There's a problem.

I've gone ahead and made a tremendous investment, one that puts me at the very frontier of what I'm capable of. Unfortunately, after the initial excitement faded, the reality of things rushed in to fill the space.

The group which I have invested with is great, except for one, small, yet bold exception... and you see, it's one of these things where I've been "Trying to sleep on it." But, I've been waking up feeling worse about it.

As a result, my disdain has been slowing growing, becoming ever harder to keep contained.

I'd be lying if I said I haven't been considering an all out withdrawal from the entire thing. I suppose, "good ol' " me would have done that, not really caring about anything other than himself and his closet friends.

But then again, very few things/people/ideas bother me to the very core like this particular disagreement.

Maybe I'll nap on it this afternoon.
Either way, I suppose I should buckle up, it is definately going to be a bumpy ride.

*F--k Sh-T pi**!!!

I'm sitting in my home office blankly staring at a pile of journal articles I need to read so I can start in on my 20% biomechanical engineering term paper.

But as you can imagine, "Stent design for arterioplasty" is about as fun to right about as it is to read/talk about.

So in the midst of procrastinating, I happened to glance up from my game of desk top tower defense and out the window.

It took a second for it to set in. At first I thought it was a huge fire at the oil refinery across the harbor... then I thought it was mars? but that was impossible, it was massive. A blimp maybe? nope. The moon, for whatever astronomical reason hung low and huge in the ski with a color I've never seen before, it was a deep dark blood red.

I ran through the house trying to find a camera. After 5 minutes of bumbling around, I managed to find a point-and shoot olympus, but as one can imagine it's not all that well suited to night photography. It took 10 or so shots to get this one... and unfortunately it's the best one I have. The image stabilization just couldn't facilitate a longer exposure and I don't have a tripod.

either way, pretty cool

One of the side effects of my ambitious plan for the next couple of years is that Holidays away (far away) from home are going to be more common.

Easter away from home, friends and family sucks. I can't really imagine what Christmas is going to be like. I suppose in the future I'll have the comfort that I won't be busy with school work, I'll just be an infeasible distance away to travel for the weekend.

At least on the bright side, I still woke up this morning to an Easter Egg hunt and warm, beautiful smiles. It helps to take the edge off the fact that I need to head to the library now.

All in all, from what started off as a weekend with me being homesick has sort of blossomed into one of the better long weekends I've had in a really long time :)

Here's to the tradition of keeping good friday night free from memory.

Meet Marty

My brother went to the upper campus engineering banquet Saturday night and was awarded the lucrative prize of "Greatest net weight gain".

You see, when you show up to this all you can eat celebration of almost being done, you weigh in and your weight is recorded.. Then you weigh out, and the largest gainer wins a prize :)

So naturally he won a Betta Fighting Fish in a neat Dollar store glass bottle.

After surviving a bus ride home in -10C temperatures, It arrived home and was planted on the kitchen counter much to my shock. As the weekend passed, the fish had no food and my brother grew comfortable with his abandonment of it. I began to feel sorry for the fish, it was after all in such a small little jar (think pin glass) and had no food.

So after deciding on a nice colorful name, we called it "Marty", I went to Aqua World and picked up Marty's new house, complete with colorful gravel, a nice algae and a sea shell, not to mention a limitless supply of blood worms. All of which I had nothing to do with (grand total, 30$ (fish was originally free, but was on $4 to buy).

so... meet marty :)

In other equally amazing news, I stumbled into "The Trail Shop" here just in the middle of an amazing year end sale. I picked up (quite unexpectedly) a North Face Crestone 75 backpack. It's amazing. The comfort, the design and the capacity is fantastic. What a find.

Certainly makes up having missed the sale on trail runners today. But the european departure is still a month away.

The end of 5 years and $50,000 is closer now than ever.
I now feel the burden of cold iron.... there's no getting away from the continual reminder of what I'm responsible for and what I've sworn myself to... yesterday we all got our iron rings.
We're now officially inducted into the Family of Engineers and a "married to a strive toward perfect".

I sat and listened about how we are the arbiters of civilization. How it is our role to bare alone... how we must ensure that people get what they want.. that society and mankind steps forward into the future in the safest possible way. How our work must advance us...

It was quite a build up and I must admit I left that ceremony (which might I add is top secret) feeling quite powerful. Now if only this barby little unconformable ring would just stop irritating my pinky. (but I suppose then it wouldn't serve as a reminder nearly as effectively)

oh! and P.S!
I'm the new owner of my namesake on the web.

The new .com me website was an idea floating around in my head ever since I came across my first co-op job application form that had a space between "fax #" and "e-mail address" for "personal www."

Now, I've finally gotten it (after a little motivation from Otis).
As for exactly what is going to go there. I'm not entirely sure.
As for exactly what is going to happen to this blog, I'm not entirely sure either. One thing is for certain, likely there will be some overlap between the two. Perhaps a meshing of the two together will be more appropriate. Perhaps when I'm not busy studying (procrastinating) for this week's midterms I'll sit down and html up myself something I'm relatively happy with.

Midterm season again and the first results have starting spilling back.

Not entirely impressive results.
The results in one test were so poor and the professor so surprised (obviously not quite in touch with his teaching method, or what material he was reviewed) was forced to downgrade the total weight of the midterm on the entire term mark.

Ah well.

In other news, I've been spec-ing out the purchase of a new manual transmission Nissan Xterra. I can quite easily afford it with the new low-low-low financing/rates it as long as the rent accommodations or get a low mortgage in Calgary.

The only thing that seems to be souring the realization of this dream is the price of oil. It's now climbing over 105$/bbl and while that's fantastic news for my rainy day fund which has ascertained and all time high, the price of gas is expected to top $1.40/L this summer.

I might be forced to bite down on my hippy hatred and go the way of a hybrid car. At this point, with the cheaper models available and the tremendous boasts in mileage over SUVs' it might be stupid to go for style and power over such savings. Plus, there's always the green-vehicle rebate.

Lastly, my strategy to apply for a job a day has essentially developed into a before-bed ritual. I've started working my way down the list of 100 best employers. Luckily most of these companies have positions/offerings in the Bay area :)

Something happened a couple of days ago... something just snapped inside of me. Am I happy where I'm going?

I couldn't answer yes. But I certainly would never say no.
The thing is I never looked.

I was told by everyone what I was getting was awesome, but my office doesn't look anything like this. The city I'm going to doesn't make me giggle when I think about moving there. There's a lot of thoughts floating around in space.. "What if I went here".... "what if I worked here"... the what ifs pile up...

And part of me, though it is only a small part, is starting to wonder if I have mistakenly short changed myself.

So I've got a month left before I finish school.
I'm going to apply to at least one company for one job every single day. Even if it's not an amazing sounding job but a good company, I'm going to send in the resume.

As per my facebook religion: fortune, glory, and adventure.

So, let's see what happens.
Plus, I really do want an office where I can take an escalator up and a tube slide down.