Rogers sucks.

I forgot how much I hate Canadian telecommunications companies. Especially Rogers.

I've been looking forward to opening day of the NFL season all summer, and when that day finally arrived, the afternoon was bittered by the Rogers Cable monopoly. I was most looking forward to the Patriots vs. Jets game as they've supplemented their receiving core with Dante Stallworth and Randy Moss - two new huge targets for Brady. Unfortunately, that game isn't on any of the channels we get, we get the Buffalo Bills game on EVERY freakin' channel. The channel information might say that the game is on, but nope, ALL BILLS ALL THE TIME. Considering the proximity to New York and New England, you'd think Rogers might consider giving some coverage to that game but I guess they're just huge Bills fans. I guess it's Global TV's fault too, but I still hate Rogers.

Complaint #2. As my housemate Ryan and I were whining to each other about how we want to see the Patriots game, we got to talking about how much Rogers sucks at other things too. Wireless data plans. As smartphones become more popular, more people are subscribing to wireless data plans on top of their voice plans. Apparently, it's a lot more expensive in Canada, strangely more expensive than Rwanda.



Also, Rogers offers great deals such as 0.5 MB per month for $12. And if you use more somehow, it will only cost you $22/MB over. They say this will easily be enough for 10-15 emails per day. Hmmm. 15 emails per day, at 1 kb per email (essentially empty), will run you 450 kb after 30 days.

Apparently they used to offer "unlimited" data plans as well, but the fine print had the catch that anything over 25 MB is abusive. T-Mobile has a real unlimited data plan with 1000 anytime minutes for $59.99. Rogers offers 150 minutes and 25 MB for only $95 per month. Apparently Canada just doesn't have the technological infrastructure to offer a cheaper alternative.

Rugby Update

For the first time in three years I am playing rugby competitively. I played throughout high school and in my senior year ended up captaining the squad, although that was probably due to the overall inexperience of the rest of the players, and probably not due to my leadership or rugby skills.

A quick rugby explanation for all my reader. Rugby consists of 15 players per side - 7 backs and 8 forwards.

The backs are usually assigned as follows:

Back 3 - Right Wing, Left Wing, Fullback: Usually the fastest players on the side, responsible for returning kicks and known for finishing tries.

Centers - Inside Center and Outside Center: Big, hard runners who can make a pass, run straight and hard, and tackle well. The inside center is similar to a full back in Football and the outside center is more like a tail back.

Fly Half - Quarterback of the team: he decides which plays to run and who should get the ball. He is also usually the best passer (along with the Scrum Half) and best kicker on the team.

Scrum Half - Usually the smallest, scrappiest player on the team. He is a very strong passer and is the link between the forwards and the backs.

The forwards are assigned as follows:

Front row - Loosehead and Tighthead Props, Hooker: These guys are the first row in the scrum. The hooker is the person who hooks the ball back into his side with his foot when the ball is tossed in to the scrum. The props are usually the biggest guys on the team and are used for their crashing and mass (Lineman in football)

Second Row - Locks: These players are strong tacklers and runners and usually the tallest two fellows on the pitch. They are the ones that are hoisted into the air during lineouts.

Flankers: The best tacklers on the team - think of them as line backers in football.

8: The back of the scrum. He controls the ball with his foot and must be able to run like a back but hit like a forward. One of the busier players during the game.

/* Start boring stuff about me - skip if you don't have time */

Alright, in my early high school rugby days I played on the wing which tends to be where many teams put new players to learn the game. You don't get very much action out there but it is a critical position if the team can move the ball around. Later that year and for the next couple years I played in the centers and enjoyed that position immensely as you get a lot of passes but you tend to get hit really hard really often. In my final year I played Fly Half which was a lot of pressure but a lot of fun. Our team really sucked that year so there wasn't that much pressure. This year I'm playing out on the wing again mainly, but I've played a couple of games at fullback as well. This league offers a much more competitive game than what I played in high school, mainly made up of university players and wiley veterans.

