It’s no secret that many will feel a twinge of anger to know that millionaires, meaning people with, oh, $2.5 million in the bank, for instance, are still continuously worried about their financial well-being. Part of this stems from jealousy, which is natural, and part of it comes from the fact that you can’t help but feel sorry for these people who continue to work 70-80 hour work weeks even when they can retire to a life of relative comfort.

On the other hand, after reading several posts talking about how they basically “can’t possibly imagine how one could continue to work so much when they have millions of dollars in the bank”, I was reading a paragraph in a particular post, which says:

It is disappointing that the NYT article is so one-sided in its decision to portray rich SV folks in such a shallow light. Not that what they wrote isn’t true, and not that I feel any differently. I just have a hunch there are at least a few people reading that piece, feeling frustrated that their charitable efforts, good work ethics, family values, etc are being ignored. Unfortunately, I think the article was all-too-easy to write and the story they tell was all-too-easy to substantiate.

I would have to agree with this, in that I’m sure there are an equal number of Valley millionaires who have since retired after getting their fair share of wealth.

It seems to me that the people who were profiled in the NY Times article are the type of people who simply enjoy working (i.e. workaholics). People with these characteristics exist everywhere, and it’s not surprising that the elite group of millionaires would have its fair share of them.

If put in very simple terms, I would say that there’s one group of wealthy Valley people who got their millions by being at the right place at the right time (i.e. Broadcast.com and Mark Cuban comes to mind, which sold to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion; the website is now defunct), and then there’s another group of people who would work as hard as possible no matter how much money they had, which I would say are the people who were profiled in this article.

It’s actually entertaining and annoying at the same time to see people from the Valley who continuously strive to make their first million (I’ve seen my fair share), maybe because their neighbor has reached the $10 million ‘milestone’. Up here in Toronto, at least in the neighborhood that I live in, people are very down-to-Earth. I keep my stress levels low by only talking ‘business’ when I’m at my computer and at certain times of the day; I wouldn’t know how to manage my life otherwise. (The next time I meet someone who is a workaholic and expects me to be one, I’m going to tell them to ‘chill the f**k down’.)

Anyways, I find it disturbing, and yet, refreshing, to find that at least these people are people who are deserving of their millions, and who (at least claim that they) enjoy working 70-80 work weeks. I know I sure as hell wouldn’t!

I’d like to thank Tony for giving me the opportunity to write there - it’s been a great experience the whole time!

Personally, I’m still waiting for Mac OS X Leopard!

I must say, the television commercial for the move does not do the film justice - this is definitely a movie that cannot be judged based on what their marketing department can conjure up. When living in a world with movies such as “The Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End”, “Shrek 3″, and “Spider-Man 3″, - movies which made nearly a billion dollars, and walking out of the theater feeling ripped off - it’s not difficult to see that the quality of a movie can be vastly different from what the general perception is before walking in to the theater.

The television commercial for the movie DOES display how far some of the great technological advances computer-generated animated films have come, what with very realistic-looking fur on the rats and smoothly flowing water in the sewers. What it does NOT show, though, is just how well the story goes along with it.

The premise for the film, as is described in the commercials, explains that a rat who likes to cook befriends a chef who can’t cook, and together, they become one of the greatest cooks in France. To I don’t know about you, but to me, this is a story that seems unappealing, but it all works out in the end! The funny thing is, the movie trailer for Spider-Man 3 was so appealing to me that I wanted to see it over and over again. But, it turns out, the movie Ratatouille is so great that THAT’S what I want to see over and over again.

First of all, I’d like to thank them for giving me the opportunity to work there. I’ve learned a lot of things, and I take away with me experiences and relationships that I will use for the rest of my life.

In a way, this event is perfect for me. Now that I have more time available to myself, I’ve invested it into my own projects that I have planned for quite some time (most of which are still under wraps!) I also have several projects that I have been working on but had to put on hold because of my work at b5media, so now I can spend more time to focus on them.

Anyways, thanks, muchos gracias, to everyone who has been involved with my experience over at b5media. It’s been fun, but I can only work at the same place for so long!

Plus, I get bored easily, so I try to spice things up by changing the platforms that I work on and such (I primarily used WordPress over at b5media). Which, leads me to my next point… I’m building Facebook Applications now. Read on by clicking here!

