I don’t know what it is with me and traveling during school. Remember final exams? Yep I went to Seattle just days before they started. And now I am doing it again! School starts on the 8th of September, and I leave for Toronto on the 10th. I am only gone for the weekend though, so I probably won’t miss anything. Pretty hard to get jetlag just from TO.

What am I going for, you ask? Well for “training” of course! Once again I will be the Student Ambassador to Microsoft on campus for the 2004/2005 school year. I only know the basics of what is planned for this year so far, but I will be sure to post more when I find out! And yes, I am going to get all of you involved.

And to think I was dreading the start of school!

FIRST OFF: If you have sent me any important email in the last month, please send it to me again. I lost all mail sent or received after July 5th due to a problem with my computer on Monday night.

Okay so in a manner of speaking, I’m back. My parents left Edmonton yesterday on their five day journey back to Inuvik (decided to take it a little slower on the way back). It seems like they arrived here just yesterday, but that’s how it is I suppose. Time flies when you’re having fun!

Yesterday was a busy day. After helping my parents pack up and get on their way in the morning, I went to my grandparents (northside) to setup my sister’s computer. While I was there, Papa and I decided to run a network cable from the router (in the basement) up to his computer so that he too could be on the high speed Internet. Well, who would have thought how much trouble it would be! I am no longer surprised they don’t make houses like they used to – old houses are built so strongly you can’t change them! In the end we ran 50 feet of ethernet cable, drilled four holes, and spent a lot of time trying to fish cable from one hole to another.

I thought I was feeling better yesterday too, but I guess I wasn’t really! Last night I started to feel quite sick again, so I loaded up on the appropriate drugs and went to bed:

Needless to say, I feel much better today so far! I guess we’ll see how long it lasts this time. For now, time to get to work – the “vacation” is over!

My apologies if I have missed a message or something from any of you recently – I admit I have kinda disappeared lately. With my parents in town, I have been quite busy and wasn’t home at all this weekend, not even to sleep. But, when you only see your parents once a year, you want to make it worthwhile you know?

Anyhow, my Dad and I were up very early Saturday morning to do some photography (early as in about 6 so that we could catch the fog on the farms, etc). I learned quite a bit about that digital camera of mine – I’ll have to post some of the pictures I took. And we were up early again this morning to see Michael Schumacher win his 12th race of the season (a new record), and Ferrari lock up the constructor’s championship with their 7th 1-2 finish of the year.

I cannot believe it is already the 16th of August…time sure flies when you want it to slow down. My parents leave Edmonton on Tuesday, and my sister arrives on the 25th. Should be a busy next few weeks!

I haven’t been blogging as much lately, nor have I been around on MSN, but my parents are here so I have a valid excuse! Anyway, I was at home most of today doing some work and catching up on things, and I came across Northern Voice. It is a one day, non-profit blogging conference that’s being held at the UBC downtown campus on February 19, 2005.

Registration opens September 1st. Looks like a very interesting idea, and judging by the website it appears to be very well planned (and well in advance too). Perhaps I will have to consider attending – if not as a speaker (I could chat up Blogosphere.ca) then as a delegate. Gotta represent good old Alberta!

And of course, if I decide to go I’ll have to whip up a display picture!

Last night Andrew hosted a Poker/XBOX Party at his house. And of course, what party is complete without BPs? It was good times, good to see John and Peter for the first time this summer as well! Also in attendance was Megan, Jane, YiLi, Felicia, Warren, and Joe! I guess looking back the poker party quickly turned into an XBOX party, but it was fun.

We had some fun with my new digital camera, so be sure to check out the photo gallery for the party here!

As many of you know my parents arrived in town on Thursday evening, safe and sound, and so today was my first full day with them. We accomplished quite a bit, and yes (sorry Megan – but don’t worry I’d go again), we went to see M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Village tonight.

I loved this movie – it was really, really awesome! I don’t want to give anything away, which is why this post is not titled review as I normally would have done. Instead, all I will say is that Shyamalan further solidifies his place in Hollywood, and Byce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix and especially Adrien Brody all give amazing performances. Really excellent casting for this movie.

The one other thing I will mention is that you English majors will absolutely love this film. In fact, I am sure the movie will leave you drooling for a book to be analyzed in class. Go see The Village!

If you’ve ever used ICQ2GO, or whatever the web based version is called, you probably now hate web based messenger tools. But you have to check out MSN Web Messenger with an open mind – it’s awesome! Looks just like your MSN Messenger contact list and chat windows, even plays the correct sounds, the works.

Perfect for when you need MSN and are too lazy to install it, or when you don’t trust the computers at school. Enjoy!

Tonight I was chatting with Dickson about his trip, and he mentioned that his friend told him about a hotel in China that has showerheads that follow you! That is, if you step backwards, forwards, or sideways the showerhead will readjust the spray. Pretty darn cool hey?

Made me realize how stupid my showerhead is. Now of course, upon hearing something like this, there are a number of questions that could come to mind, such as: can it interpret movements to change the force or style of the spray?, can it automatically adjust the temperature according to your facial expressions?

However, neither of those was my first question! My first question was simple – what happens if there are two people in the shower? Who does it follow? And here is Dickson’s response:

welp, i would generate the smallest bounding circle that encapsulates both bodies and then aim for the centroid

riiiight….

I think it should dim the lights and turn on some Barry White or something…maybe turn the spray to “massage” mode.

I bet you thought it was bad enough the University robs you of your money for tuition and books every year! Now this:

PuTTY 0.55, released today, fixes a serious security hole which may allow a server to execute code of its choice on a PuTTY client connecting to it. In SSH2, the attack can be performed before host key verification, meaning that even if you trust the server you think you are connecting to, a different machine could be impersonating it and could launch the attack before you could tell the difference. Read: Dana Epp

Guess what client the University recommends for use? Yup! PuTTY! So protect yourself today! If you use PuTTY to connect to the UofA from home, or anywhere off campus, get the newest version here (exe). You can also get it at the official PuTTY site.

DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting the University of Alberta actually knew about this security hole, nor that they would take advantage of it, but it does make one wonder doesn’t it? What if they were under extreme pressure to crack down on plagarism? Nifty backdoor if you ask me!

In preparation of some totally cool news regarding my pictures, I decided I had better finish off a few more. Here are the new pictures, with details on the news to follow later.

Activities Series: Flying, Moving
Emotions Series: Homesick, Lovesick, I Miss You, Mad
Events Series: Athens 2004, Election 2004, Vote Bush, Vote Kerry, Remembrance Day
Sports Series: Olympics

Enjoy!