I've played about 7 games with the club and we aren't doing very well (2-5) but we are starting to come together as a team. The club has 4 teams - Waterloo County 1, Waterloo County 2, Cambridge Pirates, Kitchener Knaves. We all practice together, but are in different leagues. WC1 and WC2 are in the Ontario Rugby Union Keenan I and II leagues respectively (one and two leagues beneath the Ontario premiership). Cambridge and Kitchener play in Niagara Rugby Union A and B respectively which are competitive leagues but not as tough as the ORU league. I play for the Pirates and absolutely love the group of guys we play with. Good attitudes, tough players, and they love to party after the games. The reason we aren't doing so well is because the other teams in the NRU A put their first team out every week. We tend to get the second and third string players from the club since the first string players and lots of second string players all play for Waterloo County. However, another year as a group and we'll be much more competitive.
/* End boring stuff about me */


There are so many reasons I'm attracted to this game:

1. You get to do everything! Play smashmouth and knock some lights out or play with finesse and precision. Every player on the pitch gets to tackle, kick, pass, and run. In football you have one job and you probably don't get involved in most of the game play.

2. You can play as long as you are able. Similar to hockey, soccer, and slo-pitch, there are plenty of men's leagues around the country and there is no age limit. Many places also have old-timers leagues that you can play in if you're over 40.

3. Sportsmanship. You pound some guy's face into the mud all game and then he buys you a beer after the match. The so-called "third half" is the beer up that always takes place after the match and it is mandatory. Lots of chugging competitions and sing-a-longs.

4. Culture. Due to its origins in England, the rugby culture feels very British. And its a nice change of pace. The field is called the pitch, your cleats are called boots, your uniform is called your kit, out of bounds is called "into touch", a game is called a match, speed is called pace, and so on.

5. Fitness. Rugby is more running than any other sport I can think of. It's very sprint/stop with a lot of physical contact which keeps its players in really good cardiovascular shape as well as keeping overall strength and speed up.

Anyways, we have about 3 more matches left this season and then I can finally heal for a while. Anyways, hopefully that is the last self indulgent post that comes up here. More insight next time.

iPhone Madness.

Wow it's been a while. I don't have any excuses, other than the fact that I basically haven't had anything to do this summer and now that I do (PDEng assignment), might as well write a blog entry.

Today I had the opportunity to play with a real, live iPhone and I have to say I was pretty impressed. Like any other gadget-blog reader, I've been completely overwhelmed by the iPhone news over the past month and had to start filtering out any post about the iPhone because it was getting so annoying. I don't think there's ever been this much hype about a gadget, although any news coming out of the cult-like Mac community tends to hog the newswire around release time. Despite my frustration with all the iPhone coverage, I was still pretty excited to play with one.

First impressions - sexy. Apple is known for having incredible industrial design and they have produced some of the sexiest technology out there - from the iPod to their operating system Mac OS X. I am a huge fan of minimalism and thankfully, so is Steve Jobs. The iPod managed to succeed with only 5 buttons and revolutionized the mp3 market. The iPhone has one button - home. Everything else is accessed via its glass touch screen. The touch screen has a very good resolution (both optical and capacitive) and although smudges are awfully annoying, the glass is much more scratch-resistant than typical plastic LCD covers.

Navigation is fairly intuitive with lots of flicking, pinching, and tapping. However, exiting programs was not very simple and I usually just hit the physical home button to return to the homescreen. It supported a bumch of email programs such as GMail Yahoo! etc and it was a breeze to configure my gmail account and read mail. Replying to mail was simply impossible - the iPhone keypad is as bad as the reviews say. It is simply unusable. It would be convenient if the keyboard would flip horizontal when you flip the device horizontal (as all images and web pages do) since this would make the keys a bit larger and perhaps increase the accuracy. As a BlackBerry user, I found thumb-typing on a touchscreen with no tactile feedback nearly impossible. I was typing approximately 6 words per minute.

The reason I was impressed with the iPhone was its media playback. Looking at the photos on the phone was a very enjoyable experience. You can easily zoom in/out, flick around, start slideshows, and view in portrait or landscape view simply by tilting the device (complete with pretty animations). The iPod portion of the phone was really cool as well - cover flow is just as cool as the commercial, and scrolling through songs/artists/albums flows really well. I thought there would be a character-based search option but I couldn't find it. This would really make the iPod for me. Another downside is that the headphone jack is the standard 3.5 mm but they sunk it into the plastic so that only their earbuds will fit in it (my sennheisers won't work without an adapter).

