Pensador’s Blog

Related links (constantly updated):

• March of the monks
• Photographs from the Burma Protests
• Myanmar troops kill 9 protesters - Reuters
• Nine killed in Burmese crackdown - BBC
• Canadian friends of Burma
• US Campaign for Burma
• Burma Campaign UK

This Monday I had yet another renal calculus crisis—the second one in less than 12 months. There was I, in the emergency section of the local hospital contorting in pain from 18:30 to 22:30. By 23:00 the stone had moved from my ureter to my bladder, which reduced the pain, and by the next day it finally got expelled from my system. After a blood test and an x-ray, the doctor said I had to drink more water and reduce the salt in my diet. I am considering taking Herba Desmodii capsules, a natural diuretic, which a co-worker said does wonders to kidney stones.

Here’s a little Bossa Nova for you to listen to when you get home from work. Just sit back and relax. I wanted to give YouTube’s custom players a try—I’ve put together this playlist with my favourite Bossa Nova videos.

A short but true story of someone who decided to quit World of Warcraft.

In the afternoon of November 23 of 2004, after my last class of the day, I headed to a computer store where I had reserved a copy of World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition. Three years later, I look back and I realize how I almost ruined my life with a computer game.

I am an undergraduate in Software Engineering. I feel kind of silly writing this, but I will share my true story with the intent of helping somebody who might be going through what I went through. I hope this will not bore you.

I was addicted to WoW during my first year of university. I seemed to be a pretty dedicated student; I did not miss any lectures and took detailed notes. However, my head would wander elsewhere—be it sketching my character, building its skills and planning the next quests. As an active member of a guild, I was the first to get a mount. Every day of my life led to the same—as soon as I got home, I would go straight to the computer and log in to WoW. My idea of having a good time was spending hours and hours in front of the screen completing quests, leveling up and earning gold at the auction house.

All was fun until I saw my first transcript: A+, C+, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, D- and D-.

With these results, I had a GPA of 1.96. In my institution, you need to keep it higher than 2.00, or else you get expelled. I decided to take a definite and concrete action. Not only did I uninstall WoW from my computer but also I completely eliminated games from my life. If I told you that I even removed the solitaire card game that comes with Windows, you would probably laugh, but I really wanted to stick with my resolution.

I also changed my studying habits. I stayed long hours at the university, reading lectures in advance, redoing exercises, rewriting notes—I pretty much lived at the library at that point. When I got my transcript I thought it was someone else’s: A, A, A, A-, B, B, B, B, B-, D+ and D-.

I knew that if I could stay focused and stick to my study routine, I would do even better. I was not mistaken. Here is my transcript for the third year: A+, A, A, A-, A-, A-, B+ and B-. Nothing below a B-grade, and now I have a cummulative GPA of 3.02.

That is only one side of my life that changed. Since I quit, I have met many interesting people, including a gorgeous and smart girl who is now my fiancée.
Some will say that it was not the game that influenced me but it was I who had problems in the first place; that might have been the case. I agree that games do not ruin lives, people ruin lives; all I can say is that I am a much more complete and happy person now.

This a video I took when I went to the Formula 1 Practice in Montreal. June 8th, 2007. Sorry for the low quality.

3 days left for the end of another semester in Software Engineering! Tuesday is the last day! Who wants to go out? I need to celebrate it somehow! :D

Then 2 weeks later I have my finals:

April 24: POLZ 202 - Introduction to Political Science
April 25: COMP 335 - Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science
April 25: ENGR 301 - Engineering Management Principles and Economics
May 3: ENGR 391 - Numerical Methods in Engineering

And on May 8 I’ll be working fulltime! Yay I can’t wait!

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I posted something about my personal life, and since this website has become more of a blog than anything else, I thought it would be a good idea to give you an update on what is going on behind the scenes. I still have one final left, for my COMP 239: Mathematics for Computer Science II class. It is on Dec 21, from 19:00 to 22:00. On Dec 22, at 11:30 I am taking an airplane to Quito, Ecuador, where my girlfriend is doing a 6-month intership. I am spending Christmas with her and I’ll be back in Montreal on the 29^th.

As far as the site is concerned, I have two “tools” I am planning to add: a guitar chord dictionary and a Portuguese-English verb dictionary. I will talk about why I will be working on those and how they are going to work on a future post. Well, that is all I had to say, thanks for visiting my site, and if I don’t talk to you before I leave, I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas!

Cheers
Pensador

My birthday was on June 9th, and this year it was on the same week as the Formula 1 Grand Prix. It was great, the city was alive, we had live music and thousands of people on the street! Here are a few pics I took, I hope you enjoy!

I have the impression that I went out more often during this spring break than over the past 6 months!

Tuesday: I went to Café Campus where I met a lot of good friends but also some nice new people.
Friday: I was invited to go to Momentos. They were having a party for the Día de la Bandera Mexicana (literally “Day of the Mexican Flag”).
Saturday: we had live Brazilian music for the Nuit Blanche (”all-nighter”). Once again, I met a lot of interesting new people there.
Sunday: I went to Bayou Brasil, a Brazilian restaurant here in Montreal, where we had a typical Brazilian dish called “feijoada“.

All that to say that this was a great week! Now I gotta get back to the normal schedule of an engineering student…

This semester I am still working three days a week and studying the other two days. Here are my courses:

• ELEC 353 - Basic Electromagnetics and Transmission Line Theory
• ELEC 261 - Complex Variables for Electrical and Computer Engineers

As far as the site is concerned, I have changed a little bit the layout of the main page by putting “Random Thought” below “Poll”. I also added a new poll, so please cast your vote!

Take care and see you in the next update!
Pensador