I went to my first professional ice-hockey game! A work buddy of Anastasia’s is keen on ice-hockey and invited the two of us along. We went out with Sam, his wife June and a friend of theirs to see the Tampa Bay Lightning take on the Montreal Canadiens.

All in all, I was really impressed! The game is very slick, posession of the puck passing back and forth extremely rapidly. Plenty of people getting thrown into the walls (much to the delight of the crowd) and even a couple of fights (to the positively enormous cheers from the crowd). I have to say I’m not particularly fond of ice-skating on accounts of an incident where I ice skated into mid air in a cartoon-like slip-up, landing rather heavily on my butt. It didn’t stop hurting for like a month… I might’ve fractured my tailbone or something, but Mum let me know that even if that was what happened, there was nothing the doctors could do anyway, so I was just sore for a while. Anyway, I digress! Even though I have not ice-skated since (lots of pain is a large deterrent), watching these guys very skillfully move around on the ice, not to mention wielding their hockey sticks… it was all very impressive and cool and I might just give ice skating another go if the opportunity presents itself. We’ll see, I guess.

I don’t think I’ll actually play ice hockey, though. ^^;

Anyway! It was a great game, I got to know some rules and could follow what was going on. Just to make it better, we (Lightning) creamed the Canadiens as well.

Also this week, I went and saw The Good Shepherd, a film about the origins of the CIA. It was really quite cool. Had some elements reminiscent of The Skulls (that whole secret society stuff) and it had Angelina Jolie in it. Directed by Robert De Niro, who also has a minor role and is generally cool. Good stuff, I thoroughly recommend it. ^^

Well, after arriving in Florida, I managed to start relaxing. This will come as a surprise to no one I’m sure, but hey, this is for writing what I’m doing, is it not? Anyway, I managed to get a little bit of work done on my report and a lot of relaxing time with Anastasia. I also managed to do a lot of the organisational stuff for my applications to grad school, which is good… bloody transcripts are a pain in the ass, I tell you.

Anyway, things were going swell until the Friday before Christmas, when Anastasia’s cousin (older, more like an aunt) got into a bad car accident and was hospitalized. After what looked like a long recovery, things went downhill and unfortunately the damage was too severe. She died at 9.30am on Christmas. A whole swathe of the family (including Anastasia and I) were there at the hospital and it was all extremely sad. This family has gone through a lot. Only six months prior, the father of the cousin in the car accident had passed away as well.

This all made for a very muted holiday.

I did manage to see some of my family on Christmas in NZ, it was good to talk to Dace again. Michael was there as well (he’s a friend of the family about my age) and it was good to see him as well. I think he had a little too much fun playing with the delay on the webcam, though. ^^

Wow, the last couple of weeks has been… stressful. At the same time, I’ve had some of the most fun I’ve had in Seattle. Weird.

Anyway, so with the large amount of work I’ve been doing trying to get things sorted out for the end of the quarter (and the end of my exchange), I’ve been staying in the labs until late, then getting up relatively early to head back in and do it all over again. As my title suggests, this is not insomnia, it’s me very deliberately getting less sleep in order to get everything done. For those of you who read this and go “you’re not looking after yourself, Leith”, I do make sure that I get fed (pretty well), have fluids and all that jazz. Now that I’m at the end of the quarter I can afford to just sleep and wake up when I wake up, so I’ll recover and I’ll be fine. I can’t say that I want to do it again, but I know how to manage it and listen to my body telling me how to recover. I’ll certainly be having words with the International Exchange people back at Canterbury, since I think the requirements (that they made up on the spot since no one had done it before) need some revision.

The academic stuff: I got my security paper done (which is my group project) and I think it came out really well. Our presentation went off without a hitch on Friday morning (except for one of our group-mates not showing up) and all in all I learned a lot from that class. I don’t know if I can actually post the paper we wrote online or not, there were one or two revisions that we might need to make to make sure no privacy is compromised and possibly giving my professor the last authorial credit. Anyway, I’ll be looking into that to see if I can post it here somewhere. For my research, I spent a lot of time working away at it and I’ve got a reasonably working implementation for the basic stuff… still a couple of things I need to modify and then I’ll be spending the next week or so writing the report, I suspect. I’ve also been given a remote access to the servers I need here, so if I feel like continuing with the work before it is worked on by others in February or so (which I might, it’s pretty interesting), I can. I’ve had a blast working with Magda, she’s been a way better adviser that’s really guided me and helped me in just the right way. I’ve really enjoyed my research this quarter and learned a whole lot. I think if I come back to UW, I’ll try and work with Magda again for my Quals project or something.

In other news, my flatmate Joe left for Canada earlier this week to spend the Christmas season up there with his Dad. It was sad to see him go, I’ve really enjoyed living with him. We talked about anything and everything all the time, we had meals a whole lot… all in all, he was everything I imagine flatmates should be like. The crazy flatmate Sam actually moved out this week as well, which means that the temperature in the apartment won’t be continually set to 85 degrees (about 29.5 degrees Celsuis). My last flatmate, Donald, has been great as well. I haven’t talked to him as often as with Joe, but every time I do he’s really friendly, we’ve gone out for meals together a few times and he’s just generally a nice guy. I had a chat to him just yesterday, in fact, in which he was extolling the virtues of studying in Hong Kong (where he’s from). The scholarships to go there and do a research-oriented Masters is… impressive. I don’t have any interest in learning Chinese as yet, but Donald tells me that being a native English speaker is actually to my advantage. Some of the research coming out of the universities there is some of the top in the world, so I’ll probably at least look into it. If nothing else if I get it then I’ll be able to have a great international experience and save money, which will be rather novel. I’m still planning on applying for the scholarship to do a Masters in Japan, and if I get that I’ll be taking that over the Hong Kong one since I have a stronger interest in Japanese culture and in learning Japanese.