Overall, the applications all look cool, and navigating around was really cool. As a phone or smartphone, I would never buy one of these. The crappy keyboard, ridiculous AT&T contract lock-in, and lack of GPS are all dealbreakers for me. However, if Apple uses all the technology in their next video iPod, I would definitely buy one. Especially if they can mimic their 9 hours of battery life during video playback (as reported by the engadget iPhone review). Verdict: wait for the next iPod and buy a BlackBerry ;)

Anyways, I'll be trying to update this bad boy once a week from here on out. Thanks for reading.

A fitness post.

This may be of general interest, I thought I might post an entry about fitness. I've been into some form of fitness since grade 8 when I started wrestling and moreso in grade 9 when I started playing contact sports - namely rugby and football. I've picked up a lot along the way and I think it might be useful to provide some of this info for my friends and any other interested readers.

I obtained most of this over the summer of 2005 when I moved away to Ottawa and decided it was time to drop a few pounds. I will post a before and after although I am acutely aware of how embarrassing both of these pictures are.

This is the best before picture I could find, it's from the Winter of 2004 - I was about 185 lbs (at 5'7).



Here's a really embarrassing after shot I took of myself in August 2005 after around 4 months of exercise and dieting - I was around 153 lbs.





Here's what I did in terms of workouts:

I used the following four-day split:

Day 1: Chest and Triceps
Day 2: Back and Biceps
Day 3: Shoulders
Day 4: Legs

I tried to get to the gym 5 or 6 days per week which wasn't too difficult as I found a gym right across the street from my office. I would leave work at 5 and work out until around 6:45 every day.

Sample workout:

I usually did 4-5 sets of each exercise (15, 12, 10, 8, 6 reps) with increasing weight each set and 60-90 seconds rest between sets.

Day 1 -

-Bench Press (overall strength and mass)
-Incline Dumbbell Press (upper chest)
-Flyes (inner chest)
-Dips (lower chest, shoulders, triceps)

-Rope Pulldowns (good way to start your tricep isolation)
-Over-the-head Presses (any tricep exercise with your elbows straight up supposedly hit all three heads of your triceps)
-Skullcrushers (same as above)

Day 2 -

-Lat Pulldowns (V Shape)
-Seated Row
-T-Bar Row
-Deadlifts
-Bent Over Row

-Barbell Curls
-Hammer Curls
-Dumbbell Preacher Curls

Day 3 -

-Military Press with Dumbbells (deltoid mass builder)
-Lateral Raises
-Bent Over Lateral Raises (rear delts)

Day 4 -

-Hamstring Curls
-Quad Extensions
-Standing Calf Raises
-Seated Calf Raises
-Squats (with a rack)

I did abs twice per week and as you can see didn't quite get to the six-pack. I would choose 3 from the following set and do 3 sets of as many as I could.

-Fitness Ball Crunches
-Hanging Leg Raises
-Oblique Crunches
-Kneeling Rope Pulldowns
-Bicycle Kick

Cardio:
This was probably the most important part for me as I was trying to cut fat more than anything else. I did manage to increase my strength in every lift though - this probably sounds braggy. My max bench press went from 155 lbs when I weighed 185 lbs to 205 lbs when I weight 155 lbs. Anyways - cardio:

Everyday to and from work was a 4 km bike ride. Three days a week before lunch I would jog for 30 minutes and on weekends I would go for long bike rides (2 hours +). The city was beautiful and it was summer so it wasn't hard for me to keep up with the cardio.

Diet:

My diet was pretty gross and I don't know if I could ever eat as strictly again. I tried to eat 200 g of protein per day and consume around 1500-1800 calories per day in order to lose weight.

