Money!

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What a pleasant surprise! I arrived home today and in my mailbox is a letter from the alberta government who as part of the Alberta Heritage Scholarship fund decided to award me a cool $2000 scholarship for my achievements in my first year of grad studies.

Sweet!

Since my finances are all well and good at the moment, I may well turn my new found wealth to my Television fund where I am looking to purchase a new fancy tv for my living room. Woohoo! I can actually afford a nice one now without dipping into my poker fund (which was my original plan). Crazy talk :)

Heraldk

An Anniversary

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It has now officially been 2 years since Diane and I started Dating. Naturally, we had to get out to see each other and we spent a lovely evening together. It wasn't all that fancy, but you know, that's part of the reason that I love Diane so much. Its a pretty big day for us ... two years is definitely not an insignificant amount of time. But part of what makes what we have so special is that we both feel the important part of the anniversary is to just spend time together. So we did. We went out for dinner at East Side Mario's which is not all that fancy, but has some pretty good food. Then we just spent the rest of the evening with each other. It was a simple evening, we exchanged a couple of small gifts, and we really just enjoyed each other's company.

I'm really amazed at how lucky I am with Diane. She's all I could ever hope for and more ... and I really kinda stumbled into the relationship. On a day like this, I just shake my head in amazement and say ... yay!

I think that's all one can do.

Heraldk

Holidays go by too fast

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I really should be working. But since I'm not, my holidays have been going by far too quickly.Still, its been a good holidays - lots of time with the family, and a couple friends are coming over tomorrow afternoon. Then there's new years and the two year anniversary for Diane and I coming up in short order! Amazingness!

Last night I watched Memoirs of a Geisha ... I don't know what rotten tomatoes has against it - I thought it really was a pretty good movie. Oh well. Maybe I'm just ignorant - I haven't read the book nor do I know anything about Japanese culture. *shrug* - from an ignorant standpoint, I thought it was good :)

Hope everyone is having a good holidays!

Heraldk

Work work

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I found out that there are some theoretical issues with my code so it turns out that I'll need to continue working right up until Christmas to see if I can find what the issues are. It also turns out that because of this, the results I've finished running already aren't valid anymore :( *sigh*

Oh well, its not so bad ... I don't really mind working right up until Christmas. My "job" is really fun - so while it would be nice to have a holiday, I'm having a good time anyways :)

Plus I get to see Diane today. That makes every day better :)

Heraldk

Poker Satellite!

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Saturday night was crazy. I bought a deep freezer for my condo, as well as a couple of Christmas gifts - and then picked Diane up. From there we visited three parties, including Diane's work party, a fantastic dinner at Lingnan, and then a birthday party for one of our friends from Dance class way back when. Lingnan was awesome. Amy, the owner of the lunchtime establishment in Scotia place (by the name of Chicken for Lunch) is an awesome host - particularly when you are a loyal patron of her Chicken for Lunch restaurant. She took care of us and gave us gifts and we ate far more food than we should have. It was awesome!

I didn't get long to sleep in today - we had a satellite tournament to send one of us to an upcoming Canadian Poker Tour event in January. Amazingly enough, I managed to come out on top - which I was hoping for, but not too sure if I could manage. There's a lot of luck involved, and I picked up some key hands that got me through. By the time I was heads up with Curtis, I had a pretty sizable chip stack and was able to take him out in a couple of hands. Hooray!

So I'm going to be looking into details on securing my seat - but I'm not too worried about getting in. Should be fun ... wish me luck! I know a lot more about poker than I did last January - maybe that will be a good thing!

Heraldk

Narnia

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Last night Diane and I joined several of my friends to go see the first of the Narnia films. It was amazing ... at least I thought it was really well done. I didn't really like the discovery of the wardrobe sequence - but other than that, I felt that the movie was really quite well done. I really quite enjoyed the Narnia books - and so I was quite excited to hear that they were making movies out of the books. My understanding is they are going to do them all ... which should be pretty cool.

So indeed ... a very good movie in my eyes and a movie to go see if you can!

