AMORY: And you love me.
ROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much. We can't have any more scenes like this.

(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyes blind again with tears.)

AMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, please -- oh, don't break my heart!

(She presses the ring softly into his hand.)

ROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go.
AMORY: Good-by -----

(She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness.)

ROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory -----
AMORY: Good-by -----

(He goes to the door, fumbles for the knob, finds it - she sees him throw back his head -- and he is gone. Gone -- she half starts from the lounge and then sinks forward on her face into the pillows.)

ROSALIND: Oh, God, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and with her eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks once more at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had so often filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetly lowered one long Sunday afternoon. Misty-eyed she stands and remembers; she speaks aloud.) Oh, Amory, What have I done to you?

(And deep under the aching sadness that will pass in time, Rosalind feels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows not why.)

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

According to Matt's information, the myth of Waterloo is that people here know how to interview. And that's why Microsoft loves UW grads.

But isn't that one of the most important staples in the process of finding a job? The interview is your first face to face impression with a potential employer. And to that employer, for the candidate to be confident and personable in an interview is akin to showing up to a blind date and finding out that the date is good looking and sociable. This gives us the competitive edge.

In a way, this almost makes sense. Good social skills are not only helpful, but a necessity in today's work environment. Furthermore, the work experience we get implies that we are quicker to adapt to the corporate setting (distinctly different from a purely academic atmosphere), and have demonstrable technical skills useful in the real world.

But let's not forget that Waterloo is a technical school, and our quality of education is among the best. The amount of mathematics and computing theory in our curriculum gives us a solid foundation upon which to build our technical skills. We not only understand how it works, but why it should work. And even though our admission average may be lower than those of the Ivy League schools in the US, our reputation ensures that the best students from across Canada all have one single destination -- here (and those are the ones who get jobs at Microsoft anyways).

The myth and fact of Waterloo is that we have good students. If we could not back up our reputation, this myth would have been long drowned in the sea of economic downturns and corporate scandals.

Nothing to do ... so bored. Yesterday I was so bored that I volunteered to go outside and shovel snow.

Who wants to drive to Guelph and hang with Ming?

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What are we put on this earth for?

I can hear the clock on my desk ticking - Tick Tock - as I sit idly by, staring at my computer screen, wondering at events past. I have an urge to talk, but have nothing to say. Questions on life are flying in and out of my head, like the snowflakes outside, floating in and out of existence.

No one quite knows what to say when someone's life is taken away. All words just sound trite and out of place. We can only hope that time, what little we have, may heal the wounds dug by such tragedies, leaving only scars of beautiful memories.

Life is so fragile.

I just don't get it. Why do people need to fight and compete and kill each other?

Why is it that we find the need to declare more war? Why do we need to revenge everything? Counter violence with violence?

Is violence the only real deterent against further violence? Is the strongest member always the most powerful? And in being so, the most resented?

I keep on seeing one commercial on TV about bullies. It shows a kid saying mean things, and pushing and shoving. And as the camera zooms out, he's in the playground all by himself. The caption says that bullies only want attention, and if we just leave them alone, that'll be the end of our perils.

I guess the problem is to find out who the bully is.

Two weeks of doing nothing, here I come.

I wanted to start a new project in the new year, and call it the 365 project. But it looks like someone has already beaten me to it.

Oh well, maybe I'll do it for my own amusement. I should be easy enough with a digital camera. I might even buy a webcam to make the process easier.

Looks like everyone is feeding off of this Matt Goyer thing.

No wonder he's so popular. Can you and I switch places Matt? At least in blog land?

When I got home, I found the roommates ready to make gingerbread cookies. So instead of studying, like I planned on doing, I ended up with flour all over my shirt. And now we have boxes upon boxes of gingerbread men/Santa/candy cane/heart/star/mystery items laid out on the kitchen table. See the disturbing details here.

A card with 93 words on it giving clues to the next Harry Potter book has been auctioned for $45 000 US. But we still know nothing about the book other than some random words like "Ron" and "broom" and "dies".

In a way, you kind of wish that Rowlings wasn't that successful, and had to finish off the books so she can make ends meet. Now she really has not incentive to write the next book.

I get a lot of Ellen Feiss naked search strings. A record breaking 37 in fact from last month.

I wonder why so many people would want to see a 15 year-old girl naked.

And no, I don't have any naked pictures of her.

Exam time always messes me up. Today I thought it was Tuesday, and decided to take a break and watch Smallville. But it wasn't on, because today is Monday, and the show is on Tuesdays. Yesterday I thought was Sunday, and it was.

I am "that" close (pinching thumb and index finger together) to finding a place in Seattle. Yes, that close.

Don't screw it up Ming.

The monotonous hospital like environment is getting to him. He needs colour, a dark, yet vivid pallet to enlighten the atmosphere. Let's face it, black and white pictures on a white wall just doesn't provide enough contrast. The clutter in his room is also getting larger and more chaotic with each passing day. He wants to be minimalist, but could never achieve the end product. For one thing, all the cords (from the computer, the battery chargers, the cables, the stereo) are an eyesore.

He takes a break from typing to look out the steamed window, and wonders how inefficient single pane windows really are. Even with another set of windows outside the originals, they still fog up when the weather turns snappy.

He wonders why he just watched a basketball game instead of burying his head deep in the books. He wonders why his nose is still running after almost two weeks of being on the fringe of sickness. He wonders why no one sends him real emails.

The world spins.

So, I'm replanning my life again. I can either take it easy, and just go with the CS major/C&O minor. Or, I can kill myself for the next two terms again, and opt for the double major.

Just for your information, here's what my schedule would sort of look like if I opt for the kill-myself route:

Summer 03:
CS 452 Real-time (aka Trains course aka Time Killer)
CS 370 Numerical Computation
PMATH 334 Intro to Rings and Fields
C&O 454 Scheduling
Elective

Winter 04:
CS 456 Computer Networks
CS 436 Distributed Computer Systems
PMATH 340 Elementary Number Theory
C&0 487 Applied Cryptography
Elective

The easy route would be the deletion of the two PMATH courses and Scheduling, and the addition of one elective.

What do you think?

Exam crunch time again.

I'm not ready for exams yet. We need a reading week between the end of classes and the beginning of exams where we can do nothing. I think this is probably my most challenging term yet, in terms of course content and amount of work. We'll see how it all rides out.

My lofty idea fell through. For those who don't know, I contacted someone about sharing a loft, and the following is a little exerpt from the reply email (emphasis mine):

it really is a loft, just one big room. the bathroom is shared with two other apartments, and i'll have to build a kitchen.. but that shouold be done in january. i'm going to put up walls and curtains for privacy.. but you should know that it's definitely not a conventional living situation.

But today I got another email saying that she's not going to rent the place afterall.

Oh, and Deirdre doesn't believe that molly lynn smith is a real name.