For those who don't know, Skule™ is the metric spelling of school, referring exclusively to Engineering at the University of Toronto. Contrary to what you may have heard, my undergraduate career was not all about free pizza. Most of the time I had to work my face off just to get by. Why, you ask? Because I had the sorta-unique pleasure of studying Engineering Science (also known as Eng Sci or NΨ) at the University of Toronto.

As any Eng Sci student will tell you, the best part of the Eng Sci experience by far is the second-year design project. In my year, the requirements were for a robot that would follow people around, fit inside our storage locker, and do some simple task that would help mankind (and womankind). Now, some people had golf caddies, and some people had robots that would carry drinks around, but we had The Greatest Table-Setting Robot That Ever Came To Be. It sounded like a good idea when I proposed it. After all, what could be simpler than setting tables? </sarcasm>

Those little yellow buttons helped us parallel park the thing against tables. That stack of Lexan stored the dishes and cutlery. It can't be seen from this far away, but (in classic engineering student fashion) the whole stack is just hot-glued together. We had threaded rods running along the whole width of the thing (about a quarter of the way down from the top) which moved the "dish-and-cutlery-pushing-device" in and out of the beast. The plywood flaps around the bottom are bump sensors. If one of those went off and one of the yellow buttons didn't, the robot decided that it had hit something other than a table and it tried to get around whatever it was that it hit.

In my third year, I chose the Physics Option, Photonics and Condensed Matter stream, which gave me the opportunity to play with giant science toys that light up, go buzz, and are paid for by the government (and, to a lesser extent, my tuition).

In addition to learning science from books and such, I was also doing science on and off as a member of Barth Netterfield's lab at the University of Toronto. Our goal was the complete understanding of all cool things in the Universe, particularly the incredibally funky Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The name of that CMB experiment: BOOMERANG.

My main project in the Netterfield Lab was the design and construction of a pointed star-tracking camera. It didn't look very pretty, but I was proud of it. You can see it here in all its glory (Barth is on the right, I'm on the left):

In the Spring of 2000, I went out to Palestine, TX with the rest of the BOOMERANG collaboration to run some tests on the balloon. Palestine (pronounced Palesteeeen) is home to NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF). It is also the home of the best stuffed jalapenos I have ever found. Here are the web updates I made while I was there:

May 11: Very hot. Lots of people with funny accents and they say 'ticket' instead of 'bill'. Creeeeepy.

May 13: All of us have grown handlebar moustaches so that we can fit in better (except for Carrie and Vjera, and Barth, who, at 33, still has no facial hair). Sasa Nedeljkovic has temporarily changed his name to Wayne 'Ranch House' Anderson. That way no one will know that he's not from Texas.

May 16: A crocodile is more green than long.

May 18: When warm milk isn't available at a restaurant, a double tequila makes a nice substitute.

May 25: If you ever get the opportunity, try to go to an Italian restaurant in Texas with three Italians. It's priceless.

May 28: Last night there was this crazy storm and a complete patio set was submerged in the deep end of the swimming pool, including a table, umbrella, and three chairs. Very funny, but maybe you had to be there.

June 14: Sorry there hasn't been an update lately. I got busy, then spent a week in Pasadena, California, then came back, and then there was this major cryogenic catastrophe, so i'm coming home for a while.

 

It's a little small, but you can see the location of Palestine on the map above. It's right next to the massive finger.

Now life back then wasn't all science all the time. As an undergraduate in Skule™, I tried (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to have lots of fun. And not just your regular kind of boring fun. The good kind.

First, there's Skule Nite™, the Engineering comedy musical revue.   Skule™ Nite is awesome.  Go see it.

Then there's SUDS, the Engineering pub, an oasis in the desert of integrals and subroutines.  I was once the manager of this wonderful establishment, and now that I am no more, I am relegated to drinking Labatt 50 with whatever free beer tickets the current managers will toss at me.

And of course, there's everyone's favourite renegade musical terrorists, marching Gregorian chant society and white noise brigade: the Lady Godiva Memorial Band (also known as the LGMB or BNAD). The LGMB (pictured below) helped me survive plenty days and nights with a refreshing lecture crashing or football field dashing or alcohol stashing event.  At one time I held the storied position of Drumb Mayjur within the BNAD, but now I'm just a lowly multiple-X Drumb Mayjur, which is a pleasant way of saying that I'm nothing.

At the end of it all, just as every good Engineering student had done for many years before and will do for many years into the future, a bunch of us put together a sweet grad prank. Check it out in my picture gallery.