Posted
Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:47:28 GMT
to Posted in
Tags family, travel
Over the last week or so, I was entertaining family. Not only did my mom and sister fly from Ontario for a visit, but so did one of my aunts, and two grandparents (apparently a birthday present for my grandfather who recently turned 80).
The family did the tourist stuff by day while I worked and I took them to some of the good places to eat in the city and hung out with them in the evening. Went to PEI for the weekend, which was a nice change of pace.
Things were a little weird with 3 generations of family together though. This resulted in my ‘borrowing’ my little sister from time to time to do more interesting things, like introducing her to Freak Lunchbox and showing her some of the local pubs and meeting my friends (the pubs were her request).
In PEI, we basically did out own thing for the day. Rather than go and do the Anne of Green Gables stuff, which didn’t interest us that much, we instead hit up the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, the Wax Museum, and mini-golf.
It was a decent visit overall, despite a few technical difficulties. New stuff was seen, fun was had, and new jokes (which I am apparently not allowed to post here) were made.
Good times.
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Posted
Mon, 02 Jan 2006 04:35:10 GMT
to Posted in Life
Tags family, travel
Back from 10 days in the sticks of Ontario for Christmas with my family. While it did have its ups and downs, it was pretty interesting and much better overall than my last visit home. My flight to Ontario was the best flight I have ever had through Toronto. I like how Air Canada has fixed things so I don’t have to run from terminal 1 to terminal 3 and go through security again.
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Saw a lot of people while I was back. Between the regular Christmas day festivities and bouncing back and forth between various relatives I also managed to see some old friends from high school. Most of this occured on one event, called the Glencoe Gong Show, a yearly invite to dinner that started out with three of us 4 years ago and has grown to almost 20 people out of a graduating class of 62. Most of these people I haven’t seen in almost…..... 5 years now. It was interesting to hear what they have been up to and where they are now. Many are actually working on their graduate degree. One actually has a 7 month old son. It puts some things in perspective (almost done that undergrad degree….... almost…... almost…...)
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Posted
Sun, 04 Sep 2005 13:38:52 GMT
to Posted in Life, Programming
Tags New Jersey, travel, work
So writing 2 days behind turned into 3 turned into 4 turned into….... well, a week.
Things were pretty busy between diagnosing hardware problems (old power supplies dying really screws things up, you know?), software problems (no matter how many bugs you fix, running software in the field will always bring about more), and a combination of the two (what happens when you write code for a winch when you don’t have a 100% working example in the lab to test important things, like almost everything except movement).
End result: lots of code changes, lots of issues corrected, a lot of end user usability concerns written down. All in all this was pretty much what everyone expected going into this, and since nothing catastrophic happened, everyone appears quite happy. I had an awesome (though really tiring) time down here and am very glad I made the decision to. In the end, I learned a few new things, and came up with several ideas on both how to improve the user interface of the project as well as how to set things up in order to allow a trip like this to run more smoothly from the development side (I will be writing about some of those later).
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Posted
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 21:21:36 GMT
to Posted in Life, Programming, Work
Tags New Jersey, Rutgers, travel
Actually at the Rutgers University Coastal Observation Oceanographic Lab Station (also known as the RU COOL Station) today . I found out what the old Leo15 station used to run on. A Sparc 5 workstation. Though considering some of the old computers are old DELL machines, I think the Sparc 5 was probably a fine, fine choice at the time.
Apparently this place used to be an old coast guard station. Its a huge building. I can’t understand why there is no one here. Unless, of course, they all took a day trip to Atlantic City. Ah well, from the looks of things, if there are any hardware problems that will require the hardware team needing to take things offline for several hours that I will at least be able to try my hand at fishing.
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Posted
Sun, 28 Aug 2005 13:30:26 GMT
to Posted in Life
Tags New Jersey, social, travel
Note: I am now into day 3, but all the entries are going to be at least 2 days behind
So today I flew to New Jersey. I am, as you can imagine, both excited and a little nervous. Not as much as I was earlier, when it was 15 minutes before boarding and my supervisor, and the only programmer not on vacation, has yet to show up. I’ve been told that it is usual for him to show up right before the flight takes off.
Then Montreal: I managed to make my way through customs. It was pretty easy actually. The customs officer asked me about my wire, and when I told him that it was a cochlear implant, he knew what it was and had a little chat. Once I answered a few of my questions, I was through. One of my coworkers went right after me. He apparently told the custom’s officer “Oh, I am working with Sean” and the custom’s officer just said “Ok, have a nice trip”. I thought that was amusing, but after thinking about it, it is a little scary how simple a person can potentially get through.
We decided to head into Atlantic City for dinner. As all of us wanted to drink to a degree, we got a cab. The cab driver was not only the cab driver, but the owner of the cab company and the dispatcher. Listening to him talk to us, take calls, and dispatch cabs was like listening to a “Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie” skit (many of which I think are funny).
Next up was a mexican restaurant that was a large step above Mexi’s in service and entertainment. This is probably due to the fact that it was a REAL mexican restaurant with actual Mexican oweners. Chips were replaced when they ran out. Serving sizes were the same as Mexi’s. Live mexican singing, which was performed with much spirit.
And then the boardwalk. With casinos, tourist shops, fortune tellers, and massage parlors. And its beach bars, one of which had this awesome band that played a nice selection of 80s music. The sights, the sounds, the plethora of people, it was fun.
I have already decided I want to save up and go on a vacation somewhere…..... different from Nova Scotia, when I don’t have work, class, or any other responsibility other than to have fun.
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Posted
Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:30:14 GMT
to Posted in Life, Programming, Work
Tags travel
Reporter: “Sean Smith, you have just finished correcting 12 semi-critical bugs, what are you going to do now?”
Sean: “I’m going to Disney World New Jersey!”
So….... I have just finished a large stint of bug testing and fixing. Some last minute testing turned up a crop of bugs that were semi-critical and required resolution. The more frustrating part was that several of them were hardware problems, not software problems, due to someone blugging in an obviously damaged ethernet cable into the communication bus.
Due to my efforts, my relative familiarity with large sections of code, and the fact that most of the programmers are now on vacation (one on Maternity leave until the 4th, one on Vacation until then, and my supervisor just started a one week vacation so he could spend some time with his family), I was asked if I could possibly go to New Jersey with several other members of the team, to help with the deployment at Rutgers University.
Hmmm…..... let’s see….... I haven’t traveled anywhere besides to Ontario and back since my high school years. If I DIDN’T go, I wouldn’t really be doing much except waiting for bug reports and probably finishing up my work term report. I am supposed to move, but thanks to my compliment of truly amazing friends, I am putting my stuff into storage early and then moving into my apartment when I get back.
So yeah, I am heading down to New Jersey from the 27th to the 2nd. It should be an adventure.
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