Last night, in Waterloo, there were two parties.

The first was thrown by a frat, and was bone dry. The second was thrown by a local employer and featured a good deal more beer and liquor than could have been safely consumed by the persons present.

Not that all Waterloo frat parties are dry, or that most employer recruitment sessions aren’t, but it’s a little amusing to observe the contrast between students now and the students who graduated ten years ago to start companies in town.

This fun little piece just came down the toronto_lindy mailing list:

As they chatted while waiting for the dance to begin, one elderly gentleman in colourful shorts and mismatched knee socks was dancing up a storm with a partner half his age. With his right arm wrapped around his partner’s back and his left hand gently holding her right hand, the man twirled her around the dance floor, unfurling the woman gracefully, then pulling her back into his embrace. It was a beautiful sight, but an anxiety-inducing one for me.

I had reluctantly made my way to Lithuanian House because I wanted to learn how to move like that elderly gentleman. I hadn’t always known I wanted to dance. In fact, I had lived my entire life unaware that I had such a desire…

Catch the whole article here. Alana is presently on sabbatical in Ottawa, but she was my teacher over the summer, and I fully second Karastamatis’ experience of her delightful personality and instruction.

It was almost a year ago that I first declared my desire for a Mac. With the release of the MacBook, the features and price became too much to resist, and I bought one on launch.

In the spirit of blogging retrospectives, I have a few remarks to make on the visible aspects of the switch. Read on…

I’ll have a real post next week, but in the meantime you can catch some articles at my book’s blog; I’m particularly proud of this demo, which I think will open a lot of people’s eyes to the possibility of making cool maps based on regional statistics.

At the moment, I’m working on my work term report for University of Waterloo. I’m once again using Simon Law’s powerful LaTeX class to typeset the document; the big drawback of not having to waste time on formatting is, I can’t fiddle with the page numbering while I cast about for inspiration. On that note, if you’re interested—or know someone interested—in offering me an engineering-related job for January through April of 2007, please check out my sales pitch and maybe give me a shout.

It looks like my We-Create co-worker Jeffrey Sambells is attending php|works again this year. I was there last year and enjoyed it; keep an eye on his site for rundowns of the events.