How do I determine if I should remove someone from my Facebook profile? Well, Facebook nicely reminds me whenever a friend’s birthday is coming up within the next few days. If I would find it awkward if I posted a simple ‘Happy birthday’ message onto a friend’s Facebook profile ‘wall’, then they probably shouldn’t be connected to me on Facebook.

I’ve also previously mentioned that it’s always a good idea to specify your relationship with your Facebook friends, so that in the future you remember that you met Bob from that short-lived job that you worked at a few months back, or Jane at your friend’s birthday bash last week.

I’ve talked to a few people, and among my peers, I’d say that Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular social networks, in that order. Some people simply go for numbers and try to get as many friends on Facebook and as many contacts on LinkedIn as humanly possible, but personally, I aim to only add people on Facebook if I’ve conversed with them at least once. This is a cardinal rule that many people don’t bother with - I’ve personally received dozens of Facebook friend invitations from people whom I’ve never heard of but are in some way connected to me! For LinkedIn, I only add people on it if I’ve had some sort of interaction with them, since it’s always nice to expand my professional network.

How do YOU weed out your Facebook friends list, or your friends list on any social network in general?

To drugs? No, silly! To feeds! When I counted, yesterday, I had no less than 200 feed subscriptions in Google Reader; according to some people, this is a tiny number and I should continue subscribing to feeds. To me, though, I eventually found it a bit excessive.

The important thing to consider is if you are getting a lot of duplicate content in the feeds, and if you are, then you should start purging feeds that simply echo content that you find in your other feeds. This was the case for me.

Just a few minutes ago, I put my feed reader on a diet and unsubscribed to about 150 feeds, so that I’m now left with 53 feeds. I plan on skimming that down a bit more to, at most, 50 feeds, and plan on keeping it below that.

I’m actually having a hard time deciding on which 3 feeds to cut from my list; the first 150 feeds were easy to decide on, but the last 3 are the hardest! I have to determine which feed gives me the least amount of value for reading it.

For example, I plan on keeping the feeds that give my list some variety; I’m subscribed to a blog on cooking, one on comics, and one about personal development, to keep a bit of variety intact.

One thing that I find really useful are the statistics that Google Reader provides; I’m talking about what they call Trends, which Google released at the beginning of this year. It really helps to see which of your feeds have been inactive for the longest time.

The feed with the oldest post that is its most recent, was made back in April 20. That’s not that long ago, so this shows that the feeds that I’ve subscribed to at least post fairly regularly. I’ve got 20 feeds that post at least once a day, so I’ve got plenty of content coming in with fewer duplicates because each feed is covering a fairly different niche from each other.

I’m sure there are plenty of other people out there that seriously feel like you’re stuck under an avalanche of information sometimes. How many feeds are YOU subscribed to? How do you cope with all of the information that you receive every day?

Once the event was done, I took the bus home. This was the first time that I had actually been further than a mile away from my school’s campus. I’ve lived here for nearly 5 months now, so it was definitely interesting. Fortunately for me, a bus stop for the city’s express bus is right outside my apartment building, otherwise I would never have gotten home in time to watch TV on my new TV .

Most popular posts

In the year that my blog has existed thus far, the most popular list of posts include topics such as “I’m joining b5media“, Nintendo Wii + Mac Mini = entertainment paradise“, and “Sanjaya Malakar is eliminated from American Idol“.

Statistics

Some interesting statistics that I’ve gathered about my blog over the past year include:

• I average 3.2 posts per week.
• I get an average of 2.7 comments per post (I blame the earlier posts for such a low number! )
• The times that I post the most are 3 pm, 5 pm, and 11 pm.
• The days that I make the most posts on are Friday, Thursday, and then Sunday.
• I get the most comments when I make a post on Tuesdays (this is a really interesting tidbit for myself!)

Anyways, have a great day!

P.S.

To anyone who is still awaiting a response to an email that you’ve sent to me, I’ve got quite a few emails backed up. I’ve got a long day ahead of me today so I most likely won’t be able to respond to them until Friday, or at the latest, during the weekend. Thanks for your understanding!

Some interesting things that I noticed off the bat, were that my site immediately hit 60 concurrent visitors within 5 minutes of making the post, and that comments came in to the post even before I finished editing it (I made the post, published it, then went back to edit it since it’s a time-sensitive post.) I also sent the post to Digg (typically, I would wait until someone else submitted one of my posts before Digging it, but this was a time-sensitive post, so I just did it myself) and so far, I’m at 52 diggs and its the item with the highest number of Diggs regarding this issue. What I don’t quite get is why Google’s main search engine doesn’t use any of the pages indexed by Google’s Blog Search - a search for ’sanjaya’ on my site brings up nothing on Google, but it works on the Blog Search.

