Some of you might have already read about this but just in case you haven't, have a gander. According to reports, several chimpanzees escaped from an animal sanctuary on Thursday. Two male chimps began attacking two visitors to the sanctuary. The most seriously injured, a 62 year-old male, apparently had most of his face chewed or ripped off. Here's a quote from a news report:

"St. James Davis had severe facial injuries and would require extensive surgery in an attempt to reattach his nose, Dr. Maureen Martin of Kern Medical Center told KGET-TV of Bakersfield. His testicles and a foot also were severed, Kern County Sheriff's Cmdr. Hal Chealander told The Bakersfield Californian."

That's not a pretty description. Read the whole story here.

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Remember that academic plan I was writing about a few weeks ago? Well, I present that to my supervisory committee tomorrow (er, today). I have no idea if I've prepared too much material or prepared too little. I asked the departmental graduate advisor if any guidelines existed on this stuff. He said none did. He seemed real casual about it. I get the feeling if I got up there and just talked about chicken wings I'd be ok.

I'm hoping that I'll just present my slides, tell my committee why I took the courses I did, they'll give me a standing ovation, sign off on my plan and insert it into my file. Of course, I'm scared that they'll start to question me on my choices. Why did you take that course? That doesn't seem helpful at all to your work goals. Did you ever think about taking this course? Did you know you're not wearing pants right now?

I don't even know how long this will take. I booked a room for two hours from noon on. I hope we won't need all that time.

My intuition tells me that this will go over quite well. My supervisor wants me to get the hell of here, so there's no reason for her to want me to stay behind any longer. The other faculty member on my committee is a super cool (tm) guy. He's a relatively young prof which is unlike my entire department. I picked him because we got along real well when we taught a semester of tutorials together. My slides are complete in my opinion and I even have some videos to show them. By 2pm Friday, I'll be one step closer to graduation.

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In hindsight, it would have been easier to mark these assignments before going out with the boys for beer, wings, and nachos. Geez, I feel tired. Every answer looks pretty good to me now.

While I take a quick break, I'll make this short post. Writing posts that feature links are the most painless ways to blog. In light of this, I point you towards Frank's web site. He's got pictures from last week's LAN party and room crawl. Some of the pics you'll see are eating challenges, man-on-man action, and other feats of debauchery... the pics of the room crawl are good to look at as well.

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I'm afraid I don't have much time to blog tonight. I've spent most of the evening working on a project and for the first time, writing a Windows application. I made three buttons and a little text window, all by myself. Actually, I got a lot of help from one of my group members which made this much easier.

As a result of all this coding, my left shoulder feels like I've thrown the baseball around a thousand times today. The whole area feels like it's on fire. I've never had that happen before.

What I had for lunch today: an Oh Henry chocolate bar.

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I've been saying "get bent" all evening and don't ask me why. It's probably one of my favourite phrases from The Simpsons.

Back in '97, my sister and I were walking along Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki when we saw this sign on a Japanese restaurant. It said, "Get bento". I thought it was the funniest thing ever. I laughed so hard I didn't even notice the blonde prostitute next to us who was trying to proposition me in Japanese.

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For many years now, I've had an interest in zombies. I think this stems from living on-campus. While UBC is a bustling mini-city during the day, it gets pretty deserted during the evenings and early morning. As a person who stays up late on a consistent basis, I've been around campus when it truly feels like you're the last person on the planet.

When I lived at SJC, I'd visit the vending machine quite a bit during the late hours. As I lived on the first floor, I'd have to briefly exit one wing before entering another to get to the machine. For those few seconds I was outside in the darkness, I'd always wonder, "What if there's a zombie waiting for me out here?"

Of course there never is, but you know what? For some reason, I feel pretty confident I could survive a zombie attack. Perhaps it because I've watched a few zombie movies in my time or I've played a few zombie based video games as well. It certainly isn't because I've read any zombie survival books. It's just a gut feeling.

There are, however, certain conditions on this confidence. The list is as follows. First, I definitely need a weapon. I doubt that anyone could survive for any length of time without having some way of defending themselves against the living dead. I'd prefer a long range weapon, not necessarily a gun, perhaps even a crossbow. Of course, I'd also want a decent supply of ammo to go with that weapon (if applicable).

Second, I'd need to be in a fortified building. Several buildings on-campus would be ok for this, some better than others. I'm pretty sure you'd have to surrender the ground floor in some cases, but as long as you can hold them off in the staircases, you'd be fine. Of course, this means you'd be essentially stuck in that building, but maybe that's what you want. As example, I think if you were in SJC, you'd definitely have to surrender the whole first floor. Way too many windows and access points on the first floor. Let 'em have the pianos.

Third, you'd need food and water. While zombies can traditionally get away with eating just brains, we need bottles of Dassani and bars of Oh Henry. This is especially important if you're going to hole up somewhere.

Fourth, and this is a biggy, the zombies have to be old school zombies. This means they just want to eat your brains and can only move a fraction of the speed of the living. None of this 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead 2004 stuff. Those zombies can run at full speed. Combine that with their superior numbers and you'd be in serious trouble. I suppose though if you manage to hole up somewhere, their speed wouldn't matter. It only matters if you were out in the open with them.

If the dead began walking the earth, where would you go and what would you take with you? Before I finish, I leave you with the zombie infection simulator.

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