I can’t believe it’s almost November! Here’s my weekly notes:

• My Mom was in town on Saturday night! She was on her way to Toronto for some training for her new job, and she’ll be back here in two weeks on the way back. I hadn’t seen her in over a year, so it was great she could stop in Edmonton!
• Tomorrow (or technically today – October 24th) is United Nations Day – the day the UN officially came into existence when it’s charter was ratified by the majority of signatories. This also happens to be the UN’s 60th anniversary.
• I went to see A History of Violence tonight with Sharon and Megan. I can only describe it as deliciously violent.
• Sharon’s sister asked me to sponsor her while I was there tonight too, so I did. I gave her $10 towards her run. They are raising money to build a school in Africa.
• I really like the Hypnotiq Beach at Earl’s – so yummy!
• When I was a kid, our family had an original Atari 2600. I never knew what happened to it until recently, when I found out my parents still had it. I was quite interested, so my Mom brought it down with her last night. There’s lots of games and controllers – only the power supply is missing. I won an auction for one on eBay a few hours ago though, so we’ll be playing Atari in the Paramagnus office soon enough!
• I am tempted to listen to 96X this week just to see if anything came of the boycott. If you hear anything, leave a comment!

Winter is definitely coming – so cold out today! Or maybe it was just me. Here’s my notes for this week:

• Last night was the Chinese Grand Prix, the last race of the 2005 Formula 1 season. Newly crowned (and youngest ever) World Champion Fernando Alonso won the race. Not such a great year for Ferrari, but here’s to hoping they bounce back next year!
• Midterms for me this week and next. Hopefully they go better than my SOC midterm a couple weeks ago (which I still have not gotten back).
• One thing I hate about surfing the web is that sometimes you click a link only to find out that it’s not a webpage, but a PDF file instead. Then you have to wait for hours while Acrobat loads. Happened to me all the time, until recently when I found the PDF Download extension for Firefox! Basically if you click a link to a PDF file, it will give you some options like opening the file as HTML. Highly recommended if you use Firefox!
• Here’s an interesting live search page I found, called Inquisitor Instant Search. Hard to explain what it does, but give it a shot!
• Work is moving along for Paramagnus! We’re trying to get everything ready for the Podcast & Portable Media Expo in November. More to come on that later!
• If you like a challenge, check out my Dad’s daily trivia. See how much useful stuff you know!

Dickson and I spent many hours trying to solve a programming challenge (there are no problems or impossibilities, only challenges!) last night, part of the 14 hour marathon of work that was my Sunday. As a result, I didn’t get a chance to post my weekly notes, so here they are on a holiday Monday instead!

• Happy Thanksgiving!
• Congratulations to Violet & Vincent on your engagement! Pictures from the ceremony are now up on Flickr. Also congrats to Mark & Kim (also recently engaged), my new favorite couple to photograph – they are just so photogenic!
• I tried the new Starbucks Maple Macchiato yesterday, and I must say it’s pretty good. I don’t think it’ll replace my favorite (Caramel baby!) but it’s very good. And very Canadian now that I think about it. Yep, just checked, it’s not on the lineup on the American site.
• This Microsoft job posting sounds like my ideal job! I would be quite happy doing what Scoble does!
• Found this quote from Larry’s blog today – Google’s Sergey Brin: “The No. 1 factor that contributed to our success over the past seven years is luck.” There’s some more good quotes from his talk here.
• I missed my SOC 300 class last Thursday morning as I took my Grandma to the hospital (she’s fine!) but I talked to some classmates later that day. Apparently the entire class did very poorly on the midterm and there was a big discussion. At one point, the entire class of 400 students was booing and the prof got quite agitated, as you can imagine. I’ve never heard of a class booing the teacher before! I guess I’ll find out more tomorrow morning. For the record, his exam was terrible. Multiple choice questions with answers A through H for some, recorded on a scantron (which only goes to E) and on paper for the others. Ridiculous options too – “all of the above”, “none of the above”, “only a, b, and f” (where F is “none of the above”), etc.
• Here’s the website for the Toyota Echo’s replacement, the Yaris. Dickson and I decided it looks like a mix of the Echo Hatchback, the Prius, and the Matrix.
• I’m really digging the new Ricky Martin song “I Don’t Care” which features Fat Joe and Amerie. Maybe it’s just because I love Amerie! She can definitely sing, and let’s face it, she’s beautiful. Ricky Martin and Amerie performed the song on Oprah today.

Hey look I am posting my notes on the actual Sunday for once!

• Just got back from what is hopefully a monthly dinner with “the old McNally crew”. Of course, anyone is invited, so let me know if you want to come next time! Pictures are here.
• In case you’re still sleeping, September Has Ended.
• I started to try Coca-Cola Zero yesterday, but I ended up pouring rum into it, so I still need to do a proper test. My sister says it isn’t very good, leaves a terrible after-taste. Still, I gotta find out for myself you know?
• The University of Alberta is going ahead with plans to buy the Hudson’s Bay building downtown!
• I really hope Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2008, so much so that I registered “hillaryclinton.ca” the other day. Thinking some sort of “Canada wants Hillary” website, but we’ll see. Speaking of the next US election, Rudolph Giuliani is going to decide next year on whether or not he’ll run. Apparently he is one of the best speakers in the States. Hillary versus Rudolph?
• I used to be a total Google News junkie, but lately I’ve been using Yahoo News more. I find it is laid out better and easier to use. Give it a shot!

