Oh yeah, come to my convocation tomorrow. 2:00 PM at the PAC on Saturday. I'm sure Nick would have mentioned that it's his too, but he's still denying the public his bad, bad self. People who know the man in question should take every opportunity to berate him over this (the no web presence thing, not the finally getting his degree thing).
Seriously, come tomorrow. What with the strippers, the bands, the circus midgets, and what have you, it'll be a great time.

Someone from Shad Valley tracked me the e-mail address associated with this little corner of my world. The funny thing is, I've never mentioned Shad here before. More to the point, my full name doesn't appear anywhere, and it's not in the search terms. As far as I knew, no-one from Shad was aware of this place, even the one's I've kept in (half-assed) contact with over the years.
Spookylicious. Anybody want to 'fess up and fill me in on how they found me?

In an effort to keep this from becoming a massive bitch-fest, some Fall entertainment recommendations:
Read The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. If you hate your family/are trying not to be like your family/have sneaking suspicions you might be starting to resemble your family/are amused by the misfortunes of others/appreciate well written fiction, you'll like it. Franzen wrote a piece for Harpers a while back wherein he basically shat all over the quality and relevance of modern novels, then proceeded to produce one himself. You'd have to give the man points for having massive balls, even if the book sucked. Fortunately, it didn't. Not even in the slightest. It's about the best thing I've read since high school.
Watch Following, a strange little (only about an hour long) movie from the same guy who did Memento. Don't hold that against him though, because this is a sweet piece of story driven movie making.
Also watch The Man Who Wasn't There, if only to prove to yourself that someone named "Billy Bob" can actually act. It's the Coen brothers, it's funny, and (like Following) it's black and white so you can impress your film wank friends. Thorton's character in this one kills me.

Somewhere around the middle of last month, I started worrying about the distinct lack of convocation information in my mailbox. A quick check of my transcript revealed that Co-op had lost one of my work term evaluations, and was withholding the "Co-op" designation on my degree. Naturally, it didn't occur to them to attempt to resolve the situation themselves (after all, they are Co-op), or contact me.
After an invigorating two week round of three way phone tag between myself, Co-op, and my former employer, my evaluation was finally re-submitted, and I was cleared to graduate. On the advice of the only helpful Co-op employee I've ever encountered, I called the Registrar's Office to get the latest scoop on fall convocation, given that last year's info was the only thing available on the web. I was assured repeatedly that Convocation was on the 20th of October, and that I should go ahead and book my tickets, now that everything was in order with my degree.
At this point, I should have been suspicious. Last year's Fall Convocation was on the 20th too, but that was a Saturday, and this year it was a Sunday. "Oh well," I thought, "it's probably always on the 20th."
So non-refundable plane tickets for most of my family in hand, I sat back to wait for the big day, unaware that my information package was sent to my former Waterloo address, despite the fact that the Registrar's Office was well aware of my being halfway across the country. I'd still have been just as screwed if it came to my home address, but I might have at least had time to make new arrangements.
One last call to the Registrar's Office this morning revealed the actual dates for this year's Fall Convocation, and the extent of the incompetence that pervades most of my soon to be alma matter's bureaucracy.
As things stand now, my family is out a fairly large sum of money, and instead of staying within fifteen minutes walk of campus, we'll be in Kitchener. For their part, the Registrar's Office is so sincerely sorry for the whole situation that they've graciously offered to do absolutely nothing about it.
Despite the plethora of similar screw-ups and screw-jobs I suffered at the hands of our not so benevolent administrators, I had planned to be, at the very least, respectful when I received my degree. Now whoever hands me that overvalued scrap of paper is going to be lucky if I don't piss on their shoes while they pass it to me.

You know those people that will do anything to avoid spending the holidays with their family? I'm really starting to sympathize with those people.

Why is that whenever television new programs air a piece about obesity, they follow overfed trailer trash around with a camera angle that goes from the ground to the shoulders? Surely they could find some land whales that don't wear white spandex so tight you can see through it?
Yes, all right. We understand that there's an epidemic of obesity. We just don't need to see a single camera close-up of it waddling down a crowded street.

Friends Don't Let Friends Buy Compaq.
I've never dealt with a worse sack of poorly constructed shit than my cousin's Presario 5100. Despite the fact that my mother has her Master's, and my Dad's been working with complex systems his entire life, everyone in my family degenerates into a baffled monkey-like creature when confronted by a glowing box with a keyboard in front of it. Hence my designation as the resident tech guy for my Winnipeg relatives.
So when my Aunt needs a printer, I ride shotgun when she goes shopping and help her install it. The only problem is, their Compaq crashes, freezes, or spontaneously reboots at least five times in the half hour it takes to get the proper drivers installed. Frustrated, I breezily promise to "take a couple of hours sometime, and put a decent OS on there" for them. Only a couple of hours turned into four days when their CDRW (a Phillips CDD4801, a defective brick of compressed crap masquerading as a burner that Compaq sold for a good long time after they knew how bad it was) died as soon as I got there, and their hard disk turned out to be mysteriously incompatible with ntldr, that fun little boot loader without which installation of Win2K Pro is impossible, but only when the drive was in their Presario. When it was in my little sticker-covered beastie, it behaved perfectly.
In a last ditch attempt to get something on this box, I caved and tried to install WinXP Home from the official install media that Compaq provided, only to discover that they hadn't been so kind as to pass along a valid fucking serial number, or install media for WinME, the OS the thing shipped with. But lo and behold, something good actually came out of a WinXP installation (that's got to be a first); The XP boot loader is installed whether you put the OS on or not. Three hours later, and the Presario is happily running 2000 Professional, and I'm the hell out of there.