Oh, I also submitted three out of four of my graduate school applications yesterday. I still need to wait until my transcripts are complete and send those off as well, but other than that it’s out of my hands.

Other things: I leave Seattle on Monday, back to Tampa for at least the Christmas/New Year season. After that, I’ll be moving up to Gainesville with Anastasia as she continues her education at the University of Florida in their Engineering program. After that, it depends on where I get a job. If a company in Seattle finally decides they like me I could be back in Seattle, or I could get something local in Gainesville, or I could get nothing and end up just working on my own business, which is a perfectly fine option. Ideally I’d like to do something that’s relevant to my studies and sets me in good stead for finding any future jobs (or studies), but I recognise that I won’t necessarily be able to find that kind of thing right off the bat.

I’m looking forward to seeing Anastasia again, I’ve really missed her. I miss my other friends in Florida as well, and I know that I’m going to miss the friends that I have made here in Seattle. Being an international man of mystery certainly involves missing a lot of people since, unfortunately, I can’t be everywhere at once.

Oh, amusing story: the International Student Office here at UW managed to lose my Employment Authorisation Document card, after copying it for my file and emailing me to tell me to come pick it up. It was later returned after a couple of days (somehow it had gotten put into the campus mail system), but for a while there the whole office was a shambles looking for it. In any case, I now have official permission from the US government to work here from the start of January to the end of December next year. I don’t think I’ll be using even close to all of that time, but it’s nice to have the option, I guess.

I also went to a party last night at Armin‘s house. Armin is one of my group mates for Security and it’s been a ball getting to know him and hanging out with him. I had a few drinks, met a whole bunch of new and cool people. I hung out with a bunch of the CSE people who showed up, that was fun too. At the end of the night there was some kind of misunderstanding and I ended up leaving… it appears that some of the people that came along have bad temperaments after they have had a few drinks. In any case, I said my goodbyes and came back to my apartment. I had still had a good time throughout the evening, so while I’m a little non-plussed, I’m ok.

I caught up with Greg and Philipp for coffee this week as well, it was good to see them again before I left. I actually saw Philipp at the party last night as well.

I just cleaned out my office, which didn’t take very long, I didn’t make a lot of clutter. I’m going to hand in my office-key, then maybe do a bit more work here in the lab, then I shall head back and continue to pack. I’ve started tidying and packing the little things, but I’m still not sure how I’m going to fit everything and get it back. A few things I’ll end up mailing down, I’m sure.

For those of you reading this back in New Zealand, I miss you all terribly and I wish I could somehow teleport back and see you whenever I wished. That or bring you here, I’m not sure. I’ll be back in June, so hang in there and you can get your dose of my Leith-hugs and dry humour when I return.

The (Mac) computer on which my Ruby on Rails web-application was developed has apparently died… before I got my files off of it. Back to square one on that one.

*sigh*

Ok, so for the last week I have been without my laptop and it has been terrible. Right now I’m (finally) in the process of siphoning everything off of my hard drive onto some DVDs for portability (via Jarret’s IDE enclosure, thank you Jarret!), as well as some current documents onto my pen-drive so I can keep on working. The upshot of it is, if you emailed me at the end of last week some time, chances are I haven’t read it, and probably won’t read it for another couple of weeks yet, when I actually have time to do so.

Also this week: Microsoft said no, they don’t want to interview in person; Armin (my groupmate from my security class) had his birthday, we went out and had drinks at the College Inn Pub; I had an email from the Sony guy asking me some questions, so that might lead to something; I wrote my paper “what I learned” *after* having my drinks with Armin and Stefan and all the rest of them… and it was thoughtful and insightful and I generally am good at spinning something; further to that end, I got my GRE results (which includes the writing analysis portion) and although I already knew my computer-based ones, I didn’t know the stats for them… in fact, I don’t have it with me, but I can tell you that I got a 5.5 (out of 6) for my writing score, which means that I rule at writing, pretty much.

Also! On Monday I went to an event held by Autodesk, the makers of such awesome programs as Maya and 3D Studio Max, saw what awesome stuff is in the new releases of each of those particular products and then hobnobbed with graphics people for a while. Good times. ^^ I don’t think I’ll be getting a job out of it, but I at least made a few contacts that will hopefully persist.

Also since my last update: my flatmate Joe had his birthday, we went to dinner with his mother and a family friend. There were meant to be more, but they bailed for some reason. Good times, hilarious stories about Joe when he was younger (and not so younger) and generally reinforcing how much I’m going to miss living with this guy. He’s awesome. ^^

Also also! I finished my Ruby on Rails project and presented it to the class as well. I have to say, after playing Ruby on Rails for this, I’m going to have to keep on using it and seeing if I can’t integrate it into my other projects on a regular basis. Awesomely cool stuff, lets you develop very rapidly some very cool stuff. More on that later when I can actually have a bit more of a play with it.

Also also with: Happy Birthday to my Mum! It’s your birthday here in the US today, I hope it’s been a ball back in NZ. Loads of love and hugs coming your way from the US of A.

Actually, it’s Roderick’s birthday today as well. If I had an email address or some way of contacting him I’d let him know. Happy Birthday Roderick, wherever you are. ^^

Also also also with: Happy Birthday to Saku, whose birthday it was yesterday, and Steven, whose birthday it will be on Sunday!

Wow, clearly this is a popular time to have a birthday! Right, back to work, people… stay safe, stay (relatively) sane and I’ll try and update again next week some time.