Outside of work during that week was Anto’s going away dinner because he’s going off to Waterloo to work at RIM for four months. After dinner, our group of people headed over to CHQ to play around in the arcade, which included playing some vertical shooter (never caught the name) with Anto, Initial D with Amy, Time Crisis 4, Taiko: Drum Master with Amy, some other rhythm game involving three buttons with several people, House of the Dead 4 with Anto, and Ghost Squad with Tadashi. Turns out I’m really bad with rhythm games. I also tried out that tank driving game based on World War II. I ended up calling an air strike on myself because I’m such a noob >_<, but it was fun nonetheless.

Once I got home on Friday, I found a Steam message from Dan telling me that Civilization IV was 33% off on Steam. And so, I bought the Civilization IV Complete Pack for USD $39.95.

However, I could not really get any rest for that weekend. That is because on Sunday, we had the 12th Annual General Meeting and Anniversary Dinner for the 99th Saint Francis Xavier Scout Group. Being the project coordinator for this meant that I was pretty much running all over the place on both Saturday (to rehearse and prepare) and Sunday (to oversee everything to ensure that the event ran smoothly and assist if something did explode in our faces). Surprisingly enough, the event ran quite smoothly, despite the last-minute nature of many things in the planning and preparation process. I did not really start the planning process until a month or so before the actual event, things got delayed and pushed back (mainly due to poor management from yours truly), and various other things.

Mom left for her pilgrimage on Monday, so I basically did the driving for the day. Woke up early, drove out to Richmond, had breakfast, saw her off at the airport, then dropped off dad for work and went home. Pretty much, the day was a maintenance day. Fixed up my bike so I could actually use it, then I started to try to fix that computer that was mentioned in the to-do list post. That in itself was a challenge because it’s got Chinese Windows XP installed, and I don’t really read Chinese all that well, even though I am Chinese. Basically, the problems with the computer mainly revolve around errors popping up when the system boots up (and from the looks of it, these are the application encountered an error and crashed type messages). Usage history from the users states that the errors started when they tried to install the TELUS eProtect software. I think I am going to toss it out and install AVG instead. Might as well go with what you know works for things like security. They are also using Spybot Search & Destroy for their anti-spyware needs, which I will keep around because it works. Haven’t done that yet because I wanted to actually spend the week enjoying life and taking a break from things.

Started getting lazy on Tuesday and lounged around for a quite a bit. Had a meeting at night though for more program planning for the next two months of Scouts. Not going to post details here because I know some of them read this blog. You’ll find out tomorrow what to expect!

There was a SFU Open House meeting on Wednesday that I went to because I am coordinating stuff there for Computing Science. Since my bike is ready to be used, I took the bike out for a spin. Good weather out too, but I just am not in good enough shape to bike much, which kind of sucks considering how I could actually do the distance from school to home (a 45 minute commute by bus/foot) back in high school by bike. As a result, I cheated quite a bit, and only biked the distance from home to Commercial Skytrain Station and from SFU to Sperling/Burnaby Lake Skytrain Station. Turns out it’s really beautiful at Burnaby Mountain Park. I should head over to that field more often – it doesn’t take long to get to from campus.

Went out to Havana for dinner with a few people from the co-op job on Thursday, which was pretty good. We then went all the way across town to Sweet Obsession for dessert. Very, very yummy cake (I had the White Chocolate Raspberry Mousse). They also have an interesting tea blend called the Sweet Obsession tea blend, which is basically an Earl Gray with jasmine.

After I got home, I finally started to play my recently purchased Civilization 4 with expansions. My God is that game addicting. I ended up playing from 9-10 PM until 4 in the morning because I did not look at the clock. >_>

Not really looking forward to going back to school so soon, but the time is coming. At least I’m only there for two days a week. I should get some golfing into the week at the nearby pitch & putt course at Kensington Park..

I just wish I had a longer break.

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.

Dine Out Vancouver 2008

Dine Out went through quite well this year. I went to four different places this year.

First up with J.J.’s Fine Dining. This is located at the VCC Downtown Vancouver campus and is actually ran as part of the culinary arts program VCC has. I have gone there in the past for their buffet on Fridays and it was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the dine out experience. The thing that stood out strongly was the fact that I was never asked for how I wanted my steak done, which left everyone who ordered the steak entree with well done steak. Even those who stated how well they wanted their steak done never got their requests made either. I can not exactly blame them though; the restaurant is a training facility for up and coming chefs and servers after all.

