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Well I just realized in my post about my car that I didn’t really explain why I wasn’t going to be putting insurance on my car this summer, and I guess I should finally let the cat out of the bag about what I will be doing this summer. I have accepted a job for an co-op term at Research In Motion in Waterloo Ontario.

I’ll be starting in April and working out there until the end of August. I honestly cannot wait to get out there and be part of an amazing company like RIM, I really hope to bring a lot to the team and I also hope to learn a lot about working in a team environment in such a technical company like RIM.

Look forward to lots of pictures of Waterloo, it’s supposed to be an absolutely beautiful to be in the summer time, I can’t wait to get out on my own

kungfuice School, Technology

Well I have to say I am loving spring right about now. This weekend it finally started to warm up enough for me to take my “Real” car out for a little spin. I decided it was a smart idea to fill it up the Civic with some fresh gas, and take some time to wash the dust off it. I have to say I really miss being able to drive that car on a day to day basis. It’s fun knowing that you have this super great car sitting in the garage but at the same time it’s sad to know that you can’t experience the joys of driving it whenever you want.

It pains me to know that this summer I probably won’t be putting insurance on it, and although I plan to trailer it to some track events it definitely won’t be the same. Getting behind the wheel of my Civic takes me back to a simpler time, when all I had to do was get in my car and forget everything that was going on in my life. There is nothing more fun and relieving then getting into a car like my Civic going out for a drive, and experiencing 240whp of All motor Honda fun.

I always joke about getting rid of my civic and moving on to bigger and better things but I really don’t ever think I’ll be able to part with it, the amount of hours I spent underneath and around that car, I have really developed a connection with it that I don’t think I’ll ever have with any other car out there. It was my first, it was the car that taught me everything I know today about cars, including the good and the bad. The memories, and friends I have made with it will be with me forever, and when I look back on my teenage years it is definitely one of the things that puts a smile on my face every single time.

Hopefully after this summer I’ll be able to devote more time and energy to my car, and hopefully I’ll be able to bring it back to a state where I can feel comfortable driving it everyday. Until that time I’ll be missing her day after day, until the time I get to drive her again, and experience the joy of being behind the wheel of an absolute beast.

kungfuice Cars

Well I spent a good portion of yesterday implementing Better Then Live Search and can finally say that I have everything looking and working the way I wanted.

I spent a lot of time re adjusting my div tags for the sidebar, and chasing a bug where the lower categories were not being pushed by the prototype effect engine the way they should have been. I then realized that I had forgotten to apply the div tags around the elements in the sidebar that needed to be pushed down to make room for the search results.

There may be more tweaks to come but right now I’m very happy with my minimalistic theme, and minimalistic ajax search box. I may be adding more ajax tools to this blog in the future. I had tossed the idea around of an ajax enabled comment system kind of like Digg.com but we will see how my time pans out over the next couple of weeks/months.

Anyway back to studying

kungfuice Technology

Well over my reading week I decided to make the transition to Windows Vista. I had recently been running Ubuntu Edgy exclusively on my desktop, but decided that I wanted to see what Vista was all about. I picked up a copy of Home Premium (Legally!), and installed it on my box. I must say that I was very impressed with the changes to the Windows Installer. The image based install went smoothly and I was up and running in just over 30 minutes.

Once Vista booted everything just worked, I didnt’ need to download any drivers everything was done for me, which was a pleasant change from what I remember installing when I last installed Windows XP. Although Vista doesn’t have any services packs yet I think this will eventually change but we will see.

I was concerned about how my box would handle Vista, my computer is by no means old, but at the same time it’s definitely not bleeding edge. Currently I am running 1.86gz Centrino Processor with 1gb of PC3200 Ram, and an 80gb Sata Drive with a 120gb IDE storage drive, and I have an AGP 6600GT Nvidia Video card. Vista actually runs quite nicely on this setup. The overal experience seems very “snappy” everything opens quickly, and my memory usage is usually between 500-750mbs of my overall 1gb. I did however make the upgrade to 2gb recently just to give myself that extra “room” just incase.

Overall I really do enjoy the UI changes that have been made, and with the system in general. The search improvements are a blessing, and it’s nice to just type what I’m looking for in any window and have it just come up. Overall the Vista Eye Candy is nice, but is by no means as good as Beryl in Linux, however I do find that it is a lot more stable.

I really enjoy the integration of windows media player and the improvements they have made to it. I was always a fan of windows media player when I used windows. I liked it’s small memory footprint, library folder watching, the only thing I didn’t ever really like was the UI and they have definitely improved in that department.

All things considered if would definitely recommend anyone who is still running windows xp to go out and make the switch. I find that Vista has given me a reason to enjoy windows again, for now, but that definitely does not mean I spend a lot of time in it. I still use Linux as my main OS and would say I’m in that at least 85% of the time.

So yeah I guess that’s my pseudo review of Vista. I hope it helps some people make the decision to make the switch.

I almost forgot here’s a screenshot

kungfuice Computers, Technology

What vi would look like if Microsoft had developed it

There’s no where to run and hide from the vi assistant!

kungfuice Computers, Technology