Well, the olympics are basically over. The final listings can be found here and probably quite a few other places.

The Canadian organization was predicting 25 medals, so 24 is quite impressive considering how many close 4th places we had, too. Also, I think the most medals Canada ever got before was 18.

One thing that my dad noted that I found amusing was that, despite how well the country did this year, the one thing that will be remembered is how badly the men's hockey team screwed up.

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I watched Munich this afternoon. Here is what I had to say about it at Cinema Blend:

I watched this movie this afternoon/evening. Ok, I admit that there were some memorable and especially well done scenes, however, a bit of a let down overall. It builds up a lot of excitement to little payoff. I think it had a great story to tell, but it could've been done much better, in my opinion, from what I expect from Spielberg. For one thing, I did enjoy Bana's, as well as some of the other actors, performances. At least it was much better than what I expected way back when he said he wanted to do a film about the Olympics (Note that I am too young to have known at the time that there was anything important about the 1972 olympics. Sure, I had heard about the terrorist attacks before, but I was not aware of which year or locale it had happened.)

I tend to agree with the majority of the people in this thread. While I didn't love the movie, it was enjoyable and some of the scenes (specically when they were taking out hits) were very impressive and memorable.

I then started to watch Walk the Line, but my mother just came home from a matinee showing of Grease and grocery shopping with two rented movies. She got Just Like Heaven, which I have no interest in watching, and The Constant Gardener, which was on my list of movies to watch before the Oscars. I will most likely start watching it soon.

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My dad's birthday is tommorrow. I ended up getting him some gift certificates from Tim Hortons last night as well as a 4-pack of aero bars at work today.

Anyways, I have to work to work at 6am, so I won't spend any more time blogging tonight.

This was a very good week at work. I ended up being able to create a comparison for the four best online learning software packages and find a great example that I think will help us create what Jana was looking for regarding the "puzzle presentation." I have certainly been enjoying my position so far at P&I. I have been able to learn a lot and get a substantial amount of experience. Some of the other co-op students that I have heard from are not as pleased as I with some of them having too little work and others way too much. I even heard of someone passing out at work from stress. Whether or not I end up coming back in the fall, that is not completely up to me, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out at this point in time.

I work tommorrow morning at Sobeys from 10am-4pm and then I plan on watching a few movies. I will probably watch Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Walk the Line, and Brokeback Mountain this weekend and maybe another movie or two. As I said before, I am trying to catch up quickly so that I can enjoy this year's Oscars next weekend. If nothing else, Jon Stewart will certainly be a formidable host for the evening.

I am going to the St. Mac's production of Grease this evening with Sarah. I anticipate that it will be good despite the fact that it is not the most exciting choice of musical. I expect that their choice for next year will be better, but I have heard good things about this year's production.

Be sure to look at some of the links below. I found and compiled some interesting/informative ones from the past few days.

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Items of note:

ABC Greenlights "Masters of Science Fiction": Hopefully they bring justic to Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov's work.

Torrent sites under attack: Not much the MPAA can do since these sites have done nothing illegal. It makes me even happier to read people predicting the demise of the MPAA and RIAA.

A Banned Mortal Kombat commercial: No surprises here regarding why it didn't air.

Canadian school bans Wi-Fi: I found the link that I mentioned yesterday.

World's largest Windows error message: What a screw-up.

VeriSign is trying to buy .com registry: Wow, this could be really bad and it's quite shocking that it even came as far as being considered.

Sleep May Become A Thing Of The Past: This could be really bad or really good. I cannot decide.

Mozilla Talks About Its Plans For Firefox 2.0: Hopefully they can continue to surpass the competition. By far the feature I enjoy the most is multiple tabs, but Microsoft plans to integrate that and many other features that Mozilla already has in their next release.

Sarah (hah, you do too get mentioned) is teaching piano tonight for two hours so I have a fair amount of time, while waiting for her to finish, to write this and sort through the various interesting links I've looked at the last few nights.

I forgot to mention a while back that I got the Viva La Bam: Complete Seasons 2 and 3 set for Valentine's Day from Sarah. I got her to watch the first season the week before (Sarah, Heather, and I watched the first two episodes one night at home) and I'd been thinking about getting the set for quite some time. Tonight I started to watch the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries. It is pretty good so far and I plan on catching up to the current episodes that are airing right now on SciFi. I've heard that it is fantastic.