After that came a trip to The Cannery Restaurant. This restaurant is located within the Vancouver Port and one will need to go through port security to get to the place. At $35 per person for dine out, it was a worthwhile experience. The food was absolutely delicious and they do something new as well, which was quite interesting. Most restaurants would give you bread and butter. Others would give you bread and a mix of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Here, they give you a mix of balsamic vinegar and lobster oil, which is quite good. Definitely going to be going again next year if possible.

A camp later (which will be talked about below) and before the snowstorm that saw SFU closed for two days, I found myself at Horizons Restaurant on Burnaby Mountain, a short bus ride (and if I did what I was planning to do, a hike up) from SFU. The food was quite delicious and the night view of the city was beautiful.

Finally, I went to Gramercy Grill. This small-ish West side eatery on Arbutus had a pretty good dine out menu. Usually, you cannot get quite full from the various dine out experiences, but the portions served up were quite large and I left fairly full. Maybe that was why they charged extra for extra bread..

All in all, the whole dine out experience this year was quite good and I look forward to next year’s Dine Out Vancouver!

Winter Camping

When my co-workers found out that I was going camping in the snow in late January, they were in disbelief and going on about how cold it is and all that stuff. Some were curious about winter camping too.

To be honest, before heading off, I was quite nervous myself. Ever since I became a Scout leader, the winter camping component of the program was done with a winter camp at the Mount Seymour group campsite, which usually would not have too much snow. The campsite we went to this time around was the Cambie Creek site at Manning Park, home of the annual Rovent camp for Venturers and Rovers. Usually, what the site would look like is a big open field full of snow, several feet deep, providing good opportunities to do very awesome stuff like snow caving, snowball fights, tobogganing/sledding, snow sculpting, and, of course, camping in the snow.

Of course, the Manning Park campsite itself is a lot colder than what the Seymour site is, so various safety concerns were going though my head as the date loomed closer. “Would the kids get frostbite? Would they be warm enough? Did we prepare them well enough?” The list went on.

Thankfully, the camp itself was one organized on an Area level (so various Scout groups together at once) and with everyone’s joint efforts, the kids were well prepared and the camp went without incident.

I guess the biggest highlight of the entire camp itself happened on Friday night before everyone else got in. After going in and setting up the various shelters for first aid and stuff, I took some time to shut off my headlight and just look up. The skies were clear and you could just see all the stars in the sky. It was really beautiful and made me wish I had a camera that would be able to take such detailed pictures.

五月雨 ~samidare~

Astute readers would perhaps recall a previous post that mentioned that I wanted to try out a game called 五月雨 ~samidare~. Well, I found the game and holy crap is it hard. But like all shooting games of the variety, 五月雨 ~samidare~ is all about observing and understanding the various shot patterns to dodge them effectively; however, the game makes that somewhat easier with a rechargeable shield that absorbs the shots to temporarily increase your firepower as opposed to a finite number of screen clearing bombs.

However, despite the shield and all that, the game itself is still not easy. Just give it a go; you can see why I say that for yourself.

We had our camp in a Scout camp site in Maple Ridge over the weekend. It was somewhat cold for obvious reasons and we were tenting in the forest. Eventually, on Saturday as we were practicing foot drill in the field, it happened.

Brian: Dom! Bear!

Me: What? (pretty random thing for someone to say, especially during foot drill)

Brian points at the bear.

Me: Oh.

Since that point on, it threw us off balance schedule-wise. Any plans for outdoor activities that the Beavers and Cubs had were pretty much scrapped due to the unknown danger. Movement of our campsite areas became a priority as the bear had managed to steal some of the kids’ food (cookies, salad, Wonder Bread), which meant it would be coming back for more. We moved them into one of the Cub hulls (think of a cabin with a tarp for the roof, no windows, and no door) and constantly reminded them to not have food in their sleeping areas, lest they want to have a face-to-face meeting with a bear in the middle of the night.

Luckily, the kids did not have any more sightings with the bear anymore and the camp finished without incident, save the bus not starting up.

Co-op has been going quite nicely. I’ve certainly found myself getting better with things I suck at (ie. public speaking), so that’s quite fun. We’ve visited several schools so far, including University Hill and Maple Ridge Secondary. More schools are on the way though, which is good since we can promote the really nice program we have.

I got my first ever co-op site visit today. It was quite interesting because we went over the things I’ve done so far and looked at just what my future goals are. I also saw the importance of doing the whole learning objectives thing. Two really nice things that came out of it: 1) I was given permission to do another co-op term after taking a break over summer (generally, I am supposed to do one school term at least between work terms) and 2) Harriet will vouch for me to take part in co-op Japan when the time comes (probably either late next year or 2009).

