Back, after a long time

Alright boys and girls.. we finally made it to 3B :)

Here's a post after a long hiatus.


.. :D

CUTC Parts 1 and 2

So I totally forgot to post about CUTC. Here it is, ganked from my LJ.

@__@ Fweee. I wasn't actually expecting to get subsidized for the Conference, but half of the subsidies are left for the ME dept. O_o;

*insert love for Blackberries here* (I've quickly decided against getting one though @_@ Service is pricey)



The first keynote was from the Director of Tech Dev at Yahoo, and his presentation on the future of search, and I suppose that Yahoo!'s philosophies contrast to Google's (seminar today).

Lunch was served, although I wasn't really expecting it to be XD The best part was pulling Coca Cola cans out of a Pepsi cooler bin. I ended up eating lunch partially again with my mom... we had green curry.. I've never tried that before ^^ and I liked it O_O

I went to the ATI techshop and and that was interesting, played around with RenderMonkey (and watched people sitting beside me play Castle Wolfenstein and Need for Speed Underground II lol). Learnt a lot about Xerox and "big I little T" from the VP of Xerox Global Services.

The Microsoft Pavillion fairly impressive (NO BLUE SCREEN!! j/k xD... although there really WAS no BSOD) and we demoed Vista beta and were shown some of the code in the second part, which I didn't say for. Vista still looks pretty as ever, except everybody agrees it ripped off macs. But still pretty. And sluggish .__.;

TechShow was hilarious. Impromptu PI-offs xD

Today was similar. A little more technical than yesterday, but more peptalks, advertisments (PROPAGANDA!) and nanos. Yes, Nanos. The ENTIRE class of 2010 Nanotech Engineers came from UW today to attend the conference and the NanoTalk. O_O overwhelmed by Nanos. I met Michelle from that class ^^

Mike Lazaridus from RIM spoke about his company, the testing and technology that goes into making Blackberries and such. We were shown the Oprah video of everybody screaming and jumping up and down when she was listing off all the functionalities of the Blackberry "it's like a cell phone" *screams from audience* "you can check your e-mail" *audience screams and jumps up and down* etc. They looped the vid at the RIM info booth, too.

Seminar #2 was Google; the jist of their search algorithm and hardware; interesting facts about Google (free gourmet meals! on site massage parlour! flex hours and 20% of those you can work on your own project! ride bikes around the Googleplex! Google began with LEGO! <-personal favorite); blinky pins that read GOOGLE and light up with LEDs.

Lunch was good today, we got hot pasta intead of cold sandwiches like yesterday--the drinks were actually Pepsi, though :( Lunch was accompanied by a presentation from a Civil prof from UT regarding creativity.

...then Microsoft got on the stage and the video they showed was absolutely hilarious XD *shot of microsoft employees playing beach volleyball outdoors* commentary: "See these people, sweating away! Microsoft is, really, a sweatshop...!"

"You mean... you actually expect your employees to work for.... *gasp* free soda?!"

The presentation itself was very propagandous towards MSN. The speaker claimed how MSN was strengthening relationships between people and pretty much how it was making our lives better. :/ I sorta zoned out after that. ... I guess I *COULD* anecdote on how I met my estranged cousin over MSN last night, lol. Alan L (I actually DON'T know how to spell his last name, even though it's the same as mine Oo) attending SFU [(S!) F U! (S!) F U!] and is two months younger than me O_o although he looks about two years older.

...but I digress. xD

Seminar #3 was about Clockless Circuits. Not much more I can say about it except the demo was pretty funny, and I'll probably learn more about it in upper year ECE courses.

TechExpo was really interesting, but it seems like the majority of the tech sector is looking for softies. (WOE.) NORTEL seemed to be the only one looking for hardware engineers. Got lots of information on the other companies though :D

Tomorrow's got Keynotes from ATI and Amazon, and I have a seminar by Jim Elliott about Open Computing and Linux. xD


In summary: HILARY DUFF. xD

"Oh, and make sure you try out IE 7 and check out the new feature of 'tabbed browsing'!" - Microsoft speaker.

______


The last day of CUTC was fun, but I think most people were tiring of the Keynotes and seminars. I got a cute foam plush of the Linux penguin dressed up in a blue tux (hence it's called Blue Tux) to represent IBM.

The banquet was pretty good. Nice food xD Ceasar salad, chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, and a mousse thing with fruit in a martini glass for dessert. There was no dance this year though, because apparently some bad things had happened at the dance last year with alcohol. :S

All in all it was a good experience and maybe I'll go again next year, but that really depends on when and where it is, and if they have more non-software sponsors x3

CUTC 2006

O_O Since when was Blogger a Google Tool?! O_O wow.

Attending CUTC. Will post more about it later :D

Re: Being Sickly

So the doctor wasn't so sure that it was a virus after all, since I was still sick on Monday, and a virus should've been taken care of in a couple of days.

[EDIT: It was salmonella.]

Or, maybe my immune system is just that weak.

Anyway, it did eventually go away on it's own; they thought it might've been bacteria, or parasites though. :/ I'm glad I'm better now.

.__.; I failed both Module 4 and 5 of PDEng 25. The resubmit for Mod 4 was yesterday, and now I'm working on the Module 5 again. :3 Not really sure how I can make my response better... as I'm already rapidly approaching the word limit.

Work term evaluations have been completed! =)

Making plans to eat ramen and watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Alex and Nikki and Sarah next next weekend XD It's gonna be great.

Sickly

Sick, with a stomach virus this time. I've missed so much work x_X

I'm not allowed to eat any solid food for the weekend. .__.;

Oh... And I finally failed a PDEng module. Infact, I failed two of them...

Winter Again

What're the chances that I need to contact the only professor on campus who doesn't have an e-mail address?!!

...Ironically, he's the one who teaches Intro to Society, Technology and Values.

Who would've ever though I'd wanna take that course ;)

Spring housing!

It looks like I'll be living at MKV next term :D

(It has air conditioning :D)