It is interesting to walk around the city at the beginning of May because half of the city's population is in the process of moving. May marks the beginning of another term at university and for most people means subletting an apartment. It is a scramble as Residence people either return home or move into some sort of off campus apartment. Such was the case on Friday with Sarah. However, thanks to a few cousins and uncles we managed to get her sick amount of stuff from point A to point B. Organizing that can only be classified as ongoing as anyone who has ever moved would know. However Friday was still April. Today is the 2nd of May so I managed to miss my opportunity to wish everyone a happy May Day.

Even better is that I get to repeat this process myself sometime this week. At first I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to move this weekend, but I think that they are doing some repairs to the floor that I am going to be moving to so I guess I can accept waiting until they are finished with that. So today will be a day of starting to put things in boxes. Boxes that I may or may not have... I should look into that.

It was announced today that Steve Jobs will be detailing the new version of Mac OS X 10.4 at the World Wide Developers Conference this June. Code named "Tiger" this release is supposed to revolutionize development everywhere. I'm not sure what that means, but I'll tell you that I am excited. I am also excited because I plan on buying a Mac desktop sometime after the WWDC because they tend to use the event to announce new products/price cuts. Maybe I can get a machine with Tiger on it. :)

After a couple of days of rain it is nice to see that we finally will be having some sunshine. There isn't even a cloud visible from my office. Not a bad summer day for spending indoors and then possibly spending the evening moving furniture. Fun times indeed.

I'm not sure if any of you received a brochure from Pizza Hut (and took the time to read it) but they are currently offering free DVDs with the purchase of 2 medium 2 topping pizzas. Their selection isn't that large (3) but one of the movies was the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. So like a sucker I ordered a couple of pizzas. It was a lot more expensive than I expected, partially due to a delivery charge - so I had to pay for part of it with a roll of dimes that I had just put together. But I got a DVD out of it so I am happy. Now I just need to get moved and settled in so that I can actually watch that DVD. ;)

I got my workterm report back today finally and it turns out that my resubmission was acceptable. I'm at the point where I know that my work isn't excellent or exemplary but as long as I don't fail my work terms... I'm all about that.

Well... I have moved my computer up into my new apartment and my site is back online. I apologize for the length of the outage - the power went out in my apartment building earlier today. And so I decided that because my computer was off... it would be a good time to get it moved upstairs. Obviously getting things just the way that I wanted took a bit longer than I expected. Once I get my camera from home, I will post a picture of my setup.

I also just finished watching the original Ninja Turtles movie - the one that came with my pizza earlier this week. It is definitely still a good movie. I also scored a ride to get some groceries earlier so overall it has been a pretty good day. :)

It happens sometimes. You are burning some candles for a romantic atmosphere, or simply you don't have any power. In any case we all know that hot molten wax is present in these situations and that sometimes it does what it wants. If you have a big/nice enough candle holder then usually your wax related woes only extend for the holder where you can usually chip off the chunks of hardened wax with a knife or even your fingers. But sometimes the worst does happen and you end up with wax in carpet.

So you wait for it to harden and then try picking at it with a knife or something similar - and that is only somewhat useful for getting the bigger bits of wax out... what about the tiny little pieces that are embedded in your carpet? Well... I learned something today that works really well. Granted I only tried it with a fairly tight carpet... so YMMV. Take newspaper - ones that you don't mind getting rid of - raid the recycling, old phone book pages would probably work too. Get a fair bit of this newsprint - as much as you can spare. The only other thing that you need is an iron. A regular iron that you would use to iron a shirt with - don't worry, this won't damage your iron. Plug the iron in near the wax 'scene' and set it to a medium heat... but make sure that you don't have steam... that might make things a bit more difficult. Once your iron is hot... lay down a sheet of the newsprint over the problem area and iron it as you would a shirt. On the first couple of passes you will notice right away that the newsprint is absorbing the wax. Keep changing the newsprint (or readjusting it) so that more of the wax can be absorbed. Essentially this is it... keep going until you don't get any more wax absorbed and you can keep checking the spot to see the progress. It worked for me and I would imagine that it would work on most carpets. And no... I didn't invent this idea myself, I found it at PageWise but I wanted to share my experiences with you.