Heraldk

CS Department Christmas Party and the Singing Christmas Tree

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Ahh Christmas ... so much to do, so little time! Saturday was the department Christmas party - and it was a blast as I kind of expected. The food was not spectacular, but the dancing was fun. Diane and I showed off our dancing skillz - though I felt really rusty at most of the dances other than the waltz. Our waltz is our best dance for sure :) The DJ at the party was a little too involved in the dance. At first it was pretty cool - with him playing several instruments along with the music. But after he switched costumes a few times and tried getting people to dance all night, I started to feel a little awkward. Oh wells. I also won the limbo contest, which was kinda fun. I dunno what I do right there - I just seem to know how to do it. Kinda weird :) For a prize, I got a cool see-through digital clock. It sits on my desk now :)

Last night I joined Diane and her mother to go see the singing Christmas tree. For those who haven't gone, its a big tree with tiers for a choir to get setup in it. Its usually pretty good - and while I didn't think it was too bad this year, there was a couple of things that I kind of didn't like. Mostly, I didn't like how the sound was setup. Usually, the capability of a largish choir to sing doesn't need a lot of amplification through the sound system. But using a little is okay too. However, some sort of effect was being applied I think, and the result didn't sound very good to me. The concert also seemed a lot shorter than past years too. *shrug*.

The other thing that I've started thinking over the past few years that I've gone there is that I'm feeling increasingly uncomfortable in a church like the one the tree is in. Its too ... over the top for me. I consider myself to be a Christian - at least in a lot of the ways I think about life and its opportunities. But I just can't feel comfortable in an environment where there's this big speaker setup, with tv monitors lining the aisles and corporate sponsers for the program and the refreshments. I'm fond of the little church my family goes to - its nice, its not near as flashy, and it just feels more comfortable. *shrug* This will probably come up later in another post. For now, I'll leave it at that.

It certainly doesn't look or feel like Christmas outside. All the snow is gone again - and its less that two weeks to Christmas. Weird weird weather. But no matter - I'm starting to look forward to a chance to take a holiday here ... I need some time off I think :)

Heraldk

Life

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I'm the luckiest guy in the world. At least, I'm really really fortunate with what I've managed to accomplish in this life of mine so far ... and honestly, I'm not too sure that I deserve it all.

First and foremost, Diane and I have an amazingly loving relationship. From the way I stumbled into the relationship, I'm a little surprised that it turned out so well. It turns out that we have so much in common that we've just clicked. Its pretty amazing when the worst things we have to argue about are things like who gets to pay for dinner or the movie.

My family is caring and wonderful. They are a significant reason why I was able to put together the funds to purchase my condo. My dad lets me borrow the car just about any time I want, and I'm always welcome home for dinner! ;-). Those are just the physical things that are easy to describe how wonderful they are!

I own my own condo which I'm hoping to have paid off (with a little help) in around five years. I love living on my own. Don't get me wrong, living with my parents isn't too bad - it certainly had its perks. But there's something about having the freedom to come and go under your own whims ... something I could never really do at home. I think I've settled down pretty well - though perhaps I need to force myself to start trying new food recipes so I don't just eat the same things all the time.

I'm in grad school working on a master's degree on something I've grown to like a lot: poker. I have a scholarship that is paying my living expenses as well as putting me through grad school. I have one of the best supervisors in the research world, and its a fun laid-back environment to learn and develop my computer science skills.

Really, not only do I have no reason to complain about anything, I feel kinda spoiled. Its not that life has been easy ... that's certainly not it. But I feel super-amazingly fortunate, and I don't know how to describe it. I don't want to gloat ... I just want to put how I feel into words and this isn't a bad place to put it (since as far as I know, there's only one person that regularly checks in on this blog).

And that's how I feel. Heraldk

Esks Win!

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What a wild weekend. Friday night was a pretty calm night as I pretty much just stayed home and watched the hockey game (an exciting game between the oilers and flames ending in a shootout Oiler win... yay!). I also won another $75 player poker that night. Full tilt has been an awesome room for me this week.

Saturday morning I had to be up to get to first aid training. I needed a recertification, so this was the second of two training sessions. Thankfully, its over now - the course definitely isn't all that exciting. The best parts were laughing at the acting jobs of the people in the St John's ambulance videos. Some of their "painful groans" were really funny.

