Ike!

Hurricane Ike has been battering the Texan coast for a couple of hours now. For us up here in Calgary we're blessed by the rocky mountains (and lack of any shores) that shield us from hurricanes. Which is kinda sad depending how you look at it. Check out this picture I found of some dude in Galveston, Texas.



He makes riding 100 mile per hour winds seem kinda fun.

The fort.

School has started and we're working at full capacity here at the fort. Cause of that I personally haven't had a chance to sit down and think about something meaningful to rant about. For the past two days I've been going through my first classes and becoming familiar with my final four courses. Everything else has been pretty quiet here. We're still looking to develop the desolate empty space between my quarter and Armen's. All that we have right now is a chair (very uncomfortable), a coffee table, two end tables and a TV with no cable. I honestly would be very surprised if I see that TV turned on at any point during my stay.



As far as our kitchen goes, I think we're pretty lucky. For the first time since I've moved out, I've had the pleasure of living in a place that comes with a dishwasher. I'm also very proud to see how clean and tidy our kitchen has been for the past week.




This is the fort. More the come

Posters

One of the more memorable moments of living in residence was moving-in and moving-out. When you're moving-in you're excited about the year ahead of you, the people you will meet and the things you will learn. This excitement, at least for me, helped cope with the back breaking labor that comes with actually moving in. Moving boxing up and down stairs, pushing shopping carts and hooking up your computer is no cake walk. However no deadlines, and being able to crowd your room at a steady pace through out the year helps with the whole process. Moving out on the other hand is another story. Within 24 hour of your last final exam, you're responsible for returning your room the way you received it, dismantling eight months worth of decoration. Having to say goodbye to the room can be heartbreaking and is usually followed by the realization of how you will most likely misplace half your stuff, break a couple of things and ruin all your posters.

For these reasons alone, in the past two years I have followed a strict policy of living light. The policy itself is very simple, move in all the stuff you need and leave behind what you don't. As simple as it might sound there is a slippery slope when it comes to deciding what is necessarily and what is not. For examples, my xbox and playstation 2 are unnecessary, therefor I don't take them out of storage. Old notes, binders and textbooks are unnecessary, therefore they stay behind. Things like printer, laptop and winter clothing are necessary so every year when I move in, they'll participate in my academic quest. But other stuff like the TV, or my monitor ( I've been using a laptop instead of a desktop for a while now) fall in between.

Moving in to Fort McMorley however changed everything. Such a move had to be accompanied by a new and revised edition of the policy. This time around I turned my strictly light policy to a more lenient one. However one of the things I kept on the unnecessarily pile regardless, were posters. They're a bitch to take off and a pain to pack. They don't fit in any sized box and are prone to being damaged. With that in mind it was decided that my walls will be kept naked and my four month stay in Fort McMorley will be a poster-less one. Until I saw this:



It was love at first sight. Not love in a sense of how I would love to be hitting up this chick. But in a sense of how this one image was encompassing all the themes to my university life. Explaining all the aspects of how that is so, would result in a very long post. Someone who knows me very well however would agree that this poster was made with me in mind. When I first saw it, I knew this poster was not like other posters. Of all the unnecessaries, this poster would be a necessary. A sense of one-nites(sp?) was formed and I knew I should get it. But no matter how relevant and perfect it was, it was still a poster. I was split between showing a weakness of character by flip-flopping on my own promise to myself or sticking to my no poster policy. I decided to let it go. I said to myself, if tomorrow, I still feel the way I do today, I will buy it. I walked away...

IT crushes dreams

IT crushes dreams, grinds it to bits, burns it to dust and then takes a dump on it. It's not surprising to see IT's regarded as one of the most stressful careers in North America. Every years thousands of Americans waste best years of their lives learning the trade, all in hope of a stable and safe career. They spend endless hours behind computers, tweaking settings and trial'n erroring random tricks just to make it work. After all the router juggling and RAM installing, when a hire-able level of ITness is reached, they move from college labs to company cubicles. Here begins an exciting journey of more sitting, tweaking, installing, juggling and trial'n erroring. However this time around their work is no longer like the assignments they got in school. It no longer consist of company x wanting to set up an extensive network of computers, servers, printer, scanner and other office worthy gadgets. But instead it's endless hours of sitting around waiting for the dumb secretary up front to forget her password or the old fart up in management wanting to go over why he shouldn't download “The Cool Aquarium Screen Saver” he got in his email... for the 500th time. The complexity and challenge of IT work diminishes as days go by. Dumb secretaries finally learn how to remember a password and the old fart management guys give up on their computers all together. What you're left with is your life withering away in front of a computer. Arguing why IT budgets should not be cut becomes your only ever improving skill. You can no longer carry a conversation with a woman cause it's a fact that IT workers never get ass and have to resort to Japanese anime for any form of female interaction (maybe not even that). You also can never get over the fact that being in IT does not have the “panty-dropping” feel that comes with being a software engineers. Something you could have been, and probably would have been great at it too.

Which brings me to my other point. If your company is blessed by an engineering division you're worse off. Although the idea that working with engineers results in less argument and headache might seem natural the opposite becomes your reality. These self righteous group of tinker-heads tend to look down upon anyone who didn't spend half a semester in college designing hammers. They refuse to accept that they're mortals and prone to mistakes and god forbids if someone knows something that they don't. They sit behind computers thinking “I'm an engineer, I can do no wrong , check out this email I'm going to send, I'll make sure I'll send it to everyone on the network, I will load it up with pictures of my friends wedding, 114 megabytes? That doesn't sound like a lot. Send.” Then you see your Friday night change from going out with friends to sitting in your cubical and cleaning mess up. One thing engineers are great at is standing behind you and breathing down your neck while you try and remove the virus they unleashed on their computers. Huffin, puffin, and making snarky comments like “well the virus scan YOU installed on the computers should have detected it.” or “ we spend so much on IT every year, how can YOU guys let something like this happen?” Life is great.

Then it hits you, somewhere between the time you're banging your head against a wall or grinding your teeth, that you should have listened to your wise and brilliant friend. He warned you of the black hole that is IT. He told you “ Armen, IT work crushes dreams, stay way”. Now he owns a multi-million dollar software development company and you're stuck installing RAM. He spends nights with his many girlfriends on his 11 million dollar yacht, looping around the Caribbeans while you spend your nights rebooting servers and mopping the floor. IT work crushes dreams, stay away.

-Reza Shirazian