Hell^WWinnipeg has frozen over

Temps this week were almost down to -40c with some wicked wind chills. I bussed it on Monday and Tuesday, but after almost losing a few limbs to frostbite I decided to drive on Wednesday and Thursday.

I did at least discover that my car will start just fine at -30c without being plugged in, which is a good thing.

Thankfully the cold snap has unsnapped now; I just hope the relative warmth lasts a little while this time.

Xenophobia

Sent off my paperwork for my J-1 visa. Whee. We'll see how it works this time.

Slow month

It's been a pretty slow month, not much news to tell.

I found out that I got an A+ in my Atmospheric Science last term, and was offered a TA position for the class. I declined, though, as I'm rather busy just keeping up with my regular schoolwork.

With all the new features announced at MacWorld, I'm really starting to itch for an iPod Touch, especially with the addition of mail and google maps. I'll have to rope in one of my Apple friends when I'm down in California this summer so I can get the employee discount at the corporate store. At the same time, though, I'm also somewhat tempted by the Eee and the MacBook Air. While both are considerably larger than the iPod Touch (and in the case of the Air, much more expensive), they do come with the benefit of a real keyboard and a normal-ish sized screen.

I suppose I'll just have to see. Any option would beat having to use the filthy lab computers at school.

Speaking of California, I've started the visa process with Palm and it at least hasn't burst into flames yet. I suppose that's a good sign.

It's going down to -36c tonight, while Mom and Bob are away in Portugal soaking up the sun. Life is so unfair!

Palm it is!

So it looks like Apple won't be giving me an offer for the iCal position, so rather than wait around for some other department to show some interest I've decided to just go with Palm for this summer.

I'm really looking forward to making it to California (providing the Visa doesn't fall through), and I'm certainly looking forward to the dump trucks full of money they're promising me!

More hardware failure

My 21" Sony monitor has been showing signs of death ever since I got back from Vancouver last fall, and today it showed enough signs to cause it to go into an error mode that required me to unplug it for about 30 seconds to reset.

it's still basically alive, but I'm very much looking forward to picking up a few shiny (well, not shiny actually, I prefer the matte ones) 24" LCDs this fall after I get back from California.

Deep hatred for my amp

My amp/receiver thing is crapping out on me again. It was a hand-me-down originally and the switches on it kind of suck, so it occasionally drops one or the other channel in an annoying series of crackling pops.

One of these days I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new one. Preferably one that's just an amp, without any switches or fancy do-dads to wear out and fail.