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I haven’t posted in such a long time. The past while has been really busy for me with CUSEC and other stuff to work on. Now that CUSEC and CUTC are over (they were a blast!) and I have made sure to have no other commitments, all I have to worry about is ‘just’ school. This should be a vacation! (Yeah, right) For the moment, I have some catching up to do on school work, then maybe I can spend some of my new found time looking for something to do after I graduate in a few months and put in extra time on the SOEN 490 project.

A few weeks ago I finally decided to start contributing to CUSEC 2006. My main area of focus is the website: http://cusec2006.soen.info (Update your links please!). I think I’m keeping on top of it pretty well. I went with a Wordpress base, hoping that this would cut down some of the work. Up to now, it’s been a good experience. I’ve made many changes to it, especially to make it alot less blog-ish to fit the purposes of CUSEC. I learned some CSS and even kept it W3C CSS/XHTML compliant.

The dates for the conference are January 19-21, 2006 and it will be held in Montreal. The organizing team is a small but dedicated group. We are always on the look-out for more helping hands. One area that I’ve been asked to recruit for is the Logistics team. Logistics takes care of plans surrounding the actual event, such as finding suitable hotels for attendees and speakers, renting equipment for the conference, managing the conference layout, putting together the gift bags for speakers, taking care of the registration table, looking into different possibilities for the CUSEEC souvenir item, etc. If any of these areas hit home with you, or you’d like to help out in some other way but aren’t sure what, I’d love to talk about it with you.

I just came back from a 5 day trip to Las Vegas. I had a great time. There are many things to do there besides gambling, however most are based around getting money from your pocket and putting it into someone else’s.

While I was there, I took the opportunity to go to the Grand Canyon. That was really nice and I took a whole lot of pictures. I went for the helicopter tour. We landed inside the canyon for a “champagne lunch”. I was just happy to get off the helicopter for a while because it was making me sick. Before leaving I wasn’t sure I would go to the Grand Canyon because it is actually pretty far from Las Vegas. Bus tours use up your whole day (10-12 hours) but the helicopter gets you there and back in half a day and I am sure provides much better scenery. There are also tours by plane if you really don’t like the idea of a helicopter.

I also went to pick up some trekkie souvenirs at the Star Trek Experience. Unfortunately they don’t carry the souvenir I really wanted, a small phazor with sound and lights, but I did pick up some other stuff. So geeky!

Another important thing about Las Vegas is everything is larger than life. What that really translates to is: Girly girls, leave your fancy sandals at home. Las Vegas is not a place for those shoes you wear and say:”Oh, these should be ok, I’m not going to walk too much; I’m just going across the street.” Everything is far! Going to the next casino can take a good 20 minutes.

What really surprised me about Las Vegas is how wheelchair-accessible it is. Every escalator has an elevator right next to it. You don’t have to go looking around for an alternative entrance, it’s right there! It’s amazing how there seems to be no limit on the budget used to build all the huge hotels/casinos.

Enjoy the pictures!

I became a CUTC ambassador for Concordia this week. Yes, I can’t seem to stay inactive for very long. Last year’s CUTC was very well organized, and after being an ambassador for 2005, I was invited back for 2006. They are also looking for a Regional Head Organiser for Quebec, I am considering the position but if there’s anyone out there who is interested, let me know and I can put you in contact with the appropriate person.

As for CUTC itself, it’s definately worth the trip to Toronto and with the awesome deal I hope to score by Concordia funding, it shouldn’t make a huge hole in your wallet either.

Yay! I finally found a position for my summer work term. I’ll be working at Oz Communications. I’ll be doing QA, working on the server side of their product that allows for instant messaging in mobile devices like cell phones. The company itself is located downtown in the Windsor Station, it’s an old building but whoever designed the office space did a good job because it has a cool modern look, but still kept some original features like the stone walls in the reception area. Also, I’ll be working with another student, Kriggs or Michel, not sure what I should call him at work.

I start on tuesday, so I still have a few days of “freedom”but I am eager to start and see what it’s all about. Woohoo!