September 22-24 there will be a PHP conference held in Toronto. Right now they are accepting proposals for sessions and talks to be given at the conference. Personally I would be all over this. I am going to see if I can get together an idea for a talk and weasel my way into free conference action. Of course... the idea of actually presenting a talk - which would be 90 minutes - does in fact frighten me. I think I might attend regardless. The conference is being put on by php|architect and is called php|works.

You would think that not being all that busy with classes that I would have a bit more time for things like keeping up with my weblog, but as you can tell... that is not the case. In case anyone wasn't aware, last Sunday was my birthday. Thanks it was a good day. Then last week I worked and well that was that. And this weekend I went home for a Murder Mystery. It was a good time - Saturday was damned hot, but I guess some people might think that is a good thing. In any case, I will try to keep on top of things this week. Cheers.

Last night while watching bits and pieces of the news, it became clear that the state of Massachusetts was going to allow gay marriages as of today. In Cambridge, people were lined up waiting for midnight - but in most other cities including Boston, registration won't begin until the city offices open this morning.

Obviously there were protestors on site as well, but that is to be expected because ignorance runs rampant everywhere. I however feel it is a great step forward for not only the gay couples who can now share in the bonds of marriage, but for the social health of the United States in general. When Bush went on record basically saying that gays would not be allowed to marry, a lot of people started to feel that things could move into a white-supremacist, Hilter-esque stage pretty quickly in the US. I guess that is something to worry about when you have a president from Texas. Hopefully, with a politically charged state like Massachusetts allowing gay marriages, the winds of change are finally turning in the right direction.

I sit here in my office and I have been gazing out my window once in a while and I see that they have broken ground on the new Kenneth Rowe Management Building. They have an excavator (a Komatsu PC200LC to be exact) and they have been digging a trench of sorts in the dirt lot. And moving dirt around... and digging up some pavement... it looks like the operator of the excavator knows what he is doing. It makes him look like a mech if you know what I mean. Kind of scary with his 32 feet of reach. Hopefully he won't be there too long because he is hella distracting.

Long time forum member and close friend (and current roommate) mike has started a personal journal website. Visit Mike Smit and watch his progress as he builds up his site.

As you can determine from mike's site, he has been working on things for a while with an extended hiatus in there. I am guilty of that myself... not really with this site - although I have vowed to update the code base. I am talking about the Dalhousie Computer Science Society website. I was/am the webmaster and I have been for a while now, but the site has been lacking despite my grand plans for it. I tried to use the Xoops Content Management System, but that didn't work so well. I am going to slowly develop a solution for the society website over the summer. If any of you have any comments or suggestions I'd love to hear them.

For anyone who is interested, Dalhousie University is releasing a new 'branding' image and whatnot tomorrow at noon. You should be able to see the changes on the Dal website at that point. I haven't heard all of the details, but I think that we are getting a new colour scheme and everything. There is supposed to a release "party?" at noon tomorrow in the McCain Arts Building. FYI

As it turns out that is what we at Dalhousie University are doing here. Everyone... all the time. To be quite honest, I like the new look and feel. Obviously they can't impress everyone, we all have different tastes, but once they are finished the new site will be much much better than the old one. The old one was designed in a different time, a time of different thinking.

I have heard people gripe and whine about various problems... "Why didn't they put this towards the TA's or tuition?" or the far more superfluous, "I don't like the way that the water looks or the way that this colour looks...". To the first one I say that any organization has to look to the big picture for sustained growth. Maybe my opinion is more realistic because I have worked for the university in a number of different capacities as well as being a student, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. And the matter of taste is just that... a matter of taste. You can say what you want, the colours have been carefully picked to compliment and contrast in a balanced manner... and it is good. Yes the water tiles when you have a higher resolution, but not so much that it is a problem... practically. And I must say that despite any issues arising from having the Flash plugin (which is pretty ubiquitous) the page does load into any modern browser without problems.