I went to the dentist this morning for my 6 month check-up and now my teeth are pearly white. I ended up getting to work at 8:34 and then I had to go to a 2-and-a-half hour training session for Novell Groupwise. It was basically a waste of time, but I did learn how to use some of the features a bit better. I've been using a paper DayMinder so far this year, but using the program may have convinced me to switch to a computer-based one. I may end up using Outlook once I finish this work term and no longer have access to GroupWise.

After that I spent most of my day focusing on the research I have been doing on Online Learning software. I also looked further into creating a "puzzle based" presentation using PowerPoint. Jana mentioned this as an idea last week for marketing the University and I mentioned that it might done best in Java. I am not quite sure how to do it, but I am looking into if it can/has been done.

I finally got another package of CDs from the radio station to review. The music director changed this year the new person has had to do a lot of learning and catching up. Well, she did a great job at least on my end by sending me 3 CDs that I am quite enjoying. Music truly makes the work day go more faster and smoothly.

And, finally, as any Canadian/hockey fan would know the men's team is, unsurprisingly, out of the Olympic competition. I was quite dissappointed in that aspect, but the Canadian Olympic team is otherwise extremely impressive so far this year. A lot of people are especially excited for the men's curling final tommorrow. They were saying on CBC that they expect Newfoundland to basically be shut down tommorrow afternoon; even the schools have a half day.

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Items of note:

Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone (Wired News): I don't exactly have the best grammar or writing skills, but this article shines some light on a big issue as our attention spans are waning. It is not all bad, however, as I have seem some rather impressive writing even (or, perhaps, especially) on blogs.

Automated Taco Bell Ordering: I posted this on Cinema Blend the other day. Will cashiers disappear altogether?

Wi-Fi to Go: I read, but cannot find, another article recently about a school banning wifi because their was the potential for harmful effects. On the other hand, our campus embraces the technology and I cannot wait until what this link describes becomes more widespread.

Apple to hold special event on Feb. 28: New products to be announced.

Build Your Own Hoverboard: If only because I wish I had the time to make my own.

Toyota and BMW Park Themselves: For those of us who a) can't park b) are lazy.

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Listening to: Carmen playing a song on the piano.

Well, I got mostly through the day without a blogging fix, but I need a midafternoon break.

I forgot to mention before that I got my BA Law midterm back on Monday. I wasn't completely sure what to expect for a mark as it was only 10 MC, 10 T/F, and 5 short answer. However, I got a B+. I'm quite content with that mark especially, as I gathered, most people didn't do so well. I only saw one other person with a B+, one with a B-, and one with a C, but people were scrounging for extra marks by trying to argue certain answers. Anyways, the next midterm isn't until March 20th and then the exam is a month from that date.

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The mens hockey team ended up winning yesterday 3-2. Now they play against Russia today in the quarter final. Russia is coming in off of 4 consecutive wins while the Canadian team has been struggling. It starts at 3:30, so I will at least be able to catch the end either way.

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My dad's birthday is this Saturday. He turns 54 and I'm not quite sure what to get him. I know my mother got him a gift certificate from Coles, but I feel like I should get him something myself. I really wanted to get him one of the UNBSJ sweaters that say Dad on them, but I don't know if they have any. I may just get him one of the regular sweatshirts or t-shirts with the logo on them, though.

Any ideas?

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I took a few pictures the other day of the sky as the sun was rising in the morning and, also, of the dent in my car. I'm waiting until I download PhotoPlus editing software tonight before I post them, but I also set up a deviantart account. I've always had a small interest in photography and this may get me more interested as I can post pictures on an internet showcase.

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Anyways, I have to finish up some research and then I have a meeting this evening at 7pm. I also have a dentist appointment tommorrow at 8am and then a training session for Nowell Groupwise from 9-11:30am. So, I will probably make a quick post sometime in the afternoon/evening. I will also probably go through many of the interesting links I saved on the weekend from digg.

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Listening to: Editors - "Someone Says"

I truly enjoyed this article listing the top ten reasons Geeks make good fathers. Personally, I can't wait until I have kids so that I can play with legos again.

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I posted on Cinemablend's forums earlier about catching up with movies before the Oscars air on March 5th.

