Ryan J. Allen

I posted my grad photo proofs to the photos directory. Check them out and let me know what you think. Note that I’m not the one who will be purchasing the photos so your opinion might reflect my personal decision it may not necessarily reflect the purchasing decision.

Many, if not all of you have taken a look at my resume, including an incomplete summary. I have the line:

Highly motivated, resourceful, and dedicated software developer with a proven leadership record and experience applying education in solving real-world problems.

To justify the summary I want two more sentences. My goal is to cover all of the fluffy (read: non-technical) skills somewhere in my summary and/or objective. So I need a sentence or two that links my communications skills, my familiarity with the software development life-cycle, and my teamwork skills. Two shorter sentences would be preferred over one long one, I think, but we’ll see how it reads. Feel free to mix up the sentence I’ve got, too, if it helps. I’ll let you all know when I come up with something (or if I use any suggestions!).

When will my time be my time again? 5 weeks. *sigh*

I’m tired. To be honest, I didn’t do too much project work tonight. I goofed around with the SSL wrapper a bit, but that’s it. I have to have it finished, tested, and working tomorrow by midnight (that’s about 24 hours). Plenty of time for me to sleep! I’ve decided that Wednesday will be the big integration day of all of the backend components. Realistically, I’ll spend any spare time I have Thursday and Friday cleaning up some code. I think parts will be feature in-complete, but I suspect everything that’s there will be working well enough. Save the SSL bit, it’s really simple stuff we’re dealing with.

I had a presentation today for the TR. It was our regular weekly deal. We went for a “no crap” sort of presentation, where we just updated on progress only and didn’t fluff it up. We’ll see how it’s received. When I see the project advisor scribbling on paper while I speak I always hope he’s writing “this guy’s pretty decent at presentations,” but that might be overly optimistic.

I’ve asked Stephanie for a picture of the Jesus figure and the Jeff Gordon car lined up at a starting line as if they’re ready to race each other. It could be symbolic; it could be tasteful; and it could be artsie. We all know how much Stephanie wants to be an artsie (especially at essay-time). Anyway, I mention it here because this is as close to peer-pressure as I can get from 400km away. Who wouldn’t want to do something nice for nice ol’ Ryan, eh?

I can see the commercials now: “Four time Winston Cup Champion…the World’s Savior…in a one-time only race to the black and white checkered flag.”

Time Well Wasted!

I’m awake to get ready for school and I’m really cold. Add to that, I dreamt about malloc()ing memory and not free()ing it! :O You can imagine my getting the shivers from that, too. I just checked what I dreamt was the offending code and there’s no malloc() to worry about, so I can calm down. Scary thought, though.

Sometimes I can sleep through a lot but this morning I woke up to, what sounded like, the vibration of a cellular phone on the floor of the room above my bed. I couldn’t confirm that’s what the noise was, but it’s my best guess. I can’t imagine what else it would be.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, today is Turtle’s 20th birthday. I woke her up when I called to say happy birthday. I feel bad, but she replied “it’s all good.” Cute, eh? Hopefully the presents bring some joy (Turtle: post pictures!). The best gift of all? No wakeup call. Who could wake someone up on the birthday (someone who LOVES to sleep!)?

Okay, the cold is really bothering me. I’m going to get ready for school.

So, the suit. I bought a black, pinstriped suit from Moores. It’s a single breasted, two button suit by Joseph and Feiss. I also bought a pair of Lincoln Deer Stags to go with it. A Guy Laroche shirt, a Pronto Uomo tie, and other small accessories. I’ll have to decide how I want to fold my handkerchief.

I made some significant advancements with my resume this weekend, as well as with OpenSSL. OpenSSL was more painful.

The race was pretty awesome. I wish people would stop “boo”ing Kurt Busch when he wins. Not that I’m his biggest fan, but that’s just rude. It’s like when Earnhardt fans boo at Jeff Gordon. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.