As for Scouts, as you may know, I have been promoted to Troop Scouter this year, which pretty much means I’m head honcho for an entire section. A bit intimidating for someone who would rather prefer to be in the sidelines doing the whole supporting effort thing like myself, but a good challenge nonetheless. We’ve been doing some new things, like selecting our PLs and APLs with scenarios to observe their leadership skills, amongst other types of skills. For those who aren’t familiar with Scouts, we divide up the Scouts into patrols, who are led by a PL (patrol leaders) and assisted by the APL (assistant patrol leader). I have also been taking a somewhat relaxed approach to working with my leaders, making things more in their hands and allowing them to take on new initiatives. Would it work out in the long run? Who knows, but I guess I’ll find out!

I’ve also been tasked to do Group Camp for a second year in a row. Now admittedly, last year’s planning, along with various responsibilities at school and such, got me so stressed out that I did terrible with school. Ideally, things do not go into that area this year, but I did learn over the year and I will probably start delegating things off soon to capable people.

Speaking of Scouts, October 13 is Apple Day, which means Scouts selling apples on the streets by donation. My group will be out in the Chinatown area, so if you see kids in white and yellow neckerchiefs, buy an apple from them.

As for my part-time job that I got before starting co-op through Marcel, I’ve been pretty much given the reins on the project I worked on when I started there. Unfortunately, I know I will not have much free time to do it, so I will be working on it in the various pockets of time that I have when I actually am well-rested enough.

And for those who are looking for part-time work and are capable of doing PHP/MySQL web applications, the company that I am part-timing for is hiring full-time employees. Just go to Appnovation’s website for more information on available careers.

On the gaming side of things, The Orange Box just came out and I am seriously thinking of buying it. I already have Half-Life 2 though, so that means if I do actually end up buying it, I will have one gift-able copy of Half-Life 2 available. Any takers?

Lightning Round went nicely for me. The week after finals were over, I had six interviews over the span of four days for various people, mainly in the public sector side of things (ie. government and government-affiliated groups). However, by Tuesday, when I had four interviews, I already had a job offer from the school. Other offers trickled through, including one from the SFU library doing development on their projects, such as the Public Knowledge Project, as well as one from the Provincial Health Services Authority, associated with the province of BC, doing development in .Net.

All the offers had something interesting to offer and something to learn. For example, working with the PHSA would have given me a chance to learn C#. Working with the library would have given me valuable software development experience

But what set the school apart from the rest was simply because it gave me numerous opportunities to develop myself in areas that I know I am lacking in; namely people skills. Since the job is around 60-70% recruitment (of students), it gives me a chance to work on things like public presentations, which usually make me nervous.

It is with this mindset that made me decide on that for my co-op term. This starts on Thursday.

So to pass the time, through a referral from Marcel, I am working on a contract job for a friend of his, working on a restaurant guide website written on PHP with the Fusebox framework. It’s an interesting framework and I can’t really say too much about it yet, having only worked on it for a few days, mainly making fairly specific changes. The circuit system with fuses and all does seem quite interesting though, to say the least.

Well, looks like things would be busy.

I need to pick up my parents from the airport tonight after their trip to Las Vegas.

Tomorrow is a Scouting Centennial Celebration held by the Vancouver East Area (ie. the area which my group belongs to), so I’ll need to wake up early (just like the past few days) and help setup and oversee the booths our group is running.

Then on Sunday, we have the WCCCLC pre-camp meeting, then work, work, work, with WCCCLC over the Labour Day long weekend.

I think I’m going to be sleep deprived. Best get used to it..

Tis the time when stuff starts getting silly and I start to wobble around with how much I am going to care. I don’t know why, but it seems like there’s so much to do that I cannot do schoolwork and such properly anymore.

It started off like an excellent semester. I was on the ball. My homework was done in good time. I actually found time to study Japanese.

I don’t know what happened. Now, every Japanese class starts off with me going “I’m so screwed..”. I don’t have the assignment(s) for the class done, I haven’t studied well, which will hit me most in the quiz marks. For my computing courses, I can’t study properly. My midterm review for both algorithms and networking simply consisted of looking at the stuff. No application of topics. No doing practice test questions, despite the availability of those things.

There’s also Scouts-related stuff. Since I am the group’s contact for PJ ’07, I have to get on the ball on that. Needless to say, I haven’t been on the ball at all with that stuff.

I felt stressed with no way to reduce the stress, given my giving up of gaming for Lent. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and played some Eternal Silence and checked out some Half-Life 2 mods, including Goldeneye: Source and Empires. Guess it was a futile attempt that’s currently toying with my psyche.

At least, despite all this, I started to work on my work assignment.

I need to de-stress some, but not take it to the extreme and slack off and not care for the rest of the semester.

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.