Being torn in two

Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, January 30th 2008 at 5:39pm

Placing 2nd in the Quebec Engineering Competition was completely unexpected. I was there to have fun and attempt to solve interesting problems. I really didn’t expect us to come in second! What’s even more, is that we found out that the first place team beat us by only 0.7%. Wow! That’s extremely close! Luckily both teams get to advance to the national Canadian Engineering Competition in Waterloo.

The same weekend of the CEC, however, is the annual CS Games competition which is being hosted in Sherbrooke. I have spent the past month struggling to put together a team, and was extremely proud of the strong responses I got from computer science and software engineering students here at Concordia. We managed to register a compliment of two full teams, many of whom are in their first and second years of school. I couldn’t be happier! We’re going to bring these greenhorns to Sherbrooke for fun, friendly, nerdy competition and lots of partying. I’ve been coordinating with the team from ETS for us to share a bus down to Sherbrooke. They’ll be teaching our team French drinking songs while we’ll be teaching them the English ones. Cultural exchange for the win!

This is my last semester of school, and I’ve been looking forward to CS Games 2008 since … well, since the last CS Games. It’s my chance to go out with a bang, to party one last time with friends from all the Québec schools, a number of Ontario schools, and from all over North America. More than anything, I want to be the one to lead my team of mostly-freshmen to the battlefields of Université de Sherbrooke and show them what it means to represent your school, your friends and flaunt your knowledge and nerdly status. Then I get to pass along the torch, and these froshies will be the ones organizing the trip to CS Games next year. Maybe they can even get it hosted at Concordia in 2010! I have such high hopes for this new batch of students and I want to teach them everything I’ve learned over my years of student involvement. I’ll be able to get my team to mingle with other schools, forge alliances and friendships that will lead them on to be supreme powers in inter-university events. CS Games is my chance to do that; and I feel like it’s my last chance.

Now I’ve got myself stuck in this pretty sticky situation. CS Games and the Canadian Engineering Competition are mutually exclusive. They overlap completely, and there’s no way I can go to both. I can’t let down the other three members of my Consulting Engineering team – they’re convinced they need me. Apparently, in the national competition you’re allowed access to the internet, so my Google Fu will come in handy. Considering this is the first time Concordia has ever sent teams to the CEC, I would love to be a part of the inaugural team, boldly going where no Concordian has gone before. I want to be there to represent my university, and more importantly to represent my province. I’m proud to be a Québecker, and I want to join with the other Québec teams in drink and song and competition, especially before I move away to Ontario. While I’ve attended previous CS Games competitions, I’ve never been to CEC before. The pressure to attend CEC is terrible.

I wish I could fork a new process¹ so that I could attend both competitions, then merge together again. But alas, there’s only one of me. I can’t go to both. I have no idea what I’m going to do … but I feel like I’m being torn apart and it’s depressing me. I put off thinking about it for the weekend, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Tags: cec, competition, concordia, csgames, life, party, school | 5 comments

Cake

Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, October 9th 2007 at 12:53am

I finally, successfully, made some food!

When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Bridget said, “Bake me a cake.” She bought me a beginner’s cookbook as part of my birthday present, so it seems only fitting that I should cook something from it. I ambitiously chose the Sunken Chocolate Cake, if only because the description in the cookbook read “ridiculously easy to make”. Also, because it had very few, simple ingredients: chocolate, butter, eggs, and sugar. No flour or anything fancy like that.

Luckily I had two good friends (Josh and Morgan) supervise me. They helped improvise a Double Boiler to melt the chocolate and butter in, and with beating the eggs. I was a little intimated by the egg beating, since I’m still traumatized by the last experience. No less than 40 minutes later, the cake emerged, and it actually looked like a cake!

Here’s a picture of it with icing sugar on top:

Lessons learned:

• Icing sugar and “confectioner’s sugar” are interchangeable terms.
• “Whipped Cream” and “Whipping Cream” are not. (Many thanks to Morgan for trying to help me improvise an icing).
• If you give Bridget a cake that tastes delicious, she’ll raise the bar and expect more next time.

Tags: baking, cooking, events, food, Friends, party, thanksgiving | 3 comments

It’s Over!

Posted by Skrud at Friday, December 22nd 2006 at 4:41pm

Yesterday was my last day of work, and last night was the celebration at Brutopia. The powers of Facebook astound me. Brutopia was packed, with people I knew. We conquered the entire downstairs lounge. Lots of drinking, lots of screaming, lots of party. The party was smoking hot.

They even gave us 20 shots of vodka on the house. I’ve never had something like that happen before… just, a tray of vodka which the barmaid handed to me saying “These are for you.”

Few things are more enjoyable than spending an entire night in a pub, surrounded with the best friends in the world, some amazing beers, and loads of liquor. Thanks to everyone who showed up – I had a killer awesome time.

Tags: events, party | 6 comments