It’s definitely an interesting experience - it changed my perspective on my own blogging. I’m not saying that I’ll be making American Idol posts from now on (although, I know that some of you would LOVE to see me try), but rather, that I’m going to make an effort to blog more. I’d hate to be best known as ‘a blog that reported Sanjaya being booted from American Idol’, so I’m going to start pushing out posts on OTHER topics that are Digg- and Techmeme-worthy in the future. I’m pretty sure that working at b5media, a blogging network, has helped, too.

I think I’ve written posts with fairly good content in the past (I would like to note that I believe I’ve improved over the last few months), but the problem, as many readers probably know, is that I don’t blog enough! This event has changed my thoughts on blogging, and starting now, I’ll try and push out more useful posts like never before (it shouldn’t be too hard, considering that I used to only make a few posts every month!)

If you’ve got an idea on what topics you’d like to see posted here, feel free to let me know in the comments. I’ve got a few posts in the pipes, but I’m also really interested in hearing what your thoughts are.

Update:

In one day, the number of subscribers to my blog jumped from 98 to 119 subscribers, a 21% increase, which is the biggest jump that my blog has ever had. (Even though it’s not impressive when compared to large blogs, but still - it’s something I’m happy to see!)

Here’s the graph for the number of subscribers that my blog has had since its inception:

During this time, I’ve learned a few things about the guys (and girl) of b5. For instance, we discovered that Chad really loves Facebook (and made us all use it), that Darcie tells great stories even when she’s drunk, and that Darren has a photography blog! Who would’ve thunk?!

See also posts from other participants of these events:

• Technosailor
• Ensight

I started the family tree by simply adding myself and my parents. My father later on added a handful of people, including his siblings and his own parents, and then the family tree started gaining traction. Of course, some of my relatives don’t understand how to use the interface, but some of them are lucky enough to have someone in their household that is a technorati to help them out . Within a few weeks, we hit the hundred mark pretty quickly. Geni is extremely intelligent, in that the website itself is very viral. When someone in your family receives an email which says that they have been added to the family tree, then they have the choice of visiting the website with the link provided and add more relatives. The people that they add are usually those that are directly related to that person (i.e. parents, siblings, children, and spouse’s family!). This makes the growth of the site to be fairly exponential (there is still the fact that a large number of the people receiving the emails will be non-technically savvy, though, unlike more typical social networking sites.)

Fast forward one month later (to today), and I came upon reading a post by Michael Arrington (the author of the aforementioned TechCrunch), and he stated that his family was really getting into Geni. After some mindless browsing, I found myself upon the Geni blog, and I came upon a particular post that was made today, showing anonymous statistics of how many family members each family tree had. Well, it turns out that I’m in the top 100! My family tree currently has 763 people, so we’re on the very brink of the top 100 (the 100th largest family has 746), but I’m pretty sure that once we dig a bit deeper into our history, we’ll be adding more and more very soon

Ah, yes, I’ve got good memories of last year’s inaugural conference. It was actually during that time that I finally decided to start a blog and keep it for at least a month; my first posts are in fact, about the conference itself!

So far, only the keynote speakers have been announced on the website, which include such industry heavyweights like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame, Jim Buckmaster from craigslist, and a returning speaker from last year, Tom Williams of GiveMeaning.com. It will be very interesting to see the rest of the schedule fleshed out over the next few months leading up to the event itself; I can’t wait! It would also be interesting to see another ‘15 minutes of fame‘ segment, like the one that existed last year and that I was included in (thanks again, mesh guys!) Or maybe hold a panel focused on how today’s teenagers have a growing influence on some of the largest websites on the web, including YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook? This would then be similar to what I spoke about at last year’s conference; I consider my little spiel at mesh 2006 to be foreshadowing the ‘Google buys YouTube‘ news!

I can’t imagine why most websites would want to be fixed; most people I know have their browser windows maximized (whether they want to or not, since it’s the default setting I believe) and so the site could use all that valuable screen real estate that is usually filled with whitespace. I know that switching from a fixed to flexible width comes with some headaches regarding CSS, depending on how many divs you’ve got going, but for most sites, it seems well worth it (especially for ‘content’ sites, where there are articles and other large bodies of writing that populate the website.)