Here are my Sunday notes, slightly late once again:

• My Dad’s blog is sporting a new look! He gave me a description of what he wanted, and I tried to make it happen. I think it looks pretty good! If you notice any bugs or anything, let me know.
• I need to start coming home earlier. If I come home after 3 AM, it seems that 50% of the time there is a very wide load being moved down 17th street with police escorts and I have to wait for it to pass.
• I had grilled cheese for lunch today 🙂
• I also posted my post-Globalism Conference thoughts today. I’m very glad I went to the conference, gave me much to think about.
• Tonight Dickson and I visited Annie, and she showed us her new Nintendo DS. She happened to be playing a game called Nintendogs, in which you have a pet dog that you must train and look after (and since the DS has a mic, you can use voice commands). She let us try it – big mistake!
• Thinking of buying an iPod Nano? You might want to read this. Seems the Nano has some very widespread problems with it’s display.
• I acquired a lot of new music this last week, so I am going to post some music reviews over the next week. Maybe I’ll do one album review a day. Lots of great music being released at this time of year!
• I got my car all sparkly and clean today, inside and out, so it had better not rain tomorrow!

Seems like the last week has just flown by, but maybe it’s just me.

• Happy Mid-Autumn Festival everyone! Thanks for dinner Yeo & Family!
• My favorite social bookmarking tool del.icio.us turned two years old this week. Happy Birthday!
• It was announced this week that Northern Voice is happening again in February.
• I watched part of the Emmys tonight, and I couldn’t help but think that awards ceremonies are just an excuse for the networks and celebrities to try to convince us that they care about the disaster du jour. I long for the awards ceremony where no one thanks God for their award, and no current event is mentioned in any detail other than perhaps in passing. Otherwise, why don’t we just post the winners online with a generic acceptance speech – “I’d like to thank God, and express my deepest condolences for the families affected by 9/11 or Katrina or Iraq or etc.”
• If you know of any podcasting projects or experiments at the University of Alberta, let me know!
• Speaking of the UofA, there are some good suggestions for wireless in the comments of this post.
• Microsoft’s PDC ended Friday, and while I wasn’t there, it sure was amazing. Lots of excellent stuff coming. I agree with Brad Feld – 2006 Will Be The Year of Microsoft.
• There is no “grilled cheese” on the menu at Denny’s, but if you ask for it they’ll make it anyway, and it’s damn good. One day I’m going to start my own grilled cheese restaurant, something like Grilled Cheese NYC.

Last night I was finishing up a big project that needed to be done for early this morning, so I didn’t get a chance to post my weekly catchup entry! So here it is, slightly late (hopefully this doesn’t become a habit):

• My brother Tom has arrived in Edmonton for the year. Now to get him blogging! He got a new cell phone at Bell that features music when dialing. That is, if you call him, you don’t hear ringing but instead music. Not sure if I like it yet.
• School is now in full swing. Kind of sad.
• Are the rumors that eBay is going to buy Skype true? Looks that way. What about Google buying Reuters?
• Four years ago terrorists struck against the United States. Check out The September 11 Digital Archive for more.
• So far, an advantage to having classes every day is that I can create a better schedule.
• I finished reading Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust this week. Absolutely fascinating book, though a bit hard to read in places. I’ll have to write up a review one of these days.

Little late on this one, but better late than never right?

• I rediscovered tonight how much I like Caesars. So yummy!
• Kim has returned to Edmonton and moved into residence at MacEwan.
• From “The Art of Demotivation”: You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.
• I’ve still got to get my Dad’s new blog skin up and running, though I have successfully upgraded everything to Community Server (though the old site is still live).
• I’m becoming a total wiki-convert. I really am quite taken with Instiki.
• The last week has been unique in that I don’t think I looked at Google News very much, maybe once or twice. Instead, I read mostly blogs and I don’t feel out of the loop.
• I ran into a friend from junior high on Whyte Ave on Friday night, who I hadn’t seen since I last lived in Inuvik in grade 9. I very much doubt she’s reading this, but you never know, so hello Jill!
• Happy Birthday Alberta!

I’ve been in a “try to get organized” mood for the last couple
weeks. One of the outcomes of that ongoing effort is to post a weekly
update, because it should force me to think about what has happened in
the last week, and what is upcoming for the next.

• A couple of great resources for “getting things done” are To-Done! and lifehack.org.
• Looks like Hurricane Katrina is causing major problems in the southern states, especially New Orleans.
• Did you stop to wish Windows 95 a happy birthday this week?
• The Fringe has come to an end for 2005. This marks the second year I have attended.
• The CBC remains locked out, though some think it should be considered a “rethink”, and not a labour dispute. If you want to help end the lockout, click here.
• The start of a new school season approaches – I need to start making plans.
• Kim returns to Edmonton on Tuesday!

UPDATE: Yeah, I got the title wrong at first, thanks Shermie for
pointing it out. August is of course the 8th month, not the 6th!