No one had better read this

10:39am: Final Tally
In order of finding out:

U Manitoba - Yes
U Alberta - Yes
MIT - No
McGill - Yes
CMU - No
NSERC Scholarship - Yes
UBC - Yes
U of T - No

And the winner is: UBC!

What a rollercoaster.  The big surprises were the NSERC scholarship and U of T.  When I applied two years ago, my grades were so low that the university wouldn't even send it away - and this year my prof who was on the committee said that he hadn't known how to write a good cover letter, and that he didn't see my name on the list so I must have either been pre-accepted or pre-rejected.

12:24am: We did it!

We got funding from Manitoba Hydro and also the province to do research on improving wind generation forecasts! Oh happy day. This means we get to spend the next 4 months on the supercomputing grid simulating weather and trying out different machine learning techniques. It also means we can pay ourselves and continue to hire. It also means I get to relax again...

Man. It still feels like a fluke. I can't believe everything worked out.

11:40am: The old man and the sea
Well today at work, a horde of techies came and raided our offices, and gave us new computers. One of them was an old man, Maxim, who told me and the secretary about how he retired at 52, and went to the Caribbean to windsurf. He said "I windsurfed every day, but after a while I realized that pleasure isn't the same thing as happiness. Who knew?". So he came back to Winnipeg, got his technical certificaions, and has been working as a techie here for 4 or 5 years.

I asked him if he was serious when he said "who knew?" and he said yes. The secretary later told me that her generation is so focused on retirement, that they think once they get there life will be perfect. Then they die 6 months later, she said.

12:55pm: My enemies:
I have scoured livejournal for the best of humanity, to learn from their example. But, my "friends", the best I have found is you. You all have the qualities and ability to become great, yet you make mistakes that stop you. Therefore I am no longer going to learn from your examples but from your mistakes! Thus my friends list is now my enemies list, and each of you should consider yourselves insulted!