So if you’re reading this post in a feed reader, please come check out the new layout and let me know what you think! I’m sure the new design will divide a lot of readers on both sides of the fence; some will like it, some will hate it. I’d rather have a change in the layout than not at all, though!

P.S.
Cross-browser compatibility was a pain in the ass for this, so let me know if something has gone awry in a non-Firefox browser.

UPDATE: Sorry about that comments box goof; the comments input box was at the very bottom of every page, so a lot of people didn’t know it was still there. It’s fixed now!

It would’ve been nice if iTunes had at least had an icon showing that would appear whenever the Alarm was enabled - it’s all that I ask!

There’s that Mac Mini that I have…

I have a Mac Mini that I haven’t touched since obtaining my MacBook Pro, and it’s just been sitting on my table, collecting dust. I had thought of using it as an ‘entertainment hub’ for my home for some time, since it has built-in wifi.

The synergy of the Wii and the Mini is a great thing

I thought of purchasing an infrared receiver for my Mac Mini so that my Apple Remote which came with my MacBook Pro could be used for it. My eyes then laid upon my Wii Remote, with its simplified-yet-useful set of buttons, and inside of it, its built-in motion sensor… and I thought, why can’t I use that as a remote for my Mac Mini? Well, it turns out that I can, with the help of DarwiinRemote! I installed the application immediately, and lo-and-behold, I’m now using my Wii Remote as a remote for both my Nintendo Wii AND my Mac Mini. The Wii Remote works with my Mac Mini because both devices have Bluetooth enabled. I’m now deciding upon which media center program to use; my options include Front Row, MediaCentral, and CenterStage, among others.

At this point, the Nintendo Wii is used for gaming purposes, which the Mac Mini can also be used for - but primarily, the Mac Mini is used for viewing media, such as movies or TV. I’m also thinking of also integrating my Tivo box into the equation to include time-shifting abilities, but that’ll be a project for the future.

• Gmail
  • Inbox: 1 unread
  • Starred: 4 emails
• Google Calendar
  • 17 events or to-do items for today
• Google Reader
  • 3 unread items
  • 23 starred items
• ListMixer
  • 50 items

Slow over time, this stuff piles up, even though the oldest item out of all of these containers is from less than a week ago!

Starring items to give them priority

Out of the four of these containers, both Gmail and Google Reader gives me the ability to ’star’ certain items, allowing me to save them for future referral, or to remind me to read them the next time I open up my account. This is great when using it in combination with keyboard shortcuts, because then I can quickly sift through the items and marking those that I want to return back to with a star. Also, in essence, ListMixer is like starring a website for me to look over again as well.

Using labels to give context

In Gmail, I also used the labels feature to label my email. But, for emails that required immediate or daily attention, I gave them a special label that was all in uppercase text, such as B5MEDIA or EBAY PURCHASES, to remind me to look at them at least once a day. I also sometimes use Google Calendar as my to-do list, as the ability to quickly drag events from one date to another is very useful for chronic procrastinators who often delay that ‘clean the xyz’ item for far too many times, but when I need a really accessible to-do list that takes no time at all to call up, I turn to High Priority, which is a great to-do manager for the Mac which sits in your menu bar (that thing that sits at the top of your screen.)

Checking my containers

I checked my containers for items that I starred whenever I remembered to do so, which ended up being not that often - so I often ended up with at least several dozen items starred, waiting to be read and followed up on by me - until now. It’s a simple solution, but it works great for people, like me, who likes to procrastinate things that seem less important than those that are obviously important, such as work-related tasks.

Emptying out containers, one-by-one

Now, instead of slowly cleaning out my containers little by little, but never having them completely empty, I set a weekly deadline for me to empty them out completely. At the end of every Friday night, I’ll go through each container and act on actionable items, and discard anything that isn’t needed.

I’ve created a folder in my Firefox bookmarks called ‘perpetual’, which contains bookmarks for all 4 of the containers that I listed above - Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and ListMixer - so that they’re all grouped together like that. I don’t like having ‘orphaned’ data just sitting somewhere in one of my accounts in an online to-do list manager like Ta-da List, and I forgot about it a few days later, letting it linger there indefinitely. It could’ve been a great business idea! Which is why I also use Google Docs & Spreadsheets to store that kind of data, but which I check less often since I tend to use it less (damn - my life really does seem to revolve around Google a lot these days!)

