Samm's House

Yesterday was my first day house sitting for Garrett's house, which also includes looking after his pets ( a dog and a cat). It's making me realize why exactly our family never owned any real pets (I say "REAL" because I don't consider fish to be a pet as much as a display ornament).

Let's get this straight, I've never claimed to be an animal lover of any sort. But I don't hate them either. I just perfer solitude, and pets (dogs in paticular) do not allow that. They need constant attention and care, something I just don't have time for.
But really I Am thankful for this opportunity to take on responsibility...and there are positives to this. For instance; it's New Year's Eve and I have a house to myself, which is amazing (However parties are a negative on the list of instructions given to me...so maybe a few friends over for some poker). I can also practice my musical side without having th bother anyone. So really, I can't complain at all... I'm pretty fortunate to be in my situation.
So this next week should prove to be interesting as well as a challenge for me, but I'll survive.

I'm at work at the moment and my break is almost up, so I best get back to the grinding stone...
(and yes. I AM bitter.)

The Christmas and The Rush

Now to understand my Christmas you must take into account 2 parts: The Christmas, and The Rush. Allow me to explain ...

THE CHRISTMAS:
The previous week was a frenzy and when Christmas came, it was like a brick to the nuts....
I wake up at 10 to realize it was Christmas, I still needed to wrap my gifts and I had to be at church in half an hour...I did a pretty pathetic attempt at wrapping the gifts, but I came to church on time which was good.
I enjoyed the service, even Pastor Doug proved how little each one of us knew about the Christmas story. He gave us a little quiz on the story, in which most people in my row got a whole 25%! (Man am I ever screwed for the exam!). Nonetheless, it really got me into the Christmas mood which I had really lacked earlier so that was nice.
When I got home we opened our gifts. I recieved the usual items (socks, underwear, etc) and then there some more notable gifts like the 'Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' DVD. But one gift stood above them all...It had everything one would need for a source of entertainment. Something that I have been waiting for a long time...
What is this something?
Well, friend, sit down, grab some hot coco and listen up as I expound on this magnificent gift...

THE RUSH:
As many of you may know, I am a huge Rush fan...HUGE. throughout 31 one years this band has stuck it out through thick and thin...with 20+ albums and each album being a masterpiece, you cannot deny their awesomeness...
There are so many reason why theyre awesome:
- Drummer is the lyricist for the band -------------> AWESOME
- Been around for 31 years and still making music -> AWESOME
-Guitar solos -------------------------------------->AWESOME
-Drum solos --------------------------------------> AWESOME
- Bass solos --------------------------------------->AWESOME






^^AWESOME^^

I could go on of course, but if I did, I would run out of room on the internet and your whole computer would implode! You don't want that, do you?...didn't think so.
So what does this have to do with my Christmas gift?
Well I recieved the RUSH 30TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR DVD....

Complete with everything you need to rock out (plus kung-fu action!).
When I opened the dvd, I couldnt believe what they put in it...okay there's the DVD...which is good because that's what I bought it for, but on top of that they included the audio discs of the concert! that's Huge! I can now listen to the live concert while I'm cruising the streets of Winnipeg!
But that's not all! It comes with guitar and bass pics with signatures from Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson!! by that time I was blown clear across the room by the sheer force of awesomeness that the dvd was emitting.
A sticker and picture book were also included in the package....such a gift could make a rush fan weep in joy....ahem...but not me.
Anyways if ALL THAT didn't do it for you, than I've got news for you! Along the dvd case there were calculus equations written....



YES, FREAKIN INTERGRALS, probably written by Neil Peart no less while he was sleeping because he's a pure genius.


So in conclusion, Christmas was a Rush....no? Well, I thought it was funny.

Bite-Sized Summary of My past week

Here is the summary of my past week:
Last Saturday (17th) was an eventul night to say the least... I was searching for my cricket bat when I stumbled across an item that I've been in search for a very long time... but it wasn't the cricket bat...it was a ...POTATO SAC...... what? not impressed? oh right, thats because that wasn't the exciting part. okay inside this sketchy looking potato sac I found .....
A set of Wickets! Okay, Now you should be impressed. I was beside myself in excitement when I found it. Now all my dreams of having a cricket match were coming true!

oh yeah, I did happen to find my bat. that was good too.

Also Sean, Mark, Matt, and myself had plans on visiting the 'Kilcona Ruins'... now the word 'KILCONA' derives from 2 places, Kildonen and Transcona....hence KIL - CONA.
But what IS kilcona? uh, well...its...um... It's a tunnel...and a smoke stack. Yeah...thats it. Well, I think it would be best to visit Sean's blog and read up on it there rather than have me explain.

