This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

What fuel leak?

Posted by ehren

The evening in Banff was solid. I totally rocked about 3 hours of SPECTRE work, then hit the cheap, local, basement bar with Michelle, Allison, Adam, Charley, and Miro. We played a ton of foosball, though I failed to defend the honor of Wisconsin when challenged by a couple guys from East Lansing, Michigan.

In order to get a good jump on work, I set my alarm for 9. I'm not sure if people who grow up without winters have had this 6th sense, but when I turned off my alarm but before I had opened my eyes I knew that it was snowing. By then it was just starting to turn into frozen slush/rain, and it made the 20 minutes I spent wandering around with the 5 gallon jerrycan looking for a working spigot really enjoyable. I knew that most of my work would be internet-free for the day (no point in checking in a pile of broken templates to CVS), so I was tempted to start hot water and crawl back into bed, but I knew the strong likelihood of falling back asleep. I stood in the freezing rain for about 15 minutes waiting for the city bus to downtown. It ruled.

I kicked some ass today, work-wise. For the past two weeks I've been putting at most an hour or two a day into the project, and I think it's really made a difference being able to work for longer stretches. All the work we put into the design of SPECTRE is paying off in the form of an easy implementation, so far.

In the late afternoon most of the gang washed up at the internet cafe, except Charlie and Adam who were waiting for the rest of us at a different basement internet cafe, so we started back towards Michelle and Allison's hostel. They checked into a different room, set about making dinner (you CAN screw up pasta, it turns out) and by 10 we were back at the previous night's bar, playing more foosball. I met a random Saskatooner named Dave who had a jaw-droppingly vivid accent, and he ended up following us for the night. Around 1:30 the girls dragged us to a club for dancing, and then around 2:30 someone started a fistfight with the DJ, so then we went to the only late-night pizza joint in town along with about 300 other people who were just getting out of closing bars and clubs. I was handed money and appointed decision maker, so I bought ALL the by-the-slice they had and distributed from there.

Slept in (waaaaaaaaaaay in), showered, shaved (beard still intact, for now), cut hair. The clouds blew off today, and Banff is surrounded by gigantic mountains! I was under the impression it was in a mountainous area, and though it seems like I'm exaggerating our ignorance we really had no idea they were right next to the city. Huge, snow capped, and looming. Charley and I put together a ramenesque dish with tofu and celery (thus fully depleting the galley of non-canned items) for lunch, and then I hiked a half mile down the road with a barrel-sized bag of laundry on my head. The adjacent motel had wireless, so I put away about two hours of work while waiting for all my clothes, sheets, and towels to dry.

Later afternoon I got back to the bus, tried to fix my bike (failed), ate a family-sized can of chicken soup, and snagged a ride into central Banff from a guy who stopped to ask questions about the bus. Miro, Adam, and Charley were reading, sunny by the riverbank. Soon enough Michelle and Allison wandered by, fresh from another solid day of successful jobhunting. We wound up at the food court for dinner, and I initially thought that I wouldn't be hungry after eating the giant can of soup 90 minutes before, but let's be honest, I'm never not hungry. DQ makes a mean blizzard.