What's up in the Dalhousie?

Hello everyone,

Now that Darcy has given you a sample of daily life over here in Dartmouth, I thought I'd take you all across the harbour into Halifax, and talk about what my days at Dalhousie are like.

First, some context:  here is a map of Halifax, with the relevant bits marked (we are the blue star; Dalhousie is the red arrow):

(Click for full size)
Image taken from http://mappery.com/map-of/Halifax-Dartmouth-Map

So, you see it is a ways to school in the morning.  I walk to the bus stop (through Dartmouth Commons, which is a lovely walk) every morning, which is about 700 m away.  Then I take the bus over the bridge, which is one heck of a view (as long as you like iron bars):

Did you think we were done with the ocean?

There are only two bridges into Halifax, and they are both toll bridges, so traffic moves pretty slowly.  I have found this to be an excellent time to do exactly nothing.

Once across the bridge, we drive through historic downtown Halifax, which I really know nothing about, aside from the fact that it looks real nice:

Did you notice you can still see the ocean?

Then, after between half an hour and forty five minutes, depending on traffic, I get to the university:

It's blurry, but it says it was founded in 1850, which for those of you who are playing the home game, is AFTER the ferry started.

Dalhousie is on University Avenue, which you might think is obvious, but Halifax has about thirteen hozillion universities all in its downtown core, so that's actually potentially confusing if you DON'T go to Dalhousie.  Anyways, with the trees all leafy and such, it looks pretty awesome:

Just to the left, you can see the Computer Science building, captured in all of its glory right here:

It's a pretty nice building.  On the inside, it's got classrooms and offices and computer labs like you would expect, but grad students are organized into "playgrounds."  Here is my playground:

You might notice that a "playground" is actually just a kind of wacky cubicle farm.  But so far, none of the people near me have ever shown up, so I don't mind at all.  Here is my desk as it was before I got a computer:

Perhaps you notice al that Lego on my desk.  This brings me to what I actually do while I am at the school, which I was not able to explain to anyone before I arrived, because I had no idea what I would be doing.

It turns out that what I do is a bunch of random stuff.  The Lego was actually part of my TA work.  My supervisor (who I do not have a picture of) wants to use it as a demonstration for one of his classes.  I didn't complain because I got to build lego for the first few days I was in school.

I also do stuff like go to classes and teach labs and things, but mostly I just seem to do stuff.  Just today, I've finally got an actual project to work on, but up until now, I was just doing miscellaneous odd jobs that needed doing, both for myself and my supervisor.  I have spent far more time than I should have getting administrative stuff sorted out, mainly because it seems like no one is very good at communicating things.  Some of you might know how I like to know exactly what all the rules are (so I can feel confident in breaking them), and despite my best efforts, I have twice broken rules that could have resulted in me losing my registration if I didn't fix them.  Luckily, everything seems to be fine now, but you never know.

My supervisor (Dr. Jamie Blustein) and I are getting along very well.  He's a big geek, I'm a big geek, it works out.  I'll likely have more to say about what I am actually DOING once I start doing it, but suffice it to say that I seem to have ended up in an area of Computer Science that I have literally never studied before.  Luckily, it's about things I care a whole lot about, so it all works out nicely.

Dalhousie has a LOT of options for food, and I am still wandering around trying to find them all, in addition to all the places that are just off the grounds that I can walk to.  The only issue is that I have to eat with the common masses.  I usually eat outside, but the wasps seem to have discovered that sitting near where the food is sold is a great way to get food bits that people drop, so it's a bit unpleasant sometimes.

So, that's a sort of overview of my academic life so far (confused?  So are we all).  I'll leave you with these two pictures of quaint old houses:

JUST KIDDING!!  These are actually Dalhousie offices.  I guess they didn't want to tear down the cute houses, so they stuck offices in them instead.  I think it's awesome.