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Back to School Chaos

It’s that time again.  Time to realize that “oh shit I’m back in school again” when I’m already 2 weeks well into school.  I guess the reality of things are starting to hit me just now.  Usually it takes me a little time for my own little reality to adjust to where I’m actually at.

In all honesty though, I feel good to be back.  I know it’s going to be a tough term, but I also have the drive to do well.  It feels just like how I felt at the beginning of last term, and that ended up being my best term yet.  The challenges for this term a little larger though.

My organizational skills suck, and so I’ve cornered myself into a little problem.  One of my required courses has a second year calculus course as a pre-requisite.  Now I’m not completely terrible at math, but if I only paid more attention to math in first year instead of partying and being lazy I wouldn’t be so lost with it as I am now.  Also take into consideration that first year was roughly 4 years ago, and I’m in a deep pile of doo-doo.

What’s nice about this term is that two of my good friends are in school, and our schedules match up really well.  So not only do we get to carpool together (Edmonton Transit is TERRIBLE), but my friend Mylore is now my workout buddy.  Yes, we sweat together… A LOT.  Our workout sessions have been really good, and we seem to push it harder each time and it’s been consistent.  Having a buddy helps keep the motivation up, and I’ve never really had that working out before.

What will help this term for sure is that my house is getting a huge renovation face-lift.  We’ve stripped all the carpet from the floor and are putting in laminate flooring and ceramic tile.  We haven’t changed the floors since we moved in … almost 13 years ago :-|.  With this huge over-haul will probably come a huge change in the way we organize all the stuff in our house.  My dad is a complete packrat, and the organization gene in our family is really really weak.  It’s like we get a fresh-start at everything… the only hiccup is that this whole week I have been sleeping in the living room, and using the kitchen table as a desk while all our bedrooms get torn apart to be replaced.  Fun!

Hopefully this will be the return of my blogging after the summer hiatus.  Stay posted for part 2 of my campathon recollection :-).

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Vim for VI IMproved

The Mundane:My bike into work has become easier and easier, and after Saturday’s intense mountain biking ride in the hills my quads can handle the commute to work with ease. The hills that were once killer now pale in comparison to the steep inclines I faced on Saturday.

However, I got suckered into subbing for Wei in his basketball rec league yesterday. I haven’t played basketball in over 2 years, but I fit right into our team of beginners. I have never sweat so hard in a very long time and by the end of the game I could wring out a few glasses of water from my t-shirt. Basketball is a lot more intense than from what I remembered. I had an amazingly fun time playing though, despite the fact that our team got steam rolled.

I’m almost 5′8 and I was the tallest player on our team. It’s a mixed league, and we have 3 guys and 3 girls. Our opponents: 5 guys and a 6 foot tall chick. Every player on the other team except 1 was at least 6 feet tall, and they all were really good at basketball. I think Wei’s team was put in the wrong pool/league because we got absolutely destroyed. Final score: 56-17… and we were playing a point per basket.

I’m happy to say that I haven’t felt this active in many summers. I can definitely feel my cardio improving quite a lot, and my endurance is really starting to increase.

I had fun nontheless. This morning I woke up with my legs dead tired, stiff, and sore. I guess this is a good thing; no pain no gain. My legs are gonna be stacked for this Saturday’s extended mountain biking ride. However, being that they haven’t recovered they got even more worked out today at Ultimate Frisbee practice.

Why did I sign up for Ultimate Frisbee again? Oh yes, because I’m a masochist.

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I’ve decided to hit up Bluesfest and buy the all week pass. There’s a show almost every day of the week, so this week will be a musical buffet of all sorts. I can’t wait.

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So my new project is solely Unix based. What’s really annoying though is that the Solaris servers we use have a really poor user interface.

So instead of using the crappy interface made in the 90’s, I interact with the servers purely through the use of the command terminal (essentially similar to a DOS prompt). This is great and all, but what happens when you have to edit a text file from the shell?

You use something called VI (Visual) or it’s evolved incarnation Vim (as in VI Improved). The only problem is that VI is really unintuitive to the beginner user. It’s nothing like Word or Notepad for text editing because there is no mouse, and to boot there’re thousands of commands when hitting the keys. It’s completely daunting and intimidating for a beginner user, and so it turns off most users…such as myself.

My first encounter with VI was in the Computing Science University labs, where I noticed my friend was programming in a shell instead of using a graphical interface like notepad. The keys he was hitting were all weird. To move up he didn’t use the up arrow on the keyboard, and instead he pressed ‘k’, down was ‘j’ and left and right was ‘h’ and ‘l’. Why learn something new when I had a nice notepad-esque text editor… especially something so unintuitive.

However, now that I’m forced to learn how to use VI I don’t think I can turn back. In fact, I’ve installed the Windows version of Vim on my workstation.

Why? No, it’s not because I’m a masochist. It’s because VI and VIM are a lot more efficient and intuitive once you get the hang of it. It took me 90 minutes to walk through the tutorial and practice to use the editor. This sounds weird, because it takes 3 seconds to learn how to use notepad. But upon learning how to use it, I’m completely sold.

All the commands that you would normally use in a text editor are placed effectively in VIM. Need to do a search? Hit the ‘/’ and type in the keyword you want to search. Need to scroll down 4 pages? You can do that in 2 keystrokes by hitting 4 Ctrl N.

Need to shift 5 words right? Hit 5w. Need to scroll to line 455? Press 455 G. Simple, quick, and effective. Now all I have to do is use VIM for the next little while so that it becomes second nature and my geek points will increase.

Give it a try! It’s free and open source.

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Mmm… Spontaneity

My weekend started off with a nice bowl of pho on Friday night with Anne-Marie.  We then watched “The Omen”.  It wasn’t a great movie and there were a lot of “wtf?  that’s retarded” elements to the movie but I was entertained.  I had low expectations for the film anyways, and they were met, so I wasn’t let down.

Saturday I was asked if I wanted to join Frank, Mel, and his dad to go to the Agriculture Museum.  His dad is in town for two weeks, so this was my last chance to check it out (cause I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise).  To be honest, I hadn’t heard of the Agriculture Museum before, and it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it’d be (I never thought it would be to begin with), but I did get to see some animals and get a photo of riding a pig, yet another photo to add to the “riding” album.  And anyways, animals are cute!

Father and Son:

That night we went out to Moxie’s near St. Laurent for Chrystal’s birthday.  We spent over 2 and half hours eating, drinking, and staring at the mini-skirted waitresses.  Watching Chuck, who recently turned 37, hit on the 18 year old waitress was pure entertainment.  This was followed by some drunken bowling.  Renata and I were the only ones drinking, but I’m glad I had someone to get sloshed with at the bowling alley.

On a roll, one of my friends asked if I’d like to go clubbing that night.  Why not?  This act of spontaneity turned out beautifully.  She’s a complete social butterfly, so we managed to meet a ton of people at the club.  Pier 21 had a great atmosphere, with smiling “clubbers” inside and a wicked live band that belted out all your favourite maritime songs.  Sometimes things that just happen out of the blue also are the most enjoyable.

The shots of tequila and packed dance floor made the night whiz by.  The $60 cab fare to get back home in my suburb wasn’t so nice though, but in my drunken state money didn’t seem to have much value.

Sunday was spent curing my hangover by hanging out on the driving range.  I’m not a golfer, but I’ve definitely learned to appreciate the game.  It was a good chance to get some lessons from Renata, since she’s been golfing for years.  Hopefully the upcoming golf tournament I’m in won’t be such a gong show after a few more lessons.

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