Amy and Adam
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Because Waterloo students are often out in far corners of the world when they are on work-terms, there are efforts to get them to meet. These culminate in social gatherings called WatPubs, which are an excuse to get together and talk. In fact, years ago, apenwarr organised some of the Montréal gatherings.

Anyway, on Thursday, holdenk swung by my desk late after work and invited me to the Markham meeting. "What time does it start," I asked. "At about seven," came the reply. So we were already ten minutes late. But it was fine to be tardy because Holden is one of the organisers.

I drove into Unionville, which seems to have turned itself into a tourist town. When a municipality's website has a big Valentine's Day heart on the front page, you know they're up to something. We found the bar at which to meet.

Inside, we looked around until we found a large group of young, geeky people sitting in a corner. "Aha," I thought, "that must be them." And I was right! Nothing says University of Waterloo like a bunch of dorky boys talking about computers. I sat down beside Tim, Graham, and John and introduced myself.

When they got around to asking what year I was in, I had to admit that I was an imposter. That caused a small ruckus around the table, and Amy declared that I had to leave. But I eventually convinced them that I wasn't so bad and that I should stay. After a bit of conversation, I started moving around the table in order to converse with everyone. This seemed to strike the girls as a good idea, so we all eventually talked to each other.

Some people had more technical discussions than others. For instance, three of the computer science students griped about their courses. Meanwhile, Adam in actuarial science stole a heart-shaped decoration for his girlfriend. Because nothing says "I love you" like purloined goods.

Some photographs were taken, all of which are horrible, because of the magical powers of flash photography. Still, it gives that charming, tipsy-in-a-bar feel that is so valued these days.

With any luck, none of our descendents will ever discover them.

What's going on?
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Normally, on Wednesdays, I noodle around doing creative stuff. Not yesterday at the Markham office. Instead, I went around trying to convince people that they should be happier. This has been my overriding goal when I am here.

Since I have also been talking to people who are considering giving us money, one of my sub-goals is to make them understand that they'll be happier by handing it over, instead of hoarding it. So far, they seem to be quite pleased with this whole happiness thing.

One of the nice things that happened was the drumming. See, some teenagers dressed up as dragons decided to dance around in the front lobby to some drumming. Lots of people left the office to see what the ruckus was all about. Then, they got into the elevator and swung by the office. They even posed for photo-ops! The drummers were pretty loud and disruptive, so I'm sure we'll have good fortune this year.

Ice bucket with tong
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

So after this noon-hour excitement, dwiseman and I decided it would be a good time to go out for lunch. We had organised an expedition to return to Phở Viêt with some co-ops. I managed to convince two out of three to come along, which isn't so bad.

We hopped into the Cadillac and drove two blocks down to Warden and Steeles. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed a bunch of shady characters milling about the front door.

I had a large bowl of tasty phở while other people contented themselves with dishes that did not involve soup nor creepy meat. Boy did the miss out. We forgot, however, to order the iced coffee until the end of the meal. So we had to wait for the coffee to drip and what could we possibly do but chat. Once the coffee was done, we dropped ice cubes into it from a $6 ice bucket. With only one tong.

I didn't leave my camera at the restaurant this time.

Adam Zey
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

On Friday, I discovered that elliptic_curve was heading down here by train. I knew she was coming for a month, but the day had never really firmed up, until a couple hours before she was due to leave. She told me that she'd be arriving around midnight, so there was plenty of time to take Adam out for a celebratory meal.

He's off to Concordia, you see. Out into the wide world of higher education, and frustrating bureaucracy. He had gone to an orientation session earlier in the afternoon, where they stuffed him with bad free beer. I was going to clean his palate with excellent free beer.

I took him to Brasserie Reservoir, which is not only a very nice microbrewery near my place, but it also has a splendid kitchen that turns out very nice meals. We both tucked into plates of salmon tartare, and enjoyed them very much.

After saying goodnight to Adam, I realised that there were a couple of hours left to while away before Julie showed up. I planned to take a nap, so I head home. There, I found six messages waiting for me on the answering machine, so I called Julie's telephone and was informed that she had managed to catch the 17:00 train.

I went down to the station as quickly as possible, where I found a slight impatient, but mostly gleeful, Julie. We tried to find some dinner, which involved getting sandwiches at Schwartz's. Then it was back to my place, where we pulled out the guest bed (for me), and set up the bedroom for Julie. This was so she could close the door to keep Timin out. Poor kitty, his mistress is now allergic to him.

I've just finished doing the least fun part of interviews. Sending e-mails.