Now I think it would be best to skip at Thursday(22nd), because previous to that, it was a routine schedule of getting up, going to school, studying, going home and sleeping. Anyways, I finished my classes for the term at Red River, and to say the least I felt a little burnt out. But it was only days before Christmas and at the time I hadn't started my shopping so I was... now how can I put this lightly...Freaking out. Without going into detail, I basically panicked and got gift certificates all around.


Friday night, my parents were having their annual Christmas get-together with their friends, and we had a gift exchange. I ended up with a pink diary and a line dancing video... I could barely contain myself. No really..this wasn't any regular line dancing...this was BIG BAND line dancing... do you know what that means? ...no ? okay neither do I, but all I know it's BIG band opposed to just BAND line dancing...pfft that stuff is for suckers.





BOOGIE WOOGIE BIG BAND?! Well howdy, that sounds like a party! *knee slap*

ahem.... moving on...

On Saturday, I worked and decided to hang with Garrett ,who's family was in Hawaii, which means that he spent Christmas alone. He couldn't go with them because he's finishing his full time coop term. Coincidentally, one girl named heather is starting her coop term and her parents went to Saskatchewan, leaving her in winnipeg.
After cruising around for a little bit Garrett and I hung at Heather's house. I took a picture of her cat.
Cat: "You will bring me cat food...yes.... and sqeeky toys by the hundreds....OBEY ME!"

What about Christmas Day?
Well thats a lengthy one... and I really don't have the patience to type out the details, but I'll post soon with the goods

Have a Merry Boxing Day everyone

P.S I have yet to write about my big band line dancing lessons in my pink diary

SLEEP IS OVER-RATED.

Sleep is over-rated. There, I said it. Why waste hours of your day lying in your bed like a vegetable, when you could be studying for a cure for cancer, or something productive like that. If scientists didn't sleep at all we would probably have flying cars by now...

Anyways

Yesterday morning I got up and left for the college at 8 am. My normal routine for a school day is to stay until my classes end and book it home, but I was bogged down with a lot of work, so I decided I would take some time to study with some people and save myself the homework.
Hours later:
There was much rejoicing over the completion of one paticularly long assignment. But there were still more work to be done, so eight of us strived on to other assignments.

At 11 pm, there was an idea sparked from our group of keeners...

"Why go home, when all we'll do is sleep? we might as well keep working until our next class." said someone
"An all nighter...? Why?" I asked
"Why not" was the reply.

I'm not entirely sure what was driving me through the night, but was able to keep focused the majority of the night. Although, I cannot say the same for the rest our studying crew. At one point some started blasting country music...and this was not good... because this seemed to bring out the hick in every caucasions in the room. I mean, I don't want to stereotype white people, because I know that not Every white person listens to country. However, this seemed to be the case in my perdictiment. Each and every white guy knew every single lyric to the country songs that were played. It was late, I was tired, and white people were singing country songs. Nothing could be more traumatizing.
The night also seemed be a lucky night for vending machines:
Adam was feeling the z's coming on, so he decided to go buy himself a coffee. Whilst, pressing the button, the words "Winner!" flashed on the digital display of the machine. Wow, this is great! Adam is the winner of the coffe vending machine! What does he win? a car? a trip to hawaii?
Following Adam's hopeful thoughts, the vending machine spit out one dollar... Almost as to say, "Here's lookin' at you, kid. Don't spend it all in one place."
Well I guess it's nothing to complain about. He Did buy himself another coffee with his new found wealth.

I too had some good luck with a vending maching that night. I went to go buy some caffine to better my attempt of staying awake, so I stopped at the Coke machine, popped in my 2 bucks, and pressed the large button that said, 'COKE'. nothing happened. Again, I pressed the large button that said, 'COKE'. nothing happened. I shook the machine, which made this unusual sound. I came to the conclusion that it was stuck, so I gave it a swift kick. SUCCESS! The coke dropped down into the dispenser. As I turned to walk away another Coke dropped down.
Score!
Girish 1; Coke machine : 0

I'm pretty sure you're thinking we did nothing but goof around all night, but we did get a lot of work done. It's just that you wouldn't want to hear about homework. Homework isn't that exciting to talk about.

Or is it?

There was question 5 on our Section 7 assignment of Statics, which many people were having issues with. The objective of the question was to find the equilibrium on these 2 balls resting on a wall. it kind of looked like this:

Procedure:
FBD#1
We took all the forces and broke them down each into components. With each component, we found the summation of Fx and Fy to solve, using substituion, for the unknown force acting on the ball 1 from ball 2.
FBD#2
Using the force applied from ball 1, we calculated the Fx and Fy applied on the second ball. Again, using substitution we can solve for the force being applied perpendicular to the wall.