It’s the little things like this that really puts everything back in motion and it gives a nice sense of accomplishment at least once a week, because now I have a reason to clean out my containers - I want to make my own deadline!

If you have any other tools that you use to temporarily store information for near-future retrieval, please post them in the comments. I prefer to have a minimal number of tools to use so that I don’t have to refer to as many of them, but I’m sure this differs for others.

Like the CEO of b5media says, I am the newest addition to the b5media team! I really look forward to working with everyone there, and I intend to learn a lot during my employment.

Now, first off, here’s a bit of background information and other spiel on b5media, straight from its website:

b5media (www.b5media.com) is a global new media network featuring more than 150 blogs on a wide variety of subjects ranging from entertainment and news to technology and sports. With content written by passionate people from all over the world and visited by more than two million unique visitors a month, b5media is among the world’s largest online new media networks. b5media is based in Toronto.

Since I am making this post a few days after my first day of work, I’m going to also talk a little bit about my experience so far at the company - if it even deserves a label that’s colder than b5 really is. I’d call it more of a… family of people who… have never met… and love working with each other? Yeah, that sounds about right! There hasn’t been much work required in integrating me into this tight-knit group of people, and so, since Monday, it’s been a great ride thus far!

Waiting for my first day of work at b5media to arrive felt like waiting for New Year’s Day. It very much felt like it was going to be a big milestone in my life, and I still feel that it is. It’s basically MY New Year’s Day - a fresh start, a new mindset, and exciting, brand-new challenges await me! Of course, the weather apparently agrees with me, because I had the ‘privilege’ to walk, bus, and ride the subway (underneath) the blanket of snow that hit Toronto the very same Monday that I started work.

To be perfectly honest, out of all of the existing blog networks out there, I was much more familiar with Weblogs Inc. and Gawker than with b5media, so a little pitch was required from Jeremy in order to convince me - but only a little, because his vision for the company really clicked with me once he started talking. Of course, once I actually became a part of the company, I, then, REALLY began to start seeing where this company was heading. And now, I’m excited. VERY excited. I hope that this will be an awesome ride for me - in fact, I’m certain of it.

May

• mesh wrap-up

June

• What’s wrong with formal education? (and I’m finally studying now)

July

• EdgeFest 2

August

• My UWaterloo acceptance has been withdrawn?

September

• Looking for a job for my first co-op first term

October

• (none)

November

• Paradigm shift: Is it actually possible to love what you’re doing?
• Procrastination - could it actually be a BAD thing?

December

• The past 4 months that have opened my eyes
• No laptop for the past few days makes me an unhappy camper

This isn’t as much as I would have hoped, but that’s because I haven’t been blogging that much in 2006. One of my goals for 2007 is to blog more when I have something to say, and so I hope to follow through with that goal!

I have also learned a lot about myself while at university that I wouldn’t have otherwise figured out on my own. This list is in no way comprehensive, as I’ve definitely changed in many more ways than I can count (primarily in a good way), and I hope that spending more time at university will help me to better figure out who I am. Here are some things that I’ve learned about myself and about life in general:

• I prefer Arts rather than Mathematics. Those who have known me for a long time know that I have a strong affinity for computers, and more specifically, the future of the web, but I’ve figured out that this doesn’t necessarily mean that Computer Science is the natural choice for me. I haven’t made any final decisions yet, but I feel like I’m leaning more towards a more creative program now that I’ve finally dipped my toes into the water.
• Take initiative and follow your dream. I’m in the ‘co-operative education’ program at the University of Waterloo, and this allows me to find jobs at employers that have deals with the university. Instead of taking that typical route that most students do, I decided to find jobs on my own through my own network of contacts. I understand that many students don’t have that luxury, or that many are simply looking for jobs that aren’t found within their network of friends, but if possible at all, I recommend that you look hard to find out if you know anyone who works at the company that you’d like to work for, or who is a part of a company that has goals that are similar to what you would like to achieve.
• Be prepared to embrace the culture of others. University is an excellent example of a densely populated melting pot, regarding both culture and ideas. It’s a great place to find people with similar interests with you, and yet, with different perspectives. This is an excellent situation to bounce ideas off of each other and innovate.

These are all that I can think of so far (I haven’t gotten much sleep these past few days - it’s really been hectic!), but if I come up with more, I’ll add them in.