Saturday evening my parent's had Diane and I over for dinner - an offer I couldn't refuse. One of our family friends was up from Calgary and so her and my mom and my sister all went to the Opera that night after dinner. Elizabeth got a chance to see my condo on the way and she seemed pretty impressed :)

Diane and I spent the evening together. We had intended on going to see Harry Potter, but ended up missing the show we wanted to see so we just hung out. Its pretty wonderful to spend an evening with my sweetheart :)

Sunday was crazy busy. Elizabeth, mom, Diane and I all went to the UofA mixed chorus dress rehearsal for their yearly Christmas concert. I understand its tradition that they put on a show at Strathearn United Church every year before the actual concert at the winspear. It was pretty cool to watch. Then, we wandered down to Rutherford house where we had a lovely little lunch.

After that, Diane and I parted ways with the rest of the group and went south to join Leanne and Jon's grey cup party. It was a pretty intense game and there were many moments where we were on the edge of our seats hoping that the esks could come back. Next year's grey cup has little chance of being this exciting!!

Afterwards we needed to leave so I could get the car home, but it was a very fun party and a super exciting game to watch. I'm still amazed at how it all turned out!

All in all, a busy weekend. Now I'm tired and need to sleep :) But I have to get through today first!

Heraldk

Floor Hockey playoffs

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So I'm a member of the computer science grad school floor hockey team. We're playing in a division that isn't high on the competitive scale, but of course everyone likes to win. We finished the regular season (all of three games) with an 0-3 record, but I don't think that record was fully deserved. We actually played pretty well, and didn't lose by more than 2 goals on any of those games. For those unfamiliar with the campus rec floor hockey league, the games tend to be high scoring affairs with many lopsided wins happening. Our games we played had scores of 3-1, 5-4, and 5-3. Amazingly low scoring, tight games for the league! Had the ball bounced in our favour a little more we would've potentially won all three of our regular season games. So last night we played our first playoff game. If we won, we would go on to the final. We came out firing ... scoring three goals in the first period. We only had 7 guys besides our goalie, so we tired ourselves out pretty fast. But after getting up 3-0, we were able to hold the opposing team to only one goal in the 2nd period. Our goalie played fantastic, and we ended up winning 4-1. Several hilight reel saves from our goalie and some pretty clutch defensive plays including a penalty kill in the third period were what backstopped our win.

Oh, and I scored my second goal of the season, which means I've now scored more goals this season than all others combined. Haha. I'm not exactly an offensive player. In fact, I'm lucky that my shot this time around actually made it in, because I had a huge amount of net to shoot at but I hit the post instead and it bounced in from there. *whew*. I like to play a defensive minded game where I knock the ball off my opponent's stick and send them running back for it. I leave the fancy plays for those who can make them ;-)

So we're on to the final next week. Wish us luck! We could win our second campus rec t-shirt in as many years!

Heraldk

Successful Poker Party

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Well I'm glad for all the people who were able to make it to my poker party on Saturday. It was quite the event! We held two tournaments, the first before dinner and the second afterwards. The first was a full 10 people and the second was 13 people large! Congrats to Curtis and JR who won each respective tournament. Also, congrats to Kepi and Curtis who made the money in both tournaments. I think (hope) that everyone had fun. The food everyone brought was amazing and it was nice to have people over finally. I hope to hold more parties soon.

Heraldk

Confidence

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It seems like life is all about confidence. If you are confident in who you are and what you are doing, you will tend to succeed at the things you do. Not only that, succeeding breeds further confidence and from there you go onto doing bigger and better things. But confidence is a fickle quality. If, despite your confidence, you start to fail, then watch out! And just like gaining confidence breeds more confidence, losing confidence breeds more lack of confidence.

I have found that through the earlier portion of my life, I have taken many a hit to my confidence. I have now started to realize that my confidence levels at this point in my life are the highest they have every been. Its not hard to see why. I've got a big scholarship, a caring family, keen interests in several areas including my field of study, and most importantly, a loving relationship with Diane. When looked at this way, I can't help but feel a little proud of what I've managed to accomplish. I am loath to say anything particularly good about myself. Frankly, I hate boasting, and I try to keep my ego in check by realizing that there are so many people who better than me at anything that I can claim any measure of skill at.

Still, my record looks pretty. Or at least shiny. Well ... maybe not even that.

My life is an interesting story. There's a whole lot more to it than I'm entirely willing to put up here on my blog for everyone to read. Lets just say that throughout my life confidence in myself has been ... probably a lot less than is probably healthy. My low confidence levels led to moodiness, over self-examination, and low comfort levels around other people. I found myself retreating away from people who I didn't understand - which turned out to be nearly everybody. I found my niches of interests and found people who shared some of those interests and we hung out where the geeks hang out. Away from popularity.

