Big fat update

Hey dudes and dudesses,

I all of a sudden had the urge to blog stuff so here goes.

Since I last wrote a number of things happened which are only of minor interest to anyone but myself but immensely interesting to me. For instance:

9 days after I bought my new ibook back in May (my Sony laptop died an ignominious death while I was scrambling to finish my final essays) Apple discontinued it and released a newer, better one in its place. I tried to make them take my ibook back and give me a newer, cooler one. They told me to screw off. Flash forward to mid-or-late June and I am still complaining to a friend who indirectly encouraged me to try again. Her idea didn't work, but I once again started harrasing the store I bought it from. My saving grace came from the fact that the ibook I had purchased was a bit wobbly when sitting on a table or surface, like a bad table leg that you need to put a coaster under.

Long story short, I used my constitutional rights and wrote a bunch of threatening emails to KRCS Apple Centre and finally, after taking my ibook to the Apple engineers and finding that it was indeed outside of Apple's product tolerances KRCS humbly gave me what I wanted, a sexy new Macbook, with widescreen, built-in web cam, 20GB larger hard-drive (60GB total) and the new intel duo processor. Score 1 for me.




The next cool thing was this. The new Macs with Intel processors let you run Windows XP as well as Mac OS using this free software you download from Apple. The only thing is that you need to have a non-OEM XP installation disk that includes Service Pack 2. I actually had my own non-OEM disk, but it only had Service Pack 1. D'oh! However, I amazed myself (and no-one else unfortunately) by finding out a way to slipstream a downloaded Service Pack 2 into my Windows XP disk and create a fully-bootable Windows XP disk which included Service Pack 2, saving myself over £100 and allowing myself to install Windows XP on my Mac! Seriously, it was some complicated crap. And probably the most complicated, bonafide-computer-geeky thing I've ever accomplish. Score another for Drew.

Also, my sister Dallas came out and we got to chill with her for a week which was super-dope. It was so fun to sit with her in Hyde Park (Leeds, not London) on a 30c day drinking beer and watching the skaters (that's right, in other non-puritan countries you can sit in the park and drink your beer and no morality-enforcers pester you while you're trying to enjoy a cold-one in the park!). Totally awesome week.

I just finished the book War and Peace last night, which was no small accomplishment. It is a 1443 page bohemoth of a book. It's really good though and super educational, I learnt lots about the wars between Russia and Napoleon, and Tolstoy adds alot of his own philosphy and theories of history. Totally excellent book.

And today I've started a new book which I bought from the Economist book shop: Economics - Making Sense of the Modern Economy. It is a totally awesome book that explains anything and everything a person needs to know about global economics in a really interesting and exciting way. If you read this book you will be able to answer back to stupid hippies who constantly regurgitate lines from the one book they read about "the cor-po-ray-shunsss, maaaan" and tell them why they are just ignorant and stupid hippies who should drink less fair-trade coffee and read a newspaper (not that I have anything against fairtrade coffee [but I do hate hippies]).

Another happy thing - I got my marks back a couple weeks ago for my second year modules and they positively rocked!! Let me now apologize for the bragging I have just done and am about to continue doing...sorry. Anyhoo, I got such high marks I couldn't believe it and I have been riding high on that ever since. I have never put so much work into something and it is the first time I've felt really good at something. Here's a scan of my report card so that you all can see it too! (click to enlarge:)



It might not look like much by Canadian standards of marking, but the UK grading system works like this: a mark between 40%-49% is a pass; 50%-59% is a 2.2; 60%-69% is a 2.1; and anything over 70% is 1st. A 2.1 is what you need to get a good job or to get into post-grad programs, most people get 2.2s. A 1st is said to be publishable. I'll stop my bragging short here, please forgive me, I've just never had grades I could show my parents before :)


That basically brings us up to present where I am now desperately trying to find a job and pay my bills. I have handed out so many resumes, emailed so many resumes, and looked through so many webpages and newspapers and all to no avail so far. You rich Calgarians don't know how lucky you are to live in the fastest growth area in North America (according to the Ecnomist) with high-wages and low unemployment. People here won't even take my resume: they all say they have too many employees and not enough work. Boo-urns.

Beth managed to find a job (she applied to loads of places too, and only one place called her back) working at a vegetarian restaurant downtown part-time, so good for her.

Hope you are all doin' fab, my friends.

-Ciao!