So, the Engineering Year-end Formal/Grad last night, and it was a fantastic time. Showing off the Stick of Office was lots of fun.

I had to speak, and while I don’t think my speech was all that amazing, I found a good quote for it, an excerpt of which is given below:

George Bernard Shaw once wrote:
“Some see things, and they say ‘Why?’
But others dream things that never were, and they say ‘Why not?’”

As you continue on in life, and especially as Engineers, never forget to say “Why not?”

I never cease to enjoy the Dean’s Benediction.

I’ve not blogged in a while, so I figured my poor blog deserves an update just when I need to be studying the most. Go figure. Here are a few (in the words of Bob McLeod) “short snappers” about what’s going on with me right now:

• First off, I’ve been elected as the new Senior Stick of Engineering. I’m excited, but right now it adds another level of complexity to an already busy life.
• I also have a job for the summer doing research under an NSERC Student Research Award with Gabe Thomas (he has a beard now and is generally much less serious that than picture would have you believe). I’ll be doing medical image processing of one kind or another, which I’m looking forward to.
• Thesis idea: real-time, hardware implementation of an encryption algorithm in an inline device for IDE/ATA hard disks. Sounds like fun with FPGAs, discrete math, and key management. Now for a thesis advisor, and partners.
• Doug Buchanan’s Digital Systems Implementation (DSI) is rocking my socks. It’s amazing that we have high-speed desktop computers at all, given how complicated and error-prone the IC manufacturing process is. And yet we keep asking for more from those poor IC designers, who must curse Moore’s Law every day they arrive at work.
  Corollary: I think I’ve discovered my two loves in Engineering: signal/image processing and VLSI.

• Speaking of Dr. Buchanan, I’ve created a top five list of my all-time favorite ECE profs. Here they are, in no particular order:
  - Doug Buchanan
  - Gabriel Thomas
  - Dean McNeill
  - Witold Kinsner
  - Joe LoVetri

  Not to be outdone, Trim is in a separate class of favorite non-ECE professors. He’s right up there with H. M. Soliman.

• Engineering Grad is next Saturday, and I need to write a speech. What would you like to hear me talk about?
• Finally, SEP2 sucks. That’s what I’m supposed to be studying for right now, but I can’t bring myself to look at the Visitor pattern or other such BS. I hope I don’t have to study comics that somehow represent design patterns. Sigh. This course needs to be put out of it’s misery. Come on, CEAB.

You can call (and have called) me Stephen, Steve, Esteves, Woodrow, s-dub, bbs and other interesting names. Even the University has a special ‘name’ for me: my student number. And now, one more way of referring to me: VE4SRW.

That’s right, I’m a certified amateur radio user, or Ham (:P), and VE4SRW is my callsign. You might catch me broadcasting at 50Mhz or above the next time I’m near a transceiver, which probably won’t be very often.

And on that note…

CQ CQ CQ DE VE4SRW VE4SRW VE4SRW
CUL
VE4SRW SK

// START SHAMELESS PROMOTION

Come one and all to UMES’ upcoming social, The Big One: Urban Sprawl, on Saturday night (Jan. 28).

We’re turning the WAG into an urban wonderland, complete with a good and bad side of the tracks. Feeling upscale? Stay on the good side of the tracks with the Posh Café and full service bar. Want to go slumming? Then wander over to the rough side of the tracks…

Tickets are only $10, and you can pick them up from us (UMES), amongst other places. Check out bigone.ca for all the details.

// END SHAMELESS PROMOTION

Lenovo, the new makers of the “IBM” Thinkpad, are toying with the idea of changing the Thinkpad’s classic black to a titanium finish. And they want your opinion, so let them know which side you’re on (hint — choose black). Perhaps best about the whole marketing gimmick is the Persuadatron. The best choice is the CEO with the british accent — he says the following (it’s fantastic):

I like black. Black means profit, a word that’s very dear to my heart. Besides, this titanium thing has fad written all over it. People don’t want looks. They want reliable, powerful workhorses. Like my good self. Choosing black is like money in the bank.

As I sit here writing this in the hallway of Windsor’s Radisson Riverfront hotel at 3am EST, with Britney Spears’ Oops!…I Did It Again playing very very quietly as muzak on the hotel’s PA system, Bernard Dione wandered out of his room to see what I was up to and remark on what a nice roommate I must be to be out in the hall on my computer while the rest of my delegation is asleep. Drunken laughter trickles out from beneath the doors of some of the other rooms in the hallway. And I’m not tired.

In other exciting news, the U of C recovered SuperCow tonight after a four month-long Ontario junket following le PM. Suffice it to say, they’re glad to have her back.

Ah, Congress.

More thoughts will follow soon, but the random thought of the moment is that Manitoba’s public smoking ban has been sorely missed on this trip…

ETA: It turns out that after being such a “nice roommate”, I forgot my key card in the room. Luckily, a hotel employee happened by not too long after (before I tried knocking hard) and allowed me back in.