As I said:

Well, I didn't watch a lot of movies last year due to lack of time/interest. However, I realized that I missed a lot of good movies. So, now I intend to watch several of tthe highly acclaimed movies up for awards before March 5th.

Just last week I watched Crash and yesterday I watched Capote. I think I'll watch Brokeback Mountain next.

Anyways, I know what movies are up for awards, but tell me which ones to watch next or which ones to avoid, if you so wish.

Edit: I've also seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Murderball, and Star Wars, though they are all only up for one small award each.

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Here's a list of the CDs that were released yesterday. I've been listening to the Arctic Monkeys for a few weeks and it's been getting really great reviews. No surprise there and I've been really enjoying it. I don't have much interest in anything else listed there except maybe for the new Elbow release.

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A former professor of mine posted a link to this website with picture of "various [objects] made with recycled paper." There are some pretty good ones in there.

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I think I've made it much easier to navigate through my blogs by splitting up seperate topics by line breaks. Let me know if you think it works or if it's worse> I think I will tend to continue making 1 or 2 big posts a day as I take small breaks from work. I also think this is easier than having to navigate through several different posts a day.

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Finally, I happened upon some videos of Kurt Steiner setting the Guiness World Record for stone skipping. Impressive.

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Anyways, I have a fair chunk of work to do regarding the Chinese students coming in the summer and my project on Africa. Back to it.

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Listening to: Belle and Sebastian - "Sukie in the Graveyard"

Edit: I didn't realize that the Men's hockey game was this afternoon; they lead 3-2 in the 3rd.

I just read on digg that Serenity [made] more money from DVD than from [the] box office. I don't think they'll make another as Whedon said it was done, but this bodes very well for it. I plan on buying it sometime and I've been meaning to buy the complete Firefly series for a long time.

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If you're a fan of the olympics and a Canadian, you probably know that the Canadian women's hockey team won gold yesterday. Well, at least we got it and hopefully the men's team can turn it around tonight against the Czech team.

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In local news:
- There are plans for new transit routes in the outlying areas of Saint John. They said that one of the stops would be at the Westfield store (near my house) and Sobeys in Grand Bay (my part-time job). They also said that they wanted to make the stops on the East, West and near the Uni/Hospital have buses coming by every ten minutes. Sounds ambitious and I may even use the service a bit if it works with my schedule.

- I also heard on CBC this morning that the YMCA plans to buy the Canada Games Aquatic Centre.

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Anyways, I'll probably post again later in the day if I take a small break and find some cool/interesting stuff.

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Listening to: The Flaming Lips - "Haven't Got A Clue"

- Great, I just went outside and someone dinged the passenger side door on my car. Fucker!

- Been fooling around with the template a bit this morning. I think I'll stick with this one.

- Women's hockey final between Canada and Sweden starts at 3:30 pm. Can't wait.


Cool Stuff for Monday, February 20, 2006

3D Paint Jobs - I wish my office looked like one of these.

A Real Transformer - another example of real transformers. I've seen a lot of videos in the last few years of different robots like this. The geeks shall inherit the earth!

Listening to: "Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But..." by Arctic Monkeys

Well, it's another Monday morning at the ol' P&I office, but at least I get another big pay cheque this week. One of the best things that occured from working two jobs was that I get paid every single week. Though my Sobeys pay is usually pretty small from my 1 or 2 shifts a week, it is all spending money, which is great.

I'm sure few of you knew, but my main project for this work term was going to be coordinating UNB's side of a conference scheduled for April. This conference was going to be a gathering of all of the African students in New Brunswick and would've been a great learning experience. Unfortunately, because the politician in charge of this type of funding was recently changed when the government changed and he has decided to postpone any spending until he is up to par on everything. This means that the conference has to be postponed until the fall. I'm not really sure if I'll be working here in the fall. That is when my next work term starts and I think they would take me back in a second, but it all depends on where else I can get employment at. I'm even looking into maybe getting a job in Fredricton for a term.

And, to Brandon or anyone else wondering, Champagne from a Papercup is a song from Death Cab for Cutie. It was what I used as the title for this blog when I did it last year and, as I wasn't sure what to change it to, I left it. Any better ideas? If not, I'll probably just leave it. lol

Listening to: Symbolistic White Walls - Matthew Good