Anything that can unify this university in a way that is more consistent is definitely a good thing.

I have it on the good authority of CSI Guide that tonight is the season finale of CSI. And it certainly was a successful season. I didn't get to watch it as often as I would have liked, but I won't have to suffer too long - the DVD is supposed to come out on September 12 based on a rumour that I heard at TVShowsOnDVD.com.

I also watched the cross over episode of CSI:Miami on Monday - the episode that had Horatio from Miami head to New York to segue into a new spin off that will star Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, Apollo 13) playing Detective Mac Taylor in the lead CSI position. I guess that Law & Order has shown us that two spin off shows are possible. And that you can't have too many crime drama shows that are set in New York City. :)

So if you follow the show at all... tune in tonight to wish the characters goodbye for another summer.

I thought that I would give you a heads up that I am toying with the templates trying to convert my site over to using a new system that I have developed. If you notice some errors or other unusual behavior don't worry about it - chances are that I am working on things. If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know...

I should have mentioned the Spring Ball before now, after all it is tonight, but I doubt that my posts here have ever inspired anyone to go that wouldn't have been going otherwise. So I will wish everyone who is going a great time, I know that I always have fun. If you do still want to go, contact Brad at bsurette@cs.dal.ca and he might have some tickets left. Starts tonight at 6:30 (dinner starts at 7:00) and it being held at the Westin Hotel. For the details etc, visit the Computer Science Society's web site.

But not today. Today it smelled a little minty. Almost medicinal - like a balm or something. But that is neither here nor there.

I am currently watching the crew across the street pour concrete for the foundation of the building and I must admit that it is kind of mesmorizing.

The Spring Ball last night was really fun. As usual I got my groove on to a point were I was dehydrated and tired and then bent over and paid $2.25 for a tiny bottle of water. The evening was magical and I was glad to be able to chat with some old friends and obviously my current friends. I was also glad to win the Bronze Award for third highest academic ranking in third year. It added a little coin to my pocket and I can't say that I wasn't pleased about that. All told it was a great time and for those who missed it... well... I got nothing for you.

[end of cliché] However, this time I have plans and a system in place to make things work. I am going to be changing rhuvok.com. I will still be writing about stupid things that don't mean much to anyone, but I am also going to be writing about web standards and their roles in web applications. I have been inspired by Dave Shea over at mezzoblue as well as Jeffery Zeldman who is one of the co-founders of a list apart which is a tremendous resource for web developers everywhere. I know I haven't been doing a lot of work in the 'professional' circuit, but I have been designing for the web since I was 14 and I feel that I have seen the way certain things move in this industry.

Long story short... stay tuned. I'm not promising immediate results and maybe I am shooting myself in the foot by announcing too early, but good things will come... just you wait.

People have told me about Dim Sum for a while (mostly my aunt), but I've never had the opportunity until today. After sleeping in until after noon, Sarah and I plus her two roommates sauntered down to the Great Wall restaurant. Apparently dim sum is only supposed to be eaten in the morning, but they keep it going until like 2pm at the Great Wall because it is quite popular. The restaurant was full when we got there, and from what I could see there were quite a few tables. Essentially, dim sum is comprised of several small dishes that you choose and share with your party. Many restaurants have carts that they wheel around and you can choose what you want from that. However, the Great Wall has a simple menu that you check off what you want and they bring you it in various stages. The problem we had with that was that we couldn't remember what we ordered entirely and when things arrived it took a bit to figure out who was going to eat what. I knew however, that I hadn't ordered any squid - which in addition to looking frightening, smelled awful. All told, although I did enjoy parts of it, I don't think that I will be attending again. I think I will be sticking to a brunch that focuses around bacon and eggs as opposed to shrimp and squid.