Saturday, September 03, 2005
Last day
Probably should have blogged about this sooner, I tend to forget things as they leave my short term memory.
Pretty crazy day today. Last day at NITI after working there since January. The first four months were a co-op work term from John Abbott, the second four were a summer job, and with school starting that's it.
I started out the day running into Nikhil on the metro. It was a pretty strange coincidence, because I always board the second car at Lionel Groulx, and I had almost sat down when I realized that the person I was sitting down next to was my co-working Nikhil. We chatted a bit before seperating to head off to our respective parts of the office.
Spent the morning talking to Mich, trying to bring him up to speed on some stuff; he'll be taking over one of my two primary responsibilities. sjwalters isn't going to be back until the 6th, so I think I'll try to brief him when I swing by sometime next week to visit and say goodbye to all the people I missed this time around.
Headed off to Conordia at 1-ish for an orientation session. Most notable things? Beer and foosball. A fitting orientation indeed.
When I got back all that was left was to try to commit a few of the scripts that I had hacked together for my own use while at NITI; I figured somebody might find them useful so they should be stored permanently somewhere. I zipped up the 12MB of stuff in my home dir that actually mattered (Some pictures, videos, stuff that was downloaded off the net that I didn't have at home, etc) and emailed it to myself. Isn't GMail grand? ;)
The night was spent with sfllaw, who offered to take me out for a drink. We stopped by his place to drop off some purchases and made our way to a nearby microbrewery for a beer and a bite. The bites turned out to be extremely small, but also extremely tasty. The beer was quite interesting, something I've never had before, sort of a smooth citrus taste with little bitterness or carbonation. I liked it quite a bit and found it very easy to drink. We had a great discussion for what must have been a few hours, and then parted ways at about a quarter to 10. I really like the discussions I have with Simon, they're always quite interesting and touch on a large number of topics. For some reason, though, we always end up discussing Google. I guess Google is just up to a lot of stuff ;)
I don't have many of those types of conversations anymore, the long ones that are so interesting that you lose track of time. I used to have them with a friend I went to highschool with, but we don't see eachother all that often any more, so they are now only occasional. I'm leaving NITI now, though, so I guess such conversations with Simon will also become rare.
I always like riding the metro. There is just something "cool" about it, for one thing, and I just feel safer underground than I do elsewhere. On the way home from Simon's I started out at the Mont Royal metro stop, one I'd never been to before. The Montreal metro system is a bit unique in that for each metro stop in the whole system they had a different architect/artist design the stop. Because of this each stop is unique, and there were a whole bunch of stops on the orange line on the way home that I hadn't seen before. Some were quite interesting.
I grabbed a bit of a candied snack at the Couche-Tard that has taken up residence on the platform of Lionel Groulx. Would you believe they still sell those Popeye cigarette sticks? Of course they don't call them that anymore, but for 25 cents a box, they were a great deal. Also grabbed a packet of seseme snaps, but haven't eaten those yet. I mentioned that the bite at the brewery was rather small, and I'm useless at preparing food. I tend to prefer easy to consume items, since they are easier to prepare, despite my like of finer foods. I understand Simon is a bit of a gourmet, perhaps one day I'll be able to try one of his confections. Anyhow, I spied a bag of mini carrot sticks in the fridge, and not seeing anything else premade or easily consumable, I'm currently snacking on them. They're not really filling me up though, so I'm still rather hungry. I really can't cook ;)
Pretty crazy day today. Last day at NITI after working there since January. The first four months were a co-op work term from John Abbott, the second four were a summer job, and with school starting that's it.
I started out the day running into Nikhil on the metro. It was a pretty strange coincidence, because I always board the second car at Lionel Groulx, and I had almost sat down when I realized that the person I was sitting down next to was my co-working Nikhil. We chatted a bit before seperating to head off to our respective parts of the office.
Spent the morning talking to Mich, trying to bring him up to speed on some stuff; he'll be taking over one of my two primary responsibilities. sjwalters isn't going to be back until the 6th, so I think I'll try to brief him when I swing by sometime next week to visit and say goodbye to all the people I missed this time around.
Headed off to Conordia at 1-ish for an orientation session. Most notable things? Beer and foosball. A fitting orientation indeed.
When I got back all that was left was to try to commit a few of the scripts that I had hacked together for my own use while at NITI; I figured somebody might find them useful so they should be stored permanently somewhere. I zipped up the 12MB of stuff in my home dir that actually mattered (Some pictures, videos, stuff that was downloaded off the net that I didn't have at home, etc) and emailed it to myself. Isn't GMail grand? ;)
The night was spent with sfllaw, who offered to take me out for a drink. We stopped by his place to drop off some purchases and made our way to a nearby microbrewery for a beer and a bite. The bites turned out to be extremely small, but also extremely tasty. The beer was quite interesting, something I've never had before, sort of a smooth citrus taste with little bitterness or carbonation. I liked it quite a bit and found it very easy to drink. We had a great discussion for what must have been a few hours, and then parted ways at about a quarter to 10. I really like the discussions I have with Simon, they're always quite interesting and touch on a large number of topics. For some reason, though, we always end up discussing Google. I guess Google is just up to a lot of stuff ;)
I don't have many of those types of conversations anymore, the long ones that are so interesting that you lose track of time. I used to have them with a friend I went to highschool with, but we don't see eachother all that often any more, so they are now only occasional. I'm leaving NITI now, though, so I guess such conversations with Simon will also become rare.
I always like riding the metro. There is just something "cool" about it, for one thing, and I just feel safer underground than I do elsewhere. On the way home from Simon's I started out at the Mont Royal metro stop, one I'd never been to before. The Montreal metro system is a bit unique in that for each metro stop in the whole system they had a different architect/artist design the stop. Because of this each stop is unique, and there were a whole bunch of stops on the orange line on the way home that I hadn't seen before. Some were quite interesting.
I grabbed a bit of a candied snack at the Couche-Tard that has taken up residence on the platform of Lionel Groulx. Would you believe they still sell those Popeye cigarette sticks? Of course they don't call them that anymore, but for 25 cents a box, they were a great deal. Also grabbed a packet of seseme snaps, but haven't eaten those yet. I mentioned that the bite at the brewery was rather small, and I'm useless at preparing food. I tend to prefer easy to consume items, since they are easier to prepare, despite my like of finer foods. I understand Simon is a bit of a gourmet, perhaps one day I'll be able to try one of his confections. Anyhow, I spied a bag of mini carrot sticks in the fridge, and not seeing anything else premade or easily consumable, I'm currently snacking on them. They're not really filling me up though, so I'm still rather hungry. I really can't cook ;)
