplish my goals as stated above. Greg Mori stated quite clearly that this is a math heavy course, which would be something to focus on, since my math marks have not been stellar in any case.

Luckily, there are opportunities to review with a math review session tomorrow and a bunch of free time brought about by the single class.

Now, people might now go “Dom! You have so much free time now! Go do X for Y!” I am going to be clear right now and say “No.”. I need my free time to do various things that fit in with my goals for better academic performance and professional development, so see me either studying or working on some projects that either have been hanging back or learning new skills that would be useful to achieve my career goals. Some examples of such projects include:

• Get more practice in writing C
• Learn how to reverse engineer things through crackmes
• Finish my Scout group’s website
• Create a badge administration web information system for Scouts
• Online game

Of course, life will need to be kept in balance, so efforts will also need to be made to go out and have fun with friends more, which is also something I have not really done much of, but absolutely necessary to keep me sane, as I have discovered as of late.

Throwing this here just so I remember to do these things. Quite a few things that really need to be done, and then there’s the things that I’ve just been itching to do, but haven’t done yet.

In no particular order, categorized by when it needs to be done, by weeks relative to now:

By April 20:

• Pack bag for Wood Badge II second weekend trip, happening this weekend (April 18-20) – done hours before going
• Do writeup for Wood Badge II homework – done April 17
• Get a meeting date decided for Troop planning and misc. issues for the coming months (May till June/July) – delegated to another Scouter (the one in charge of the months)
• Send out this week’s announcements for the troop – done early April 18
• Get number of confirmed participants for Nite Hike – found a sad number, but done nonetheless April 17
• Get people in on the stage crew team for the AGM on the 27th – got two people on board for this April 22
• Make sure all teams are on schedule for the AGM planning stuff – kinda done..
• Check on AGM booklet team on their status – technically should be almost done at this point if we are to meet the print deadline – done April 16 by another leader
• Get Nancy to fill in the Supervisor Evaluation for co-op – done April 15
• Hand in work report – done April 15
• See if I can get off work earlier on Friday so I can get down to Langley for Wood Badge II training – done April 15
• Determine Scout of the Year – done April 16

By April 27:

• Clean up my desk at work – done April 25
• Do documentation for my self-initiated project at work
• Fix issues with said project as we find them
• Get student volunteers to help out with the CS booths during SFU Open House
• See if I need to contact all my teacher contacts made during my work term to let them know who to contact now that my co-op term has ended – work approved idea on April 22
• Send said email – done April 25
• AGM – make sure all planning is done, all bases covered, etc., etc. – done April 27

By May 4:

• Meeting for Troop program and misc. management issues – done April 22
• Fix a Scout’s computer – I’ve had it for a while now, but I told her I should have time starting on the 28th because work is done by then
• Clean up my desk at home
• Clean up my room
• Throw out the random junk I don’t need that I find while cleaning up my room
• Review scary math in preparation for CMPT 419 so that I will not “run from the room screaming if [Greg Mori] say[s] “eigenvector” or “covariance matrix”" (email from Greg Mori forwarded through csadvise back in December 2007)
• Buy textbook for said class – done April 16
• Pay tuition for summer

And other, no specific due date items that have, unfortunately, just hung around. Also unfortunately is that this is all the fun and/or important stuff:

• Work on my online game project
• Work on a Scouts-inspired project related to badgework management – idea from fellow Scouter in my group from his discussion with his group during Wood Badge II because:
  1. Existing solutions are reportedly bad and hard to use
  2. I would benefit from such software
  3. I can make it a web application, which makes it fairly easy to get to and use
• Finish work on my Scout group’s website (a run-away project of epic proportions.. really. If we did earned value analysis on this project, the SPI would be very, very, low, perhaps somewhere < 0.01)
• Create my website, so that the main page doesn’t suck
• Related to the above: since I will be creating something on my own, chances are I will only use WordPress for blogging and nothing else, which means I need to make a template for my website, then port said template to become a theme for my blog
• Review my commitments on things and see if I really need to start cutting back on various things. Currently, all signs point to yes.

And hopefully there’s nothing else. There’s already a huge stack here already and more would just.. well, let’s not go there. I want to go to sleep tonight right after this without nightmares of things that I have not yet done, or forgotten to do.

This semester, I felt, started off strong.

I was on the ball. Things were going right for once. I was enjoying school and everything had a good balance.

Then something happened. I don’t really know just what happened, but it happened fast and brought this sweet, sweet taste of potential academic success down the drain. Perhaps it was the stress? The large amounts of commitments with extra curricular activities? I don’t know.

But in the end, what started off as an alright semester turned into one which I need to seriously look at what I’m doing. Of the three courses I’m taking, I did best in JAPN 100 with a B. Everything else? I did terrible.