Of course this would allow us to get the appropriate amount of jiggawatts needed to jump start our flux capacitor into signal drift. Once hyperflux was complete, were were able to sort out the index sequencer.

(that last part was a joke)

We continued our adventure onto the next morning into class. I was able to stay awake until I went to our surveying class. Yeah...I don't remember much after that, becasue it's an incredibly boring class where I cannot pay attention when I'm fully rested anyways.
After class I came home, grabbed a bite to eat, and went to sleep. I then woke up, ate some more, started writing this blog. So now you're up to date on my life in the past 48 hours or so.
I hope youre happy.

'The Waking Life'? or just a messed acid trip?

So Garrett called me over tonight to see this crazy movie he rented. It was called 'Waking Life'. Most movies Garrett introduces me to are rather strange, so this comes of no exception:



Have you ever had a sudden spark in the interest of an alternate world and felt it neccesary to discuss these thoughts on philosophical issues concerning prospects for the beneficial utilization of lucid dreams with total strangers?

No? Well, Neither have I.

But apparently Richard Linklater, the director and writer of this 90 min talk-fest, thought it would better profit the world to make a movie based off his thoughts of dreams while he was sky high. This hippie film is filled with enough philosophical jargon and big words to make confucious scratch his head and say, "man, you gotta lay off those shrooms '
The visual style was definitly original, but at the same time made me nauseous, so it really did feel like I was high out of my mind.
Now, I don't do drugs, so I can't say firsthand what it feels like, but I gather it's awfully close to watching 90 mins of 'Waking Life'.
So if you're not the druggy type but you still want to get high.... I highly recommend this movie.

Girish OUT

Cricket = Awesome ; Cricket 2005 = not so awesome.

Cricket...what can I say?
It's everything you could ever want in a sport: 2 wickets, a stick, and a ball.
Well thats I want anyways.
Besides crickets being an extremely sophisticated sport, there are other reasons why it appeals to me so much.

Reason 1: Cricket happens to be one of the only sports that India is really good at.

okay so maybe there's just one reason that I can think of.
Anyways, recently I downloaded the demo version of 'EA SPORTS' CRICKET 2005'. This would be my very first experience with a cricket Videogame. Never heard of a cricket videogame before? well, there's a good reason why.

Now, to begin, I must explain that I downloaded this game expecting something of poor quality...because lets face it, Cricket was not meant for the videogame world.
Okay so the graphics in this game were decent...but thats about it...the controls were strange and most of the time you watched the crazy cricket officals shake their finger at you because you made some stupid fault. And whats up with the officials having Cell phones...? Who's going to call them?

"hello mr. official, this is the president."
"Can't talk now! I'm busy shaking my finger because someone made a fault!"

Thats basically all I can really comment on the game due to the demo being extremely limited.


I wonder what cricket would be like if it were more videogame friendly... well it would obviously have to be called something like 'cricket man 5000' , where Cricket Man would obviously be a ninja of some sort wielding not one but two cricket bats and involve rescuing the sacred wicket from the grasp of satan himself...


..or I could be just extremely sleep deprived.
Good night

Ode to St. Andrews

The question:
- What do you get when you mix:

-the urge to jam
-musical instruments
-an empty classroom

The answer:
St. Andrews College

Yes, the college of St. Andrews has been very good to me for the past 6 months. Whenever I had to vent anger, had the urge to play guitar, or just had free time, I would come down to the college to express my musical side. It is the the perfect oppurtunity to jam ...one which you can pretty much have the freedom to play as loud as you want for as long as you want...
But St. Andrews really cannot be understood without mentioning one person who basically makes it all happen. This person of which I speak is Evan. He is a maintenance / resident / student at the college. St. Andrews is his life. The fact that he is all of these things, means that he does have the key to the classroom in which we jam in. So in short, if it weren't for him we would not have this kick-butt room.
During the summer I went to the college pretty much everyday to jam with Alex (who actually introduced me to the college), Sean, and Evan. We had a good time, getting to know each other's styles and tried to create a sound of our own.
Sadly though, since school has started it has been less frequent. We still do have a time that works for all 4 of us. So every Friday after 10 we jam till we're too tired too jam any more. Lately though, Sean and Alex have been extra busy, so It's been just been Evan and myself.

Next year, Evan will be moving back to Edmonton, which means that the classroom maybe be unusable. Although this would end the use of the classroom, the legend of St. Andrews will live on.

-Girish Out