All in all, though, it wasn’t all that bad. I surprised myself at how much I didn’t really depend on my laptop if I didn’t need to; a lot of the stuff that I used were online, including Gmail for email, Google Calendar for my events and tasks, Bookmarks Synchronizer to upload my Firefox bookmarks online, and even ListMixer, a place where I store temporary bookmarks; these are basically my most essential items that I need in order to pass the day. Of course, I was forced to return to Windows XP for this fairly brief period of time as well, and the differences between OS X and XP really dawned on me at that point, such as how inconvenient a lot of tasks are made to be in XP.

I’m curious, can you guys survive without your primary desktop/laptop for a few days, or even a few weeks? Or do you really need to lug it along with you almost everywhere you go? Feel free to reply back by commenting on this post!

Why, then, do people today still choose to work in professions that they don’t quite enjoy? Stereotypes shouldn’t be applied, and yet, even without trying to, they are seen all over university campuses everywhere. Take the University of Waterloo, which is where I am currently enrolled. Programs such as accounting have a much higher ratio of Asians-to-Caucasians than, say, engineering. Even gender stereotypes still exist; the male-to-female ratio in the Faculty of Mathematics is 72:28, and in the Faculty of Engineering, it’s 78:22. But in the Faculty of Arts, the ratio is 29:71. One of the primary causes for this huge imbalance is stereotypes.

In my English course that I’m taking this term, we’re doing research projects on one of four topics; one of the topics is ‘women in mathematics.’ The goal of that topic is to come to a conclusion of why there are such low enrollment numbers of women in the Faculty of Mathematics, and how this can be resolved. A good chunk of the women in mathematics are in it because - surprise, surprise - they actually love it.

I just came back from my English class today, where all the groups did their presentations on what they’ve learned and researched. One of the groups that did their presentation on Women in Mathematics mentioned that what we should do to increase popularity and change the views of women about math, is to make bigger changes at a younger age. So for instance, in pre-school, girls usually play with dolls, and the boys usually play with building blocks (a stereotype, yes, but one that’s pretty accurate.) The boys building blocks is more than just a way to spend their time; it also helps them with their analytical and problem solving skills. They figure out where blocks go to build the desired object that they wish to build. Girls play with dolls, and the primary thing that they get out of it is creativity, but in a very limited way, because dolls aren’t as abstract as blocks and therefore can’t be applied to as large a field of subjects. Blocks are very abstract, and so boys can take the knowledge that they learned in pre-school, build on it and hone their skills, and then apply block building to, say, building computer software, or constructing the next Eiffel Tower.

2:00 pm: Arrived on campus, removed my belongings from my car, and unpack them in my residence.
4:30 pm: Don’s chat, pizza dinner, and then outside for some fun and games.
6:00 pm: Meet up with the other 3,000 or so freshman students outside, and cheer for our own respective teams.
8:00 pm: Do our own thing; walk around the campus, or continue in other campus activities.
9:00 pm: Ice cream sundaes are served across campus residences.
9:30 pm: Walk around some more; find my high school friends.
12:00 am: Return back to my residence with high school friends. Chat a bit, then they leave.
12:30 am: Prepare to go to sleep. A visitor of my roommate’s comes in and we chat for a bit.
2:00 am: Prepare to go to sleep.
2:30 am: Type this blog entry. I’m going to sleep now!

UPDATE:

3:30 am: Awake again to get a snack and watch some television.

UPDATE: I also want to mention, that during the fireworks, one of the dogs there (there were 4) ran up to the fireworks and almost picked one up with its mouth. Someone managed to ran up to the dog in time, while it was within 5 meters of the fireworks, to drag it away.

“The Admissions Committee for the Faculty of Mathematics has received and reviewed your final secondary school grades.”

and that

“The conditional Offer of Admission to the Honours Computer Science Coop program at the University of Waterloo, you received earlier, included conditions that have not been met.”

(There is more, but these are the main points.)

My immediate reaction? Well, you can imagine the rage, anxiety, and whatnot.

I emailed them back immediately when I read the email. Then I received a reply back:

“It has come to our attention that you have been contacted in regards to having a final average below 75% in one or more of your required courses. I wish to apologize as your grades are ok and your offer to the Faculty of Mathematics is not in jeopardy.” … “Again, I apologize for any anxiety this has caused you and we look forward to seeing you in the Fall. “

Anxiety, indeed!
At least I’m back in now (although I guess I technically never wasn’t), so I’m fine again. A small roller coaster, and I think my heart stopped when I read the email.