You see, I've got this strange idea in my head that I should tell people if they didn't do so well during an interview, and suggest some things they could do to improve. But this is rather difficult to do because it's pretty difficult to write a similar note a lot of times, without it turning into a form letter. Plus, one doesn't want to offend the recipient. I really do want them to improve, because I want all our applicants to get jobs.

Then again, if all our applicants were awesome, then I'd have an stomach-churning time trying to choose which ones to offer jobs to. I'd probably have to pick them out at random.

I have read a lot of résumés in my life. I've done critiques with EngSoc. I've picked co-ops to interview for Delano, a company I used to sysadmin for. And I go through résumés for co-ops and full-time positions at NITI.

There are some very good résumés and some very bad ones. I have to note that résumés from Waterloo students or graduates seem, on average, far more polished than their competitors. I don't know if this is because I'm biased to seeing the kinds of résumés coming from Waterloo, or if it because co-op students get so much practise writing them.

I certainly did. I probably spent more time writing and editing résumés than most people I know. Why is that? Well, one of the reasons is because people ask me to go over their résumés and improve them. Typically what we do is use their old one and write a new one from scratch. But the second, and more important, reason is because I started procrastinating when writing mine.

Which implies that I went and wrote a résumé programme that typesets and posts it for me. I figure that it's pretty eye-catching to people who've seen Computer Modern before. Plus, it was incredibly fun to write at the time.

But more seriously, I do want to note that some Waterloo students do put out horrible résumés. And they really shouldn't. After all, there are résumé critique sessions run by the student societies that you really should attend. And failing that, you can do a little research on the Internet for a tutorial. Do try to write a personalised cover letter for companies you really like. We almost always interview the funny ones.

I hope never again to read something that makes my eyes bleed. For one thing, it's bad marketing for yourself; you do want a crack at a job, right? Secondly, you do want to be nice to me: It really helps to have eyesight to work as a programmer, and my glasses are already thick enough.

I'm back in Montréal after a grueling two-days of interviewing. I was pretty sleep-deprived, but I seem to have survived. I did, however, crash for a while in Toronto before getting on the sleeper train here.

We were pleasantly impressed with a large number of the candidates we've interviewed. The ranking forms have already been submitted and now it's up to a big computer to crunch all the numbers and match students. It's like a dating game, but where brains count.

I spent some time in Waterloo seeing people, but was regretfully too tired to meet all the people I'd have liked to. Ah well, I understand that halfwitted will be holding a party sometime this term, so this will give me a convenient excuse to go down and visit.

I didn't sleep last night.

My entire weekend was filled with geeky things. On Saturday and Sunday, I did the following things:

1. Get ALSA working properly on my television
2. Get XVideo working properly on my television
3. Get BitTorrent working properly on my television
4. Do all of my laundry
5. Compute my Federal and Provincial taxes (yay refund!)
6. Get monitor mode working on my Orinoco wireless card

Actually, that last one was much harder than it should have been. It took several attempts before I finally git a set of kernel modules that would (a) load and (b) work. Now I can finally scan for available and open wireless networks. Which is very useful if you're stuck in a bus terminal hoping to read your e-mail.

By the time I was finished, it was about 4:00. So I packed things into my giant backpack, fixed up some food and water for Timin, and then headed out the door. Which is good, because the bus wasn't running yet, so I walked to the train station. In my groggy state, I picked up my train tickets at the teller but accidentally left my umbrella there. (It was drizzling this morning.) I shall have to see if they've got it when I return on Wednesday.

I arrived in Toronto by train, then in Waterloo by Greyhound. The trip was uneventful, mostly because I was unconscious most of the time. The people on the train were very nice and left me to snore peacefully. The bus was surprisingly comfortable as well. I must have been quite tired.

I got off the bus at the Kitchener bus terminal and was assaulted by a wave of heat and pollution. I waited in the bright sun for the 7D to arrive and noticed that my chest was constricting because of the poor air quality. I miss Waterloo a lot, but some things are best forgotten. Anyway, riding the bus was pretty interesting as I got to see all sorts of people. People that you rarely see in Montréal: white suburban teenagers trying to look like inner-city gangsters, vastly overweight men who take up two seats, and lank scrawny vampires who only get cathode-tube tans.

The bus stopped outside the CECS building and I thanked the bus driver and I got off. I walked inside to find dcoombs walking up the staircase with a co-ordinator. I hurried after them, calling out Dave's name. We gave a little presentation about the job, where Dave spent most the time speaking, and I spent most of the time staring into nothing. Mostly because I didn't know what was on the slides, and also because my brain was half-functioning.