After talking with Nancy, one of our advisors in CS, I’ve had a pretty significant wakeup call. My upper division CGPA is approaching 2.0. If that dips below 2, I will not be able to graduate with a BSc in Computing Science. And of course, my overall CGPA isn’t looking that pretty either. It’s not as low, but it’s gradually getting there and once that happens, I have one semester left to redeem myself out of academic probation and then I’m RTW-ed.

So I’m starting to tread on some dangerous ground now. I’ve been strongly advised to take out time from the extracurriculars to go and study more, as well as focus. My problem is that I just know exactly what I need to change, but the focus to make these changes are not there, nor is the motivation.

This should be a good wakeup call to get my stuff together and get myself out of this academic rut once and for all.

Not blogging is the obvious thing.

I have been given temporarily a Nintendo DS Lite from Benton, who tells me to hold onto it so he cannot play and study/do homework better. Thanksfully, since I have kind of given up on giving up games for Lent (well, changed it to reduce playing games for Lent – see later), it actually has been beneficial to have as it helps put me back on track (surprisingly enough) instead of drag me deeper into lack of focus.

I went to Games night last Friday. That wasn’t bad, although I wish I could have stayed longer. I could not do so because there was a church retreat the next day.

The retreat was pretty nice, with the English group speaker being no one other than the recently ordained (one year ago) Fr. Justin Huang, who also went with the SFX/Corpus Christi joint group to World Youth Day 2005 in Germany.

The topic that Fr. Justin talked about can be summed up into how to find happiness in God. It was done in three sessions. The first talk was on things we need to have to be happy, which he called fruits of the Holy Spirit and consist of the following: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chasity.

The next session analyzed why we turn away from God. There are two reasons. The first is obviously sin, which we can resolve by doing a complete and integral confession, which requires one to confess all their mortal sins, along with the number of times the mortal sin was committed. The other cause is disorders in our lives, with the orders being the Four Levels of Happiness. Disorder occurs when either one of the levels are missing or they are sorted in the wrong order.
The final session was one focused on how to turn back to God and, hence, become happy in Christ. Unfortunately, I did not last that long (it was a pretty long day after all) and somewhat dozed off while listening.

After most of the retreat was over, I decided to go to confession. Some things troubled me, such as the burnout stage that happened a while back and my gaming Lenten promise which is in tatters.

It was one of the better confessions I’ve had. It kind of put things back on track, such as how to deal with stress that leads to the eventual burnout and resolving the guilt from breaking the gaming Lenten promise. With some internal searching during confession when Father asked me questions, I realize that I am quite a perfectionist, always wanting to get something exact, which in turn leads to my procrastination, which causes a good chunk of my stress.

To deal with it the stress, Father suggested I go and do something else like go for a walk. He also suggested I take part more in church things. As well, when I asked about how to keep the promise to give up games, it turns out that I only thought too short-sighted and failed to fill in something to the time freed up from giving up games. He, therefore, recommended that I just reduce my gaming time instead of outright outlawing it for Lent, giving my own nature to game.

It’s strange how the better confessions are the ones where I’ve done an examination of conscience with the list of questions to ask myself in front of me and where there was no screen, but a face-to-face one.

But yeah, I certainly feel better now after that and quite refreshed, to say the least. I’ve managed to clear off my JAPN homework stuff this week and actually found time to study for the classes. I guess I could do better with the other classes though, especially CMPT 307. I really should go and talk to Binay, but I’m not really all that sure what part to ask for help with. My problem is that when I look at it, it makes sense for the most part, but when confronted with it in an exam situation, it just does not come out, although I could probably use some help with that recurrence relation stuff.

I’ll see.

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.

Looks like I’ll be quite busy next week.

I went through co-op intake yesterday. Just a few hours after, I was notified that I have been accepted into the program. Woohoo!

But I probably won’t be applying to stuff until the week afterwards. Lots of stuff to handle next week.

The big events are the CMPT 307 quiz/midterm that’s coming up on Monday and my self-imposed deadline on Wednesday, which I technically have an extension till Thursday now since that is when I am meeting up with my boss to talk about it. But hey, a deadline’s a deadline and it must be kept. Hopefully I’ll be able to work wonders with my time and avoid the distractions to get things working nicely. Something to pray for.

There’s almost a Scout leader’s meeting sometime during the week as well that has yet to be scheduled. I’ll need to throw that into the schedule somewhere once the time’s decided.