Sample Day (which was every day - boring):

Breakfast 7:30 AM - 3 egg whites scrambled, 2 pieces of whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter, one protein shake

Snack 10 AM - 1 package of plain instant oatmeal with frozen blueberries on top

Lunch 12 PM - Extra lean ham sandwich with fat free cheese on whole wheat bread and a diet coke

Snack 2 PM - Can of tuna with relish

Snack 4 PM - Protein shake with milk

Dinner 7 PM
- One broiled chicken breast, whole grain rice, steamed broccoli OR
- A lean cut of steak with sauteed onions, mushrooms, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, broccoli OR
- Whole wheat pasta with lean meatballs and a salad OR
- Fish and some combo of above stuff

Snack 9 PM - Cottage cheese with blueberries

I drank lots of water and coffee all day. I also supplemented with a multivitamin (important when dieting) and Glutamine (for muscle recovery). Also I never dieted on weekends - I think you need to have your cheat days to keep your sanity as well as keep your body from adapting to the diet.

Now I'm not saying this is the way to go but it might be a good starting point. Everyone is different and you need to try different things to get the results you want. Anyways, thanks for reading this boring post.

Apathy

Anything beats studying.

In this week's Imprint (UW's student newspaper) there was an excellent editorial regarding apathy at the University of Waterloo. The writer discusses the possibility that the problem with student life at UW is not a general apathy of the student body, but is instead the misguided efforts of FEDS and student organizations. His point rang true for me at least.

In MacLean's Magazine's university ranking issue, the University of Waterloo floats around the top of the charts perenially in almost all categories except for student atmosphere (and financial aid - methinks these are not independent phenomena). Why doesn't the student body enjoy the atmosphere at school? Is it a lack of fun events? Maybe, but student societies are constantly organizing concerts, pub crawls, and intramural sports which always have a sub-par turnout...wait...is sub-par a bad thing? Below par is good in golf...this doesn't make sense. Anyways, the nightlife isn't the problem; we have a good variety of options in nearby uptown Waterloo. Yet, night after night, these bars would stay empty were it not for our party school neighbours down the street. So what are students doing in their spare time at Waterloo? Walk into one of the 2 major libraries on campus at any time of day, any day of the week and you will easily find out. Try getting a seat in the Davis Centre library - no wonder it's called Club DC. Not only will you not be able to find a table, you will be hard-pressed to find a seat, terminal, or one of those weird cube cell things.

The author of this Imprint editorial speculates that the problem is a misguided attempt by the Federation of students to force students into doing things they don't care about or don't have time to care about. When my dad was in college, they were throwing entry-level jobs at students, they didn't even need to earn their degree to be offered the job. Nowadays, post-secondary education is required for almost all entry-level positions and if you aspire towards a good job at a prestigious company or a start-up with some serious potential you need more than just a degree. The degree has to come from a reputed school and if it isn't a post-graduate degree, you better have top marks. This pressure has forced students into the library on a saturday night, and it also means they have less room to care about those "less important" things in life.

Now, I'm not sure these students are entirely righteous in their behaviour but it is what they believe is right. What I believe is you need to develop a sort of balance.

When I entered my program I was in the middle of the pack marks-wise and stayed there until the end of first year when half of my class failed out. Now, if the bottom half falls out and I was right in the middle, where does that leave me afterwards? Yep, I've been uncomfortably holding that bottom position for the last 2 years and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not proud of it but I'm certainly not ashamed. The reason is that despite my classmate's prettier transcripts I have managed to attain excellent co-op positions. I volunteer my marks when I apply to jobs and most employers are not deterred by my consistently average average - to ballpark it, I think my overall average is somewhere around 70%.

If the difference between 70% and 80% means I lose all aspects of my questionable social life, I'm happy with my decision. By not spending every waking minute on school work and computer programming I have developed a superior set of social skills when compared to the majority of my classmates (to those that are reading this, I'm not talking about you). This means that I can confidently participate during interviews and I think at the end of the day, as long as you are technically competent, employers would rather hire someone that they can throw down with at the watercooler than some robot. And if things continue on this robotic trend at UW, that's about all that we will be able to produce as a graduating class.

Remember, as my friend Deaf Frat Guy says: "If you're not wasted, the day is."

A Pill to Forget

I recently heard about a radical new pill that is being used experimentally to treat trauma victims. It is called Propanolol and from what I can gather, the pill doesn't suppress the traumatic memory per se, but it does block the negative association that goes along with that memory. When rape victims who had used the drug were asked how they felt about it, they can accurately describe the event, but they just felt like it had happened to someone else. It is like they had heard the story on the news.

60 minutes did a story on it here.

This could virtually eliminate shell shock and post traumatic stress altogether.