After the presentation, Dave and I went to the hotel. (Where I'm typing this, incidentally.) I checked in and got the room right beside Dave's. I took a little nap, then it was off to Ben Thanh for UltimateSpringRolls. Which were still very very good. There was so much food that we brought some back to stick in the mini-fridge in my room. This will be so much better than the "continental breakfast" they serve here.

I came back to discover that Sarge had released over dinner. Hurray for everyone. Unfortunately, it seems like everybody is too busy to actually celebrate this fact. Come on people, it's not like Debian releases every year.

I suppose the only thing to do is to run a nice bath, soak in it for a while, and get some sleep. Tomrrow will be a day where I will have to ask tough questions and expect to get good answers. I should probably collate the résumés so that they are in the correct order and then acquire a pad of lined paper.

Got to Waterloo.

Group session. Introduced NITI. I should get a more active role in the presentation.

Meeting up with sailorfrag at 18:15 for dinner. Should be fun.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'll be getting on a train bound for Toronto. A brief walk after that and I'll be in the coach terminal, where I will catch a bus to Waterloo.

Once again, I'm returning to the University of Waterloo to do co-op interviews. We'll be choosing some skilled and lucky students to do a four-month stint at NITI. I really enjoy going down and talking to people about what they know and what they're doing, so I've been anticipating this trip all week.

While I'm down there, I should be available Monday and Tuesday evenings. I'll be hitching a ride to Toronto with dcoombs on Wednesday after our last interviews, and I think I'll stop at home for a couple of hours to pick up some stuff. People interested in seeing me should probably send me an e-mail, or just leave a comment here.

I can't wait.

I guess I really fell in love with that dorky college town, because I'm going back to Waterloo on Tuesday. dcoombs will be picking up the rental car bright and early, and we shall make the long drive to Waterloo.

There will be a group interview in the afternoon, and then we shall meet up with Jim for dinner. After that, I crash at his place.

The next day, we're going to interview some Human Cannonball candidates and, with any luck, we'll find people we like.

After that, I say goodbye to dcoombs and I sit around at Jim's place for the next two days. This is to force myself to get WvStreams 4.0.2 out the door. Which I've been saying for months now.

I'll be returning Sunday night. Maybe I'll be insane and splurge for the overnight?

Update: I guess I'll be back in Montréal and hopping back down. Ah well, I guess I will splurge on overnight travel then.

Update: Not going on Tuesday. I'll arrive later.

This was the most novel interviewing experience I've ever had in Waterloo. I have helped with them two times previous, but never before has the trip been so notable.

It's odd what kinds of twists life throws at you. Last week, I thought I wouldn't go back to Waterloo for years. Today, I just booked a train trip there.

dcoombs_rss went to Toronto yesterday. cloquewerk and messiahdivine left today. I will be leaving on Sunday.

We are there to interview Waterloo co-op (and non-co-op) students who want to GetaJob with us over the summer. This time, I'm not going to interview developers, although that's what I like doing best. Playing bad cop, that is.

No, this time I'm there to interview testers, because denizsarikaya is down with the flu. She's feeling pretty miserable, and deserves the bedrest. Plus, it's midterm season and students would hate us if they caught what she has. Heck, I don't want to catch what she has.

I'll be arriving on 6 February 2005 at 22:00. I'll be leaving on 9 February 2005 at 9:00. People in Waterloo who want to see me should probably comment here, and I'll arrange something. Even if I have to squeeze you into my sleep schedule. (I hate hotel beds anyway. They're always too soft and "luxurious".)

I'm heading down to Waterloo again. Sadly, I'm going to be quite busy, so I probably won't be able to make spontaneous dinner arrangements.

I found out that travelling by train isn't too expensive due to a BizPak, which makes things almost as cheap as a student fare. Yay!

Now I don't have to lie to Travel Cuts about still being a full-time student. My WatCard says that I am one until April '06. Isn't that nifty?

Yesterday, halfway through our list of ten candidates, a whole bunch of former co-ops went out to lunch with Coombs and me. We headed off to Ben Thanh Viet Thai, a place that serves the Ultimate Spring Rolls. Boy are they good.

Julie and I had dinner afterwards, which consisted of going to a "fine dining" experience in uptown Waterloo. She and I were very upset about the quality of the food, but at least they were able to cook my steak blue. As for Julie's seared tuna, the whole plate was waterlogged and mushy. I think we'll stick to our normal restaurants from now on.