According to Timbo, the practice questions for 307 are quite hard. That has me worried a bit. But then, the fact that there isn’t that much time to really study is also worrying. Saturday’s pretty much occupied with WCCCLC training stuff, Sunday morning’s occupied with Mass, and Sunday afternoon with a WCCCLC promotion team meeting, which really means I have a small block of time Friday, a few hours Saturday night, and all Sunday evening to study for this potentially uber-hard quiz. Something else to pray for.

Then mom’s coming home after three weeks in Hong Kong on Tuesday, and she’s bringing home some 香片 (jasmine tea), which makes me a happy camper. I love that stuff. It’s so delicious and fragrant. And she’s got her birthday coming up on Saturday, which means going out for dinner. Thankfully, by that time, the busy week is over, so it’ll be like a cooldown period.

As an aside, Code Geass is awesome. And from what I heard about it from Dan, Afro Samurai sounds pretty ludicrously awesome as well.

How so you might ask? Let’s see here. Besides the fact that Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of the protagonist, a black samurai with an afro, they have a mix of feudal and modern technologies, one example of which is fully automatic crossbows with RPGs mounted underneath. I think that warrants a WTF.

Well, wish me luck and/or pray for me. I’ll be needing it.

Happy New Year!

Looking back at the past year, and the years before it, there are many areas that I can improve myself on. Giving it some thought, I’m putting forward for myself the following New Year’s resolutions.

• Be more confident in myself and my abilities
• Do more exercise
• Be more neat around the house
• Avoid freaking out over the little things
• Normalize my sleep
• Quit slacking off

This would most likely be the first time I actually made some New Year’s resolutions. However, I’m looking at it more as goal setting for the new year. If there’s anything that the current leadership team approach in Scouts has taught me, it’s setting goals and paths to achieve these goals.

With the first item on the list, I will believe in myself more and quit second-guessing my choices. Since our very recent semi-annual leadership conference with Scouts, people have pointed out that I lack confidence. Thinking about it a bit after, I see their point.

I never seem to be able to make my own decisions without other people’s help. I seek their advice and all, which is fair. However, in the end, I most likely end up leaning towards what they say is the best decision, without weighing in what I believe in on the matter.

At times when I am absolutely sure of myself, if I am questioned, the second thoughts start. Of course, you can say that I think objectively because I would think of the different choices I have available. However, the fact remains that my final opinion is based on what most people say is the best, not what I believe is best. It is by far the biggest weakness in my character.

Item number two is simple enough. I should probably go pick up swimming again, since I dropped it near the beginning of my time in university. I could use the exercise.

Well, as I am typing this, my room is quite messy. Not exactly messy when compared to some other people, but yeah. I have papers lying down on the floor, textbooks on the floor, clothes not in the dresser.. the list goes on. I can take a proactive approach to cleaning that all up. As for other areas of the house, say the bathroom, I will take some time once a month to clean.

There have been times over the past year when something small gets the best of me, especially when it comes to being in an organizational role for stuff, such as Frosh Week or Scout camps. I found myself in panic mode for some very little things. As an example, on the day before our Scout group’s Group Camp, which I was Camp Chief for, I neglected to note that we need a food permit or something and I started to freak out. I quickly emailed the guy who was in charge of food for said camp and told him my bad news. Stupid thing about that? After freaking out about it for a few hours, I finally smartened up and called the campsite and asked – turns out we only need FoodSafe.

Sure, freaking out gets me doing stuff, and generally stuff in the right direction, but it isn’t exactly the wisest choices. Frankly, all what I need to do is be more calm about things and think with a clear head in all situations. It’ll take some time, but it should work out in the end.

And on sleep. Right now, it’s almost 3 in the morning. Why am I still up? Obviously, my sleeping schedule’s gone out of wack. And what’s my action plan to get it all better? Referring to some stuff I’ve learned in PSYC 100 last semester regarding sleep, as well as a document from my mom’s workplace regarding hints on getting a good night’s sleep, I should go to sleep and wake up at the same times. My goal times of choice? 11 PM to sleep and 7 AM to wake up. Of course, this does not happen overnight, so it will take some time to get on.

The very last thing on this list is going to be difficult to say the least. I find myself wasting so much time these days and not being able to focus. Perhaps it’s the whole lack of sleep thing starting from about Chirstmas till now that’s causing it, but truth be told, I haven’t exactly been the best when it comes to focus. Unless the task I am doing is extremely interesting to me, my mind will drift off and go towards something else in a short time after.

Back in second year (or was it third?), I ran into a friend of mine from elementary school on the route to school. He’s always been a smart student, even up till now, whereas I kind of drift off after high school. His tactic is to brainwash himself into thinking that activity X (where X is something that may be boring, like studying) is fun.

I think I’ll try that out for once.

So yeah. A hefty list of resolutions that aren’t just random things I resolve doing, but I will actually get done sometime this year.

What’s your new year’s resolutions?