Its taken me a long time to embrace who I am. Even now, at the highest level of confidence ever, I still find that I feel awkward around people. I find that I feel like people are judging me. Evaluating who I am based on the actions that I take. I'm pretty sure that people don't do that. But I can never be sure - and until then I find myself always careful about what I say. I feel foolish when I say something that could be misjudged and whenever that happens I find that I will closet myself up to prevent it.

Its really odd thinking about confidence like this. Lately, I've started to feel really confident in myself. Its an amazing feeling ... one sometimes wonders just how long it will last.

Heraldk

A lovely Sunday brunch

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My sister gave Diane and I a wonderful little Christmas present last year. A gift certificate for La Ronde to have a Sunday brunch there. For those who don't know, La Ronde is a rotating restaurant on top of the Crowne Plaza hotel. You get a beautiful scenic view of downtown Edmonton and the river valley, and if you don't like your current view, you only have to wait a few minutes and you'll have a new view! :) Its a classy joint. I'm not the most comfortable with these higher end establishments - I kinda feel like people are watching me and disapproving of me. Its probably just my imagination. Still, the company (Diane) was wonderful, and the food was amazing. The view was incredible on a sunny Sunday afternoon ... and really, the whole day was just fantastic. So, many thanks to Megan for her generous gift. It certainly was nice :)

Heraldk

Hockey Night In Canada

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Wow. My dad was able to get a pair of awesome tickets from his boss to last night's Vancouver vs Edmonton game and I got to take my sweetheart to the game. It certainly was an experience and a half!!

The house was packed with fans including a surprising number of vancouver fans. The game was exciting, though extremely frustrating in the 3rd period when the Oilers got into penalty trouble. Edmonton took a 2-1 lead into the 3rd period but almost lost the game. It was 3-2 until the final minute when Edmonton had a powerplay and had their goalie pulled ... and managed to score the equalizer.

Overtime solved nothing and we got to see our first shootout - where the Oilers showed quite a lot of talent - Torres and Hemsky scored for Edmonton while Maarkenen stopped both Naslund and Bertuzzi.

The atmosphere in a packed and pumped Oiler crowd is amazing. The volume when we scored was deafening, and we had to laugh as many of the Oiler fans shouted out their very opinionated comments at the refs. Like "This is the worst game I've ever seen in terms of ref-ing". I say that while I was none too happy about the number of penalties the Oilers took - I can't say that we should blame the refereeing. They did a really good job, and its the penalty crackdown that we need to make the game better. So kudos to them.

Heraldk

Edmonton Stratovarius Show Review

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Boy was I excited. And nervous. Since I found out that Stratovarius was coming to town, I was really wondering what sort of crowd would turn up to a band that is, as far as I know, virtually unknown in town. I was also nervous that the people I had dragged to come see the show (like Diane) wouldn't like it and be forced to endure a few hours of misery.

Thankfully, I really had no reason to worry. Metal fans came out of the woodwork and we had a decent sized crowd - more people than I expected for sure!

Now for my show review.

I arrived at the door around 8:00. The starlite room is a members only club - so some of the people in my group needed memberships. We hung around there and got memberships for them and then entered the place. This was the first time I'd been at the starlite room - it was a pretty neat venue. Pretty small, but my first thoughts were that it was an awesome little venue to see a top notch band like Stratovarius.

The opening band, Into Eternity, started up at 8:45pm sharp. I had not heard anything by them before, and I think its obvious that I would have benefited from doing a little research before hand. I wish people would realize that its not all about making music as loud as possible. Sure, more volume can make things sound really good. But the clarity and balance of all the instruments together that makes for a good listening experience. That is my biggest complaint for the opening band - they seemed extremely talented, but because of the balance issues, I could barely hear the middle range of the vocals. The only notes we heard were when they were growling into their mics or when the lead singer hit some super high notes. I may have to take a listen to some of their music to see if I like them. Unfortunately, the show was not enough to make me buy a cd right then and there.

Finally, Stratovarius made it on stage, and they started in with a great deal of energy. The volume/balance issue did affect them too, but to a lesser extent as more of the Strato songs included quieter ballad songs that took us away from the sheer volume for a few songs. Still, the balance was a major complaint of mine and if I hadn't heard the songs before I think I would've enjoyed the show a little less than I did.