Afterwards, I showed up to Julie's microeconomics class to sit around and wait for Coombs to show up on IRC. (He never did.) But I got to listen to Prof. Smith rave on about how Free Software (and other Groups of Interest) were changing the economy so that was quite interesting. Afterwards, I talked to icedrake where we had a small debate on whether user-interface people show know how to implement their designs.

I'm waking up far too early for my own good. How do I know this? It's still dark outside. This reminds me of getting up for choir practice, but this is a digression I will not take.

The reason I'm such an early bird is that we have a crop of interviews starting at 0900h, and if I don't get up this early, I'll never dig through all of my e-mail in time. Plus, I figured that I'd meet Kevin O'Keefe and denizsarikaya and give them moral encouragement. (They start at 0830h.)

Last night's information session was great. Lots of people showed up, and we got to encourage them to apply for jobs. Plus, I figure that my karmic imbalance of mooching off free food has been restored, as I have helped feed hungry undergrads. People seemed generally pleased to be there, and I hope we made a good impression on most of them. Happily, many old NITI co-ops were there, and I got to hand out drink tickets like there was no tomorrow.

I'm sitting in front of the television, beside ringzero and Dwayne. I think I'm ignoring Superman; the Space Channel is doing a tribute to Christopher Reeve.

I've just reviewed all of my notes for the interviews. Now I'm bored out of my mind. Julie's gone to do some homework and all I'm doing now is trying to hack. But failing, sadly. Maybe I should spam some forums to advertise our information session. I hope lots of people take advantage of our free food.

Here I am hacking on a manual for WvStreams, as I travel by train to Toronto. That's actually a layover for my trip to Waterloo. We're heading down there to hire another round of co-op students, this time for Winter 2005. Along the way, we'll feed and water them (for a much deserved mid-term break.)

However, I'm not really heading down this early because I like Waterloo a lot. I'm actually going down to visit some friends. Of course, I have to see Julie and she's graciously offered her couch and living room to me. Then I can also see ringzero and Adeel. I hear Kevin Fong is making a turducken for his dinner party, and I will be very happy to attend. In fact, I'm bringing some Montréal bagels to some ex-patriots who must endure Ontario bagels.

Oh yes. Before I hopped on the train, I showed Carlos around a small subset of the city. We went into some used bookstores, and he was able to procure some travel souvenirs. Unfortunately, my weakness for used books revealed itself, and I couldn't help buying a couple along the way. In my defense, they were purchased as gifts for others.

Anyway, I'll have to do a little NITI meet and greet on Monday, so if you want to see me, and don't want to tie yourself down to an actual schedule, you should show up at the University Club after 9pm. In fact, if you show up before, you can also apply to get a hacking job, or mooch off some free food.

I left for Waterloo on Monday, to interview Waterloo co-op students with dcoombs. It was an interesting experience being on the other side of the table, and I actually enjoyed it a lot!

As agreed upon last night, Joe, Dave and I went to eat spring rolls.

I met them at the CECS building and we drove to Cambridge. There we arrived at the Mecca of Spring Rolls: Ben Thanh Viet-Thai. The place was nice, and it looked like they put a lot of care into renovating. It was really bright and sunny indoors.

We each had a plate of spring rolls (#501 at $2.75) and then ordered some other sundry stuff. The spring rolls were pretty nice, they appeared to be bean sprouts, shitake mushrooms, vermicelli and baby-shrimps wrapped in a bean-sheet and then deep fried. What was really addictive was the fish sauce. It tasted like fish sauce, lime, rice vinegar and white sugar with chopped chili and carrot floating around inside it. I pored this sauce over my pad thai and it was really good.

So obviously, it isn't the spring rolls that are amazing. It's this sauce. I'm going to try to reproduce it at home so that I can make lots of friends. Although Dave seems to believe that they put crack in it.

Wow! NITI is such a cool company that when they promise free food, they actually deliver. They were even handing out Free Beer there, which is good. I think they sold the company alright, and I had a fun time walking around and answering questions about what it's like to work there. Lots of people seemed fun, and it looked like all had a good time.

It was interesting to see the place packed full of students. It's like a Microsoft presentation, minus the free gifts. I think some people were pretty interested in the technology and the work environment, and I think one guy was pumping Jim and I for information on interviewing.

N.B. The free food was Weaver's Arms food, which wasn't so good. But their wings are now bigger and tastier, so I might consider going there more often.

Speaking of food, Jim and I are going to go with Dave Coombs and Joe "Not Charles" Mason to lunch tomorrow. Somehow, we're going to go to some mythical Chinese restaurant in Cambridge where they serve UltimateSpringRolls. I have to try these, as Avery and Dave claim that they are the world's best. We shall see.