I was just gently violated by my exams yesterday, only to have a slightly more inconvenient day today. Since I’m going to be telling this story to about a dozen people sooner or later, I might as well tell it here.

The day begun with me wasting three hours trying to make my laptops display 1080p resolution onto the new TV, only to learn that they can’t display wide screen to an external source (I still don’t know why made it work!). Both showers were broken and the TV lacked component cables, so I had to drive down to Plumbing Mart and BestBuy today (the only day I have access to the car). By the time I was done wasting time with the laptops, I realized it was almost rush hour and rushed off to the car. Once I got down to the car I was faced with a small dilemma: I forgot my keys, so I can’t get into the car, and I forgot my keys, so I can’t get back into the building. With more time wasted, I was officially in rush hour, heading down Dundas and looking for a tiny outlet store without any luck. What should have been a 10 minute drive to Plumbing Mart, turned out to be a 40 minute escapade of going back and forth on Dundas with thousands of other angry cars. After buying a “crane” and a “shower inverter”, I headed off to BestBuy.

I was driving south on Dixie Rd., approaching the intersection to Queensway E. (here). I needed to make a left turn on Queensway and the turn arrow for the intersection was blinking, but the car in front of me didn’t quite leave me enough room to change into the turning lane. I was already half way into the turning lane, and saw that the car in front of me (a black 4×4 Jeep Liberty, 2003) had literally two cars worth of space in front of it. Naturally, I honked a “could you move up?” at the driver. He started moving forward, so I started switching into the left lane… but he stopped. I didn’t see that he stopped, so my only indication was the noise of my right side mirror getting wedged between his car. I stopped immediately.

Okay, so it’s my first accident. I got out of the car and went up to his window to see if he was alright, but he was PISSED (and really stubborn). He kept accusing me of crashing into his car (he must have had some sort of higher education, because I have no idea how he gathered THAT </sarcasm>), and then completely ignored my apologies and attempts to cooperate, as fumed with his wife. Just to paint the scene a little, this was a Caucasian male (with a French surname) in his 50’s, with a woman that I gathered to be his wife. He kept threatening to go to the insurance and that it’s a brand new car, with chrome wheels, it’s going to be very expensive and he had to go through insurance because it was a rental. Later I asked what company it was rented from, and he said “no no, it’s not a rental, I own this vehicle.” Then he started making other things up, like some scratch on his door was also from the accident (even though there’s absolutely no way my car could have reached his door, even if it had arms.)

Anyways, long story short: A cop arrived, took both of our statements, wrote down our registration and driver’s license information, then we exchanged each other’s information, the cop said “there’s no point in reporting this to insurance because this is a minor incident and definitely less than $1000.” The only damage for his car (that was obviously made by mine) was a gray scratch on his back wheel bumper (them Jeeps have wheel bumpers…). In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his car was perfectly fine once the gray paint (which came from my car) is cleaned off. Measly old Honda Civic doesn’t stand a chance to his fancy black Jeep with chrome wheels. Seriously… chrome wheels? What’s up with that?

Oh, and to top it off, when he tried to move his car, it completely ripped off my side view mirror (which was only dislocated before). Too bad it was dark and can’t see anything in my cellphone photos.

Now I’m waiting for him to get an estimate from his dealership and to call me back. Sigh. I hope my insurance rates don’t get gently violated, too.

After finishing my 8 AM exam (yes, on a Saturday; and yes, it went well, thanks for asking), then having breakfast with Maria@Google and company, I had to run an errand which inadvertently (ok, it was advertent) turned into a four-store electronics shopping marathon. I don’t mean to brag, but I find it amusing how I only ended up buying one thing from each store. Let’s reiterate the journey.

1. Hard Drive: 320GB SATA2 Seagate @ PCCanada

   The story: I built a computer for someone last year, and their 120GB hard drive died. I had to get them to RMA the drive, but due to the recent Maxtor acquisition by Seagate, there were complications and it took 4 weeks. So, not to let the poor guy suffer a month without a computer, I bit the bullet and bought a 320GB drive for him to use until his comes back. Today, his came back, so I had to go down there and grab it. Effectively, I was getting my 320GB.

   From here, I went to look for a nice flat-key keyboard at BestBuy since PCCanada was out of stock.

2. Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution @ BestBuy

   The story: This mouse has been eluding me for months, ever since Dell put it up for $77 a few months ago — original price: $139. I missed the opportunity to buy it for that awesome price, and I’ve been regretting it ever since (curse you, Andrew@IBM, for not convincing me). I’ve been using my original Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer since 1998, when I bought it for $139 as well. I’ve had it replaced 3 times by Microsoft since then, but the warranty finally ran out and it’s near death again. Finally, I hunted it down for $79 at BestBuy, completely by accident. Alas, no decent keyboards in sight.

   Next stop, TigerDirect to look for a keyboard…

3. Hard Drive Enclosure: Vantec NexStar 3 @ TigerDirect

   The story: As I was walking through the store, I remembered that I don’t have any more SATA ports for the new hard drive and it looks like I wont be able to build my new computer as soon as I thought. I can’t let the 320GB hard drive just sit there… So I grabbed a nice SATA hard drive enclosure with eSATA and USB2 ports, to insure eternal-ish usefulness.

   Much to my dismay, TigerDirect was also out of flat-key keyboard stock. Off to CanadaComputers.

4. Keyboard: ENERMAX Aluminum Keyboard @ CanadaComputers

   The story: Last week I was eating cereal at my computer and in a lapse of judgement I let my hand control itself for a while — this is when it decided to drop the bowl and have milk go all over my keyboard. After some fun of trying to type on a sticky keyboard surrounded by cereal and milk, it short circuited which effectively made some of the keys permanently pressed. I had a spare plain cube-keyed keyboard to type on for a while, but I couldn’t live without my laptop-ish flat keys. Since the cheaper Logitech UltraX was sold out everywhere, I had to spill an extra $35 for the deliciously sexy brushed aluminum Enermax keyboard. Oh, it’s so sexy. And the keys feel great. I love this thing.

Moral of the story: Don’t go shopping for electronics after getting rejected by Google… again. All these are my birthday presents to myself. *Shifty eyes*

The final tally for this week (2006-12-04 to 2006-12-08), henceforth known as the (new) Week of DOOM:

• Assignments: 6
• Presentations: 1
• Interviews: 2
• Casualties: <Result pending>

Over a month since the last post, time to fill friends and potential employers in with what’s going on:

One week left until the semester is over, with one semester remaining after that. This means one really mean week of six assignments and a presentation, followed by two cuddly weeks of exams, followed by intense job searching and hobby coding.

I’m currently in the middle of yet another ordeal with Google, meanwhile exploring opportunities with startups in Toronto. If that doesn’t work out, I might have to resort to working at one of my backups. Not that there’s anything wrong with my backup job opportunities, it’s just not the most hip thing to do when you’re fresh out of school.

Aside from that, I’m tinkering with a light-weight tag-driven logging/ticketing system which will hopefully replace the minion of Satan that is WordPress. End of this week, expect a post pitching me to potential employers.