Don't get me wrong - the show was amazing. I find myself wishing that I had more time to spend with my keyboard to try and learn how to play as well as Jens Johannson. For those who don't know, he used to play backup keyboards for Yngwie Malmsteen - often heralded as one of the best speed guitar players. So Jens is a pretty amazing keyboardist since he was able to keep up with Yngwie, and is now playing with Timo Tolkki - who is pretty amazing as well.

They could've kept playing for another hour and half at least and not run out of songs. Stratovarius has a long list of cds they've put out over the years. I think the count is up at 12 cds or something, and almost all the songs on the discs are good enough to be played in a live show like this one. Unfortunately, they couldn't play all night, since they needed to be in Calgary the next day ... They gave us a good selection of music from their repertoire, including some old and some new.

They played two encores - the first ending with Hunting High and Low and the second ending with ... of course ... Black Diamond. There was a startling number of fans who knew the words to many of the songs and that was pretty sweet.

All in all, it was a pretty incredible evening. I'm very happy that they came to town, and at the end of their show they had a slide at the back that said they were coming back in 2007! Woohoo!

Maybe I can drag a few more people to the show this time ;-)

Heraldk

Canoe down the N. Saskatchewan

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On Saturday, Diane made plans to have us rent a canoe and be shipped down to Devon to spend a day floating down the North Saskatchewan river into Edmonton. Its a pretty relaxing experience - as long as you have a nice day. Since you're floating down river, you don't even really have to paddle unless you'd like to. You can relax, lay back and enjoy the company of your partner. For those who haven't done the trip, I'd recommend it. If you don't have a canoe and/or have problems getting yourself to devon to start the trip, you can go through the same people we did: Canoeheads.com. They shuttle you to devon and have canoes, lifejackets and paddles if you need them.

Makes a nice relaxing day :) After canoeing, Diane and I went over to my parent's place for barbequed steak and a game of cards. All in all ... a good day!

Heraldk

Mark’s Bday

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Last night was Mark's birthday so of course we had to celebrate! His plan was to go down to the Melting Pot, but when we arrived we realized it was closed (and being replaced ... alas I will not be able to taste their ginger beef which was apparently really really good). So instead, we wandered down to Chianti's for cheap pasta Tuesday. Really, I think its one of the best deals in town ... the food is really good and it doesn't cost very much - $6.99 a plate. After dinner we wandered across the street to Chapters to let dinner settle before dessert. After Nolan finally got decided what he was buying, we went the the Marble Slab ice cream shop for dessert.

Haven't heard of the slab? Goodness, let me fill you in. The marble slab is an awesome ice cream shop - they make all their flavours in house. You choose a flavour like you would normally do at any other ice cream place, but then you also choose candy (like coffee crisp, crispy cruch, skor, smarties, chocolate chips), or fruit, or nuts. They then take your choices and mix them together on a big marble slab and then slide it into a waffle cone. It is fantastic ... and even though its a tad pricey, its certainly worth it.

Anyways, tonight Diane and I are going to see the Great Pretenors - a fringe holdover that Diane really wanted to see but couldn't get tickets because they sold out too fast. So I'm going to that, and then on to the CSGSA games night! Fun!

Heraldk

Life goes on

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It has been awhile since my last post. My life has been pretty busy over the last little while. I've been taking a break from the "play poker every night" thing. Last week I lost a little more than I was comfortable with so I decided to take a break, and read my books a little more to figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out I was actually making some pretty major mistakes and the last few sessions have been a lot better. Now I just have to try and win the money back that I've already lost. Diane and I are still getting on splendidly. She's been looking for a new job to replace her current one when it expires in early September. I hope she finds something good. It'd be nice to see her get a nice more permanent job so there isn't a constant "find another job" thing going on. We've been spending a lot of time with each other, and I must say that I don't think I've every been happier. *insert random sappy sound here*.

My university research is starting to pick up. I've been working on a tool to analyse poker games and to give us an idea of which player had better luck in a match shorter than a statistically significant number of hands. Its turning out to be a very interesting program, and I've got some interesting results already from it.

The Fringe is on now! I've been once already to see Theatresports (there really isn't much better than some improv), and plan to go back to see at least another show or two.

And ... that's about it! Its been busy but its also been great. Oh, and having my own place is awesome :)

Heraldk