PDEng sucks.

Finally something has pissed me off enough to warrant a blog entry. PDEng. PDEng is Professional Development for Engineers, a new pilot program kicked off the year that I enrolled at UW. It is a series of 5 courses we have to take during our workterms as engineering students at UW. We were not told of the program during the application process, and it was not a happy surprise for most of the engineering class of 2009.

On one of the assignments this term I forgot to explicitly state how my recommendation would move an issue forward. For that reason I failed the entire course...I know, but the ridiculous marking scheme is the topic for another entry perhaps. If you attend a workshop in the area of your alleged weakness, they will give you credit for the course. Anyways, this morning (yes it's a Saturday) I dragged myself out of bed to attend a mandatory workshop on the assignment that I failed.

I submitted this assignment from my office computer and so did not have a copy of the assigment on my local computer. The "invitation email" asked that I bring a copy of this assignment which I could not do. When I arrived I was told that it wasn't an issue as long as I talked to the staff about it before the workshop was over. I attended the workshop, braved my hangover, participated in discussion and completed the group work and assignments during the workshop.

At the end of the workshop I was told that I had failed PDEng because I did not meet the basic requirements which included bringing my assignment. I cannot comprehend how that fact reflects my ability to write an opinion paper, but apparently it is reason enough to fail a student. Another student failed because he did not RSVP to the invitation email, although he did attend the workshop and complete the work.

I cannot comprehend how this ridiculous rubric was put together and the staff member that informed me of not receiving the credit seemed pretty confused himself. The reason this bothers me so much is because we have to complete each offering of the PDEng program before graduation. We have 6 co-op terms and 5 courses to complete which means that if I fail another offering I will not meet the requirements for my degree and will not graduate with my class.

It's not just me that thinks this is complete bullshit, the staff of PDEng requires escort to their vehicles at night and their offices have been vandalized every term since the program was created. It is the sole reason I would consider dropping out of engineering and into CS and a major reason that I would never recommend engineering at UW to anyone.

Shipping to Canada

Argh, why doesn't Amazon ship to Canada? Can someone please explain to me this logic? And if they won't ship to Canada, why doesn't Amazon.ca expand beyond books already? It is extremely frustrating to see the ridiculous deals Amazon can offer to the US and then refuse to ship to Canada at all. The jerks at Fossil are the same way. There are a few things I want from their website that I can't find locally for reasonable prices but they won't ship to Canada either.

I've settled on a pair of headphones...mostly. I am leaning toward the Sennheiser HD 477's, even though they're a bit pricey ($100 at Future shop). I found a number of better deals online but obviously from retailers in the US which means I would have to add customs, exchange rate, and shipping to their prices...and that is if they ship to Canada at all.

After listening to some music through my dad's cans I don't think I can ever go back to my little white earbuds again. Especially now that my good friend Phil has re-Africanized me and introduced me to the exciting world of rap music. Last time I listened to rap, I'm pretty sure Mase was topping the charts and Biggie was still kickin it.

Anyways, everyone please check out Black Star, it's an album Mos Def and Talib Kweli made at the end of the 90's. I forgot how fun good rap music can be. Also, I am very open to any suggestions for new music right now so please comment!

Break is over.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas break, I sure did. Here's a short update:

Christie and I were in Cuba from December 15 - 22 which is now a blur of mojitos, cigars, sunshine, and Hemingway. I did manage to cross 1 item off my list: smoking a cigar, drinking a mojito, and reading Hemingway in Cuba. Christmas celebrations ensued when we arrived home, sadly without snow. Christie caught some kind of virus from her cousins which she then passed on to me. I was fixed up in a couple days and we spent new year's at Caesar's which was as fun as it was expensive.

Yesterday was my 21st birthday which was fairly uneventful, but thanks to all who called or messaged to wish me a happy birthday, feel free to send gifts any time.

Yesterday was also the start of my 3A term here at UW. I'm taking 5 pretty interesting courses: Concurrent and Parallel Programming, Human-Computer Interaction, System Performace Evaluation, Cognitive Science, and Ancient Roman Civilization. The workload should be reasonable, but I don't have very much class which works nicely with my plans to work part-time for RIM.

Here are some pictures from Cuba!