I have no idea what Derek was doing. Toe captures another priceless moment.
Continue reading ‘WTF Derek’
Monthly Archive for January, 2004
The Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference is an entirely student run event, mostly organized by Waterloo undergrads. As the same suggests, about 500 students from the east to west coast come together for a three day conference, to talk about the future of technology and how technology is going to shape the lives of youth in Canada.
Some of the most interesting attractions of the conference: high ranking officers at some of North America’s largest technology corporations, and companies come to share their personal insight; top tech firms try to entice today’s brightest minds into joining their corporate teams; workshops where students can learn how to succeed in today’s marketplace, and how they’ll be applying the skills that they’re learning in their studies.
I’m on the Student Relations team, who’s responsible for making sure that every province in the country is represented at the conference, and that the conference feels like a truly national event, not some Ontario dominated one. We did a pretty good job: BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia schools are there this year right now, which is actually quite impressive.
I joined on the CUTC team in September, and after a pretty slow start, In just November, December and January alone, I’ve probably received 1500 CUTC emails, and written out at least 500. It was hard work, and that was just to make sure we had 500 students at the conference.
Wednesday was our first official day at the conference. It was just a registration day, so I’ll just call it a Preliminary day for now. I finished work, attended a seminar on Investment Representatives for Edward Jones (very interesting and rewarding line of work… maybe its something for me ten years from now?), I met up with the CUTC team who had been at the Delta East hotel in Toronto for the whole afternoon, ironing out last minute items and setting up for what was sure to be three very long days.
By the end of our four hours devoted to checking in registered students, we had seen about 120 of them. We expected at least 300 more, and we had only allotted one hour to registration before actual events began the next day, Thursday.
Stuffing registration kits (conference guide and goodies from sponsors), took the remaining hours of my day, and despite being exhausted from the week upto that point, I went to bed, ready for a good 4 hours of sleep (more than most of the other major organizers!).
Whoa, it’s late, but when else will I have time to write these?
Can you feel the vibe in the air? It’s the first harmonic, and it’s resonating with my personal frequency and the amplitude is deafening. The beats are bouncing, the flow is wet, entertainment is entertaining, but damn is it cold, and damn I’m tired. Can’t complain though, I’m having fun.
It’s been about five months of the most dedicated work I’ve ever done, and we’re approaching the climax. Though this is the first I’ve mentioned it here, since September I’ve been directly responsible for getting 500 or so undergrads from across the country to show up in Toronto for three days of pure geek talk. It’s a technology conference run by students from UDub. And it’s finally taking place this week, finally all coming together, and starting this thursday.
I have some ambitions for subsequent instances of the event, and I’ll probably be spending more time plotting out plans for next year than participating in the various seminars, speaker sessions and social events.
I realize that once everything is done by the end of this Chinese New Years weekend, I’ll quickly find myself with nothing to do. It’s a scary thought. I’ve been brainstorming projects for a few weeks, things that would be really time consuming, and could last me through what would otherwise be three months of brain inactivity.
Maybe I’ll also have the time to make those hiyo.org renovations that I drew out a while ago.
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I live in a pigsty. There was probably a lot more clutter than an actual pigsty, but I can be proud to say there was a bit less mud.
Over the past month or so. I’ve been pretty slowly re-organizing my room. I’ve sorted almost every item of matter I own, into piles and files. Labelled boxes, folders, shelves. Thrown away a couple bags of garbage, and maybe ten times as many bags of recycling.
A couple trips to pick up organizational supplies later, I have a clean floor, rearranged furniture, and finally a place to my own at home.
I’ve gotten a taste of home improvement, and it already has me thinking of several new projects. But most of them require taking up a course in cabinet making, or at least a visit to my local library for the basic know-how.
If only I had Simon’s carpentry expertise, then I’d be set.
i can’t be living like this… huff… puff… what is it going to take to get some energy…
When I wake up in the morning, i’m too sleepy to crawl out of bed, so i have to lie there for several minutes before I can force myself awake.
I stumble my way to work, where i’m often so tired, I go through extended sequences where i’m expending all my available energy to keep my eyes open (it’s impossible to win).
I somehow manage my way back to my home, where my large comfy bed seems to be calling out to me. Most days I don’t even try to think about doing anything besides lazing around. I fear my body just can’t take the beating.
Then (through a seemingly accelerated passage through time) it gets to around now, the eerie 10pm - 12am period, where I know that if I don’t sleep, I’ll be too tired to wake up the next day. I usually am.
And as you can imagine, this cycle has been repeating itself, with sometimes school as a placeholder for earning my wage.
It’s certainly been getting better over the year, I’ve been able to survive a little more of the day as the months have gone by, but with my ambitions of finding a business project I really want to focus my life around, the type of project that would typically require 60-70 hours of work a week, for a couple years… I just don’t know if I’d still be alive after a huge undertaking like that.
But with that in mind, 11pm is coming up… I’d better get my rest.
The developers of Kazaa (not sharman networks who later bought the company) have created another killer peer 2 peer app that uses the latest in Voice Over IP technology that’s sure to send ripples this time through the phone companies.
They’ve created Skype (http://www.skype.com), an AIM/ICQ/MSN/YM type program that instead of dedicated IM, allows realtime, better than phone quality free calls to anyone else on you bunny lists. It’s still in beta form, and a little buggy, but it’s saving me lots on phone bills. Once you have it installed, you can click here: Skype Me! and you’ll call me if I’m online.
Not only is it free, unlike Yahoo voice chat or Window messenger, Skype works through almost any network configuration, including behind routers and firewalls. So next time you don’t need to tell people to “Call Me“, it’ll be “Skype Me“.