I’ve updated to the latest release bBlog. The template is different, and I don’t like it. Baby blue isn’t my colour. I’ll fix it someday (or just say I will and never get around to it). I’ve moved the weblog out of the root directory for rja.net. I think I want to make the blog a part of the site, not the whole site itself.

I think I’ll upgrade Turtle’s, too. She’s busy with having fun tonight and tomorrow, though. Maybe it’ll happen on her birthday!

bBlog 0.72 has butchered the spacing between paragraphs on old posts of mine, and it also breaks the ability to use WAP to access the site. I don’t think anyone ever did that, anyway.

Does my weblog lack rambling? All well, at least Hanson rocks.

I was upstairs this morning pooring myself an ice cold glass of milk (to which I added a squirt or two of Nesquick strawberry syrup) that I could enjoy with my 1/2 Moon (stellar breaky, eh?) when something strange happened. Out of nowhere, my dog (Pip the Dog) shot accross the floor in a panic! My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, unphased by this event.

“Pip the Dog,” I asked, “what happened?”

“He farted,” my mom replied. “He doesn’t know what it is, and it scares him.”

Totally unrelated, did I ever mention that Alex and I made a snowman?

I warn you, the following update is rather incomplete and could go anywhere…

Today, I bought things. None of it was really necessary, but the USB to serial converter makes homework easier for me. The problem of finding time to do that homework remains, however.

I say that after taking a weekend off to go to Toronto (with a short visit to the Hammer). I visited with (in alphabetical order) my favourite Alex, and my favourite Stephanie. I, of course, saw others but they (and maybe, also, my favourite Amy) were the primary visitees. Oh, and how could I forget Kevin Smith. Smith was right hilarious for three and a half hours. Except not so much during the cockroach story. That story was a bit long.

Back to the visit: it was good. Amy and I met up with some mates and their friends for dinner at Spring Rolls. The food was delicious, and the Evian was thirst-quenching. Saturday night meant dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, also good. Alex received the Bring It On Again DVD, and Stephanie got her birthday gifts (Stephanie: were you hoping that I linked to a clue? Hehe).

One of the highlights of McMaster University was Titles, the campus bookstore. In Titles I found a Pilot ExecuGel! I’ve been looking for an ExecuGel for a while, checking local office supply shops and other university bookstores. I have the blue barrel Pilot ExecuGel. I would’ve prefered black but beggers can’t be choosers!

Hanson’s new album, Underneath, found it’s way online yesterday. I couldn’t be more excited. You better believe that Underneath is on my little MP3 player, as well as some Simon and Garfunkel and the Darkness.

Good for now? Reply if I left something out or you’d like me to expand on anything.

Does everyone know what time it is? 3:46 a.m. I’m tired, hungry, and easily confused at this hour. Either that or Stephanie is confused. And that is possible, considering her work load. I could easily relieve myself by going to sleep, even though I also have lots of work to do, however I don’t want to leave her online all alone. It’ll happen eventually, though. I’ll give in. I’m too tired.

Looking at the glass bottle of Evian on my desk I’m suddenly wondering if evaporation is possible. In theory if the bottle is air-tight it wouldn’t be…I’ll keep an eye on it. I don’t want the Evian to go floating away.

Tomorrow’s a big day of doing nothing. I guess that’s good. Maybe I’ll get my resume done? I do need to finish editing this software design description document, pronto. My poor TR group; I told them it would be done last night.

Stephanie went away and hasn’t come back yet, or hasn’t said anything. I hope she’s okay.

Hanson was on On Air with Ryan Seacrest today and they were awesome. I am very pumped about the new album. Not as pumped as Alex, though.

I used a can of air in an attempt to dust the innerds of my printer today and the little tube-thing came off the nozzle-type-thing and flew inside the printer. The state of emotions at that point was surprised, confused, worried, relieved, and then happy. I retrieved the tube-thing just fine.

Okay, clearly I should stop talking. WATCH THIS SPACE!!!